Beauty So Rare, A (A Belmont Mansion Novel Book #2) (21 page)

He eyed her. “I thought you didn’t like gardens.”

“I never said I didn’t like gardens. I’m simply not overly fond of flowers.”

“I believe your exact words were . . .
‘I simply don’t
see the need
.
’
”

She raised an eyebrow. “You have a good memory.”

“When it serves.”

She offered the tiniest of smiles, then moved to retrieve her satchel. He reached it first and, hearing the clomp of horses’ hooves, turned to see one of the Belmont carriages. She held out her hand as though to take the bag from him.

He shook his head. “I’ll carry it for you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and wasted no time in meeting the carriage. Her gaze flitted from him to the asylum and back again. “How much longer are you here? I mean . . . How long will it take you to put in the garden?”

She seemed almost nervous. Even disturbed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so honest with her about this place and its patients. “About two weeks or so. Mrs. Cheatham gave specific instructions to—”

“Mrs. Cheatham?” She paused at the edge of the walkway. “My
aunt
is responsible for this?”

He liked the way the space between her brows wrinkled when she
disapproved of something. “Yes, madam, she is.” Seeing Armstead about to climb down, Marcus waved to the man, indicating he would assist Eleanor himself. “Your aunt . . . now, there’s a woman who’s fond of flowers.”

“Indeed she is,” Eleanor said beneath her breath, accepting his hand briefly as she stepped up.

A little
too
briefly for Marcus’s taste. In his experience, women often sent him signals through such a supposedly innocent gesture—by gripping his hand overlong or glancing seductively from beneath fluttering lashes. Or, from the more brazen, by leaning forward to afford him an ample view of their . . . womanly assets.

But not
this
woman. She seemed impervious to him. Or at the very least, indifferent.

It had been a long time since he’d looked forward to being in someone’s company as much as he did hers. There was something inviting and so . . . unforced about her. To say he found her charm appealing was a gross understatement, which probably should have sent a warning through him.

But it wasn’t the first time in his life he’d been attracted to a woman he couldn’t have. And he
was
attracted to Eleanor Braddock, despite her dissimilarities to other women he’d pursued. But that was just it. He wasn’t going to
pursue
her.

And she’d made it clear she didn’t wish to be pursued by him, even if he were free to pursue. Which he wasn’t. So . . . that was that.

“Thank you again, Marcus, for delivering the envelope.” She glanced past him to the building, trepidation weighing her gaze.

“Eleanor . . .” Holding the carriage door open, he leaned in. “I’m sorry if what I said about this place frightened you. That wasn’t my intent, I assure you. It’s simply that . . . what’s inside those walls is something no lady should have to witness.”

She gave a soft, unexpected sigh. Not a laugh really, because there was no humor in it. And again, a sadness slipped in behind her eyes. “I appreciate your concern.”

He closed the door but lingered, determined to draw a smile from her. “The roses I told you about, the ones I grafted for your aunt . . . one of the buds bloomed. But it wasn’t quite the right color. The others are set to open anytime. You should come by and see them.”

She nodded. Hardly the response he desired. Then it came to him . . .

“Don’t forget, Eleanor . . .” He leaned in again. “The tunnel is still there, waiting to be explored. I’d be happy to show it to you anytime.”

Slowly, her mouth tipped up on one side. And that was enough, for now. The carriage pulled away and he watched it go.

It wasn’t until later that night, after a dinner eaten alone at the boardinghouse, that he surmised why his thoughts turned to her with such frequency. For the first time in his adult life, he was actually friends with a woman, with none of the various
strings
otherwise attached.

He liked the thought of simply being friends, strange and unfamiliar though it was to him. And unlikely, based on past experience. But he didn’t want to think about his past, or even his future—beyond the next handful of months.

He especially didn’t want to think about the
strings
tying him to Austria, or his obligations to the House of Habsburg, or to Baroness Maria Elizabeth Albrecht von Haas.

Retired to his room, he picked up the still unopened letter on the dresser and studied the exaggerated flourish of her script on the front, then slid his finger beneath the closure and opened it. Multiple pages of stationery. No wonder the envelope felt thick.

Sighing, he sat back on his bed and scanned her always superfluous greeting. The baroness never used five words when she could use thirty.

He skipped on down.

You must know, Gerhard . . .

