The Lady of Bolton Hill (3 page)

Not that she ever had any such intentions of journalistic fame when she arrived in England as a confused and lonely sixteen-year-old girl. No one here knew the real reason Clara’s father had sent her to England, and it was certainly not the kind of story she cared to circulate.

“I’ve already arranged for your things to be delivered to the Portsmouth dock,” Mr. Townsend said. “Your clothing and personal belongings should all be there. I don’t think it would be safe for you to return to your lodgings.”

“Are they serious about my need to leave the country by sundown?”

“Do you really want to test their patience?” Mr. Townsend asked.

A nervous laugh escaped her lips. “I suppose not.”

So this would prove to be her last carriage ride in England. Her gaze strayed out the window to look at the country she had come to love. She was twenty-eight years old and had spent almost half of her life in London. She had become a woman here, finally learning to stand up to her father. It was here that her broken heart had mended and her dream of becoming a writer had been fulfilled. And for a few short years she had been given the opportunity to be a foot soldier for the Lord through her work in the press. Her articles had gained her acclaim as well as a fair share of enemies, but throughout it all, she had the satisfaction of knowing she was doing good work.

And yet, she was still a failure. The notes documenting her discoveries in the coal mines had been confiscated and destroyed. Without that proof, all of her work amounted to nothing more than a load of sound and fury. No children had been rescued; no mine owner had been punished. It was as if she had never come to London. She had failed.

“What will you do once you return to America?” Mr. Townsend asked.

Did she even have any choice? Clara looked him in the eyes. “I’ve had a taste of what it means to make a difference in the world, and I can’t stop now. I will write for my father’s newspaper in Baltimore.” Reverend Lloyd Endicott was a well-known minister, and his weekly newspaper,
The Christian Crusade,
had a loyal readership even beyond the city of Baltimore. It only seemed natural she would write for her father’s publication. If the Lord wanted to silence her, she would be sitting in jail for a ten-year sentence.

The seed of resolve had taken root and was nourishing her with a new sense of buoyancy. Clara had been conquered, convicted, and was still wearing stained clothes, but she had been blessed with the gift of freedom, and she would not let that go to waste.

“Have there always been that many stars in the sky, or have I merely failed to notice?” Clara asked.

Clyde leaned against the side of the ship, looking at her rather than at the night sky. “The same number as always. Aren’t you ready to go below yet? It is freezing out here.”

But Clara merely leaned into the wind, savoring the feel of the crisp ocean air against her face, the roar of the ship slicing through the waves below. Tiny droplets of cold seawater dotted her face and evaporated in the brisk wind. The thought of returning to her enclosed cabin was unthinkable when the sky, spattered with a thousand blazing stars, stretched out above her. The dark radiance was enthralling. “I can’t go down below just yet,” she said. “I’m still afraid that I am dreaming and that when I awake I will be back in that cell. I want to savor as much of this night as possible.”

Clyde turned to look out into the ocean. “Fair enough.” From inside his coat he pulled a pocketknife and a small block of wood, which he began whittling. One of Clyde’s many talents. “So,” he said casually. “Have you kept in touch with Daniel Tremain?”

The name was a cherished echo of the past. Once it was impossible to believe she could live a life without Daniel in it. Of course, those days were more than a decade old. “Did Father put you up to asking that?”

“Nope,” Clyde said. “I’m simply dying of curiosity to know whatever happened to the princess and the pauper.”

Anxious to appear as if his question did not rattle her, she tried to make her voice sound casual. “I’ve followed him in the newspapers, of course,” she said.

It was hard to believe that a boy who started out shoveling coal into furnaces would grow up to become one of the most powerful industrialists in America, but Clara had never doubted that Daniel was destined for something great. She could still remember the day she had seen a tiny mention in the business section of
The
Times
, announcing a patent filed by a young inventor in America for a new alloy of steel that would improve the strength of railway lines. That single invention had been the basis for a technological empire, and Daniel Tremain was at its helm. She had nothing to do with Daniel’s success, but that did not stop her from being immensely proud of him. The pressure in her heart swelled when she thought of all he had accomplished.

“I wrote a few letters to him after I got to London,” Clara confessed. “I never heard back from him.”

But it had been more than just a few letters. She and Daniel had begun composing music together before she left Baltimore, and he had begged her to keep sending him her piano compositions so he could write the accompanying music for the cello. Of course, that was before his mother had died. Clyde had written her a few letters that let her know of Mrs. Tremain’s death, and that Daniel had taken up additional jobs to support his sisters. How could he have had time for something as frivolous as composing music?

