All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)

by Maureen Lang

  “It’s too bad you don’t have dear Miss Pierson here to live with you,” Mrs. Naracott said. “At least two might be safer than one.”

  “Yes, I miss her every day of my life,” Miss Caldwell said. Had she purposely avoided acknowledging the censure in the other’s tone?

  “She was so sensible,” Mrs. Naracott went on. “Not to mention a formidable person in her demeanor and forthrightness. I recall her saying, though, Miss Caldwell, that she didn’t plan to move into the neighborhood for a few more years, allowing the two of you to establish friendships and trust first. What made you decide to move in so soon?”

  This time, not surprisingly, Miss Caldwell avoided any eye contact with Henry. “How many girls might be lost in the next few years if we waited?”

  “But if they haven’t the trust, as seems obvious from your lack of clients, perhaps the opening might have been better served by Miss Pierson’s plan.”

  Tobias raised one of his hands to attract the eyes now focused on an increasingly uncomfortable-looking Miss Caldwell. “If I may say so, Miss Caldwell’s research was thorough enough to compare experiences from two other such missions. It’s not uncommon to begin modestly, then multiply. I have no reason to believe that pattern won’t be repeated right here.”

  “Miss Pierson never expected immediate success,” Miss Caldwell added, sounding less confident than she had before the conversation took such a turn. “Patience was one of her many virtues.”

  One that, perhaps, Miss Caldwell lacked? Henry didn’t have to voice the question to see he wasn’t the only one wondering.

  The sun was barely setting behind the mountains by the time Dessa said good night to many of her guests—only the Whites and Mr. Ridgeway remained. And Mr. Hawkins.

  Like the servants whose roles they’d taken that evening, Mariadela and her daughters whisked away the dishes, insisting Dessa leave the cleaning to them. Although she’d spent the majority of her years doing those things for others, she knew that until the two bankers left, she had little choice but to continue playing the hostess.

  Ever since Mrs. Naracott had voiced her doubts, Dessa had thought of little else. Only when the conversation took on a lighter tone did she force herself to listen. They talked about an electric trolley that promised to revolutionize the movement of people all over the city. People needed no longer live, work, and die within the same small radius once such a marvelous thing came to town.

  With so few of them left in the parlor, Mr. Ridgeway asked William White to accompany him out to the porch to help affix the sign he’d brought as a gift to Dessa. Delighted that the sign would be hung so quickly, she hurried off to find a hammer, hooks, and nails. Then she moved to follow them outside.

  “No need to come out until the task is over, Miss Caldwell,” Mr. Ridgeway said. “The night’s surprisingly chilly.”

  She might have argued—she found the temperature quite comfortable—except William claimed he worked best with a partner but without an audience. So since she hadn’t the energy to go against both of them, she stayed inside.

  Unfortunately, with the girls and Mariadela busy in the kitchen, that left Dessa alone in the parlor with Mr. Hawkins. The very person she’d hoped to avoid speaking to, now that he knew he wasn’t alone in his doubts about her plans.

  She told herself not to be nervous; after all, he hadn’t rescinded the loan, and even though his quiet presence hadn’t given much of a clue as to whether or not he’d enjoyed his first social outing in years, he hadn’t been the first to leave. Maybe that meant something.

  Before she could ask, he spoke. “I told Tobias that you should consider opening Pierson House as a café. After two excellent meals here, I no longer take those words lightly. You could, you know.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Was that what he thought she should do with his bank’s money? “It’s the soul, not the belly, I’m hoping to see filled.” Then, because she didn’t want to risk reigniting the sour mood she knew him capable of showing, she added a smile. “Even with the best stove in the neighborhood.”

  He held her gaze, and for a moment seemed younger than he normally appeared. When he’d laughed earlier, so unexpectedly, he’d looked young then, too. Hiding behind that banker’s facade might be a man who could attract many a woman—well, at least ones unlike Dessa, those who hadn’t the benefit of a mentor like Sophie to show them there were other things besides marriage that a woman might reach for.

