The Engineered Engagement

by Erica Vetsch

  Josie kept her breathing shallow. It sounded as if they’d moved to stand almost directly behind her chair. Should she interrupt?

  “Enough about your papa. Clarice, it’s been torturous. What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late.” The flat, fatalistic tone of Clarice’s voice caused sadness to weigh down Josie’s chest.

  “I don’t believe that. There has to be something. I’m going to speak to your father.”

  Where had she heard that voice before? It tantalized her, just at the edge of her memory.

  “It won’t do any good. Papa doesn’t change his mind. And anyway, there’s your job to consider. If you speak up, the Kennebraes will fire you.”

  He worked for the Kennebraes?

  “I don’t care. Clarice, I can’t live without you. I love you.”

  The rustling of movement and steps on the carpet, and Josie could tell Clarice was being embraced. In an instant she knew she shouldn’t be hearing this, that she was eavesdropping in the worst way. But how could she get out of the room without their knowing?

  “Please, Geoffrey, don’t. It only makes it harder.”

  Geoffrey, that’s who it was, the man who had been with Eli at the wedding reception.

  “Harder? I don’t see how it can be. I’d like to shake you, Clarice. How can you even dream of going through with this? I know you love me. You must.”

  Josie leaned over and dropped her book flat on the hearth. It smacked, and the sound ricocheted off the glass-front bookcases surrounding the room.

  Clarice squealed.

  Geoffrey rounded the chair, his hands fisted.

  Josie blinked and stretched like a cat waking up, then shook her head as if surprised to see a man before her. “Hello.” She put her hand up to cover a fake yawn. “Do I know you?”

  “Josie!” Clarice crossed her arms at her waist, her lower lip darting behind her teeth for a moment as she looked at Geoffrey then back at Josie. “Stop pretending you were asleep and didn’t hear a thing. I know you better.” She pointed to the book. “You never fall asleep over math.”

  Josie shrugged and straightened. She’d tried to give them a graceful way of saving face. It wasn’t her fault if Clarice didn’t take it.

  Geoffrey shoved his hands into his pockets, his face like a thundercloud. “So much for a private place to talk. Getting a Zahn girl away from her sisters is impossible.”

  Josie put her tablet on her math book and stood. “So I gather this is the man you met at the opera?”

  Clarice nodded and stepped closer to Geoffrey. “Geoffrey Fordham, this is Josie.”

  He nodded but didn’t take his eyes off Clarice. He looked like a man dying of thirst and she was a tall glass of water. “There has to be something we can do. I went to talk to Eli about it last night, but I had to leave before I punched him in the teeth.”

  “Why? What did he say?” The words leaped out before Josie could stop them. It really was none of her business. In fact, she should find a way to escape, but mention of Eli kept her rooted to the rug.

  “He’s so busy with his shipbuilding plans, I wonder if he even knows he’s engaged. All he could talk about was his ship and his math problems.” Disgust laced Geoffrey’s words. “He’s engaged to the woman I love, and he acts like he doesn’t even care.”

  “Math problems? What math problems?” Josie’s mind leaped up to chase the idea.

  “Who cares? Something about his new ship design. He had the gall to ask me to help him find a mathematician, when all I wanted to do was throttle him for treating Clarice so cavalierly.” Geoffrey paced to the window and back.

  Clarice stopped him from repeating his steps by placing her hand on his arm.

  He took it and tucked it into his elbow.

  “What did you expect him to do?” Josie asked. “He barely knows her. It would’ve made you madder if he’d have pretended he was in love with her. If Eli didn’t know the engagement would be announced, then he’s as much a victim as Clarice. Perhaps he’s coping the only way he knows how.”

  Geoffrey gave Josie a curious glance, and she realized how hotly she’d come to Eli’s defense. Embarrassment heated her cheeks and climbed into her ears.

  “I suppose you’re right. If he knew about Clarice and me, he’d feel terrible. We’ve been friends a long time. He’d never steal another man’s girl.” He patted Clarice’s hand and squeezed it close to his body with his elbow. “The question is, how can we fix this?”

