The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Either I take you home, now, Miss Finnegan, or I don’t take you home at all. And then your uncle will come after me with a shotgun.”

  Fiona giggled and blushed, understanding his meaning. She smoothed her hair, then cheekily offered him her elbow. He shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “I need a minute,” he said awkwardly, adjusting his trousers.

  Fiona looked in the direction of his fly. Even in the darkness she could see that the fabric appeared to be elevated. She giggled harder.

  “Really, Fiona! I wish you wouldn’t laugh,” he said, feigning outrage. “This is a rather humiliating position for a forty-five-year-old man of some worth and standing to be in.” He glanced down at himself, then whistled, full of admiration. “Lord! I haven’t had a hard-on like this since I was a schoolboy.”

  “Will!”

  “What? You did it!”

  Fiona, giddy with laughter now, kissed him again over his protests. He told her if she didn’t stop it they wouldn’t get home until morning. She felt happy, hopeful, and excited. She was going to fall in love with Will. She was certain of it. She couldn’t quite remember what falling in love felt like; she had always just been in love with Joe, but it must feel like this.

  As she and Will walked back to the carriage, arm in arm, Fiona told herself that she had found someone new, just as Rose Bristow said she would. Someone kind and smart and funny and wonderful. Someone who built gardens for her, even though she wasn’t rich and didn’t have a father in the produce business. Someone who would make her forget Joe. He hovered at the edges of her consciousness now, like a ghost in the gloom of a forest, but she was positive she would soon forget him entirely. He would be gone from her life, her mind, her memory. Really gone. Forever.

  Chapter 40

  Fiona looked at the address scribbled on the slip of paper she held in her hands, then looked at the number on the brick building in front of her. This was it: twenty-one Nassau Street. Hurst, Brady, and Gifford – Stockbrokers. During their dinner at Delmonico’s, Will had insisted she go to his broker’s for a lesson on the stock market.

  “Do you know the difference between the rich and the poor?” he’d asked her.

  “Yes. The rich have all the money,” she’d replied.

  “No, my dear,” he said. “The rich understand that money begets money. Take a portion of your profits, invest it wisely, and before you know it you’ll have the money you need to open your tearoom.”

  And today, three weeks after their dinner, she had a little more money to invest than when they’d first spoken of it, for Will’s prediction had come true. The papers had gotten hold of her impromptu audience with the Prince of Wales. Peter Hylton wrote that the future king of England could take tea in the grandest salons the city had to offer, but he preferred the wares of a pretty little tea merchant from Chelsea. And so did the dashing William McClane.

  Will had bristled at the fact that his name had been bandied about in gossip columns, and in such a salacious manner, but Fiona had no time to be offended; she’d been promptly deluged with customers. Young, fashionable types came in carriages, thrilled to pieces with themselves for daring to go slumming on the West Side. Maids and housekeepers came for their mistresses. And inquiries came from restaurants, hotels, and stores. Panicked, Fiona had run to the printer to order more boxes and then to Stuart to tell him to get her more tea. She’d had to hire two full-time girls to ring up purchases and one more to pack TasTea boxes. Fiona often joined them, shaking her head at the fact that she’d come all this way only to find herself packing tea again.

  Will was supposed to have accompanied her this afternoon, but he’d gotten tied up in a meeting. He’d sent his carriage with a note explaining his absence and telling her to go without him. Fiona hadn’t wanted to go today; she was too busy. But when he stopped by last night to say hello and had seen her stuffing bills she couldn’t fit into the night box into a jar, he’d put his foot down. “My broker’s. Tomorrow. No arguments,” he’d said.

  She walked up the steps, pushed the door open, and entered what looked like hell on a bad day. There was a great wooden desk at the front of the room. Its owner was standing on his chair, his back turned to her, yelling. Behind it, a wooden railing ran the breadth of the room, separating the reception area from the clerks’ desks. Visored men in vests and shirtsleeves sat at the desks, wiping sweat from their faces and rapidly dipping their pens in ink pots, scribbling furiously. Brokers ran back and forth, shouting at the clerks. Their noise, plus the sound of telegraphs and ticker tape machines, was deafening. She heard language more appropriate to the water-front than a place of business.

