“Will you be wearing those spectacles?” She’d taken them off when she sat on the bucket, and he kind of missed them.
“If it will persuade you to listen to me.”
He would gladly listen to her read the telephone directory if she wore one of those prim dresses and those tiny spectacles. He hadn’t been this irrationally attracted to a woman since . . . well, since never. Physical attraction wasn’t the best foundation for any sort of relationship, but when he’d learned she was smart and funny and had a solid core of good-hearted principles . . . well, he didn’t see any reason he shouldn’t pursue her. He didn’t want to be a widower the rest of his life. In less than ninety days, this court case would be officially over, and he could begin wooing her in earnest.
“I’m busy on Monday, but I can come over to your lab on Tuesday,” he said.
She winced. “Tuesday is the start of the annual meeting of the American Water Association. I’ll be at the conference.”
Ah yes. The scientific organization he was not welcome to join. It didn’t matter. It looked like he was going to succeed in getting appointed to the State Water Board without their help. After last week’s meeting with the governor, it was almost certain.
The water conference would be over late on Wednesday, so he’d take the first opportunity to see her the following day.
“Then I’ll be at your lab bright and early on Thursday morning,” he said. “I’m happy to learn about new technology, but please understand . . . I’m not going to change my mind about this.”
“All I’m asking for is a chance,” she said earnestly.
“Me too, Dr. Werner.”
But he had a feeling they were speaking about entirely different things.
Chapter
Five
Rosalind felt honor bound to confess the incident in the alley to her brother. If the photographer hadn’t snapped that picture, perhaps she could have ignored it. After all, those two men didn’t know her name, and without that, her reputation was secure. But a photograph changed things because someone might recognize her. She had to warn Gus, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
She waited until Ingrid went upstairs to get little Jonah dressed for the day. Not that Gus wouldn’t immediately tell his wife what had happened, but it would be easier to discuss it without Ingrid’s judgmental presence. Rosalind had been trying for years to win her sister-in-law’s forgiveness, and this incident was only going to harden Ingrid’s heart even more.
“Were they close enough to get a photograph of your face?” Gus asked, his fists clenched as he sat at the kitchen table, his breakfast growing cold before him.
“I don’t think so,” she said. In all likelihood, the photo would only show the silhouette of two people in a provocative embrace. “They don’t know my name, so I’m probably panicking over nothing. I only told you because I don’t want to have any secrets between us.”
“What about this Drake fellow? Can you trust him not to speak to the press?”
“He promised the reporter an exclusive interview to discuss the orphanage. Nothing else. He won’t leak my name.” She was certain of it. They barely knew each other, but she sensed a raw strength and honesty about Nick. He’d promised to protect her, and he would.
Gus pushed back from the table and took two steps to the kitchen window, where he glared out at the vegetable garden in her postage-stamp-sized yard. When she’d bought this cottage, it was fine for her needs. It had a kitchen, a parlor, and washroom on the first floor, and two modest bedrooms upstairs. It was clean, with freshly painted wainscoting, enameled hardware in the kitchen, and a covered front porch. It had been perfect for her, but she never expected Gus and Ingrid would be forced to leave Germany as well. Offering them a home was the very least she could do to make up for the scandal she’d brought into their lives.
“You work alone in a laboratory with Dr. Leal, opening yourself up to all sorts of rumors. Now you’re kissing virtual strangers in public.” Gus’s voice simmered with tension, but Rosalind remained stone-faced. She had nothing to be ashamed of with Dr. Leal, and Gus knew that. It was another story with Nick Drake.
“It is disgraceful.”
Rosalind turned to see Ingrid at the base of the steps. Splotches of anger marred Ingrid’s pale cheeks, a stark contrast to the neatly woven blond braids coiled around her head. Ingrid crossed the parlor and stood in the arch leading to the kitchen. “Do you expect Gus to bail you out of this humiliation as well?”
Gus stepped in front of his wife. “There’s no need to panic,” he said in a placating tone.
“No need?” Ingrid screeched. “She ruined our lives. I can’t go home to Heidelberg. Now she behaves in the same disgraceful manner here?”
Rosalind raised her chin but said nothing. Ingrid had disapproved of her since the moment they met six years earlier. Germany was a traditional society where it was rare for a woman to go to college, and even odder for her to venture into a scientific field.
It had been difficult after their grandfather died and Rosalind and Gus moved to her uncle’s farm in Germany. They clung together like two orphans in a storm. They weren’t yet fluent in the language, and everything seemed a little different in Germany. Neither better nor worse, just different. People were very formal. Adults who had lived in the same village for generations referred to each other by their title rather than their first name. Women dressed modestly, and hierarchy was respected.
After a while, she and Gus learned to speak German like natives. They spent their summers tromping through rugged forests and fishing in mountain streams. Her cousins taught her how to milk a cow, and in the long winter evenings, she helped them assemble handcrafted music boxes that were sold in Heidelberg. Her uncle even took her into the city, where he taught chemistry at the university, and she got her first opportunity to see a real research laboratory.
