“General Howard?” he said, his voice indistinct and a bit fuzzy. As if I’d awoken him from a sleep.
“Yes. If anyone can help find your daughter and wife, he can.”
He began pacing around the kitchen, still deep in his memories. “That’s good. That’s good.”
Mr. Holyrod burst into the kitchen. “Where is the bloody cake? It’s well past time for serving it.”
I had never heard Mr. Holyrod utter a curse word before, no matter how impatient with the staff he became. For a moment, I was shocked into immobility. I quickly regained my composure and covered for Mr. Ford. “Nearly ready, Mr. Holyrod. Mr. Ford just has a few crystallized rose petals to add to the top layer, and he was about to complete this final task when you walked in.”
Mr. Holyrod glanced over at Mr. Ford, who hadn’t spoken or hastened over to the table to finalize the cake. Understanding that something was amiss, Mr. Holyrod directed his instructions to me. “We will clear the plates and return for the cake in less than a minute. I expect it to be ready.”
“It will be ready, Mr. Holyrod.”
Waiting until Mr. Holyrod flew out of the kitchen, I raced to place the sugared rose petals on the top of the cake in some semblance of a design. I didn’t bother asking Mr. Ford for guidance, as he was lost in the past.
Chapter Thirty-Three
June 14, 1866
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Cobalt hues began to illuminate the pitch-black of the nighttime sky as I finally closed the door to Mrs. Carnegie’s bedroom. Only the harkening of dawn could cajole the revelers into ending the wedding festivities. The music of a string quartet had followed the protracted dinner, and drinks and more silver trays of delicacies had followed the music, and a boisterous farewell to the bride and groom had followed the final round of confections. Conversation lingered until Mrs. Pitcairn noticed the brightening sky and announced that the wedding guests must take their leave.
I paused in the stairwell. I wanted to check on Mr. Ford’s spirits after last evening. Would he have awakened for the morning? It would not be abnormal for him to be preparing the day’s bread or organizing the larder at this hour, and given that Mrs. Carnegie had excused the kitchen staff after the dinner concluded, he would have had a normal night’s rest. Unlike me. Thankfully, Mrs. Carnegie had surprised me by excusing me from my duties for the following morning. Perhaps she was planning on sleeping until noon herself.
I padded down the back staircase to the kitchen. Even the low gaslights Mr. Ford lit for the early-morning hours were dark. Mr. Ford must have been asleep still. Turning back to the servants’ staircase, I bumped straight into Mr. Carnegie.
My heart thumped in my chest so loudly, I thought he could hear it. “You startled me.” A few weeks before, he’d asked me to stop calling him Mr. Carnegie and to start calling him Andrew, in private of course, but I couldn’t cross the bridge to such familiarity. Instead, I’d taken to omitting any sort of name when speaking to him. In response, he’d taken to doing the same.
He laughed. “I am sorry. I did creep into the kitchen like a thief in the night, didn’t I?”
“Yes, though I cannot complain. I was lurking around in the dark myself.”
“True enough. What’s your reason? I confess to wanting a few more of the éclairs filled with coffee cream.”
“Why didn’t you ring for the staff to bring some to you?”
“There has been a frenzy of work for the past two weeks—at my mother’s insistence—and they deserve their rest.”
“I’d be happy to get the éclairs for you,” I said and started to walk toward the larder where Mr. Ford kept them.
He reached for my hand to stop me. “Please don’t. I’m perfectly capable of serving myself.”
As he heaped the remaining éclairs onto one of the kitchen plates, he said, “You never told me your reason for coming down to the kitchen when, by all rights, you should be collapsed in your bed as well.”
“I wanted to check on Mr. Ford.”
“Is something wrong?” he asked, sliding the plate of éclairs toward me and gesturing for me to select one.
I shook my head and answered, “The wedding made him rather melancholic about his own family.”
“Poor fellow,” he said. “Did you tell him about General Howard’s investigation?”
