Unrivaled (31 page)

Why didn’t anybody think I could understand anything?

“I have to go.” He retreated to the porch, pulling the door shut behind him.

I pushed aside the curtain and watched him walk off into the night. “What on earth . . . ?”

Mother was in her sitting room when I left the kitchen for bed. She gestured from her table as I stepped into the front hall.

“Would you like to talk about Mr. Arthur?”

“No.”

She came to me and took my hand from the banister. Clasping it in her own, she pulled me into the parlor. “I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

At least she hadn’t turned on the light. I couldn’t really make out her face and could only pray that she could not see mine.

“The things of the heart hurt so terribly.”

Things of the heart?

“You might think that you’ll never love again, but you will.”

“Love again?”

“I know it’s too soon to speak of it, but just know that things will get better. You’re so young. There’s time enough for love.”

“I’m not . . . I don’t care . . . I didn’t love him, Mother. I didn’t want him for . . . for . . .
that
. I wanted him for what he could do for us. How he could help us.”

She withdrew from me, looking at me as if she’d never seen me before. “You never loved him?”

“Why did you think I agreed to his proposal?”

“I thought . . . I mean . . .”

“Isn’t that what you wanted? Didn’t you want me to marry well?”

“Yes! Of course I wanted you to marry well. But I wanted you to marry well for your own benefit, not for ours. The company is finished. There’s no hope of saving it. I never wanted—” She seemed to swallow her words. Then she sighed.

“You’ve never even tried to save the company, Mother. All you want to do is sell it!”

“I know the success of the company is all you and your father ever wanted, but I’ve given up. I gave up a long time ago. Don’t
make the same mistake I did. It’s not worth your soul. It’s not even worth your dreams. Candy isn’t everything, Lucy.”

“But it’s
something
. Candy is something. I was going to be the girl who made candy and saved her family. And then I was going to be the girl who married Mr. Arthur and saved her family. But now I don’t have Fancy Crunch, and I don’t have a fiancé. And now I don’t even know how to save myself!”

In spite of Lucy’s feelings toward me, I was good as my word. I put it around the club that Alfred had broken her heart. And then I talked about it again at the country club on Saturday night, just to make sure the point had been made.

Lucy Kendall was ready and waiting to be swept off her feet.

Although she’d made it quite clear she didn’t want me—and how could I blame her?—I didn’t mind trying to help her out. Her opinions about me stung, but I ignored them. What else had I expected her to say? Besides, I’d been the one to introduce Alfred to Evelyn, so I figured I owed her something.

Although . . . she didn’t exactly look very grateful.

She didn’t really even look at me at all. Not until I was finished talking to some judge’s son. Then she marched up to me and poked me in the chest with her fan. “Were you talking to Mr. Whitley about me?”

I resisted the urge to take that fan from her and snap it in two. “I told him you’re looking for a chance to mend your broken heart.”

“I’ll thank you to keep yourself out of this.”

I would if I weren’t already so much a part of it. If I didn’t want so much to erase that look of hurt and betrayal in her eyes. “Alfred made me promise to help you.”

“But he didn’t really know what you’re like. So I’ll thank you to leave me alone.”

She couldn’t have hit a truer mark if she’d tried. “What? With all of them?” I tipped my head toward the refreshment table, where several of the city’s most eligible bachelors were lounging.

“With any of them!”

As she stood there glaring at me, I realized something was wrong. Things didn’t sound right. The conversation wasn’t as loud as normal. There was more hiss and less hum.

I’d gotten used to people sizing me up at these places, looking me over, sliding me glances. But it wasn’t me they were looking at tonight. Tonight those glances and smiles and whispers were directed toward Lucy.

The job Alfred had given me might be harder than I’d thought.

I slid a glance toward Lucy.

A flush had risen on her cheeks. And underneath her proud and noble brow was a glimmer of hurt.

I offered her my arm.

She looked at it for one long moment and then she took it. And as we stood there together staring back at all those whispering people, Winnie Compton came and joined us.

On Monday morning, my father called me down to the factory for another meeting. “We need to talk about that strategy of yours. We’re already sending out orders for this week, so our new pricing is going to have to wait until next week.”

“New pricing . . .” I vaguely remembered him mentioning that.

