Betina Krahn (36 page)

“So you have regrets,” he said, sitting forward and wincing at the pressure it put on his bad leg. “Well, in my opinion, regrets should be outlawed for people under sixty.” He waited for that to register, and it did. Cole looked up with a scowl. “In my experience, there are precious few things in life that can’t be helped or fixed if someone puts his mind or his shoulder to it. Half the misery in the world is caused by people sitting and wailing about a problem instead of
doing
something about it. If people got up off their arses and applied themselves to whatever bothers them, there would be a lot less blubbering and a lot more done—and the world would be better off on both counts.”

Cole stared at his uncle, surprised and angered by his attitude. Of all men, he might have expected his uncle to understand … to lend some insight.

“Madeline Duncan is a remarkable young woman. Would you agree with that assessment, or disagree?” Sir William demanded, sitting back.

Cole took a moment, then answered with a hostile “Agree.”

“A bit eccentric, but remarkable nonetheless. She built a factory, hired workers, and produced a product—all on her own. According to you, she tossed William Morris, Henry Broadhurst, and the redoubtable Sylvia Bethnal-Green out on their ears, then turned around and did the same to her precious
employees. That, my boy, is not the work of a fragile flower of femininity. She’s human, not glass. She’s hurt, but she can heal.” The old man waited to collect his full attention before continuing.
“If you can, she can.”

“Me?” Cole sat straighter. “Heal?”

“The fact that you’re in agony over what’s happened to this girl is a most encouraging sign. She’s done wonders, actually. More than I expected. Resurrected your conscience. Got you to care again. You have to
care,
my boy, before you can
hurt
. Not bad work for a madwoman with an aversion to corsets, eh?”

“Why, you old—” Cole sprang up from his chair, mute with exploding fury, glaring at his uncle—who was smiling like a fat Cheshire cat. Trembling with the effort required to contain his more violent impulses, Cole grabbed his hat and stalked out the door.

Sir William chuckled, watching him go, but soon found himself staring at his scowling clerk, standing in the doorway.

“Lucky man,” Foglethorpe said.

“Yes, he is, really.” The old justice sighed, feeling quite pleased with himself.

“I was speaking of
you,”
Foglethorpe said, narrowing his eyes. “Any other man would have put your lights out.”

Do something … do something … do something …

Wretched old coot, Cole said to himself again and again as he strode furiously along the Strand, headed for the heart of The City. The words beat like a drum in his brain:
Do something
. Who did the old man think he was, handing down opinions as if they were damned edicts, playing God with people’s lives? He showed not the slightest remorse at the way his diabolical plot turned out. In the old justice’s eyes Madeline had rescued Cole, made him care again, healed him—the hurting was proof.

Well, if this agony was what was required to be
healed,
then perhaps he preferred to stay sick and broken!

Do something … do something …

Absorbed in his careening thoughts and emotions, he charged along the street, oblivious of other pedestrians, lorries, and even omnibuses. A “Hey—look out!” did manage to penetrate his awareness, and he halted just in time to keep from bashing into a large sheet of plate glass being unloaded from a glazier’s lorry. Jolted by the near-miss, he stood a moment, watching the workmen hoist the plate of glass into a shopwindow and work to secure it.

The memory of broken windows came back to him with a vengeance, and he felt a painful ache beginning in his chest. She had been so proud of those windows.…

He took in the name of the glazier stenciled on the side of the lorry, then approached and asked the workmen where the firm was located. In moments he was headed for the nearest cab stand, refusing to think too much about what he was doing or to worry about why. He arrived just as the clerk of the establishment was about to lock up for the night. The proprietor, as it happened, was staying late to work on some correspondence and was surprised to have such a well-dressed customer walk in off the street. His surprise turned to incredulity when he heard what Cole wanted.

“…  to the village of St. Crispin, in East Sussex. There, I want you to rebuild a number of factory windows—frame, glass, and all. And I want it started right away.” When the glazier wagged his head and opened his mouth to decline, Cole settled the matter by declaring, “Money is, of course, no object.”

By the time he had sketched out the windows, approximated their dimensions, and written out a letter to serve as a draft on his own accounts, he was feeling somewhat better. Doing something, he hated to admit, felt better than doing nothing at all. Unfortunately, the salutary effects of “doing” didn’t last long. When he reached his home in Mayfair, he
was thinking steadily of Madeline—of her in Gilbert’s house, perhaps in Gilbert’s arms.

Of all the things that haunted him, that was the worst.
He
was the one who introduced her to kissing and caressing. It was
his
lovemaking she had responded to and explored. It was in
his
arms that she experienced pleasure and intimacy for the first—hell,
he
was the one who fondled her knickers and gave her goose bumps and made her dizzy enough to walk into walls!

He paced his rooms and the upper hall of his house, feeling choked and constricted. He began to shed clothes, trying to shed the feeling. Coat … tie and collar … vest … Breath came easier, but he was unable to rid himself of the sense of loss. He was the one who cared about her, who worried about her—who was crazy about her. He was the one who teased her mercilessly, who looked into her eyes and saw into her soul, and who understood how close to being an angel she truly was.

Mad Madeline. St. Madeline. Archangel Madeline.

Do something
.

Not far away, in a fashionable town house in Belgravia, Madeline was being dressed for dinner. For the first time since she was four years old she had to be helped into her clothes—laced into a straining corset, tied into successive layers of petticoats, hung with pads and frames, hooked and buttoned into a viciously tight bodice, and finally draped with a few dozen yards of the finest French silk moiré. And all this after she had spent two hours under the tedious ministrations of a lady’s maid with a hot curling iron and a passion for making sausage curls.

