How had she ever thought to keep father and son from knowing each other? From this special bond they already shared? She had been wrong not to tell him, she acknowledged to herself. She should have sent word to him, regardless of her pride.
“You’re a good father, Levi.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could think better of them. It was late, she was tired, and their earlier camaraderie was doing odd things to her senses, she was sure of it.
He looked up at her, seemingly startled by her praise. “Thank you.”
She felt suddenly awkward, standing there with empty arms as he deftly coddled their son in his swaddling. The cold evening air made her shiver. Levi’s eyes trapped hers, bringing back a flood of unwelcome memories and feelings. She turned away from him and retrieved a dressing gown, stuffing her arms into the sleeves with precious little grace.
“You’re a good mother as well, Helen.” His voice was low, scarcely audible above the rustling of fabric.
She stilled, her back to him, her defenses against him sagging. It was her lack of sleep, she told herself, coupled with the newness of her situation. She’d lived a quiet life for nearly a year, working alongside the ladies at her House of Rest, learning a deep appreciation for the mass of servants she’d spent her life taking for granted as they toiled below stairs. There had been no electric lights, no lovely ceramic water closets. There had been chamber pots, tapers and oil, scrubbing with the cheapest soap to be had until her hands turned raw and red, cracked open and bleeding. There had been cold nights with no fire in the grate, stand-up washes rather than tub baths, there’d been learning to cook and clean and black a range.
And yes, there had been nights when she’d asked herself if she hadn’t made the greatest mistake of her life, choosing to raise her beloved son on her own. He had deserved more than she’d been able to provide him. But she loved him, loved him with a ferocity that she’d never before experienced. Loved him so much she would do anything, even sacrifice her pride and her future, binding herself forever to a man who didn’t love her. She mustn’t mistake Levi’s fatherly doting for anything more than what it was.
“I try to be a good mother.” She wasn’t sure she could express her gratitude to him, not now for fear of breaking down before him. Her emotions were still in a jumble. Cleo and Tia had told her it was common for a woman to feel at sixes and sevens after childbirth. But these days, she nearly turned into a watering pot at the slightest provocation. She hardly knew what was wrong with her. “I’m not sure that I always have been.”
“I’m sure you have. I don’t doubt that for an instant.”
She turned back to him, wanting to be at odds, to create conflict so that she wouldn’t long for him quite so much. “I kept him from you.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” he shocked her by admitting. “In your shoes, I think I may well have done the same. I’m not perfect, Helen. Sometimes, I’m wrong. Sometimes, I make mistakes. I’m only a man, humble before you, hoping for a second chance.”
A second chance? Dear God, where had that come from? He’d said nothing of it before now. He’d agreed to a chaste union, a marriage in name only, and he had seemed more than willing to comply. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her when they married. She wouldn’t say she was disappointed he hadn’t, not even in her own mind. And the mere thought of opening her heart to him again, of allowing him back into her life as he’d been before, back into her bed…it was enough to make her dizzy.
She didn’t know how to respond to him, so she decided to leave his words hanging in the air as she sat in a plush, upholstered chair and propped a pillow in her lap. She simply didn’t say anything at all. She made a great show of arranging everything properly, feeling his hot stare upon her with each move she made. He expected something from her, though just what that was, she couldn’t determine. Indeed, she didn’t know if she had aught to give anyway.
“There now,” she said at last, her throat thick with an emotion she didn’t care to examine. “I’m ready for him.”
Levi brought Theo to her, relinquishing him gently to her waiting arms. Theo turned his head toward her, instantly rooting. Her cheeks went hot as she met Levi’s gaze. “Some privacy, Mr. Storm?” She adopted a deliberately formal air to combat their partial state of undress and his presence in her chamber this late at night. There had been an unmistakable air of change between them earlier in his workshop, and it remained there now, lingering as surely as his touch had branded her wrist. It made her terribly uneasy. She couldn’t deny that she was as drawn to him as ever. His mere touch had set her pulse racing earlier. In the warm glow of light now, his body was a sleek reminder of how much pleasure he could bring her. How much she had missed him. How much, even now, she loved and wanted him.
“Please,” she forced herself to say when he remained, allowing her to gawp her fill, as though she’d never see a man before, as though she’d never seen him before. But she had, and all she needed to do was close her eyes to remember every gorgeous bit of him.
He gave her a formal half bow then, his gaze boring into hers. “Mrs. Storm, forgive me for the intrusion. Good night.” As though they were strangers, or mere acquaintances meeting in a drawing room. As though they’d never shared a smoldering passion that had changed everything for the both of them and redefined who and what they were.
But perhaps it was for the best.
She watched him go, the light he’d left behind for her use casting its golden radiance over the hard planes of his back. Desire stirred through her again, thick and jarring and most unwelcome. The moment the door closed, she unfastened her robe and nightdress brought Theo to her breast, effectively quashing any such feelings.
It was certainly better that they remain polite and aloof to each other. There could be nothing more for them. She was too fearful to go back down that road with Levi ever again. The last time had nearly been her undoing. She couldn’t trust him, she reminded herself. He was yet a stranger to her in so many ways, a stranger who dissected watches and machines, and was at turns cool and angry and forbidding, who had deceived her and broken her heart.