  One of the clerks, fed up, shouted, “But I just wrote that jackass’s purchase at ten!”

  “And he wants to sell it before it drops to five! Hurry up!”

  “Barnes!” a man yelled from the back of the room. “Hobson’s on the line. He wants your head for telling him to buy Sullivan. Says you’ve ruined him.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did I know this was going to happen? Tell him to go to hell!”

  Fiona walked up to the wooden railing, thinking how it reminded her of a fence, and the men inside it of wild bulls snorting and charging, penned up for other people’s safety. She approached the man standing on his chair. “Excuse me, sir,” she ventured.

  He ignored her. He was listening to a flushed, breathless lad who was standing in a huddle of men. “I was just down the exchange,” the boy said. “It’s a mess! People are screaming and yelling. I saw three fights break out –”

  “What about the Sullivan brothers?” somebody asked.

  “One’s in the hospital. Heart attack. The other one’s dead. Shot himself.”

  His news prompted loud expressions of anger and disgust.

  Fiona tried again. “Pardon me, is Mr. Hurst available?” She might as well have been invisible. The men paid her no mind. She was beginning to despair of ever getting anyone to listen to her when she felt a hand on her back. “Will!” she exclaimed, happy to see him. “I thought you couldn’t make it.”

  “I managed to break away. I haven’t got long,” he said. “My secretary’s got meetings scheduled back-to-back for me today. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.” He winced at a shouted obscenity. “What the devil’s going on here? Where’s Hurst?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get someone’s attention, but I haven’t been successful.”

  “Mr. Martin,” Will barked at the man standing on the chair. The man turned around. “There is a lady present. I expect you to behave accordingly.”

  “Sorry, Mr. McClane. Didn’t see you there, miss.” He turned, put his fingers in his mouth, and blew a piercing whistle.

  He had seen her. She hadn’t had Will with her at the time, though.

  “Lady in the house, gents!” Martin yelled. The clerks and traders craned their necks, saw Fiona and Will, and immediately quieted down. Mr. Martin picked up his telephone and informed Mr. Hurst that William McClane was here to see him. Half a second later, a tubby man came flying down the stairs to the upper floors, his hand extended. He welcomed them, then shouted at the office boy to bring refreshments for Mr. McClane and his guest.

  Fiona was getting used to this now, to the way the waters parted before Will. In the three weeks he’d been calling on her, he’d taken her picnicking on the New Jersey palisades with Seamie, to Rector’s for dinner, and to the opera. Her uncle had allowed her to go on the picnic without a chaperon – feeling that Seamie was enough of a third wheel – but he’d insisted that Nick, who was up and about now, accompany her to the opera. He’d heard untoward things went on in the private boxes there. And he made Mary go to Rector’s with them, for he’d been told it was nothing but a lobster palace, and fast. Wherever they went, people fell over themselves to please Will. Fiona had had to train herself to expect service when she was with him, and not to hand the waiter her plate, remove her own wrap, or pour the wine.
She realized again, as she saw Peter Hurst scramble to attend to him, what an immensely powerful man he was.

  “Peter, what’s all the commotion about?” he asked.

  “A takeover.”

  “Whose company?”

  “A shipbuilder’s in Brooklyn. Sullivan Brothers. Three of the major shareholders have been buying up stock, it appears. They consolidated today and ousted the family. Nobody saw it coming. It’s a dreadful business.”

  “They can do that?” Fiona asked, following the two men into Hurst’s office. “Someone can just take away another person’s company?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Hurst replied. “It’s a very ungentlemanly way of doing business, but it’s perfectly legal –– He was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. He excused himself, answered it, then handed it to Will. “It’s for you.”

  “What is it, Jeanne? Right now?” He sighed. “All right, yes. Tell him I’ll be there.” He handed the phone back. “I’m sorry,” he said to Fiona. “I’ve got to go. The mayor. The subway. The usual nonsense. I’m going to take a cab and leave you the carriage.”

  “We’ll take excellent care of her, Mr. McClane,” Hurst said.

