The Glassblower Read Online Free PDF Page A

before he was too old to enjoy them. He wanted a son.
    Mr. Pyle made a perfect son. He turned to Father for guidance on business and other matters since his own parents died when he was Meg’s age. A union between the two families, what was left of them, made sense even to Meg.
    “But I want someone I choose.” She spoke aloud as she drew a blue muslin gown over her head. “I want someone who will let me have my school and my cats and maybe a dog.” She yanked tight the ties under her bust. “Please, Lord, don’t let Father make me marry anyone I don’t want to.”
    An image of the glassblower flashed through her mind, that strong-boned face with his frame of sunset red hair. He would let her keep her school.
    He wasn’t considered eligible—alas. She may as well greet the dinner guest.
    With her dark hair brushed and pinned up so a few curls fell on either side of her face, she waited until she heard first Father arrive home then Mr. Pyle enter the front door a few minutes later. Then she waited for a few more minutes before making her descent to the parlor.
    “Margaret, there you are at last.” Father rose and came forward to lead her into the room. “You’re looking well.”
    “Thank you.” She smiled at her father and then Joseph Pyle.
    He bowed and returned her affable expression, except for his eyes. They were so cold, like the bay on a clear January day: a lovely pale blue but not welcoming.
    She couldn’t help herself from comparing those icy azure eyes to eyes the color of spring grass. Eyes like emeralds with the warmth of a flame burning inside them. Eyes that belonged to a man who had stepped beyond the gates of the glassworks and, in belonging there, stepped out of her world, as her father and friends defined it.
    She had to force her smile to remain on her lips.
    “I concur with your father’s assessment, Miss Jordan,” Mr. Pyle said.
    Meg repeated “Thank you,” like a sailor’s parrot. She didn’t want to say she was pleased he could join them, as she knew she should. It seemed too close to lying.
    “I believe dinner is ready,” she said instead. “May I assist Ilse in bringing dishes to the table, Father?”
    “No no, she can manage on her own.” Father shook his head. “Joseph, why don’t you escort Margaret into the dining room.”
    “With pleasure.” Mr. Pyle strode forward and offered her his arm.
    Meg rested the mere tips of her fingers against the crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead the way across the entryway and into the dining room. A fire blazed on the hearth, warming the chamber and reflecting in the ruby glasses on the table. Those glasses had come from England with her great-great-grandmother, who had sailed across the ocean to marry a man she had never met—a colonial at that—because her father had lost all his money. Meg wanted not to merely know but love the man she married.
    She released Mr. Pyle’s arm as soon as politeness allowed.
    “This is so much nicer than dining alone.” Mr. Pyle drew out Meg’s chair. “I eat in the kitchen or at a table in the parlor more than in my dining room.” He waited for Meg to seat herself, then he nudged the chair closer to the table before taking his own seat across from her and on her father’s left.
    “Company always makes a meal more pleasant.” Father sat at the head of the table and nodded to Meg to direct dinner to be served.
    She knew many of the wives and daughters of the successful farmers, the ones like her father and Joseph Pyle, who could afford servants rarely lifted a finger with meal preparation or serving. Perhaps because Ilse had taught Meg about running a household after she returned from boarding school, she didn’t like the older woman waiting on her. She rang the bell then clasped her hands around the edge of the table in an effort to hold herself in place and not jump up to snatch serving bowls from the housekeeper the instant she pushed through the swinging door from kitchen to