“I did. I’m hoping that after he rests, the news will lighten his mood a bit.”
“Good. I hope we can help find his family. General Howard has the ability to search the records of most plantations and conduct wide-scale investigations, of course.”
The plate of oblong éclairs, each piped with an identical flower of icing, sat between us. Neither of us reached toward the plate, although, after the interminable day, I longed for one.
“You first,” he offered.
Normally, I would have resisted, as befitted a maid, but I was too weary. And too desperate to try the confections that I’d been staring at all evening while denied a bite.
“Speaking of news, I have some rather exciting information to share with you,” he said.
The delectable coffee cream interior of the éclair filled my mouth, and I couldn’t speak.
“Your company is in the works, Miss Kelley.”
I dabbed at my mouth with a napkin and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Your telegraph company.”
“My telegraph company?”
“Yes. It’s called Keystone Telegraph Company.” His barrel-shaped chest swelled with the excitement of sharing his news. “Your idea to string public telegraph lines along the railroads was the work of genius. I ran the idea by Scott and Thomson, and they wholeheartedly agreed to grant us the necessary rights of way along the Pennsylvania Railroad, in exchange for becoming silent partners, of course. So I formed Keystone Telegraph, and at Thomson’s behest, the Pennsylvania Railroad entered into contract with Keystone Telegraph, giving it the right, for an annual fee of four dollars a mile, to string public wires along the Pennsylvania Railroad’s poles.”
I clapped my hand to my mouth. “I don’t believe it.”
He grinned at me. “Believe it. And I took the liberty of granting fifty shares in the new company to you. Much as Mr. Scott granted to me over ten years ago when I helped him with the exclusive contract Pennsylvania Railroad entered with Adams Express to transport packages between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”
“Fifty shares to me?” I felt like giggling. A wildly inappropriate giggle at the idea of me, farm girl Clara Kelley from Galway, owning a piece of a telegraph company. I kept my hand clamped over my mouth to stifle an unseemly act.
“Yes indeed. But I haven’t even told you the most brilliant part of my news.”
“Mr. Carnegie, I cannot imagine news more marvelous than fifty shares in Keystone Telegraph!”
“Haven’t I told you to call me Andrew?”
“Andrew,” I said, although the word felt raw, even exposed. I stifled the urge to look around for witnesses to this almost-licentious behavior.
“The Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph Company caught wind of your idea, and they need a telegraphic connection to Philadelphia.”
Why was Mr. Carnegie—Andrew—telling me about the aspirations of the Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph? I didn’t understand. What did Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph have to do with my company, Keystone Telegraph?
“So that they can string lines from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, along the route that the Pennsylvania Railroad granted to your company, Keystone Telegraph, Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph has offered to buy Keystone Telegraph in exchange for six thousand shares of Pacific and Atlantic stock and the contract to string the wires from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, which one of my companies can handle and for which we will be paid a premium. All before we dig a single hole for a telegraph pole, string even one telegraph line, or spend a sin
gle dollar.”
“Why would you—we—want to do that?”
“Because Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph is paying us, the owners of the shares of Keystone Telegraph, a huge premium. Each of your Keystone Telegraph shares is now a Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph share worth $25, for a total of $1,250.”
I didn’t feel my jaw drop at the news that I now had $1,250—an amount I never expected to earn in my entire lifetime—but it must have. Because Mr. Carnegie—Andrew—stepped closer to me and, with a single finger under my chin, closed it.
“Now it will be a bit of time before you can cash in your stocks, if in fact you even want to do that. But the money will be all yours.”
All I could think of was Eliza, Cecelia, Mum, and Dad. This wondrous boon could rescue them. The absurd amount of money was more than enough to save my family from the desperate life they were living in Galway City and bring them here. And until the “bit of time” passed before I could cash in the stock, it could bring them hope. I couldn’t wait to write Eliza with the news.