“I had assumed that since Tremain is now rolling in riches, he would have figured out some way to come see you in England,” Clyde said.

She turned to face him. “Why is it you never liked Daniel?”

“Have I ever said such a thing?”

“You don’t have to. You can barely say his name without wincing.”

Clyde continued to whittle, and Clara waited patiently, the sound of the rushing waves swirling below filling the silence of the night. “I’ve always thought him a bit too hotheaded,” Clyde finally admitted. “There is no doubt he is brilliant, but he was always so arrogant about it. Pushy, I suppose.”

Clara bit back her uncharitable thoughts. Clyde had come halfway around the world to rescue her, and she wouldn’t chastise him for not understanding her adolescent fascination with Daniel Tremain.

“Perhaps it was Daniel’s brashness that Father objected to, as well,” she conceded. “We all know I was not sent to London simply to broaden my education.”

Clara always suspected her father’s ambition for her musical career was why he initially encouraged her unlikely friendship with Daniel Tremain. Daniel encouraged her to compose, nourished her love of Chopin and Beethoven, and helped her reach new creative impulses as she played on the piano and he accompanied her on the cello. But what Clara truly wished to do was write, like Margaret Fuller or many of the other women who were just beginning to be allowed to write for newspapers. And when Daniel encouraged her to follow her own dreams of writing rather than music, her father saw it as a threat and sent her to London.

Clara watched the chips of wood drift into the swirling waters below. “I wonder if Father will object to Daniel, now that he is rich as sin.”

“The short answer is a resounding
yes
,” Clyde said without hesitation. “Tremain is still a nutcase over that whole business with Forsythe Industries. Any man who can keep a grudge stoked for twelve years is a little off-kilter, Clara.”

She turned to face him. “If you believed Alfred Forsythe had murdered your father, I think you might hold a grudge, too,” she pointed out.

“It wasn’t murder, Clara; it was an accident.”

“That was what the court said, too.” Which did not mean it was the truth. Alfred Forsythe had a cadre of lawyers to cover up the facts surrounding the explosion of that boiler, and Daniel had been a nineteen-year-old boy with no money and three little sisters to support. What chance did he have of proving his case in court?

Clyde’s blade continued to make progress on his carving. “From what I hear, Tremain has made it his life mission to grind Alfred Forsythe and his company beneath the heel of his boot. That company employs more than seven thousand people, and they are all pawns in this private vendetta Tremain is waging.” Clyde folded the pocketknife and slipped it back into his coat. “You are a grown woman and free to make your own choices,” he said. “But I don’t want you getting in over your head with that man. You are too sweet-natured to handle a dynamo like Tremain.”

Maybe Clyde was right. There was a time when she and Daniel could finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s minds. If ever there were two kindred spirits, it was she and Daniel.

But twelve years had passed since she had seen him, and now he was a man in control of a vast fortune and on a crusade for vengeance. It was hard to believe he could have changed so drastically, but then again, Clara would never have believed he would have failed to write to her once she was in London.

Did Daniel even remember her? He had been such a huge force in her life, an earthquake after which nothing was ever the same. Had she had that same importance to him?

Clara drew a deep breath. It really did not matter. She had found her calling and her banishment was over. It was time to rebuild a new life in America.

I
f looks could kill, Daniel would be a dead man.

Lou Hammond, the company’s lead attorney, was having difficulty maintaining a calm voice as he stood in the gilded interior of the company’s private railcar as it rolled through the Pennsylvania countryside. “Mr. Tremain, your insistence on this bizarre licensing arrangement will cost too much money in sheer profit,” he said.

Daniel quirked a brow. “We are not on our way to the poorhouse, are we?”

A glance around the impressive private railcar was proof that Carr & Tremain Polytechnic was doing just fine. Some of the country’s finest craftsmen had provided the brass fittings and highly varnished teakwood moldings that lined the car’s interior. Velvet draperies framed the view of the rolling landscape of western Pennsylvania as they sped home from New York. It would have been quicker to travel on the stretch of railroad that linked Philadelphia and Baltimore, but it was well known that Daniel would never ride on a railroad controlled by Alfred Forsythe. He would return to Baltimore by donkey cart before paying a single dime into that man’s coffers.

