The lawsuit was about more than money. Lucy still remembered the way her grandfather’s face grew wistful when he spoke about why he worked so hard to create his devices. “Talent is a gift from God,” he would say. “It’s a sin to hoard our talent. There is nothing special about me except that I can build things to make life better for the people around me. And when I do that, I feel God smiling on me.”
Lucy felt the same way. When she and Nick installed homemade versions of the Drake valve in tenements, she felt like she had the blessing of her grandfather. Eustace had taught Nick how to build the valve, and to this day they sneaked them into the buildings of people who asked for it. It seemed like the right thing to do. Uncle Thomas might be earning a fortune from his mass-produced valves, but she and Nick helped people who could never afford the extravagant fees her uncle demanded.
Lucy and Nick rode the streetcar back home in silence. She was twenty-eight years old, and Nick was thirty-one. They both ought to be married and living a normal life, not working their fingers to the bone to pay a lawyer they couldn’t afford.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there tomorrow,” Nick said as they sat side by side on the streetcar bench. “We’re installing the new tidal doors in the tunnel, and I need to be there.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said.
After all, she already knew how the Saratoga Drakes intended to proceed tomorrow. They were going to file a motion to get the suit dismissed, claiming that Lucy and Nick had no standing in the case. Since they had not been born when the original contract was signed in 1863, they had no vested interest in the valve. Their father had been alive and clearly had standing in the court’s eyes, but with his death last year, the Saratoga Drakes wanted to call the lawsuit to an end.
The only thing that worried Lucy was Uncle Thomas’s latest motion accusing them of bad faith. It had come out of the blue and hung over her head like a waiting vulture, frightening her with its vague sense of doom. Nevertheless, she had right on her side. She prayed each evening for wisdom in how to move forward with this ugly lawsuit. Almost four million people were crowded into New York City, and a third of them had no running water in their homes. If her uncle won, that was unlikely to change.
“I just feel like I’m letting you down,” Nick said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. He leaned forward, bracing his forehead on his palms as he stared at the floor. “I really hate this,” he whispered.
The fact that the Saratoga Drakes could make her brave, daring brother feel this low was discouraging, but she wouldn’t let it stop them. This battle had begun before she was even born, but she would be leading the charge when it ended.
Chapter
Four
Colin smiled as he passed his coat and top hat to the butler at the Wooten family’s Madison Avenue residence.
“The family is awaiting you in the drawing room, my lord,” the butler murmured.
“Very good.” He didn’t correct the butler over the improper use of his title. He was technically a “sir,” but servants in America weren’t trained in the minutiae of hereditary titles. He rarely used his title in New York, but everyone in the Wooten household seemed to enjoy it.
Which was fine, especially if it impressed Miss Amelia Wooten, the quarry he was hunting this evening. Amelia was charming, nineteen years old, and her father was worth a cool sixty million dollars.
The scent of orange blossoms fragranced the air, and a violinist played music somewhere in the mansion glittering with hundreds of candles and cut-glass chandeliers.
“Welcome, Sir Beckwith!” Frank Wooten heartily greeted him as he entered the grand salon. Over a dozen people draped in the finest silks and broadcloth had already gathered, and he was introduced to the few people he did not already know. He’d been paying steady court to Amelia ever since he met her last year in London, and he was eager to carry on here in the States. Mrs. Wooten was equally effusive in her greeting, as was the congressman from the 3rd District of New York.
These people could not have been more gracious, welcoming him as though he were actual royalty. If only they knew . . .
He pushed his misgivings aside and headed straight for Amelia, who looked lovely standing beside a towering vase of ivory camellias. Her flaxen blond hair had been coiled into an exquisite pattern that must have taken her maid hours to arrange. Tiny diamond pins nestled in her hair and shone like stars on a blanket of golden silk.
“You could not look lovelier if Leonardo had placed you there himself,” he told her.
“What a silver-tongued flatterer,” she said, beaming with delight. “I look no such thing.”
He flashed her a devilish smile. “Oh, all right. You look a terrible hag, not even fit to be let out in public.”
Amelia tapped his shoulder with her fan. “That makes two of us!”
Everyone laughed, even Amelia’s mother. This was what he loved about Americans. They understood his reckless humor and kept pace without losing a beat.
“I think you look lovely, Miss Wooten,” a thickly accented voice said. Colin stiffened at Count Demetri Ostrowski’s voice. The Polish aristocrat wore round spectacles and an emerald green vest that made his skin look puffy and soft. There was plenty of competition for Amelia’s hand, and Ostrowski had been pursuing Amelia with the zeal of a baby duckling waddling after its mother. A count outranked a baronet, which mattered to Amelia’s mother, but her father clearly favored Colin. That meant Amelia’s opinion would tip the balance.
Footmen in full livery circulated with trays of caviar and imported cheese. Wine flowed freely, and soon the group drifted into the dining room, where the seating arrangements placed Colin beside Amelia. She delicately tugged at the tips of her long gloves, wiggling them off.
He leaned his head down to whisper in her ear. “Need any help?”
It was terribly forward to make such an offer, but Amelia blushed gorgeously as she finished the task on her own, laying the gloves in her lap.