Without thinking of propriety, I hugged him. Whether as an expression of gratitude for what this meant for my family, an outpouring at our enormous good fortune, or something more, I did not know. I simply could not restrain myself. His body was stiff under my arms at first and then slackened as he wrapped his arms around me. I must have shocked him. I had, in fact, shocked myself.
“I told you it was good news, Clara,” he whispered. “Now you can really help your family.”
We stared into each other’s eyes, and I wondered what would happen next. In this moment. In the weeks to come.
And then, Mr. Ford walked into the room.
Chapter Thirty-Four
August 8, 1866
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Fairfield echoed emptily in the weeks following the wedding. The younger Mr. Carnegie was a quiet, placid man, and I did not expect the house would grow still without him. But when he and his bride left for their extended European honeymoon, the exhilaration of the wedding planning departed with them, leaving behind a deflated Fairfield.
The frequent business trips taken by Mr. Carnegie, Andrew as I’d been trying to think of him, made Fairfield seem even more desolate. President Johnson had recently authorized the construction of seven bridges across the Mississippi River and down the Missouri River to Kansas City. Given the profit they had made on bridge construction from both Keystone Bridge and Union Iron Mills, Messrs. Thomson and Scott relented to Andrew’s ambitions and agreed that Keystone Bridge should compete for those bridges. Knowing about this arrangement, I wasn’t surprised when Andrew and his silent partners decided that he should put all of his energies into the pursuit of these contracts. This meant Andrew had to travel to the Midwest, Washington, DC, and New York City to get commitments from railroad companies to build the bridges and to raise capital to pay Union Iron Mills for the iron by selling bridge bonds and stock. He returned to Pittsburgh only to consult with engineers and iron makers over the actual construction of the bridges. In his absence, I worked on business structures and ideas in the evening when I finished with my duties to Mrs. Carnegie, but I felt disconnected from him and the hope I felt with him. And I wondered when the stock money would come in, as Eliza’s latest letter described their Galway City situation as “bleak at best.” But how could I ask Mr. Carnegie without revealing my real situation?
“Mother, I think a trip to New York City is in order,” Andrew announced from behind the Daily Morning Chronicle, a Washington, DC, newspaper. A pile of discarded sections of the New York Times and Pittsburgh Daily Gazette sat at his feet, and the Daily Morning Chronicle was the last of his reading material. From the size of the pile, summoning the courage to proclaim this trip must have taken him some time.
My mistress tried to peer around his paper before answering, which left me scrambling to slacken the line of knitting wool that connected us. He refused to lower his Daily Morning Chronicle a single inch, so she was forced to talk to the political page, which covered some legislation President Johnson proposed. “That bastion of vice? With Boss Tweed in control of the government and those corrupt financiers Fiske and Gould in control of the money? I am not keen, Andra.”
“Keystone Bridge cannot compete in the Mississippi River projects without additional funding, and you know that New York City is where the investors are located,” he said, lowering his paper just enough to allow his eyes to peek over the top. He caught not only her eye but mine as well. “And you know that Tom and Lucy need some time alone in the house to make it their own.”
Was Andrew planning on handing over the ownership of Fairfield to his younger brother? Perhaps the occasion of his marriage merited a new home for Tom, but did it have to be Fairfield? What would happen to me? Andrew and I rarely talked about any topic other than business and certainly never broached his mother and brother.
She looked startled, and knowing my mistress as I did, I guessed that she’d never really considered that Tom and Lucy would take over Fairfield in any way, although the pattern was not unusual among their acquaintances. Fairfield belonged to her and, to a lesser extent, Andrew. In her mind, Tom and Lucy would simply fall into the existing structure. Or get their own house.
“Why must we be supplanted, Andra?”
“It seems to be the way of these wealthy American families. Anyway, I think you and I should experience more than just Pittsburgh. Why don’t we stay in New York for the fall season? That should give the newlyweds time to adjust to a new home and schedule, while we enjoy all the culture and entertainment New York has to offer.”