But another voice inside her reminded her that he had also once brought her scones in bed and kissed her senseless during a ball. He was also the man who held their son as though he was the most precious and wondrous being he had ever beheld. He was the man who had worked hard to achieve success and wealth after beginning his life in poverty, who had never known a father and yet bestowed unparalleled adoration upon Theo, who had been beaten as a child and still touched her with reverence. He was also the man who believed that everything could be made better. The man who probably believed that they could somehow be made better, their jagged pieces fitting back together again.
But she was too afraid to hope for that. Reasonable Helen had been at the reins for quite some time, and she wasn’t ready to relinquish her place. So she promptly told the other, far too persistent voice—foolish Helen—to go to the devil.
He wanted his wife with a desperation that was fast becoming as pathetic as it was distracting. Levi had spent the night tossing and turning in his bed, thinking of Helen separated from him by nothing more than a door and a layer of cotton that was cheap as a Waterbury Watch. Of course she was still wearing her homespun weeds and not a stitch of the expensive French confections he’d provided her. She didn’t want his money. She didn’t want him.
Damn it all to hell.
He splashed water on his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. Probably, he ought to shave today. But he’d had precious little sleep and if he looked the part of the barbarian he was beginning to feel he was on the inside, perhaps she’d take pity on him. Or perhaps she’d continue to keep her cool, polite distance. And it wasn’t her charity he wanted after all, was it?
Either way, he was still a businessman, and he had work to do while he remained in London. He finished his morning ablutions and began dressing. As he buttoned up his waistcoat, a thought struck him. He st
rode to the door connecting his chamber to Helen’s and rapped upon it, barely waiting to hear her bid him entry before sweeping inside.
Early morning light sluiced into the large windows where Helen sat at a desk, taking tea and reading her correspondence. Her eyes were upon him, homing in with an intensity that cut him straight to the bone. Her curls were pinned up, and she was buttoned to the throat in one of her plain gowns—this one an unsightly gray—but the force of her loveliness hit him square in the chest just the same. He almost stopped to stare, drink her in, this deity he had somehow wed.
“Good morning, Mrs. Storm,” he said instead, not halting until he was at her side and the faint scent of her teased him. “How did you find your sleep?”
She stood, her expression wary and otherwise unreadable. How he longed to pull her against him, to kiss the soft skin of her neck above that stiff collar, to catch the luscious lobe of her ear between his teeth and bite.
As if she could sense the base direction of his thoughts, she clasped her hands firmly together at her waist, a shield of sorts. “Good morning to you, Mr. Storm. I slept very well, thank you.”
She waited politely for him to reveal the reason for his abrupt invasion of her territory. Perhaps she was that eager for him to leave her to her letters and her cooling tea. Very well. He had earned her aloofness, her disdain, her mistrust. But he would earn back everything he’d lost. He would peel away the layers she’d built in his absence and find the Helen he’d known before. That Helen was still there, beating within her like a heart.
He clenched his fingers at his sides to keep from touching her. “I have a meeting scheduled for this morning, a very important meeting that I believe will change a great deal for North Atlantic Electric. It will change a great deal for all the world, in time.”
“Oh? That sounds like a very important meeting indeed.” Her tone was noncommittal.
“I want you to attend the meeting,” he announced, then thought better of his delivery. “If it would please you.” Somewhere along the way, he’d grown unaccustomed to asking permission. For her, he would relearn it.
Her surprise reflected on her suddenly expressive face. “You wish me to attend?”
He smiled. “Yes.” And he did. He wasn’t merely inviting her because he wanted to win back her trust and respect. He was including her because she was intelligent and interested, and because it had occurred to him that she wasn’t so very different from him. I wanted to rely on myself alone, she’d said to him. And she had done so. She was not just good and kind, his Helen. She was also capable and brave and daring, and those were all qualities he sought from the people he chose to employ. Brave and daring people changed the world. They always had, and they always would.
“Why should you want me there?” she asked, her clasped hands tightening until her knuckles turned white.
He couldn’t resist catching those linked hands in his then, raising them to his lips for a kiss. Just one, and fleeting. “I believe you might find it interesting. I respect your opinion, Helen. You have a keen mind.”
Her cheeks warmed. A small smile tipped the corners of her mouth before she pressed her lips together to stop it from blooming in full. She didn’t tug her hands away from him, however, and he noted that small victory with satisfaction.
“Won’t your business associates find it odd to have a woman in their midst?”
Perhaps, but if he spent much time fretting over the opinions of others, he wouldn’t even walk out the door in the mornings. He certainly never would have pursued electricity, a concept that the masses had initially found as perplexing and foreign as Greek gods. “Hang them. I don’t care if they do. I want you there, if you want to be there, that is.”
For Helen’s sake, he was making an effort to be less demanding. Arrogant, she had called him. With a temperament worse than a surly bear. Like the machines he dissected and reassembled, her opinion of him too could be made better. He was doing his damnedest.
