New York City
Early May, 1838
She studied the big, shiny, block letters on the pebbled
glass filling the top half of the massive office door.
Lindsay Macphaull. Richard Patterson. If the paint was
gold, she could scrape away her name and sell it. Everyone
knew it was her office. It didn’t need to be so
extravagantly labeled. Richard’s name would stay, of
course. Legally, he was the one in command.
“Today could be the day, Miss MacPhaull.”
She turned to the young man who had spoken and found him
standing behind his desk, his eyes bright and his upper
lip faintly beaded with perspiration. Lindsay smiled and
arched a brow. “Then what are you doing here, Jeb?
Shouldn’t you be home with your wife?”
“I have reports to—”
“The arrival of one’s first child is more important than
any report, Jeb,” she asserted gently. “Close up your
ledgers and go home. Lucy needs you more today than we do.”
He fingered the corner of the leather-bound book. “Are you
sure, Miss MacPhaull?”
“Absolutely,” she said, taking the young man’s hat from
the peg on the wall. Handing it to him, she smiled broadly
and added, “Please give my best wishes to Lucy. And send
word as soon as you have it. We’ll be waiting anxiously.”
He nodded, put the hat on his head, quickly closed the
ledger, and stripped away his sleeve protectors. Lindsay
watched as he walked sedately to the door of the MacPhaull
Company offices, crossed the threshold to the busy
sidewalk, and then broke into a dead run. With a quiet
chuckle, Lindsay turnedand resumed her regular morning
course.
There might be as much as a half ounce of gold in her
name, she decided as she entered the dark paneled office.
Every bit would help.
“Good morning, Miss Lindsay.” Benjamin Tipton, the head
bookkeeper, stood across the desk from Richard Patterson
in a manner approximating attention.
“Good morning, Ben,” she answered, nodding to
Richard. “Please don’t let me interrupt your conversation.”
He nodded crisply and turned back to the task. Ben was
such an interesting blend of contrasts, she thought — not
for the first time. He was a supremely efficient
bookkeeper, with a devotion to order and neatness that
bordered on obsession, and yet there was something about
him....
Though he’d never said anything, Lindsay couldn’t escape
the sense that Ben magically transformed into a rakish
ladies’ man when he left the offices each evening. His
clothes were stylish and seemingly chosen to accentuate
his blond hair and pale China-blue eyes. Lindsay knew that
maintaining his wardrobe had to consume the vast majority
of his wages. How he afforded to eat and entertain was
beyond her.
Of course, she reminded herself as she stripped off her
gloves, Ben could well have family resources from which to
draw. He was at the age when most men could expect to
receive an inheritance from their fathers. Somehow it
didn’t seem at all odd — or the least bit unseemly — that
Ben would try to parlay a bit of inherited wealth into
social connections that might lead to a wife with an
inheritance of her own. It was, after all, the way the
world worked, and Ben appeared appropriately discreet
about it. She just hoped that it never occurred to him
that she might be receptive to his advances. Ben was a
pleasant, handsome, and intelligent-enough man, but he was
simply too much of a dandy to appeal to any of her senses.
He reminded her of a porcelain doll.
“The news is even worse than we expected, Lindsay,”
Richard said from his side of the huge mahogany desk, as
Ben left carrying a stack of papers.
“You could have at least said ‘good morning’ and asked if
I’d slept well,” she countered, smiling at him and undoing
her bonnet strings.
He rolled his wheeled chair from behind the desk,
saying, “It isn’t a good morning and you haven’t had a
good night’s sleep in the last six months.”
There was no denying the latter and there hadn’t been a
good morning in recent memory. She considered Richard,
noting the creases in his brow and the tension in his
powerful shoulders. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You
look as though you didn’t sleep well, either.”
“The blasted headache won’t go away,” he said
gruffly. “And no, I’m not having Dr. Bernard come by the
office to check on me, so don’t even suggest it again.
It’s the change of the season and nothing more.”
With a silent sigh, Lindsay changed the subject. “Has
Henry danced through the offices this morning?”
Richard’s white brows knitted. “Are you expecting him?”
“He came by the house yesterday evening,” Lindsay
explained, removing her pelisse and taking it to the brass
cloak tree in the corner. “Edith wants to buy a winter
home in Charleston. My brother is of a mind to indulge his
wife’s latest whim and take advantage of the depressed
situation in the South.”