  Josie tapped her chin. “I doubt it will be Eli you need to pacify. It will be Mama and Papa and old Mr. Kennebrae. They’re the ones who cooked up this batch of catastrophe.”

  Clarice pulled her hand away from Geoffrey’s grasp. “Stop it, you two. There’s nothing we can do. I can’t defy Mama and Papa.” Her blue eyes looked agonized, but her expression was resolute. She moistened her lips and crossed her arms at her waist again. “I’m sorry, Geoffrey. You know how I feel about you, but I cannot go against my parents’ wishes.” She didn’t cry, but her voice broke at the end. She turned and fled.

  Geoffrey took a step to follow her, but Josie stopped him. “Don’t. She’s upset. She’s like Papa. Once she makes up her mind, it’s awfully hard to change it, especially right away. Let her cool down. Maybe there’s a way out of this.” She plopped down in the chair and put her elbows on her knees, defying Mama’s nagging about posture that echoed in her head. Her chin rested in her palms, and she nodded for Geoffrey to sit in the opposite chair. “Tell me more about Eli’s math situation.”

  He perched on the edge of the chair and looked toward the door. “I don’t want to talk about math. I want to know what to do to get Clarice to change her mind and back out of this engagement.”

  “Maybe one is related to another.” An idea, or the ghost of an idea, flitted on the edge of Josie’s mind.

  “How?”

  “What you need now is time. Time for Clarice to get her courage up. Time to figure out what you’re going to do. If you keep Eli focused on his ship, he’d have less time to spend with Clarice, and you’d have more time to map out a plan of attack. All you need is a mathematician to keep him busy.”

  “And where am I going to get one of those? They don’t grow on all the bushes around here.”

  “How about me?” She spread her hands wide.

  “You?” Geoffrey smiled then quelled it, looking at her in a patronizing way she was so familiar with when a man found out she liked math. “This is a little more complicated than figuring out needed yard goods for a ball gown or converting a recipe for two to feed a dinner party of twelve.”

  Josie took a deep breath, then bent to her tablet, flipped through a couple of pages, and turned it to face him. “This isn’t exactly recipe conversions. Although I can do those, too.”

  He took the tablet and frowned at the rows of numbers and symbols. “What is this?”

  “It’s a line graph for flow dynamics. I was calculating the approximate rate of flow of water past a whaleback ship’s bow versus a conventional steamer’s bow.”

  “A line graph?”

  “A handy tool for solving complex equations.”

  “And you can do this? Nobody’s helping you?” He leafed through the pages.

  She shrugged. “I’ve always been good at math. I guess you could say I think in numbers. You could write to my tutor, Mr. Clement, if you doubt my abilities. He taught me for over two years, though most of it was theoretical study when Papa forbade me to go to the shipyards anymore.”

  “You could do what Eli’s looking for? He wants help calculating stress loads and hull bracing, and I don’t know what all.”

  Her mind raced with the possibilities. Helping Eli, helping Clarice and Geoffrey, and getting to work on an actual ship—real-world problems. A hint of doubt nudged her. Real-world problems required real-world solutions. And being wrong held consequences. But she wanted to try.

  “The dilemma will lie in keepi
ng my identity a secret. You’re a perfect example. No man is going to think a woman is capable of the complicated mathematics necessary for structural engineering.”

  “And how can we keep your identity a secret? He’s bound to notice you’re a girl.” Geoffrey tunneled his fingers through his hair in exasperation.

  “Then we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t find out.”

  Five

  Enough wooden scaffolding shrouded the Bethany as to resemble a log jam in spring. Eli mounted the ramp and climbed toward the deck.

  Jonathan’s footsteps scraped behind him. “Have you been to see her yet?”

  “No. Not yet.” Eli ignored both his brother’s snort and the nasty nudge his conscience gave him. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Too busy to go see your fiancée?”

  Eli climbed faster, as if he could outrace Jonathan’s pestering. The immense cleft amidships came into view. “She sure hit that shoal hard. The surf nearly broke her in two.” Eli stopped for a moment to survey the damage. “I don’t know how you survived.”

  Jonathan paused beside him and shuddered, though the August sun beamed down and a soft breeze flowed through the shipyard, cooled by the lake. “God’s mercy. A lot of good men didn’t survive that storm.”

