Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  Love Takes Root series

  Read an excerpt of The Harlow Hoyden

  Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries

  Prejudice

  & Pride

  LYNN MESSINA

  potatoworks press

  greenwich village

  COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY LYNN MESSINA

  COVER DESIGN BY ANN-MARIE WALSH

  ISBN: 978-1-942218-04-3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Published 2015 by Potatoworks Press

  Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As a friend said during one of a dozen email exchanges discussing edits for Prejudice & Pride, it takes a small red-brick Georgian village to write a novel. Huge thanks to my villagers: Dawn Yanek, Mark Leydorf, Ariella Papa, Roell Schmidt, Jennifer Lewis, Karen Lanza, Ann-Marie Walsh, Joyce Kehl and Donna Levy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bennet Bethle is heartily sick of universally acknowledged truths. He appreciates the value of hard-earned knowledge and the usefulness of insights gleaned from years of experience, but the pronouncements his boss makes fall into neither category. They’re opinions elevated to aphorism wrapped in the shiny gloss of established fact.

  Today’s assertion, uttered while buttering a bagel with a spoon, because Mr. Meryton can’t find a knife, is simple: Any young woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a social committee to chair. Whether the heiress is actually interested in the organization’s cause—be it cultural, ethical or political—is immaterial to the designs of museum directors everywhere. At once impervious to reality and beleaguered by it, professional fundraisers have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement to other people’s money: It already belongs to them; it just needs to be routed to the correct bank account.

  Knowing that Meryton can never say in one sentence what can be vigorously enthused in eight, Bennet doesn’t glance up from his computer. Rather, he opens an email from the manager of community affairs at Venture Marts, confirms an upcoming meeting, enters the date into his calendar and files the message in the appropriate folder for future reference. The blond-haired man at the desk across from his also continues to type, and for three minutes, Meryton’s loquaciousness is scored by the muted clack-clack-clack of both their keyboards.

  And then suddenly he’s silent, and the cramped, little room fills with expectation.

  Now Bennet looks up.

  Meryton’s dark brown eyes, round like walnuts, are glittering with excitement and impatience. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Netherfield on the Park has been rented.”

  Bennet pictures the lovely beaux-arts tower along Fifth Avenue, with its high, arched windows and graceful balustrades, and wonders at Meryton’s sense of urgency. Although the Netherfield had the unfortunate timing to open three days before the stock market crash of 1929, it somehow managed to weather the Depression and in the years since has developed a following among an international clientele seeking an old New York flavor and elegant afternoon tea. Now it perennially tops lists of the best places to stay in Manhattan. “Oh, yeah, I read hotels were doing that now—renting rooms,” he observes. “It’s this newfangled thing called guests.”

  This flippant remark does little to amuse Meryton, who’s disappointed once again by his young employee’s inability to see the infinite in a grain of sand. When one hears the Netherfield is rented, one should immediately envision the magnificent three-story penthouse crowning the august hotel. In an instant, one should call up the layout of the thirty-three-room accommodation: the three bedrooms on the first floor, along with the library, living room, kitchen, dining room, and north and south reception halls; the second floor, with its grand salon that used to be the hotel ballroom, its additional two bedrooms and wraparound terrace; the third-floor bedrooms each with an adjoining dressing room larger than a studio apartment in Red Hook.

  “The penthouse,” Meryton says with breathless excitement. “The penthouse at the Netherfield is rented at last. It has been empty for ages.”

  The blond-haired gentleman, perceiving the significance of the development and uninclined to make jokes at his employer’s expense, leans back in his chair and stares thoughtfully. “Who’s rented it?”

  Meryton takes a deep breath, savoring the moment, and announces with obvious relish, “Charlotte Bingston. Yes, of the Boston Bingstons. Her father patented a process for mass-producing lithium-ion batteries. Reliable Energy’s third-quarter earnings were up fifteen percent, and its market cap is $1.2 billion. Charlotte and her two brothers are Bingston’s only heirs, and her net worth, not including real estate holdings in London, Telluride and Los Angeles, is conservatively estimated at $450 million.”

  At this concise breakdown of Charlotte Bingston’s wealth, Bennet smothers a smile. Even after seven years in the development department of the Longbourn—seven years of Meryton’s gross calculations and tabulations and speculations—he’s still amused by the way his employer follows fortunes as if they’re sports scores. Several times a day, he consults the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for shifts in ranking, and every morning he combs the obituaries of several major international newspapers for familiar names. There’s nothing he relishes more than the unexpected death of a little-known industrialist.

