The Glassblower (16 page)

For your sake
, she wanted to cry out.

“Take care of yourself.” She hugged the kitten to her. “I’m going to keep this beastie near me all the time now for his own good.”

“Thank you.” Smiling, Colin tipped his hat to her then spun on his heel and strode off through the packed snow.

“Revolting.” Joseph reached past her and slammed the kitchen door. “You lower yourself, Margaret.”

“Because I’m going to care for a kitten?”

“Because you care for a mere glassblower. When we’re married, you will never associate with the glassblowers or their families.”

Meg turned on him. “I will associate with whomever I please. I want to be with glassblowers or anyone else. I’m sure it’s what God wants for me.”

“Not possible.” Joseph curled his upper lip. “You are gently bred and beautiful. You deserve better associates than that.”

“I don’t deserve anything. I’ve been blessed is all.” She carried the kitten to the arc of warmth around the stove but kept her gaze on Joseph. “Since you think to associate with only those you consider worthy of notice, what is your notion of serving the Lord?”

“I go to church on Sundays and holidays and give generously.” He cut himself a slice of the cake still sitting on the worktable and bit off a generous hunk, chewed, and swallowed, while Meg waited for him to say more. “Other than that, I’m far too occupied with my properties to do anything.”

“I see.” Meg’s spine stiffened. “And you’re saying that you won’t allow your wife to do much more than work on the church fetes?”

“You won’t have time.”

“Even if I want to use my time for something other than housekeeping and entertaining important people?”

“You won’t have a choice.”

“I see.” Meg took a deep, shaky breath. The kitten’s claws dug into her shoulder like a pricking conscience. “Joseph, I need to go to my room. Please excuse me.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she strode past him, through the dining room, and up the steps to her bedchamber. Once there she tucked the kitten into a quilt on the floor, then she fell to her knees.

“Lord, I don’t want to marry him. I simply can’t do it. Surely You don’t want this for me either.”

She so disliked the idea of marriage to Joseph that she couldn’t believe God wanted the union. Yet she couldn’t figure out how to make things change. Her father’s future depended on the marriage. Colin’s future depended on the marriage. His family’s future depended on the marriage. As for her future …

“God, I can’t do this. I believe You want me to serve You with the school, yet I’m being forced to marry a man who doesn’t serve You at all. It’s wrong. I can’t—I can’t—”

She sobbed and didn’t care who heard her.

“I thought if I did enough, You would honor that and give me what I want. Is that too much, Lord?” She pounded her fist against her mattress. “I want to teach at the school. I want to bring home kittens or orphans or whoever needs help. I want—”

Her own words began to ring in her ears, and she stopped, choking down the next sob.

She was telling God what she wanted to do for Him. Rocking back on her heels in a puddle of crumpled muslin skirts, she scanned through her mind to think of when she had asked God what He wanted her to do. No time came to mind, not a single prayer, even a brief one. All her prayers regarded what she wanted to happen. She told God; she didn’t ask Him.

“But I haven’t done anything wrong.” The minute she made the statement, she knew it was a poor excuse for going her own way.

Going her own way was doing something wrong. Father denied her little, so she asked for the school, knowing she would get it. And the school cost Father money and resources he couldn’t afford. She pursued Colin, knowing he found her attractive. And their relationship put him in Joseph’s sights, endangering Colin’s future at the glassworks. She had no idea what sort of troubles she had caused others with her willful behavior.

“Lord, I need You to show me what You want for me.” She gulped. “Even if that means marrying Joseph.”

More peaceful, if not entirely settled in her heart and mind, Meg returned downstairs to clear away the dinner dishes. Joseph was nowhere in sight. Neither was Father. She sliced bread and buttered it, then she set it on a plate with pieces of cheese and ham and some apples and left them on the kitchen table for Father’s supper. Back in her bedchamber, she decided to push forward with her party for the potential schoolchildren and listed things she needed to accomplish for both that event and the one for neighbors on Christmas Eve. She worked until the candle guttered and her eyelids drooped. She still hadn’t heard Father come home, but she crawled into bed to sleep.

