Her uncle had warned her that the college did not accept women, but she couldn’t stop hoping, and Uncle Wilhelm encouraged her dreams. When she was seventeen, she submitted her school marks, letters of recommendation from her uncle and the village schoolteachers, and most importantly, her essay about why she wanted to study.
She wanted to find a cure for cholera. She had always been captivated by the world of medicine, and after watching how fast cholera could rip through a community, she wanted to join the quest to find a cure.
The college never formally admitted her, but out of respect for her uncle and curiosity about the girl who wrote with such passion, they allowed her to attend classes and hire a private tutor. Over the years, she worked with a series of professors, and her interest veered away from medicine and into biochemistry. It became apparent that it would be easier to eradicate cholera from the environment rather than cure a patient who had already contracted it. Uncle Wilhelm had breathed a sigh of relief when she informed him of her intentions, for he feared that in conservative Germany, no one would consent to be treated by a woman physician.
When she was twenty-one years old, she graduated with a degree despite never having been formally admitted. Then she earned a doctorate through private study, researching how chemicals could affect bacteria in water.
As part of her studies, she’d moved to the college’s remote research station high in the mountains above the city. There she lived with other scientists studying forestry, hydrology, geology, and all manner of flora and fauna. The lodge had laboratories, a library, a dormitory, and a large room for communal dining and conversation. As the only female scientist, Rosalind shared a bedroom with the housekeeper and the two maids. Her aunt Fredericka worried that there was no official chaperone, but Uncle Wilhelm had been dismissive. Frau Bergmann had been the housekeeper at the research station for thirty years and was a respected woman who would tolerate no nonsense among the boarders.
“After college I moved to the Berghütte Research Station, ready to conquer the impossible by ridding the world of cholera,” she told Nick. How naïve she had been to think it would be so easy. It was a monumental task, but with the boundless optimism of youth, she was bold enough to try.
“One of the scientists at the station studied pollen spores, another the distribution of chlorophyll in tree leaves. Professor Fischer had lived at the lodge for thirty-five years to study the behavior of honeybees. In the evenings, we would dine on a fine meal prepared by Frau Bergmann, and we would talk long into the night. It was a wonderful place.” She couldn’t block the note of wistfulness in her voice, for no matter how long she lived, those years would surely be the happiest of her life.
“The station’s biologist was a man named Stefan Dittmar. He came from the great wine-growing regions of the Rhenish Palatinate. His family was very old and very rich. His brother was a count, but as a younger son, Stefan was responsible for the family’s vineyards. He came to the Berghütte every summer to study the effects of heat on mold spores, as that had been a problem on their vines. We met and became instant friends. When I wandered the hillsides to collect samples, he came along, and we shared what we knew.”
Beside her, she could sense Nick’s muscles tightening, as did her own. She had been so gullible. She could see that now, but at the time, Stefan had seemed like all the other scientists who were there for research.
“One afternoon when we were collecting water samples, he put his hand on the small of my back while we were climbing up a ledge. It wasn’t necessary, for we’d climbed that pass many times. I didn’t say anything about it when we reached the summit. I just pulled away a few feet.”
Strange—even as she spoke, she could feel the imprint of Stefan’s hand on her back. That was the only time he’d laid a finger on her, and yet that afternoon almost destroyed them both.
“That was when he confessed he had powerful feelings for me and hoped I would consider him as a suitor. I was appalled. He was married, and I never once considered him in such a light.”
She had been so stunned that she couldn’t even move her mouth to speak. When she’d finally found her tongue, all she could do was stammer, “But you’re married!”
Stefan had actually smiled. “I can get a divorce. Helga married me for money, and she can still have it after the divorce. You and I need not concern ourselves with such petty things. We can live at Berghütte forever, make our lives up here, just like Professor Fischer. We will live simply and perform research and love one another.”
“Stop! I don’t want to hear any more. I’m going back to the lodge, and I don’t ever want to speak of this again.”
He’d appeared shocked by her rejection, disbelief stamped across his handsome features. “But you must return my affection,” he said. “I can feel it. Every day as we explore the woods; when we dine in the evenings.”
She behaved exactly the same way with over a dozen scientists, and never had there been a hint of impropriety before this moment. She turned to head back down the steep ridge. He had tried to assist, but she shrugged him away. The thought of letting him touch her was sickening.
The next day, she was studying a chemistry text in the lodge’s reading room. Stefan approached and asked to go walking with her. They were alone in the room, so she didn’t bother to lower her voice.
“No,” she said firmly. “And don’t ask again.”
He continued to pester for the next week, and finally she spoke to Professor Fischer about the unwanted attentions. With his kindly old eyes and graying beard, Professor Fischer was a father figure to most of the young scientists who spent time at the Berghütte.
“Stefan will not leave me alone,” she had told him. “I feel him staring at me all day long. I’ve tried to avoid him, but he watches me constantly, even when I go to the bathing hut.”
“I will speak with him,” Professor Fischer had said, his eyes grim.
She turned back to Nick, who watched her with a somber gaze. “Stefan packed his bags and left the following day. I never asked the professor what had been said, but he assured me I would have no more trouble from Herr Dittmar. For a week all was calm, but then the letters began arriving.”