After this week’s round of meetings with bankers, lawyers, and judges, their company was on the verge of becoming a publicly traded corporation on the New York Stock Exchange. As soon as this deal closed, Daniel and his partner Ian Carr would be among the wealthiest men in the country.

But only if Daniel permitted the deal to go through. “As long as I am in charge of this company,” Daniel said, “I will never permit any of my patents to be licensed to Alfred Forsythe. This is nonnegotiable. Everyone in this railcar knew that before we went to New York.”

“But the company won’t be
yours
after it goes public,” his attorney said. “The company will belong to the shareholders. And any sort of decision that affects the value of the company will need to be disclosed to the public.”

Daniel shrugged. “Then take out an advertisement in
The
New York Times
and tell it to the world. It is no secret that I despise Alfred Forsythe and won’t do business with him. I would rather scuttle the deal than let Forsythe use my technology.”

“Are you sure about that, lad?” Ian Carr’s lilting Scottish accent was gentle, and Daniel felt a twinge of remorse. Ian was more than just his partner; Ian was the person who gave Daniel his first leg up in the world by hiring the penniless nineteen-year-old to work the timing devices on his fledgling railroad. Within six months, Daniel had figured out a way to alter a standard timing device into one which could operate without human intervention, making the timer not only cheaper to operate but safer by removing the danger of human error. The thousands of dollars that poured into their company from licensing that invention had allowed for more innovations that helped to revolutionize the railroad industry.

The reason their company worked was because Ian let Daniel run the technical side of development without interference, and Daniel deferred to Ian’s natural business acumen to license, market, and promote their inventions. Together they controlled the railroad industry’s best timing devices, rails, and routing systems.

Daniel met his partner’s eyes. “Ian, I’ll defer every business decision in the company to you, except for this. I can’t license those patents to Forsythe. Even if it scraps the Wall Street deal, I won’t do it.”

Mr. Hammond cleared his throat. “Now, Daniel, it is no secret that you are a brilliant innovator—”

“Stop, you will make me cry,” Daniel said dryly.

His attorney held up his hand. “The reputation of Carr & Tremain will suffer if we use the company to carry out a personal vendetta. Negative financial consequences will result.”

“We’ve been paying negative financial consequences for almost a decade,” Daniel said, “but it doesn’t amount to a fraction of what Forsythe has lost. He has to replace his rails twice as often as the companies who use my technology. Every time he has to commission another set, he thinks of my father and regrets what he did. That’s exactly how I want it.” By all that was holy, it felt good to have Alfred Forsythe by the throat, and never,
never
would he relax that grip.

Jamie Carr, his partner’s son, shifted in his chair. “That accident was more than ten years ago,” Jamie said. “Can’t you just accept the man’s apology and be done with it?”

A silence fell over the group and tension rippled through the men assembled in the railcar. Nervous glances flew among the men, all of whom knew of Daniel’s temper when it came to Forsythe. Daniel stiffened, but he wouldn’t rebuke the boy. After all, Jamie was only nineteen years old and knew nothing of the stench of burned skin or the agony of being scalded to death. He had never witnessed the eyes of a widow turn hollow until suicide was the only way out of her despair.

Daniel forced his voice to remain calm. “But, Jamie, Mr. Forsythe has failed to offer any sort of apology, and I am convinced he never will.”

Alfred Forsythe planned on running for governor of Maryland next year, and filling his resume with charitable works and publicly funded hospitals was the sort of thing he excelled at. Taking responsibility for the careless death of his workers would not fit into the public image he had created for himself.

Daniel turned his attention back to Ian. “I am aware that my issue with Forsythe has cost you, as well, and I’m sorry for that. Do whatever you need to structure this deal, so long as it stops short of licensing to Forsythe.” Daniel knew Ian was utterly trustworthy to protect the business affairs of their company, and he would find a way to honor Daniel’s request.

Kerosene lanterns were lit as the sun dropped below the horizon. The business meeting was long over, and a few men played cards at one table, while the gentle rocking of the railcar had prompted others to nod off to sleep in the plush, overstuffed chairs. It would be at least three more hours before they arrived in Baltimore.

Daniel sat with his assistant, Joe Manzetti, and his personal attorney going over his affairs. Who would have thought back when he worked a second shift shoveling coal into a furnace that someday he would have a corporate attorney, an estate attorney, a patent attorney, and a personal attorney? But they were all necessary. A man did not rise to the heights he had without relying on attorneys to look after his various endeavors. Along with his attorneys, Daniel had Manzetti, who served as his bodyguard, business assistant, and an extra set of eyes. Daniel had never regained sight in the eye that had been blinded in the boiler explosion, and the dim light cast by the lanterns made it a strain to read once the sun had set.

