Chapter 13 #3
“I think you did.” Thor looked almost as worn out as Victoria did, after worrying about her.
It had made him realize how much he cared about her, and how attached he was to her.
She had gotten him back up on his feet when he was disheartened and in despair in the hospital, and for the past few days he’d been terrified she was going to die.
It made him want to tell her how he felt about her, but he knew how independent she was, and he didn’t want to frighten her away.
She meant too much to him to risk it, and he contented himself with the deep friendship they had, without hoping for more.
And she was so far above him socially, although she didn’t act it.
She treated him as an equal, with the greatest respect.
But Thor was a coal miner’s son, and Victoria was the daughter of a lord, and that would never change.
She was far above him in the world they lived in.
“I’ll be back in the office in a few days,” she reassured him.
“No, you will not. You will stay here in bed until you’re fully well, and not coughing like a seal.” She still had a dreadful cough from the flu.
“Is that what the doctor said?”
“No, those are my orders. You need to take better care of your health.” She looked like a scolded child, and he left her a little while later and went back to the office. He felt like dancing, he was so relieved that she hadn’t died.
“How’s Mrs. Banning?” Victoria’s secretary asked when she saw him.
“On the road to recovery,” he said happily.
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said, and went back to her office.
Victoria returned a week later, still coughing, but she said she felt fine, and she looked more rested than he’d seen her in months.
All she could talk about was the mill owners’ conference she was going to in Virginia in May.
She had the whole trip planned. She was sailing on the Carmania to New York, going to Virginia by train, spending two days at the conference at Vergil Jackson’s plantation, and then back to New York and home again.
Victoria knew that Jackson had been a friend of Bert’s and that he had admired him greatly.
And she was interested in hearing the American point of view.
It would be a very short trip but she thought it was worth it.
She didn’t want to stay long, but Jackson was a very important man.
She’d be away for less than three weeks.
She was nervous about the crossing. It was the first ocean voyage she had taken since returning from New York after the sinking of the Titanic, seven years before.
Bert had been with her on the trip home.
For a mad moment, she thought of inviting Thor, but it didn’t seem appropriate to be traveling with him.
Even though she had more freedom as a widow than she had had as a single woman, it didn’t feel right, so she never mentioned it to him.
He was nervous about her going alone too, but the war was over, the ship was solid, and she wanted to go, so he didn’t say anything.
He respected her independence and felt he had no right to interfere.
When the time came, he saw her off at Liverpool.
She was anxious about being at sea again, but excited about what she would learn in Richmond from the American mill owners.
She wanted to broaden her horizons. And she still loved to travel and hadn’t in years.
She hadn’t seen Delphine since before the war.
Thor took Victoria to her cabin, and she looked as beautiful as ever in a pale blue suit and hat.
The other passengers looked very elegant, and Thor felt slightly out of place being there.
He was acutely aware in circumstances like these that his father had been a coal miner, his parents were simple people, and he had grown up poor.
Despite the suits he had bought for his important new job, he always felt slightly like an imposter.
The hardest part was that he was in love with Victoria.
He loved the fact that he got to see her every day.
They had a good time together and could talk for hours.
She was everything he had ever dreamed of in a woman.
She was interesting and smart and fun to be with and beautiful and brave, but he was not of her world and he knew it, and he couldn’t envision her ever wanting to be with a man like him.
She was an aristocrat with a title, and Bert had been the most important mill owner in England.
All Thor could think was what could Victoria ever want with a man like him?
The answer in his mind was that she wouldn’t and she was far beyond his reach.
* * *
Thor watched the ship set sail from the dock, and Victoria waved at him, smiling by the rail.
He stood there for as long as he could see her, then took the train back to Manchester.
It was going to be a long three weeks without her.
He was used to seeing her every day, which gave his life purpose and meaning, even more than the job she’d given him.
On board the Carmania, Victoria had lunch in her cabin, spent the afternoon reading, and went for a walk around the deck at the end of the day.
She was thinking about the trip ahead of her, and meeting Vergil Jackson.
She missed being able to talk to Thor, and was sorry he hadn’t come with her.
But she thought he might have been shocked if she asked him.
And she had no one to ask to chaperone them.
She ran a powerful empire with over four thousand employees, but the proprieties still applied even to her.
The world had changed, but not entirely.
She had lunch in the dining room twice, and the rest of the time ate in her cabin.
She read in a deck chair all afternoon. She had brought several articles about Vergil Jackson with her.
He sounded like an interesting man. His mills were on the plantation that had been in his family for generations.
He was the most important mill owner in the South, and had been a senator when he was younger.
He was about Bert’s age and had been married to a famous movie star, briefly, and divorced.
He had had a long marriage before that, and had lost his first wife to cancer.
He owned racehorses too, and his horse had won the Kentucky Derby the previous year.
