“Legally, yes. But we both know you’re going to fall in line.” She gave him a tolerant smile. “Once you’ve accepted your place, we can find you a respectable wife.”
He knew she brought up marriage to distract him, but he refused to take the bait. “Are you saying you agreed to the changes to force me into doing whatever it is you wish?”
Alma sighed. “You’ve always been too much like your father, and look what his experimentation got us. I should be in my own drawing room, but instead, I’m a hostess in my brother’s home. You cannot begin to understand the humiliation. I am merely trying to save you from a similar fate.”
Mack barked out a laugh. “So having progressive tendencies in a rapidly evolving world is the same as being reduced to middle class?”
Alma narrowed her eyes. “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. Horace has been more than generous by taking you under his wing. Without a child of his own, he expects whoever takes over his life’s work to uphold the family’s ideals. And those ideals do not align with imprudent quests nor frivolous investments.”
“Father didn’t know the investments weren’t sound—”
“Itold him they weren’t, but he didn’t listen. I refuse to let my son make the same mistakes.”
Mack’s control slipped. His father had been the most important person in his life, and it burned to hear anyone, especially his mother, speak ill of him. His father might not have had a head for business, but he had been kind and courageous. “That’s enough.”
Alma’s brows rose at his clipped tone, but he didn’t apologize. He tossed back the whiskey and returned to the drink cart. Just as he lifted the decanter, his uncle entered the parlor. When he spotted Emil on his uncle’s heels, he poured a generous three fingers and escaped to the balcony for a much-needed breath of air. He returned to the sitting area in time to catch the tail-end of Horace and Emil’s conversation.
“We’ll see what she produces,” Horace said.
“From what she said, there will be numerous speakers, so that gives us several local references.”
“I hope you point out the lack of decorum those women show by marching in the street.” Alma sniffed.
Mack halted. “What are you talking about?”
“Look who finally showed,” Horace said.
He gestured behind him. “I was on the balcony. What’s this about?”
“I sent you a memo,” Emil said. “Did you lose it in that mountain of charts on your desk?”
How did Emil know his desk was covered in charts? Was he his uncle’s snoop now as well, or did it have something to do with the strange man on the corner? His eyes narrowed to slits. “We’ll come back to the fact that you’ve been in my office, but stop prevaricating.”
There was the tiniest of pauses as Emil lifted his glass to his lips, but Mack caught it.
“I approved Mrs. West’s human-interest piece. She wants to write about some suffrage event in Oak Harbor this coming weekend.”
Mack had trouble processing the words, but perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. Ever since the day of the Button Factory fire, Winnie had avoided him. Something had happened that day between them—of that he had no doubt—but it could not be repeated. When she’d gone straight to the stenographer’s room every morning that week instead of to his office, part of him had been relieved.
He should have known her silence was not quiet acceptance, but impending doom.
“It’s a good idea, and time sensitive,” Emil continued. “We’re lucky we heard about it.”
Mack scrambled to find a reason to revoke the approval. “It’s a terrible idea to pay for a married woman to travel alone on a steamboat. We’ll be eaten alive.”
Emil didn’t need to know she was a widow. That bit of knowledge was his.
“Didn’t figure you for a fuddy-duddy, Mack. If the lady wants to go, why stop her?”
“Besides, she won’t be alone,” Horace added. “Emil, you’re also going.”
“What?” Mack and Emil said at the same time.
“Emil will go to Whidbey Island,” Horace repeated calmly.
“I don’t want to waste a weekend listening to suffragists spout off.” Emil’s lip curled. “Can’t I read her report when she returns?”
“From all accounts, this will be a gathering of major players from around the state. We can’t miss the opportunity to cover it, and we can’t rely on a stenographer without official training to handle such an assignment.”
