Where Love Shines (22 page)

“I assure you, Lady Eccleson, I feel quite well.”

“Nonsense. You are very peaked. You need to get away from these heavy fogs, or you shall take a pleurisy. I never stay in town through the winter. Don’t know how anybody survives it. You shall go to Newcastle with me. I shall tell your parents. We will leave Thursday.”

Jennifer opened her mouth to protest. She couldn’t possibly be ready to travel in three days’ time. She had told Susannah she would attend her wedding. Sending a note of regret accompanied by her best wishes would not serve.

“Lady Eccleson, I—” Then she remembered. Richard was in Newcastle. She had suppressed the full force of the feelings she had discovered at the concert, making herself think of other things. But had Richard’s great-aunt seen what she refused to acknowledge herself? Did the strain of such repression show in her face?

And then one overwhelming thought blotted out all others. Lady Eccleson would take her to Richard. Nothing else mattered. “—I thank you.”

A
nd how do you expect us to compete with the continent if we give our workers shorter hours? Your eyes were not the only part of your head that cannon damaged!” An angry male voice thundered over Jenny’s head.

Lady Eccleson pulled her buff kid gloves off one finger at a time, her eyes twinkling. “How lovely to be back to the peace of Greyston Pitchers. I don’t believe you have had the pleasure of meeting my great-nephew George, have you, Miss Neville?”

Richard’s voice followed George’s, coming down to them from the room at the top of the stairs. “With the greater output produced from using the jigger and the jolley, of course. Even a blind man can see that.”

“Jiggers and jolleys can go to Jericho,” a heavier voice rumbled over the others. “But I’ll hear no more of this model village scheme unless you mean to pay for it from your own pocket. Have you any idea—” Thudding blows of a fist on a table accompanied each word.

“That is my dear Caroline’s husband, Francis. Such a gentle soul.” Lady Eccleson handed her gloves and traveling cape to Cannock.

Jennifer gave her hostess a wry smile and then turned at the sound of silk skirts on the tile floor. A woman smaller and more wrinkled than Lady Eccleson but sharing her proud carriage and twinkling blue eyes entered just ahead of Livvy. “Ah, my sister Lavinia.” Charlotte Eccleson embraced her elder sister. “Vina, this is Miss Neville, about whom I wrote to you.”

Jenny acknowledged the introduction while the argument rolled on around them. Livvy darted across the tile floor and hugged her great-aunt. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Aunt Charlotte. You can make them stop.” She nodded her head toward the stairs. “It’s all we’ve heard for days and days. Dick is determined the pottery should be reformed, and Papa and George will have none of it. They say the most dreadful things to one another.”

The elder Lavinia’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t you dare stop them, Charlotte. I find their conversation most instructive. Since females are to know nothing of business, if men didn’t shout at one another, I would know little of the conditions on my own property.”

The door at the top of the stairs opened and slammed shut. Jennifer did not have to look up to recognize the sound of the feet that felt their way to the first step, then descended rapidly, accompanied by the sliding of a hand down the guide rail. Suddenly she froze. She had been so wrapped up in her own delight over seeing Richard again, it had not occurred to her to worry about how he would feel on encountering her. Had Lady Eccleson informed him she would be bringing a guest? Livvy hadn’t seemed surprised—or terribly pleased—to see her. She took a step back when the footsteps reached the ceramic tile.

“I heard the carriage arrive, Aunt Charlotte. Forgive my delay in coming to greet you. We were—ah, discussing a matter of business.”

Charlotte kissed the air near her nephew’s cheek. “Yes, Richard, so I heard. As did the servants and, no doubt, the neighbors as well. It’s comforting to find that some things never change.”

Richard ignored her irony. “But some things must change. This family cannot continue to live in ease on the profits of the suffering of others. The needless suffering.” He waved a large roll of paper in his left hand. “I have the plans of a model village for factory workers similar to the one Minton built—”

Lady Eccleson put her hand on his arm. “I shall be happy to look at them later, Richard. But I have a surprise for you.” She signaled Jenny to come forward. There could be no shrinking back now.

Jennifer lifted her chin and stepped from the shadows of the curving staircase. “Hello, Richard.”