  As executive director of the Longbourn Collection, Meryton feels a keen sense of ownership of the institution he has overseen and safeguarded for twenty-three years. His tenacity is remarkable, and as much as Bennet admires his employer’s relentless devotion to the cause, he knows he’ll never be able to emulate it. His intentions are good, his commitment is sincere, his work ethic is strong and his faith in the mission is absolute, but at the end of the day, his job at the Longbourn is simply that—a job, not the sou
rce of all meaning in his life. For Bennet, it’s a satisfying way to cover the rent on his apartment and pay for drinks at Minetta Tavern and buy suits that don’t make him look like he just got off a bus from Michigan. Meryton knows this about his employee and has accepted, through years of the slow dissolution of hope, that he’ll never make a great executive director. A fine one, maybe. A competent one, without question. But he will never be truly great, and he’ll certainly never be transformative, for he just isn’t calculating enough. As Meryton once observed with a regretful sigh, Mr. Bennet Bethle has a heart where his spreadsheet should be.

  His older brother, John Bethle, who also works in the development office, is likewise too soft for Meryton’s comfort, but his physical beauty—the chiseled jawline, the thick blond hair, the lush pouty lips, the brilliant blue eyes—more than compensates for his lack of calculation. His perfection is startling and disconcerts even the most methodical mind. Before a donor gathers her wits enough to realize what she’s agreed to, she’s already sitting down with him in a meeting. To Meryton’s delight, the benefits are not limited to the female half of the species. Men are also caught off guard by his employee’s appearance, trying, he supposes, to find flaws amid the perfection.

  The first moment Meryton spotted John—hunched over the Xerox machine making copies of board minutes—he recognized the young man’s potential. Not even the harsh green glare of the old copier could dim his stunning beauty. What heiress wouldn’t want to hand over her checkbook to such an Adonis?

  Naturally, when he assigned the young man to the development department, run, at the time, by the sister of a successful movie director, Meryton left out all mention of Greek gods and refrained from uttering the phrase physical perfection. Rather, he spoke of the challenges of insulating an esteemed institution from the vagaries of fate.

  Money, he explained, is the only thing that can guarantee security.

  And the Longbourn Collection needs security. Housed in a Venetian mansion built in 1902 by art lover and industrialist Cyrus Reginald Longbourn, who made his fortune in steal manufacturing, the collection suffers from Disinterested Heirs Syndrome. None of the millionaire’s four great-grandchildren and ten great-great-grandchildren are the least bit interested in preserving his legacy, which they consider the folly of an old man seeking immortality. Setting up an art museum in a provincial backwater like Forest Hills! It had been an utterly ridiculous proposition in 1913, when the trust was established, and it’s an utterly ridiculous proposition now. And to expect the latest crop of Longbourns to continue to throw money at the crumbling old monstrosity, with its second-tier assortment of paintings, is the most utterly ridiculous proposition of all.

  The contempt is palatable but not entirely appropriate, as the assortment of paintings is hardly second-tier. The Longbourn has one of the finest collections of Impressionists in the world. Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, Degas, Sisley, Cassat, Morisot and Bazille are all represented and represented generously. Every year, hundreds of scholars, historians, critics and artists walk its rooms in awe and delight.

  The charge of being a backwater, however, isn’t as easy to dismiss, for few self-respecting New Yorkers relish making the extended journey out to Queens to look at art. Tucked at the end of a quiet, tree-lined street, the Longbourn is a long way from the glamour of the Upper East Side or the practicality of midtown. It does a brisk business with tourists, who don’t see the East River as the great impediment the locals do, but a healthy international business doesn’t equal local respect. Perhaps if the mansion were on Madison Avenue like the Frick, its heirs wouldn’t be so eager to sell it to developers.

  Or perhaps they would. As much as Cyrus’s great-great-grandchildren would welcome the prestige of an important Manhattan cultural institution, they would probably welcome the purchasing power of a large check more. The only thing saving the Longbourn from becoming eighteen luxury condos with granite countertops and steam compression dryers is a property-tax exemption, the generosity of Cyrus’s last remaining grandchild and the sweat of Mr. Meryton’s brow.

  As valiant as Meryton’s efforts are, they cannot prevail over the greatest hurdle of all: time. The clock is running down, and Meryton always hears the tick.

  This year, their benefactor, Henry Cortland Longbourn, turns 86.

  “Four hundred and fifty million,” Meryton enthuses again, his eyes focused on an unseen mound of dollar bills piled as high as the Flatiron Building. “John, you must go over there at once and introduce yourself. There’s no time to lose. The vultures are circling.”

  “Vultures?” Bennet repeats with a wry smile. “You mean the men and women who do exactly what we do at other institutions?”

