1
The ledger snapped shutbeneath his hands.
For a long moment, Thornton only stared at it, the stiff leather pressing into his palms as though the weight of the entire mill sat bound between its covers. Marlborough Mills had been his pride—its looms the loud, steady pulse by which he measured his worth. But now the quiet of his office seemed accusatory. The machines downstairs were running, but not vigorously. Not confidently. Not like the steady thunder they had once been.
The numbers did not lie. He had always trusted numbers.
He exhaled slowly, the sound scraping in his throat. Profits that should have sailed them into the new year were thinning like gruel. And the causes were brutally plain: months of uncertainty, the strike, the men he had been forced to protect, the costs of breaking up riots his competitors had simply… avoided. He had done his duty. He had done what was right.
And somehow, that had made him the fool.
His rivals whispered that Thornton would weather the storm because Thornton always weathered storms. He had heardSlickson say as much at the last Master’s Meeting— “Thornton? Oh, he will come through. He always does. The stricter he grows with his men, the fatter his profits seem to run.”
Hamper had been overheard outside the Exchange only a week ago to declare, “Mark my words, he’ll land on his feet. Thornton’s the one fellow in Milton who don’t feel the pinch. Built of iron, that one.”
Even Bartley had murmured within Thornton’s hearing, “If any of us can weather this cursed slump, it is Thornton. His accounts are always in the black. Too prudent by half, that man.”
They all said it—every name on the Board of Trade, every man who had watched Marlborough Mills rise from nothing under Thornton’s unrelenting hand.
They had folded him neatly into the myth of “Thornton the Unshakeable,”
the man too disciplined to fail, too stern to falter, too proud to come undone.
None of them knew how close he stood to the edge.
He leaned back in his chair and pressed two fingers to the space between his eyes. No one except his mother had caught even a glimpse of how tight the margins had become. And even she only suspected. He could not bring himself to voice the full truth aloud: that if the winter was hard, if orders continued to lag, if credit tightened just one degree more… he would have to do the unthinkable.
Retrench.
Dismiss workers.
Shrink the mill he had built from nothing.
Failure.
Even the word turned his stomach.
A soft rap sounded at the door. “Post for you, sir,” the boy announced, edging inside with a bundle of envelopes tied in twine.
Thornton pushed back from his desk, rubbing his thumb along his brow. “Set them there, Tom.”
“Yes, sir.” The lad placed the stack carefully near the ledger, cast a quick glance toward the looming machinery yard through the window, and slipped out again.
Thornton stared at the bundle a moment before tugging it toward him. Too many of the letters these days bore the same hungry look—creditors inquiring, suppliers pressing for confirmation, banks hinting at reassessments of terms. He went through them methodically, breaking seals with the grim resignation of a man counting blows.
The first was from the dyers—payment “requested at earliest convenience.”
The second from a broker—prices falling further.
The third—he breathed in sharply—another demand for settlement by month’s end.
He set that one aside with a hard growl.
Halfway through the stack, his thumb paused on an envelope heavier than the rest. Cream paper, thick, with a dark red seal stamped cleanly on the flap. No handwriting to catch his eye—only the impression of a professional seal: HENEAGE & WILBERFORCE, SOLICITORS, OXFORD.
A strange prickle raced over the back of his neck.
He broke the seal almost mechanically, but as the flap lifted and he caught the first line—It is my sorrowful duty to inform you…—the room seemed to narrow around him.
