A Love by Design, page 27
Otherwise, Geflitt would have even more ammunition to use against her should she muster the courage to part ways with him.
After she went out to the warehouse to send back the goods that were mistakenly delivered, Margaret planned on paying a call to Flavia. Even if Geflitt would not let her refuse the commission, she would find a way to keep the geese safe.
She and Flavia would work together to find a compromise that allowed for progress alongside conservation. It might not be ideal, but nothing ever was.
By the time the carriage pulled around to Athena’s Retreat, the morning had advanced enough that a footman stood at the side entrance. Margaret had no wish to advertise she’d spent a night elsewhere. Yesterday, her encounter with Geflitt had disturbed her enough that she’d forgotten about discretion. However, if anyone saw her getting into Grantham’s carriage without a maid and recognized her clothes today as the same . . . well, that would be one way of escaping Geflitt’s threats. A scandal bigger than either she or Grantham could contain would certainly change Geflitt’s mind.
Thoughts on potential scandal and how she would carry on working with Geflitt’s true nature distracted her and she turned down the wrong hallway. Instead of heading toward the stairs leading directly to the Retreat’s guest rooms, she walked toward the front hallway and straight into Althea.
“Oh, Althea.” Margaret switched her reticule from one arm to the other and reached to check her bonnet ties.
Damn. Most mornings she worked in her laboratory before dawn, so Margaret wasn’t surprised she walked the halls this early.
“Good morning, Margaret. I mean—not that I’m—that is . . .” Her mouth opened in shock, Althea took a step back, then forward again. “Are you . . .” Her skin was pale, her lips lacking color.
Poor thing needed a nap.
“Have you come to confess?” Althea asked.
Confess?
The sensation of Grantham’s hands on her breasts lingered; the marks he’d made with his mouth and teeth no doubt still stood out red and pink against her pale skin. Margaret opened her mouth to lie but the scent of his skin had imprinted over her own. Did this show in her face or had Althea seen the carriage?
“How did you . . . ?” Margaret groped for words. Althea was a gently bred young woman for all she understood about human physiology. What could Margaret say to her?
“Is it only you who knows of us?” she asked.
Althea’s head reared back in surprise. “Only me? By this time, all of London knows.”
All of London?
“All of London?” Margaret cried. “How? How could that be? I . . .”
Wait.
Althea wasn’t scandalized or embarrassed.
She was bereft.
This was not about last night. This was about something much worse.
Pressing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, Althea appraised Margaret with a searching intensity, her delicate mouth bowing beneath the weight of a frown.
My God. Somehow Althea knew about Armitage.
“I must . . .” Margaret gathered her thoughts.
Violet. Violet would understand.
“I have to find Violet and . . .”
Althea pointed at the small parlor. “She is in there with Mr. Kneland. Milly and Willy are with them and we . . .”
Somehow Margaret managed to walk without stumbling into the small parlor where Violet sat by the fire, a newspaper clutched loosely in her hands. Milly and Willy stood next to her, Willy’s arm around Milly’s shoulder.
The Capital’s Chronicle.
What had Grantham said?
“. . . eventually this information will come out. Dodson and Wolfe will not keep it to themselves forever.”
Violet held it for Margaret to see. The print was so large, she could read it from three feet away.
VICTOR ARMITAGE SINKS HIS POUNDS UNDER THE THAMES
Margaret could not form words. She held out a trembling hand for the paper. Rather than letting Violet get up, Arthur handed it to Margaret.
Beneath the bold letters, the entire first page of the broadsheet carried a single story about how the Futuro Consortium had partnered with Victor Armitage. The details of Armitage’s deal were laid out for all of London to read. How Geflitt had tried two years before to get funding for a railway and failed. How Armitage had stepped in to save the project.
At the bottom of the page, Margaret found what she feared most. Grey spots appeared before her, and she forced herself to breathe.
While Armitage’s desire to keep quiet a relatively risky financial investment might be seen as mere prudence, The Capital’s Chronicle has found a deeper, more insidious reason for his silence.
The Futuro Consortium has hired England’s first and only female engineer, Madame Margaret Gault, to design their innovative tunnel. Madame Gault, the renowned designer of railway bridges across the continent, has recently left Henri Gault and Son to set up a firm on our shores.
Mme. Gault is highly respected for her engineering acumen as well as her savvy business practices. However, Mr. Armitage has been vociferous in his distaste for women working outside of their role as keepers of the hearth. Could his secrecy around his payments to the consortium be to hide his hypocrisy? In public, he whips his Guardians into mobs to harass poor women who are trying to feed their children. In private, he makes financial deals with firms employing women to line his own pockets.
The paper slipped from her numb fingers, cutting through the still air to land in a pile at her feet. All she could think of was Grantham’s body laid out before her in the flickering candlelight. His words of praise and comfort as they lay facing one another amid his tousled sheets. The way he’d made love to her as if he searched for a way inside her skin while he knew this article would come out today. Had his proposal been a clumsy way to rescue her after the fact?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Violet’s voice held not a hint of anger. Instead, she radiated sympathy and concern.
