Conor's Way (52 page)

"There's no gold in it. Your husband, it
appears, had not consulted mining engineers before he purchased it.
The mine is worthless."

How characteristic of James to die in a
worthless gold mine. It was the inevitable fate of a man who always
wanted to find the end of the rainbow. Again, she was the one who
had to deal with the consequences. She shook off the bitterness
that swept over her. "What do I have to do to keep Elliot's?"

"The terms of the loan James took against the
company

are quite clear. The balance and any interest
become due and payable ten days after his death. To keep Elliot's,
you have to pay off the loan. Within three days from now."

Mara felt sick. The principal was at least
five thousand pounds. She could never raise that kind of money in
only a few days.

She thought of all the work she had done. All
the careful planning, all the worry, all the sacrifices to make a
life for herself and become an independent woman. After four years
of struggle, Elliot's was finally solvent. The future had actually
begun to promise the security she craved.

Gone. In the blink of an eye, it was all
gone
.

***

Mara walked slowly through the now quiet
factory, moving between the machines and tables. Finch had
tactfully left her to grieve in private, but she found she could
not grieve. James was dead, but in her heart he had died a long
time ago. He had died by degrees, day by day, year by year. She
should feel sad, she supposed, but she felt nothing at all.

She should cry, but she remembered all the
tears she had shed during her first eight years of marriage to
James. Tears of heartbreak as a young bride who couldn't understand
why her husband was always leaving. Tears of farewell when she
again packed up everything to join him, and friends were left
behind. Tears of worry when it all fell apart, when the bills
inevitably came due and there was no way to pay them. Finally,
tears of bitterness when the fire came, when Helen had died, when
James had not been there.

Too many tears, washing away all her love for
him until there was nothing. Four years ago, she had run out of
tears, and she had not cried since. She could not cry now.

She had to think, she had to come up with a
solution to the problem at hand. In a few days, everything she'd
spent four years building would collapse, and she had no idea how
to stop it.

There was nothing else to be done. She had to
find a way to hang on. In the morning, she would go to Joslyn
Brothers and try to persuade them not to call in the loan. She went
back into her office and gathered the company's account books,
placing them in her worn leather portfolio. When she left her
office, she found Percy at his desk. He had not obeyed her order to
go home. He often worked late, and she knew he was underpaid for
the hours he put in, but she couldn't afford to pay him more.

Suddenly, she felt an overpowering urge to
confide in him, to ask for help, for advice. He looked up, and the
words stuck in her throat. She gave him a stiff nod of good night,
and left the factory, but paused a moment to glance at the sign
above the entrance: "Elliot Electrical Motors Company."

Not for long, perhaps. She turned away and
started for home. A stray kitten, its ribs showing plainly through
matted gray fur, hissed at her as it slinked by. She felt like
hissing back. She was in that sort of mood.

She walked to her lodging house next door and
heard the clock strike eight as she stepped inside. If only I had
the money to pay off the loan, she thought, starting up the stairs.
She shook off the thought impatiently. If only was a silly term, a
child's wish. She didn't have the money and all the wishing in the
world wouldn't give it to her. But the wistful words followed her
as she reached the second level of the three-story building and
turned to the door leading into her flat.
If only
...

Preoccupied with her thoughts, Mara didn't
notice the item on the landing until she stumbled over it. "Oh!"
she cried and pitched forward, dropping her portfolio.

After regaining her balance, she bent down,
rubbing her shin and trying to discern in the dim twilight from the
window at the end of the hall what had caused her to stumble. It
was a wooden crate filled with flat metal disks of varying sizes.
What was such a curious item doing in the hallway?

She didn't have much time to ponder the
question before a loud pounding began above her head. Startled, she
jumped at the unexpected sound.

Mrs. O'Brien must have let the rooms
upstairs. She hoped the new tenant didn't intend to continue that
pounding all evening. What was he doing?

The noise from upstairs stopped as abruptly
as it had begun. Mara picked up her portfolio and fumbled in her
pocket for her latchkey. Finding it, she turned toward her room,
carefully stepping over the crate. She came to a halt before her
door and frowned in irritation at the sight of it hanging slightly
ajar. Three days now, and the lock still wasn't fixed.

With a sigh, she pushed the door open and
stepped inside her room.

As rooms went, hers wasn't much. The ceiling
plaster was cracked, the mattress sagged, and the table and chair
were too rickety to be of much use. The view from her window was
the brick wall of Elliot's. She had always intended to find better
lodgings once the company was profitable, but there never seemed
to be any profits.

She had to take stock of her situation. After
setting her portfolio on the table and turning on the gas lamp, she
opened her window to let in the hint of summer breeze. She
carefully lit a small fire in the grate and put on the kettle to
boil water for tea. Then she pulled the information she'd gathered
from the office out of her portfolio, placing the account books in
neat stacks on the table along with pencils and paper.

Her door had swung open again, and she tried
to close it, but the latch refused to cooperate. The kettle began
to boil, and she let the door go.

After pouring out her tea, she sank down in
the chair, feeling its uneven legs rock beneath her. She pulled the
account books forward and began looking for some way, any way, to
scrape together five thousand pounds.

A little while later, she set down her pencil
and sat back, defeated. The cash-on-hand was meager, a tiny
fraction of what she needed to pay back the loan. The only
alternative was to sell assets, and there wasn't a single piece of
equipment they didn't need in the factory. She'd been over the
balance sheet a dozen times. The money simply wasn't there.

Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the
table and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers, feeling the
cool smoothness of her kid gloves against her lids. If she didn't
come up with the money, she would lose the company. If she lost
Elliot's, what would she do?

What occupations were there for a widow whose
only work experience was managing a factory? No one would hire a
woman for that. She lifted her head and stared down at her gloved
hands. She supposed she could become a typist, but she imagined
work of that nature would require her to remove her gloves.

