For Love's Sake Read Online Free

door closed, the drone of the machinery could be heard. It rattled the windows, and more importantly, it rattled his brain.
    Christopher took the ledger from her hands. “Thank you.”
    The girl curtsied clumsily and backed out the door before he could tell her that this was not the books from last quarter, but in fact, the quarter before that.
    “This entire place is filled with imbeciles,” he said to the empty room, rubbing his pencil eraser across his forehead, tracing the grooves that formed there from years of constant scowling.
    Flipping through the pages, he ran his fingers over the figures, trying to decipher exactly what numbers went with what. Whoever had been keeping the books for Holbrooks had not done a very good job. Everything was unorganized and hastily thrown together. The errors were glaring, and even without the help of an adding machine, he could easily see that nothing totaled up like it was supposed to.
    “I’m going to need a new bookkeeper,” he sighed. “ And a new secretary.”
    Christopher was disgusted at the illegibility of the accounts – accounts he needed to have on hand to show any potential buyers of the mill. If he couldn’t even make them out, certainly no one else would be able to. Resisting the urge to fling the heavy book out the window, he stood up from his desk and stretched. It was hotter than hell in that office, and he needed a break, so he left his brown jacket draped across the back of his chair and walked out the door in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves.
    As soon as he stepped out onto the catwalk, he was almost knocked back by the heat of the Spinning Room. Between the September afternoon, the dozens of bodies, and the machines, it couldn’t possibly get any hotter in there. Christopher studied the boys and young women on the floor, watching them run their sides in between wiping sweat from their faces with their already damp shirts.
    It was inhumane.
    Thundering down the steps, he hurried over to the nearest window. It was obvious that they hadn’t been opened in years, and a mountain of dead flies and moths littered the sill. Christopher brushed them aside and pushed the window up, oblivious to the dozens of pairs of eyes riveted on his back.
    No one had ever dared open a window at Hathcock-Holbrooks.
    “That is an improvement,” he said to the little girl at the spinning machine closest to the window. She smiled back, too afraid to voice her thanks to the enormous stranger.
    Christopher went around the room, opening each window. When he was finished, he dusted his hands off, and shoved them in his trouser pockets. His eyes scanned across the faces of his employees, who looked relieved to have some fresh oxygen in their lungs. Satisfied, he decided to check the conditions of the other rooms of the mill, and left them to their work.
    When he returned, he could hear the supervisor’s voice from all the way down the hall. Pushing the door open, he saw the man screaming and pointing at the windows, which were now closed.
    “Whoever touches these windows again is out of here! Do you understand me? This is my mill and no one does anything without asking my permission first.”
    Christopher leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. He debated on whether or not to correct the man openly, but then decided it was best to do it in private. Although he was the first person to admit that his people skills were lacking, he understood that no one liked to be made to look like a fool.

    “Will you be with us long, My Lord?” A middle-aged woman stopped him in the lobby of the hotel that night. She cornered him against a side table, and he had no choice but to speak to her.
    “No,” Christopher said.
    The woman clasped a hand to her bosom. “What a shame! We’ve never had a member of the aristocracy visit before, and the Hospitality Committee has decided to throw a party in your honor!”
    “That’s very kind,” he said, trying to push past her.