The Glassblower (3 page)

Meg trotted off before anyone from the glassworks reached the gate and recognized her. Once headed up the drive to the Jordan farm, with majestic oaks and pines keeping her out of sight from the road, she began to skip—for about ten steps. The kittens set up such a commotion she had to slow to a sedate walk. Her heart, however, felt as though it skipped along ahead of her, and she clamped her lips together to stop from singing.

She couldn’t wait to tell Sarah about meeting Colin Grassick. Besides his being the most interesting man she’d met in too long to remember, he was also another glassmaker who would surely get the window glass done now. And he had brothers and sisters for her school. And she had more kittens for the stable and barns. And—and—

She skidded to a halt halfway between house and stable. Her heart dropped to the pit of her belly, and she heaved a huge sigh.

Father wasn’t about to let her make friends with one of the glassblowers, let alone one from Great Britain. He might be willing to hire a Scotsman for his skill, but he’d not let an employee befriend his daughter. He thought it unseemly for a worker to fraternize with his employer. It might give the man notions of slacking off in his duties. So even less would he like the man talking to Miss Meg Jordan.

Had she been ten years younger, Meg thought she would have stamped her foot in frustration. This was America. Weren’t men all to be equal? And surely Colin Grassick was special. Father must be paying him a great deal to come all this way. A skilled craftsman was far different from just anyone.

Resuming her walk to the stable, she resolved to talk more with Mr. Grassick.

She had the bonniest eyes Colin had ever seen. He held the memory of them as he tugged the rope by the gates and a tuneless bell clanged a hundred yards away. They were wide, round eyes of a golden brown hue like the finest amber glass, framed in extraordinary black lashes. He could gaze into those eyes for hours while listening to her sparkling voice.

If only he knew who she was so he could find her again. He was smiling when a fair-haired man, in shirtsleeves despite the cold October day, pushed open the gate. “Yes?” the man clipped out.

Until that moment Colin had forgotten to be anxious about beginning work at a new glasshouse in a strange country. Perhaps the Lord had sent the young lady along to distract him from his previous worries that the men might resent his arrival as a craftsman intended to produce the finer pieces Jordan wished to sell.

Inclining his head in greeting, Colin reminded himself he wasn’t supposed to be anxious about anything. The Lord was supposed to take care of it all.

Except when His servants forgot to take care of their own
, a little voice reminded Colin.

He swallowed before he could find his voice. “Colin Grassick reporting my arrival to Mr. Jordan.”

“Grassick, am I ever glad to see you.” The man’s face lit up with a wide grin, and he thrust out a broad, scarred hand. “Thaddeus Dalbow at your service.”

“My service?” Colin welcomed the man’s firm handshake and warm greeting, but he wasn’t certain how to proceed after such an effusive greeting. “You were expecting me then?”

He grimaced at such an absurd comment.

“Expecting your arrival?” Dalbow laughed and pushed the gate wider. “We’ve been praying for it. If you hadn’t come now, we all would be trying to make the glassware for Mr. Jordan’s daughter’s wedding chest, among other fancy things.”

“You don’t already make the fancy things here?” Colin followed Dalbow into the tree-lined lane leading to the glassworks.

“Not often.” Dalbow set a brisk pace past the tree line to where the lane opened into a yard stacked with charcoal.

The sharp scent of smoke and molten glass permeated the air, offensive to some, perfume to Colin.

“What do you make then?” he asked.

“Windows mostly. We’ve got a lot of need for windows, especially now that everyone wants just the clear glass.” Dalbow grimaced. “Jordan finally hired an apprentice to do the cutting.”

Colin understood that the man meant the process of cutting the thinner, clear glass away from the thick, gray, and nearly opaque glass from the center. He’d heard the French were working on a way to avoid that thick center altogether, using a process other than blowing and spinning the glass against a metal plate until it flattened out, but he didn’t know if they were successful and never much liked making windows enough to care.

