Betina Krahn (35 page)

What if the garments weren’t as bad as she had been taught? What if all the horrors of the haut monde had been exaggerated … or intentionally misrepresented? If some of her precious ideals had betrayed her, then how did she know others hadn’t too?

There was only one way to find out.

Raising her chin, she stepped defiantly onto that wooden box and tried not to shrink or cower when they pulled her nightdress from her.

Several hours later she stood before the carefully arranged pier glasses in her bedchamber, wearing proper knee-length drawers, a frilly chemise, and the first corset she had ever laced up in her life.

Her cheeks seemed to be permanently stained from an afternoon of continual blushing. The couturier and his minions were aghast at the dimensions of her waist and considered her erect posture and substantial rib cage as lamentable natural defects. She would need walking lessons, the little dressmaker advised, speaking in French when Gilbert came to see how things were progressing. And sitting, standing, and probably breathing lessons as well, he added, assuming from her gracelessness that the intricacies of his native language were beyond her. Unfortunately, they weren’t.

Now, with her cheeks red, her nose burning from dust, dye, and lint, and her breathing constricted by a merciless set of whalebone stays, she faced herself in the mirror. And her one thought was a bittersweet musing on what Cole would say if he could see her now … in the corset he had once admonished her to acquire.

She escaped into the bathing room, locked the door behind her, and ran water to mask the sound of her breathless sobs.

Cole tried the knocker, then the handle of the front doors of the house on Maypole Street. The silence and stillness went on uninterrupted. He peered in a window and saw dust drapes over the dining room table and chairs, and finally admitted to himself she could not be there. He turned reluctantly back down the walk, his hands in his pockets, more despondent than he could ever remember feeling.

Climbing back in his carriage, he sat for a moment, trying to think what to do next. To Davenport’s knowledge, she had no close friends in London. Perhaps if he checked the hotels …

Pulteney’s, the Clarendon, the Midland Grand—none of the respectable establishments had heard of her. In fact, most seemed offended at the mere suggestion that they might have let a room to a young, unaccompanied female, much less one wearing trousers and appearing at the doorstep on horseback and without luggage. When he ran out of reputable establishments, he checked a few less than reputable ones, all to no avail.

Discouraged, he sent his carriage home without him, intending to walk for a while. The thought that she was probably somewhere in London at that very moment, hurting, miserable, perhaps even in trouble, haunted him.

He kept seeing her face as she stared at the destruction after the blast—the horror, brokenness, and despair that
seemed unnatural on her lovely features. Over and over he recalled things he had said to her as she struggled against the odds to build something decent and good—jaded observations on humankind, criticisms of her competence and judgment, sneering assessments of her workers, her facilities, and her prospects for success.

Without someone to back her, to bolster her flagging energies, to underwrite her dream, what chance did she have? Even the toughest fighters, strongest leaders, and most powerful revolutionaries—people who built fortunes and governments and empires—had to have
someone
to turn to, someone to share their ideas and victories with, someone to commiserate with on their losses. At the end he had offered her a grudging bit of help … a nudge here, a word there … only when he couldn’t help it, only when he couldn’t resist her hope and caring any longer.

By then the damage had been done. His conscience-salving sop was too little too late.

He looked up and found himself on Piccadilly, just a block or so from his club, and headed for it—for the bar in it, to be exact. The dinner crowd had moved into the bar, and there was sufficient noise and smoke to mask his determination to drown his recriminations in a bottle of Scotch whisky. He sat at a table in the corner, shunning company and staring into his first glass of whisky as if expecting an oracle—or perhaps absolution. He found neither, and the merriment around him grew increasingly unbearable.

He headed for the door in high dudgeon, appalled that a man couldn’t even get roaring drunk at his club anymore without having to listen to someone else’s high spirits. Then, as he was leaving the bar, he overheard the word “cousin” and for some reason stopped stock-still.

When he turned, he found himself staring at the back of a tall, neatly built young man with excessively blond hair. Gilbert Duncan. He wasn’t aware he had said the name aloud until the fellow turned to answer to his name.