Mara tugged at the fingertips of her left
glove and pulled it halfway off, staring down at the scars on her
hand. People would stare at her with pity in their eyes. They might
ask questions. She yanked the glove back into place, hiding the
scars even from herself.

What would she do? Visions of the future
hovered on the edge of her mind, a future of poverty, a future
born of the past. A dismal future, indeed, for a woman with no
prospects and little money of her own.

Desperation began to spread through her,
desperation and a hint of panic. She rose to her feet. Walking to
the washstand that stood in one corner of the small room, she took
her tin bank from its hiding place.

Tuppence for the bank, Mara
. Her
mother's words floated back to her from years ago.
At least
tuppence, every day
.

As a child, she had watched her mother put
two pennies in a tin can each day. She'd said if they did that
every single day, they'd eventually have enough to buy a home of
their own. But her mother had died in a rented shack in a South
Africa shantytown without ever seeing her dream come true.

Mara had vowed to do better. She'd married
James believing in his grand dreams, hoping to escape the poverty.
She'd made her own tin-can bank and dropped pennies into it with
all the optimism of a child bride. During the good times, it had
been easy. But during the bad times, which had come more frequently
with each passing year, most of the pennies had disappeared.

She dumped the money out of the tin can and
began to count what cash she had. The tiny salary she paid herself
covered her basic living expenses, but there had been little left
over to save for a rainy day. Now she was twenty-eight, optimism
had long since deserted her, and she knew tuppence tossed daily
into a tin bank added up to precious little.

She sat down and stared at the tiny pile of
money and thought of all the work she'd poured into the business,
ail the hours, all the hopes. All for naught.

She was so tired. She wanted to sleep, to
banish the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "Damn you," she
whispered to her dead husband, hoping he could hear her. "Damn you
and all your rainbow-chasing dreams to hell."

Pushing aside the papers and the pile of
coins, she folded her arms, rested her cheek on her wrist, and fell
asleep.

The sound was soft, but Mara awoke with a
start. She lifted her head to stare at the door through the dark
curtain of her bangs, which had lost their curl hours before and
now hung limply in her eyes.

The door was wide open. A man stood in the
doorway, and he was watching her. Paralyzed, she stared back at
him. Seeing a face of such flawless masculine beauty, she wondered
if she were dreaming. The gaslight reflected off his hair, tawny,
tousled hair that needed cutting. He stood with one shoulder
against the jamb, arms folded across his chest, utterly still. She
thought of golden eagles gliding on the wind, moving yet
motionless.

No, it was not a dream. In her dark dreams,
there would be no such man.

His eyes, the color of sea and sky, looked
into her, seemed to perceive and understand everything about her in
an instant. He tilted his head slightly to one side. "Why are you
sad?"

At the unexpected question she jumped to her
feet and pushed back her chair. She felt the knot of her hair
coming loose and her hat pin slipping. Her bonnet slid to one side,
and she wished she'd remembered to remove it when she'd come in
earlier.

She attempted to straighten the mess as she
backed away from the stranger, but her efforts only made things
worse. An ostrich plume fell awkwardly over one eye and tickled her
cheek. "Who are you?"

"Didn't mean to startle you," he said. "Saw
your door open. I don't think it shuts properly." He smiled
briefly, and in that instant everything in the world shifted, fell
into place, and became right. She sucked in her breath. Perhaps he
was a dream after all.

He nodded toward the table between them.
"Shouldn't leave your money lying about like that. This doesn't
seem to be the nicest neighborhood, I'm sorry to say."

Her gaze moved from him to the cash on the
table. She stared down at the money and reality returned, making
her feel foolish and awkward. She tried to push the feather out of
her face. "Thank you for the warning."

She swept the money into her bank. Clutching
the tin can to her breast, she gave him a nod of dismissal that
bounced her feather back over her eye. She hoped he would take the
hint.

He didn't. Instead, he came into the room and
circled the table. She stepped back, retreating until her shoulder
blades hit the mantel of the fireplace. She glanced down, but the
poker was just out of her reach. He came closer, and alarm bells
began ringing in her head. He was tall, and strong, and very
strange. "Who...what are you doing?"

"Your feather is broken." He reached out and
gripped the plume that dangled over her eye, then pushed it back,
out of her vision. "I don't know much about the latest fashions for
ladies," he added in a confidential tone, lowering his head until
his perfect face was only inches from hers, "but I don't believe
broken feathers are in vogue for bonnets this year."

He moved his hand, brushing the hair out of
her eyes with the tips of his fingers, a light touch that made
breathing difficult. She remained perfectly still, too terrified
to move as he tucked a strand behind her ear.

He took a few steps back, and she began to
breathe again. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, then gave a
satisfied nod. "Much better. Now I can see your face. No hair and
ostrich tails to get in the way. Have you ever wondered how the
ostriches must feel? Do they know their tail feathers are
decorating the bonnets of women all over London?"

She didn't know whether to laugh or scream
for help. "Who are you?" she asked, ashamed when her haughty demand
came out as a helpless squeak.

"I've frightened you." His voice held both
surprise and regret. "Terribly sorry. Didn't mean to. Allow me to
introduce myself. Nathaniel Chase, brilliant inventor and rude
terrifier of helpless ladies." He bowed, and the unruly strands of
his golden hair caught the light.

"How...how do you do," she murmured.

"Very well, thank you." He straightened,
shaking back his hair. Again he reminded her of an eagle in flight.
"Fair play, ma'am."

She frowned. "Sorry?"

"I've given you my name. What's yours?"

"Mara." She licked her dry lips. "Mara—"

"That explains it then." He nodded sagely. "I
see."