“Do you fit the pieces into the frames here then?” Colin glanced around, seeing no evidence of woodworking.

“No, they go to a carpenter in Salem City.” Dalbow strode up to the door of a long brick building with two chimneys jutting into the sky. “You may wish to take your coat off. It’s hot in here with both furnaces going.”

“Aye, that it would be.” Colin set down his tools with a
clink
of metal and took off his coat.

Removing it would also protect it from any flying sparks. A shirtsleeve he could afford to replace but not an entire coat.

Dalbow opened the door. Heat and the odors of hot iron and sodium blasted out with strength enough to taste. But the long room, brightly lit from several clear windows and the two great fires, lay quiet save for the
crackle
of the charcoal in the furnaces, the occasional
clank
of a metal tool set on one of the iron gratings, and sighing breaths of the two men on their stools engaged in spinning out the sheets of glass for windows.

“Mr. Jordan?” Thaddeus Dalbow called. “Grassick is finally here.”

From a desk at one end of the factory, a tall, thin man with hair nearly the same dull gray as the center of the crown glass windows rose. Despite the heat he wore a coat and cravat, and Colin wished he hadn’t removed his outer garment.

“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” Jordan smiled, drawing out crinkles at the corners of wide, dark brown eyes. “I’d heard you just got here this morning.”

“Aye, sir.” Colin strode forward as did Jordan, and they met behind one of the men perched on his bench, blowing gently and steadily into a long pipe, while the parison spun into a flat panel. “The ship docked in Philadelphia yesterday, and I found transport here straightaway.”

“Good. Good.” Jordan shook his hand. “With your country and France at war, I always worry about ships crossing the Atlantic.”

“Not to mention the limited number of English ships allowed to come here,” Dalbow added.

“I had to come on an American ship from the West Indies.” Colin shuddered involuntarily. “Two extra weeks at sea was not much to my liking.”

“That’ll keep him here.” Dalbow laughed.

“We hope so, if you are as good as my agent in Edinburgh says you are.” Jordan turned back toward his desk. “Let’s talk about your work and your accommodations. But I don’t expect you to get started until tomorrow unless you want to.”

Colin felt his lungs expanding as though he were about to breathe life into the molten silica. “I’d like to begin, sir.”

“Good.” Jordan nodded. “A man eager to work. I like that.” He gave Dalbow a pointed glance. “If you please, Thad? I did promise Margaret she would have her windows before the first snowfall. And we have to fulfill that order for the new town hall before she can have the glass.”

“Yes, sir.” Dalbow trotted to one of the workbenches.

Colin’s stomach tightened. Margaret, the young lady’s name. A fine, noble name. The name of a lass of whom Jordan must think highly, likely making her too high for him.

Not that he should even think in that direction after so short an acquaintance—or at all. “… if you like,” Jordan was saying.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Colin’s neck heated from more than the fires. “I was distracted.”

“I said you can work on windows for a day or two to get back into your work, if you like.” Jordan’s tone showed no impatience, but the corners of his mouth tightened.

Margaret could get her windows faster that way.

“I would like to, sir. Thank you.”

“I’ll show you your quarters now.” Jordan moved around his desk and opened a rear door.

They exited to another yard, this one with small outbuildings filled, Colin presumed, with supplies, the sodium and lime and other elements necessary for making glass. Beyond a wooden fence lay half a dozen cottages: neat, wooden structures with small windows and gardens that would be fine in the summer. Trees shaded the houses, and a petite woman hung laundry outside one of them.

“I built these so I could bring in skilled craftsmen, and they could bring their families.” Jordan headed in the direction of an end cottage with two floors. “This one is big for a single man, but I understand you have a family.”

“Aye, that I do.”

And the cottage into which Jordan led him was twice the size of the croft his family lived in now. “This is fine indeed,” he added.

Though it was damp and dim, and holland cloth covered the furniture, it looked like a palace to Colin.