“My maid still does not understand the language of gloves,” she said. “She constantly confuses evening gloves with opera gloves.”
He did not bother to inform her that they were one and the same. Amelia was a bit of a snob, but that trait would serve her well if they married. The British upper classes could be ferocious, and she would need plenty of armor were she to move to England as his wife.
The elderly matron across from him caught his attention. “I saw a photograph of Whitefriars in a guidebook of the English countryside,” she said. “What a lovely home.”
He gave a polite nod. “Indeed. It was a privilege to grow up in such a place.” He could only pray the guidebook did not contain pictures of the inside of his house. Entire wings had been closed off due to plaster falling from the ceiling and floors sagging in the middle.
“Was it terribly lonely growing up in the countryside?” the matron asked.
He glanced at Amelia, who paid close attention. After all, if they married, she would be spending the better part of her life at the rambling, seventeenth-century estate in Yorkshire. They’d courted for two weeks in London, so she had never had a chance to see Whitefriars. From the outside it looked like a castle. Inside it was a wreck.
“It is six miles from the nearest village, and as a boy I remember feeling like I lived on the edge of the universe. We had a telegraph for communication, and I learned how to listen in so I could be connected to the rest of the world. Must keep up with the cricket scores, you know.”
There wasn’t much else to do for amusement in the middle of nowhere. He never cared for hunting, but cricket was his passion. It had been imperative to hear the scores the instant they were reported, prompting him to learn Morse code.
During the long hours while he awaited the incoming scores, he listened to the news of the world, and it changed his life. He heard about the discovery of gold and diamonds in Africa. He learned about Queen Liliuokalani and her tropical paradise in a place called Hawaii. The telegraph sounder became his portal int
o the wider world, opening his heart to adventure and possibility. When he was fourteen years old, a volcano on the island of Krakatoa exploded, and the eruptions lasted for days. It was spellbinding. He stayed plastered to the telegraph, listening by the hour as the extent of the devastation became clear. There were tidal waves, fires, and ash raining from the skies. A correspondent from Reuters risked death by going to the Indonesian island, sailing straight into the jaws of danger so he could gather information and send reports back to the world.
That reporter became Colin’s hero, and from that moment, he vowed his life would amount to more than cricket games or living on a moldering estate. He wanted to see the world and experience its triumphs and catastrophes, reporting on everything he saw. He longed for the day he could join the army of Reuters correspondents, whose dauntless spirit helped illuminate the world with knowledge. During his years as a foreign correspondent, he asked Reuters to send him to the most exotic and dangerous postings. Nothing in his life had made him prouder.
“Did you really learn how to operate one of those rackety machines just to listen to cricket scores?” Mrs. Wooten asked from the far side of the table.
He pushed back the memories and flashed a wink at Amelia. “Yes. I learned Morse code for the sake of cricket.”
After dinner they moved to the salon, where Amelia was going to entertain them all at the grand piano. He enjoyed music and vowed to wire his sister at Whitefriars to tell her to get their own piano tuned. No one had played it in decades, but it would be nice to have music at the estate again.
The ladies seated themselves along the rows of plush settees while he stood beside Amelia at the piano as she paged through a stack of sheet music.
“What would you like to hear?” she asked. “I can offer you Beethoven or Brahms, but please don’t ask me to play Mozart. He adds too many—”
A gunshot rang out directly behind Colin, and he dove for cover. The goblet in his hand smashed to the floor, and wine splattered everywhere.
Before he could gather his wits, Amelia knelt beside him. “Colin? Good heavens . . .”
He covered his head, waiting for another explosion, but nothing happened. From his position on the floor, he saw feet gathering near but sensed no other signs of pandemonium.
False alarm. Again.
Silk rustled as people drew closer and murmured in concern, but his heart pumped too hard for him to stop quaking as he lay curled on the floor. He gathered his shattered nerves together and braced one hand on the piano bench. It was mortifying, but given the way his hand shook, he wasn’t going to be able to stand up yet. He kept his eyes averted, counted his heartbeats to ten, then managed to get his feet beneath him and stand.
Directly behind him, a stunned footman held a freshly uncorked bottle of champagne. Colin had mistaken it for a gunshot.
“Don’t open champagne so close to me,” he bit out on a low breath.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
He tried to stop the trembling of his hands, but it was going to be hopeless. He shoved them into his pockets. He forced a little levity into his tone, hoping it could mask his quaking breath. “Sorry. I slipped.”
“Yes, of course,” Amelia rushed to say. “Johnson, will you send Peter with a mop?”
How mortifying. Twenty people stood motionless in the salon, staring at him like he was a bomb about to detonate. Wine stained the floor and the skirt of Amelia’s pale silk gown with splotches of red. Shards of crystal were everywhere. He and Amelia stepped away from the piano as a pair of servants mopped up the spilled wine and broken glass, but at least no one challenged his statement that he had slipped.
