Betina Krahn (44 page)

“Well …” She huffed with annoyance. “Halfway between the two.”

“So … you would make the hardest-working clerks take a reduction in pay, while giving a raise to others who scarcely earn what they receive now?”

She blinked. “That’s not what I meant. I meant …” It seemed a bit more complicated, said aloud, than it had seemed in her mind. “It might not sound fair, put that way, but then neither does the way the department heads show favoritism and take sales from some clerks to assign them to others.”

“There has long been a seniority system at the Emporium,” he said, considering it. “Most shops and mercantile establishments are organized that way.”

“Well, it’s unfair. If there has to be competition, then it ought to be free and open … with each man keeping what he earns.”

“Sounds reasonable. Let’s say that we put that into effect tomorrow. Who could possibly oppose something as straightforward as that?” The look on his face said it wasn’t a rhetorical question. Who indeed? It didn’t take her long to see the problem.

“The department heads, all the senior clerks, and, I suppose, a number of junior clerks who have the heads’ favor.…” She listed them on her fingers and realized where he was leading. “You’re saying it wouldn’t work. They would resist the change and do things their own way, regardless.” Fighting the urge to surrender, she squared her shoulders. “But it could work. As the owner you could insist, and if insufferable old fossils like Hanks didn’t like it, they could always go somewhere else.”

He laughed and his eyes shone as they flowed over her. “More problems, I’m afraid. ‘Old fossils’ sometimes have
considerable influence with customers; trust and confidence in merchants takes a while to build with customers. Also, replacing workers and training new people can be expensive business.…”

“I can’t believe it is impossible to improve working conditions in your store,” she said, impatient with his genial pessimism.

“Not impossible. Just difficult. And in ways you probably didn’t anticipate … perhaps couldn’t anticipate until you’ve been in a position of making such decisions.” He smiled and reached out with one finger to lift a stray wisp of hair back from her forehead. “Congratulations. You’ve just had another taste of men’s work. My work, in fact. Lots of ideas, lots of possibilities, all with problems attached. How do you like it?”

She stood looking at him, feeling the hard edges of her determination against him softening dangerously. For a moment she glimpsed the complexity of the world he inhabited and began to see men and their work in a new light. Men had to compete—within constraints that sometimes frustrated their best efforts—and often with the knowledge that others depended on them. Suddenly she was bombarded by conflicting feelings, wanting to know more, yet afraid of what learning more would mean to her.

Suddenly his face, his eyes, were all she could see.

“Is there a way to change it?” she said softly, drawn to the power and certainty of him, seeing him as a knowledgeable and powerful man in a man’s world.

“It can be changed, but it will take time. People have to adjust, even to freedom and fairness. It’s not easy to change a lifetime of habits and attitudes. It usually takes something important—something a person wants a great deal—to get him to change.” The warmth and longing in his gaze said that he had found that something.…

If it hadn’t been for Davidson strolling back through
the stockroom, calling her name, she might have acted on the wild impulse trembling her limbs just then. The young clerk spotted her with someone and came hurrying over … only to halt with his jaw drooping as he recognized her companion. Rescued from her own reckless impulses, she hurriedly introduced Davidson to his noble employer, then fetched her hat and declared she was through with the mercantile trade.

Remington caught up with her as she left by the front door of the store, and he escorted her to the carriage waiting down the block. As he made to help her in, she paused on the step.

“Don’t you dare send this monstrous vehicle for me tomorrow morning,” she insisted, staring disapprovingly at the seductive opulence of the coach’s interior. “If I ever have to travel to your offices again, I’ll hire a cab.”

Paxton House was charged with tension when Antonia and Hermione returned home that evening; Antonia felt it the moment she walked in the front doors. Eleanor and Pollyanna were waiting to usher them into the drawing room, with news that they had a guest for supper. There on the center settee, in a cluster of anxious faces, sat Alice Butter-field Trueblood, another of Antonia’s former protégées, her dark eyes filled with hurt and evidence of tears recently shed. The sight caused Antonia to halt.

“Lady Toni!” Alice pushed to her feet and stood wringing pale hands until Antonia’s tension melted and she came forward with open arms.