“Right. The new pricing: three cents instead of five. That should beat Fancy Crunch when they go to four cents next week.”

Fancy Crunch was changing their pricing? “But if they haven’t already done it . . . how do you know they’re going to?”

He smiled. “Let’s just say I have a person on the inside.”

“Lucy!” I’d finally caught up to her. I’d had to push aside half the attendees at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon in order to follow her outside.

She didn’t even turn to look at me. “I thanked you for your support on Saturday night and I meant it. But I don’t really wish to speak to you.”

“You don’t have to. Just listen.”

“I don’t wish to listen to you either.”

I pulled her arm through mine and hustled her off down the street. “Fine. I’ll talk and you’ll not listen.”

She stumbled as she tried to keep up with me. “Will you—”

“There’s a spy in your company.”

She stopped so suddenly that I nearly swung right around her on the slippery soles of my new shoes. “A what?”

“A spy. There’s somebody giving information to my father about your plans.”

Her eyes grew wide and then they narrowed with suspicion. “And why would you tell me?”

“I’ve let a lot of people down, let a lot of people get hurt. But I don’t want you to be one of them. If somebody’s telling my father your secrets, then it has to be someone close to you. I don’t think . . . that doesn’t seem . . . well . . . it’s dangerous.”

“What secrets?”

“The change you’re going to make next week in your pricing.”

She pulled her arm from mine and then took a step back from me. “That’s very clever of you.”

“To work out the connection?” I thought so.

“No! To try to trick me into telling you our plans.”

“I’m not trying to trick you! I’m trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need your protection. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

Why did she have to be so stubborn? “No, you’re not. Because someone close to you is a traitor.”

“Even if that’s so, why should you care? If you think I’ve forgotten what you truly want, then you’re mistaken. Why should you take the trouble to warn me?”

“Because—”

She lifted a brow.

“Because I . . . I like you, Lucy. Don’t you know that?”

For a fraction of a second, her eyes softened. But then she blinked. When she opened them, they’d gone a steely blue. “I will admit that I was fond of you once too.”

“Fond? I’m not talking about fondness! I love you!”

“How could love exist between us, Charlie? What does it have to grow on? Your duplicity or my dirty tricks? Beyond the fact that you’re not the person you represented yourself to be—”

“I never—”

“—
even if
I did love you, how could I admit to it? Do you know how much it would cost me? It would be a betrayal of—of myself and everything I’ve ever wanted. You’re asking me to give up everything that’s important to me, to pretend as if none of it mattered. And I can’t do it!”

“Lucy! Wait—”

I walked on, ignoring Charlie’s cries and the burning of my cheeks.

A spy. I ought to have laughed, it was that ludicrous. But something about the idea made the skin at the nape of my neck crawl.

As I walked away, I promised myself that I would not look back. I
would not
give Charlie the satisfaction. Did he think that by making professions of love he could hide his true intentions?

The viper.

The absolute snake!

Love! He had a very funny way of showing it, using his supposed affections to hide some ulterior plan. Only . . . Standard had come out with new packaging right as we had. And how had they known that we were planning to lower our prices?

I walked on for a moment, considering.

He’d probably talked to one of our workers, that’s how. That’s
what he had to have done. It’s the only way he could have known. Because if there truly were a spy, he ought never to have told me. If there were a spy, then the advantage was all his. Besides . . . Mr. Blakely was a talkative sort. He could easily have spoken in the wrong company.

But still . . . why would Charlie have bothered to tell me? Nothing made any sense. Unless there really was a spy.

There wasn’t a spy.

There couldn’t be.

Curse Charlie Clarke for putting such thoughts into my head!

As I continued down the street, I caught a glimpse of Sam. Now, there was a person I could talk to, a person who’d understand! I sped my walk to catch up with him.

He turned the corner.

I slipped past a group of women who had gathered around a shop window and hurried to follow him. As I turned the corner, someone caught my arm.

“Pardon me!” I pulled it, only to find it was Charlie’s hand that had caught me.

“Look.” He nodded past me toward Sam.

Sam had taken a note and a bag from a girl’s hand. He opened the paper. Read it. Cupped a hand to her chin and then shoved it into his pocket. He looked as if—

“You there!”