Once she’d thought Heidelberg was heaven. Now all that word brought was memories of shame and fear. Gus had helped her through the worst of it as her lawyer, but ultimately she had fled the scandal like a coward.
In the end, Gus had to leave as well. And until he passed the necessary qualifications to begin practicing law in America, they would all be sharing this house.
“You will not see that man again,” Ingrid declared. “I will not raise my child in a house with a woman who behaves in such a manner.”
Rosalind tightened her mouth, waiting for Gus to remind his wife that they were guests in her home.
His face flushed, and he shifted uneasily. “Everything is going to be fine,” he said in a placating tone. “I’m sure Rosalind won’t see that man again.”
“But I will see him again,” she interrupted. Nick had agreed to come to her laboratory next week, giving her another chance to persuade him of the validity of their research. She would not squander that chance because Ingrid had eavesdropped on a conversation.
“You have a duty to your family,” Ingrid sputtered.
“And I have a duty to scientific research that outweighs the people who live in this cottage.” She turned to focus on Gus. “You of all people should understand that.”
He flinched at her words. Anyone who had suffered through the horrors of cholera understood the importance of clean water. Gus cast a nervous glance at his wife, then nodded in acceptance. “Of course you’re right, Rosalind. It shall be as you say.”
He turned back to the stack of law books spread open on the kitchen table, pretending to study, but tension still sizzled in the air. Ingrid scowled as she banged the teakettle onto the stove, making as much noise as possible as she moved about the kitchen, preparing breakfast.
Rosalind went to the shelf for a teacup. At least she could prepare a nice cup of tea the way Gus liked it. A twinge of guilt pinched her for alluding to his bout with cholera. When push came to shove, Gus always deferred to her.
She reached for the tin to prepare the peppermint-steeped tea Gus liked so well, but Ingrid batted her hand away. “Yo
u’re making a mess of my kitchen. Why don’t you just let me cook and go do your own business?”
Rosalind clenched her teeth, but this wasn’t a battle worth fighting. Gus still had his nose buried in the law books, but both his fists were clenched. She owed it to him to make peace with his wife.
“Thank you, Ingrid. We all appreciate your housekeeping.” But she was as tense as Gus as she headed outside for a walk, leaving the house she loved but no longer felt was her own.
Nick led a team of men through the underground tunnel toward the new vertical turbine pump. As always, there was a dank feel to these brick-lined tunnels that drove some people crazy, but Nick enjoyed it. He’d spent more than a dozen good years working in this vast underground network of tunnels that provided the city with water. He rarely got to go underground anymore. The past five years had been spent crawling up the chain of command at the State Water Board, working at a desk instead of twisting a wrench. As much as he loved the ability to oversee the entire water system, he sometimes missed the chance to go underground and get his hands dirty with the other guys.
He recognized Gino Vanelli standing beside the turbine pump that had been in operation for more than twenty years. The question to be decided today was if the new aqueduct would use a similar pump or switch to in-line booster pumps. Nick had brought a couple of men from finance with him, as they would be paying for the pumps.
A grin spilt across Gino’s face as he recognized Nick. “What are you doing down here, stranger?”
Nick declined the handshake and tugged Gino into a quick, back-pounding hug. “Just coming down to visit the best work crew in the city.”
“How’s that baby girl of yours?” Gino asked.
“Smart as a whip. She’s already figured out how to unfasten the kitchen cabinet latch and get into the cookie jar.”
“She inherited her daddy’s knack,” one of the other plumbers said.
“Let’s just hope she hasn’t inherited her daddy’s belching skills,” another added.
Nick roared with laughter and promised a round of drinks after work. As much as he loved his new job, it wasn’t possible to roughhouse and joke with government bureaucrats the way he could with a work crew.
He sobered and got down to the business at hand. “This here is Michael Robinson and Harwell Smith, both from the finance department. We’re going to need at least fifty or sixty pumps on the new aqueduct, and I’ve already warned them it’s going to be pricey.”
Harwell Smith held a handkerchief over the lower half of his face, but he shifted it in order to send a quick greeting. It didn’t smell too bad down here, but Nick always forgot how squeamish people could be the first time they went underground to tour sewer facilities.
“All right,” Nick said, “tell us about the ongoing maintenance with this beast and what kind of men we need to keep it in operation.”
He already knew the answers, but it was important for the finance men to understand too. Sometimes men who wore suits to work assumed that laborers were interchangeable and could be had cheaply. The kind of plumbers and mechanics needed to keep these room-sized pumps in operation were expensive, and the new aqueduct was going to require over a hundred skilled laborers.
Gino explained the system, and the finance men asked all the appropriate questions. While another mechanic took the two men to the opposite side of the pump to explain the maintenance procedures, Gino pulled Nick aside.
“What’s this I hear about you in line to be the next commissioner of labor?”
Nick bit back a smile. It was too early to say anything publicly yet, but he’d been privately assured the appointment was his.
“Nothing is official yet,” he said. “I expect the governor to make an announcement sometime this week.”
Gino looked uneasy. “Yeah, well . . . there’s something I want to talk about, then. Rumor has it that a bunch of Irish guys have been hired to work on the new aqueduct.”
Nick met Gino’s gaze. “And?”