  “I saw you the other day,” he said without looking away. “At City Park. You appeared to be waiting for someone.”

  She nodded. So she hadn’t imagined seeing him there. “I’d received a note from a woman who said she wanted to meet me. But she didn’t arrive after all, much to my disappointment. I’m confident she’ll reach me again, though.”

  “There was at least one person here tonight, Miss Caldwell, who was surprised that you haven’t yet housed any of the women you hope to help. Has it surprised you, this slow start to your mission?”

  “Anything slow surprises me, Mr. Hawkins.”

  Henry let his gaze linger on her again, for the first time wondering if they had something in common. How many times had impatience gotten the best of him? Starting with the way he’d gathered his own investment money.

  But he didn’t allow those thoughts to progress. The differences between them were vast and varied. And the fact remained that though he might have offered restitution for his past, a man with a secret was still a man who couldn’t count on a secure future. Or offer to share such a tenuous future with anyone else.

  “I have faith Pierson House will be everything God wants it to be,” Miss Caldwell said. “Sometimes I try to get ahead of God’s plans, I admit, but we’re nearly always going in the same direction. I hope you aren’t worried about the loan, because I assure you this place will be filled with a force of needleworkers in no time at all, and each bed that’s used will inspire even more donations to keep us going.”

  He didn’t believe her for a moment, and right then he wasn’t sure she believed herself. But he could afford to offer her some comfort, thanks in no small part to having just partaken of another of her excellent meals. “I have no desire to foreclose on this property, Miss Caldwell.” He allowed himself another look around at the freshly painted walls, taking in the décor she’d cleverly added with a paintbrush. “This house is already worth more than what you paid for it, even considering its proximity to a less desirable neighborhood. I’d rather not take it back. If we counted you out, the only type of buyer to be found in this neighborhood would likely be a madam. Brothels aren’t the kind of business my bank wants to invest in.”

  “I’ll never sell to such a place!”

  The passion behind her statement surprised him, and he studied her for a moment. “Is it possible, Miss Caldwell, that you hate this neighborhood, after all?”

  “Not the neighborhood, Mr. Hawkins. Just the businesses that trap women inside of them.”

  Just then William White entered from the front door, eager to show Miss Caldwell where he and Tobias had hung the sign.

  Nonetheless her words—and her obvious passion against a major portion of her surroundings—left him wondering if she wasn’t so blind to this neighborhood’s faults as he’d believed.

  12

  DESSA PUSHED AGAIN on the bar that boarded the doors to the empty carriage house. It was either such a tight fit inside the latch that it stuck, or it had been sealed somehow. Most likely the doors hadn’t been opened in years; certainly they hadn’t been opened since she’d moved in. Glancing around for something to pry apart the wide double doors, sparing her fingers in the process, she found a slim and sturdy stick that might have been fashioned for just such a task.

  Fearing that even the stick wasn’t strong enough, she was about to give up when the board popped out of place. The doors sprang free, nearly hitting her in the face in their eagerness to open.

  She peered inside the old building, only half surprised to
see the sun lighting the area from above. Looking up, she spotted a hole in the roof just as she heard the scampering of some small animal in the opposite corner. A squirrel with fat cheeks flicked a curly tail. It ran one direction, then the other before disappearing under an opening beneath one of the walls.

  She needed to find some kind of suitable wood in here to add to the sign Mr. Ridgeway had brought. Looking around, not immediately finding any prospects, she pondered prying a wallboard loose if nothing else was available. One at the rear appeared to be hanging precariously already. Obviously the rickety shelter offered little protection from wildlife, so removing a board would make little difference.

  When the doors had opened so violently, they’d loosed what she guessed to be years of dust and dirt from their crevices. But now that her eyes had adjusted to the relative darkness, she realized the carriage house was far more orderly than she would have expected of a place with a hole in the roof and wild animals living inside. There was even a cot set off to the side, narrow but complete with a pillow and blanket. An old jacket was cast over the foot.