Both Sam and the girl turned at Charlie’s cry. A blush swept both their faces as Charlie strode toward them. “Let me see that!”

Sam stepped forward, placing himself between Charlie and the girl.

“Let me see it.” Charlie held his hand out. “We saw you shove something into your pocket, Blakely. Out with it.”

Sam frowned. “It’s no business of yours what my girl has to say to me in a note.”

“It is if you’re corresponding with my maid about company secrets.”

Company secrets? “Sam?” How did he know the Clarkes’ maid?

“That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Selling City Confectionery information to Standard?” Charlie scuffled with Sam for a moment before stepping back with the note between his hands. He unfolded it with a flourish and began to read it aloud. “‘My dearest Samuel . . . ’” His ears went pink at the tips as he refolded it and handed it back to Sam. “Sorry.”

Sam shrugged as he put it back into his pocket, but his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were shooting sparks.

“If you weren’t passing secrets and you weren’t spying . . . then what’s in that bag of yours?”

Sam leaned around Charlie and offered it up to me.

The Clarkes’ maid linked her arm through Sam’s. “It’s some pieces of Royal Taffy mixed with some Fancy Crunch.”

I dipped a hand into the bag and then I passed it over to Charlie. I placed the mix of candies into my mouth, closing my eyes as a symphony of flavors and textures exploded and blended in my mouth.

Charlie was staring at the mixture in his palm as if he didn’t know quite what to do with it.

I poked him with my elbow. “Try it.”

He picked out a piece of Royal Taffy and put it into his mouth.

“No. You have to try them both together.” The girl demonstrated as she said it.

He put a piece of Fancy Crunch into his mouth, too. His brow lifted as he began to chew.

“See?” Sam offered some to the girl.

“So that’s what all this was about?” Charlie gestured toward the bag.

Sam nodded. “The way Lucy’s been carrying on about you—”

“I haven’t been
carrying on
.” Honestly!

Sam sent me a look beneath gathered brows.

“Much.”

“The way she’s been carrying on, I didn’t think she’d look too kindly on my eating Royal Taffy.”

“And the way you’ve been scheming against City Confectionery . . .” The girl had slipped her hand into Sam’s as she talked to Charlie.

Was this the girl who had embroidered Sam’s handkerchief? I wasn’t quite sure I approved. “So neither of you are spies, then?” If they weren’t passing secrets, then who was?

“Spies?” The girl’s eyes widened, and she began to laugh. “A spy? Me?”

“You thought—?” Sam’s voice had gone high. “You actually thought that I would betray you, Lucy?”

“No. No! I never thought that. Charlie did.”

As he turned toward Charlie, the hurt in his eyes seemed to demand some sort of answer.

Charlie put a hand up. “You were acting suspiciously . . . and Jennie was sneaking around.”

“Miss Harrison.” Sam had put an arm about the girl’s shoulders.

“Miss what?”

“Miss
Harrison
. She should be Miss Harrison to you.”

“Oh. Right. Miss Harrison, then.”

All this was fine and good, but there was still a question to be answered! “If it wasn’t you, Sam . . . then who is it?”

“Who is what? What are you talking about?” Sam’s appeal was made to me.

“Someone at the confectionery has been giving information about our packaging and pricing to Standard.”

“Are you sure?”

Charlie answered for me. “Yes.”

I didn’t want to believe a friend had betrayed me, but who else could it have been? “Sam? Are you sure you didn’t speak to anyone about our plans?”

“No. I didn’t. I promise.”

Charlie handed the bag back to Sam. “Not even to Jen—Miss Harrison?”

The girl looked at me, worry clouding her eyes. “I never heard anything about them. Not until just now.”

But if Miss Harrison hadn’t said anything and Sam hadn’t said anything, then who had?

My encounter with Sam and Jennie had done nothing to soothe my worries or Charlie’s fears. I believed him now. There had to be a spy at work. I was certainly glad it wasn’t Sam, but if it wasn’t him, then who was it?

His father?

Mrs. Hughes?

The coachman?

It made me fear to be alone with those I had always trusted. That week, I spent less time in the company of others and more time with my father. And whenever Mother wanted another eye to go over the books, she found a willing volunteer.