Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson (new books to read TXT) 📗

stared at her as if without comprehension, and his look made her feel physically smaller.

“What do you imagine would happen if I tried to form a personal relationship with everyone I treat?” He didn’t wait long enough for her to answer. Clearly, he was not interested in her opinion. “I am not being paid to be your husband’s friend. And you,” he said, pointing his finger too near her face, “will do him no favors if you cosset him.”

In her astonishment, she felt him shove past her and leave the house. When her shock passed, she hurried to the parlor, where Alexander was seated in the chair facing the window.

Remembering the tender way with which he’d excused her from the room, she walked to his side and knelt in front of the chair. She reached for his hand.

“Are you well?” she asked, her voice low.

He did not look at her. “Well enough.”

“How can I help you?”

His face was a mask of detachment. “You have done enough.” If his words hadn’t expressed sufficient desire to be alone, his cold tone would have pushed her away. She removed her hand from his and rocked back, standing up and stepping away.

“But . . .” she began.

He interrupted her. “You heard the doctor. You’ll do me no favors. Please send in Yeardley when you go,” he said, his voice icy.

She left without trying to say anything more. What else was there to say? This dance of moving closer together and then pushing apart was another exhausting component of her tiring existence.

She found Yeardley. “Mr. Osgood requests your company,” she said. “And I believe I’ll go out for a short time. Perhaps when I return, you and I can discuss what place I may have in assisting Mr. Osgood’s recovery treatment.”

Yeardley nodded and said nothing, but Yeardley routinely said nothing, which obviously endeared him to Alexander. If Isabelle tried to be more like a silent manservant, perhaps Alexander would like her better.

Isabelle’s walk to the Kenworthy home, a bracing October wind in her face, shored her up. She felt more peaceful than she had upon leaving Alexander’s house. Her house. Their house.

When she was shown inside, she heard uncommonly loud voices echoing throughout the vestibule. Within a few minutes, the housemaid who had answered the door returned.

“Very sorry, ma’am, but Mrs. Kenworthy sends her deepest regret that she is unable to come to meet you. Miss Glory is unwell.” These words were followed by a screech and a crash. The maid jumped and then closed her eyes for a brief moment.

Isabelle reached out and touched the young woman’s arm. “Is there something you need? Something I can do to be of assistance?”

With a weary smile, she thanked Isabelle. “It’s one of her times,” she said simply, the words suggesting a pattern of behavior that Isabelle had not yet experienced with Glory.

Another screech and another crash encouraged the maid to nod and thank Isabelle again for coming by. “My lady will call on you when she is able,” she said, showing Isabelle the door. Realizing that her presence was anything but helpful, she apologized again and left.

Was there no place she was wanted?

Isabelle felt the weight of loneliness press against her heart as she turned toward the canal, losing herself in the surge of people walking along the street. She let herself be swept along with the others, mindlessly staring at the buildings she passed, mills in every state of construction, function, and disrepair lining the busy canal teeming with barges.

Several of the oldest buildings were now abandoned, a few of them blackened husks destroyed from within by fire. Isabelle shuddered at the thought of a spark that could take every machine, product, and person within a building and reduce them to ash that mingled with coal smoke to further darken the very air of the filthy city.

Soon she stood in front of a hulking building, stacks belching black clouds high above her head. A painted wooden sign proclaimed Osgood Cotton Mill, and etched into the door were the words “Manufacturers of Finest Cotton Products.” The building, though intimidating to look at, gave her a sense of borrowed pride.

Alexander had made this.

Her husband.

The man who asked nothing from her; indeed, not even her company.

She sighed. A woman jostled her arm as she pushed past her to open a door and enter the mill. Without realizing she had any plan to do so, Isabelle followed her inside.

Having never entered a mill before, she was not sure what she had expected. Her father’s coal mining business was run from a neat and airy building far from the mines. The privilege of being in charge, he had told her repeatedly, was that he didn’t need to dirty his hands.

Despite the unseasonal heat of the room, it appeared to be snowing inside. Drifts of white floated through the long room, swept on currents of air gusting from machines booming, squealing, and thumping. Isabelle fought the urge to cover her ears to protect herself from the uproar.

Huge machines hunched in rows, surrounded by men and women performing their tasks like dancers at a ball, bending, stretching, reaching in synchrony. The noise ran through the movement in a startling juxtaposition. After a few minutes of watching the orderly turmoil, Isabelle grew used to the deafening noise of the room until it settled in her ears to a growl.

A hand on her arm made her jump, and she turned to see Mr. Connor, Alexander’s engineer and frequent evening visitor to their home. A young man, he carried himself nonetheless with a confidence born of knowing his job. He looked surprised when he saw her face and recognized her. She saw his mouth moving but couldn’t hear him. She shook her head.

He leaned extremely close to her ear and shouted, “Mrs. Osgood, what are you doing here?”

An excellent question. If she had a quiet parlor, several cups of tea, and half an hour, she could possibly make him understand. That was not likely