They came almost every day. They rambled on obsessively, painting a picture of what their life would be like as soon as his divorce was final. Far from being discouraged by her rejection, Stefan vowed to obtain a divorce as quickly as possible, so “his true life could begin.”
“I quit reading the letters, and Professor Fischer wrote to Stefan on my behalf, saying the letters were unwelcome and to stop sending them. He also returned all nine letters that had been written to me. It seemed to work. For a while the letters stopped and life went on as normal. Life was wonderful again.”
For about a month. Then a man from the post office arrived with a letter addressed to her from a court in Heidelberg. Remembering that morning made her feel sick all over again.
“I was required to sign for the letter, and that was when I learned I was being sued by Helga Dittmar for alienation of her husband’s affections.”
Nick looked appalled. “Can they do that?”
“They did.”
Rosalind had no knowledge of the law or divorce proceedings, but she’d gotten a hard and fast introduction to it. Stefan had filed for divorce immediately after returning home, stunning his bewildered wife. When the packet of love letters Stefan wrote to Rosalind fell into his wife’s hands, she was enraged, lashing out at both her husband and the woman she accused of stealing him away.
“Lawyers arrived at the research station to interview everyone. It was mortifying, even though Professor Fischer verified that he’d reprimanded Stefan for his unwelcome attentions. I tried to go on as before, but nothing was the same. The laughter at the dinner table was not as easy, and when I entered a room, the conversation became stilted. The worst part was sharing a bedroom with the housekeeper and the two maids. Frau Bergmann was mostly polite, but the maids were younger than me, an
d their attitude turned very disrespectful.”
Rosalind had not been able to continue at the Berghütte Research Station after the scandal broke. The preliminary hearings for the court case were held in Heidelberg, and it seemed that wherever she went, she heard people whispering behind her back.
“I know you aren’t supposed to care what people think, but I do. The hearings were public, and members of the press filled the galleries of the courtroom.”
Gus had been by her side through it all, drawing him into the mess as well. He’d just gotten married to Ingrid and moved into a modest set of rooms in Heidelberg when the scandal hit. Rumors had circulated that he helped facilitate clandestine meetings between her and Stefan, all in hope of linking his family to an aristocratic one in the event that Stefan obtained his divorce and was free to pursue Rosalind. Gus had just begun work at a law firm handling wills and estates, but they let him go in the wake of the scandal.
“The two maids arrived to testify. They claimed I often left our bedroom after dark, and the lawyers painted that in the worst light. In truth, I only left to use the privy, or sometimes I awoke at night with a research idea I felt compelled to write down immediately. That was all, but it was enough for the maids to draw unseemly conclusions. The hearings were covered every day in the newspapers. Men at the beer halls placed bets on what had gone on between me and Stefan. Lurid cartoons showing me chasing after Stefan were published. The judge eventually dismissed the case, but the damage was done.”
Staying in Germany had been impossible after that. Her uncle knew Dr. Leal and had written a letter of recommendation. Dr. Leal was in need of an assistant but couldn’t afford to pay for one. She had enough money of her own that she didn’t require a salary. All she needed was a chance to prove herself.
“I wanted to disappear, but I couldn’t abandon my research. So here I am. These rumors about Dr. Leal and I have grown from nothing but the fact that I am an unmarried woman who has the audacity to work alongside a man.”
Nick said nothing as he gazed at another wagon pulling into the factory, this time weighed down with barrels of late summer apples. He had a faint smile on his face.
“Next week I’m delivering a speech in Central Park,” he said, still staring at the men as they prepared to unload the apples. “It will be my first speech as commissioner, and a lot of important people will be there. I want you there too.”
She perked up. It was flattering that he thought enough of her to issue the invitation, but she didn’t understand his abrupt change of topic. “Of course I’ll be there, if you want me to.”
He turned to look at her. “As a woman I have intentions toward. I want to step out proudly with you on my arm and introduce you to the world as someone I care about. It might help squelch the rumors.”
As thrilling as his words were, the prospect of accompanying him made her nervous. If it was an important speech, it meant reporters would be there. “Nick, I try to maintain a low profile.”
“If any rumors surface, either about Germany or you and Dr. Leal, I’ll shoot them down,” he said confidently. “I can have my pick of women in New York, and I pick you. I’ll go after anyone who slanders your name. I care about you, Rosalind. We may be different on the outside, but beneath all the manners and accents and background, you and I are like a house on fire. The speech next week is a big step for me, and I could use a friend at my side.”
It would be a turning point. She could go through the rest of her life hiding behind her initials and fearing the exposure of a faraway scandal, or she could confront it head on. Nick was willing to stand alongside her. He knew everything about her past yet still looked at her with a combination of hope, determination, and raw strength. It shot a bolt of confidence straight into her soul. There was only one thing to say.
“I would be proud to go with you.”
He leaned closer and touched his forehead to hers. With their hands clasped and touching nowhere else but their foreheads, it was the most intimate moment of her life. They were together. They were united. They would venture forth into this uncertain and frightening future side by side, and face whatever challenges came their way together.
