He would wait ten minutes. Enough for his mother to bring Mrs. Cabot down a notch. She would be nicely malleable, and he could persuade her not to throw a charity ball, but rather invest the funds in bonds and delay the trip another year or two so the bonds could reach maturity. And by then, the girls would be married off, and all would be well. No one would die on that deadly mountain.
Ten minutes passed, and he hadn’t heard any yelling. Nor any squeaking of floorboards to telegraph a departing guest. That was odd. He crept up the stairs, listening.
“He was forty years my senior,” Prudence was saying.
Surely she was discussing her father, and not her husband. He frowned.
“He didn’t look it, so don’t feel sorry for me, Mrs. Moon. He was an attractive man until the end.”
It sounded as if she were smiling. How could he know that? Well, she smiled like a daft idiot, so it tracked.
“Still, it isn’t right.” His mother sniffed in her imperious way. Normally that was a sign she was being dismissive of her company, but it sounded as if she were siding with Mrs. Cabot.
“Perhaps not, but here in England, it seems there are plenty of young women married off to much older men for the sake of a dynasty.”
“Atitle, my dear. Nothing so petty as a dynasty.”
“Minnesota doesn’t have any titles. But we do have railroads. Once the Transcontinental Railroad is finished, the economic engine of the United States will change dramatically. No longer will the Pacific and the Atlantic be separate, but—”
“My dear. Please do not espouse the glory of a railroad at me. My constitution cannot bear it.”
Leo could. He very much wanted to hear what Mrs. Cabot was about to say about the American economic prospects. That could very well affect his own investments. He’d assumed the Civil War had destroyed the foundations of domestic trade of their former colony, but perhaps he was wrong. The wealth of Mrs. Cabot would definitely signal a healthy American stock market.
He stepped into the drawing room before he could change his mind. Hands clasped behind his back, he cleared his throat.
Mrs. Cabot jumped, her ungloved hand flying to her chest. She looked at him with surprise in her gray eyes. “My goodness, you scared me.”
His mother stared him down with a knowing glance.
“Mother, I have an appointment with Mrs. Cabot. I don’t want to run behind.”
“You’d rather I perish from loneliness? Keep me locked in a tower, unable to let my old eyes alight on the visage of youth?”
“You’re very poetic for a prisoner.” Leo was not fazed by his mother’s feigned melancholy. She was a nasty piece of work when she wanted to be, and her while she had her outings to her favorite societies, there were whole groups that avoided her for that very reason.
“That’s what happens to those craving human kindness.” As if his mother wasn’t as sharp as two people half her age.
Mrs. Cabot stood up, showing off the cinched waist of her pinstriped white-and-blue day dress and the wide flaring skirts. Her honeyed hair had been curled and styled in such a way that she had arcing tendrils artfully escaping their pins.
Swallowing his urge to ask to touch those curls, he gave her a tight grimace. “I believe you know where my study is.”
“Indeed. Skulk off. I’ll send her down directly,” his mother said sourly.
“It seems our time is at an end,” Mrs. Cabot said.
Leo descended the stairway, holding his breath so he could still hear the conversation in the drawing room. He would go arrange himself in his study, keep himself aloof and imposing.
But the women’s words faded. As he entered his study, bell-like laughter rang out upstairs. It was a beautiful sound. A pleased sound. And it wasn’t his mother.
*
HONESTLY,MR.MOONwas infuriating. His mother, while caustic, was delightful. “I’ll pop in early next time so we can have a proper visit,” she assured Mrs. Moon as she left the drawing room. Unescorted this time, she could have explored the house as she was compelled to do, but she had been summoned. Time was part of his complaint. So fine, she would appear as requested.
She knocked on the door to his study and waited for his imperious call of “Enter.” As if he didn’t know who was on the other side of the door. Ninny.
He was ensconced behind his desk. This time, he stood and offered her the chair in front of it with a simple gesture of his elegant hands. She was more sure-footed this time, and it gave her an opportunity to look around the room. The bookshelves she’d noted last time. There were filing drawers behind the desk, labelled artfully. She squinted, trying to make out the drawings. Something with flowers? Unusual for a bachelor, wasn’t it?
Her eyesight was not perfect, she would admit. All those late nights with a candle and Gregory’s ledgers. But the labels reminded her of botanical drawings, greenery floating in mid-air with reddish-orange flowers in different stages of budding. It seemed so at odds with the rest of the spartan room. There was a baroque touch to the labels, more akin to what Mrs. Moon might want, as opposed to the heavy simplicity of the rest of Mr. Moon’s study. The green vines laced about one another, and small red flowers intermixed with buds danced on the upper left corners and upper right corners. They were well-balanced, but her mind snagged on the design. There was something about them. Each label held a different number of buds versus flowers on each corner.
