Prelude to Heaven (44 page)

With a shake of her head, she dismissed the stranger and her wandering husband from her mind and turned down the hallway leading to her office.

"Mr. Finch," she greeted the gray-haired gentleman as she entered her office and closed the door behind her. "What brings you down here?"

The solicitor rose to his feet, but he did not give her his usual smile of greeting. "A matter of some importance, I'm afraid."

Mara caught the stilted sound of his words and began to feel slightly uneasy as she studied the solicitor's worried face. "Is something wrong?"

Finch tugged at his collar. "Perhaps we should sit down."

"Of course." Mara crossed the small room. "What is this about?" she asked, circling her desk.

"Mara, dear, you'd best sit down."

"What's the matter?" He looked so grave, her uneasy feeling grew into alarm, and she knew something terrible had happened. "Mr. Finch, what is it? You're beginning to frighten me."

"Mara..." He paused and sighed deeply. "James is dead."

"Dead?" The news hit her like a punch in the stomach, and she sank into her chair. Numbly, she stared up at the solicitor. "How? When?"

Finch sat down, taking the chair opposite her across the desk. "I received a cable from California a few hours ago. Evidently, he had purchased a gold mine near San Francisco and was there to take a look at it. I'm told there was an earthquake while he was in the mine, and he was killed. Seven days ago. They dug his body out and buried it, but it took a bit of time to learn who he was."

She leaned her elbows on the desk and pressed her fingers to her suddenly throbbing temples. Then she closed her eyes, recalling the last time she'd seen James. He'd been packing to depart for America, babbling rubbish about adventures in the untamed West, and some new deal in railway stocks.

He'd said he would send for her and Helen once he was settled, but she had told him no, that this time she wasn't dragging their daughter halfway across the world to follow him. She had reminded him of all his past promises to settle down. She'd asked him to stay for Helen's sake. Then she'd thrown pride away and begged him to stay, using the only plea she had left.

If you truly love me, you'll stay
.
You'll do it for me
.

That, of course, had not worked. He'd gone to America anyway. He had handed over the reins of the company to her and left her with the debts. Alone, she'd had to take care of their daughter. Alone, she'd had to deal with the pain when Helen had died. Alone, she'd been forced to make a living from the tattered remnants of a company he'd tired of after less than a year.

The company. Mara lifted her head sharply. "What about Elliot's? Do I inherit it?"

"Although your husband evidently died without making a will, the company would still come to you as his wife, but—"

"Thank heaven." She breathed a sigh of relief. "At least I have that."

"No, Mara, I'm afraid you don't."

For a moment, she didn't understand. Then the realization hit her, and she sucked in a sharp breath. "The bank. The loan. Dear God."

The solicitor's slow nod confirmed her worst fear. "Joslyn Brothers is calling in the loan on Elliot's. I'm sorry, Mara."

The past repeated itself over and over again. No matter how hard she worked, how hard she fought, it never made any difference.
Think, Mara
, she told herself, fighting to remain calm.
Think
. "What about this gold mine he bought? Wouldn't I inherit that as well?"

"There's no gold in it. Your husband, it appears, had not consulted mining engineers before he purchased it. The mine is worthless."

How characteristic of James to die in a worthless gold mine. It was the inevitable fate of a man who always wanted to find the end of the rainbow. Again, she was the one who had to deal with the consequences. She shook off the bitterness that swept over her. "What do I have to do to keep Elliot's?"

"The terms of the loan James took against the company are quite clear. The balance and any interest become due and payable ten days after his death. To keep Elliot's, you have to pay off the loan. Within three days from now."

Mara felt sick. The principal was at least five thousand pounds. She could never raise that kind of money in only a few days.

She thought of all the work she had done. All the careful planning, all the worry, all the sacrifices to make a life for herself and become an independent woman. After four years of struggle, Elliot's was finally solvent. The future had actually begun to promise the security she craved.

Gone. In the blink of an eye, it was all gone
.