She felt buoyant as they walked back to the laboratory. Even as Nick got into his automobile and she waved him off, her heart still soared. The smile lingered on her face until the moment she returned to the lab and saw the white sheet draped over her chlorine research.
That cloth was a blunt reminder of everything she was hiding from Nick. In exchange for his heartfelt honesty, she kept a veil over the most important piece of her world.
Suddenly drained of energy, she lowered herself onto a laboratory stool and fingered the edge of the fabric draped over the testing samples, too heartsick to peel it back and get down to work again. Nick would hate what was beneath this sheet, but he wouldn’t hate her, would he?
They needed more data, and Nick would try to shut them down if he knew about this. Once they proved chlorine was effective in a real-world experiment, Nick would be more likely to understand why she had to keep it a secret, and he would forgive her. Maybe it was her hopeless optimism again, but Nick was smart and wanted a solution for delivering clean water to the masses. He would come around in the end, and when he did, she would be waiting for him. He might hate what she did, but she couldn’t believe he would ever hate her, and that gave her the motivation to remove the sheet and resume her work.
C
hapter
Twelve
Nick walked proudly beside Rosalind as they headed into Central Park. Tonight’s extravaganza was in celebration of breaking ground on the mammoth Catskill Aqueduct. There would be plenty of important men making speeches tonight, but it was Nick’s first foray into public speaking, and he hated to admit it, but he was nervous. Hundreds of people had already flooded the park for the free food and music that would be offered after the speeches.
The stage for the speakers had been erected alongside the Central Park reservoir. Most people who saw the pristine body of water surrounded by miles of parkland assumed it was a natural lake. It wasn’t. It was a man-made reservoir completed in 1862 and fed by the Croton Aqueduct with water funneled from miles away. The reservoir had been supplying the city with drinking water for decades, but it could no longer keep up with demand. Tonight, Nick’s job was to sell people on the need for a monumental new aqueduct, covering 163 miles and costing over a hundred million dollars.
He wore a custom-tailored suit and had arrived in the finest of carriages, for he wanted Rosalind to be proud of him. As they walked toward the lake, he filled her in on what to expect.
“My sister and her husband are meeting us, so you won’t be alone during the speeches. Colin and Lucy have been married for five years, no kids. Don’t ask. Colin is from England and a bit of a prig, but he’s okay beneath all the starch. He wrote most of my speech tonight.”
“I could have helped with the speech,” Rosalind said as they walked beneath trees strung with miniature electric lights. “After all, I know a thing or two about water.”
Nick hid a smile. He’d finally gotten around to reading some of Rosalind’s research papers, and they were so lethally dull that he’d be accused of abusing the public if he let her write his speech. The idea was appalling, but she looked wounded that he hadn’t asked. She genuinely wanted to help, and it moved him.
“I’m not speaking to your college professors tonight, I’m speaking to the masses. And Colin knows how to write a speech that rouses the populace. I think it’s something they breed into the aristocracy over there.”
“Aristocracy?” Rosalind asked.
He’d forgotten that salient point. “Yeah. Who’d have thought my little sister would marry into blue blood?”
He took her arm and guided her toward the pavilion erected on the north end of the reservoir. A podium rested atop a raised dais, and workers scrambled to hang patriotic bunting across the front. A few hundred chairs had been set out for the invited spe
ctators. The chairs were roped off, lest any of the riffraff try to sit in them. For all its democratic ideals, America was still a highly stratified society.
“Colin is a baronet, whatever that means. Technically, Lucy could call herself Lady Beckwith, but she never does. Here they come.”
The pair wended their way through the gathering crowd. Lucy looked smashing, with her glossy dark hair piled atop her head and wearing a peacock-blue gown swathed with layers of chiffon. Colin looked rich and smug, every strand of golden-blond hair slicked back into unnatural perfection. Nick would cut his hands off before he ever put pomade in his hair.
Nick was never much for fancy introductions, so he just spoke naturally. “Colin, Lucy, this is Rosalind Werner, the lady I’ve been telling you about. Did I lie?”
Colin tipped his head in one of those well-bred nods. “She is indeed pretty as a moonbeam.”
“We’re so pleased to meet you,” Lucy effused, reaching out to clasp both of Rosalind’s hands. This was a first. Lucy had foisted plenty of women Nick’s way, but she was always cautious of them, scrutinizing them as though gauging the readiness of a soufflé. As badly as she wanted him to find another wife, she worried he’d fall for a fortune hunter. She didn’t seem so concerned about Rosalind. Maybe because Nick couldn’t stop talking about how smart, how pretty, how perfectly prissy in a charming way she was. Any idiot with a functioning brain could see he was infatuated with her.
He was about to start bragging over Rosalind’s work in water research when he noticed Colin’s face had gone white, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. Nick turned to follow his stare.
Aunt Margaret was heading their way, her chin raised at a proud angle as she closed in on them. Her ivory skin stood out in startling contrast to her stark widow’s weeds.
“Tell me you didn’t invite her,” Lucy said.
“I did,” he said tightly. “Please be polite.”
A Daring Venture Page 14