“Alice! How good to see you!” She enfolded the young woman with a fervent hug. Alice’s presence there during the supper hour spoke volumes to Antonia, but she had to ask, all the same. “What brings you here?” Alice made a
noise of distress against Antonia’s shoulder, and Antonia gave her a comforting pat. “Was it my letter?”

Alice nodded, and when she pulled away, one look at Antonia’s sympathetic expression made her burst into tears. “Oh, Lady Toni—it’s so awful—”

Antonia led her back to the settee and listened as she poured out the story of a marriage gone wrong. It had begun with such promise: Alice had been certain Basil Trueblood loved her, and she had done everything womanly possible to make up to him for the involuntary nature of their vows. But from the start nothing she did was quite elegant enough, precise enough, thorough enough, or good enough to please him.

“The roast was too rare one time and overdone the next. The table linen wasn’t white enough, there wasn’t enough starch in his shirts, the bedsheets were too stiff, and I let the tea steep too long,” Alice said, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes. “My perfume had too much jasmine, my posture needed improving, I didn’t have the silver polished to a proper sheen, my laughter wasn’t quite musical enough, I didn’t choose the proper wine with supper, the curtains I selected were a half shade off color, and even …”

“There there,” Hermione said, patting her in encouragement.

“Even in our marriage bed I never seemed to do anything right. He criticized my affectionate nature and said I wasn’t …
ladylike
… in my conduct toward him.” Tears of shame rolled down her cheeks.

Antonia had heard enough. “The mean-spirited wretch! Well, you don’t have to withstand another minute of it. You can come back to stay with us here.”

A chorus of agreement broke the tension in the room; it was exactly what they had hoped she would say. But all
were a bit surprised to have Camille Howard edge forward with tears in her eyes and a heartfelt offer.

“She can share my room.” She smiled at poor Alice, then at Antonia. “We’ll have a lot to talk about.”

Supper that evening was a bit more festive than usual, with two new but familiar faces at the table and lots of stories to share. The subdued pleasure carried into the drawing room afterward, where Victoria played the pianoforte, Alice sang, and Molly and Aunt Hermione led several others in a scandalous dance-hall song or two.

Just as they were pushing back the chairs to make room for an impromptu reel, Hoskins appeared at the drawing-room doors with a scowl etched deep into his brow.

“A caller, madam,” he intoned crossly.

“At this hour?” Antonia said, somewhat out of breath from the exertion of moving chairs. “It’s late for visitors, Hoskins—”

The old butler opened his mouth to speak, but out came a feminine voice. “Oh, please, Lady Toni!” Hoskins started and glared at someone just behind his shoulder. With a grumble he threw the doors open, and there stood a voluptuous, thirtyish woman with a rounded face set with soft eyes. She was biting her lip and looking desperate indeed.

“D-don’t you know me, Lady Toni? Aunt Hermione? It’s Margaret. Margaret Everstone.”

“Of course we know you, Margaret!” Antonia hurried to greet her, taking her hands and drawing her into the midst of the group. “What brings you here this hour?”

“I got your letter, Lady Toni, and I—I just—”

Through tears and reassurances and occasional outbursts of anger, yet another tale of marital woe came tumbling out.

“Albert Everstone,” Margaret began furiously, “is the stingiest man that ever walked God’s green earth! He’s so
tight, he opens old envelopes to write letters on. He won’t go to church for fear he’ll have to put something in the collection, and lately he has taken to wearing the same drawers for a week just to save on laundry bills!”

There were gasps and groans as her harrowing tale unfolded. And when she was through, another valise was carried up the stairs, and Paxton House had given shelter to yet another wife who had fled nuptial turmoil … and returned to the penitent generosity of her matchmaker.

At that same hour, in the bar of White’s Club, Bertrand Howard and Basil Trueblood sat at an out-of-the-way table, staring morosely into tumblers of Scotch.

“Just like that,” Howard said with bewilderment. “Not a word of warning. Just gone. Went to stay with a friend, she said. Truth be told, I didn’t know she
had
any friends.” He lifted his gaze to Trueblood, who shook his head in sympathy.