***

Mara walked slowly through the now quiet factory, moving between the machines and tables. Finch had tactfully left her to grieve in private, but she found she could not grieve. James was dead, but in her heart he had died a long time ago. He had died by degrees, day by day, year by year. She should feel sad, she supposed, but she felt nothing at all.

She should cry, but she remembered all the tears she had shed during her first eight years of marriage to James. Tears of heartbreak as a young bride who couldn't understand why her husband was always leaving. Tears of farewell when she again packed up everything to join him, and friends were left behind. Tears of worry when it all fell apart, when the bills inevitably came due and there was no way to pay them. Finally, tears of bitterness when the fire came, when Helen had died, when James had not been there.

Too many tears, washing away all her love for him until there was nothing. Four years ago, she had run out of tears, and she had not cried since. She could not cry now.

She had to think, she had to come up with a solution to the problem at hand. In a few days, everything she'd spent four years building would collapse, and she had no idea how to stop it.

There was nothing else to be done. She had to find a way to hang on. In the morning, she would go to Joslyn Brothers and try to persuade them not to call in the loan. She went back into her office and gathered the company's account books, placing them in her worn leather portfolio. When she left her office, she found Percy at his desk. He had not obeyed her order to go home. He often worked late, and she knew he was underpaid for the hours he put in, but she couldn't afford to pay him more.

Suddenly, she felt an overpowering urge to confide in him, to ask for help, for advice. He looked up, and the words stuck in her throat. She gave him a stiff nod of good night, and left the factory, but paused a moment to glance at the sign above the entrance: "Elliot Electrical Motors Company."

Not for long, perhaps. She turned away and started for home. A stray kitten, its ribs showing plainly through matted gray fur, hissed at her as it slinked by. She felt like hissing back. She was in that sort of mood.

She walked to her lodging house next door and heard the clock strike eight as she stepped inside. If only I had the money to pay off the loan, she thought, starting up the stairs. She shook off the thought impatiently. If only was a silly term, a child's wish. She didn't have the money and all the wishing in the world wouldn't give it to her. But the wistful words followed her as she reached the second level of the three-story building and turned to the door leading into her flat.
If only
...

Preoccupied with her thoughts, Mara didn't notice the item on the landing until she stumbled over it. "Oh!" she cried and pitched forward, dropping her portfolio.

After regaining her balance, she bent down, rubbing her shin and trying to discern in the dim twilight from the window at the end of the hall what had caused her to stumble. It was a wooden crate filled with flat metal disks of varying sizes. What was such a curious item doing in the hallway?

She didn't have much time to ponder the question before a loud pounding began above her head. Startled, she jumped at the unexpected sound.

Mrs. O'Brien must have let the rooms upstairs. She hoped the new tenant didn't intend to continue that pounding all evening. What was he doing?

The noise from upstairs stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Mara picked up her portfolio and fumbled in her pocket for her latchkey. Finding it, she turned toward her room, carefully stepping over the crate. She came to a halt before her door and frowned in irritation at the sight of it hanging slightly ajar. Three days now, and the lock still wasn't fixed.

With a sigh, she pushed the door open and stepped inside her room.

As rooms went, hers wasn't much. The ceiling plaster was cracked, the mattress sagged, and the table and chair were too rickety to be of much use. The view from her window was the brick wall of Elliot's. She had always intended to find better lodgings once the company was profitable, but there never seemed to be any profits.

She had to take stock of her situation. After setting her portfolio on the table and turning on the gas lamp, she opened her window to let in the hint of summer breeze. She carefully lit a small fire in the grate and put on the kettle to boil water for tea. Then she pulled the information she'd gathered from the office out of her portfolio, placing the account books in neat stacks on the table along with pencils and paper.

Her door had swung open again, and she tried to close it, but the latch refused to cooperate. The kettle began to boil, and she let the door go.

After pouring out her tea, she sank down in the chair, feeling its uneven legs rock beneath her. She pulled the account books forward and began looking for some way, any way, to scrape together five thousand pounds.