  “Good. I’ll see you this evening, darling,” Will said, standing up to leave.

  Fiona followed him into the hallway. “Will, you look tired. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, it’s just that blasted man. I’m eager for the whole thing to be resolved.” He smiled. “As long as it’s resolved in my favor, of course.”

  “You’ll get the contract. I know you will.”

  He kissed her cheek, said he wished he had her confidence, and left.

  Fiona returned to Hurst’s office and listened as he explained the basics to her. Though none of it was hard to grasp, he talked slowly, as if he were conversing with an imbecile. Her mind wandered as he told her the difference between stocks, bonds, and commodities futures for the second time. She couldn’t help thinking about the commotion downstairs, about the two men who’d lost their company and the shareholders who’d taken it from them. It gnawed at her. There was something in it, something she was missing.

  “One moment, Mr. Hurst,” she said, interrupting him. “About the Sullivans … you said they never saw this coming. Didn’t they realize what was happening?”

  “No. But then, I’m sure they weren’t looking for it, either. It’s a rare occurrence.”

  “But it does happen …” she said, more to herself than to Mr. Hurst. The pieces were clicking into place now. A clear picture emerged in her mind: investing was a financial tool, a way to make money. But it could also be a tool of aggression – a weapon. Buy enough pieces of a company and one day you’d own it.

  “Oh, yes,” Hurst said. “Owners become incautious. Too trusting. Or too arrogant. They think they’re invulnerable.” He smiled sympathetically. “I see all this has you worried, Miss Finnegan. What a terrible introduction to the market. Please don’t let it distress you. The majority of transactions we handle are very secure. Let’s move on to better topics.”

  But Fiona wasn’t worried. Or distressed. Just the opposite. A new possibility was sparking in her mind, the very beginnings of a plan.

  Hurst droned on, telling her how her account would work, how to buy and sell, all about fees and commissions. He explained the newly devised Dow Jones Industrial Average in The Wall Street Journal. She let him rattle. Her mind was going a hundred miles an hour, alive with the possibilities of her plan – a plan that had eluded her for so long.

  “So, you see,” he said ploddingly, finally wrapping up his lesson, “you can follow your stock’s progress very easily just by looking in the newspaper. Let’s say you’d bought five thousand shares of McClane Subterranean yesterday at fifteen dollars a share. We see here that it closed today at sixteen and a quarter.” He picked up a pencil. “Now, that gives us …”

  “… one dollar and twenty-five cents per share multiplied by five thousand, which would give me a profit of six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. Goodness, Mr. Hurst, Mr. McClane is absolutely right. This is a good way to make money!”

  Hurst blinked. “Yes, it is. Now, if there’s anything else I can do for you …”

  “There is,” she said, sitting forward in her chair. “I’d like to buy some shares of Burton Tea. An English company.”

  Hurst frowned. “Are you certain that’s wise, Miss Finnegan? A transaction so soon? Mr. McClane led me to believe you were quite new to the market.”

  “I was. Thanks to your excellent instruction, Mr. Hurst, I no longer am. Now, about those Burton shares?”

  “One moment. I’ll need to look up the price.”

  Hurst disappeared into the hallway. Fiona picked up a stock certificate from his desk. It was for ten thousand shares of Carnegie Steel. It was only paper, yet it was a piece of a company. Soon, she would hold a piece of Burton’s company in her hands. Only a tiny piece, but she would make that piece bigger – even if it took her twenty years to do it. And when it was big enough, she would ruin him.

  “There we are, Miss Finnegan,” he said, returning to his desk. He glanced at her, then paused. “Are you all right? You look flushed. Is it too warm? I can open another window.”

  Fiona assured him she was fine. He told her that Burton Tea was currently trading at around twenty dollars a share. She asked for ten shares. It was a huge amount of money, and such a small beginning, but it was a beginning all the same. He pushed some papers across his desk toward her. Her hands shook with emotion as she filled them out. She could feel his eyes on her. Can he see it? she wondered. Can he see the rage inside? The sorrow? All the black, ugly things Burton put there? She finished with the papers, catching his gaze as she handed them back. She held it for a heartbeat, watching his eyes widen before he glanced away. He looked as if he’d seen something he would’ve preferred not to.

