It was cat-and-mouse, but was the cat just playful—or hungry?
She hid these thoughts and fears from John until they had settled in her mind. Much later that night, when they lay in bed reading, she told him why she was sure that Hudson knew.
He took it as calmly as he always did, not pausing long for thought. "So," he said, "let's assume the worst. Hudson is going to Beador and will magnetize and mesmerize the arrangements out of him and will then offer Beador something better—which is only too easy for Hudson. His signature on a soap bubble would seem worth more to Beador than anything we're justified in offering."
Nora let the silence, and the worry, grow until she judged it right to suggest: "If he's not going to snatch Beador from us, we risk nothing. If he is, then only a desperate remedy will cure him."
"Aye?" John asked, doubting. He trusted only her financial judgement.
"If you told him straight out about Beador, about what we fear he's done with his share applications, and why we need to know…"
"If I did that," John interrupted, impatient and disappointed, "he'd snatch the lot. We've already gone over…"
"Aye!" Nora said with redoubled conviction. "If
you
did that. But what if
I
did it? All simple and trusting? Ladylike, you know?"
At least John considered the idea.
"You have to remember," she pressed on, "Hudson's carrying two hundred years of gentility on his back."
He still said nothing.
"It'd go against his grain to use intelligence given him by a gentlewoman asking for his help."
John smiled at that. Nora's whole claim to gentility derived from the fact that her great-grandfather had been squire of Normanton. His neglect of that small estate in favour of hunting had been the first step in the family's long slide into poverty and, finally, with the death of Nora's father, to destitution. Paradoxically, the squire-ancestor in the background enabled her to confess frankly to everyone the degree of poverty she had known. She was not the jumped-up servant she might seem, but a true gentlewoman reduced by the folly of others and rescued by her own innate qualities; not an interloper, but a heroine.
"You have a certain instinct in these matters," John conceded.
"Aye." She settled complacently and blew out her candle.
"And it's nearly always wrong," he said with no change of tone. He blew out his candle.
In the dark she smiled. "Never fret, dearest. You'll find a way, I'm sure."
But he did not; and next morning after breakfast, he reluctantly agreed to try her suggestion.
Chapter 5
The snow began to fall when they were halfway to York. It was a light flurry that looked like a shower; but the land was cold and the flakes stuck to the ground from the very start. By the time they reached the station, there was no doubt that the fall was going to be prolonged and no melt was in prospect.
"I hope you get through to Darlington," she said as their carriage halted. "If it's like this here, it's bound to be worse at Northallerton."
"I'm thinking of you," he said. "Forget Hudson and get straight home. At this rate there could be four foot on the tops by evening."
"Aye," she said. "I sh'll just see you off, then head for home."
He knew she was lying, but, as there were no means to insist on his way, he tacitly let her have hers.
When he was in the director's carriage, he opened the window and leaned out. She reached up and squeezed his hand, the greatest intimacy they dared in public. He squeezed back and smiled, looking at her grey-brown eyes, eager in her smiling face, framed in dark ringlets that strayed from the edge of her bonnet; he had to remember that face over the next fortnight. "Throw away any bad pennies," he said.
She smiled and blinked.
The train backed out of the station, switched to the down rails, and set off northward. As the last carriage slid from view beyond the broad arch, she turned and made at once for Hudson's office.
Hudson had two styles of greeting. The one for insiders was warm and almost conspiratorial; the one for strangers, outsiders, gulls, sheep for shearing, was majestic. It struck at the pit of the stomach; it awed important stockholders and silenced querulous directors. His greeting to Nora was an odd mixture of the two. "Hide the books!" he said in a stage whisper to Noakes, his clerk, while he came around to help Nora into her seat. "Give us a conundrum, lad," he added just before Noakes left.
"Uh…eleven per cent of one thousand two hundred and forty-seven pounds," Noakes said as he closed the door; it was a long-established ritual.