  “Must’ve been hard, being so close to land and still so far from safety.”

  “The longest night of my life.” Jonathan turned away to watch a man scurry up a ladder near the smokestack, his shoulders bowed under an immense coil of rope.

  Eli sensed his brother was done talking about it. Both Jonathan and Noah had little to say about the events of that night, and Eli supposed he didn’t blame them. Things could’ve gone much differently during that storm.

  Jonathan crossed his arms. “You didn’t say when you were going to go see Clarice. Don’t you think you should make some time in your busy schedule?”

  “I will. Like I said, I’ve been busy.” Eli turned his back and headed up the next ramp.

  They reached the deck near the pilothouse, their footsteps echoing on the metal decking.

  “She looks about down to scrap iron right now, but just you wait. You won’t even know her when I’m done.” Eli patted the building plans rolled up under his arm.

  “You haven’t said just what you’re doing to change her.” Jonathan stuck his head into the pilothouse, his expression sober. For a long moment he stared at the tiny space, no doubt reliving moments of the previous November when the ship had grounded just outside the safety of the harbor, a victim of the worst storm in Duluth’s history.

  “Come into the chartroom, and I’ll give you a quick peek.” Eli shouldered the door open farther and stepped inside the wheelhouse. He ducked his head to enter the small room just behind and spread his papers on the chart table.

  Jonathan followed and leaned against railing guarding the steep steps to the hold.

  “Which dock job pays the most?” Eli reached for two books to weigh down the edges of the curling blueprints.

  “Lumber loaders,” Jonathan answered quickly. “Every stick loaded by hand. Hard work. They deserve the pay. One of the reasons we’ve steered clear of hauling lumber, though I suppose with your marriage that will change.”

  Eli grimaced and sighed. “Look here. This is a plan for a typical lumber hooker. One hundred sixty feet long, thirty feet wide. In order to make hauling lumber efficient, a shipper usually has a steamer and a tow barge, loaded to the gunwales, with lumber stacked on the deck and in the hold.” He loosened the edge of the plan, and it rolled across the table to reveal the sheet underneath. “But look at this. The Bethany is four hundred fifty feet long. Her capacity for lumber would be huge.”

  Jonathan scanned the drawing, already shaking his head. “The labor to load and unload her would erase any profit for filling her with pine. No doubt she’d hold a lot, but it would all be for nothing if you couldn’t turn a profit. And she’d be laid up in the harbor for days on every trip. It would take a full crew of lumber loaders several days to fill her up. Add another several days at the other end to unload her, and you’ve really bottomed out the number of trips she could make in a season.”

  Eli grinned. “Exactly. But that’s if you’re loading her by hand. What if I told you I had a design that would allow you to load her by crane, and in less than five hours?”

  “I’d say you’re barmy.” Jonathan straightened away from the chart table and crossed his arms. “But I’d be willing to listen to more.”

  Eli grabbed a pencil from the mug in the rack on the wall and, with a few strokes, sketched out his design. “Look, if we alter the deck hatches, it would allow enough access that an entire unit of lumber could be lowered at one time. Then, I plan to add a sliding storage system to move the lumber from side to side in the ship. By orchestrating the loading process, you could balance the lumber as you loaded it, lock it into place on the sliders, and voilà!”

  Jonathan scratched his chin, his dark eyes keen on the sketch. “And you’ve thought all this out? It’s really possible?”

  A grimace tugged Eli’s mouth, and he used the end of the pencil to scratch his hairline. “In theory. The math is a little fuzzy, but I’m working on that. It just needs a few kinks ironed out. I need to hit on just the right hatch construction that will open wide but close down to be watertight. But think what it would mean, not just to Kennebrae Shipping but to the lumbermen of Minnesota and all over the Great Lakes. Fast, efficient ways to get their lumber to purchasers.”

  His older brother looked thoughtful. “If it worked, it would revolutionize the industry.”

  “That’s what I aim to do. Put Kennebrae Shipping on the map as the leader in Great Lakes shipping. And this invention and this ship will lead the way.”