Sometime during the night she heard the sleigh
swoosh
into the stable yard, harness jingling, and a few minutes later the back door closed. Father had returned from wherever he had gone. Meg rolled over and fell into a deeper sleep that lasted until Ilse arrived and the aroma of coffee drifted up to Meg’s room.

She dressed with haste and ran downstairs for breakfast.

“You look pretty today.” Ilse set a mug of coffee before Meg at the kitchen table. “The wedding must have pleased you.”

Only Colin’s kiss had pleased her about the wedding, but she mustn’t think about that, let alone admit it to the older woman.

“I’m excited,” Meg said. “I’m going over to the school to see if I can make tables out of the crates so I can have a bit of a party for the children there next Monday.”

“Ya, that would be kind of you.” Ilse smiled. “My children are looking forward to the school.”

“That pleases me. No eggs. Just some toasted bread.”

Meg wolfed down her breakfast and hastened into pattens, warm cloak, hat, and gloves. She would have to walk slowly, and a brisk wind warned her she would be chilled by the time she reached the school. But she didn’t care. She was working for the Lord now, not herself.

Despite the cumbersome iron rings on the bottom of the pattens, she trotted along the road, following the ruts of sleigh runners and heavy wagons. Her heart twisted a bit as she passed the glassworks with its twin curls of smoke spiraling into the gray white sky. She employed all her willpower not to stop and pull the bell for admission. She couldn’t see Colin again unless something changed.

“It can, Lord. I know it can with Your help.”

Though she had no idea how.

She reached the crossroad, where chunks of ice flowed in the stream. A glance at the lightning-struck tree assured her no kitten clung to the branches. Only another hundred yards to her school.

She rounded the corner and stopped, her heart freezing in her chest.

Yesterday an aging oak spread its snow-laden branches over the roof of the school. Today that same tree lay with its branches inside the roof of the school.

Half the roof and one wall were completely destroyed.

The goldfinch perfume bottle lay in fragments atop Colin’s workbench. He found it the moment he walked into the glassworks on Monday. Considering he left it in the lehr to cool Saturday evening, the ornament could not have broken on its own.

“Aye, and I suspect I ken who ‘twas.” He let his gaze travel the length of the glasshouse to where Joseph Pyle stood talking with Isaac Jordan.

The men’s faces appeared grim. Gray tinged Jordan’s complexion, and he stood with his arms crossed over his chest. Pyle leaned forward, making his height advantage over Jordan appear far greater, rather as though he were a bird of prey.

Another image of the man flashed into Colin’s mind—Pyle standing behind Meg, his hands clenched, his eyes colder than the snow blanketing the countryside, while he challenged Colin’s presence in the kitchen.

The cat had merely been an excuse. Colin could have warmed the creature in his own house and returned it to the stable without disturbing Meg. The need to see her, to receive one of her smiles, to hear her voice flared inside him, and he allowed his feet to carry him to her door.

The sight of her, the hint of apple blossoms mingling with fresh coffee and spices, the brush of her fingers against his added up like treasures, and he stored them in his heart in case she married Pyle.

But she couldn’t marry him. Colin understood, empathized with Pyle’s wish to marry Meg and have her near him. Colin didn’t approve of how Pyle went about compelling her to wed him. At the same time, Jordan had made the debt, had agreed to the bargain. Surely a father who loved his daughter as Jordan loved Meg would never ally her to an unworthy man. Pyle would take care of Meg, cherish her, give her the kind of life Colin could scarcely imagine living, let alone bestow upon a wife. He had to convince himself she was better off with Joseph Pyle in the end so he could let her go. His conscience demanded it. He couldn’t let his family down again. She couldn’t see her father suffer.

The broken perfume bottle changed all Colin’s careful thinking. A man who deliberately smashed a piece of work lacked kindness. Worse, he possessed a streak of meanness that might not stop with cruelty to a glass ornament.

“What happened?”

Colin startled at Thad’s voice close behind him, knocking several shards of the finch bottle onto the floor.

“Somebody smashed it.” Colin shoved the other pieces onto the stone to be swept up for cullet later. “I left it in the lehr.”

“Who would do something like that?” Thad glanced from the fragments to the head of the room.

“Who can get into the glassworks?” Colin asked.

“Any of us with keys. That’s you, me, Weber, and the senior apprentice. And Jordan, of course.”