Nora and Hudson faced each other, smiling grimly, cat-and-cat. It was Nora's day to be Distressed Lady Seeks Help so she let Hudson say, "One three seven pounds three and fivepence," a little ahead of her. Then lamely, with all the pedantry of a born loser, she added, "Three shillings and four and four-fifths pence, if you want a base figure."
He laughed magnanimously, pretending to accept second place. Good. He was slipping into the right mood.
"It was pleasant to see Mr. Stevenson again," Hudson began.
Nora displayed confusion. "This morning?" she asked, unbelieving. Hudson frowned. "No, no. Yesterday." His grey eyes watched her. "We met near Leavening. I out for a trot. He on his way to repair my great blunder." He pulled a sudden wry, naughty-boy face.
"Great blunder!" Nora rose to his challenge. "Indeed. A chain's-length of wet ground, Stevenson says." Then, as an unimportant afterthought, she added: "Odd he never told me you met."
Hudson wet his lips, uncertain of her.
"But then," she added brightly, burying the topic, "I fancy you spoke nothing of moment."
He's uncertain whether to believe me, she thought.
It would take an indiscretion to prick his ears and drop that guard. "Stevenson and I were a little out of sorts," she confided, laughing to show it wasn't important. "I want a hand in the management of my trust fund. He and Chambers are that cautious. It saddens me to think of so many tens of thousands…" She halted, made herself blush, and stammered. "Well…thousands anyway—all lying as good as dead in Treasury stock."
Hudson smiled, a touch greedily. "I don't know how he resists the idea," he said.
She composed herself again. "Oh, I shall win," she told him. "I shall have the control of part of it at least."
And that's a notion,
she thought,
that will come back to him over the months. And
no harm to me.
"It won't please your banker, that," Hudson said, pretending this was all idle chatter.
"I'm out of concert with him and all," she answered glumly, and then, as if appealing to his judgement, added, "I feel as we've a right to a great deal more intelligence than he ferrets out for us. We've put contracts for over two million pounds through him these five years past. I think we're very poorly served in that department."
Oblique though the appeal was, she made it plain enough to be irresistible to Hudson. "If it's railway intelligence, and ye think I could help…"
Nora showed the right mixture of dwindling caution and mounting relief. "You're quick, Mr. Hudson. Quick and kindly. For you know full well I came here of express purpose to ask. But I wanted to avoid a direct request you might have been embarrassed to refuse and loath to grant." She smiled her gratitude. "I'd not have pressed it."
"I'm certain you'd ask nothing dishonourable," Hudson warned.
"Indeed," she said. "I'm very sensible of your honour, which I know would prevent you from taking advantage of anything you might hear from me."
For the first time he saw where he had been manoeuvred. He looked steadily at her until, apparently struck by a sudden thought, he smiled. "Oh, I can't promise that," he said.
She pressed her lips together and waited.
"The day after you get control of that fund I shall be knocking at your door!"
She joined his laughter. "Better come the day before," she warned. "Day after may be too late."
His laughter quickly died. "I believe that," he said.
The time for chatting and joking was over. She gathered herself together and, sitting upright, said, "We are turning over the idea of going into foundry work on our own account." He showed only a polite and casual interest. "Nothing as yet is settled, but Rodet, whom I'm sure you know?" Hudson nodded. "Rodet has put a friend of his, Sir George Beador, in touch with us. There's a possible partnership in the venture. The interests are mutual."
"Stockton!" Hudson interrupted. "Of course. That Beador." A satisfied look came over him. "Stockton, eh?"
"Aye." Nora confirmed his pleasure. "Every scrap of iron we send inland will go over your metals. North out or south out." He rubbed his hands in pantomime. "So you've a further reason to wish us well."
He pouted at that. "My own friendship would ensure my every assistance."
Nora placated him. "I'm sure, Mr. Hudson, but a sound business reason always helps."
He smiled again. "Why iron?" he asked.
