Betina Krahn (28 page)

What she had been working on was dark blue woolen, part of a pair of trousers. She sullenly snatched it from the table and thrust it into her lunch basket at her feet, then reached for one of a stack of bodice pieces stacked on the other side of her machine. Even without Cole’s insinuating
smile, Madeline would have been hard pressed not to make the connection.

She backtracked along the machines, looking at the color thread being used, and at the first machine where she found blue, she peered beneath the table at the woman’s lunch basket and pulled out a nearly completed girl’s dress.

“I believe the mystery of your dismal level of productivity is solved,” Cole said as he strolled past her and into the office.

But that was only half true. Finding the problem hadn’t been particularly difficult, thanks to Cole. The hard part would be coming up with a solution. The women looked warily at her, wondering what she would do now that they had been working on their children’s clothes rather than Ideal undergarments.

She told herself it wasn’t surprising that the women were spending most of their time making clothes for the children. Most of them weren’t accustomed to thinking beyond the welfare of their immediate families. But they were being paid to work for the Ideal Garment Company, and she needed to control her frustration and irritation before she could speak reasonably about it.

“You’ve been sewing a great deal but producing very few salable garments.” She paused, thinking. “It is of the utmost importance that we have samples to send to merchants and to individuals for endorsements. From now on, Mrs. Thoroughgood will spend her time exclusively in supervision—to be certain you have all the help you require.”

She could tell by their faces that they knew Maple would be doing more than just “helping,” and they resented it. Eager to make some concession, she added, “But since you obviously feel so strongly about the children’s clothes, you may continue to work on the children’s garments for the last two hours of each day.”

Ignoring the murmuring, possibly even grumbling, she turned and headed back into her office. There, Cole was
standing in the doorway in his favorite condescending male posture—arms crossed, chin up.

“That’s telling them.”

“If you don’t have anything to do, I can certainly find something to occupy you,” she said, gliding past him to retrieve the letters from Emily’s desk.

“Has it occurred to you that thus far you’ve given away everything you’ve produced?”

“I consider it … a prudent investment.”

He followed her and perched on the edge of her desk as she folded letters and stuffed them in envelopes.

“Generosity, as a virtue, is highly overrated. And like most other highly vaunted virtues, it generally flows in only one direction. You give and give, until you can’t give anymore, and people will still be there with their hands out.” His voice lowered, drawing her gaze to his. “Where will your precious workers be, angel, when
you
need something?”

She studied his worldly eyes, disturbed by the suggestion of painful experience in his words and tone. “Is that what happened to you? You gave and gave … until you had no more to give?”

“Me?” In a heartbeat, his defenses were up. But then he took a deep breath and admitted, “I bled for my share of lost causes. In the end, they were all still
lost.
”

“In all those years at the bar, you never
won
? Not even once?” she challenged. “I find that difficult to believe.”

He considered that a moment, then produced a pained smile. “You do have a way of stripping things down to bare tacks, Madeline Duncan.” Then he rose and left the room without any further response.

For a few moments she sat thinking about what he had said. Suppose she reworded his multilayered question. Who hadn’t been there when Cole needed something? His family, most certainly. They had carelessly packed him off to live with tenants, then callously ignored his pleas for clemency for his foster family. But those were old hurts. Who in more recent
days hadn’t bothered to help when he needed it? Someone connected with the law he had loved and then left? Sir William? Someone in his firm?

More important still, what was it he needed now? And what would she have to do to help him find it?

Increased productivity brought problems of its own, Madeline soon learned. The blue-stitched bodices and knickers were set aside to be distributed to the women workers as promised. But what were they to do with bodices that were stitched hastily or crookedly, or that had misaligned buttons? Quality control was one problem she hadn’t anticipated. She had somehow assumed that the products would be perfect and desirable simply because she and her workers would want them to be and would work to make it so. It was the first real flaw in her well-thought-out system.