“And who was here first this morning?”

“Jordan and Pyle. But if you’re thinking someone snuck in here and broke your piece—” Thad shrugged. “I hate to say it, but anyone could bribe someone to open the glassworks. Weber and I wouldn’t do it, but the apprentices might wish a little income.”

“Or someone welcome in Jordan’s house could take his key,” Colin mused aloud.

“Colin?” Thad lowered his voice. “What are you suggesting?”

“I’d say ‘tis a warning.” Colin picked up his pipe and called over an assistant. “Just the green glass, Louis.”

“You’re not working on more goblets today?” Louis asked.

“Nay, nor will I be. I’ll be making the medicine bottles.”

“Yes, sir.” The lad darted off with Colin’s pipe to fetch the molten glass.

Thad fixed Colin with a crease set between his brows. “A warning for what?”

“To stay away from Meg—Miss Jordan.” Colin slid onto his bench to wait for his pipe.

“No, Jordan would never do something like that. He’d just dismiss you. I warned you about that.”

“Aye, so you did. So Jordan did.” Colin returned his gaze to the two men by the desk. “But I did not say ‘twas a warning from himself.”

“Pyle?” Thad snatched up his own pipe. “Why would he be in a position to threaten you over Miss Jordan?”

“I should not say. ‘Tis only speculation.” Colin turned to take the pipe from the assistant.

A glowing mass of molten glass clung to the end of the metal tube. With the pipe balanced on the grating before the bench, Colin inhaled deeply through his nose, set the end of the instrument to his lips, and began to blow in a slow, steady stream of air. A bubble formed in the glass. Colin turned his pipe. The glass shifted, began to form. All that mattered was the glass, the object he created, his work.

The glass would free him from the guilt of abandoning his family. It gave him the means to change their lives. He must not dwell on the pain of giving up Meg for the glass. Surely God would honor his sacrifice.

The glass began to cool, began to turn viscous. Colin removed his tongs from the set of tools at his side and commenced manipulating the caramelized silica into the flat, wide shape of a bottle to hold laudanum to ease pain or an elixir to soothe a sore throat.

The glassworks receded into a background hum of voices, hiss of fire, chink of cooled glass, the music of his life. Peace flowed through him like air through his pipe. All that mattered was the glass, the nearly completed bottle. Part of his mind knew he heard the gate bell ring. On the far side of the furnace from the door, he felt no draft if someone opened it. He focused on the forming mass of green before him, the tongs in his hand, the twist of his wrist—

The door flew open. “Father!” Meg charged into the glassworks, hair tumbling down her back, hat askew. “Father, the school is destroyed!”

Colin dropped his pipe and the nearly finished medicine bottle. The metal pipe hit the grate then the floor with a resounding clang and clatter like a bell losing its clapper. The eyes of the three people in the front of the factory swung his way. No one moved. No one spoke. Leaving the pipe and useless lump of green glass, Colin slid off his bench and stalked to the front of the glassworks.

“What happened?” he asked.

Pyle took a step toward him. “This is none of your concern. Get back to work.”

“But ‘tis my concern, sir.” Colin bowed his head. “I was at the school yesterday after church, and all was well.”

“I saw you.” Meg still breathed too quickly, and color flamed along her cheekbones. “You were removing snow from the tree branches. But it didn’t do any good. The tree has fallen into the building.”

“Impossible,” Jordan snapped. “That’s a sturdy tree.”

“It’s a very old tree.” Pyle yawned behind his rather red hand. “Apparently having a hulking brute like you in its branches wore it out.” He snorted as though amused by his insulting words.

“‘Tis possible.” Colin remained calm on the outside, while his innards roiled. “But unlikely.”

“I’d say it’s unlikely.” Jordan rubbed his temples. “The wind was blowing last night, but not that strongly.”

“What does it matter how it happened?” Tears spilled down Meg’s cheeks.

Colin clasped his hands behind his back to stop himself from pulling her head against his shoulder.

“I don’t have my school now,” she sobbed.

“Such a shame,” Pyle murmured. “After all that work.” He took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “Come along, m’dear. I’ll walk you home and let Mrs. Weber spoil you.” He started to pull a glove from his coat pocket, then he tucked it back again.