A Love by Design, page 28
Courageous, yes, and oh so admirably bold, Margaret would let nothing stand in her way.
“I tried to protect her,” he said. Unable to bear Violet’s scrutiny, he turned his hat in his hands. “I was afraid for what would happen when the news got out. I asked her to marry me.”
“Oh, George.” Violet clasped her hands and gazed up at him with joy. “Marry? You and Margaret? How wonderful.”
“She said no.”
Violet bit her lip; pity clear in her gaze. Grantham brushed a spot of dirt from the brim of his topper with far more force than necessary.
“I’ve been racking my brains all morning about what to do.” He infused bravado into his voice. “I have a plan in mind.”
“A plan?” Kneland echoed.
“What exactly are you thinking?” Violet asked in a cautionary tone.
Grantham looked over at Kneland for a dose of male solidarity amid this ocean of womanhood. “Grand gesture, of course.”
“A grand gesture?” Willy asked, one brow raised in a disapproving arch.
“Yes. Like in the book. Thinking of patching things up with Prince Albert and borrowing some crowns and swords.” Grantham stopped. All the women now stared at him as though he’d grown another head.
“Haven’t you read the book with all the sighs and alligators?” he asked. “Miss Cordelia Strongbow and the Castle of Whathaveyous?”
“George,” Violet asked, “do you love her?”
“Do I love her?” Grantham stared at Violet, unable to comprehend a world where this could be in question.
“I have always loved her,” he said. “I breathe her and bleed her, and if you open me up, my heart is the shape of Margaret Gault. I have loved her from the moment she knocked me to the ground, a blow from which I have never tried to recover. Of course I love her.”
Violet’s mouth remained taut in a frown, filling Grantham with unease.
“When you proposed marriage to her,” Violet asked, “did you tell her you loved her, or you wanted to protect her because you were worried for her?”
“No. I didn’t say any of that.” Grantham turned to Kneland for support. “Margaret doesn’t need to be burdened with my worries for her. It’s up to me to make grand gestures and the like. Right, Kneland?”
Violet’s thick black brows pulled together to create a straight line. “You don’t believe that, do you, Arthur?”
“Er . . .” Kneland frowned and glanced around at all the women’s faces. “You can’t be laying all your troubles on someone else’s shoulders, especially if they are sad themselves.”
“And so, you remain silent about what is in your heart?” Violet asked. “Did you not think that in itself would be a burden?” Violet shook her head as though chastising a child.
“Sharing your fears is an act of love greater than buying a store full of lemon drops or a hothouse full of tulips,” she admonished him.
Milly and Willy nodded in tandem, as though it should have been obvious, while Althea peered at Grantham with an air of sympathy.
Wait.
What was this?
If this was true, Grantham had made a terrible mistake when he proposed to Margaret.
He had not spoken from his heart.
His fears had clotted in his throat, and instead of admitting to them, he’d spoken around them and in the end said nothing.
Fixing this might take more than a plate of pastries and an armful of flowers.
“Right.” He bowed to the ladies and gave Kneland a black stare of impending death of his own. Later, he and Kneland were going to have a little talk about Mrs. Foster.
“I’m going to find Margaret and this time . . .” Grantham set his topper on his head with a flourish. “This time I’m going to get it right.”
20
IN THE ANTEROOM of Geflitt’s office, the kind young clerk whistled as he sorted the day’s post.
“Has Sir Royce left for the countryside yet?” Margaret asked.
The clerk shook his head. “He has to make a stop at the warehouse first, madame. Says he must receive an order.”
Why would Geflitt personally receive an order?
“From whom is he receiving the order?” Margaret asked.
“Dunno for sure. Think it might be the wrought iron.”
That couldn’t be. She had decided last week not to engage Adams and Sons Foundry. The place was so lax, she was certain such a large order would tax their small staff and an accident was inevitable.
Not one death was worth the culmination of her dreams.
There shouldn’t be a single order for any iron placed yet—unless Geflitt had done it himself?
“I believe the receipts from the past week are on his desk, if you want to have a look there,” said the young man.
Margaret thanked the clerk and let herself into Geflitt’s office, which smelled invitingly of tea and sandalwood.
Sure enough, a stack of paperwork sat on his desk. To her surprise, not only was there a receipt for payment for wrought iron from Adams and Sons, but another two invoices for the same amount of iron from two other foundries lay beneath it. With trembling fingers Margaret shifted through a stack of similar invoices including the mysterious order of wood from a few days ago.
All of the orders had been placed under the name of Gault Engineering.
Across the room, a stack of Gentlemen’s Monthly magazines squatted on the credenza but the plans for the consortium’s tunnel were gone. Crossing to the table where Geflitt had originally laid out what she suspected now was bait, Margaret found nothing about the tunnel and only one or two preliminary sketches of the riverbank.
The acid taste of panic coated her tongue.
There must be some mistake. She had misread the receipts. She had misinterpreted Geflitt’s manner toward her the other day.
