President Matthews looked grateful that she took his gaffe in stride. “Your father was a great man, but not the best steward of a budget. Gwen, I’m afraid the situation is dire. Eliminating departments is only a short-term solution. If your family does not reinstate their annual donations, the college will face bankruptcy within the next few years.”
It was inconceivable. This college was her entire world. She grew up here, went to college here, got married here. She intended to spend the rest of her life on these forty acres of ivy-covered buildings and intellectual progress. For eight years she’d been the wife of the college’s leading researcher, and she taught the introductory botany classes. She hosted faculty parties and cheered up students who sometimes flagged under the weight of demanding academic rigor. This sort of work was what she was born to do, not haggle over money or tangle with the bank.
“President Matthews, please understand that I have no influence over how my uncle and grandfather parcel out the Blackstone fortune.”
The only reason her father could pressure the bank was because everyone in the family felt sorry for him. The last bit of sympathy from her family’s banking empire had died with him, and now the college was gasping for breath. Tuition revenue could never keep their research-intensive programs afloat.
“The only thing that will prove the college’s worth to my family is if we develop some magnificent scientific discovery that will garner national attention and help blot out the . . . well, the other things my family has been associated with in the past.”
It was an elegant way of alluding to child labor, unsafe business practices, and union busting. Such ugly words. But those were things of the past, and the Blackstone Bank had come a long way since the tragedy that nearly destroyed her father.
It hurt to see the anguish on President Matthews’s face. He was still young, but the sprinkling of gray in his hair had increased in the past two years. He’d inherited a financial mess from her father, and it would take a while to repair.
“You’re doing a wonderful job,” she assured him. “You have my complete, unstinting support. Tell me how I can help.”
He gave her a reluctant smile. “I know you dislike leaving campus and dealing with your uncle, but if you could appeal to him to reverse his decision, it would be a godsend.”
Appealing to Uncle Oscar meant confronting the two things she disliked most in the world: lawyers and the snarl of downtown Manhattan. There was a reason she rarely left the college campus. This secluded haven in the Upper West Side was free of the congestion, noise, and skyscrapers that clogged downtown. Gwen would happily go through the rest of her life ignoring financial ledgers or the tedium of legal haggling if she could.
But if a woman loved something, she needed to fight for it.
“You can count on me,” she told President Matthews.
His whooshing sigh of relief underscored how important it was that she succeed.
Gwen left the safety of Blackstone College to confront her uncle and grandfather first thing on Monday morning. Tension coiled tighter with each mile as the carriage rolled farther into the heart of Manhattan, with its chaotic mix of carriages, trams, and automobiles all vying for dominance on the congested city streets. She never liked it here. The towering buildings blotted out too much of the sky, and it didn’t feel natural.
The carriage finally arrived at her family’s bank on the intersection of Wall Street and Devon. She rarely came here anymore and braced herself for meeting with her uncle.
“We’re here,” she said to the two bullnecked men sitting on the carriage bench opposite her. Anytime she came to the bank, she brought bodyguards. Zeke and Lorenzo had been with her since childhood, but after her father died, she reassigned them to other positions at the college. She no longer wanted to live in a protected bubble, but life could be challenging for anyone whose last name was Blackstone. Six years ago, an anarchist tried to assassinate her uncle as he left the bank. No Blackstone felt entirely safe entering or leaving the bank since.
Lorenzo helped her alight from the carriage while Zeke scanned both sides of the hectic street. She craned her neck to look up at the marble columns of the Blackstone Bank, which had occupied this block of coveted Manhattan real estate for over fifty years. The neoclassical building had six columns on the front portico to symbolize the strength of corporate America.
Lorenzo walked beside her as they approached the bank, and Zeke followed behind. A uniformed doorman held the steel-studded copper door open for Gwen and her bodyguards as they passed into the cool hall of America’s leading investment bank.
Her heels clicked on the marble floor and echoed off the coffered ceiling. This wasn’t the sort of bank that did business with individual customers, so there were no tellers stationed behind counters. All the important business took place upstairs, where analysts made recommendations for funding the nation’s infrastructure. Over the decades, the Blackstones had financed ports, canals, and railroads that crisscrossed the nation. They floated bonds to support cities, states, and foreign governments. It was said that France would have fallen to the Germans in 1871 if her grandfather hadn’t propped up their army with an emergency loan.
A clerk rushed forward to meet her. “Good morning, Mrs. Kellerman. Your grandfather and uncle are expecting you. Would you like tea or refreshments before heading up to the fifth floor?”
She turned to her bodyguards. “Why don’t you both relax and have something to drink?” Once inside the well-guarded confines of the bank, she had no fear of kidnappers, bombs, or blackmail.
Zeke and Lorenzo headed toward the lounge, while the clerk escorted her to the elevator. A uniformed attendant closed the gate on the elevator and cranked the brass dial to begin the lift. Even the elevator was grand, its marble floor inlaid with turquoise and jade. Her grandfather did nothing halfway.
The word grandfather usually conveyed a warmly paternal man fading into old age while occupying a rocking chair. Nothing could be further from the truth concerning Frederick Blackstone, who so disliked the implications of the word grandfather that he had ordered her to call him Frederick once she became an adult.
She pasted a serene smile on her face as she entered Frederick’s office. Velvet draperies framed floor-to-ceiling windows with a perfect view of the New York Stock Exchange only two blocks away. Frederick sat at his desk while Uncle Oscar stood by the window, his pearl-handled walking stick at his side as he glowered at her through his one good eye. A black patch covered the other eye, ruined by the assassin’s bomb six years earlier.
“Gwen,” her uncle greeted her tersely. “Still wearing your Rapunzel look, I see.”
She touched the long braid of blond hair draped over her shoulder. Most women in Manhattan pinned their hair up in fussy styles, but Gwen preferred a more natural look and usually wore it down. Instead of torturing herself with tight corsets, she favored the loose gowns that were coming into fashion among the artistic set. She was a free-thinking woman and loved the softer silhouettes of the Art Nouveau movement, but her uncle was far more traditional.
Still, she didn’t want to get distracted from her mission. She lifted her chin a notch and met her uncle’s single good eye. “I’ve come seeking a reinstatement of the college’s annual funding. The new president is doing amazing work, but he needs more time before he can run the college without a deficit.”
Uncle Oscar approached her, leaning heavily on the cane as he drew near. The bomb that ruined the tendons in Oscar’s right leg had also killed two innocent bystanders. The doctors had feared Oscar would never walk again, but her uncle’s indomitable will came to the fore, and he’d trained his body to adapt to its shortcomings. He could now walk as quickly as anyone, albeit with a distinctive lurch.
“We founded that college as a sop to keep your father happy,” he said. “It was supposed to add luster to the Blackstone name, but it’s never performed as hoped.”
“Not true,” she insisted. “Just last month Harper’s Magazine featured us on their cover. Our biochemistry department expects to have a treatment for tetanus within the next few years.”
