Page 13 of His Perfect Bride
With a shake of his head, he expelled a sigh. “Please, sit down, Augusta. We may as well have the dinner your new cook has prepared.” They were here now, and he had to stop focusing so much on himself and his own problems and show Augusta he still cared about her.
Besides, the scents coming from the kitchen had been taunting him for the past hour—roasted duck, wild herbs and vegetables, and even the sweetness of a berry tart.
Augusta stood stiffly a moment longer before approaching her place at the table. Before he could reach her chair and pull it out for her, she was already sitting down. He helped to push her in before he sat across the table from her.
She unfolded her linen napkin and laid it in her lap, then she straightened the oyster fork and soup spoon, although both were perfectly placed above the plate.
He hadn’t known he had linen napkins or formal silverware. Either Augusta had purchased both this past week or Meredith had done more to prepare their home than he’d realized.
He sat unmoving and forced himself to speak first. “Forgive me for being a brute. It seems that I am acting out what I have become.”
Her eyes softened, and all the love she had for him was shining there.
His throat closed up. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at him like that—probably not since he’d last seen her or his mother. Certainly his father had never given him such love, had only ever doled out criticism.
“You’re not a brute, Jackson.” Her voice held tenderness. “You’ve just become lost and need to find solid footing again.”
Was she right? He did, indeed, feel lost, as if he was stuck in the wilderness of the great Fraser River Valley and unable to find his way through the thick forests and rugged mountains to the place where he wanted to be.
Where was that place? What was his destination?
“Once in a while, we need someone to come alongside us,” she continued. “I hope you’ll allow me to be that someone to support you.”
He had pushed away everyone else—his friends, business associates, and even the woman he’d intended to marry. They’d all wanted to support him, but he hadn’t been ready four months ago to interact with anyone, had been too consumed with guilt. Could he accept the support now?
He swallowed the protest that easily surfaced—the protest at having anyone else involved in his life, at least not until he figured out what had gone wrong with his bridge and how he could fix things.
But what if he never was able to get it right? What if the ruins remained in the canyon, a testament to his failure and the destruction and deaths that had come about as a result?
“Are you thinking about the bridge?” she asked as if sensing the direction of his thoughts.
He stared down at his empty plate.
“I heard what happened.” Augusta spoke quietly, but the force of her words barreled into him anyway.
He sat back against his chair, the angst inside swelling hard and fast. Of course she would have heard. Everyone knew about it. The suspension bridge had been touted as one of the greatest feats of the modern world. He’d been lauded as a genius for developing it. Governor Douglas, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and every industry in Vancouver Island and British Columbia had been counting on the bridge.
After starting work last summer and then resuming again this spring after the winter thaw, the construction crew had been nearing completion. The accolades had been rolling in for his achievement. Requests for his expertise from around the world had begun to pile up. He’d been on the cusp of fame and fortune that was his own making and not a result of his famous explorer father. He’d even received a letter from his father with a rare compliment for his work on the bridge.
Then one day in early May, during a downpour that had turned into sleet, the freezing moisture had expanded in one of the columns with a new hollow structural section that he’d developed. In all his initial calculations of the dimensions of the steel structure, including the nominal width, depth, and diameter along with the wall thickness, he hadn’t calculated the permissible variations for freezing action.
The ice had split the column and weakened the rods, and he hadn’t realized the damage that had been done until it was too late. The full crew had been at work when the column had collapsed, bringing down the west abutments and timber towers along with all the men who had been working on that end of the nearly completed bridge.
His mind had replayed the moment of the bridge crumbling more times than he could count. He’d been on the east bank overseeing the cables being installed when it had happened. He’d watched in horrified silence as the section had broken away from the bedrock and fifteen men had plunged ninety feet to their deaths below.
“It wasn’t your fault, Jackson.” Augusta spoke in her no-nonsense tone. “Accidents happen to everyone?—”
“It was my fault, and that’s all I want to say about it!” The words came out a half growl, half roar. His pulse was spurting forward, sending frustration to every part of his body, tightening his muscles, and pounding through his head.
He had the sudden desperate need to flee from the room and from Augusta, barricade himself in his study, and pore over the equations that he’d worked and reworked to test the effect of freezing on a hollow structural section. He could escape in the equations and in the numbers, even if only for a little while.
Augusta pursed her lips. Although he could sense she wanted to talk more about it, she only eyed him warily.
The truth of the matter was that he was entirely to blame for the bridge’s failure and for the deaths. If he’d been more thorough, if he’d anticipated the freezing, if he hadn’t let the pressure of deadlines rush him—then maybe he could have prevented the tragedy.
He grabbed onto the edges of his chair to keep himself from standing and stalking away. He couldn’t behave in such an uncouth manner, not after all Augusta had done for him over the past week, not when she had arranged for such a fine meal that evening, and not when she didn’t know the whole story.
He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to calm his erratic pulse.