I tried to keep my hands still as Mrs. Carnegie continued to pull thread from the skein I held, but they trembled with excitement at the thought of accompanying the Carnegies to New York City. I would have more opportunity to connect with Andrew on our business efforts and more access to information as well. Might I have the opportunity to increase my holdings? I almost chuckled aloud, thinking about how my aspiration had grown to match Andrew’s ambitions.
My mistress did not immediately reply. Knots formed in my stomach as I awaited her reaction, and I prayed a silent Hail Mary that she would agree.
“Mother?” Andrew asked impatiently. “Did you hear what I said about traveling to New York for the fall season?”
“Of course I did, Andra. You’re talking so loudly, how could I not hear you?” Her knitting needles clicked. “I’ve been thinking on your proposal, as is a mother’s right. New York, giving up the house to Tom and Lucy—you are asking me to make major changes. I deserve the time to think through these matters.”
While proclaiming her mother’s rights was a favorite tactic of my mistress when she wished to shame her Andra into silence, I would have demanded the same in her shoes.
She continued, “Not to mention we have many social obligations here in Pittsburgh, Andra. We have to introduce Tom and Lucy to society.”
“No social obligation would hold back a trip to New York. Imagine, Mother, experiencing the real season among the elite of America, not just Pittsburgh.”
The clicking of the knitting needles stopped. He knew precisely how to play to his mother’s weaknesses. “I suppose we should give Tom and Lucy the space necessary to make a place for themselves in society. And the Colemans will be on hand for any necessary guidance. The trip to New York would only be for a few months, and we could leave after the party introducing them to society.” I noticed that she did not concede to giving the newlyweds the house, only to traveling to New York.
“Excellent decision, Mother,” Andrew said, as always allowing her to claim the resolution about the trip as her own, instead of his.
“I need an uplifting tea,” she declared. “Clara, tell the kitchen that we would like our tea now instead of the usual time.”
As I entered the servants’ hallway to the kitchen, I thought about how my mistress adored issuing orders to
me. She had a button at her footstep to summon the kitchen staff, but she preferred watching me scurry about on her command.
I expected to see Hilda in the kitchen, but only Mr. Ford was there, preparing the evening meal. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Ford. I know it’s a bit early, but the Carnegies are ready for their afternoon tea.”
Without a word or his hallmark warm smile, he lumbered over to the battered center table, where he had meringues, apple tartlets, and trout finger sandwiches ready. Reaching for the teapot, he took it over to the fireplace, where he kept hot water boiling throughout the day.
“How is your day going?” I asked him. But he did not respond. He simply shook his head.
I did not know what to say next. Ever since Mr. Ford had caught me and Andrew in the embrace, he would only speak to me when necessary. I had tried to explain that the hug was innocent, an instinctive reaction to good news that Mr. Carnegie had brought me, but Mr. Ford was unmoved. He simply closed himself off to me. Losing his friendship meant losing my only friend in this house, indeed in this city, aside from Andrew, and that relationship was too complicated—fraught with too many stakes—to regard as friendship.
Chapter Thirty-Five
September 20, 1866
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Always the requisite two steps behind Mrs. Carnegie, I mounted the steps into the railcar bound for New York City. Following the engineer, we shimmied to the berths that Andrew had indicated down a hallway so narrow, I feared my mistress, wide in build and made wider by her skirts, would not fit. Once she managed to squeeze through the hall, the engineer opened the mahogany-and-etched-glass door and said, “Welcome to the Woodruff Silver Palace car, madam.”
In my mistress’s wake, I stepped into a railcar berth that looked like the interior of a mansion in miniature. Oriental rugs lined the floor, brass chandeliers hung from the ceiling, two sets of chocolate-brown upholstered chairs faced one another, and to my astonishment, a set of twin beds stacked upon each other hid in the rear, nearly obscured by red damask curtains that could be drawn for privacy.
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