Short of walking the sewing floor herself, peering over the shoulders of her workers and directing every stitch, she had little control over the actual sewing process. She decided to offer a “piece bonus” for correctly stitched garments, and by the end of the third day she was marking down numerous credits in a ledger. Quality had improved drastically, but at some expense and only with her time-consuming inspection of each and every garment.

Mornings began earlier and evenings lasted later than ever now. She ate when Davenport appeared with a tray of food, and nearly always stumbled home well after dark and fell asleep in whatever place or position she landed. There was no time—even if she had been so inclined—for a midnight rendezvous in the kitchen.

Her greatest pleasure each day came when she stood by the front doors as the children entered and saw the new garments they were wearing. The boys liked to demonstrate how they could reach or run or jump in their new clothes, and the girls accepted her compliments and beamed with pride when
she commented on the ways their mothers had decorated collars or added cuffs to sleeves to give the dresses more individuality. More than half the children now wore Ideal garments, and when she had a few minutes free or her determination needed a boost, she went to the classroom door and peered in for a glimpse of blue jersey.

Then in the middle of one afternoon Daniel Steadman came rushing up the stairs to the office with a letter from London. When she saw the return address on the envelope, she opened it with trembling hands.

It was from Liberty of London. It seemed that when he was in London, Tattersall had done more than merely buy cloth; he had spoken to his friend at the store about Ideal garments. At the urging of Tattersall’s friend, the directors of Liberty had decided to look at her reform clothing with an eye toward offering it to their customers.

“A customer!” she cried, hugging the letter to her, then waved it ecstatically as she danced about the office. “And
Liberty
of all places. The premier mercantile establishment of London’s wealthy west side! If we can get them to offer our undergarments, before long a goodly number of the ‘upper ten’ will be wearing them—I’d bet the factory on it!”

Cole’s smile was a bit forced as he refrained from mentioning that she might just be doing that very thing. If Liberty’s approval meant success, their disapproval could also mean failure. But she had worked so hard to come this far, and the joy in her face was just too painfully sweet to disturb.

Madeline hurried down to the shipping room to personally locate tissue and pasteboard boxes, then set some of the cutters to packing up the garments stacked in the storage room. In a short while she had composed a letter to accompany the garments. She then oversaw the loading of several boxes into a wagon bound for the nearby village of Stonecrouch, from where they would be put on the next mail coach to London.

When she called her seamstresses and cutters together on
the sewing floor to announce the news, her buoyant mood ignited an explosion of celebration among her workers. They applauded, shouted, laughed, and hugged one another. Someone produced a mouth organ and a tune, and soon seamstresses and cutters were dancing up and down the aisles between the worktables. The commotion forced Tattersall to release the children from class to join in the excitement.

Madeline stood in the office doorway, watching, filled with mixed emotions at the disruptive celebration. Cole came to join her.

“Well, you won’t get another piece cut or another stitch sewn this day,” he said.

“I suppose not,” she responded with a tired smile. “But perhaps it will do them good to let off a bit of steam. They’ve had a great many changes to get used to in the last two weeks. Besides, there are only two hours left in the workday.”

He turned his gaze from the merrymaking to her. “If anyone in this place needs a change of pace, angel, it’s you.”

She looked up at him, his warm autumn eyes, and the handsome mouth, and for the first time in three days gave serious thought to what she must look like. Running a hand over her hair and finding it slightly frizzed, she blushed.

“Perhaps you’re right. I haven’t been out of the factory in daylight for days. Maybe a walk and some fresh air would do me some good.”

She smiled and left him to go down the rear stairs.

After a few moments he decided to go after her and offer his company. He could use a walk too.

The sounds of raised voices and metallic clanking and pounding drifted in through the open door at the bottom of the stairs. She slowed, puzzled by them, then quickened her step and was soon standing in the rear yard of the factory.

