by Pamela Pope
‘Be your mistress? But we’re closely related, Julian. It’s a despicable suggestion.’
He inclined his head in acknowledgement of the fact, and had the decency to take a step back. ‘So be it,’ he said, and went to the door where he paused with his hand on the knob. ‘I need you to work with the draughtsmen, Ellie, all the same. I’ve just accepted a very important order from Ezbania and from what I’ve seen this evening, there’s no one else can do the interior designing so well as you. I give my word there’ll not be a single string.’
Ellie had won another small victory, but this one didn’t give her the same satisfaction. She was not given to lying even in the smallest degree, but it hadn’t been the truth when she told him she had no need of physical love. Her body ached for a long time after he had gone.
And now there were two men desiring an illicit relationship with her.
*
She tried not to see too much of Oliver Devlin, but it would have been impossible to avoid him altogether, even had she wanted to. His behaviour on the night of William’s first birthday had brought an apology the following day, but the damage had been done and her trust in him suffered. She still needed his friendship, but made sure there was no opportunity for it to be abused.
He had bought up more shares in the company, making him the second biggest shareholder next to Julian. It didn’t surprise her. Oliver had found his feet when he’d invested in Court Carriages, and most of the new contracts were due to his efforts. He was becoming a rich man, and had bought a house for himself in the fashionable Brunswick Place. Pillars flanked the front door, which was opened to visitors by a butler, and the furnishings were costly, though somewhat lacking in taste.
‘You’ll always be welcome here, Ellie,’ he told her, as soon as he had taken possession of the house. He was alone with her in the garden at the rear, Grandfather Cromer having said it was too cold to venture out. ‘In fact, it could be yours.’
‘I’ll come when I’m invited, but only with company.’
‘You won’t need a chaperone — I promise you’ll be quite safe with me.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Safer than with Julian Cromer.’
‘Julian is my uncle,’ Ellie protested. But her heart raced unexpectedly with the shock that he had noticed.
‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s like a hungry boy with his eyes glued to a candy-shop window, so he is.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous is it, to care about you? I don’t like it.’
‘There’s no need for you to be jealous,’ she said.
Oliver guided her towards a gazebo at the end of the path, putting a hand under her elbow to steady her when she almost tripped over the crazy paving. Beneath a riot of trailing plants he turned her to face him.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘And I feel responsible for you. I promised Max I’d look after you, and I’ll go on doing it no matter how you feel about me.’
His gaze was innocent of guile, and she would have been foolish to take exception. Truth to tell she had missed their easy friendship since the split, and knew it would be sensible to renew it.
‘You’re good to me, Oliver. If I can trust you I’d like us to be friends again.’
‘Mavourneen, all I ask is to be guarding over you.’ He took her hand and held it against his chest. ‘I swear I won’t frighten you or make you angry again, so I do.’
The pledge made Ellie so happy she reached up and kissed his cheek. He made her feel safe.
*
Plans for the Ezbanian train progressed rapidly and there was great excitement at the Works. It was the most ambitious project so far undertaken and promised to generate fresh interest in the company when it was shown. Ellie’s part in the success could not be underestimated. At Julian’s insistence she had used the plans which had so impressed him in her workroom, and the ideas she had seen Max developing at his drawing board in their tenement kitchen were incorporated in her reclining chairs and the draped bed which remained level no matter how great the swaying motion of the car. She felt no compunction about claiming Max’s work as her own. He’d had none for her when he left her destitute.
When the train was finally unveiled in 1897, photographs of the Crown Prince of Ezbania seated in the smoking room appeared in all the leading newspapers and magazines, and every detail of the luxurious and revolutionary furnishing was described in minute detail. It was a triumph for Court Carriages.
One unforeseen development with success and a more competitive outlook in the Works, was increased antagonism between the men at Court Carriages and those working for the rival company at Eastleigh, which had transferred its carriage and wagon workshops there from Nine Elms in 1891. Frequent skirmishes were reported in Southampton’s public houses, and at managerial level devious methods were now employed to win over contracts.
The unrest bothered Ellie. Vivid memories of Chicago during the strike made her nervous of industrial troubles and she wished the men would settle their differences amicably.
Fourteen
Interest in the Ezbanian train was not confined to England. Photographs and articles about it appeared in many parts of the world where railroads made news, chief among them being the United States of America.
It was several weeks before copy of the ceremony in Southampton, England reached Albany, the capital of New York State. The city on the west bank of the River Hudson where it met with the Erie and Champlain canals was built on hills, and had a large and thriving timber market. It was partly this which had brought Max Berman to Albany back in the spring of 1895.
He was the first to admit he didn’t deserve the luck which had started on board the steamship Paris as it carried him back to America after he had left Ellie. From the moment the ship set sail he regretted what he had done, but it was too late to turn back. He was practically penniless, and having acted on terrible impulse he would have to live with terrible guilt for the rest of his life. For two days he drank and slept, eating nothing. On day three he met Jarvis Warding.
