To Dream Again (18 page)

Although she was very busy, Mara found time twice each day to feed the kitten with milk she bought from Mrs. O'Brien. The little cat wouldn't let anyone pet him, including her, but he became a nuisance, following her, playing with her skirt, curling around her feet while she worked. She nearly stepped on the little fellow a few times, but she didn't have the heart to scold him.

Nathaniel was also very busy. He came in every morning long enough to check on Boggs's progress with the remodeling of the office and for Michael to tell him everything was running smoothly, then he disappeared for most of the day, taking his train set with him in a special case built for that purpose. He came to her office every night to walk her home, waiting for her if she still had work to do, but he never asked about her reaction to the children in the factory, and she was relieved. She had no intention of explaining her reasons to him.

Mara knew that he spent his days calling on merchants, and she wondered if he were having any success. She doubted it would matter. Her figures were confirming what she'd suspected all along. The cost to manufacture each train was very high, and she doubted he'd find merchants willing to pay such a price.

Two weeks after they'd made their bet, she copied all her notes and figures into a final report. When Nathaniel walked her home that night, she told him she was prepared to go over figures with him whenever he was ready. He didn't set a time, but merely said that he would let her know when he was ready.

The following afternoon, she returned from an errand

to find a note from him on her desk. She unfolded the paper, and a puzzled frown knit her brows as she scanned the scrawling lines.

Seven o'clock is the hour of our fate

When numbers tell the truth, so don't be late.

Seek out the toys and you will find

The way to have a meeting of minds.

It was a riddle. Mara read the note again, and an unwilling smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Didn't the man ever do anything in the ordinary way? He wanted to meet at seven o'clock. That much was obvious. Seeking out the toys must mean that the meeting was to be upstairs, since he kept all his toys up there.

She folded the note and set it aside, then checked her watch. It was just past six. She fed the kitten, went over her arithmetic one last time, gathered all her information, and at precisely seven o'clock went upstairs to meet with Nathaniel, her little friend tagging behind her.

But when she arrived, her partner was nowhere to be seen. She hadn't been up here in over two weeks, and she was astonished at the changes that had taken place. The painting had been done, and gaslight wall sconces had been installed. The partitions he'd ordered from Mr. Boggs were finished and blocked off most of the huge room from her view. Although she couldn't see beyond the makeshift walls, the part of the room in which she stood had been transformed into an office.

To her left stood Nathaniel's huge desk, piled with papers. In the center of the office, a table and chairs had been set up, and behind them, a doorway between two partitions led into the other part of the room. The wooden Indian stood beside the doorway like a sentry.

To her right, there was only empty space, with a placard on a stand that read in carefully printed letters, "Mara's Office." Behind the sign was a door, and she wondered why on earth Nathaniel would have a door put in that would lead into empty space. Confused and curious, she walked past the sign and opened the door.

A steel platform jutted out at her feet, surrounded by a rail. Steel stairs led down, zigzagging back and forth to the alley below. A fire escape.

Mara dropped her portfolio and let out a choked sound. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, and the sting of tears pricked her eyes as she sank down, the steel solid and cool beneath her knees. She had no idea how long she remained there, holding back tears and trying to accept the fact that Nathaniel had done something like this. He'd done it for her.

"Not the usual gift a man gives a lady," said a low voice behind her, "so I'm hoping it doesn't cast aspersions on my character."

She turned her head to find Nathaniel standing in the doorway. The light behind him kept his face in shadows, making his expression unreadable. Mara opened her mouth to thank him, but the only sound that came from her throat was a choked sob.

"You're welcome," he said and knelt beside her. "You know, crying women always make me feel like an idiot. If you'd rather have a handkerchief or a bottle of cologne—"

"I don't wear cologne." She sniffed. "And I'm not crying. I never cry."

"Of course not. Maybe you have something in your eye."

"Why did you do this?"

He shifted, leaning back against the brick wall and stretching out his long legs on the steel platform. "It's a bribe. I'm trying to butter you up in case your numbers are better than mine."