Sympathy.
What was Margaret supposed to do with sympathy? She could not push back against sympathy and hope to remain standing.
Rage. Sorrow. Those, Margaret could acknowledge and endure. Sympathy meant she could have told her friend everything.
Sympathy meant Margaret had done this all wrong.
“Armitage’s men have terrorized the women of this club for two years,” Arthur said. No inflection in his voice denoted his opinion of Margaret’s actions but his eyes were hard and black as coal. “Now, you are in his employ. Are you certain it is safe for the club members to have you here? Does he know what we do here?”
Grantham called it the black stare of impending death and Margaret met the stare with her own.
Grantham.
Margaret wished he were here with her now. He would say something idiotic and maybe he and Arthur would knock over a plant stand or two, but it would have been lovely to feel his strength at her back.
Ironic, considering he was the reason she was in this mess.
Or was he?
Margaret had done this to herself, by taking the job and by keeping this a secret for as long as she had. Keeping everyone at arm’s length so they would never know how inadequate she truly felt, no matter how deep she buried it beneath a facade of competence and industry.
Violet turned to Arthur with a frown. “Margaret would never put the club in danger.”
“How are we to trust her?” Willy asked. “She has taken his thirty pieces.”
Perhaps a bit overwrought, but Margaret bowed her head to accept the condemnation and waited for more.
“Enough!” Althea snapped. Willy frowned and Violet exchanged surprised glances with Margaret at Althea’s unusual display of temper.
“We all make similar compromises.” Althea rubbed her forehead, staring at nothing in the center of the room, the heat gone from her voice. “Why, the entire reason for women to marry is financial stability. Margaret had to take a man’s money because so few of us have money of our own. How many of our members stay silent when their husband’s employer says something prejudiced about science or women because they can’t afford for them to lose their jobs?”
She rounded on Willy, setting her hands on her hips. “She took his money, but it is Margaret’s name that will be forever attached to that tunnel. A woman engineer. That is important.”
“What does it matter how amazing this tunnel is if its construction enriches men like Armitage?” Willy retorted. “You climb in bed with men like him and you lose your integrity along with your virtue.”
Margaret bent and picked up the folded sheets of paper then looked around for somewhere to set them.
“She intends to create the first all-woman engineering firm in the country,” Althea argued. “Are there not concessions we should be willing to make for a woman to be the first in something? How long do we have to wait?”
Althea, Milly, and Willy were standing in front of the low table near the settee. Violet and Arthur blocked the rosewood secretary. Margaret was left standing before them like an unruly student called before the headmistress, her gloves becoming grey with the ink from the papers.
“It doesn’t matter, Althea,” Margaret said, numbness receding and acceptance taking its place. “A hundred years from now, we will still be at their mercy.”
This was not hyperbole. While men like Arthur and Grantham existed, they were exceptions.
“It’s true,” said Milly. “Mary Astell wrote pamphlets in support of equal education for women in 1696. Mary Leapor was condemning the injustice of unequal education and the oppression of the lower classes in 1730.”
She stepped away from Willy’s embrace and spoke to her. “Fifty years ago, Olympe de Gouges was denounced as unnatural and beheaded for advocating for communal property in a marriage. Nothing will change, Wilhelmina, unless we force it. In this case, the results of Margaret’s actions are more important than who funds them.”
Violet spoke from the chair where she sat. “I’ve learned over the years there are no hard-and-fast lines between what is wrong and what is right. There are gradients. There are compromises and those are not necessarily bad.”
Willy opened her mouth, then closed it tight.
“There are very few true villains or heroes,” Violet continued. “Only people who see the world in different ways.”
At his wife’s words, Arthur set a palm on her shoulder. The two exchanged an unreadable glance and Margaret again mourned the lack of Grantham’s company.
How stupid of her.
“I have to leave,” Margaret said.
Althea crossed the room and clasped her hands. “The members will understand. No one is forcing you from the club. If they so much as—”
“I meant I must clear out my office.” Margaret squeezed her friend’s palms, stepping away from them all. “There is no chance I will have a contract for employment after this.”
She blessed whatever force kept her upright and regarded Willy with resignation. “Your point we must consider the far-reaching consequence of scientific progress is not wrong. I wanted so much to be the first, it drowned out most other considerations.”
“I understand,” said Willy softly. “As much as I want to stop the march of progress from trampling the most vulnerable, I, too, want to see a world where women can leave a permanent mark.”
“What will you do afterward?” Violet asked.
Afterward, Margaret would take down her plaque from the wall and pack it away. She would apologize to the women of Athena’s Retreat and accept their condemnation.
And then?
Then, she would find Grantham.
* * *
GRANTHAM WATCHED FROM the bedroom as his carriage left the mews, shading his eyes against the morning light so he could catch a last glimpse of Margaret’s head in the carriage’s rear window and cursed himself ten times over a fool for his terrible attempt at a proposal.