  Fiona thanked him for his help. Then she told him she would like to make a standing appointment with him every Friday to purchase additional shares of Burton Tea.

  “Every Friday? You must have tremendous faith in the stock. Do you know the chairman?”

  Fiona nodded. “All too well, Mr. Hurst. All too well.”

  Chapter 41

  “It’s going to be a boy, I just know it,” Isabelle, Will’s daughter-in-law, said.

  “How do you know?” his daughter Emily asked, looking up from her needlepoint.

  “He’s troublesome. Always kicking. Never stays still.”

  “What will you name him?” Edmund, Will’s youngest son, asked.

  “William Robertson McClane the Third,” Will Junior, Isabelle’s husband, said, putting a golf ball into an overturned vase.

  “That’s original,” Edmund snorted. He was sitting in a wing chair, one leg hanging over the side. He was home from Princeton for the summer and working in the city on the subway project with Will Junior. “I have a better name, Izzie!”

  “What?”

  “Edmund!”

  His brother threw a golf ball at him, missed and dented a side table.

  “Boys …” Will said absently, making them all laugh.

  “He thinks we’re still five,” James, the second eldest, said.

  “When you throw golf balls in the house I do,” Will replied, looking out the French doors of the large sunny sitting room where they were gathered to the rolling hills of his estate, the horses in the distance, and the Hudson beyond. He’d go for a walk if only he didn’t feel so indolent after his enormous dinner. Maybe in a minute, with one of his sons, or Richard, his son-in-law. The women would stay behind. Isabelle was in the last weeks of her confinement. As befitted a woman of her station, she no longer went out in public and saw only family and female friends.

  Will looked at his family and felt a deep glow of paternal pride. Emily had written asking him to come home to Hyde Park for the weekend. They wanted to see him, she’d said, he’d been away too long. He suspected they thought he was lonely without their mo
ther. He appreciated their thoughtfulness, but he would have preferred to be in the city with Fiona. He wanted to take her to Saratoga or Newport, someplace where they could spend a long, lazy July weekend together – even if it meant he had to invite Mary or Nick along. But then Emily’s letter had arrived, and Fiona, when she learned of it, told him to go see his family. She was so busy with the tea shop, she couldn’t have gotten away for an entire weekend. And besides, she’d promised to take Seamie to Coney Island on Saturday evening. The Munros were going, Nick and Michael, too. If he changed his mind about Hyde Park and wanted to eat hot dogs, shoot the chutes, and see the bearded lady, he was welcome to join them, she’d said.

  Will had shuddered at the very notion. There were times when he was reminded of the great differences in their backgrounds, a difference that sometimes made him feel self-conscious when he was in her element, but never seemed to affect her when she was in his. She carried herself with grace always and charmed everyone she met.

  He had begun to introduce her into society, just dipping her toes in the water, and she’d done so well. Two nights ago, he’d taken her and Nick to a party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in honor of the famed landscape painter Albert Bierstadt. She’d looked so beautiful. She’d worn a dress of teal green and a pair of earrings that looked like diamonds but were really paste and were borrowed from her friend, Maddie. The dress’s lines were spare, almost Grecian. She had a way, he’d noticed, of wearing the simplest of things to the greatest effect.

  She’d told him Nick had gone with her to pick the dress out. He was a bit jealous of the lad, though he tried not to be. He had asked her once if he was competing with Nick and she had surprised him by bursting into laughter. If anything, she’d said, she was competing with Nick. Usually he could tell, but with Nick he’d had no idea. The lad was not effeminate. There was his interest in art, and his sartorial excesses – the Liberty of London vests, the white linen suits, the heliotrope cravats, but Will had ascribed those eccentricities to his nationality. He was English, after all, and that explained a lot. Fiona and Nick were very close, inseparable even, and he knew from the tenderness they showed each other that he wouldn’t have had a chance with her if young Soames fancied women. To please her, he’d taken Nick up and was trying to further his career. At the Bierstadt party, he’d introduced him to William Whitney, Anthony Drexel, and J. P. Morgan, art collectors all.