“Given the reports that came in this morning’s mail, Henry
would be hard-pressed to buy Edith a new privy.”
Privy? The very circumspect Richard Patterson had actually
uttered the word “privy”? Lindsay barely managed to keep
her smile contained. “The news is that bad, Richard?”
He took a stack of paper from his desk and handed it to
her, saying, “Read for yourself and see what you think.
I’ve sorted them, ranging from bad to worse. Would you
care for your coffee now?”
Lindsay nodded absently, already reading as she moved to
the leather divan. The first letter was from a bank in St.
Louis reminding her that the loan payment on the warehouse
was sixty days past due. Lindsay quickly moved on. The
building had burnt to the ground three months ago. Given
the current economic situation, there was no point in
rebuilding it and no reason to pay for something that no
longer existed. She and Richard had decided that the only
reasonable course was to sell the land itself in an
attempt to recoup the loss. If a buyer couldn’t be found,
they’d let the bank have it.
The second letter was from an architect who wanted payment
for the design phase of a large renovation project being
undertaken on the home of Mr. Henry MacPhaull. With
clenched teeth, Lindsay moved it to the bottom of the
stack. Richard wordlessly placed the cup and saucer on the
wide arm of the divan.
The third piece of correspondence was from a man on Long
Island who indicated that he would be most happy to sell
Miss Agatha MacPhaull the land she wanted. He considered
seventeen hundred dollars a very fair price and was
instructing his attorney to draw up a bill of sale.
Seventeen hundred dollars? Lindsay skimmed the letter
again. For five acres? Perhaps in the center of the city,
but certainly not for land on Long Island. In fifty years,
seventeen hundred dollars might be a reasonable price, but
not now. Besides, she didn’t have the money. Lindsay
expelled a long breath and took a careful sip of her
coffee before going on to the rest of the news awaiting
her.
The Emerson Bank of Ohio was demanding immediate and full
payment from the investors in the Todasca Canal Company.
The project had been abandoned and the managers had taken
themselves to parts unknown. The bank showed the MacPhaull
Company as having a fifteen percent interest in the
concern and thus owing twenty thousand dollars of the
outstanding debt.
Todasca had been Henry’s idea. An old school chum had been
the head of the firm and Henry had made an absolute pest
of himself about it, eventually wearing down her patience.
Against her better judgment she’d agreed to invest, just
to get him out of the office.
Her blood pounding, Lindsay went to the last letter. Heavy
spring rains had combined with a rapid thaw and led to
widespread flooding in western Virginia. The MacPhaull
Coal Company managers had been forced to suspend
operations until the mines could be pumped out and the
lost and damaged machinery replaced. They roughly
estimated the temporary loss of revenues at forty thousand
dollars, the cost of salvaging and rebuilding at another
forty.
Her stomach leaden, she laid the stack of papers in her
lap. She’d have to find the money to replace the machinery
and get the mines operational again. There wasn’t any
other choice. The annual income from the mines last year
had been close to a quarter of a million dollars, the
revenues providing the fiscal foundation of the MacPhaull
Company.
With cup and saucer in hand, she took a steadying breath
and said, “What are we going to do, Richard? We don’t have
the cash reserves to meet these expenses.”
“The first thing we’re going to do,” Richard answered
briskly, “is put an end to Henry’s renovations and
Agatha’s land acquisition.”
“Agreed.” Despite knowing the soundness of the course, she
inwardly cringed. The scenes would be horrible. Henry and
Agatha had never learned the difference between wanting
and needing.
“Then there are a few properties we might consider
selling,” Richard continued, obviously having given the
matter a great deal of thought before she’d
arrived. “Henry’s yacht, for instance. And Agatha’s
cottage at the shore. Neither produces revenue; they just
consume it. Both are expenses the company can ill-afford
given the present circumstances. Selling will not only
give us needed cash but free up future money that can be
used to keep the revenue-producing ventures in operation.”
Having her sister out of the house for several months
every year was a bit of heaven Lindsay was reluctant to
surrender. But times were hard, she reminded herself
sternly. Sacrifices were necessary. So was
practicality. “Agatha leaves for the cottage in a couple
of weeks and it’s too late to change her plans. She won’t
cooperate in the selling, and being in residence will put
her in a position to undermine the effort. I suggest we
postpone putting the property up until after she returns
to the city this fall.”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “Is Henry’s yacht fair game?”
he asked, his hope wary.
