CHAPTER TWELVE
The newly married couple did not return to a peaceful home. There were workmen in the house and workmen in the stable. Since Daniel wanted Amit brought to Grex as soon as possible, he removed a number of carpenters from the house to build a stall sturdy enough to hold a breeding stallion.
To Anne’s secret amusement, the house carpenters adored Miss Bonteen. “I can’t believe how much work you’ve got out of them while we were gone, Bonny!” she had said with admiration when first she saw the energetic workforce.
“It took me awhile to find what I needed to do to keep them going,” her gentle friend said.
“And what is that?” Anne asked with genuine curiosity.
“I feed them. They have a tea break every hour, and then they get back to work. They think I’m incredibly generous to give them so much time to eat, but when I calculated how much time they were taking when left to themselves, we are getting considerably more work done.”
Anne was still laughing when she finished. “Good for you, Bonny.” she said.
“Unfortunately, with Mr. Dereham taking half my workers away, the house project will slow down.”
“Don’t fret, Bonny. We have comfortable bedrooms to retire to and it’s important we do the same for the horses.”
Bonnie sighed. “It’s always about the horses.”
Anne laughed again.
# # #
Daniel’s stallion and two mares finally came, accompanied by an Indian groom. This unusual individual provoked astonishment from Anne’s two stable workers. Both Frankie, who was quite old, and Timmy, who was quite young, had lived near Grex for their entire lives, and never thought they’d set eyes upon a genuine turban-wearing Indian.
“It’s hard to understand him, my lady,” Frankie complained the day after Kumar arrived. “He seems to think he’s speaking English, but he ain’t.”
“You’re all horsemen,” Anne said encouragingly to the duo confronting her. “That’s a common language all over the world. I’m sure you can make yourselves understood.”
Frankie had to admit that the bloke had taken wonderful care of Mr. Dereham’s horses. “They’re beautiful, my lady, that I will give him. Two beautiful beautiful mares! And the stallion! He’s full of fire, that boy.”
“They’re pure Arabians, Frankie. Our thoroughbreds originated with an Arabian, you know.”
“Aye, my lady. That I do know.” He heaved a resigned sigh. “I supposed we’ll manage, my lady. We always have.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” Anne said. “I knew I could count on you.”
# # #
Anne was still in love, but not quite so mindlessly happy as she had been on her honeymoon. There was so much about Daniel that was unknown territory. She knew nothing about his parents, about where he was born, about anything concrete in his life before she had married him. She didn’t even know his birthday!
She, on the other hand, was an open book. Her life could be summed up in a few lines:
Born at Grex in Yorkshire, England, on February 28, 1798. Only daughter of the Earl of Grex.
Married to Mr. Daniel Dereham on May 18, 1817.
She had yet to produce children to add to that biography, but when she did, that would be the summary of her life.
She could not create even so simple a summary as that for Daniel. He had told her he was twenty-six, so he must have been born in 1791. She knew he had run away from home and gone to India when he was 16. She knew he had come home from India with a fortune. That was it.
She had asked him about his parents once. It was while they were lying in bed after making love. His arm was lying lightly over her breasts, and she had turned to him and asked softly, “You never mention your parents, Daniel. Are they still alive?”
She felt his arm stiffen. Then he took it away. “As far as I know.” His voice was chillingly indifferent.
“You mean … you don’t know?”
“That is precisely what I meant,” he returned. “You don’t think I ran off to India because of my happy home life, do you Anne?”
“I see,” Anne said.
He turned, presenting her with a view of his bare muscled back. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sleep. It’s very late and we have a lot to do tomorrow.”
Anne had never again asked him about his family, but he had succeeded in engaging her curiosity. She knew that who Daniel was had a lot to do with where he came from, and she wondered if it might be possible for her to find out about him some other way.
# # #
After Daniel was certain his horses had settled in, he decided to pay a visit to the factory. “I’ll be gone only a few days,” he told Anne. “The gas must be in by now, and I want to see how it’s working.”
As he drove his curricle away from Grex, Daniel reflected on the last month of his life. He was pleased with his marriage. Anne had been a nice surprise. She was lovely to look at, with her great dark eyes, long slender neck, dark hair and ivory coloring. He liked to watch her as she moved - her waist was slender and supple, her legs long and slim. Altogether, she had turned out to be thoroughly satisfactory.
Daniel was not thinking about Anne, however, as his carriage reached the outskirts of Manchester, where his factory was located. Dusk was falling as he drove up the new road, the factory rising before him. It was eight storys high, with forty windows on each of its long sides and twenty windows on its shorter sides. In order to accommodate the power looms, each floor had been built with twelve-foot high ceilings, so all of the windows were very tall. And right now, every one of them was blazing with light. A beacon of the future, Daniel hoped.
He had planned on using gas from the moment he broke ground. It had taken time and money to have the lines brought in, but gas was safer than any other option. Cheaper too. The Napoleonic and American wars had cut down the supply of whale oil and tallow, which had pushed the price of lamp oil and candles sky high. Gas, Daniel firmly believed, was the way of the future.
He drove his horses into what looked like a small village, with streets laid out in rectangular form, all of them lined with wooden cottages. Daniel drove down the main street and pulled up at the only cottage that looked occupied. A man came out the front door as Daniel stopped his horses. “I didn’t know when you were coming,” Robert Denver said.
“I had some things to settle at home,” Daniel replied.
Denver went to the horses’ heads and Daniel jumped down from the curricle. He joined his friend and the both of them stood still, looking at the lighted factory.
“The gas looks wonderful,” Daniel said.
“That it does. They finally finished putting it in – it took them long enough. I turned it on tonight so I could admire it. You came at just the right time.”
“Let’s take a look at the houses,” Daniel said after they had gazed their fill. The workers’ cottages had all been built on a similar plan. They had a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen on the first floor, all with fireplaces. Upstairs some cottages had four bedrooms and some had five, making them considerably larger than the usual two up and two down inhabited by most country people. They also had a patch of land in the back for a garden. The smell of fresh wood permeated the air of the cottage that Daniel and Denver chose to inspect.
“The families who move in here are going to think they’re in heaven,” Denver said, as he and Daniel went from room to room.
“Children deserve to live in decent surroundings,” Daniel said firmly. “I believe the children who live in these houses will grow up to be the kind of people we need for the future.”
“You’ve certainly invested a ton of money to make that happen,” Denver said.
“I’ll make it back, and more.”
Denver smiled. “If anyone can do it, you can Daniel.”
The two men went back outside and stopped to look at the glowing factory again. Then Daniel punched his friend lightly on the shoulder and said, “Do you think my factory manager might offer me a drink?”
“Come along,” Denver said with a grin. “I think I might have a wee bit of something in the house.”