  Meryton immediately dismisses the sentiment, on the grounds that nobody else does exactly what they do, and grumbles under his breath about inappropriate levity. Then, as he contemplates the competition, he begins to pace back and forth, his short, round frame—oddly matronly, as if he’d given birth to five daughters in rapid succession—maneuvering awkwardly around the desks, chairs and file cabinets that fill the tight space.

  An office is never as large as its mission.

  Now, there’s a universally acknowledged truth, Bennet thinks.

  “I bet you anything, Mr. Lucas from the Frick is already en route and Mr. King from the Morgan is hailing a cab as we speak. You must hurry, John.”

  Bennet glances at his computer and sees that it’s only nine-fifteen. “Isn’t it a little early for morning calls? Maybe John should wait until noon before bursting in on her.”

  “Do you think Mr. Lucas is waiting? Or Mr. King?” Meryton asks before knocking his knee against John’s desk.

  Sadly, bumping into furniture is an occupational hazard for all employees of the Longbourn, as the offices are housed in the former servants’ quarters, a warren of tiny rooms at the very top and the very bottom of the faux palazzo. The development department, with its array of file cabinets and secondhand color printer, is squeezed into a maid’s bedroom, while publications and special events share the coachman’s bedroom on the other side of the building. The curators are consigned to the basement, in the former kitchens that still smell faintly of coal and ash. Meryton, who, like the original owner of the home, rarely visits the scullery, likes to say the curators are in the kitchens so they can “cook up” their excellent ideas. Having heard this clever quip dozens of times, the curators can barely drum up a grimace at each new repetition—though, to be fair, they were hardly amused the first time Meryton uttered it.

  For his part, Meryton works in the old housekeeper’s quarters, a lopsided trapezoid dignified by a small closet and a pair of generous windows overlooking the back garden. Located next to development, the office sits at the top of a winding staircase far too narrow for the installation of an elevator. To partake of that modern convenience, one has to walk down two long corridors to the east end of the building.

  John and Bennet rarely make the trek; Meryton rarely does not.

  Rubbing the painful spot on his knee, the executive director insists they move on Bingley immediately. “I’m sure she’s an early riser. How can any woman sleep when she knows she has all that money to spend?”

  “Bingley?” John asks, while his brother imagines a horde of dollar bills jumping on a bed like unruly children yelling, “Spend me! Spend me! Spend me!”

  “Yes, Charlotte Bingston,” Meryton explains impatiently. “She goes by Bingley. Do neither of you read the tabloids? What do you do all day while you’re not comprehensively following the industry in which you’re employed?”

  This time Bennet doesn’t bother to hide his smile. Although there are many frustrations in his job as director of corporate giving, including the disconcerting fact that he has no staff to direct, he’s genuinely entertained by his boss’s antics. Meryton is one part CEO and two parts court jester.

  “Why don’t I send flowers from our garden now and follow up this afternoon?” John proposes calmly.


  Although this suggestion is perfectly reasonable, Meryton is appalled. “Flowers from our garden? Are you mad?” he asks, his voice growing shrill. “Can you not imagine how anemic our sad little bunch will look next to the Met’s towering bouquet of red roses or MoMA’s immense assortment of orchids?” He shudders with horror. “Absolutely not.”

  The shudder, like most things the fiftysomething Meryton does, is needlessly dramatic, but Bennet concedes his boss’s point: The Longbourn doesn’t have the resources to compete with the heavy hitters who play in the next league up. It does have a few natural advantages, though. “I think John is onto something with the local angle. We have some of the best bakeries and artisanal foods in the city. Quinny was just named the best small-batch brewery in New York by Time Out, and Whitestone Baking Co. has topped the list for best black-and-white cookie three years running.”

  “HBO recently aired a documentary on the Astor Pickle Factory,” John adds. “We could make a basket of Queens delicacies. Great idea, Bennet.”

  Meryton nods slowly, reluctantly conceding the wisdom of leveraging their local advantage. The Longbourn would never win on strength alone; it has to be wily and clever. “Let’s do it. Pull something together and have it on her doorstep by noon. Include a personal note offering a private tour of the collection at her convenience and an invitation to next week’s gala.”

  “Yes, of course,” John says mildly, as if Meryton isn’t treating him like a newbie who’s never courted a prospective donor before. At thirty, he’s been in the department for more than nine years and the director of individual giving for almost five. He knows exactly what to do. But he also knows his boss has a hard time believing anyone is as competent as he is. “I’ll also invite her to lunch in the trustees’ dining room.”

  “Yes, yes,” Meryton says, leaning against Bennet’s desk as the plan to win over Charlotte “Bingley” Bingston falls into place. “That’s a nice touch. And don’t forget to mention the committee she’s to chair.”