It was so at odds with Bianca, this vision of her as an idle woman needing something harmless and feminine to keep her occupied, that Max couldn’t repress an amazed glance at his companion. Tate nodded, eyebrows raised encouragingly as he waited for Max to agree with him.
Ah. Tate wanted his daughter to be more idle and more feminine, caring for the children even if she took too enlightened a view of that endeavor. Bianca, however, wanted to be useful. How had she described her work? A close study of mineral properties, some chemistry intuition, and extensive trials, she’d said. She cared about her glazes, and that made him think she also cared about this school.
So in reply to Tate’s comment, he merely smiled and dipped his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “One thing I’ve not seen. Where are the smaller items produced?” he asked instead, remembering Bianca’s little plum pot. “My wife has some charming pieces on her dressing table.”
Tate flicked one hand. “Those bits of paste,” he scoffed. “Frippery.”
“Oh?” Max had seen many an elegant lady’s dressing table, with little silver pots full of pomade and powders. Fripperies they might be, but they were in demand. “More than that, I think.”
Tate rolled his eyes. “Bianca wanted to experiment with the porcelain. There’s no harm in it, but earthenware is more lasting. Stronger, too.” He strode back into the workshop, pausing now and then to examine a piece. At one bench he paused, taking down a vase and turning it from side to side. Having kept pace, Max scrutinized the piece, too, searching for the flaw that had put a frown on Tate’s face. He couldn’t find it, but expected it would be pointed out soon.
Then, to his astonishment, the older man flung down the vase with a violent crash. “Who made that?” he roared. “Craddock!” A stout fellow with ginger hair rushed over. “Who is responsible for this?” Tate demanded, waving one hand at the remnants of the vase, lying in shards on the floor.
“Martin, Mr. Tate,” said Craddock uneasily.
Tate threw up his hands. “It’s not good enough for Perusia! Does he need to be sent back to making plates? Don’t let that happen again.”
“Right, sir. Never.” Craddock ducked his head and gestured for a boy with a broom to come sweep up the mess.
Tate stepped over the broken vase and strode onward.
Max regarded the shattered vase. Its faults had been small, imperceptible to any casual observer, but Tate had spotted them, and destroyed the vase in consequence.
It seemed a waste of clay, of labor, of potential income. The smooth handle of the jug was intact, a sinuous curve of biscuit. It had been fired once, but was still devoid of Bianca’s glossy glazes. It looked as perfect as the rest of them to him. Tate had higher standards, and that was entirely admirable. But smashing a vase that looked perfectly fine to the unskilled eye—that is, to the vast majority of the population—rankled. Max, who had long had too little of everything, despised waste.
With a lingering glance at the boy crouching over his broom, the rows of bowed heads in the silent workshop, and the shelves of otherwise indistinguishable vases, Max went after Tate.
Chapter Thirteen
Bianca would never have admitted it to herself, let alone to anyone else, but she was coming to like her husband.
She didn’t understand him, and she still thought there must be more to his decision to marry her than she knew. But every day that went by seemed to bring evidence of some endearing thing about him, and it was becoming harder and harder to keep him at a distance.
His response to Cathy’s letter was the most surprising, but far from the only sign that she might have been slightly wrong about him. There was the way he waited for her at the factory gate every day, and seemed to sense from her mood whether he should speak to her or be silent. The faultless manners he always displayed, to everyone from Bianca herself down to the lowest scullery maid. That he never lost his temper with her, not once, since that stern warning in the sacristy. Since Bianca had been guilty, at times, of trying to provoke him into an argument, this last impressed her immensely.
It was obvious that Max was not merely the shallow, fortune-seeking rogue she had labeled him, and trying to divine his true intentions was driving her mad.
In an effort to relieve some of the strain, she reconciled with her father. She marched into his office, held up Cathy’s letter, and announced, “My sister wishes you to know that she is well, and very happily married to Mr. Mayne.” She curtsied to her parent, and almost walked back out the door before he recovered from his astonishment.
“Bianca, wait!” Papa caught her arm. “You have heard from her?”
Her jaw worked. “Surely you already knew?” She meant St. James, who spent a portion of every day in the offices with Papa. He must have told her father that she’d heard from Cathy. Even if he hadn’t, there was a very large chance Mary or another servant had told someone at Perusia Hall that a letter had arrived. The housekeeper there, Mrs. Hickson, was mother to her maid Jennie, and there wasn’t much news that didn’t eventually travel from house to house.
“By my soul, I did not!” Her father couldn’t keep the yearning from his voice. “Tell me how she is.”
Bianca turned toward him. Papa released her, giving her arm a small pat. He cleared his throat and nodded at the letter in her hand. “She’s happy, then?”
Bianca nodded. “Very happy.”
Papa’s lips pressed together. “I suppose I should be relieved that curate did the proper thing.”
“He always meant to,” she said in withering tones. “It was obvious to everyone in Marslip that he wanted to marry Cathy.”
“And it would have cost him nothing to ask my permission and my blessing,” her father fired back. He threw up his hands as she drew an irate breath. “Never mind! ’Tis done, and there’s nothing to gain by quarreling over it now.”
“No,” said Bianca stiffly.
“And you?” he asked cautiously. “Are you . . . happy?”
Bianca drew a controlled breath. “I am content with the choices I made.”
He didn’t look pleased. “Content.”
“Well, what else can you expect me to be?” She raised her brows. “Condemned for helping my sister pursue her true happiness—”
“Condemned!” he growled indignantly.
“—told that my birthright was to be given to a stranger, and then told I could reclaim it only by marrying the stranger.” Bianca lifted one shoulder. “I did what I must.”
Her father’s face worked. She braced herself for a fiery row; this was the first time she’d spoken to him since the disastrous wedding day, and Papa rarely missed a chance to put in his word.
But instead, with almost visible effort, he swallowed whatever it was, and gruffly said, “I hope you warm to the fellow. He’s a good man.”
The fact that Bianca was coming to agree, however reluctantly, did not make her admit it now. “I have little choice now but to make the best of things,” she said. “And I will.”
“That’s a start,” Papa replied, his face brightening. “Your mother and I did the same.”