The Only Gold (4 page)

Simon came around the counter, waving a handful of paper. “I could use a change,” he said, and smirked at Margaret. “Run away to the South Seas with me, and we’ll live like happy children in a tent on the beach.”

“You must ask Helen,” Margaret said, laughing. “Living in a tent no longer enchants me as it did in my youth.”

Simon grimaced. “Helen’s pining over Darlington. Or she fancies our new cashier—”

“Oh!” Helen exclaimed and looked daggers at him through the scrollwork. “You’ve no right. I only said he had pretty eyes. And I don’t flirt with customers half what you do, so you needn’t talk about Mr. Darlington, either. It’s no affair of yours.”

“Nor yours, from what I’ve read in the
Times
—”

“Children, please.” Margaret caught Jonah’s glance, and her lips curled despite her obvious effort to stay reproachful. “I wonder that Mr. Woolner doesn’t believe he’s running a nursery rather than a bank.”

“Don’t think he’s running anything now,” Simon muttered.

“Simon,” Margaret said, so sharply that both he and Helen started in surprise. “I think you might show some consideration for Mr. Woolner’s feelings, under the circumstances.”

Jonah devoutly wished he were back in the office, buried in correspondence. “Mr. Campbell, what is it you require?”

“Signatures, sir.” Only Margaret’s disapproval had the weight to cow Simon. Even so, there was an insolent glint in his eye. “Will you sign or should I ask Mr. Hylliard?”

“For heaven’s sake. Give them to me.” Jonah took the papers and Margaret’s pen. “I would be grateful if you—all of you—could direct your concern and sympathy where it is most needed. Mr. Hylliard may have considerable experience, but it will require time and no doubt some patience on our part to help him become accustomed to Grandborough. It cannot be easy for him….” Jonah dipped the pen and meticulously signed the note.
Did everyone think him a hypocrite or did they realize he would quite prefer Reid’s innovations, whatever they might be, proven useless—and Reid, himself, sent back to wherever he’d come from?

“It cannot be easy,” Margaret said, as if she had the impression he’d lost his train of thought.

“No.” Jonah worked his way through the stack, avoiding everyone’s eyes. “He knows nothing of our habits, the routines peculiar to our bank, and the particular demands of our depositors. Until he does, we must be united in our efforts to be sure there are no inadvertent… mistakes… that will leave the bank vulnerable to a loss of public trust. I imagine it will be some months before Mr. Hylliard feels at home or, in any case, comfortable in making changes….”

He hesitated again as the strangest sound came from the corridor—a sort of wheezing cackle that rose and faded, only to rise again. Reid appeared around the corner with Mrs. Chickering on his arm. She was wheezing, but not in distress. To the contrary, she was smiling, flushed and bright-eyed. Reid escorted her to the window and waved the drafts at Simon. “Mr. Campbell, if you will be so kind.”

Simon did not dawdle, and when Mrs. Chickering had her funds, Reid saw her to her carriage. The staff—even Margaret—regarded the whole matter with approval, apparently taken in by good manners and a questionable degree of charm. When Reid returned, Jonah reminded him of the waiting correspondence, and he only smiled with genial forbearance. “We settled that, didn’t we?”

“You’ll want to familiarize yourself with the depositors.”

“I think I’ll familiarize myself with the staff first,” Reid said as Helen approached with a ledger cradled in her arms.

“Mr. Woolner….” Helen stole a look at Reid and her gaze dropped, her color rising. “Mr. Woolner, Simon is insisting I’ve made an error.” She glanced again at Reid. “I’m sure I haven’t… I
wouldn’t
… but if someone might spare a moment to check my figures, I would be so….” She trailed off as Reid smiled at her. “Reassured,” she whispered.

Jonah took the ledger. “By all means, let me reassure you.” As he opened it, Reid leaned over his shoulder, causing Helen to shift, like a filing to a magnet, in the same direction. She laid slim fingers over the edge of the book.

“Just here, at the end of the column.” She upturned her heart-shaped face, her wide eyes pleading for understanding—Reid’s, at any rate. “I so seldom make mistakes.”

Jonah thought to tell her she was making a considerable one in flirting with Reid, but knew she could be discouraged only by Reid, who seemed to be enjoying the attention. Focusing on the ledger, Jonah progressed partway down the column of numbers, to be interrupted when Reid tapped the bottom of the page. “Four-six-two-seven.”

Simon had perched on the corner of Margaret’s desk and, at the confirmation, fixed on Helen with smug triumph. Helen looked mortified. Jonah worked down the rest of the column, to find Reid was correct.

“You’ve a gift for sums.”

“He does,” Helen said, as Jonah returned the ledger to her. “Even better than Simon.”

“Guess I should be glad he’s not after my job—” Simon choked off the rest and glanced nervously at Reid.

But Reid was the only one who didn’t seem to think Simon had gone too far. “Never steal a paying teller’s position, Mr. Campbell, when you can steal a cashier’s.”

