Working Man, Society Bride. Mary Nichols

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      After arranging where to meet, they mounted the horses they had been leading and went their separate ways. Masters and Waterson went north where they had lodgings while Myles rode home over the hills on a huge black stallion called Trojan, which his father had bought for him four years before on his twenty-first birthday. ‘The size you’re getting, you need a big horse,’ he had said. ‘I’m blowed if I know where you get it from. I’m not much above average in height. As for your mother, she’s tiny. Must be a throw-back to some distant ancestor.’

      His mother’s ancestry was unquestionable. She was the daughter of Viscount Porson, the last of a long line, which had not thrived in the way the Gorridges and Luffenhams had thrived. His lordship had been glad enough to let his daughter marry the son of a mill owner with no pretensions to being a gentleman, but who had become wealthy through business. It was that money, and a generous contribution to Wellington’s army in the shape of uniforms, that had led to his being created a baron. Myles could just remember his grandfather, who worked all the hours God made, driven by ambition and a fear that whatever wealth he had created could disappear in a puff of wind and he would be back where he started. It was a trait he had passed on to his son, Myles’s father.

      ‘My father worked himself into the ground,’ Henry Moorcroft told his own son. ‘He was either at the mill or the factory every morning before seven and we didn’t see him home again until late evening. His efforts meant I could be educated and learn new ways, but that doesn’t mean I could take my ease. I worked, too, and so must you. You can take your pick where you start, but start at the bottom you will.’

      Of his father’s many interests, Myles could have chosen the woollen mill in Leicestershire where the original fortune had been made, or the engineering works in Peterborough, but he had plumped for building railways, which his father had only then begun to contract for. They were the transport of the future and the whole concept excited him. Starting at the bottom, he had become a navvy and developed muscles, along with a clear understanding of how the men worked, shifting tons of rubble every day with nothing but picks and shovels. He had discovered how they lived, married and looked after their children. Under the tutelage of the contractors employed by his father, he had learned about explosives, cuttings and viaducts, bridges and tunnels, about surveying and costing and keeping within a budget, which was of prime importance if the shareholders were to be paid. He considered himself the complete railway man.

      He had been so busy he had had little time for the ladies, but he supposed that sooner or later he would have to begin thinking about marriage. His father, who was still rooted in his working-class past, would not care in the least whom he chose, so long as she was not extravagantly frivolous, but his mother might be more particular that he chose someone of breeding. The Earl’s daughter certainly had breeding, but was she frivolous? Judging by the riding habit she was wearing, she was certainly accustomed to extravagance. She was spirited, too, but he could deal with that.

      His laughter rang out, startling a flock of starlings who had settled on a tree beside the road. What on earth had made him think of her, the spoilt child of a stick-in-the-mud peer, who would certainly not consider him a suitable husband for his elegant daughter? He would probably never meet her again. On the other hand, if he had cause to visit the Earl on railway business…He laughed again, raising his face to the sun. You never could tell.

      Chapter Two

      The Earl of Luffenham arrived home that evening in time to take dinner with his family. He was, Lucy noticed, not in a good mood. He snapped at the servants and criticised Rosemary’s gown, saying it was unsuitable for a young lady not yet out. ‘What is that shiny stuff?’ he asked.

      ‘Taffeta, Papa.’

      ‘What’s wrong with muslin?’

      ‘Nothing for day wear, Papa, but it is not the thing for dining.’

      ‘You are getting above yourself, miss, and I wonder at you, madam, for allowing it.’ This last was addressed to his wife.

      ‘It is not new, my lord,’ she explained. ‘It is one of mine I had remade. That deep pink colour suits Rosie and I thought it would recompense her a little for not having all the new clothes Lucy has had this year.’

      Slightly mollified, he grunted and nodded at the footman to begin serving. His economies seemed unnecessary and inconsistent to Lucy. He grumbled about money spent on clothes, yet would never have dreamed of managing with fewer servants, particularly those, like the footmen, who were seen by visitors. He insisted on frugality at family meals, having only four courses, but, when entertaining, the food on his table was lavish in the extreme. His horses were the best money could buy, his hospitality at the annual hunt meeting was legendary, but he begrudged the repairs to his farmer-tenants’ buildings, maintaining that if they let them go to rack and ruin, why should he have to stump up for their negligence?

      They ate in silence for some time until Lucy ventured, ‘Did you have a good journey, Papa?’

      ‘It was as abominable as usual.’

      ‘Did you come home by road, then?’

      ‘No, I did not. I came on the railway, but it kept stopping for no reason that I could see.’

      ‘I expect it was because you went from one company’s lines to another,’ Lucy said. ‘You have to be coupled up to their locomotives.’

      ‘What do you know of it?’

      ‘I read it in the newspaper. There was a report about a debate in the Commons about the number of lines being agreed to and Mr Hudson’s plans to amalgamate them so that there is no need for constantly changing in the middle of a journey.’

      ‘Not suitable reading for a young lady, Lucinda. And Hudson will come to grief, you mark my words.’

      ‘Why are you so against the railways, Papa? I should have thought they brought enormous benefit.’

      He looked sharply at her. ‘What is your interest in them, young lady?’

      ‘It is only that I journeyed by train for the first time when we went to London and I found myself wondering about them. It is a very fast way to travel. Over forty miles an hour, we were told. It felt like flying.’

      ‘So it may be, but the countryside where they go is ruined for ever. They run over good farm land and are so noisy they frighten the cows so they don’t produce milk, the sparks from their engines are a danger to anyone living near the line, and they ruin the hunt because the fox can escape on to railway land where horses can’t follow. And that is after all the desecration to the countryside the navvies cause when they are building them. They throw up their shanty towns wherever they fancy and spend their free time drinking and quarrelling. Their children run round in rags with no education and no notion of cleanliness. Does that answer your question?’

      ‘Yes, Papa. What would happen if a landowner refused to allow the railway to go over his land?’

      ‘Then they would have to go round it. Now, enough of that. Let us have the rest of our dinner in peace.’

      Lucy decided it was definitely not the time to mention seeing the surveyors, and after a few minutes of eating in silence her mother began to talk about their visit to Linwood Park. ‘I do not know how big the house party will be,’ she said. ‘Nor exactly what plans have been made for our entertainment, but we must go prepared.’

      ‘Naturally СКАЧАТЬ