  The dusty floor was empty except for a rusted and abandoned hitch, a few broken pieces of wood that may have come from the roof, and a curiously placed bowl in the corner, near the spot where the squirrel had been hiding. If she didn’t know better, she’d say it had been storing nuts there, from the few left in the center. Didn’t squirrels bury nuts and seeds?

  Deciding against taking the wallboard—at least having it in place, even if it was wobbly, gave a brief impression the building was still sound—she fought with the doors to close them again, then brushed her gingham skirt free of soil as she made her way back inside the house.

  She would speak to Mr. Ridgeway about where he’d acquired the wood for the sign he’d given her. It was likely best to have her addition match his anyway, if she was to attract anyone with it.

  “Come in,” Henry responded to the knock at his office door.

  As expected, Mr. Sprott stuck his head around the door, though he did not step inside. “There is a Mr. . . . Smith . . . to see you, sir. He doesn’t have an appointment.” Then Mr. Sprott entered after all, leaving the door open behind him as he stepped closer to Henry’s desk. “He’s quite young and seems a bit nervous,” he whispered, “and asked to speak to the bank president alone. Should I send him off?”

  Henry did not need to leave his desk to give the visitor the benefit of a glance. He could easily be seen just outside the open office door, staring intently in the direction of the vault.

  The boy was slight of build and did indeed look as nervous as Mr. Sprott claimed, with one hand in his pocket and the other twitching now and then. He was narrow-shouldered and couldn’t be more than eighteen years of age by the smoothness of his chin. Though it was a somewhat shadowed chin. Dirt? Surely he was too young to have much of a beard. By the simple black cap that covered him from nape to crown and the rough cut of his jacket, Henry guessed whatever business he had with the bank was inconsequential at best. Another miner looking for an investor, no doubt. One so scrawny wasn’t likely to go far.

  Henry was about to tell Mr. Sprott to send the boy on his way when he spotted Miss Caldwell going into Tobias’s office.

  The sight of her simultaneously intrigued and alarmed him. There was only one reason he could imagine for her visit to his bank, and particularly to Tobias’s office. She probably wanted to borrow more money.

  “Send him in,” Henry told his clerk. If the boy wanted anything of the slightest interest, he could provide the excuse Henry needed to make his way into Tobias’s office before Miss Caldwell left.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Dessa told Mr. Ridgeway, who had immediately, even happily, ushered her into his office. “I’d like it hung just below the one you’ve already provided.”

  “And it’s to say what, exactly?” Mr. Ridgeway picked up a pencil.

  “‘Free Beauty Lessons, Tuesdays at Two.’ Would that be too many words, do you suppose? Can it easily fit on a piece of wood roughly the same size as the Pierson House sign?”

  “Oh yes, yes, I’m sure my man can make it to your specifications.” Still, he looked baffled. “But why would you want to offer such lessons? Won’t that . . . well, won’t it encourage women in the business you’re trying to discourage?”

  She leaned forward, allowing her smile to broaden. “That’s just it, Mr. Ridgeway. The beauty lessons I’m proposing will be to beautify the soul. Because after all, God has the power to make everything beautiful, hasn’t He? We’ve only to look at what He’s created to see that. I’m willing to stoop to whatever ploy I need to get them inside the door. How do you like my idea?”

  He stroked his smooth double chin. “Well, of course I have so little experience with such . . .” But before he’d even finished his sentence, he offered her a smile with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s worth a try, Miss Caldwell. I’ll have the sign readied immediately and come by to affix it myself before the week is over. Will next Tuesday be soon enough to offer your first lesson?”

  Dessa stood and extended her hand to him. “Oh yes, and thank you, Mr. Ridgeway! God has blessed me through you once again. I’m very grateful.”

  He led her outside his office, one hand politely at her elbow. “I’m sure you’re full of wonderful ideas, Miss Caldwell,” he was saying, but just then his gaze left hers for a spot beyond her shoulder.