“Yes?” The icy gray eyes seemed to lose some of their warmth at the sight of him, despite the smile that appeared with them. “Ah … another familiar face. Lord Mandeville, I believe.”

“Indeed.” Cole glanced at the men about Gilbert, most of whom he knew to belong to the “young rakehell” contingent of Brooks’s membership. He knew because until the last year or so, he had been a member of that group himself. “Surprised to see you here, Duncan.”

“He’s just been added to the subscription list, old boy,” came an explanation from Lyle Barclay, one of their fellow members.

“Then congratulations are in order,” Cole said absently, trying to think of how to broach the subject of Madeline’s whereabouts.

“On more than one account,” Barclay continued, raising his glass. “Duncan here may be getting ‘shackled’ soon.”

“Wedded?” Cole felt the blood draining from his face.

“My dear cousin Madeline,” Gilbert declared, his eyes glittering as they took in Cole’s ill-concealed reaction. “She’s finally given up that reform madness—some sort of accident at that wretched factory of hers. She’s come to stay with me, you know … and we’ve reached something of … an understanding.”

“You have?” Cole felt like some other being had taken over his body. He was twisting his mouth into a smile and extending his hand toward Gilbert Duncan. “Well, then, best wishes.”

Cole fled the bar as quickly as civility allowed, feeling as though something were sitting on his chest, hindering his breathing. Not even the clearer, cooler air of the street could dispel the smothering sensation he felt at the thought of Madeline marrying cloying, boy-faced Cousin Gilbert. It couldn’t be true.

But as he walked through rain-slicked streets, feeling the cold drizzle dampening his shoulders and nullifying the effects
of the lone whisky he had consumed, he recalled Gilbert blowing a kiss to her as they parted on the steps of the factory and saying something about being a champion and if she needed anything … The tumultuous events that followed had eclipsed that irksome incident in his mind. But apparently not in Madeline’s. Gilbert had offered her support and solace when she needed it most, and she had gone straight from the ashes of her dreams to the shelter of his arms.

The thought of Madeline in Gilbert’s cool, handsome embrace sent Cole into a downward spiral that ended a day later at the bottom of a bottle of Scotch. He awakened in the same clothes, lying facedown on his own bed, with a cotton-lined mouth and a pounding head. Between his discomfort and his distemper, it took poor Cravits the better part of the morning to make him presentable again.

He paced his study and then his parlor and then his hall, and when he could bear it no longer, he stormed out of his house to pace the streets themselves.

He could see now that her heart, her very spirit, had been under siege … beset by hopelessness and despair … in the person of Lord Cole Mandeville, former barrister and self-appointed king of cynics. With each new criticism, each contemptuous look, and each cutting observation, he had helped to wear her down, to exhaust her loving and creative spirit. In some ways that inner spiritual struggle was the fiercest and cruelest one of all. In the end it was the one that had broken her heart and sent her flying from St. Crispin to London, and into Gilbert’s ready and willing arms.

It was his fault.

Again.

Once more he had become the agent of destruction. Once more he found himself in the role he loathed and despised: scrupulously executing the letter of the law while destroying every vestige of true justice. Once more he confronted the workings of the “Mandeville” in him. And this time, three days, three months, or even three years of
Scotch and unbridled sex would not be enough to make him forget the pain.

For the rest of the day he walked the streets, hoping to blot out or at least dull his misery with exhaustion. As evening fell, he found himself walking down the Strand and realized that his feet had carried him to the very person he had turned to for help a dozen years before—Sir William.

The doorman led him down the hallway, where he found his uncle ensconced behind a desk full of briefs … in an irascible mood, as usual.

“You!” The old justice staggered up and groped for his cane the moment he saw Cole, and it wasn’t at all clear whether he meant to walk with it or use it on his nephew. “What the hell are you doing here?” He waved the cane, then tottered around the desk on it. “You’re supposed to be out in St. Clarence—or wherever the blazes it is. And what the devil’s all this about you and Madeline Duncan cohabiting and oppressing workers and having orgies in women’s knickers? God A’mighty, I sent you out there to keep an
eye
on the girl, not
hands
!”

He had to pause for breath, which was the only way Cole could ever get a word in with him.