  A knock rang on the open metal door, and Gervase Fox stepped in. “Afternoon, boys.” His stare darted into every crevasse of the room, and he rubbed his hands together in relish. “Hope you don’t mind my coming here to see you. I was over at my own shipyard and thought I’d stop by to see how repairs were coming on the Bethany.”

  Jonathan stepped forward, all but crowding Gervase in the small space, shielding the chart table from prying eyes.

  Eli quickly picked up the books and allowed the drawings to roll up with a dry rustle.

  “Gervase, just the man I wanted to see.” Jonathan stuck out his hand. “I’ve been meaning to ask you to dine with me at the club. I want to hear all the news about this new ship you’re building at your yard. Word has it she’ll dwarf anything else on the lake. You’ll have to be careful you don’t build her so big you can’t get her through the Soo Lock.” He herded Gervase to the door, and before he exited, he shot a warning glance over his shoulder.

  Eli nodded. Their footsteps rang on the deck, and as soon as Eli could no longer hear them, he grabbed his plans and headed down the steps to the hold.

  A man in filthy overalls lay on his back half in one of the boiler fireboxes, his boots braced on the floor, his torso straining. Metal clanked on metal. The smell of coal dust, oil, and iron filled the air.

  “Hey!” Eli had to shout above the noise. He leaned over the rail from the catwalk.

  The man jerked then wriggled out of the hole. His expression cleared when he looked up at Eli. “Mr. Kennebrae, sir.” Soot streaked his large features and coated his bald head. “Just checking the fireboxes are still sound. I know it ain’t a job for a foreman, but I figured I’d feel better if I looked them over myself.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs.

  “Gates”—Eli rolled his papers tighter—“I want you to see that a guard is installed at the shipyard gates. Nobody in or out who isn’t a Kennebrae employee. There are plenty of shippers who’d give a considerable amount if they knew what we were doing here.”

  “Twenty-four hours?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day until this ship slides off the ways.”

  ❧

  Josie followed Grandma Bess and Clarice into the next gallery. Sunlight streamed fro
m high windows, bathing the room with natural light that picked out all the bright colors of the paintings on the walls.

  “Look at this one. I love the way the mischief shines out of that little boy’s eyes.” Grandma lifted her lorgnette and peered at a painting of a boy and his dog.

  Josie tilted her head to look down the long room and into the next. More paintings.

  Clarice passed to the next frame but appeared not to see the arrangement of fruit and flowers portrayed there. She refused to talk to Josie about Geoffrey or her engagement, wandering the house like a ghost. Mama fretted over her lack of appetite, and Grandma Bess pursed her lips and lowered her brows whenever she encountered Clarice in the house. The outing had been Grandma’s idea.

  “Isn’t it amazing? I had no idea there were so many women artists of this caliber.” Grandma consulted her catalogue. “And wasn’t it clever of the Duluth Women’s Suffrage League to bring this exhibition here to raise money for the cause? I hear Melissa Kennebrae headed up the committee and arranged for the gallery space.”

  At the mention of the Kennebrae name, Clarice started out of her trance.

  The now-familiar jab poked Josie’s heart. It had happened so often this week, she wondered—if she could see her heart—whether it would look as bruised and battered as it felt.

  “Just imagine, all these women striking out to make their mark in what has always been considered a man’s field.” Grandma’s cane tapped on the shiny wooden floor as she made her way to the next painting. “And they’ve done so with grace and dignity. Two qualities to be admired in any woman.”

  Clarice nodded, her carriage becoming more erect. “I intend to be a woman of grace and dignity, too. ‘Above all else, cultivate a gracious and courteous demeanor at all times.’ And I intend to make Mama and Papa proud of me.”

  Josie grimaced and tugged at her gloves. Another quote from Mrs. Morris’s book. Clarice was beginning to sound just like Mama. They practically ate that book for breakfast.

  “Another quality I admire, though, is bravery. These women are brave.”

  “Brave? How scary is it to paint pictures of pears and puppies?” Josie shrugged and edged toward the door. She had no more interest or talent for painting than she had for singing. She wanted to get home to see if there was any word from Geoff about Eli’s plans.