His mouth twisted sharply as he checked the impulse to hold his hand out to her. Jennifer was sure she was the only one who saw the gesture, as she halted her own impulse to grasp his hand.

Richard all but clicked his heels as he drew himself upright and gave a stiff bow. “Miss Neville. What a charming surprise. Welcome to Greyston Pitchers.”

The momentary awkwardness was relieved by the entrance of Caroline Greyston urging everyone to come into the lounge for refreshment.

The next morning, after a troubled night, Jennifer allowed the maid Lady Eccleson had sent her to arrange her hair and help her into a freshly pressed morning dress of blue, green, and pink checkered cotton. The little maid fluttered like a hummingbird with bright, dark eyes as she fastened the agate stud buttons mounted on black velvet bows that adorned the front and wrists of the dress.

“There now, miss. You look lovely. Breakfast’s laid out in the dining room.” She bobbed in a curtsey.

“Thank you, Martha. Has the family eaten?”

“I think all have but Miss Livvy.” Martha bobbed again.

That would do very well. Jenny had no wish to encounter the moods of Richard Greyston before breakfast.

The dining room was paneled shoulder-high with dark wood and hung with ornate gold-framed portraits, its parquet floor covered with thick carpets. Pale morning light filtered through the lace panels covering the tall square-paned windows. They looked out on a lawn now dotted with snowdrops and crocus under the oak and maple trees lining the garden. Jennifer had the room to herself as she filled her plate at the sideboard of covered dishes containing porridge, eggs, creamed kidneys, kedgeree, toast, and assorted preserves. She passed on the porridge and kidneys, but took a healthy serving of eggs and kedgeree and sat at the side of the table.

She was piling marmalade on her second piece of toast when Livvy came in and helped herself to a bowl of porridge. “I trust you slept well, Miss Neville.”

Jennifer started to give a polite answer, then stopped. There was little to be gained by roundaboutation. “No. I didn’t.” She looked at Livvy who had chosen a seat some distance from her. “I was troubled by your brother’s reaction to my presence. And it seems you share his opinion. Must you call me Miss Neville now when we were on a first-name basis in London?”

Livvy ducked her head. “It—it is somewhat awkward to know what is proper. I shall be happy to call you Jenny. But you must allow Richard more time to adjust to the new circumstances.”

“What new circumstances? Has something happened? You must tell me, Livvy. I am most concerned—”

She was interrupted by the entrance of the great-aunts, both dressed in proper black, with bonnets over their lace caps. Aunt Lavinia leaned on her walking stick, and Aunt Charlotte peered through her lorgnette. “There you are.” Charlotte spoke first. “I cannot understand how the young can manage to lie abed half the morning. I breakfasted hours ago. Would you care to see Greyston Pottery, Miss Neville? I have ordered the carriage.”

“I should like that very much.” Jennifer would like any activity that would take her away from the awkwardness she felt in Greyston Pitchers. And she was doubly pleased when Livvy agreed to accompany her. Whatever the problem was, Livvy apparently did not find her presence intolerable. And surely she could make an opportunity to find out what had happened.

But Jenny was surprised to discover that both of the older women intended to make the tour as well. “I have not been to Longton for years. At my age it is not wise to put off until tomorrow what one may do today. One cannot be assured there will be a tomorrow,” Great-aunt Lavinia said as they settled into the well-sprung brougham. They took the hard-packed dirt road southeastward to Longton, one of the five towns that made up the great pottery-producing center of the Midlands. The trees lining both sides of the road were bare, and yet the countryside gave an impression of intense greenness.

As they drew nearer the factory site, however, the air darkened, and the February sun seemed dimmer, although the sky held no clouds. Then the carriage rolled up a small rise, and Jennifer saw the smokestacks of the potteries, each brick potbank belching a black cloud into the sky. She checked an impulse to raise a handkerchief to her nose. There would be no escaping the smoke. It was little wonder that the factory owners chose to live in Newcastle with its cleaner air and elegant walks.

The brougham passed through a wide gate in a high red brick wall. They came to a stop on a bricked courtyard before a building bearing an ornately lettered sign, “Greyston Pottery, est. 1787.”