“Very well,” she agreed. “I will join you, Mr. Storm.”
Theo began rustling and cooing in his bassinet, announcing that he’d risen from his morning nap. Levi kissed Helen’s hands again. “Thank you, Mrs. Storm.”
While he was tempted to linger, draw her close, nibble her ear, lick the pulse beating at her throat, he did not. He wouldn’t press her. He had a lifetime to do penance, to make her realize he was worthy enough to be her husband, to be by her side. So instead, he crossed the room to pick up his son, who blinked up at him like an owl. His cherubic cheeks gave him the look of a Renaissance angel.
“Good morning to you, Mr. Storm,” he said to Theo, staring down proudly into blue eyes that matched his own. His chest felt full. Near to bursting. This was what he’d been missing his entire life, what he’d been pursuing in every business deal and real estate purchase, in every invention he’d chased, every technology he’d attempted to recreate, every machine he’d tried to understand. It had been this feeling of humbling, all-encompassing…love.
Levi stilled, looking at his son, this miniature version of himself and Helen melded into one. Yes, damn it, love. He’d been wrong about what he’d felt before, when he’d made love with Helen, and yesterday on the carriage ride following their marriage. It hadn’t been contentment at all. It had been love. Pure and true. Genuine and real. Jesus, how had he failed to realize it? How had he failed them all so utterly?
If he hadn’t been so damn stupid, so blind, he would have never let Helen walk out of his office and out of his life that day. He would have ignored his pride and followed her to the bowels of hell to convince her to marry him. He wouldn’t have learned of his son’s existence from a letter. Helen wouldn’t have lived a year in hiding, working her fingers raw and selling off her belongings. She wouldn’t have had to be alone. Hang it, he had wronged her. Badly.
I’ll make it up to her and you both, he promised his son with his eyes as he ran a finger down his plump cheek, not daring to say the words aloud. I’ll make this right.
Theo rewarded him with a large, toothless grin, and that was all the endorsement he needed.
“This, Mr. Storm, Mr. Stillwell, my lady, is our secondary generator,” announced the well-dressed, bearded man before her in a German-tinged accent. If either Mr. Gebhart or his confederate, the taller and slightly built Mr. Young, found her presence at their meeting with her husband odd, they hadn’t indicated. Not even a flaring of the eyes, no protestation. These were men of science, she supposed, so excited by their work that they cared not who their audience may be. Either that or they were intelligent enough to realize that a woman’s mind was worthy of respect and attention. Preferably the latter.
Mr. Stillwell, Levi’s man of business, was also present for the congregation being held in the workroom where Levi had recently demonstrated the phonograph for her. Helen had spent so much of her life being excluded that it rather startled her to find herself being spoken to directly, to be not just present at this meeting but included. As if she—her opinion—mattered. It was gratifying.
Helen stared at the contraption laid out on the table before her. Mounted to mahogany wood, it appeared to be little more than a lump of metal coils and rods with wires springing from it. The idea that this object could somehow perform feats beyond her ken fascinated her. “What does it do?”
“It transforms electrical voltage by stepping it up or stepping it down,” Levi told her. “This will make it possible to transmit power a great distance by stepping down high voltages before they reach their end user. No longer will our ability to electrify homes and factories and train stations be reliant upon individual dynamos as they are now. With the secondary generator, one powerful station can do the work of many.”
Electricity, like her husband, remained a bewitching mystery to Helen. How could a conglomeration of metal and wood propose to change the world? She looked from the second generator to Levi. His gaze was upon her, unflinching and so warm that she had to look away. He had looked at her as if�
�as if she were someone precious to him. As if she were someone he cared for deeply.
Impossible. Silliness on her part. Foolish Helen attempting to retake control. She turned her attention back to the safety of the inventors and their wood and metal machine.
Mr. Gebhart nodded, his mustache twitching. “Just so, Mr. Storm. While our secondary generator is by no means the first of its kind, we are certain that it is the best. Moreover, it’s the first that will make it possible to distribute electricity for industrial use. The secondary generator allows us to harness the power of alternating current and step it down before use, which in turn renders alternating current the ideal form of electricity. With the secondary generator, direct current method will be replaced by alternating current in very little time. Mr. Edison’s machines will become a thing of the past.”
“And North Atlantic Electric will make all of that possible, once you grant us your patent rights,” Levi concluded.
Mr. Stillwell didn’t appear quite as enthused as the other occupants of the room. He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, fidgeted with them a moment, before removing them altogether and frowning. “But there is inherent danger in the use of alternating current. What were to happen if the consumer touched the wrong component? Would he not be electrocuted?”
“I’m pleased you asked,” chimed in Mr. Young. “The principle circuit that supplies the secondary generator is closed at the limits, meaning that any component the consumer might touch would not possess enough volts to be a danger.”
“Just last year, our secondary generator featured in an exhibition using alternating current at the London Aquarium,” Mr. Gebhart added. “We powered over a thousand Swan lamps.”
“I saw the exhibition,” Mr. Stillwell said simply in a tone that made it clear he hadn’t been impressed.
Sweet Scandal Page 23