Jarvis was returning to Albany after a visit to his dying father in England. The reading of his father’s will after the funeral had disclosed that he had inherited immense wealth, but grief at his loss overshadowed the good news and he was still trying to drown it when he found a fellow sufferer at the bar in Max. The result was the beginning of a new friendship.
‘It’s good to find someone who understands,’ Jarvis said, after pouring his troubles into Max’s ear. ‘Everyone else on board seems so intent on frivolity.’ He looked at his companion with deep sympathy. ‘You’ve lost your wife. That’s a dreadful thing — even worse than losing a parent, I imagine.’
‘She isn’t dead,’ said Max. ‘She’s in London, with her grandfather. She …’ Suddenly the need to talk about his guilt was overpowering and he had to burden this stranger with it. He began: ‘I’ve done something terrible.’ And he proceeded to confess.
Luckily, Jarvis was a very understanding man, and he welcomed the chance to help his fellow traveller, if only to take his mind off his own problems; for the rest of the voyage, the two men were often in each other’s company. On reaching American soil once more Max was invited to travel to Albany to meet Jarvis’s family, but he declined, saying he was going to try for work in New York. He couldn’t return to Chicago, and he’d no idea where he might settle.
‘Well, if things don’t work out you have my address. Like I said, I run a sawmill. No doubt I could find a job for you,’ Jarvis told him. He was edging forty and excess fat showed he was used to living well. ‘It’s in the Lumber District close by the Erie Canal, but I myself live near Washington Park. You can see the Catskill Mountains from my house and it’s right pretty.’
As Max had never been to that part it meant nothing, but he thanked him warmly for the offer.
Winter in New York was very hard. Work was scarce and Max’s depression deepened. Finally he realised the folly of not taking
up Jarvis Warding’s offer, and contacted him before it was too late. Soon afterwards he travelled on a steamer up the Hudson River to its confluence with the canals, and passed the time by reading a book about Albany. It was important to learn all he could about the place because Fate was beckoning him towards it more surely with every nautical mile. But he was not happy. His reading was disturbed by thoughts of Ellie, and illogically he found himself longing to share this new beginning with her. More than at any time during their life together he began to appreciate the wonderful qualities she possessed. The vast distance now separating them enabled him to see the sacrifices she had made for love, and he was so ashamed his eyes misted over, blurring his first glimpse of Albany. He looked down into the dark river water and in the depths he saw pictures of Ellie holding their son in her arms. The water seemed to draw him irresistibly, but a shout from Jarvis on the quayside brought him back to reality. There was no easy way out.
It soon became clear that the two men could help each other in many ways. Jarvis had money to extend his business: Max had talent and ambition. The opportunities opening to him over the next few months should have been cause for excitement, but the burden of his guilt became heavier.
The Wardings were good to Max. Ruth, Jarvis’s wife, was a motherly soul who began including him with their brood of seven children as soon as he arrived, and straight away he shared a room with Henry, the only son. Jarvis was an astute man. On learning of Max’s experience in the Pullman industry, and seeing evidence of his creativity, he knew he had stumbled on something as valuable as his newfound wealth. Within weeks he had established a new company which was to make exclusive furniture. Within a year he had found countywide recognition, and by the winter of 1896, Warding Upholsterers was selling to the most exclusive shops in New York.
Max himself was the power behind the firm’s success. He worked fourteen hours a day, sometimes more, and took no leave. He longed to see his parents, but shame held him back. Not only that, he couldn’t face going to Chicago without Ellie.
He wrote to her often from New York and then Albany, longing for forgiveness. He poured out his heart to her, allowing her to see for the first time to what degree the difference in their backgrounds had affected him. He blamed his pride, but also admitted his inability to cope with the selfless love she had bestowed on him.
‘Ellie, I didn’t deserve you. You were far too good for me,’ he confessed in writing. ‘I took everything with such bad grace it was a wonder you didn’t leave me. How I wish that you had, then you would have been spared the final acts of cruelty I have inflicted on you, I can never forget that through me you have been denied further children. What plagues me incessantly is the similarity between what happened to you and what happened to my mother in Russia. Since I was a boy the horror of Momma’s suffering has haunted me, yet I let you be led into danger which ended in another barren future. Can you ever forgive me? I am earning good money now and want to help support our son. Even though you have a rich family I hope you will accept what I send.
‘I plead with you, implore you, if you can find it in your generous heart to spare me the rejection I deserve, please write and say that you understand a little of what I, too, suffer now.’
The letter was five pages long and written in such anguish it surely couldn’t fail to move the reader, yet no answer came. He continued to write in spite of her silence, until his letters were returned because she was no longer at the same address. When he knew he had lost her completely, he spent every waking moment building up the business in which Jarvis Warding had made him a partner, and tried to banish Ellie from his mind.
It was on Easter Day 1897 that Max’s life again changed direction. He was spending the day as usual with the Wardings, but in the middle of the celebrity dinner Jarvis collapsed and died from a heart attack. It was a tragedy, as much for Max as for the family. The man had been both friend and father-figure, and Max felt his loss so keenly he had to get away to be by himself to mourn.
