Betina Krahn (17 page)

He sat down in the one padded chair in her spartan office, propped his feet on the desk, and stared at the stacks of paper that were the outward manifestation of the astonishing orderliness inside her. She was an interesting woman despite all that unfortunate optimism. Also intelligent, energetic, logical, opinionated, and utterly unaffected. In point of fact, it had been a long time since he encountered someone as individual, independent, or inventive as she was. Thoughts of frothy silk knickers popped into his mind, and he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have her employ those creative instincts in more pleasurable endeavors.

Pushing away those dangerous musings, he rose and went back to watching her from the doorway as she supervised the unpacking of the sewing machines. It was chaos around her, yet she dealt with obstreperous children, dubious workers, and frustrated engineers with extreme patience. Every time she turned so that he caught a glimpse of her flushed cheeks or the flash of her quick smile, he felt a worrisome sliding sensation in his middle and prayed it wasn’t the feel of his hard-won common sense deserting him.

Later in the afternoon, as Madeline was cleaning a newly unpacked machine, she realized that things had become strangely quiet. She looked up to find the sewing floor empty except for a clutch of men standing near the stairs, surveying the sight of ladders, half-assembled machinery, empty crates, and the litter of packing wool and wood shavings all about. She set her hands to the small of her back, stretching, feeling for the first time the deep, throbbing ache of exhausted muscles.

Where was everyone? The women, the children, her newly employed cutters—even Daniel and Fritz were nowhere to be seen. Only Thomas Clark, Ben Murtry, and Will Huggins were left. She looked at the dwindling stack of crates against the wall—only five more. How good it would feel to be done.

The top crate was well over her head, but she managed to find a grip on its wooden framing and give it a tug. It didn’t move, so she braced and pulled again. This time the entire stack swayed. Her workers should not have left such a precarious vertical stack, yet another example of their poor judgment. With another heave and tug, the top crate began to slide. Steadying the crate below it with her other hand, she looked around for help from the men.

Surely they could see her predicament. “Thomas, I need some help,” she called as she turned back to give the crate another pull. It slid more easily than expected, and she suddenly found herself bearing more weight than she’d bargained for. “Aghhh! Thomas!” She looked frantically over her shoulder, only to see the last of three heads disappearing down the stairs.

The crates tipped and wobbled. Just as she shut her eyes in panic, her burden abruptly eased. Male hands were lifting that box above her head and lowering it safely from the stack. The hands were attached to dark-clad arms finished with pristine
cuffs. When she turned, Cole Mandeville was standing behind her, holding the heavy box and glaring.

“Biting off more than you can chew again, St. Madeline?” He delivered the machine to one of the unoccupied tables and deposited it with a thud.

“I—I didn’t realize they were leaving,” she said, reddening. “I thought …”

The disgust in his expression made his opinion of her workers quite clear. Muttering something she didn’t catch, he strode past her to the stack of machines and transferred the remaining crates to unoccupied tables.

“There,” he said, straightening his clothing. “I’ve done more work in three minutes than most of your precious employees did all day.”

If Cole had looked back as he exited the room, he would have been treated to the extraordinary sight of Madeline Duncan kicking a hunk of packing felt and sending it flying. Fortunately for Madeline’s dignity, he did not look back. If there was anything she hated more than a cynical, unfeeling overseer, it was a cynical, unfeeling overseer
who was right
. She couldn’t deny the disappointing performance her workers had turned in on their first day on the job.

Wholeheartedly confused, she picked up a pry bar, shoved a chair over, and climbed up to open one of the crates. She savagely jabbed the metal bar between the boards and pushed and levered the slats apart. With a crash the lid fell to the floor, followed by a bushel of packing wool and wood shaving.

Thomas Clark had left her there, in trouble, with a costly piece of equipment teetering overhead. He and the others had walked away as if they hadn’t heard anything. She paused in the midst of removing the front part of the crate and leaned on the wood. Well, of course she couldn’t blame them for what they hadn’t heard, could she?