She stood looking in the mirror for a moment and glimpsed a total stranger looking back at her. This poor female looked perfectly miserable in a teal blue gown that flattened
her breasts and squeezed her waist to a “forgivable” twenty-two inches.

Poor thing, she thought. She looks like a sausage ready to shoot from its casing
.

Her hair was pulled up so tightly into a knot on the crown of her head that it gave her a wide-eyed look and something of a headache. There were at least two hundred small curls and ringlets on her head, and every one was held in place with a metal pin. And then at each temple were those awful rolls of hair, which—lacking hairpins—were already beginning to droop.

I’ve seen smarter-looking basset hounds
. She sighed.
Certainly happier ones
.

By the time she was duly powdered and perfumed and pinched to put color back into her cheeks, she had completely lost what little appetite she had. It was with the greatest of reluctance that she exited her room and descended the stairs to join Cousin Gilbert for dinner. Following the dressmaker’s instructions, she bent forward at the hips and pulled her shoulders back, bowing the small of her back to produce a semblance of the S-shaped curve currently in vogue.

It was like having a parlor rug and an entire tea table lashed to your waist and being asked to walk without spilling
. She withdrew a bit more inside herself, trying to escape the discomfort relayed by her aching senses.
I suppose you get used to it
.

She paused in the doorway to the parlor to locate Gilbert and found him by the fireplace, looking quite dapper and obviously pleased by the sight of her. He hurried to take her hand and lead her into the room, talking all the while. It was hard to appreciate, much less produce witty repartee when she had to concentrate so much on the mechanics of breathing and walking. She looked up to find he was introducing her to someone. Lord Somebody. And Lady Something—who didn’t look like a tortured sausage.

“I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind a bit of company and conversation tonight,” Gilbert said privately as he led her
into the dining room. “One has to start somewhere.” Then he gave her one of his aren’t-I-just-too-charming-for-words smiles and declared, “You look ravishing. Madeline, my dear, you were made for such clothes.”

If I was made for such clothes, then why can’t I even sit down in them?
she thought as she caught her bustle cage on the corner of the chair a second time and fumbled to free it. It took three tries to get her seated properly. Lord and Lady Something-or-other pretended not to notice. She sighed.
Breeding tells
.

By the time she reached her room four hours later, her back and ribs were aching, she was dizzy from the wine and lack of air, and every nerve in her body was screaming for relief When the maid finally removed her corset, she melted into a puddle on the bed and refused to rouse herself again, even to let the girl take down her hair. She lay there for a long time, looking up at the ornate ceiling, tracing plaster cherubs, pomegranates, and grapevines with her gaze.

“Maybe I just won’t eat dinner … ever again.”

The next morning Cole trapped the membership secretary of Brooks’s in the Great Subscription Room and got him to render up Gilbert Duncan’s address, on the pretext that he had a wager to pay off and it was not the sort of thing one could reasonably handle across a civilized card table. He approached the house on Chester Square, repeating to himself the excuse for his intrusion: It was his legal duty to oversee her affairs, at least with regard to Ideal, and advise her on same. And if circumstances required it, he would be willing to confess to a concern for her welfare, and then demand to know why the hell she was marrying her oily cousin Gilbert.

Braced and prepared, aching for the sight of her, he was roundly disappointed to be told that neither she nor Mr. Duncan were at home, and that they were not expected for some time. He walked back through Mayfair, stifling the impulse to go searching high and low, and feeling thwarted and irritable. Rousing from his dismal thoughts, he was surprised to find himself on Regent
Street, in front of Liberty, staring intently at a display window filled with children’s clothes.

Liberty
 … the one store in all London that carried Ideal garments. He truly was a glutton for punishment.

Entering, he made his way to the ladies’ department and strolled about for a while, weathering stares of indignation from the female clerks. After a time he approached one of them and identified himself as a representative of the Ideal Garment Company. He had come, he explained, to learn something about their customers’ reaction to Ideal’s garments.

Mollified somewhat by his explanation, the clerk explained that she was not authorized to make such reports, but, in confidence, related that the ladies generally seemed a bit skeptical. A good idea, many said, and they liked the lines and appearance. They thought the goods were nice and the design supportive. But all but the most adventuresome were reluctant to make such a drastic change in their wardrobes.

As he thanked her and turned away, he was glad Madeline hadn’t heard that assessment. Silly women, not to recognize an inspired bit of design and a chance for freedom when they saw it. He headed for the door with Madeline’s disconsolate image burning in his mind, but found the way blocked by a crowd in the aisle. A number of perambulators, women, and assorted children were collected around something on display. He craned his neck to look for another route, but the nearest alternative was also clogged with middle-class matrons and the occasional nanny, all with children in tow.

Children again. The world was positively overrun, these days, with the little—

“Ideal. They certainly are aptly named,” one of the women was saying.

“So much better than those little gentleman suits or Fauntleroy velvets.”

“Smart and yet sensible. You know, the head clerk said
the originals were designed by the old queen herself, when the prince was just a boy.”

The display under discussion consisted of a tiered table topped by two wire forms approximating children’s shapes and dimensions. One wore a middy blouse, and the trousers were trimmed in white piping. The other wore a dropped-waist dress with a sailor collar and tie, made of dark blue wool jersey. A carefully lettered placard on the display proclaimed them to be Ideal garments produced by the Ideal Garment Company.