Poppy’s nose wrinkled. “I was being polite. Mrs. Lansing never misses an opportunity to inflict her music upon her guests, but it’s best to be appreciative in order to stay in her good graces.”
“I would like to be in Mrs. Lansing’s good graces, and her husband’s as well. Could you arrange an introduction?”
Poppy’s cool blond eyebrows arched as she stirred a cube of sugar into her tea. “There are others I think you would rather meet. The Vanderbilts are in town, and they always host such splendid dinner parties.”
“I would prefer to meet the Lansings. Can you arrange it?”
Poppy hesitated. “I just had tea with Mrs. Lansing last week, and it’s best not to wear out one’s welcome. How about we go for tea at the Waldorf today, and then a ride in Central Park tomorrow? Between the two outings, you will have a wonderful introduction to the city.”
“I will visit the park with you,” he conceded. “I will escort you for tea at the Waldorf and make polite conversation with the ladies. And in exchange, before two o’clock this afternoon, I will need you to arrange for me to meet Senator Lansing.”
Poppy rocked back in her chair at the note of command in his voice, but she recovered quickly.
“Not good enough,” she said. “I will need you topraiseme in front of the ladies at the Waldorf, and then we will share a box seat at Carnegie Hall, where we will be seen enjoying each other’s company.”
Dimitri’s respect for her gamesmanship inched up a notch, and he smiled. “My dear, you are a monster of predatory ambition.”
She raised her teacup in a toast. “I see we understand each other.”
They did indeed.
Natalia had a literal tower of paperwork awaiting her at the bank. She’d never been out of the office for more than a fewdays, and business had continued at a brisk pace during her three-week venture to the West Coast.
Despite the size of her large office, Natalia had furnished it with the dainty rolltop desk that once belonged to her mother. The memento from Galina was comforting, and when she lowered the top over her paperwork at the end of each day, the entire office looked sleek and tidy for the next morning.
Not today. Natalia returned to a mound of accumulated paperwork almost a foot thick on her desk chair. Soon she would sort it all into orderly stacks on the worktable: those needing an immediate response, those that could be delegated to her clerk, and reports to read later.
But the first order of business was to see her father about Dimitri, and Natalia dreaded the meeting. Dimitri was a wild card who couldn’t be controlled, and she needed to alert her father. When she left for the West Coast, she’d told Oscar it was to tour their investment at the port of Seattle, which she accomplished quickly. She’d made no mention of Count Sokolov until she wired him of their pending arrival, and he wasn’t pleased about it. He made that clear the moment she sat down across from him at the baronial splendor of his desk.
“Riding with a bachelor across the country without a chaperone can lead to unseemly gossip,” he said.
“We have more to worry about than unseemly gossip.”
Her father quirked a brow at her ominous tone but didn’t show the slightest hint of anger. When they discussed business, he was her employer, not her father.
“Continue,” he said.
Where to begin? Her father didn’t know about Dimitri’s trial or condemnation to a penal colony. He knew nothing about Dimitri’s heroic escape or the desperate circumstances behind his arrival in America. Most importantly, her father didn’t know anything about what had happened at the Amur River. She pared the story down to the relevant details of the massacre, Dimitri’s refusal to participate in the extermination of the villagers, and his subsequent trial, condemnation to a penal colony, and escape.
“What he saw haunts him,” she said. “He fears there could be more violence along the river as the southern leg of the railroad draws closer to the Pacific, and he is upset about it.”
Her father thrummed his fingers on his desk, his face grim. “I suppose anyone with a conscience would be. Dreadful business.”
“Dimitri isn’t the sort of man who keeps his emotions under wraps. His first inclination for how to prevent future atrocities associated with the railroad was to halt operations until he could be sure it won’t happen again.”
“He’d better not,” Oscar snapped, and Natalia hurried to placate him.
“Dimitri doesn’t understand business or politics in America. He doesn’t know how to navigate here. He is driven by emotion and doesn’t care what the personal cost is.”
“Then you’d bettermakehim care,” Oscar said. “It’s not the railroad he’ll damage with his actions, it’s our reputation. The press will smear us for being complicit in that atrocity. They will blame us for funding a venture that put profit ahead of human decency. It will take a wrecking ball to our reputation.”
She wilted beneath her father’s blistering tirade. She had witnessed his carefully controlled rages for years. His voice would lash out like a whip to slice underperforming executives to shreds, but he’d never turned that rage on her before. All her life she had been the daughter he doted on. He protected and promoted her within the bank and shot down anyone who dared look askance at her. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be upset about Dimitri, but she hadn’t expected this torrent of anger.
He continued ranting for several minutes before stopping to catch his breath, a single tic pulsing in his cheek. The silence lengthened, broken only by the steady ticking of a clock on the desk.
When Oscar spoke again, his voice was drained of anger and carried only concern.
“If this gets out, people will learn you are the manager ofthe railroad investment. They will assume you got your position through nepotism and then lacked the insight to anticipate problems. We both know that isn’t true, but if blame for that massacre blows back on the bank, the public will be merciless toward you. A man might receive the benefit of the doubt, but they’ll never do the same for you, and I won’t be able to protect you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