Grimly, she opened more crates, cleaning off the packing materials and removing the leather shipping straps, then clearing
away the debris and situating the machines in the slots on the tabletops.

It wasn’t until Emily came out of the offices, whirling a shawl around her shoulders and bidding her a good evening, that Madeline realized the sun was setting. Looking around, she wondered briefly where Fritz had gone. It wasn’t like him to quit work so early.

For some reason, Cole Mandeville’s voice stole into her mind, saying that some of her workers “drink themselves into a stupor by noon.” Scowling, she thought of the times she had smelled spirits on Fritz’s breath and of the scent of the overpowering anise drops he seemed to favor. Was he …

“That’s what I loathe about you, Cold Mandeville,” she snarled, lighting a lamp and setting it on a nearby table. With angry vigor she attacked that last wooden crate. “You spread your little seeds of cynicism and stalk off, leaving them to sprout and take root in the first available doubt.”

It was sometime later that Madeline closed and locked the office door, paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, then made her way from the factory. Her muscles ached, her nose and eyes burned from the lint and dust, and her head throbbed. Just putting one foot before the other took nearly all her concentration, leaving only enough to fasten on the promise of a warm, soothing tub and a glass of wine.

She let herself into her house knowing that Davenport would be in the kitchen at this hour. She thought of asking for a tray in her room, but the long flight of stairs convinced her that the dining room was a good idea.

She made her way to the dining room, poking her head into the kitchen to let Davenport know she was home. As she sank wearily into the chair at the head of the dining table, closing her eyes gratefully, it occurred to her that it was brighter than usual in the room—Davenport seemed to have lighted two sets of candles. Moments later she was roused by
the housekeeper’s voice saying cheerily, “It’s about time, Maddy Duncan. We were beginning to think we might have to send out a rescue party. If the soup is cold, your lordship, you can blame Miss Diligence Duncan.”

That peeled Madeline’s eyes open and brought her bolt upright in her chair. There at the side of the fireplace, his arm propped on the mantel, stood Cole Mandeville, fully rigged out. A tailcoat and trousers, black as a raven’s wing, with a silk brocade vest, tucked shirt, and high collar, he was in full evening dress. Madeline could not suppress the groan that escaped her.

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Anticipating dinner, I believe,” he responded, raising his glass to her and then to his lips. “A very smooth bit of grape, I daresay.”

“Dinner?”
She turned a fierce look on Davenport, who merely smiled and waved to Mercy, the housemaid, to bring the platter and tureen for serving.

It must be a bad dream, Madeline thought. Before she could put words to her outrage, Cole Mandeville was taking the chair at the opposite end of the table, and Davvy was ladling some deliciously aromatic concoction into Madeline’s soup bowl.

Davvy explained. “His lordship found Hiram Netter’s accommodations a bit—”

“Primitive,” he supplied.

“Primitive,” Davvy echoed, clasping her hands at her waist. “From now on he’ll be staying with us.”

“He most assuredly will not,” she said, glaring between the pair of them.

“Oh, but he will.” Davvy didn’t bat an eye. “I’ve already invited him and settled him and his man into the front bedrooms.”

“
You
invited him?” Madeline was stunned. She never really thought of Davvy as a servant or employee, more as
one of the family. Still, it floored her to have the staunch housekeeper flagrantly contradict her expressed wishes.

“Of course I invited him.” Davvy’s smile bore a familiar hint of stubbornness. “I decided to take that decision off your shoulders, Maddy dear. Worker participation, don’t you know. You’re always ballyhooing it—”

“I-in
the factory,
” she stammered.

“Well, I am part owner, after all,” Davvy reminded her with steely pleasantness. “It was my money that bought those fancy new windows, was it not? Gave to the cause without a murmur, if you’ll recall. I’m only looking after my investment, Maddy dear.”