The baroness addressed him by his proper first name, which suited him fine. Until recently, only his mother had called him Marcus, the name he shared with his maternal grandfather, and that he’d declared as his first when arriving in this country.

I have been reading much about the Americas in your absence, and am quite fascinated with the description of this New World that borders the far side of the Atlantic. I am eager to learn more about its inhabitants—“colonial rustics” as your father describes them. You must find it terribly difficult to abide the smallness of life there among them. Indeed, I mourn the hardship you must be enduring.

Embellishment was her specialty, in so many ways. His sense of justice rose to challenge his frustration. The baroness wasn’t an altogether unpleasant person. She simply wasn’t the woman he would choose to spend his life with—if he had a choice. Which he didn’t.

In her defense, she hadn’t chosen him either, so they were in the same wretched boat. Only, judging from the tone and content of her
letters—including this one—she didn’t share his lack of enthusiasm for their future together. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Yet I realize that your leaving Austria for a time was not wholly of your own choosing. As your uncle predicted, the rumors about your brother have fallen to a hush. Come next summer and our glorious union as man and wife, that dark time will all be behind us. Forgotten forever.

He scoffed. Forgotten by her, perhaps. But never by him.

It hadn’t been his choice to tell her the details about Rutger’s death, but his father and uncle had insisted. Brides of arranged marriages—at least in the Habsburg monarchy—were schooled in family politics of this nature. They knew how to maneuver among society, how to drop hints, and how to nurture seeds of untruth.

And Baroness Maria Elizabeth Albrecht von Haas was a master of both.

I wish you would abandon this foolish notion with architecture and plants and return to Austria, to me, and to the grand future that awaits us. I often entertain the idea of—

Marcus bolted upright, her next words burning like a brand on his skin. Surely he’d misunderstood. The baroness couldn’t seriously be contemplating the idea of . . .

He exhaled, and forced himself to begin the sentences again.

I often entertain the idea of joining you, Gerhard, and of seeing that country for myself. However simple and unrefined it may be. I long to practice my English on the commoners. But I understand it is an arduous voyage, and Vienna—with all its pleasant society—is at its best in fall. We have so much which to—

The mere thought of Maria Elizabeth Albrecht von Haas stepping her dainty little privileged foot onto American soil—much less in the city of Nashville—made him shudder. Suddenly the vast ocean separating them seemed minuscule, then shrank again by half, and he hastily reached for pen and paper to author a prompt reply.

One that would paint a far less fascinating portrait of life in the Americas with its
colonial rustics
, and that would keep his
fiancée
firmly grounded in Vienna.

 16 

M
arcus straddled the thick oak beam, mindful of the height but even more so of the warehouse’s three-story ceiling only inches above his head. He hadn’t done this kind of work in ages and it felt wonderful. It behooved a man—even
the
boss
, as his crew called him—to keep his skills from getting rusty. Climbing was in his blood. He’d been raised scaling heights.

On the opposite end of the support beam, Tom Kender—a compact but powerful man, and one of his finest workers—mirrored Marcus’s actions, though with slower progress.

“I hate heights,” Kender whispered, more to himself, it seemed, than to Marcus.

“How high you are, Kender”—Marcus inched forward, concentrating on his balance—“doesn’t change your talent or your ability. Only your perspective on it.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Kender squeezed his eyes tight. “Right now my perspective tells me that if I
do
fall, it
is
gonna matter how high I am. Or was.”

Marcus laughed, partly in the hope of easing the man’s nerves, but also because Kender’s remark sounded much like one he’d uttered himself years earlier. To his grandfather.

His thoughts turned to the man after whom he’d been named. He’d been just a boy when his maternal grandfather had first taken him into the Alps. Little had he known then that those summer trips—time spent climbing the peaks and traversing the heights, quoting Tennyson to each other around the fire at night, and then falling asleep beneath a thick blanket of stars—would so influence the paths he’d taken.

Every brick laid in the foundation of a life, however meaningfully or haphazardly placed, shaped the whole. He could now see that fact
borne out in every branch of study, from mathematics to science, from economics to chemistry. Each part of the equation influenced the whole.

If only he’d realized that far-reaching truth as a younger man. He would have been more careful about
every
choice along the way, instead of merely those that had seemed important or self-satisfying at the time.