  Dessa turned to see what he was looking at. She’d hoped not to run into Mr. Hawkins, but there he was, just emerging from his office. A shorter man, and younger—surely no more than a boy—held Mr. Hawkins’s arm at an odd angle, nearly behind his back. That Mr. Hawkins would allow such contact was curious indeed, until Dessa saw the desperate look on the young man’s shadowy face, glimpsed only when he twisted his head from side to side to see beyond the brim of a hat that was too large.

  “Stand back!” Though no one had approached, the boy yelled the words anyway, waving a glass vial above his head. His high-pitched voice alone betrayed his youth. “Everybody! Stand where you are. Don’t move!”

  Mr. Hawkins held out his free arm, palm down, as if to offer what comfort he could. Though he appeared stiff, on edge, he was not in a panic.

  The youth pushed Mr. Hawkins forward, and the banker obliged by walking steadily toward the vault. Neither Mr. Hawkins nor the boy with the strange glass vial ever looked Dessa’s way.

  Whispers sprang up in every direction. Mr. Sprott, the clerk Dessa had met on previous visits, stepped forward, but Mr. Hawkins shifted his palm upward to halt the clerk’s progress.

  “He has nitro, Mr. Sprott,” Mr. Hawkins said, far more calmly than the boy at his back had spoken a moment ago. His pronouncement sparked such stark terror in the mild clerk that even before the words registered in Dessa’s mind, she felt his fear. “You’ll want to stand still so you don’t startle this man into dropping the vial. All of you.” Mr. Hawkins raised his voice, but only in volume, not in alarm. “Just let him go about his business and it’ll be over in a moment. That’s it. Calmly.”

  Dessa watched, heart thumping, as Mr. Hawkins opened the bars that stood as the first deterrent to entering the massive vault behind them. During business hours the money was evidently rather easy to access, based on the mere moments it took Mr. Hawkins to fill a bag while the young man dangled the glass vial of powerful nitroglycerin—a substance that could easily bite away chunks of the Rocky Mountains to uncover gold and silver hiding within.

  What would happen if he dropped that vial here? Surely the vault, and everyone around it, would be blasted to the sky. Including Mr. Hawkins.

  Mr. Ridgeway, at Dessa’s side, took a small step forward—but only far enough to stand in front of Dessa. She peered around his shoulder to watch as the boy received a bag filled with notes and greenbacks—perhaps even some gold, judging from the heavy appearance of the bag.

  Then, in possession of what he’d come for, the youth turned on his heel and ran toward the bank door.

 
Only to trip and land sprawled on the floor not three feet from freedom.

  Dessa was sure she wasn’t the only one to close her eyes in sheer terror, preparing for impact. She raised her hands to cover her face—but nothing, absolutely nothing happened.

  Before even the first shriek sounded, Dessa saw Mr. Hawkins chase after the boy. The youth had barely regained his footing before the banker seized him round the waist, tackling him to the floor and directly into the small puddle of whatever innocuous liquid had been in that vial.

  The bag of money tumbled from his grip, spewing its contents much as the vial had.

  With the would-be thief already down, people gathered round, Dessa among them. A clerk gathered up the loot, replacing it in the sack.

  Mr. Hawkins’s jacket was askew, his hair fallen down over his brow, but he was the first to his feet. Somehow he managed to keep hold of the boy’s collar, and as the guard who evidently was just outside the building was summoned, Mr. Hawkins thrust the thief toward the confines of his office. They both disappeared inside.

  “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Miss Caldwell?” Mr. Ridgeway had clearly been disturbed by the incident, as evidenced by the beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip.

  “Oh, of course! But may I stay? It’s all such a blur. . . . I need a moment to catch my breath.”

  It wasn’t entirely the truth, since she’d left out her urge to assure herself that Mr. Hawkins was unharmed. Though why that was the first thought on her mind she did not know. How heroic he’d been, to catch the thief that way!

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “Come with me, if you like. It appears we weren’t in any danger after all.” Then, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and briefly rubbing his face, he followed the path the bank’s security officer took to Mr. Hawkins’s office.

  Henry could still feel the blood pumping madly through his veins, amid a swirl of leftover fear. Fear that was being replaced by relief, triumph, and anger.