She took the papers back to her office and compared them to the records she’d kept of every visit and every order she’d made. None of them matched up.
For the first time in her life, Margaret wanted to believe herself to be “hysterical” and the terrible scenarios floating in her head to be the products of feminine humors or something equally ridiculous.
That strange wish sustained her as she hailed a hack and stared at the greying brick and opaque windows of the buildings outside until they came to the site of the rally a few weeks ago, but reason returned when she alighted from the hack and made her way to the warehouse.
Nothing.
The place was empty.
Margaret stood in the center of the incomplete structure and surveyed the building. Only one story with a half-finished roof and no place to hide a single piece of iron or the lumber purchased and marked as delivered.
Purchased under the name of Gault Engineering and not the Futuro Consortium.
The strengthening wind outside reached in through the hole in the roof, sweeping handfuls of dust from the packed earth floor. Margaret jumped when a lone starling swooped low and nearly brushed her bonnet. Flying straight up again, it perched on one of the rafters overhead, its bright eyes surveying the vacant space. Perhaps it had come to the same conclusion as Margaret, although it had taken her much longer to comprehend.
The Futuro Consortium and Sir Royce Geflitt were committing fraud.
“I am not clear on the details,” Margaret said to the figure that appeared in the doorway. For a moment, he stood still, backlit by the late afternoon sun. He doffed his top hat and stepped into the dark.
“I had hoped you would stay out of here for at least another month,” Geflitt said. He sauntered in but stopped about three feet from her, the beating of the starling’s wings catching his attention for a moment.
“Thousands of pounds’ worth of material has been charged under my name and yet there is nothing here to show for it,” Margaret said, watching him intently.
“We were hoodwinked, obviously,” Geflitt said. He transferred his gaze from the disappearing bird to Margaret’s face. Blandly handsome, but now she knew what to look for, Margaret fancied she could see the glitter of greed in his eyes, a curve of cruelty in his upper lip.
“By scurrilous merchants?” she said, a tiny bit of hope in her heart the least likely explanation was the truth.
“By a woman, my dear Madame Gault.”
Chilled, Margaret took a step away from Geflitt. The hairs on her neck stood at attention as her mind raced.
“No one will believe I would destroy any hope at creating a successful firm by cheating my benefactor,” she said, scrutinizing the warehouse. There were two large doors opening outward on one side of the rectangular building, meant for the unloading of wagons, but they were held shut by a heavy iron bolt. The only other means of exit were the doors through which Geflitt had entered.
And which he now blocked.
Not that he would hurt her. He was a baronet. A gentleman.
And a liar.
“You are once again committing the mistake of assuming men pay attention to anything you say,” Geflitt said, his jovial tone at odds with the cruelty of his words. “All anyone will know is what we tell them in Gentlemen’s Monthly. The Futuro Consortium made the grave mistake of giving a woman engineer the chance of a lifetime. The responsibility was too much. It sickened her brain and made her hysterical, just as Victor Armitage warned us. Suicide will be hinted at but not publicly claimed out of respect for your family.”
Suicide.
He meant to kill her.
“The broadsheet,” she blurted out. In her shock, she’d forgotten the article. “There is an article in The Chronicle about the tunnel. It exposes your difficulties finding funding and how Armitage’s money saved you.”
Geflitt uttered a crude and especially ugly oath. As he moved his jaw, most likely calculating the harm such an article would cause him, Margaret considered her hands. The mechanics of a punch were etched in her brain. Her legs were long, and her height gave her an advantage. She simply had to lunge for him, push him down, and run away.
A nasty leer split his face. “It will work,” he declared. “In fact, Armitage will be vindicated. He listened carefully to the arguments you made and gave you a chance. Your betrayal will be all the greater and you will have proved his point.”
“You cannot hope to get away with crimes as serious as fraud and murder. You will be found out,” she said, her voice cracking.
Disgusting man. He sensed her fear—smelled it if the flaring of his nostrils was any indication.
“Found out by whom?” he spat. “The Untamed Earl? You don’t think I know the two of you are lovers?”
Dizzy, Margaret clasped her hands to her stomach. How?
“Grantham is a fool. If he held Prince Albert’s regard, I might have been worried, but he is too much of an oaf.” Geflitt’s voice held nothing but contempt. “Staring after you like a mooncalf. Loitering in the street outside our building. Paying a street sweeper to keep abreast of your whereabouts. If, out of some misguided sense of loyalty, he tries to defend you, it will be discounted as a desperate attempt to sell his newspapers. Not to mention he will lose whatever influence he has in Lords.”
Grantham.
A wild strain of hope rose in her breast. Nearly every five minutes that giant irritation of a man had appeared at her side out of nowhere since she’d returned from Paris. She could not sneeze without him jumping out of a nearby hedgerow with a handkerchief.
What if he were about to walk in the door?
What if he were outside right now?
Right.
Now . . .
Tilting his head slightly, Geflitt glanced at the exit then at her.
No one stood in the doorway.
No one was coming.
No one would miss her.