On the heels of that thought came another, for reasons he understood only too well. He wondered what Eleanor was doing right that moment. He’d seen her briefly at church yesterday, sitting in Mrs. Cheatham’s pew.

A few days earlier, he’d happened upon her on the grounds at Belmont, and she’d regaled him, in a rather caustic manner, with step-by-step instructions on how to make potpourri from crushed rose petals. Something she’d apparently been forced to learn during one of Mrs. Cheatham’s womanly gatherings, of which Eleanor apparently was not fond—no surprise to him—and he’d enjoyed every minute of her bitter diatribe.

They had plans to explore the tunnel together this Friday evening, and he intended to hold her to that agreement. In the way of
friends
, of course, he reminded himself.

He looked forward to meeting her father when he arrived, and already guessed that Eleanor, with her logic and sensibilities, likely took more after him than—

“You’re almost there, sir,” Robert Callahan, his foreman, called up from the warehouse floor. “You too, Kender.”

Marcus narrowed his thoughts and covered the last few inches to the midpoint on the beam. Positioned below, Callahan and seven other workers secured the ropes that held the new crossbeam suspended near the ceiling.

Marcus repositioned his leather tool belt, making mental note of where the mallet and spikes were so he could retrieve them without having to look down.

He peered across the beam that hung between him and Tom Kender and saw sweat pouring from the man’s face.

“You’re almost here, Kender. Another couple of feet. Don’t look down. Just concentrate on the beam right beneath you. That’s all there is right now.”

“What I’m concentratin’ on, sir”—the man’s breath came heavy—“is the big mug of ale I’m gettin’ right after work.
If
I live through this.”

Smiling to himself, Marcus called down instructions to the workers below as he maneuvered the heavy crossbeam into place.

“We’re almost there,” he yelled after a moment, estimating the remaining distance from the notching in the crossbeam to the starter holes they’d drilled beforehand for the spikes. “Callahan! Back to the right about six inches.” Marcus eyed it. “Kender, you good on your side?”

“Yes, sir. All good.”

“Lower it, Callahan! Slow and easy!”

“Slow and easy, sir,” Callahan repeated from below.

A trusted foreman was a hard thing to find, and Marcus was grateful to have found Robert Callahan. Callahan demanded the best and was respected by the men, yet could join them after work for an ale and fit right in among them. Something Marcus hadn’t quite managed to do yet. He envied that about Callahan.

With a solid
thunk
, the massive traverse beam connected with the support beneath them, and Marcus set to work hammering the spikes into place on his side.

“Life sure looks different from up here, doesn’t it, Mr. Geoffrey?”

Marcus looked over to see Kender holding tight to the crossbeam, the man’s gaze riveted to the ground below. “Look at me, Kender!” he commanded.

The man lifted his head, his eyes a little dazed.

“
Don’t
look down. Keep your eye on the work.”

Kender blinked and sat up straighter. “Yes, sir.”

Marcus slipped in another spike and positioned the mallet. But he sensed the need to keep the man focused. “So what made you volunteer to come up here today? Someone else could have done it.”

Kender exhaled. “If I tell you, sir, you’ll think it’s daft.”

“I doubt it. But if I do”—Marcus paused for effect, not looking up—“I’ll be sure not to show it.”

Kender laughed beneath his breath. “It’s somethin’ my papa used to say when I was a boy. I’d practically forgotten it, and . . . I don’t know why, but it’s come up again. A lot of things from early in life seem to be doin’ that these days.”

Marcus kept hammering, feeling as though the man had been eavesdropping on his own thoughts. He judged Kender to be a little older than he was, maybe close to forty, but Marcus could relate.

“My papa,” Kender continued, “used to always say, ‘Tommy, every day, boy, you need to do somethin’ that scares you a little. It keeps life fresh, and keeps you grateful.’ ”

Marcus nodded. “Wise man, your father.”

“Yes, sir, he was, in a lot of ways. Anyway . . . that’s why I’m up here now. When you asked for a man to join you earlier, I felt my hand go up. Almost like somebody else was raisin’ it for me.”

Marcus considered that for a moment, then handed Kender the mallet. “I appreciate your courage in seeing it through. And, for what it’s worth . . . I think statements like that, things people have said to us, tend to come back when we need to hear them most.”

Whether due to lingering nervousness or to the man’s strength, Kender hammered the remaining spikes into place in record time, then returned the mallet. “Mind if I ask
you
a question, Mr. Geoffrey?”

