But a light footstep sounded outside the door. Dixon’s voice—careful, controlled—flickered through the crack. “Miss Margaret? The lamps will be lit soon. Do you require anything?”
Thornton straightened. Margaret shut her eyes for the span of a heartbeat.
“No, Dixon,” she called, barely finding her voice. “Thank you. We are nearly finished.”
Dixon’s weight creaked the floorboards outside the door as she shifted defiantly—Margaret heard the deliberate stillness of it—then she withdrew.
Thornton cleared his throat and reached for the next page as though nothing had happened.
She closed her eyes and let out the smallest breath.
“I should show you Higgins’s report,” he said. “He keeps me apprised on the hands, and I would forward some of it to Bell. We spoke before I left Milton. The men—some of their families—there were shortages last week. We have the worst of it managed for now.”
Margaret nodded, grateful for the safety of his words even as they twisted something inside her. “But Higgins himself, you said he was well?”
Thornton turned a page, but his gaze lingered on the margin instead of the figures. “As well as a man can be who carries others on his back.”
That, too, felt like an echo of something unspoken—a truth about more than Higgins.
Margaret folded her hands to keep them from shaking. “I would like to hear everything he wrote.”
“Of course.” He drew the folded sheet from the back of the folio and laid it between them. The handwriting was firm and economical, much like the man who had written it. Thorntonread the first lines aloud—families short on coal, a loom-tender’s wife taken poorly, a missed delivery of carding combs—and Margaret listened, not so much to the words as to the way he slowed whenever the lines touched hardship.
He stopped once, pressing a thumb to the edge of the page as if trying to comprehend it. Or himself.
“And Williams suggests delaying the second shift until the new wool arrives,” he said. “It will keep the lamps from burning longer than necessary.”
“Is that enough to make a difference?”
“It is something.” A pause. “Something small.”
She studied the figures scattered across the next sheet. “Then tell me what the large things are. What must happen to keep the mill solvent.”
He exhaled, a sound too slight to be called a sigh. “Miss Hale—”
“You have told me the dangers,” she said. “Let me understand the remedies.”
He closed the folio with a precise motion that did little to hide the tension in him. “It is not as simple as naming a sum. The mill does not hinge on a single infusion of capital, though that would see it through the winter, at least.”
“I know. But what does it hinge on?”
He looked at her then, almost sharply, as though she had touched a place he meant to keep hidden. “Credit is the first matter,” he said. “Not charity — credit. A mill stands or falls on the confidence others place in its stability. Mine…” His jaw tightened. “Mine no longer commands enough of it. Not without some stronger security behind it than one man’s word.”
He turned the next page, tracing a line down the margin. “Liverpool must keep their prices steady. No more wild shifts every fortnight. And if they will not, then someone must have the leverage to negotiate terms they will honor.”
Another page. “Spain must deliver on time — or we must have the means to withstand their delays without choking the mill.”
Another. “And there must be capital on hand — not profit, not hope — capital — to cover the first orders of the new quarter. Wages cannot wait for cotton that has not yet left port.”
He closed the folio gently, as though the ledger itself might break under the weight of his next words.
“And none of it can be drawn from a single source. Not anymore. It would require…” He shook his head once, almost a bitter laugh. “A foundation broader than one man’s purse or reputation. A union of resources, if you will—authority, capital, and standing—all aligned at once.”
He glanced away, the faintest ache crossing his expression. “But such a thing doesn’t exist for a master in my position.”
She leaned closer to catch every word. “Still, if all of those things occurred—”
“They will not.”
