To Dream Again (14 page)

She spared a glance at him before returning her attention to the ledgers spread across her desk. Undeterred, he crossed the room and leaned over her desk to repeat his greeting. "Good afternoon."

She did not look up. "Good afternoon," she answered politely.

"What are you working on?" he asked, refusing to be ignored.

"Payroll. It's Friday afternoon, and I must have figures ready so that I can pay the employees on Monday."

He watched her add a column of figures and waited until she had entered the total at the bottom of the page before he spoke again. "Mara, I want you to stop working on payroll and put your ledgers away for the rest of the day. I need your help with something else."

That gained her attention. She looked up at him. "But I have to make sure the figures are correct before I go to the bank Monday morning."

"You can do that later." He circled her desk and closed her ledger. "Right now, you're coming with me."

She tried to open the ledger again, but he grabbed it. When she jumped to her feet and tried to reach for the book, he held it out of reach.

"I don't have time for this nonsense. I have work to do."

"No, you don't." He tossed the ledger on her desk and gently dragged her by the arm, away from her paperwork. "You are taking the afternoon off."

"What?" Astonished, she stared up at him. "I can't do that."

"Of course you can. We own this company. We don't have to be here all the time. That's one of the reasons why we made Michael the supervisor, remember? This particular afternoon, we aren't staying locked up in the factory. I have something very important to do, and you are coming with me."

She made a grab for her reticule as he ushered her toward the door. "And where are you taking me?"

He stopped and reached to the hook beside the door for her straw bonnet. "Outside is a cab waiting to take us to the West End," he informed her, setting the hat on her head.

"The West End? What for?"

"Some shopping." He studied her face beneath the hat brim, then pushed the bonnet to a rakish tilt and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. He gave a satisfied nod. "Much better. That way, it complements your face."

She ignored that comment and obstinately pushed her hat back to a properly dignified angle. From her reticule she took out her hat pin and secured the hat in place before he could make any other attempts to change it. "I don't have time to go shopping. Besides, there isn't anything I need."

"It's necessary that both of us go on this particular shopping trip."

"But—"

He reached out and pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her protest. The tip of his finger felt warm against her mouth, and she smelled the clean, spicy fragrance of soap. "Do me a favor," he said. "For once, don't argue with me. Just trust me and come along."

Again he gripped her elbow and walked out of the room with her in tow. They went down the corridor and across the production floor, pausing long enough to tell Michael they would be out for the rest of the afternoon. Nathaniel's grip on her arm did not relax until they were outside of the building, where he let her go and pointed to the cab waiting in the street.

"This is silly," she mumbled as the cab rolled down Holborn toward Oxford Street. "Why do you need me to go shopping with you?"

"Because I value your opinion. Just wait. We'll be there soon."

When the cab pulled up in front of Harrod's department store, Nathaniel jumped down and held out his hand to help her down. Then he turned to the driver and instructed him to wait.

"What are you buying?" she asked.

He shook his head and started toward the entrance doors. "Nothing."

She sighed and followed him. "I don't understand why you always talk in riddles."

"Don't you like riddles, Mara?"

She didn't answer that. "I thought you said we were shopping."

"We are. I believe it's called window shopping."

When they entered the huge building, Nathaniel passed by the grocery, haberdashery, and dress materials, making for the stairs to the upper floors. She followed, more puzzled than ever.

A few moments later, she found herself following him into the toy department on the first floor. She came to a halt. "You want to look at toys?"

He grinned and leaned down to whisper in her ear, "It's called studying the competition. Let's have a look around, shall we?"

Waving the sales clerks aside, he proceeded to walk amid the tables and shelves of brightly painted toys. Mara followed, wondering why on earth he'd brought her along. She knew nothing about toys. He went straight to the trains located at the far end of the room.

Mara paused beside him. She watched as he pulled his spectacles from his jacket pocket and put them on. Then he lifted a locomotive in his hands, staring intently at the solid brass construction. "A dribbler," he commented. "Good design, very high quality, but damned expensive to make."

"Why is it called a dribbler?"

"It's steam powered. When the train moves across the floor, it leaves dribbles of water all over the place. An unfortunate problem with steam," he added, setting the locomotive back down.

He picked up another. "Well, well, well," he said to himself. "Adrian, your trains are pitiful."

"This is one of your brother's trains?" She frowned. "It looks all right. What's wrong with it?"

"Everything. This train has the same design my grandfather used. It's outdated." He ran one finger along the top of the boiler. "He's using very cheap tin, and the riveting is poor. He's covered it with pretty paint, but this thing will fall apart in a matter of weeks."

He set the train back down and studied a few more of the locomotives made by Chase Toy Company, finding none of them to be of high quality. After examining them herself, Mara agreed. "Using such poor materials doesn't make sense," she said. "It never pays off in the long run."

Nathaniel smiled grimly. "My brother is relying on the Chase reputation, but he's never cared much for quality. Someday, it will catch up with him. I intend to be there when it does."

His expression suddenly hardened. It was so unexpected, and so unlike him, Mara suddenly felt cold.

"Why are you so determined to compete with your brother?" she asked.

Nathaniel's hands tightened around the toy train, and she watched as the ruthlessness faded away. "Making toys has always been my dream. Adrian makes toys, too. Competition is inevitable."

He set down the toy and moved a few steps to the right, but Mara remained where she was, staring after him, shaken by the determination she'd seen in his eyes.