“You have a kitchen,” Jordan explained, shoving open a door into a stone-floored room with a fireplace at one end. “But if you don’t cook, Thad Dalbow’s wife is good at it and happy to earn a few extra pennies making meals for you bachelors.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The tour continued for a few more minutes, then Jordan led the way back to the glassworks and stopped at his desk.

“My daughter is getting married in a few months,” he explained. “I’d like her to have some fine glassware to take to her new home. On Monday you can start working on these.” He pulled some sketches from a stack of papers on his desk.

They were for drinking goblets, objects that required skill and experience without being difficult.

“Aye, sir. How many and what color?”

“Purple. I have a good supply of manganese.”

“That’ll look grand on a dining table.”

“I thought as much.” Jordan smiled. “Now, if you’d like to work for the two hours left to the day, I’ll have Thad show you where you’ll be working and introduce you to your assistant.”

Jordan wove his way past furnaces and workbenches, racks of finished glass plates, and stacks of charcoal fuel to where Thad was just finishing up the first stage of a window. Thad let his assistant, a youth of fifteen or so years, carry the panel to the lehr for its gradual cooling, and he turned his attention to Colin.

“Help him with everything he needs.” Direction given, Jordan returned to his desk.

“He’s a generous and fair employer.” Dalbow jutted his chin in Jordan’s direction. “Better than some of the other glasshouses. What’s he have you working on?”

“Windows, to start with.” Colin began to unpack his tools: the blowpipe, the tongs, various cutting tools. “Then I’m to make some goblets for his daughter. He wants them purple, but I’d rather be asking her what she wants for herself.”

“Jordan doesn’t like us talking to his precious daughter, but if you can persuade him to let you discuss the glassware with her, that’s a fine idea.” Dalbow grinned. “She’s as strong-willed as she is pretty and kind, but you probably already figured that out.”

“I beg your pardon?” Colin raised his brows. “How would I be knowing that?”

“You’ve met her.” Now Dalbow was the one to look surprised. “At least you were talking to her outside the gate.”

“I didn’t ken she was Jordan’s daughter.” He felt a twist in his middle that she had avoided telling him of her parentage, after knowing he worked for her father. “She’s a bonnie wee thing.”

“The most eligible female in the county, now that Sarah Thompson is engaged. That is”—Dalbow grimaced—”as long as the interested party owns land. For any tradesman it’s as much as his job is worth to speak to her without permission.”

“But I always help with dinner.” Meg frowned at Ilse Weber, the housekeeper, wife to one of the glassblowers and surrogate mother to Meg since her mother’s death seven years earlier. “No one expects you to cook and serve.”

“It’s what Mr. Jordan told me.” Ilse spoke in a musical cadence, her lips curved in a perpetual and genuine smile. “It’s not trouble to let you be extra pretty for your guest.” Her smile broadened. “Especially not when it’s such a fine gentleman.”

“Mr. Pyle.” Meg’s stomach felt as though she’d swallowed a lump of underbaked bread dough. “I’d rather you sat at the table and let me do all the work.”

“Now, Miss Margaret.” Ilse laughed. “Mr. Pyle is the most eligible bachelor in the county. He could be dining with any number of girls, but he comes here.”

“Because his farm adjoins ours.” Meg sighed. “He and Father want it to be the biggest farm in the county.”

“You shouldn’t talk to me about these things.” Gently spoken, the scold nonetheless hit its mark.

Meg apologized immediately. “I’d better go change my gown.”

Feet still dragging, she climbed the steps to her bedchamber on the second floor. It was one of five bedrooms and overlooked a garden on the side of the house away from the glassworks. Most of the time she didn’t smell the smoke from the factory. Beyond the garden, her view gave her a vista of trees and fields, bare now after the harvest, and, seeming to protrude through the branches of a massive oak, one of Joseph Pyle’s chimneys.