Luke analyzed the taste of his next bite carefully. There was a tang. But all tomato soup tasted tangy, didn’t it? He didn’t mind taking a hit of poison, but today would be a bad time to be ill, because he had a meeting with his sister, Caroline, after lunch. She was already worrying herself into a tizzy over him, and he didn’t want to get sick right off the bat. His stomach felt a little queasy as he finished the soup and pushed the bowl away, but maybe it was just his imagination.
A quick glance around the table showed other looks of uncertainty, but the men at the other table looked the same. They were all ill at ease, and surely the chemical preservatives wouldn’t affect anyone so quickly. It was probably just nerves getting to him.
The main course was a slice of roasted turkey breast, green beans, and rice in some sort of sauce.
“I’ll bet the chemicals are in the sauce on the rice,” Big Rollins whispered to him, and Luke had to agree. It would be too hard to infuse it into the turkey or the green beans.
“Please finish your meal,” Dr. Wiley stated from his stool in the corner. “The study can only be valid if each man consumes the exact same meals each day.”
“I don’t like rice,” Nicolo said in his thickly accented voice. “Americans don’t know how to make rice.”
“I’m not a big fan of rice either,” Princeton said.
“All of you have already stated you have no food allergies, so please finish everything on the plate,” Dr. Wiley admonished.
Everyone reluctantly dove in.
Luke finished quickly because his appointment with Caroline loomed. She wanted his insight on the latest proposal from the McMillan Commission, an ambitious plan to transform the heart of Washington with a huge open park. A group of congressmen, city planners, and opinion makers had been formed to advance the plan, and Caroline was serving on the commission. Few people were as well versed in Washington society as Caroline Delacroix, and she had been selected to help sway public opinion to support the plan. Lunch concluded without incident, and he headed out to meet her.
It was a bleak winter day with barren trees and a leaden gray sky, but Caroline looked splendid as Luke joined her near the proposed park. Her sapphire velvet cloak matched the blue of her eyes, and her blond hair was perfectly styled beneath the cloak’s wide hood. She held on to his arm as they carefully stepped across the mushy land surrounding the tidal basin.
“This is where the proposed memorial to President Lincoln will be built,” she said, gesturing to acres of swampy ground. “We’ll need to install a drainage system and build up the land. Someday we’ll clear these trees away, and you’ll have a clear view all the way from Lincoln’s memorial to the Capitol.”
“It’s going to be a tough sell to Congress,” he said. Half a dozen buildings would need to be torn down, and they would have to reroute the B&P Railroad tracks. There was also a thickly wooded arboretum with meandering trails and ponds that were popular with residents. The McMillan Plan would clear it all away. Two miles of land would be planted with grass, rivalling the great parks in the capitals of Europe.
“We are envisioning a huge, open park,” Caroline said. “It can be used in inaugural ceremonies or big festivals. We’llbuild a national archive and museums all along the mall. We’ll plant an alleyway of American elm trees on both sides of the park. Someday those trees will form a shaded avenue as people walk all the way from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial.”
The excitement in her voice was contagious. The vision she painted would be a celebration of American culture and history. Monuments would pay homage to their greatest heroes, and Caroline could help sell the idea to a skeptical public.
Although Caroline had once been his partner in mischief when they were growing up, she had become a sophisticated woman and had spent almost two years as the social secretary for the first lady of the United States. That came to an abrupt end with President McKinley’s assassination last September, but during those two years, Caroline became one of the most well-connected people in the city. She knew where the bad blood lay, how to flatter intransigent congressmen, and whose door to knock on for a favor. In the coming years, her insight would be priceless in helping the McMillan Commission navigate a political minefield and orchestrate a new plan for the city.
“How are you going to pay for it?” he asked.
“That’s still in the works. But the new mall will be—”
“Not good enough,” Luke interrupted. “The first thing you need to do is come up with a better answer to that question because it will be your biggest stumbling block. The other problem is that Washington has plenty of calcified elected officials who don’t like change. Take the B&P Railroad Station. They like it because it’s only three blocks from the Capitol, but your proposed new station is twice as far.”
“Six blocks isn’t that far,” she said defensively.
Sleet started falling, and they hurried to a nearby gazebo for shelter. Looking at the expanse of barren trees and waterlogged soil made it hard to imagine the future. The McMillan Plan,even if it passed Congress, would take decades to transform this mishmash of old buildings and chopped-up parkland.
The sleet turned into rain, and neither of them had brought an umbrella, so they were trapped in the gazebo because Caroline refused to put her new cloak in danger. Luke joined her on the bench and encouraged her to talk about her upcoming wedding, even though he’d rather have a tooth pulled than contemplate his dazzling sister’s marriage to the fastidiously sober Nathaniel Trask. She’d fallen in love with the Secret Service officer when they were both working in the White House. Gray was thrilled that Caroline had found such a responsible man to marry, but Luke dreaded losing his best friend and chief confidant.
It was a perfect example of his selfishness. He loved Caroline more than anyone on earth, but he dreaded the prospect of her marriage. What kind of howling void lurked in his soul to make him resent Caroline’s happiness? He didn’t like anything about the man she was going to marry. Nathaniel seemed completely wrong for her, but was it any odder than a Delacroix falling for a Magruder?
He turned to Caroline in curiosity. “Was Nathaniel off-limits when the two of you were working in the White House?”
“There were never any rules keeping us apart,” she said with a cheerful shrug. “His natural fustiness kept him at arm’s distance from me.”
He nudged her with his elbow. “You’re doing a terrible job of convincing me he’s the right man for you.”
“Was that what I was supposed to do?”
“It would help. I have no idea why you’re marrying such a stick-in-the-mud.”
Her laughter rippled out over the gloomy landscape like a ray of gilded sunshine. “Oh, darling, don’t you understand that there is something deep inside every woman that longs for a courageous, steady man she can’t intimidate? Nathaniel has myback. He is my foundation. We seem like complete opposites, but we fly together in tandem.”
We fly together in tandem. It was how he felt about Marianne. He barely knew her, but their spontaneous attraction was dangerous.