"Ah," he said, "now we're seeing some interesting ones."

He looked over at her and smiled. It was that special smile, the one meant to reassure, to charm and cajole. The darkness she'd seen only a moment before was gone, and Mara wondered if she had only imagined it.

He studied these locomotives appreciatively. "The Germans know how to make trains. Look at the detail. And the quality is outstanding. I'll wager that ten years from now, the Germans will be our toughest competition."

Mara doubted they'd be in business to compete with the Germans ten years from now, but she refrained from saying so. She followed him silently as he made a thorough examination of every train in the toy department.

When he was finished, he pulled off his spectacles and put them back in his pocket. "Now that we've seen what everyone else is offering, tell me something. What is it about our train that makes it so different from all of these?"

Mara glanced back at the toys. "I don't know much about trains."

"Use your eyes. Open your mind, Mara."

She looked up at him. He was watching her, clearly waiting for an answer. She sighed, and started to shake her head. "I don't know," she said, "they all look—" Then an idea struck her. "None of these are electric."

He nodded. "That's part of it. What else?"

She studied the trains. "None of them have tracks." She turned to look at him. "They all appear to run on the floor."

"Exactly. Which means?"

She visualized Nathaniel's elaborate train. "Which means that they don't have stations, and bridges, and all the other fancy things."

"If you were a child, which train would you rather play with?" he asked as he headed for the stairs.

"Wait," she called, quickening her steps to catch up with him as possibilities began to take shape in her mind. "The other day when Michael and Percy were with you, I saw those pieces of track all over the floor," she said. "Michael said those pieces of tin were sections that fit together."

"Um-hmm," he confirmed. "Why do you suppose I designed it that way?"

"So that children could put the track together any way they wanted it." The full potential of the concept suddenly hit her, and she came to an abrupt halt on the bottom step. "So that children could create their own miniature railways!"

"Yes!" He stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned, spanning her waist with his hands and lifting her off the bottom step with a shout of laughter. He whirled her around in the air. "Yes, yes, yes!"

She gripped his wide shoulders to steady herself, and her answering laughter rang out as he spun her around. Bolts of fabric on display passed her in a blur of color, making her dizzy. She focused her gaze on his face, and everything else receded. In that moment, something stirred within her, a feeling she thought she'd lost a long time ago. Hope.

The room slowly stopped spinning. She felt herself sliding down the length of his body until her feet hit the floor. An awareness emerged in her as she could feel the muscles of his shoulders beneath her fingers, his strong hands on her waist, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her forearms. It rushed through her, then ebbed away, leaving her with nothing but the chill of her own fear.

Everything came into focus again, making her realize they were practically embracing in the dress materials department of Harrod's. She took a hasty step back and turned away, only to find three stout matrons and several sales clerks staring at them in horror.

Heat suffused her cheeks, and she stepped around Nathaniel, heading for the exit doors. He followed and fell in step beside her, but she could not look at him. She walked outside and started for the waiting cab, but Nathaniel's hand on her arm stopped her.

"Mara, now that you understand what I'm trying to do—"

"I want to go back," she said stiffly and pulled her arm from his grasp. "I still have work to finish."

He expelled his breath with a sigh. "All right."

Neither of them said much on the way back. Nathaniel made several attempts at conversation, but she kept her gaze fixed on the window and replied in unencouraging monosyllables. She didn't even look at him.

She was embarrassed, he knew, but there was more to it than that. She was afraid. He could see fear in the thin line of her lips, the hands clasped so tightly together in her lap, the rigid set of her shoulders.

For a moment, she'd been excited about the idea of making trains. But the instant she'd realized it, doubt had taken over and she'd withdrawn again. Mara Elliot was a woman who could switch from cool logic to deep insecurity and back again all in the space of two heartbeats, and there were times when Nathaniel had no idea how to deal with her. This was one of those times.

Let her retreat back into her shell if she wanted to, he finally decided. But he had no intention of allowing her to stay there.

Mara had a routine that never varied. Sunday morning, she did what she always did on Sunday mornings. She went to the baths, taking a fresh towel, a change of clothes, and the one luxury she allowed herself—lilac-scented soap. She also took her bundle of laundry with her to do while she was there.

Afterward, she took her clean laundry home and hung it to dry on a line she stretched across her room, then she went to early Sunday service. She was in her office by ten o'clock.

The neat stacks of ledgers and papers on her desk today depressed her. Because of her trip to Harrod's with Nathaniel Friday afternoon, she had been forced to spend most of Saturday doing payroll, which had put her an entire day behind schedule. One look at the desk told her how far behind she was. She hated that.

With a sigh, she sat down behind her desk and reached for the first item on the stack of papers to her left. She scanned it and frowned in bewilderment as her gaze ran down the list. Thirty brass wheels, one-inch diameter, with flanges. Four of same, one-and-one-half-inch diameter. Four sheets tin...

The parts list for the trains. She flipped through the thick stack of papers, finally coming to the design specifications. Michael had been busy. She looked closer. No, the nearly unreadable notes beside the diagrams were not in the same handwriting.
Only Mr. Chase could have such horrible penmanship
, she thought, remembering the sloppy signature she'd seen on their partnership agreement.

Thoughts of that document caused her frown to deepen, and Mara shoved the list aside. His trains could wait. The budget for September was a higher priority.