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He bent to lift Tuppence in his arms until she was clasped securely against his chest. Taking care not to jostle her, he carried her to his room.
June was there, helping him ease Tuppence to the bed. “There now,” she said, “lean back against those pillows, and I’ll cover your legs with the blanket. Belinda’s in the kitchen breaking up some ice for you. I wrapped a chunk of it in a dishclout and gave her a mallet. ‘Smash it up,’ I says, and she starts pounding. Happiest I ever seen her.”
Tuppence managed a weak chuckle. She looked up at John and whispered, “Thank you.”
He smiled slightly.
As soon as John went out to the hallway, however, the smile vanished. He braced a forearm against the wall and rested his forehead on it. Not knowing whether to pray or curse, he did a bit of both, in Welsh.
Eventually he became aware of Enid standing beside him. For once, she wasn’t looking at him with dislike. In fact, she almost seemed . . . sympathetic.
Although she hadn’t asked a question, John muttered by way of explanation, “For the first time in my life, I want to beg someone’s forgiveness for being a man.”
Enid’s narrow shoulders hitched in a prosaic shrug. “Women are no better. We all got a bit of evil in us.”
John turned to set his back against the wall. His temples throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. He folded his arms and let out a taut sigh. “Once the midwife arrives, it won’t take long for her to decide whether Tuppence needs a doctor. If she does . . . how the hell are we going to persuade Tuppence to let him help her?”
“I don’t know if we can, Mr. Pembroke.”
“Not even if her life—and the baby’s—are at stake?”
Enid pondered that. “No use fretting until we know for sure. ‘Don’t meet your troubles halfway,’ my granny used to tell me. Now, Mr. Pembroke, you go upstairs and see to Miss Martin. June and I will look after Tuppence.”
If it weren’t for John’s deep worry over the housekeeper, he would have been amused to find himself running up and down the stairs like a player in a French farce. He returned to the library, finding Norman back at the writing desk, taking notes. The tension in the room seemed to have ratcheted a few notches higher.
John was not above a flicker of satisfaction as he saw that all hint of affectionate warmth between Reina and Farlow had evaporated.
“. . . surely some compromise is worthwhile if it means achieving your goal,” Farlow was saying.
“This isn’t about compromise. This is about having to ask permission from someone in the head office every time I need to make a decision—when the authority should be mine in the first place.”
“Does it matter whether you wield the pen or guide the hand that does, so long as the result is what you want?”
Reina took a moment to reply. Her lips curved with a smile John had never seen from her before, thin and tightly pressed like the pages of a book. “I’m going to ask you, William, to imagine trying to guide someone else’s hand to write what you want them to write. Now compare that to picking up a pen and doing it yourself. Which would you prefer?”
“It was only a metaphor.”
“An excellent metaphor, actually,” she said. “It leads one to question why everything has to be harder for women. And why my role in this bank is little more than window dressing.”
“Window dressing?” William repeated incredulously. “You’re going to be a partner with a thirty percent share, earning considerable profit.”
“I didn’t set out to do this to enrich my own coffers,” Reina said. “It’s personal. I want to build a bank where a woman can safely keep her own money and not feel like an intruder when she wants to withdraw some of it to buy food from the grocer. A bank where she isn’t made to wait in the lobby for an hour. An hour is a long time in a woman’s day, William! Longer than in a man’s day! I want to be able to approve loans for hardworking customers so they can make their lives better. But I can’t do anything if I’ve been deprived of access to funds and information. The same access, I might add, that you would give to a male partner without a thought.” She picked up the page in front of her and tore it neatly in half. “I already have a law degree without being a lawyer. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to own a bank without being a banker.”
John couldn’t recall when he’d seen anything as satisfying as Reina standing up to William Farlow.
On the face of it, any battle between the two of them should have been over before it had even begun. Farlow was a son of privilege born to occupy the center of society, whereas Reina, a daughter of nobody, had been destined to live at its margins. But even with all his advantages, Farlow was outmatched, and he knew it. Reina was an opponent who couldn’t be outwitted, intimidated, or dismissed.
Farlow let out a sigh and regarded her ruefully. “Mr. Goodluck,” he murmured, “make a note that I’ve agreed to adjust the terms of the records and audits clause.”
“And the loan approval clause?” Reina pressed.
“That one as well—although I will impose limits and retain power to rescind.”
Reina let out a disbelieving laugh. “So you could overturn any decision I made? You can’t possibly expect me to agree to that.”
“I might remind you of the personal and professional risks I’m assuming with this venture. There must be some safeguards.”
“A safeguard is one thing, a pair of handcuffs quite another.”