Lindsay nodded. Everything was fair game. It was just a
matter of timing. She’d been quietly selling off family
heirlooms for the last three months to pay the household
expenses. Last week had seen some of her mother’s silver
serving pieces, a Persian rug, and six oil paintings
carted off to the auction house. “Henry won’t be happy
with the news. He’ll resist until the bitter end and make
it as unpleasant as possible.”
“Henry is never happy anyway,” Richard observed, backing
his wheeled chair behind the desk. “Neither is Agatha.
They were born wailing and they’ve never stopped.”
“That’s uncharitable,” Lindsay observed quietly, “but
largely true, I’m afraid.” She laid the papers aside,
rose, and reached for the silver pot on the corner of the
desk. She felt Richard’s scrutiny as she poured herself
another cup of steaming coffee.
“The company holds title to all the family property,
Lindsay,” he said softly. “It’s within my power of
attorney to buy and sell as the needs of the company
require. Your brother and sister have no legal say in
regard to the actions I take.”
“I don’t either, for that matter,” she pointed out.
“At least you have common sense and a head for business,
girl. That can’t be said for Henry and Agatha.”
She returned to the divan and, slowly sinking down on the
cool leather, confessed, “At the moment, my common sense
is feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the circumstances.”
“That’s quite understandable. The situation’s grave,
Lindsay. We’re teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.”
How long would it be before they tumbled? she wondered.
President Van Buren had assured the nation that the
effects of the Panic would be short-lived, that business
would rebound in a healthy and timely manner. In the year
between then and now, matters had only become worse. There
was no comfort in the knowledge that the MacPhaull Company
wasn’t the only business frantically bailing in a
desperate attempt to stay afloat. Older and bigger
companies than theirs hadn’t been able to withstand the
weight of the slowly collapsing economy. Factories and
shops and businesses of every kind had ceased operations.
Men all over the country were unable to find even the most
menial of jobs. Faced with the loss of their homes and no
food, they were, by the thousands, taking their families
West. The land was free for the taking out there, and
eating was more a matter of accurate shooting than having
gold or silver in your pocket.
What would happen to her when she ran out of things to
sell? she wondered. Would she have to go West like the
others? What would Henry and his family do? Where could
Agatha go? And Richard? Richard didn’t have any family.
Paralyzed from the waist down, every day was a challenge
for him. To even think of him trying to make an overland
journey to a new life ...
A soft knocking against wood brought her from the gloomy
morass of her thoughts. Ben stood in the open doorway. At
her arched brow, he said, “Mr. Vanderhagen is here and
requests a few moments of your time. He says it’s a very
important matter.”
The family attorney had come to them? If Otis Vanderhagen
had thought it necessary to leave his office ... The look
of stoic resolve on Richard’s face wasn’t reassuring. Her
stomach cold and knotted, Lindsay rose and smoothed her
skirts, saying, “Please show him in, Ben.”
With a crisp nod, Ben backed out of the doorway. He’d
barely disappeared when Otis Vanderhagen all but rolled
into the room. At nine in the morning he reeked of cigar
smoke and hair tonic. Tugging his waistcoat down over his
considerable girth, he called out their names in a
deafening roar. Lindsay couldn’t keep from wincing and
looking for an avenue of escape.
She started as she realized that a second man stood in the
doorway. Filled the doorway, actually. Height and, at the
shoulders, width. He wore a dark charcoal-colored suit,
and while the lines of it were a season or two past truly
fashionable, it clearly spoke of a good tailor,
conservative taste, and a powerful physique. Heavy-heeled
boots, she noted. They’d been polished, but no amount of
lampblack would ever cover the scuffs on the insides of
each. He held a large, relatively flat-brimmed black hat
in his hands and the expression on his face told her he
didn’t want to be there. She knew how he felt.
“Allow me to present Mr. Jackson Stennett,” Otis said too
loudly, turning to wave the man farther into the
room. “Mr. Stennett is a citizen of the Republic of Texas.
Mr. Stennett, may I present Miss Lindsay MacPhaull and Mr.
Richard Patterson.”
He had dark hair and intelligent brown eyes, she noted as
he stepped toward her. High cheekbones, too, and a solid,
square jaw. Definitely handsome, Lindsay thought as he
barely nodded.