She was going to be staying at a guesthouse on his plantation, and the photographs of the property were spectacular.
It was interesting to remember as a point of history that the slaves had only been freed in the South slightly more than fifty years before, in Vergil Jackson’s lifetime.
Slavery was a part of their fairly recent history and had always been associated with the growing of cotton, which made Victoria uneasy.
Slavery was much further back in British history, and had never been a part of her experience.
It seemed like something from history books, not real life. She treated her workers as equals.
She spent most of the crossing in her cabin and on deck.
She didn’t know anyone on board and kept to herself most of the time.
She was relieved when the ship entered New York Harbor and docked, and she called Thor as soon as she got to the hotel.
She had missed him and their conversations every morning when he came to her office or she visited him in his.
She knew he got to the office early every day, and he had been working all morning when she called him.
He was excited to hear her voice. It was a happy surprise.
“How was the crossing?” he asked her.
“Boring, which was just how I wanted it to be. I didn’t speak to a soul, and I didn’t know anyone on board. It was perfect. I read and slept and ate in my cabin, and the ship didn’t sink, which is something.”
“I thought it would be more fun than that.” He was disappointed for her, but he suspected that it was traumatic for her to travel by boat at all.
“I missed having you to talk to,” she admitted.
“I’m excited to see the Jackson plantation and what his mills look like.
They’re supposedly very modern and up-to-date.
I’m interested in how they store their cotton.
” Her warehouses had had a problem with rotting recently, with a general strike in the Lancashire area.
“I’m seeing my friend Delphine tonight, and taking the train to Richmond tomorrow.
” He wished more than ever that he was with her, but didn’t want to say it.
He always respected the social difference between them, and his feelings for her were a secret he kept to himself, out of respect for her.
He knew he would never be able to tell her.
When she had the Spanish flu, he had been shocked to realize how much he cared for her, as more than a friend.
His feelings for her had grown silently and unnoticed while they worked together.
“Life is very boring here without you,” he admitted.
“I have no one to gossip with. Our mills are turning into Sodom and Gomorrah, by the way. Walter tells me they’re all sleeping with each other and having affairs.
” Victoria laughed. She’d heard the rumors too.
It was normal with men and women working together every day.
And the women had been lonely without men for four years of war.
“I told you it was better having men and women workers instead of just men. Now they’re discovering the advantages instead of complaining about the difference in wages,” she said.
“I never thought of that. It’s a shame you and Bert didn’t hire women sooner. I might be married by now,” he said, teasing her so she didn’t guess the truth, that he was crazy about her. He hid it well.
“If you were, you’d have some girl stuck in the kitchen and cleaning house for you and you’d be bored to death.”
“That’s true. No one cooks as well as Patrick anyway.
” He loved the Scotsman’s heavy, hearty meals, while Victoria was always having him prepare lighter dishes for her.
But they were both big men and loved meaty dishes.
Victoria was only going to be away for three weeks and it felt like an eternity to Thor.
“When I go to China, you’ll have to come with me.
That should be an interesting trip.” Now that the war was over, she wanted to travel everywhere.
Thor was much less excited about traveling than she was.
But she traveled in splendid elegance and comfort to interesting places.
It was a life he’d never known but which to her was commonplace, it reminded him of the class difference between them.
Victoria didn’t seem to notice, and never mentioned it.
She was the least snobbish woman he’d ever known.
But he saw the class difference as an insurmountable obstacle between them that would never change.
They talked for a long time, and she had dinner with Delphine that night.
She had finally given up having babies, with six daughters and finally a son and heir.
She had never realized early on how badly Frederick wanted a son.
She thought it wouldn’t matter to him as an American, but it did.
Delphine was as pretty as ever, though she had never lost all the baby weight, which suited her.
They had a fun girls’ night, and in the morning, Victoria boarded the train to Richmond.
“Watch out for Vergil Jackson,” Delphine had warned her.
“I hear he’s a womanizer, and very handsome.
” Victoria said she didn’t care. She was interested in his mills and his cotton, not the man.
Delphine laughed at how innocent she was, even at thirty.
She was a widow, a very rich woman, and very beautiful.
And she owned the biggest mills in England.
Delphine was sure that Vergil Jackson couldn’t wait to meet her.
She had always hoped that Victoria would fall in love again, but there was no sign of it.
She was in love with her business, and she seemed perfectly comfortable as a widow, with her memories of the year she’d shared with Bert.
It didn’t seem like enough to Delphine, but she envied Victoria her freedom.
She could do whatever she wanted, go anywhere in the world.
No man could make decisions for her or tell her what to do.
At thirty, Victoria was the master of her own fate.
It would have been hard to give that up.
And doing so never crossed Victoria’s mind. She was a free woman in a man’s world.