Greycliff and Kneland had been right after all. If he’d just reread a passage or two from The Perils of Miss Cordelia . . .
His hand dropped and he turned toward the bed when the meaning of what he’d done sank into his bones like the chill from a fever.
The sun was high enough to reach over the carriage house roof.
In the aftermath of their lovemaking and his pathetic proposal, he’d lost all sense of time.
Hollering for his horse, he’d known already it was too late. By now The Chronicle had left the press rooms and was out on the street. Still, he rode faster than was safe and nigh flew over the horse’s head when he reached the doors of The Chronicle’s office.
“Those papers will be out on the streets or I—” Wolfe stood in the center of the office, hair standing in tufts on his head, where he’d no doubt run his fingers through in frustration. Mala Hill stood opposite him, arms full of cloth-bound periodicals and a basket at her elbow.
Both leveled frustrated stares at Grantham when he burst into the room.
“Here is Lord Grantham,” Mala said with a tone of satisfaction. “He will agree with my actions and then he will no doubt punch you. Very hard. Twice.”
Grantham rested his hands on his thighs while he fought to catch his breath.
“No . . . papers . . . stop them . . .”
“You said by six o’clock, my lord,” Wolfe protested. “Six o’clock came and went. I waited an extra ten minutes.”
Mala dumped the periodicals on the desk in front of her and set her hands on her hips.
“I spent the night in my laboratory at Athena’s Retreat since two of my hedgehogs are due to give birth.”
“Aargh!” Grantham stared at the basket in horror, convinced this day was sent directly from hell.
“Christ Jesu, Grantham,” Wolfe said. “Those are scones.”
“I came to deposit these materials before I went home and saw the first of the barrow boys leaving,” Mala continued. “When I read the headline, I had Mr. Wolfe stop them until you arrived.”
Relief washed through Grantham, and he took Mala’s hand in his. “Thank you, Mrs. Hill. How did you manage to do that?”
Wolfe’s ears turned a shocking shade of pink and Mala’s mouth turned down into a frown. “Let us say some secrets are meant to be kept.”
Another time, Grantham would do everything in his power to find out what Mala held over Moses Wolfe, but he had to speak with Margaret immediately.
“About the article,” he said to Mala. “While you will want to speak with Margaret about her choices, I hope you will do her the kindness of listening to her reasons.”
Curious brown eyes studied him, then Mala pulled her hand from his clasp. “I arrived here at twenty minutes after six o’clock. Three barrow boys had already left. One of them to the environs of Knightsbridge.”
Grantham was out the door before she’d finished her sentence.
By the time he caught sight of Athena’s Retreat, it was well past eight. Throwing the reins at the groom, he dashed inside, nearly knocking down the footman, Johnson.
“Is she here?”
Johnson, pale around the mouth, knew exactly about whom Grantham spoke.
“No, milord. She just left.” He gestured with his chin toward the main rooms of the Retreat. “They’re talking about the article right now. Maybe you want come back later?”
Tempting, but his mam didn’t raise a coward.
Just a fool.
When he entered the small parlor, Althea leaned on the tiny mantelpiece in one of her ill-fitting dresses with tight sleeves most women here wore to keep from dipping a cuff into their experiments. The olive green shade of the dress made her look sallow, and dark circles accentuated her hollowed cheeks.
Violet and Kneland were speaking quietly in front of a street-facing window, and Milly and Willy were sitting close together on a pair of cushioned chairs. Milly wore one of her painfully bright day caps and Grantham suppressed a shudder.
Were the two ladies color-blind? Could Willy not say something to Milly before they left the house?
“Grantham.” Kneland greeted him with a slow shake of his head. “What have you done?”
Milly and Willy wore matching expressions of disapproval, and Violet stared at him balefully as he told them the whole story.
“It is all my fault, Violet,” he said at the end, holding his hands in the air as though she had an imaginary rifle instead of an expression making him feel two feet high. “The distribution of all but three barrows of the paper have been stopped.”
“How were we able to get ours?” Milly asked.
“This part of Knightsbridge and west of Brompton Road were two of the three barrows that left before Mrs. Hill arrived. I’ve got boys out seeing if they can buy back the ones that’ve been sold.”
For the first time since Grantham arrived, Althea spoke.
“Mala was at The Chronicle this morning? When did she . . . ? Did she see . . . ?”
Interesting.
Grantham had no time for intrigue now, but once he’d sorted everything with Margaret, he planned on having a long talk with Moses Wolfe.
Because he would sort everything with Margaret. Grantham was not going to lose her a second time.
“I don’t understand. You say you knew about this since yesterday?” Violet asked. “You let her go back to work for Geflitt knowing he took money from Victor Armitage? Why didn’t you stop her?”
Did Violet not know a thing about her friend?
“Margaret has a plan. She will not give up the project for anything or anyone. Least of all me.” He sighed, rubbing his face as the truth of the words sank into his bones.