A little while later, she set down her pencil and sat back, defeated. The cash-on-hand was meager, a tiny fraction of what she needed to pay back the loan. The only alternative was to sell assets, and there wasn't a single piece of equipment they didn't need in the factory. She'd been over the balance sheet a dozen times. The money simply wasn't there.

Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the table and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers, feeling the cool smoothness of her kid gloves against her lids. If she didn't come up with the money, she would lose the company. If she lost Elliot's, what would she do?

What occupations were there for a widow whose only work experience was managing a factory? No one would hire a woman for that. She lifted her head and stared down at her gloved hands. She supposed she could become a typist, but she imagined work of that nature would require her to remove her gloves.

Mara tugged at the fingertips of her left glove and pulled it halfway off, staring down at the scars on her hand. People would stare at her with pity in their eyes. They might ask questions. She yanked the glove back into place, hiding the scars even from herself.

What would she do? Visions of the future hovered on the edge of her mind, a future of poverty, a future born of the past. A dismal future, indeed, for a woman with no prospects and little money of her own.

Desperation began to spread through her, desperation and a hint of panic. She rose to her feet. Walking to the washstand that stood in one corner of the small room, she took her tin bank from its hiding place.

Tuppence for the bank, Mara
. Her mother's words floated back to her from years ago.
At least tuppence, every day
.

As a child, she had watched her mother put two pennies in a tin can each day. She'd said if they did that every single day, they'd eventually have enough to buy a home of their own. But her mother had died in a rented shack in a South Africa shantytown without ever seeing her dream come true.

Mara had vowed to do better. She'd married James believing in his grand dreams, hoping to escape the poverty. She'd made her own tin-can bank and dropped pennies into it with all the optimism of a child bride. During the good times, it had been easy. But during the bad times, which had come more frequently with each passing year, most of the pennies had disappeared.

She dumped the money out of the tin can and began to count what cash she had. The tiny salary she paid herself covered her basic living expenses, but there had been little left over to save for a rainy day. Now she was twenty-eight, optimism had long since deserted her, and she knew tuppence tossed daily into a tin bank added up to precious little.

She sat down and stared at the tiny pile of money and thought of all the work she'd poured into the business, ail the hours, all the hopes. All for naught.

She was so tired. She wanted to sleep, to banish the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "Damn you," she whispered to her dead husband, hoping he could hear her. "Damn you and all your rainbow-chasing dreams to hell."

Pushing aside the papers and the pile of coins, she folded her arms, rested her cheek on her wrist, and fell asleep.

The sound was soft, but Mara awoke with a start. She lifted her head to stare at the door through the dark curtain of her bangs, which had lost their curl hours before and now hung limply in her eyes.

The door was wide open. A man stood in the doorway, and he was watching her. Paralyzed, she stared back at him. Seeing a face of such flawless masculine beauty, she wondered if she were dreaming. The gaslight reflected off his hair, tawny, tousled hair that needed cutting. He stood with one shoulder against the jamb, arms folded across his chest, utterly still. She thought of golden eagles gliding on the wind, moving yet motionless.

No, it was not a dream. In her dark dreams, there would be no such man.

His eyes, the color of sea and sky, looked into her, seemed to perceive and understand everything about her in an instant. He tilted his head slightly to one side. "Why are you sad?"

At the unexpected question she jumped to her feet and pushed back her chair. She felt the knot of her hair coming loose and her hat pin slipping. Her bonnet slid to one side, and she wished she'd remembered to remove it when she'd come in earlier.

She attempted to straighten the mess as she backed away from the stranger, but her efforts only made things worse. An ostrich plume fell awkwardly over one eye and tickled her cheek. "Who are you?"

"Didn't mean to startle you," he said. "Saw your door open. I don't think it shuts properly." He smiled briefly, and in that instant everything in the world shifted, fell into place, and became right. She sucked in her breath. Perhaps he was a dream after all.