Page 1 of Through Darkened Clouds

Prologue

John Thornton stared across the expanse of churning sea before him, a steady wind buffeting his face. His fingers gripped the rail of the paddle steamer that carried him across the channel to his homeland.

The journey to Le Havre, France, had given him a better understanding of the volatile price of raw cotton arriving from the Americas. It would be impossible to secure a fixed price for the foreseeable future, as murderous events in Kansas pushed the United States closer to civil war.

He let out a long sigh. This only added to his worries about returning his mill to a profitable enterprise. Ever since the workers’ strike—was it coming up on one year ago now?—production levels had not resumed their former rates. Contracts had been lost during the strike, and cloth had needed to be remade because of his Irish replacements’ incompetence. The losses in efficiency and quality had also hurt the mill’s reputation.

It was as he had always said: that leaders in industry were bound to take all the risks involved. There would be times of upturns and great profits, and there would be times of downturns with ensuing struggle and loss.

He would weather this storm, as he had always done, but this time he had less conviction of its outcome. No longer did he feel the vigor and confidence of youthful hope. He was tired of trials and longed for sunnier horizons.

He thought of her. He always thought of her. It was his fate to suffer the cruel pangs of love without hope of winning a return. This trial he would also bear. He must endure whatever Providence saw fit to throw his way.

His gaze searched the endless gray landscape in front of him, his hands turning white in the bitter April headwind. The choppy turbulence of the channel waves below his feet smoothed into a unified mass of green-gray as he looked to the horizon. The all-pervading mass of darkened clouds overhead gave the water its colorless pitch until sea and sky melded into one infinite expanse of bleakness.

His life offered no bright promise. The coming years would be a constant struggle to regain a clearer sense of purpose, as all he had worked for might slip out of his hands.

The brisk, salty air infused a keen sense of his right to live and breathe in this world among the thousands who had ever existed on this earth. And just as powerfully came the sobering knowledge that human life was brief—that his years would have an end.

He saw no present hope of happiness. The future he had dreamed of would never come to pass.

His heart clenched with familiar pain as he remembered how Margaret had recoiled from his declaration of love and had told him she would have saved any man from the danger of that day when rioters swarmed his mill yard.

He had been a fool to think she could love him. She, a gentleman’s daughter who had lived in refined London circles and dwelt in the pleasant peace of a country hamlet all her life. She thought him beneath her—that he was a hard master over his workers, without a care for them.

He had known he was not good enough for her. And yet, this stinging truth was not what tore at his soul when he thought of her. No, it was that she had lied for another man—to keep that man safe. She, who had embodied purity and honesty, had soiled her character with a bald lie so that this lover might escape retribution.

This was the knife that pierced his heart and twisted when he thought of her. That she should love another so passionately, that she would sacrifice herself for him.

He let the agony swell in him, letting his emotions erupt in this open atmosphere of nature’s unyielding harshness. And then, like waves of the sea, the peak of his hurt ebbed and fell into sober desolation.

He had no desire to return home just yet. This journey had given him time to escape his continued routine so that he might ponder the path ahead of him. His mother had no set expectations for his return. One more day’s sojourn would not harm operations at the mill.

The minute he had taken this trip, he had considered veering slightly from his return course to visit the New Forest, which he had long been curious to see.

He would meander along the paths she had walked, to discover what it was she so treasured. He would go to Helstone to feel close to her for a day.

The warmth of the afternoon sunshine impelled him to remove his black frock coat as he walked along the soft turf road that ran through the grass meadows. He had not seen a soul since he had alighted from the cab at the base of a rising hill. The sense of freedom from society’s view invigorated his steps and relaxed the tension in his shoulders.

At length, he passed a farmer’s thatched-roof cottage and smiled at children racing hoops, their father in the distance, plowing his field behind a horse.

There was no rush here, no driving force of commerce, no timetables but the rise and fall of the sun. Nature dictated the pace of life, not machines. He began to understand the calm, silent strength at the core of Margaret Hale. It was born of her affinity with nature’s immovable patterns, which outlast all the vain clash and striving of men.

At last, he reached the village green and turned toward the farmhouse inn on a small rise across from it. The weathered sign of the Lennard Arms hung from a massive tree, where a bench encircled the rough bark. Bright daffodils flourished along the path to the door.

The innkeeper was slow to answer his knock, introducing herself as Mrs. Purkis.

“What has brought you to Helstone?” she asked, studying his face for any local familiarity and noticing the neat, pressed trousers of a town-dweller.

“I live in Milton and was passing by this area. My friend, Reverend Hale, has often mentioned his time here, so I stopped to see it for myself.”

“Ah, you know the Reverend! And how is he? And the Missus, of course,” she said, her face brightening with a wide smile.

Mr. Thornton bowed his head. “I’m sorry to say that Mrs. Hale died last October.”

“Oh dear! And only a year gone from us! The poor Reverend. He’s likely to be devastated. How is he?”

“It was a hard blow indeed. He’s away right now visiting an old friend in Oxford.”