“Jeremiah Greyston, my father’s father, built this. Before that, pottery had been made at home. Potters as far back as Roman times, the Greystons were—as far as anybody knows. And I intend to see that the tradition continues.” Great-aunt Lavinia descended from the carriage with the help of two footmen.

Jenny turned to Livvy. “I don’t understand. I thought she was your mother’s aunt.”

“Yes. But since Auntie GAL had no heirs, Father took Mother’s name for the sake of the inheritance,” Livvy explained.

Once outside the carriage, Jenny stood in amazement before the great bottle-shaped brick kiln across the courtyard. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Even at the far side of the yard, she could feel the heat radiating from the furnace. Behind that kiln rose the chimneys of three more. Then she saw the streams of small, ragged children, almost like rows of ants, carrying huge round clay containers on their heads, trudging toward the open doors of the far kiln. “What are those round things?” she asked.

“Saggars,” Livvy said. “They fill them with the pottery and then stack them inside the kilns. Each oven holds about 2,000 saggars.”

Jenny nodded and followed Livvy toward the main building. She had hoped to talk of more personal matters with Livvy, but her friend seemed determined to keep to sightseeing. “Aunt Lavinia will want to see the color patterns and then spend her time poring over books in the office. I’ll take you to the more interesting parts. When I was a child, I could stand and watch them throw pots all day. I always thought I’d grow up to be a potter, until George explained matters to me in no uncertain terms.” She laughed and held her skirt away from the railing covered with a thick film of red clay dust as she went up the stairs. “Now I think it’s most interesting to watch them shape the flowers.”

The great-aunts moved ahead, and Jenny followed Livvy into a side room where thin-shouldered, stooped women sat in rows at low tables, making delicately petalled flowers out of soft clay. Jenny watched in awe as the bony, nimble fingers of the woman in front of her formed a china rose by placing petal over petal. In a few moments the worker placed the finished rose on a tray in front of her.

In the same gesture she picked up another ball of clay about the size of a walnut and began working it to form petals. The tray was half full, but Jennifer could see that it soon would be covered with roses. Then the woman would turn to glazing another tray of flowers, and then there was a tray to be painted, Livvy explained. Fumes from lead paint filled the unventilated room. Jennifer shook her head. The woman was very skilled, but Jenny could not imagine doing such tedious work for fourteen hours a day, six days a week. And in a dim, damp room. Jenny looked at the woman’s hollow cheeks and wondered if she had ever had a really full meal. And how many children did she have to care for at home?

Jenny turned away.

“Want to see the infamous jigger and jolley?” Livvy laughed and turned toward another room. Here an equally stoop-shouldered man stood over a wheel. He pressed a sheet of soft clay onto a mold and shaped the underside by holding a profile tool against it for a few turns of the wheel. Another man was making cups by pressing clay on a wheel in a hollow mold with a jolley. Both men were assisted by pale, hollow-cheeked children working as jigger-turners and mold-runners. “You can see how quickly the new equipment forms the pottery, but the workers will complain when someone loses a job.” Livvy shrugged and moved on.

Jenny stood for a few minutes longer watching the skill of the men shaping the raw clay. Then she turned to follow her friend. Not wanting to get lost in the tangle of rooms, she hurried through the next doorway.

“Watch out!” The sharp male workers’ voice warned her too late. She felt the bump into a solid male form and heard the crash at the same time.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” At her feet lay the broken pieces of what had been an elegant china figurine, apparently a shepherdess in a rose-draped pink dress and a shepherd boy playing a pipe.

She started to apologize again and then looked at the man she had cannoned into, causing him to bump into the shelf and knock the figurine off. “Richard. I didn’t know you were here.” The look on his face clearly said that he was not pleased to meet her and that she had made a bad situation worse by demonstrating his handicap.

I
t was my fault,” she cried and dropped to the floor to gather the broken pieces.

“It seems George was right about the competence of a blind man in a china factory.” The bitterness in Richard’s voice stung her as he took her arm and raised her to her feet.

“It was my fault,” she repeated. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Suddenly there seemed nothing more to say. Or too much to say. She wanted to say so much that the words jammed in her brain and nothing would come out.

Richard broke the silence. “I assume you have come for a tour. I trust you are finding it instructive?”