What You Wish For

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

With no work to do at the mill, Carrie stayed home most days, helping Dixon. Mr Thornton had said she could continue to come in and that he would find work for her, but she didn't want him to be paying her for jobs that didn't really need doing, so she declined.

She also did her best to avoid him when he came to his lessons with Mr Hale. He needed a chance to get to know Margaret and so she made herself scarce every time he arrived.

After two weeks there was no sign of the strike relenting and so Carrie tried to find work elsewhere. Not only was she feeling the loss of her wages, she knew that Mr Hale had lost some of his students, or they had at least cut back on their lessons.

She asked in shops mainly but was consistently refused. It seemed that Mr Hale and the mill masters weren't the only ones feeling the pinch from the strike.

Word got back to Mr Thornton that a young lady was seeking employment and he guessed who it was. It hurt him that she had refused his offer of work during the strike but was happy to seek employment elsewhere, though he supposed after the shocking way he had behaved toward her when he kissed her, he could not blame her for not wanting to see him.

Besides, despite her fine words about judging people based on their character, he wasn't sure that extended to actually marrying a manufacturer. Though it pained him to realise it, she was far too good for the likes of him.

During the third week of the strike he set about importing hands from Ireland while his mother prepared for her dinner party. He was disquieted to hear that Mr Hale had only replied for three. It could be that Mrs Hale was too unwell to attend, or it could be that Miss Preston was still avoiding him, for he was astute enough to realise that was what she was doing.

Fanny was quite put out abut the fact that Miss Preston had been invited, while his mother declared her to be wild and hoped that she did not upset her other guests with her antics.

Mr Thornton rather hoped she would, for he was almost certain that she could argue her point with almost anyone and he enjoyed watching her. He did not know that she had been captain of a debate team in school, nor that her knowledge gained at GCSE far surpassed that of most educated people in the 1850s simply because more had been discovered and was understood by the 21st century.

When the evening arrived, Miss Preston looked every inch the lady, putting everyone else there in her shadow without seeming to try.

Though she had bought a few dresses of her own now, Carrie didn't have anything suitable for a dinner party and once again, Margaret had ridden to her rescue, offering her a choice of her silk dresses from London.

Carrie chose a dusky pink dress with a fitted bodice and flared shirt. The straps and been adorned with roses, as had the seams of the bodice but Carrie wasn't really a flowery kind of person (she wasn't a pink kind of person either, but this shade wasn't too bad). She removed the roses by hand and replaced them with piping in a slightly darker shade of pink that drew attention to the lines of the bodice and made the dress look all together more streamlined and less flouncy.

It had taken her hours to make the piping and then sew it on but the effect was worth it. She kept a few of the roses from the dress, unpicked them and made larger roses from them, adding some pink lace and some pink feathers from the haberdashery to fashion a hair ornament that would match the dress.

Sadly she still had only her black boots to wear with the dress, but the skirt was so long that no one would probably even see her feet.

Her bruise was well healed by now but she wore a little mascara to emphasise her eyes and a touch of lipstick to darken her lips very slightly. Makeup had always been a form of war paint to Carrie, something to hide behind when she needed to and right now she needed to hide, for the very idea of seeing Mr Thornton again terrified her; not so much how he would react to her but more how she would react to him after not having seen him for so long.