Simon’s brows shot up, and he gaped for an instant before breaking into a laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

Helen, whether red-faced with embarrassment or the throes of infatuation, fled behind the counter, Simon following. Margaret retreated to the safety of the ledger spread open on her desk. If Reid hoped the reaction he’d provoked would extend to Jonah, he might as successfully wish for the moon. “Now that you are sufficiently acquainted with the staff, may I suggest we return to the letters?”

Reid smiled faintly. “I know what my job entails. You don’t have to burden yourself with the additional duty of nanny.”

“If it’s part of your innovative process to delay tasks so you may advise the staff on the latest means of winning promotions….” Jonah stopped himself with an effort. He hadn’t meant to give in to the desire to provoke right back—especially when Reid seemed more entertained than provoked.

“Why not? It’s advice they appear to appreciate. Speaking of innovation, Mrs. Noble, I would like to discuss with you and Mr. Woolner a system for the daily balancing of all accounts kept in your general ledger.”

Reid had familiarized himself with the staff quite efficiently. Margaret’s fondness for organization shone in every attentive line as she leaned forward, hands clasped over the ledger. “I would very much like to hear your ideas. We’ve had the matter under consideration for a while now….” She sent a guilty glance Jonah’s way. “What I mean is—”

“We’ve been thinking about it,” Jonah said.

Reid acknowledged that with a slow nod. “Just… thinking about it?”

“Ordinarily a prerequisite to action, yes.”

“And how long do you deliberate before taking action? Ordinarily.”

“It depends on the circumstances.”

“A day? A week?” Eyebrows raised, Reid spread his arms. “Thirteen years, ten months?”

Jonah could not leave that unanswered. “Mr. Hylliard, whatever miracles you may have wrought overnight at your last place of employment—”

“Gentlemen.” Margaret drew their attention to customers nearby.

Chagrined, Jonah inclined his head by way of apology before escaping to his office to pull himself together. He had barely closed the door when there was a rap on the glass. Perhaps it would prove to be his last day at the bank, after all. He opened the door, and Reid brushed past him into the room, giving it cursory regard before fixing the full force of his gaze on Jonah. “Sit down.”

“Mr. Hylliard—”

“Sit.”

Reid didn’t raise his voice, but the quiet command matched the imperative in his eyes. He might have the right as manager to make certain demands, but that was not one of them. When Jonah didn’t sit, Reid snorted softly and dropped, himself, into the armchair by the radiator. “Is it the idea of change you object to, or is it me, personally?”

“I see no need for change.”

“You don’t. Is it conceivable Mr. Grandborough does?”

The events of the day had not been conceivable, as far as Jonah was concerned. But the evidence of them remained. If Reid wanted an answer to suit him, one that would assure him he had everything well under control, he was not going to come by it easily. “I have work to do—”

“Just one more question. Do you suppose Mr. Grandborough would do anything he thought wasn’t in the best interest of the bank?”

The dull, lingering ache broke, to give way to pain that cut a bright, clean swath neatly through him. He shook his head, without meeting Reid’s eyes.

“So we’re agreed on one thing,” Reid said. “That’s a start. Shall we get back to the letters?”

There was nothing else for it, nothing that would make the rest of the day bearable. Jonah worked with ruthlessly methodical care, so Reid could find no reason to call him to account. Reid, for his part, spent far more time in casual conversation with the tellers than in giving any regard to his own work or Jonah’s.

At the three o’clock closing, Jonah took his time going over the books. Not until nearly everyone else had gone did he wrap himself in coat and scarf to brave the cold twilight. He did not relish facing his fellow boarders, but after the longest day in his life, home would be a most welcome sight.

It was
a wish made in vain, to cross the threshold of Edith Muncy’s and reach the stairs unseen and unheard. Jonah had learned that fourteen years before, when he had moved into the mouse hole—the name given to the attic space occupied by the poorest young clerks who boarded there. He’d spent two years on the top floor of Miss Muncy’s, until his promotion to teller had given him the funds to descend to the third floor and a room not much bigger but seeming far more spacious, being occupied by only two.

Six years and two promotions further along, he could have taken a first-floor room, but once he had settled into the second-floor room overlooking the garden, it had become a haven he couldn’t leave. Edith Muncy and her sister, Winifred, seemed bemused by his preference. Cyrus Paige, another well-to-do gentleman, had taken a first-floor room the instant it became available. But Jonah liked his corner room with the young sycamore peeking in at the bay window and ivy curling under the eaves. He liked the small sitting porch Miss Muncy had fashioned in the bottom corner of the L-shaped room by means of a broad bamboo screen. True, the space was hardly wider than the window on one side of it, but it accommodated an armchair and a bookcase and afforded a sense of privacy that was rare in a house with ten residents—almost all of whom were currently in the front parlor, waiting on supper.

They surely waited, as well, to hear how he’d fared. He couldn’t bear to face them all at once and turned instead to the stairs. He had no sooner set one foot gingerly on the first step when the parlor doors slid open and Winnie Muncy peeked out, a grandmotherly sprite made even more girlish by the rose pink gown over-trimmed with lace and ribbon. Under a knot of prematurely snow-white hair, the softest blue eyes regarded him with anticipation, but only for an instant. She seemed to know by his demeanor, and the delight in her face faded. “Not yet?” she whispered, with a little shake of her head.