Her long-anticipated garden was a scene of total devastation. All the vegetation and the elevation and planting lines
between the factory and the large trees had been trampled or buried under Alp-sized mounds of dirt. In the center of the clearing was that massive rock covered with ropes and ringed with a trench fully four feet wide. On the far side, away from the factory, an earthen ramp sloped up from the bottom of the rock, and logs that resembled small trees were jammed under the side of the rock and up the incline. Roscoe and Algy were at the heads of two teams of massive plow horses straining at the ropes, trying to drag the rock up that slope. But even at the peak of their powerful efforts, the boulder didn’t budge.

For a few moments she stood frozen, unable to believe her eyes. When Roscoe and Algy spotted her, they halted the horses. Then they made their way toward her across the trench and mounds of earth.

“Well, miz … we almost got ’er done.” Roscoe beamed as he looked past her to Cole, who had come up behind her. “Right lucky we heard about them old E-gyptians an’ their pyreemids. They moved stones bigger’n this, I hear tell”—he winked at Cole—“usin’ these here roller-logs and just a few broad backs.”

“Egyptians?” she choked out, staring at the knotty tree trunks they had stuffed down the side of the rock. They were trying to implement some cockeyed notion they had garnered from God knew where about
building pyramids
? Emotion choked off all utterance. She began trembling as the full horror of it descended. They had torn up a perfectly promising garden, wrecked a number of natural flowers and shrubs, and cut down a number of small trees—all to move one cursed rock that would probably never budge!

She turned to Roscoe and Algy, helplessly enraged in the face of their blissfully genuine smiles. They honestly didn’t think they’d done anything wrong!

“It’s a wreck!” she finally blurted out. “A foul, disgusting mess!”

“It may appear so,” Roscoe said, rocking up onto his
toes. “But ye jus’ wait until we get Old Cussed outta there. We’ll soon have ’er filled and planted an’ blooming fine.”

“Just leave the wretched thing in there,” She spluttered, making frantic scooping motions toward the dirt piles. “Just push the dirt back in … put it all back the way it was!”

“Ohhh, no, miz,” Roscoe said gravely. “Don’t ye be fooled. That rock ’as to go. To make a proper garden, yer plants must put down plenty o’ root.” He wagged his head ruefully. “Can’t do that in rock. And if we wuz t’plant shallow, over the rock, the first dry spell, yer roots’d bake right out. It’d be a right desert out here.” He wiped his dripping face with a handkerchief. “We’d ’ave had it out today if that Rupert hadn’ta cut out on us. Dodgy bloke. Always said so.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “Somethin’ not quite right …”

A band of anguish was tightening around Madeline’s chest, and she suddenly felt light-headed. Her jaw was beginning to ache from being clamped, and a humiliating pricking had begun at the corners of her eyes. The idiots!
This
, on top of everything else of late …

She half scrambled, half slid down the pile of dirt where she had been standing, and struck off in the direction of her house. By the time she reached the corner of the factory, she was running.

“Takin’ it a might hard, ain’t she?” Roscoe said, watching her. “Well, that’s women for ye. Never can see the possibilities in a thing …”

“Damn and blast it!” Cole lunged and seized him by the shirt, giving him a powerful shake. “I ought to thrash the pair of you within an inch of your lives!”

He released Roscoe with a snarl of disgust. In his mind’s eye he was seeing the indelible image of Madeline staring at the devastation, the fatigue evident in her face, the tears collecting in her eyes, the tightly contained anguish that set her trembling from head to toe. He began to go after her, then halted.

He knew what would happen if he caught up with her. He would take her in his arms and comfort her, tell her things she wanted and needed to hear. She would look up at him with tears rolling down her cheeks … so sweet and so miserable, so loving and giving and good … looking like everything his battered heart had ever wanted in life … and he would plunge—headlong and emotions first—into an entanglement with her.

The signs were all there. He was already crazy about her. He wanted to see her, be with her, tease, listen to, or cross words with her. Experience, logic, and wisdom against it, he had already been nudging things into their “ideal” place in her blessed factory. With a word here, a glower there, a calculated presence in the cutting room or the shipping department, he found himself reminding Ideal workers of their obligations. If he went to her now, he’d be walking off his last bridge to safe, impersonal security. He’d be in over his head … no going back.