“I’ve come to give you my final report in person,” Cole said, sitting down wearily and dragging his hands down his face.

“Final report?” Sir William loomed over him for a moment, then waved to Foglethorpe to bring him a chair and with a grunt of pain settled beside Cole, searching him. with that uncannily perceptive gaze. “What’s happened?”

“She’s given it up. Packed it in. It seems there was a bit of an accident, and, on the heels of several other incidents, it was just too much. As a result of those articles in the
Gazette,
she had a visit from a few notables: William Morris, Joseph Lane, Annie Besant, Henry Broadhurst, Sylvia Bethnal-Green …”

“Ye gods. Sylvia Green is still at it?” Sir William muttered. “Then I’m not the oldest living fossil after all.” He fixed Cole with a look. “I take it this little delegation didn’t entirely approve of her efforts.”

“The sods. They marched around poking their noses up everybody’s—they were intrusive, arrogant, and belittling. You’d have thought they were a bloody royal commission! They came to see only what they wanted to see, more to accuse and make an example of her than to understand what she was doing. It was intolerable.”

“Ummm. And what did your ‘Mad Madeline’ do?”

“She was as gracious and helpful as she could be—right up to the time when she tossed them out on their blind cheeks.”

Sir William hooted a laugh. “And?”

“And … Morris and his comrades got the workers so het up that they confronted Madeline about their ‘paltry wages’ and ‘oppressive working conditions.’ They were incensed about the supposed callousness and ‘inequity’ of their treatment.”

“And what did she do, St. Madeline?”

“Tossed them out on their hindquarters as well. Said she was closing down the factory.” He grew quiet for a moment, staring at his hands as he matched his fingertips, then curled those trembling fingers into fists. “Then the place blew up.”

“Beg pardon?” Sir William pulled his gaze from Cole’s hands.
“Blew up?
As in ‘black powder explosion’? ”

Cole nodded and explained about the workmen Madeline had hired, the rock in her proposed garden, and how she had had little enough sense to take the shiftless pair back after they had dug up and destroyed what they were supposed to be creating.

“They repaid her by blowing the place to kingdom come. I suppose that was the last straw. She abandoned St. Crispin for London within the hour.”

Sir William sat back, watching Cole’s edginess and reading in his despondency that there was another, intensely personal side to the story as well. “So,” he said, “it would appear your job is done.”

Cole looked up. “If my job was to bully and hound and harass her into giving up her lifelong dream, then I suppose you could say I accomplished it.”

“Oh?”

Cole shoved to his feet and began to pace. “I mean, there she was, working so hard and believing in it so much—and all I could do was skulk around like some underfed vulture, telling her how impossible it was and how foolish she was for trying.”

“And was she foolish for trying?” Sir William asked as he leaned forward to engage Cole’s gaze. Cole knew the old man could read more in him than he wanted to reveal. As usual, honesty was his only recourse.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She might have made a go of it. Or she might have rocked along for a time, until some catastrophe occurred. Or she might have fallen flat on her face. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know … thanks to me.”

“Well, if she was willing to give up something as precious as a lifelong dream on the word of just one man, then she was probably bound to fail, and you’ve done her a service by ending it sooner rather than later.”

“But it wasn’t just
a man,”
he said, “it was
me
. And she … we … I …”

“So, it’s like that, is it?” Sir William stroked his chin. “You’ve broken her heart and feel responsible for wrecking her business venture as well.”

“I didn’t break her heart—well, not the way you might imagine. I saw she was exhausted and stretched too thin, and I kept at her.”

“You didn’t take advantage of her?” It was both question and statement.

“Not … in the way you mean. Not entirely.” He sat
down and propped his elbows on his knees. “But in a way what I did to her was probably worse—planting doubts, finding fault, looking for the worst in everything … undermining her hopes.”

After thirty years on the bench, even in Chancery, Sir William was a master at recognizing a turning point, a crisis of the soul, when he saw it. He scrutinized Cole’s burdened movements and grief-ridden expressions. Every line of the boy’s long, angular body seemed to slope downward. Sir William smiled wanly. Opportunities like this came his way too damned seldom to suit him.