“Good riddance, I say,” Basil muttered, tossing back another drink of liquor. “Mine left me a damned note. Says she can’t live with a man who picks apart everything. I am a reasonable man, Howard, God knows. It’s not my fault the woman cannot suffer even the smallest criticism. She was always puckering up over something or other …
and then her eyes would get all red and her nose would swell
up like a strawberry … and she would make that annoying little ‘eek-eek’ sound whenever she cried. Well, it was enough to rile any sane and reasonable man”—he looked to Howard for confirmation—“wouldn’t you say?”

“Ohhh”—Howard came out of his reverie with a scowl and lifted his glass—“abs-solutely.”

For a while they just sat staring off into the distance, drinking, not speaking.

“To top it all,” Trueblood ventured miserably, “the
woman made four spelling errors in the wretched note she left me. I’m probably well rid of her.”

“We’re well rid of them, all right. Wives are nothing but trouble.” After a moment Howard rubbed his face and sighed, “I just wish I knew where she had gone.”

A booming voice called their names, and they looked up to find Albert Everstone bearing down on them across the bar. The portly MP was red-faced and his neck veins were at full swell—he was more exercised than they had
ever seen him
. He
rushed over to the table, flung himself
into a chair, and snatched up Trueblood’s glass, downing the contents in one desperate gulp.

“What’s got you in such a lather, Everstone?” Trueblood demanded irritably.

“She’s gone, the wretched scattergoods!”

“Who is gone?” Howard sat straighter, scowling at him, then at Trueblood.

“My wife—Lady Spendthrift!” Everstone roared, flinching afterward from the stares his outburst brought their way. Lowering his voice to a pressured stream, he bent forward and slapped a folded note onto the table. “Got home a bit ago and found this propped on my empty dinner plate. Not a scrap of supper to be seen … just this note. And on brand-new paper!”

When they reached for it, he snatched it back and jammed it into his vest pocket. “The woman tried to spend me blind, I tell you. Always had her hand out. Money for food or replacing perfectly good linens or paying some worthless quack of a doctor, over a bit of nothing. Now she’s upped and left me. Gone.” He poured himself another drink in Trueblood’s glass and downed it.

The heat of the Scotch gradually drew the venom from his manner and his words. He sank back into his chair as the fact of his wife’s leaving was finally sinking in. His anger drained, leaving him genuinely shaken.

“Took just her clothes,” he murmured. “Didn’t even take the hot-water bottle I gave her last Christmas. I checked.” After a long moment his shoulders rounded and his voice lowered to a rasp. “Paid more’n nine shillings for that clay pig.”

Howard jerked his head toward Everstone and gave Trueblood an unsettled look. “His wife, too? Good Lord—it’s an epidemic.”

“What’s an epidemic?” Everstone looked up.

“Wives leaving. Mine did, and Trueblood’s, too. Now yours. And the worst is, we don’t even know where they’ve gone.”

“Well, I damn well know where mine went,” Everstone said irritably. “Hotfooted it straight back to Lady Matrimonia, she did. Said so in her note.”

“Back to Lady Antonia?” Howard murmured, the awful sense of it dawning. His gaze connected with Trueblood’s, and both pairs of eyes widened as the impact of their wives’ destination sank in.

“Lady Matrimonia giveth”—Trueblood groaned—“and Lady Matrimonia taketh away.”

The headlines that greeted Londoners the next morning ranged from the absurd to the erudite. But the one that was most eagerly awaited—from the paper that always seemed to beat the others to the story of the earl and the widow,
Gaflinger’s Gazette
—was simple but devastating:

The notorious earl was not content with compromising Antonia Paxton and dragging the lady’s name through the scandal-mire, the article asserted. He continued to harass her, besieging her at her house, dragging her off the streets
… demanding that she fulfill an ill-begotten wager that any gentleman of conscience would have forgotten the instant the question of the lady’s honor was raised in public.

Worse yet, the sources of this information were beyond reproach: a number of correspondents from leading newspapers, an MP, a Bank of London executive, and the scores of Londoners who had passed by Carr’s Emporium on the previous afternoon. The article related in lurid, moralizing detail how the good widow was put on degrading display in the shop windows, and lingered with outraged sympathy on how pale and drawn she appeared, and how bravely she held back her tears of shame.