“And I don’t think it’s going to go over well with the men down here. We risk our lives for each other every day. I don’t trust those clodhoppers to know what they’re doing.”
This was exactly the reason Nick was being considered for the commissioner’s job. The number one requirement was the ability to handle rowdy work crews, labor unions, and hot tempers. Nick had spent most of his life with this crowd, and no one understood them better.
“Those men have been hired to work above ground. I doubt the turbine crews will have any direct contact.”
Gino shifted his weight, his expression hardening. “Yeah, but we still don’t like the idea of those jobs going to Irishmen. There’s a bunch of Italian guys who could use the work. I’ve already talked to—”
“The new aqueduct is going to employ thousands,” Nick interrupted. “I’ve signed off on a crew of eighty Irishmen to begin work on the Ashokan leg. They start next month.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it, you just have to show up and do your job. Working in the best city in the world, the biggest underground water system, and in a job where you won’t even see those men. Got it?” Nick flashed a tight smile, took a step forward, and offered a hand to shake.
Gino mumbled something and returned a halfhearted handshake.
Nick didn’t let go. He just stepped closer and squeezed hard. And then a lot harder. “Have you got it, Gino?”
It was a staring contest. Gino tried to return the iron grip, but Nick had gotten the jump on him and was grinding hard. This was too important for Nick to lose. He hadn’t even officially been appointed the new commissioner, and he wasn’t about to back down already.
“I got it,” Gino ground out between clenched teeth.
Nick released his hand and clapped Gino on the back. “Good! Nice seeing you again. Make sure I don’t have to repeat this conversation with the rest of the crew.”
The two men from finance looked relieved when they finally emerged above ground. They headed back to the office, where the State Water Board occupied two entire floors of the building. They would spend the rest of the day working out a plan to staff the new pumping stations and drafting pay scales and maintenance schedules.
Nick headed into his office to scoop up the paperwork for manning the pumping stations, but his secretary was waiting for him. Miss Gilligan was a godsend. A whippet-thin woman with eyes as sharp as a hawk, she kept his office running like clockwork.
“You had a telephone call from that snooty servant at Oakmonte. He wants you to return the call.”
“Did he say what it’s about?”
“No, just that it’s urgent.”
Nick asked Miss Gilligan to let the others know he would be delayed a few minutes. For the past four years, he had been paying the footman at his uncle’s country estate to slip him information, and these conversations rarely took long.
He had to wait a while for the operator to patch the telephone call through a network of exchanges to get him to Oakmonte, but the footman’s message was brief.
Nick’s uncle was dying. He’d been suffering seizures, and the doctor expected him to succumb within a week.
Nick digested this information, his face as impassive as if he was hearing a weather report. He could not pretend to feel any grief. The demons that haunted Nick’s childhood nightmares all had the face of Uncle Thomas.
He replaced the receiver in its cradle, rose, and prepared to join the meeting about the new pumps. Then he paused.
In the past few years, his circle of family and friends had grown increasingly smaller, and he didn’t like it. His uncle’s death could change things. It might prove to be a disaster, but if he could patch together the tattered remnants of his family, it was a risk worth taking.
Chapter
Six
Rosalind stood on the deck of the ferry as it pulled into the 42nd Street depot. Normally she enjoyed crossing the river as the towering buildings of Manhatt
an drew near, but the ferry had been delayed for almost an hour that morning, meaning she was running badly behind schedule. And she hated being late. Her German sense of punctuality had been drilled into her since childhood, which was why she always left well ahead of schedule. She was cutting it very close this morning.
After disembarking the ferry, Rosalind boarded a crowded streetcar to ride the final three miles to the campus of New York University, where the American Water Association was holding their annual conference. Scientists specializing in water came from all over the country to share insight into water research, hydrology, and contamination. She was excited to hear about the latest advances, which made her lateness all the more galling.
She tugged at the collar of her prim white blouse, wishing the lace didn’t itch so much. Walking into the auditorium with the morning session already in progress was awkward, but at least the door didn’t creak too badly as she stepped inside and slid into a seat in the back row.
A discussion on the effect of lead leaching from pipes into the water supply was the subject of vigorous debate. She wondered if chlorine would exacerbate the problem. She opened her notebook to scribble a reminder to look into it.
Someone was watching her. An inexplicable tingling caused her to raise her head, and she immediately spotted him. Nick Drake, sitting smack in the middle of the auditorium, craning his neck to see her. He flashed her a grin and a nod. She returned the nod, and mercifully he turned back around.
Heat flooded her cheeks, and she fanned herself with her notebook. He wasn’t a member of the organization, but their meetings were open to anyone willing to pay the fee. He might not have the first understanding of science, but he was willing to educate himself, and that counted for something.
Throughout the morning, she found her gaze trailing to his dark head. It was a relief that he made no effort to seek her out during the few minutes between speakers when people stretched their legs. She wasn’t sure what she’d say to him. Never in her life had she behaved so wantonly as when she literally ran outside for the chance to kiss a man she barely knew. It was mortifying and embarrassing . . . and a tiny bit thrilling.
A Daring Venture Page 6