“Ah, yes, your quaint notions of worker participation.” Cole addressed her with a taunting smile. “It has always seemed to me that such policies must have drawbacks for an owner.
Loss of control,
for one.” Beaming infuriating good humor, he sniffed the soup Davvy was ladling into his bowl and picked up a spoon. “Damned if this isn’t the best thing I’ve smelled in weeks.”

Silenced by the treachery of having her own ideas wielded against her, Madeline tapped her wineglass sharply and Davvy filled it with the white wine Cole had just complimented. Madeline downed it quickly, seeking its heat in her parched throat, hollow middle, and aching limbs. The soup was one of Cook Hannah’s specialties and one of Madeline’s favorites: a rich mixed-poultry broth with rice and sage. She consumed the entire bowl before looking up again to behold Cole Mandeville leaning back in his chair, savoring another glass of wine and looking outrageously content.

Even knowing he wasn’t welcome, he insisted on staying in her house. And short of hiring a pack of thugs to come and evict him bodily, there seemed precious little she could do about his presence. For tonight, anyway.
I’m sorry, Your Honor, I haven’t the faintest idea how that arsenic got into Lord Mandeville’s coffee. I was rather counting on smothering him with a feather ticking myself
.

Jabbing her fork into her orange and endive salad, she signaled Davvy for another glass of wine. As she lowered her gaze, it caught unexpectedly on his smile. Of course he was smiling, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. She scowled and stuffed her mouth full of salad. She might have to suffer his presence, but she didn’t have to extend him more than bare civility.

They ate in strained silence, the only sounds in the room the tick of the mantel clock and the occasional scrape of silver or clink of crystal on china. The chicken en croustade was magnificent—she managed two bites. The braised trout with spring vegetables was positively succulent—she propped one cheek on her hand and filled the other with trout before realizing she scarcely had the energy to chew. Fearing that she would be stuck looking like a squirrel for the rest of the night, she managed to down the fish with the help of some wine.

Every time Davenport appeared with another course, Madeline gave her a dark look and she returned a spitefully cheery smile. She had apparently been planning this little feast for some days: She was serving all of Hannah’s best dishes. By the time the braised beef in Bordeaux and mushrooms, the steamed asparagus with hollandaise, the brandied pears à la Hélène, and then the cheeses and cordials arrived, Madeline was sagging in her chair and listing to one side. Fortunately, the chairs were provided with old-fashioned wings that for generations had served to keep overstuffed gentry’s heads from drooping.

Cole watched her closely through the meal, partly to show how little her hostility daunted him and partly to satisfy his bewildering craving for the sight of her. And she was indeed a sight. Her hair was coming undone, her blue smock was covered with dust and lint, wood shavings were stuck in the net around her chignon, and there was a healthy streak of dirt across her cheek. Her skin seemed pale despite her tippling, and beneath her closed eyes were dark smudges that spoke of fatigue.

If he had any lingering doubts about her commitment to her Ideal Garment Company, watching her today and seeing her tonight would have dispelled them. She was devoted to her cause body and soul, so determined to help others that she willingly sacrificed her own time, energy, and resources. She had worked herself to near oblivion today, moving, cleaning, organizing, delegating, encouraging, teaching, arranging, supervising, approving. And she did so without the cloying air of martyrdom that characterized so much of the “charity” in society of late.

Simply put, she was a giving sort of woman. Warm and giving. Delectably warm and giving. Lushly delectable, warm, and giving—and if he didn’t cease this line of thinking at that very moment, he would be forced to sit in this chair with a table napkin over his trousers for the rest of the evening.

Just how long he sat there, watching her slide deeper into unconsciousness, he had no idea. But when her shoulders rounded and she surrendered utterly to gravity, he sensed it had been quite some time. It was clear that neither the housemaid nor the intrepid Mrs. Davenport would reappear anytime soon, so he gave in to the impulse to rise from the table and move closer to her.