She smothered her laugh, but not before he heard it. "It won't work," she told him.

"I didn't think so, but it was worth a try."

"Don't be flippant." She turned on her knees to face him but immediately ducked her head. "It was a very nice thing to do," she said shyly.

He looked at her bent head. It always seemed to catch her by surprise when he did something for her, and he found himself wondering why. He wanted to ask her more about her life before they met, he wanted to know about her daughter and fires, but if he asked, she'd probably freeze up and go all starchy and their tentative truce would be lost. He didn't want to lose it.

He cleared his throat. "Yes, well, it's not quite finished. Boggs still has to install a door on the first floor. We won't have access to it from the mezzanine, so I've also asked him to put a ladder on the opposite side from the stairs. That way, if there's a fire, everyone, no matter where they are, can escape. Why haven't you put a fire escape in before now?"

"We weren't using this part of the building. Given that, I couldn't justify the expense."

Putting in a fire escape hadn't cost that much, but he'd seen enough information about the company to know the cost would have come dear. There had been almost no cash in the bank account. Nathaniel might not know a lot about balance sheets and income statements, but he knew when a company was barely surviving. They'd probably had to scrounge just to make the weekly payroll. She'd carried a difficult burden for a long time.

He thought about James and tried to understand why he'd left his wife and daughter here on their own. No man worth his salt would do such a thing. But then, Nathaniel was beginning to think James hadn't been much of a man.

"Penny."

He glanced up at her. "What?"

"Penny. For your thoughts."

He leaned his head back against the wall and stared between the rails at the flickering lights being lit across the city. "They aren't worth a brass farthing. I was thinking about James."

"Oh." Silence fell between them again, and it was a long time before she spoke. "Mr. Chase, I know that you agreed to go into partnership with my husband, but how much did you really know about him?"

"Not much."

"Did you know that he was..." She hesitated a moment, then she asked, "Did you know that he was not always honest in his business dealings?"

"I didn't know for certain, but I suspected it, yes. At the time, it didn't matter to me. What did matter to me was that he was excited about my ideas, he believed in them. He said he owned a company we could modify to make my inventions. I verified that information, of course, and insisted on having the controlling interest. I deemed those precautions to be enough, knowing that as long as I held the controlling interest and kept an eye on him, everything would be all right. And, despite my suspicions, I liked him."

She changed her position to sit beside him. "Yes, everybody liked James. He had charm, and you couldn't help responding to it. There was a time when I adored him." She sighed. "There was a time when I loved him."

"But love wears thin, I imagine, when the money runs out."

She shook her head. "It wasn't the money."

He saw her lower lip quiver. She caught it between her teeth and fell silent. He waited, sensing she wanted to say more.

"Mr. Chase, I know you think I'm cheeseparing and hard—" She stopped and raised a hand to halt his protest. "My father was a miner in South Africa, working the diamond mines for pitiful wages. I was the oldest child in a family of eight, and we were very poor. I married James when I was sixteen, and it wasn't only because I loved him. I wanted to escape. Can you understand that?"

Nathaniel knew all about wanting to escape. "Yes."

"James gave me dreams. Hopes. But his biggest dream was to become rich. I didn't care. Whether you believe it or not, money was never that important to me. I didn't care if we ever became rich. I just wanted us to be a family. I wanted a home and a husband who stayed around longer than a few months at a time. But James had wanderlust. Whenever we moved to join him, things were wonderfully fine for a while. He would talk about how, this time, things would work out. This time, he'd found his true calling. But..."

"But it never lasted," Nathaniel finished for her.

"No. He would begin to grow irritable and start taking long walks, hours at a time. Then he'd disappear for days. Pretty soon, he'd be packing, talking excitedly about some newfangled notion. Archaeology in Egypt, or sheep ranching in the Argentine."

"That must have been hard on you." He took a deep breath and broached the forbidden subject. "What about your daughter?"