There were a dozen and one reasons for going into ironworks, but the one
closest to Nora's heart was one that only another financial adept would understand. She had often wanted to put it to John, but he would have known at once that she was showing off, giving the most abstruse reason of all when the dozen simpler ones were compelling enough. Chambers, too, would understand, but he would also find some way to turn it against her. Now was her chance. Hudson would surely see it at once and admire her shrewdness.
Casually, as if it were really too obvious, she said: "If we can hold our present stocks as a liability, balanced against such assets as unpaid debt on invoiced goods, we're in a much better position than if we just hold the same stock as a depreciating asset."
He coughed and cleared his throat. "Yes," he said. "How true."
To Nora it was barely credible that he did not grasp the point; yet he clearly did not. She pressed on at once, pushing this extraordinary discovery deeper. "Manufacturer's stock-in-trade does not automatically depreciate," she added.
"That's clever," he said at length. His admiration was so quietly genuine that she knew beyond certainty this was the first time in his life the point had struck him.
For her, it was a discovery of cardinal importance. On several occasions recently, she had been on the point of taking shares in a number of Hudson's lines; soon her mere intuitive distrust of him would have been unable to withstand the strong commercial arguments for investing in such huge success as Hudson had shown. But now it was clear that he was no genius at all. Just a clever lad who had found a tin whistle and had taught himself to play four or five tunes to perfection. He did not understand accounts; he merely knew a handful of impressive tricks. God be praised she had discovered the fact in time.
Quickly, to prevent his becoming embarrassed, she said: "Stevenson tells me not to talk such French. He says if we take up foundry work, it'll be for the profit, not for tricks with the ledgers." She chuckled. "I daresay he's right. He usually is."
"So it's not certain?" Hudson was relieved to be back on familiar ground.
"It is in
my
mind." She grew conspiratorial. "Stevenson resists it because it takes us out of itinerant trade into manufacture—fixed trade."
Hudson nodded sagely. "Not a loud argument when money is given a voice," he said.
"My doubt," she said, becoming Distressed Lady once again, "is Beador. He's on the rack for cash and well stretched. Yet we fear he's applied for shares in
projected railways. Several of them."
"Ah! Hoping, no doubt, that by the time there was a call, he would have some income from your foundry to meet it. He wants to eat the calf in the cow's belly."
"Worse than that," Nora said. "The cow isn't even his. It's ours."
Hudson stood and began to pace in front of the tall sash windows that lit his palatial office; in the deep pile of the carpet his boots made no more sound than the snow which fell relentlessly outside.
"What may I do?" he asked at length. "Give him his subscription at par and tip you the wink when you should tell him to sell?"
Nora did not even smile. "I think," she said, "that honest Yorkshire folk the likes of you and me were not put upon this world in order to line the pockets of the ne'er-do-well southern gentility. If apples are falling from the trees, I'll eat them, not stick them back on the bough. It's against Nature."
The pitiless cast of her eyes brought him to a standstill; he glimpsed an implacable hardness there beyond the melting reach of love or charity.
"No," she went on. "You can tell us how deep he's dug his grave. And then I'll tell you how bad we want him burned."
Hudson breathed out sharply, unable to take his eyes from her, unable to reply.
She smiled then. "You think that's hard?" she asked. "You think me hard." It was not a question. "Aye, well so I am. And if we are to take a partner, I want one who learned his business sense the hard way. Soft things crumble."
Chapter 6
If she had gone straight home from the station, as she had promised John she would, Nora might have made it without trouble. But the half hour she spent with Hudson had put six more inches of snow on the highway. She and Willet had to abandon the coach—among several others—at the foot of Garraby Hill, unhitch the two horses, and stumble rather than ride the remaining few miles, with Willet leading the horses, forcing them to plunge and tread a path through waist-deep snow, and Nora, dressed in billowing crinolines for a carriage ride, forging behind them like a cork in a tight tube. Just to negotiate the drive, where the snow lay deepest, took over half an hour.