Chapter Twenty-Two
“Icannot imagine whyhe hasn’t stopped by or sent a note. Amity has invited us to dinner,” Beatrice told Charlotte the following morning. “You, too, of course. And I haven’t even told him or made sure he will go.” Although she had no doubt he would.
“You didn’t keep her guessing, did you?”
Beatrice smiled. “No, I couldn’t. I told her the minute she walked in here after you left yesterday.”
Charlotte clapped her hands. “I’m so thrilled for you. And you didn’t need to pretend to be a toffee heiress after all to get a husband.”
“I never did pretend,” she protested. “That was all you.”
“Perhaps it was,” her sister agreed. “In any case, now you will be a real one. A railroad heiress.”
Beatrice wrinkled up her nose. “It seems hard to believe. I cannot wait for Mother and Father to return.”
The shop door tinkled, and Greer entered. Feeling her love bubble up, she ran toward him, thinking to embrace him even though they weren’t alone. However, the expression on his face halted her a step away as if she’d come upon a brick wall.
“Whatever is the matter?”
He didn’t deny something was wrong. After glancing at Charlotte, for whom he spared a grimace of a smile, he asked, “May we speak privately?”
“I won’t tattle if you go in the back room to be alone,” Charlotte said. “And I’ll stay over by the door to keep from overhearing anything.”
Beatrice could tell something very serious had occurred. With her heart beating an erratic tattoo, she said, “Come along.” Turning, she led the way into the back of the shop.
“What’s wrong?” she asked at once, even as Greer was closing the heavy velvet drape behind him. He strolled toward the far end of the work room, then spun about and faced her, his hands on his hips, pushing his coat back, looking like a man with a difficult task to do.
She swallowed down her anxiety. After all, she loved him and he loved her. Nothing else mattered.
“Plainly, and without keeping anything from you,” he said, “I have experienced a terrible downturn in my financial situation.”
She blinked. Beatrice hadn’t expected such a thing, but she also didn’t know what it meant exactly. Moreover, for some reason, it didn’t seem to be the most disastrous of announcements. It wasn’t life or death, after all. Nor, as she feared, had he been called back to the United States.Or had he?
“Do you have to go back to America?” She wished her voice didn’t sound so scared.
He frowned. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought of that. I intended to speak with local railroad owners to see if I could find employment here. It seems folly to go back to America when I know they are in pandemonium already.”
“You know we had our own railroad downturn, as you call it, but that was before I was born. We took a wonderful train trip to Edinburgh once, and my father told us about railway mania in the ’40s causing everyone and anyone to invest in them. Some of the planned railroads were fraudulent investments. More and more money was poured in and seemingly disappeared, like sugar into melted butter. The whole thing collapsed eventually, but not until after such vast expansion that we’re still using all those rails today. I suppose that doesn’t help the men who lost everything in the process.”
He nodded. “My uncle kept our company’s troubles from me for too long. When I left his employ, I thought he had everything under control. Instead, it turns out my fortune in stocks has disappeared, and they are now worthless. What’s more, a telegram has confirmed my New York bank account is nearly empty since it is no longer being fed by dividends.”
“Oh, Greer.” Her heart ached for him. Yet surprisingly, he half-smiled.
“I think that’s the first time you’ve used my given name.”
“Out loud,” she said. “In my head, you are Greer or ...,” she trailed off, feeling her cheeks heat up.
“Or what?” he asked.
“Orthe American.”
