Until the Dawn (24 page)

That was the thing about sappy idealists: Sometimes they surprised you with their ingenuity. Sophie may not have much in the way of formal education, but she had practical insight that bureaucrats in the Washington office building perhaps had never considered.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “I may not be able to force the government to plant a climate observatory here, but I’ll be able to get their attention. Dr. Phineas Clark is going to be in New York soon. I have invited him to Dierenpark.”

She gasped. “Dr. Clark? He’s the director of the entire operation.”

“Which is why a visit would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” There was a note of suspicion in her voice, and he couldn’t blame her.

He drew in a breath to answer, but froze. She looked at him with a combination of hope and . . . admiration? He swallowed hard, uncomfortable with the surge of longing that swept through him at her approval. He must never forget that Sophie was so far out of his reach she may as well be floating among the stars. He made sure his voice was indifferent before he responded.

“Because I like your pea soup,” he finally said. “And I want to keep my cook happy.”

That morning set the tone for the following days. Sophie was amazed when Quentin materialized each afternoon, coaxing her out onto the back terrace to plan strategies to lure the Weather Bureau to New Holland. He was gruff and demanding as he made her recite the reasons why the Hudson River warranted its own station, but she loved it. He didn’t condescend or belittle her expectations. He actually helped her, dragging out old maps from the library and pointing out other promontories on the river that might be a better location.

“You need to research these spots and be prepared to answer why New Holland has more to offer than the competition,” he said. Sophie had never realized she ought to include such issues in a proposal. She was thrilled when Quentin offered to review her written proposal as soon as she finished her analysis of all the neighboring towns.

Sophie commandeered one of the tables in the hotel lobby to spread out her papers as she polished the proposal. She picked the minds of her father, the cook, and two of the traveling salesmen for insight into the other villages located on promontories along the Hudson. One of the artists who had been living at the
hotel pointed out that other spots had more mosquitoes than New Holland, and a salesman told her that nearby Tarrytown had an unreliable telegraph system. Long after the others had gone to bed, she kept the oil lamp burning as she rewrote the proposal to include details about the affordability of living in New Holland and its easy access to Manhattan. It was two o’clock in the morning when she finished the draft, but she went to bed with a surge of satisfaction for a job well done.

The next morning, she tucked the proposal beneath the bowl of oatmeal on Quentin’s breakfast tray then held her breath as she waited for a response.

His reply was delivered less than an hour later. Mr. Gilroy set the proposal on the kitchen counter as she was brewing another pot of coffee. At first she was dismayed to see large
X
’s scrawled through much of her work, but after further review, his strikes, arrows, and insertions made perfect sense. The scribbled notations in the margins sounded very Quentin.
Stop
boring your reader with how much you like the work.
And
No one cares how pretty the old mill is.
Most of the comments were critical, but she smiled at the few brusque words of praise.
At last, a glimmer
of common sense
and
Good job quantifying the cost of
living.

Oddly, it was his overall assessment at the end that thrilled her the most.
Too longwinded and sappy
beyond belief. Clean it up and get better data for
Tarrytown, which is your main competition. Show me another version
by tomorrow. Good work, but we can do better.

Quentin was the first person to take her seriously. While everyone else in the village patted her on the head in amusement, Quentin told her
we
could do better. He actually believed in her. Day after day, she and Quentin sat on the back terrace, working to improve the proposal. Each evening, she incorporated Quentin’s suggestions and honed her language. With each revision, her proposal grew stronger, and for the first time she
actually believed she had a fighting chance to land the climate observatory in New Holland.

Quentin had spent so much time helping with her proposal that she felt guilty at the end of the week when she reported to him in the library to collect her salary.

“I still think you are overpaying me,” she said as she tucked the bills into her skirt pocket.

Quentin looked annoyed. “See? Another classic example of you being too nice again. You need to work on that, Sophie. How about making me a nice chocolate cake to compensate for the money you’ve been extorting from me?”

She winced. “The cocoa powder in this town isn’t very good. I’d like to try grinding my own someday, but I’ve never been able to find fresh cocoa beans. Things like that are hard to get in a village this small.” She glanced at the paperwork on his desk. “My goodness! Is this your bridge?”

“The one for Antwerp,” he said.

“It’s fantastic! I’ve never thought of bridges as pretty, but I love the arches. Are you really going to be able to put street lamps all the way across it?”

“If the city lets me build the bridge,” he said dryly. “They keep threatening to fire me.”

“Why would they do that?” It was hard to imagine anyone having the nerve to fire a man like Quentin Vandermark, but perhaps she really was ignorant of the ways of the world.

