Page 54 of His Perfect Bride
“Don’t go.” Her hand snagged onto his arm, holding him in place.
He halted at an awkward angle. “You’re certain?”
“This is just one night,” she whispered. “And we’re both honorable.”
He didn’t exactly feel honorable at the moment, not after putting her into this awkward situation.
“We will go to sleep, and in the morning, we’ll never mention this night again to each other or anyone else.” From the resolve in her voice, he guessed she believed they could do that. Maybe she could. But he wouldn’t be able to forget spending a night in the same bed with her any more than he could forget kissing her.
The kissing had been the highlight of the week. In fact, the more he’d thought about it, the more he’d realized that nothing else in his life quite compared to it. She’d been so warm and soft and welcoming…
He closed his eyes and bit back a groan. He couldn’t let himself think about the kiss again. Especially while he was lying so close to her.
He had to get the focus off himself and think about her. Perhaps if he asked her questions? Maybe that would distract him? He scrambled to find something to talk about with her. But what? He couldn’t get his mind to center on any other topic besides kissing and lying in bed.
“Your family. Your father.” He fairly barked the words in his need to get the attention on something else. “Tell me more about him.”
“If you’ll do likewise.”
He hesitated. He wasn’t fond of thinking about his father, much less talking about him. But he couldn’t ask her to share personally if he wasn’t willing to do the same. “Very well. I shall tell you about mine if you tell me about yours.”
After a moment, Sage began to share about her father, his work at the mill, his sweet relationship with her mother, the onset of his white lung disease, the danger of him continuing to breathe in the dust of the factory.
The longer she talked, the more the tension eased from his body. Not only did it help distract him from their predicament, but he liked hearing about her family and what her life had been like before she’d come to the colony.
When she finished, he answered her questions about his father. Although he didn’t want to reveal too much, he found himself eventually telling her about his strained relationship starting when he’d attended Mount Radford School in Exeter from a very young age and then had been apprenticed to an engineering firm by the time he was fifteen.
Even then he’d felt the pressure to do more, and he’d tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, had journeyed with his father from England to Rupert’s Land to work with the Hudson’s Bay Company in York Factory.
The company had given him the job of surveying for roads and bridges, and he’d liked what he did. He just hadn’t been able to please his father. His father had criticized him for not venturing out far enough, for not being willing to take more risks, for getting distracted too easily, and for at least a dozen other things.
Finally, Jackson had taken the Hudson’s Bay Company’s offer to move to Vancouver Island. The gold rush had just started, and the governor of the new colony had wanted someone who could help with the development of the roads, primarily to make the transport of gold more accessible. Jackson had kept busy over the past years and had gained a reputation as an intelligent and industrious engineer. Then the accident had happened…
Thankfully by that point, his father had already moved back to England to be with his mother, who’d been ill. Otherwise, his father probably would have traveled to Victoria to interfere in Jackson’s business.
As it was, Augusta had come to interfere, and Augusta was infinitely easier to endure than Father.
Jackson hadn’t wanted the same life as his father, hadn’t wanted to explore, hadn’t wanted danger, hadn’t wanted new adventures. He would have been content working as an engineer in a simple position for his whole life. But his father had claimed that the time in the far wilderness outpost of the colony would turn Jackson into a strong man—a man just like him.
“It didn’t work,” Jackson whispered, staring through the dark up at the ceiling. “I didn’t turn out to be like him in any way, and he cannot understand or accept that I’m different.”
“Even after all you’ve accomplished with your engineering feats?”
Jackson’s mind returned to the last time he’d been with his father in the colony’s government building. Jackson had just returned from a wilderness expedition, surveying routes for a new road to an important trading post. He’d failed to find a suitable and safe route, and his father had called him a coward for not exploring one of the more difficult areas. “He only sees all my mistakes.”
“Then you must take after him.” Her whisper was soft but firm. “Because you see only your mistakes too.”
Jackson’s thoughts came to a halt. Was she right? Did he only see his mistakes?
“God has gifted you with so many incredible designs that I’ve seen,” she continued. “And you probably have dozens more that I haven’t seen.”
She wasn’t wrong on that score. He did have more tucked away in cabinets and trunks that could benefit from her organizational skills.
“With so many excellent ideas and projects that you can give to the world, you’re focused on the one that you’ve gotten wrong instead of all the ones you could do right.”
Was that what had happened? Had he turned into a version of his father even though he’d never wanted to? Was he just as critical and self-focused? How had this happened?
He couldn’t let go of the question, even as she moved on to ask him about other things. They talked more about his family and Augusta, as well as her family and siblings. He asked her again about loaning the money for their passage, and this time she didn’t immediately object to the idea, probably because she’d learned that Willow hadn’t been able to save much yet and was realizing how long it could take before they earned enough for the rest of the family.
