for it seemed that they were speaking about two different things. He could, however, agree with the sentiment. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
Kate nodded, touching his sleeve in a gesture of sympathy he was already beginning to associate with her. ‘Our cases are hardly comparable. There are a good deal of rules which ought to be broken, no matter how painful.’
She would not have said so if she knew the price he had paid for his disobedience. No matter how unconventional she was, she would likely condemn him for it, and quite rightly so. Virgil rolled his shoulders as if the familiar burden of guilt were a tangible weight he carried. ‘I play by my own rules,’ he answered, more to remind himself of that fact than in response to what she had said. He could see his remark confused her, but the crump of carriage wheels on the gravel kept him from saying more, and then the Wedgwoods’ groom appeared at the front door and informed them that the gig awaited Her Ladyship’s convenience.
Kate pulled on her driving gloves. ‘I hope you don’t mind the cold, but I drive myself. I hate to be cooped up in a carriage.’
‘That’s fine by me.’ Virgil pulled on the greatcoat his valet had insisted that he would require, having been forewarned that Her Ladyship scorned the closed carriage in which any other lady of her rank would have been expected to travel. With extreme reluctance, he donned the beaver tricorn hat which Watson had also insisted upon. Hats and gloves were items of gentleman’s apparel to which Virgil had never managed to become accustomed.
Kate leapt nimbly into the carriage in a flutter of lacy petticoats at odds with the masculine cut of her dress, and took up the reins. The gig rocked under Virgil’s weight as he climbed in beside her. His knee brushed her skirts. The caped shoulder of his driving coat fluttered against the braiding on her jacket. The air smelt of leaves and moss, with that sharpness to it that was distinctively English. As she urged the horse into a trot, she smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said impulsively.
Virgil laughed, and for once spoke his mind without thinking. ‘That makes two of us,’ he said.
They had left Maer village behind, and were heading eastwards along a country lane at a steady pace. The morning was bright but cool, the sun shining weakly in the pale blue sky. The blackberries which grew so prolifically in the hedgerows were past their best now. The leaves on the trees had turned from gold and amber to brown, curled and crisped by the change in the temperature, ready to float down at the merest hint of a breeze. In the distance, a bell clanged as a herd of sheep made their way across a field.
‘I was about to ask you last night, before the lemon syllabub separated us, how you came by your education,’ Kate said. ‘I realised later that I must have sounded quite the malcontent, complaining about my lack of formal schooling when it was likely that you’d had none at all—as a child, I mean.’
‘I never went to school, not when I was a slave, nor when Malcolm Jackson freed me either.’
‘Jackson is the man who brought you to Boston?’
‘Bought me at auction, and brought me to Boston. There’s no need to dance around the subject. I was a slave. I was sold. Malcolm Jackson paid for me in gold and set me free.’
‘You took his name.’
‘That man placed a lot of trust in me, it was the least I could do. Besides, the only other name I had belonged to the man who sold me. It was no hardship to give that up.’
‘And this Jackson, he gave you an education?’
Virgil smiled. ‘I gave myself an education. Malcolm Jackson gave me a job at his factory and a place to live. He let me have books, and when I was done with his, I found more, and plenty of ideas, too, at the African Meeting House in the city. I studied hard every night and I worked hard every day so that within a year there wasn’t a job at that factory I couldn’t turn my hand to. Sometimes I had just two or three hours’ sleep, but I didn’t need any more. I discovered I had a head for figures. I found I had a mind for business, too, which is more than poor Malcolm Jackson had. He was leaking money, he was being taken for a ride by just about everyone he did a deal with, and he was missing so many opportunities that it was criminal to watch.’
Virgil had shifted in his seat as he talked, so that his knee brushed against her skirt. He was more animated than she had yet seen him. His eyes glowed. He had cast his hat onto the floor, and tugged repeatedly at his neck cloth as he spoke. The finicky valet he had mentioned had obviously tied it tighter than he was used to. He had already admitted that he could not tie such a fancy knot himself. It was endearing, though Kate took care not to let him know she thought so, judging quite rightly that he would have been horrified. ‘I assume there came a time when you could no longer stand by and watch things going wrong,’ she said.
‘I would have interfered eventually, but I didn’t have to. Malcolm Jackson didn’t have the hardest business head but he wasn’t a fool. He could see what was happening, and he could see I knew what to do about it. He was getting old, and he was getting tired and he had learned to trust me. In a year I’d doubled our turnover and he made me a partner. Another year, and we had just about cornered the new market for cheap, practical stoneware.’
‘Was that your idea?’
‘One of them.’
‘And not too many more years later you are one of the wealthiest men in America. This deal with Josiah, is that going to allow you to corner another new market?’
‘I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise,’ Virgil said with a grin.
‘But you have other businesses than—what do you call it, stoneware?’
‘I sure do. I have real estate—that’s property, to you English. Homes to rent to the freed men coming north that are fit for human habitation. Rooming houses that aren’t flea pits. I have some interest in retail—shops to sell what we make at the factories. And some other investments too. As I said, I have a head for business.’
‘It must be a very ruthless one, to have achieved so much in such a relatively short time, with the odds stacked against you to boot. Your ambition knows no bounds. Tell me, do you still exist on two or three hours’ sleep a night?’
‘I prefer not to waste time sleeping if there’s something better I can be doing.’
Kate pursed her lips, her brows drawing together in a deep frown. ‘But why? Why not enjoy your success? Forgive me, but you sound almost like a man obsessed. What more can you possibly want? Aren’t you wealthy enough?’
‘I don’t care about being rich.’
Alerted by the change in his tone, Kate glanced sideways. The light had gone from his eyes. What had she said? ‘You’re so used to working twenty hours a day that you can’t stop, is that it?’ she ventured, trying to make a joke of it.
‘I’m not interested in money, Lady Kate. I’m interested in what money can buy.’
He had shifted in his seat again, to look straight ahead. His expression seemed to have hardened.
Kate’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, you mean schools? Your model village?’
He meant reparation, but it was the same thing. ‘Power,’ Virgil said. ‘The power to change.’
Kate nodded. ‘Yes. If I felt I could have that, I think I’d manage on two or three hours’