“Not at all.”

“What are
you
doin’ up here, sir? I mean . . . you got men to do this. You own the company. Why did you do it?” He laughed. “You’re the
king
!”

Marcus met his stare, that one word reverberating inside him. And like the mountain is clearer to the climber from the valley, so was the life he’d left behind, however temporarily. Might he actually be a better man without that life? And its . . . obligations? The question returned with surprising force.

But ever vigilant, honor and duty swiftly squeezed the life from the doubt and prevented it from taking root. He had no choice. He was a Habsburg. He
had
to return to Austria.

His answer to the man’s question came far more easily. “I do it for two reasons. First, I enjoy it. And second . . .” In his mind’s eye, he could see his father and uncle so well. “Because I think it’s wise for the man who is
king
, as you say, to remember what it’s like . . . not to be.”

Later that day, Marcus passed by “Eleanor’s building,” as he thought of it now. He glanced over, half hoping he might see her there. Then slowed his steps.

The windows . . .

Gone were the layers of grime and dirt. He cut a path across the street and through foot traffic to peer inside. He could actually see the interior and could have shaved in the window’s reflection, the glass was so pristine.

A
For Rent
sign stood propped in the windowsill. Good decision for the proprietor to clean the place. It should help with getting it rented.

Why Eleanor had a key to this property still baffled him. But in any case, the door was locked tight and the place was empty.

He headed toward the boardinghouse, but dreading another evening
alone decided to take a different route back—one that would no doubt prove a little painful and definitely frustrating. But he preferred to see the development in person rather than just read about it in the
Republican Banner
or the
Union and American
newspapers.

Four blocks and five minutes later, he stood in front of the plot of land he knew as well as the back of his hand. Anger and betrayal, stronger than he’d anticipated, gripped him all over again.

The land, once thick with clusters of pine, maple, and birch, had been leveled.
Every
tree gone, every bit of vegetation uprooted. Including the one-hundred-year-old poplar around which he’d proposed a garden be planted.

High above it all, stretched between two metal poles—both of which leaned to the left—hung a bright red-lettered banner proudly announcing:

COMING: NASHVILLE’S FINEST OPERA HOUSE

PREMIERE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATES’ NEWEST PROJECT

Marcus blew out a breath. As far as he knew this was the company’s
first
and only project.

Remembering the questions Mayor Adler’s son—Everett, if memory served—had been asking when he’d entered the mayor’s office, Marcus seriously doubted the opera house would ever be completed. Or if it was, whether the structure would stand long. Part of him hoped it wouldn’t. While the greater part of him knew that wasn’t what he should be hoping.

By nature, he wasn’t one who wished ill on others. But when it came to men like Augustus Adler—

“Mr. Geoffrey!”

Hearing his name, Marcus turned and searched the street. “Caleb . . .” He greeted the boy with a handshake, pretending the lad’s grip was painful. “
Schön, Sie
wieder zu sehen!
”

Grinning, Caleb only squeezed harder. “It is good to see you again too, sir.”

He saw Caleb fairly often now. Mainly in the bakery, which—judging by the paper-wrapped loaves of bread he carried under one arm—was probably where the boy had just come from. Marcus had also seen him at Foster’s Textile while his crew was there renovating the building. The boy had been on his way to meet his mother, who he had explained worked there on occasion.

Caleb peered up,
Kippah
atop his head as always. “What are you doing on this side of town, sir?”

“I decided to take a different way back to the boardinghouse tonight.”

“I stopped by Foster’s Textile yesterday. They said your work there was finished.”

“It is. We completed the renovation last week.”

“Where are you working now?”

Marcus nodded toward the end of the boulevard. “A few blocks north of here in a factory. Another renovation.”

Caleb’s shoulders sagged a little. “But you are tired of doing those. You said it yourself.”

This time, it was Marcus’s turn to smile. “Money’s still scarce for most businesses. And it’s less expensive to renovate than it is to build something brand new.”

Caleb nodded but said nothing. He peered up at the banner rippling in the breeze, then back again, a question in his dark eyes. “Before, when you told me you hoped to build something but did not get the chance . . . is that what you wanted to build? The opera house?”

Feeling “found out,” Marcus credited the boy’s astuteness, even while not appreciating it at the moment. “It is. But I’ll find something else. Don’t you worry.”