Jarvis had always regretted that Max had a wife. He would have been supremely happy to see one of his six daughters married to him. For one thing, the furniture business could then have been kept completely in the family. However, his disappointment didn’t stop him from dividing Warding Upholsterers equally between Max and Henry in his will, and there was no ill-feeling. In fact, Henry had no interest in that side of his father’s business and was agreeable to selling Max his own share, so that he himself could go off and concentrate on expanding the sawmill and timberyard.
As sole owner of a thriving company Max should have been content, but without Jarvis nothing was the same. To stretch his mind he turned once more to the designs he had once made for the most luxurious railcar ever envisaged — plans Ellie had said deserved recognition, but which the recession and the strike had rendered too expensive to contemplate. He put the senior manager in charge of the Works and left Albany for the first time since he had arrived three years ago, taking a train to New York, and another to Detroit.
The company to which he took his designs was so enthusiastic that Max was treated royally. He attended meetings with directors and the head draughtsman, all of whom were keen to use his ideas.
‘These will set Pullman back on his heels,’ he was told. ‘Did you ever see such fine detail on car upholstery? And the suspension on these chairs ought to make travelling as comfortable as sitting at home in the drawing room!’
Such flattery was a balm for Max’s spirits and he returned to Albany full of revived ambition, to await a contract for his work. None came. Instead, he received an official letter to say that the company took a very serious view of his attempt to pass off certain designs and inventions as his own, and had considered taking proceedings against him.
‘However, we are prepared to be lenient in view of the fact that the deception was discovered before any expense was incurred,’ the letter said. ‘But should any further fraudulence be brought to our notice we will not hesitate to call in the Law.’
He was amazed. There’d been a terrible mistake. Anger consumed him and he prepared to make another journey to Detroit to clear up the misunderstanding. How had it occurred? His designs had not been seen by anyone, not in Chicago or Pullman, certainly not in Detroit. They had remained in his possession, hidden away with other papers pertaining to his past, and he defied anyone to prove otherwise. The ideas were his, and his alone — inventions from his mind which were unique.
It was on the morning of his planned departure to raise hell with the Detroit company that Max received a copy of a newspaper from the manager, with photographs and detailed drawings of the Ezbanian train on view in Southampton. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The car was identical in almost every detail to the designs he had shown in Detroit, and descriptions of revolutionary methods used to ensure travelling comfort corresponded exactly with his own carefully-worded notes.
For a few moments he was too stunned to seek an explanation. Then he realised that Ellie had taken her revenge.
Fifteen
In the June of 1897, Ellie returned to London for a visit together with Julian, Millicent and their children, and Oliver Devlin, to attend the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Julian had booked rooms for them all at an hotel in the Strand, outside which hung multi-coloured glass globes, and they arrived on Sunday, 20 June in time to attend the National Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. The following day they took their places at a private viewing platform on Paddington Station by special invitation to watch the Queen’s arrival in her own Great Western Railway train from Windsor. The Royal Standard was flying at the front of the engine and the Royal coat of arms were emblazoned on either side.
‘Pity Court Carriages weren’t asked to build a new car for the occasion,’ remarked Oliver, who these days never missed an opportunity to do business.
At twelve-thirty the train glided into the station slowly with scarcely a puff of steam to pollute the air,
and Her Majesty was helped to step down on the red carpet. Only the white egret plumes in her bonnet relieved the sombre black of her clothes.
‘The Queen’s an old lady,’ cried Charlotte, with disappointment. ‘Why does she look so dowdy?’
‘She’s still in mourning for her husband,’ said Millicent.
‘Did he die recently, then?’
‘No, you goose,’ said Francis. ‘He died years before we were born.’
‘Then she should be out of mourning by now. I shan’t go into black for more than six months when my husband dies.’
Everyone laughed, and Ellie hugged her young cousin, for whom she had developed quite an affection. ‘You might if you loved him as much as the Queen loved Albert,’ she said.
‘Or as much as I love you,’ whispered Oliver in her ear, making Ellie blush.
Over the past few weeks she had been turning to him again with renewed confidence. He was honouring the promise he had made her in his garden and the warmth of his love was a great comfort. He was her shield against the harsh world, against painful memories of Max, and against the temptations Julian presented. She was beginning to love him in return, not with any sexual longing, but with a gentle gratitude for his devotion.
When they left Paddington Station, Oliver suggested taking her to see the sights from the top of a horse-drawn bus, and Ellie accepted with alacrity.
‘I thought you would be coming back to the hotel with us, Ellie,’ said Julian disapprovingly. ‘You should rest — you’ll be tired.’
‘Oh no!’ she cried. ‘I can’t waste time resting when there are so many exciting things going on.’
‘I’ll hire a private carriage for us to tour the city later if you wait until I’ve seen Millicent and the children back to our rooms.’