Margaret had turned away the one person who might have rescued her.
Geflitt let his gaze roam her body, evincing no pleasure in the act other than satisfaction at her shudder of disgust.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Margaret curled her fingers once, twice, and inhaled a breath of cold air before readying herself to run.
Until Geflitt reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and removed a pistol.
The fear holding Margaret’s knees locked now slithered up the backs of her thighs and her reticule fell from her numb fingers. The sound of the bag hitting the packed dirt floor came from far away.
“A pistol? How am I supposed to have committed suicide with a pistol?” she said, forcing bravado into her voice. “I don’t know how to shoot.”
A single shoulder rose in a half-hearted gesture of ambivalence at Margaret’s words. “There won’t be much left of your body once they pull it from the river,” Geflitt said without any remorse. “It will be impossible to tell how you died.”
Died by her own damn stupidity. How foolish of Margaret to believe she could have her dream. How naive to think a group of men might value her for her talent and skill and see beyond her gender.
Despite her terror staring at the black hole at the end of the pistol, anger propelled Margaret forward when Geflitt gestured to the exit. He stood behind and to the right of her, the pistol aimed at her back as he directed her toward the riverbank. The wind now whipped about them, yanking at her bonnet and flattening her skirts against her ankles. A few drops of rain spattered against her cheek, the chilled air forcing itself through the thick wool of her cloak.
A good-sized skiff bumped against a poorly constructed dock.
“It would be a lovely bit of irony if this boat were as full of holes as your story about me being a hysterical cheat,” Margaret said between clenched teeth.
Geflitt glanced around but no one else was in sight. The weather was raw and unappealing and the river too choppy for any stray fishermen to be about.
“Get in the back,” he ordered her.
Briefly, she contemplated jumping into the river and swimming away, but she could see the tips of the reeds above the waterline. It would be too shallow, and her skirts would weigh her down. Margaret had no desire to be shot while running away. She stepped from the dock into the rocking skiff while trying to think of a way to get hold of Geflitt’s pistol.
Once more, Margaret thought of Grantham. As she pulled her skirts around her and sat gingerly on a rotting board at the back of the boat, she scanned the banks of both sides of the river.
Empty. Woolwich lay a quarter mile away on the opposite side of the riverbank—there were certain to be folks nearby if she could only get there.
Geflitt hopped into the boat with an annoying lightness of ease and directed her to take the oars.
“I left word I would visit you at the warehouse,” Margaret said, rowing as slowly as she could. “People will be searching for me.”
“Not until tonight. You enter your office at the crack of dawn and stay all day,” he said. “Other than Lord Grantham, no one has been seen coming in or out of your offices.”
True. She had made a point of working alone this whole time.
The irony that because Margaret was so determined to do everything by herself, she’d landed in this boat with a gun pointed at her did nothing to quell her anger. It only made it worse. Now she was angry at Geflitt and herself.
“If it is of any consolation, you are talented,” Geflitt said. He must have been out hunting on his estates, for his skin had darkened since last she’d seen him, leaving fine white lines where his wrinkles were. “If I were to do something as risky as building another tunnel under the Thames, you would have been the perfect engineer.”
“We can salvage the project,” Margaret said quickly. “My father-in-law was a genius with building excitement around his projects. You can make the money back . . .”
Geflitt dismissed her with a shake of his head. “Years. It would take years to make the money back. This way, we claim the insurance, and everyone gets paid.”
“Except for me!” she reminded him.
“Oh, and the geese are to remain. A wonderful story all around for everyone. A nice touch, wasn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. The hollow wail of the wind increased, and it rained even harder. Geflitt seemed not to notice, but he raised his voice, practically shouting at her.
“If anything happened with you, the geese were the backup plan. We were going to burn the warehouse and blame it on that bird girl from your club.”
Margaret would feel more sympathy for Flavia being relegated to “bird girl” except Flavia got to live.
Geflitt peered at her with curiosity when she huffed and slapped the water with her oars. The water was more agitated now and her cheeks hurt from the cold and the wind. Rain dripped over the brim of her bonnet and ran down her chin.
“Did you truly think you could have a woman-owned engineering firm?” he asked. “No one would have hired you. Even if I never came along, you would have still failed.”
“I might have failed,” she agreed, “but I would have been the first to try and that means something.”
As she spoke, a renewed sense of purpose filled her. “It is so much easier to make a choice if someone has done it before you.”
Geflitt gestured with his chin. “Fascinating. Keep rowing, please.”
Something in the arrogance with which he directed her to move closer to her own death dislodged the fog of fear that had descended on her since he appeared in the warehouse.
Why should Margaret do as he ordered?
She would not let her last action on earth be to obey this man.
Or any man for that matter.
“I will not.”
Staring straight at Geflitt, she let go of the oars.
His brows rose nearly to his receding hairline as the oars sank into the Thames. “Pick them up!” he shouted.
The skiff passed beneath a low stone walking bridge, and Margaret gauged the distance from the boat to the shore.