“They claim I’m overdue with the design. Which is ridiculous. The first delay was their fault over the electricity they asked me to add at the last moment. Besides, they have a perfectly good bridge in place that will suffice until I can get back to Europe and commence the project.”

“When was the previous bridge built?” she asked.

“Three hundred years ago. And I’m only five months overdue. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.”

Sophie winced. “Five months does seem like a long time. Then again, trees that take a long time to grow always bear the best fruit.”

A bit of humor tinged his face. “Is that one of your fussy Bible passages?”

“No, it’s from Molière,” she said. “Look, the people in Antwerp have a right to be frustrated. You can’t convince me that five months isn’t a long time to wait, and if they go with another architect, be gracious and understanding. Above all, we should strive to love one another, for it covers a multitude of sins. And
that
is one of my fussy Bible passages.”

When Quentin laughed, it started low and deep in his chest. He usually struggled to keep his face straight, but his mouth would twist in a suppressed grin and his eyes would sparkle. He wasn’t nearly so scary when he laughed.

And he’d laughed a lot as he’d helped improve her proposal. It felt good to work with someone who respected her opinion. She could see now that her earlier drafts were juvenile, full of wishful thinking, but Quentin forced her to dig deeper and work harder. Every paragraph of this document was dense with solid reasoning, including the numbers to back her assertions.

The proposal should be professionally typed and bound. The clerk at the courthouse often took in such work, but Sophie left for Dierenpark each morning before sunrise, and it was always well after dinner before she arrived home. The college professors were due to arrive tomorrow, so her time would be scarce. She would ask her father to deliver the proposal for her.

As always, by the time Sophie arrived home at the end of the day, the front lobby of the hotel was crowded with townspeople. In a village as tiny as New Holland, there was little to do in the evenings save gossip at the most comfortable meeting room in town. Her father shared a table with a few of the artists, one
of whom was proudly discussing the sale of his work to a gallery in the city.

She rolled the proposal in her hands. The last thing she wanted was to discuss it in public and open herself to another round of teasing from the townspeople, but it took some nagging to coax her father into the privacy of the kitchen. She slid the string off, drew a fortifying breath, and unfolded the proposal on the kitchen work table.

“I’m hoping you can take this document to the courthouse and have it professionally typed for me. I’ve got my salary from work at Dierenpark to pay for it.”
Please ask to read it
, she silently begged.

Her father’s brow lowered as he glanced at the proposal, and his shoulders sagged as he recognized what it was. “Not again,” he said heavily.

“But it’s so much better this time,” she replied. “Just read it and you’ll see.” If she could convince him to look at the second page where her tables of cost data were outlined, he couldn’t help but be impressed.

He pushed the document back toward her, sympathy in his eyes. “Why must you do this to yourself? You are setting yourself up to be crushed, and now to throw your hard-earned money down the drain . . .”

She swallowed hard and flipped to the second page. “Look at these numbers! They show that New Holland is ideally situated and has the geography to support the observatory. Father, won’t you even look?”

But he had turned away and was heading back toward the lobby. She intercepted him. “I’m trying to help you! I think this plan can succeed. Quentin reviewed the proposal and he says—”

“Quentin? Quentin Vandermark? What does an architect who has spent most of his life in Europe know about the politics of Washington, D.C.?” Her father’s voice was scathing, and she
took a step back. “That man is flattering you for some unseemly purpose. Mark my words, there is only one reason a man like him would show interest in you.”

She flinched. Whatever Quentin’s faults—and they were numerous—he never hinted at any improper motives.

“Is it so difficult to believe that he thinks it might work? That he actually respects this idea?”
That he respects me?

She tried to give him the proposal once more, but her father folded his arms across his chest. “I won’t help you make a fool of yourself.” The words were gently spoken, but they burned nevertheless.

She swallowed hard. “Never mind. I’ll find some other way to get it typed.”

14

T
EAMS
OF
RESEARCH
SCIENTISTS
began arriving the following day. Nickolaas had told Sophie that the professors would be chomping at the bit to study Dierenpark. It was a nationally famous estate but had been off limits to scholars for decades. Every professor to which they’d extended an invitation had accepted the offer.

All morning, Sophie had been welcoming the professors as carriages delivered six biologists, four archaeologists, and two historians to the estate. The historians were rapt with excitement to finally see the inside of the historic Dierenpark mansion. The biologists seemed equally dazzled, repeatedly stopping on their journey up the pathway to admire the abundant wisteria vines or touch fruit dangling from a pear tree. Their distractibility frustrated Quentin to no end, which amused Sophie. Couldn’t he understand that these men were curious about the abundance of natural beauty surrounding them? While Sophie fetched cool drinks and fielded a barrage of questions from the professors, Quentin was impatient to get them all inside, holding the front door open and beckoning them with his cane.