Mara sat up. "I think it's starting to rain. We should go in."

She rose to her feet, picked up her portfolio, and went back inside. He followed her, closing the door behind him. He asked no more questions, but it hadn't escaped his notice that no rain was falling.

He walked over to his desk and began rummaging among his papers. "What do you think?" he asked, waving a hand about the room as he searched.

"My side's a bit bare," she said. "Does this mean I have no responsibilities whatsoever?"

"I'm sorry about that," he said, sounding genuinely contrite. "Boggs would have moved your things up, but you weren't here and we didn't know where—" He paused and looked at her, noticing the hint of a smile on her lips. "Mara, I do believe you're teasing me."

"Perhaps I am," she admitted. She watched him rooting through the things on his desk. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm sure it's here somewhere," he muttered. She doubted he'd even heard her question.

While he searched for whatever he'd misplaced, she decided to take a peek at his laboratory. She crossed the office and stepped between the partitions. A worktable had been set up to the right, and bits of machinery lay scattered all over it.

Mr. Boggs had built shelves behind the worktable, but they didn't seem to help keep things tidy. It was a mess. She was unable to fathom how Nathaniel could accomplish any work amid such chaos. She'd go mad if it were her.

"Here we are. I think this is it." She stepped out of the laboratory to see him lift a sheaf of papers from the desk and hold it at arm's length to study it for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yes, this is it."

"What?"

He set his notes on the table and pulled out a chair for her. "Shall we begin?"

Mara sat in the chair and allowed him to push it in for her. She placed her portfolio on the table, pulled out a pencil, and waited for Nathaniel to sit down, but he didn't. He frowned, patting the pockets of his waistcoat. "Where did I put them?"

She immediately realized what he was searching for. "Your spectacles are on your worktable. I saw them."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "that's where I left them. I remember now." He disappeared into the laboratory to retrieve his spectacles and Mara took that opportunity to glance at the papers he'd put on the table, but she had no time to satisfy her curiosity.

"No peeking, Mara," he told her, looking at her over the partition.

Guiltily, she glanced away as he returned to sit opposite her across the table. He put on his spectacles. "All right, show me what you have."

She placed the first sheet of her report in front of him. "This is a list of all the parts we can make here, and what it will cost." She began pointing with her pencil as she went down the columns of the report. "We can make the motors and the bodies of the trains here. To do that, we'll need—"

"Mara, wait." He grabbed the pointed end of her pencil to stop its progress down the sheet. He looked at her over the rims of his spectacles. "I know you went to a lot of trouble to gather this information, but you can give me the details later," he said. "For now, just give me the final figures. What will it cost to make the train set, including the locomotive, the tender, a figure-eight track, and two batteries?"

"Oh." Mara withdrew her pencil and began thumbing through the papers before her. "You don't want to see how I arrived at my numbers?"

"Not unless you cheated."

"I did not cheat," she informed him loftily. "I was scrupulously fair."

"We'll see." He waited for her to locate the sheet with her totals and set it before him. She pointed to the figure at the bottom of the page with her pencil, and Nathaniel looked down at the number. He smothered a jubilant shout only with great effort. Fighting to keep his expression as properly serious as hers, he lifted his head. "I see."

"It's very high, I know," she said, and he could have sworn there was a hint—just a little hint—of regret in her voice. "But I was fair. That's about as accurate a figure as possible."

"I understand." He reached for his notes, and pulled out the sales commitment from Harrod's. "This is Charles Harrod's order for five hundred of our trains, to be delivered by Friday, the 27
^th
of November." He placed it in front of her and pointed to the number at the bottom. "That's his purchase price."

"Three pounds!" Mara looked up at him, her eyes wide. "He's willing to buy them for three pounds each? But that would mean a profit of seventeen shillings apiece!"

Nathaniel couldn't help it. Her astonishment at the high profit margin was so obvious, he gave her a wide smile, aware that he probably looked as satisfied as the cat with the cream. "I'd guessed about fifteen, myself."