Not to his face, at least. A few gentlemen on the far side of the room spoke in low voices, but his hearing was excellent, and he heard them murmuring about the Boer War and rumors of him being shipped home early. He turned his attention to the ladies and did his best to ignore it, but sweat rolled down his face as though he’d just finished a mile-long race. Blotting his forehead with a handkerchief didn’t help much. The sweating didn’t stop, and he doubted anyone was fooled. Especially Count Ostrowski, who hid a smirk behind a raised champagne glass. So far the coddled Polish aristocrat hadn’t been much competition for Amelia’s hand, but tonight was a serious blow to Colin’s prospects. If he was going to save Whitefriars and the ninety tenants living on his estate, he needed to win Amelia’s hand and send the Polish count packing.
How long were these sudden fits going to plague him? Half the reason he’d agreed to come to the United States was to be away from England until he could control these embarrassing episodes, for it didn’t take much to spook him. A slammed door or the honking of an automobile horn could do it. Anything that sounded like a gun, an explosion, or the sound of men dying in agony beside him while he lay pinned and powerless in the dirt was enough to plunge his mind back into the stench of war.
Mrs. Wooten brought Amelia a long, floor-length wrap like the models in Pre-Raphaelite paintings wore, and it effectively covered the worst of the wine splotches on her skirt. Mrs. Wooten slanted a glower at him as she withdrew, but Frank Wooten wore a far different expression. It was a quizzical look, as though pondering the moves in a chess match.
Colin turned his attention to Amelia, who took her seat at the piano and played a few tunes, but the evening came to an early close. The laughing and easy conversation from earlier in the evening were gone, replaced by tentative smiles and forced jollity.
Amelia walked him to the front door. It was the first time they’d been alone since his embarrassing collapse.
“I don’t ‘slip’ very often,” he said.
She laid a hand on his arm. “My father told me a little about what happened when you were in the Boer War. It must have been terrible.”
That was a surprise. He had no idea how Frank Wooten had come by the story, but he didn’t want to talk about this. He hadn’t even been a soldier, merely a reporter who got trapped behind the lines.
“Being here with you makes it all seem very far away,” he said.
“You’ll come again?” she asked, smiling up at him.
Thank heavens he had not frightened her off with his stunning display of cowardice. “Of course.”
He would come again and again until he was confident Amelia was willing to become his bride and her father agreed to sign over an appalling amount of money to save Whitefriars. It was about more than just restoring a crumbling old pile of rocks. It was about the ninety people who lived on the estate and depended on him for their livelihood. If marrying an heiress would save the three-hundred-year heritage of Whitefriars, it was what he needed to do.
Chapter
Five
Lucy rose early on the morning of the court hearing in order to slip inside the chapel near her house and pray for wisdom. She never quite knew what to expect when confronting Uncle Thomas, and she needed the peace of prayer. As she knelt in the silent chapel, she could hear her grandfather’s words in her mind. “I can build things to make life better for the people around me. And when I do that, I feel God smiling on me.”
She had to believe she was doing God’s will. She and Nick were making the world a better place, even if it meant she had to fight dragons like her uncle along the way. So far they had been keeping their head above water and were well-prepared for today’s hearing. Only the vague threat of bad faith worried her. She hadn’t seen that one coming, and it was troubling.
By nine o’clock she sat at the table before the judge’s bench with only her lawyer, Horace Pritchard. The first time she’d ever been in this room, she was only nine years old. Her father wanted her and Nick to know exactly who they were up against, so he’d taken them to every legal briefing, hearing, and deposition. She’d been so amazed by the high-gloss shine on the mahogany table before her that she’d been tempted to stand up and look into it like a mirror.
Not today. Now she sat stiffly beside a single lawyer while Uncle Thomas sat on the opposite side of the room wit
h three lawyers, two legal assistants, two secretaries, and a bodyguard. It was still five minutes before the judge would enter to hear Thomas’s latest motion to get the case dismissed. Lucy had arrived as soon as the courtroom opened its doors this morning, for she would not put it past Thomas to reschedule the hearing and proceed in her absence. He had tried it once with their father.
Thomas’s son, Tom Jr., was also there. She and Tom were the same age but as different as chalk from cheese. When they were younger, their parents went through a brief phase of trying to reach a truce. They all met in neutral territory at a fancy Manhattan hotel and went through the motions of friendly family gatherings. The youngsters were sent off to play while the grownups had dinner in the restaurant downstairs.
When Lucy was ten years old, Tom Jr. invited her and Nick upstairs to see his family’s spacious hotel suite, so unlike their Greenwich Village apartment. They took off their shoes to slide across the marble floors and devoured the expensive chocolates the maid delivered to the room. They played with the dumbwaiter, raising and lowering the tiny platform built into the wall. Lucy remembered wondering what it must be like to have piping hot meals delivered from a fancy kitchen in the basement.
The moment Nick left the room to ride the elevator, Tom dared Lucy to get inside the dumbwaiter to see if she could fit. Never able to resist a challenge, Lucy clambered aboard, curling her knees up tightly and grinning in triumph. Tom slammed the door and locked her inside.
She couldn’t get out. At first she thought it was a joke, but Tom taunted her from the other side of the door, and she knew there’d be no quick escape. It was pitch black and hot and stuffy. She started crying, mortified that Tom could reduce her to tears.
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