“The bills for your sister’s wedding have been paid in full, but the balance has yet to be paid on the house you purchased for Miss Lorna as a bridal gift,” his attorney said. “Did you wish to pay that outright, or shall I prepare installments?”

Daniel hated being indebted to anyone, but most of his fortune was locked up in the company. It was the reason everyone was so anxious to sell shares to the public. Ready cash had not been available when he purchased a house for his sister last summer, but it would be as soon as Ian could list their company on the New York Stock Exchange and begin selling shares. “I want it paid outright, but we’ll have to wait until the funds from the public offering become available. Hopefully in September.”

“Very well.”

Certainly the biggest fringe benefit of taking his company public in the autumn would be the ability to ensure he could always provide for his sisters.

“And Miss Kate has requested that you renew your membership at the Colchester Sporting Club. Either that, or she suggests that perhaps you would consider constructing a tennis court on your own property.”

“She thinks I’m going to build her a tennis court?”

“She has hopes,” Manzetti said. “She doesn’t know you as well as I do.” Daniel and Manzetti had worked together back when they were both employed by Forsythe Industries. It had been Manzetti who had run to get him out of the scholarship exam after the boiler explosion. Although Manzetti had profited nicely from working alongside Daniel, neither one of them would ever forget the squalor and anxiety that accompanied a life of relentless poverty.

“Renew the club membership,” Daniel said. “I’m not going to spoil Kate any more than I already have.” If Kate had her way, his backyard would be consumed by a private golf course, a croquet green, and tennis courts. Spoiling his sisters was one of the few pleasures he afforded himself. For the past ten years, his life had been consumed by a voracious need to grind forward in developing his inventions. That left little time for raising his sisters, and he assuaged his guilt by bestowing little luxuries on them. He still remembered the time he had hoarded enough money to purchase the girls their first little beaded reticules. Those minor luxuries were soon followed by private schools, music lessons, trips to Washington. It was as though showering them with such opportunities somehow compensated for the death of their parents, and, essentially, the loss of their brother, as well, since he was generally closeted with business associates and attorneys most nights.

“Miss Kate assumed that would be your response,” Manzetti said. “She would therefore like access to the carriage to take her to the club to practice her tennis on days you are at the office.”

Daniel rubbed his forehead. “Truly, Manzetti, I can run my company, or I can control Kate. I can’t do both. Tell her she can’t use the carriage when I’m not there. She’ll bicker, but that’s what sixteen-year-old girls do. What’s next?”

His lawyer removed a file from the stack. “The bill for Miss Endicott’s defense last month. Shockingly high, but the attorney came highly recommended.”

At the mention of Clara’s name, Daniel jerked to attention and his gaze darted to the stack of newspaper clippings on the table. He scanned them quickly. He’d already heard of her deportation, of course. That had made the newspapers here in Baltimore. When she had proven herself as a writer in London, Reverend Endicott began publishing his daughter’s articles about the horror of child labor in
The
Christian Crusade
. Now Clara was another glittering ornament on the Endicott family tree, just as her father had wished.

Naturally, Daniel had followed Clara’s career. He never learned why she failed to write to him after arriving in London, but he could not blame her. Or not too much, anyway. She had been surrounded by the best musicians and writers in Europe. It was unrealistic to think that a girl with those opportunities would remember the poor kid she had once let use her piano.

Still, he was proud of her. Clara had the wealth and connections to live an idle life if she had chosen. She could have taken up tennis and golf like Kate and never worried about what being stooped over in a mineshaft did to a child’s spinal column.

“So what precisely did these legal fees buy Clara? A deportation ticket?”

“It bought her a suspended jail term. Without Mr. Townsend’s intervention, it is likely she would have been required to serve a number of years in prison.”

The thought of Clara, with her bright blue eyes and sparkling humor, locked in a stark jail cell made his blood run cold. “Money well spent, then.”

As he skimmed one of the articles, he imagined her standing in a courtroom as charges were read against her. She could not have looked so bright and sparkly then.

He tossed the newspaper down. “Find out if she intends to return to Baltimore, or if she is headed elsewhere,” Daniel said.

It had suddenly become very important to discover what precisely had become of the girl who had once vowed she would be his best friend even if she lived on the moon.