The Last Word Read online

  “It is getting dark,” he said. “Should we head back to the hotel, Lucinda?”

  He did not offer his arm, but his hand. Lucinda placed hers inside it and interlaced their fingers. He gave her another of his ridiculously handsome smiles. The happiness in his face made her heart beat irregularly. They did not say much on the walk back to the hotel, but Lucinda thought what they had shared did not require mundane words.

  * * *

  Lucinda could not seem to wipe the sappy grin off her face the next morning. Not even during the dull train ride home, when Mrs. Patton persistently spoke about her noble relations and David pretended to sleep again. He “woke up” when the train arrived in London and escorted them home. Mr. Ruffles took their hats and wraps and stood waiting to open the front door for David.

  “Thank you, Mr. Randall, for your escort,” Mrs. Patton said. “We poor females would have been quite lost without it.”

  He took her proffered hand and bowed over it. “A pleasure, ma’am.”

  “One moment, Mr. Randall,” Lucinda said quickly as he turned to leave. “My father left some papers for you.”

  Mrs. Patton was already on the first stair, but turned as if she was going to follow them.

  “Go unpack, dear Mrs. Patton,” Lucinda said. “My father’s business with Mr. Randall will not take me more than a minute.”

  She yawned. “Very well, but see that Mr. Ruffles accompanies you. You cannot be alone with Mr. Randall.”

  “Perish the thought,” Lucinda said. She saw David turn his head away to conceal his smile.

  She walked down the hall to the sitting room and waited for Mr. Ruffles to open the door for herself and David. Before Mr. Ruffles could come in, she took the doorknob handle and said, “That will be all, Ruffles. Thank you.” She thought she saw the solemn butler smile a little as she shut him out of the room.

  Lucinda turned and found herself in David’s arms. She stifled a giggle.

  “What shocking behavior, Mr. Randall,” Lucinda said, pretending to be affronted. “What if a servant were to walk in?”

  “You’re right,” he said. “What a scandal that would be.”

  Lucinda cupped his face and kissed it lightly before stepping away from him. They were not close enough to touch, but stood a foot apart, smiling foolishly at each other.

  “Thank you for coming with us, David,” Lucinda said. “I enjoyed your companionship.”

  “Just my companionship?” David asked, his eyebrows raised.

  Lucinda folded her arms across her chest and shook her head slightly. “A lady never kisses and tells.”

  “Learned that at finishing school, did you?”

  “You’d be surprised some of the things I learned in finishing school.”

  “I look forward to being enlightened,” he said, and Lucinda felt deliciously breathless. “Although I have a great deal of work to do.”

  “I hope the papers I have been reviewing have lightened your load.”

  “So very much,” David said. “You are much quicker with the figures than I will ever be.”

  Lucinda swallowed a lump in her throat. “I was thinking … that possibly … perhaps … you could speak to my father about allowing me to work at the office.”

  David didn’t reply, but she knew he had heard her.

  “Will you speak to my father on my behalf?”

  “I do not think it is my place to interfere,” David said after a long pause.

  “But you are his business partner,” Lucinda said.

  “He is your father,” David replied. “It’s a family matter, not a business matter.”

  Lucinda stepped back from him. “I thought you were my friend, David.”

  “I am your friend,” David insisted, trying to move closer to her. He held out his hand, but she resolutely folded her arms. “But legally your father has the right to decide whether or not you are allowed to work.”

  “I know! That is why I need your help persuading him. Tell him of all the work I have already done. Show him that I am capable. Treat me like your equal!”

  David shook his head slightly, and Lucinda felt anger flash through her entire body.

  “I am sorry, Lucinda. I can’t risk it.”

  “What is the risk?” Lucinda asked, louder than she meant to. She clenched her hands into fists to stop them from shaking in her folded arms.

  “A permanent rift between myself and my partner, to start,” David said, gesticulating with his hands. “The ramifications to the company are countless. We could lose contracts. Connections. Stocks and speculations. So much of the business is based on our united reputation.”

  Lucinda could stand still no longer. She unfolded her arms and paced back and forth, breathing heavily, unable to release the anger and frustration that coursed through her.

  “Lucinda,” David said, touching her arm. “Lucinda, please listen to me—”

  She brushed off his hand. “I think I have done quite enough of that today, Mr. Randall.”

  “I’m just—”

  “More worried about the business than you are about me. And I was foolish enough to think that you were different. That you saw me as an equal. But you want to keep me in a decorated cage just like every other man I’ve ever met. To be petted and admired like a pretty, brainless bird!” And then she said the worst possible thing she could think of. “David, you’re a pigeon-livered fopdoodle!”

  His immediate reaction was everything she had hoped for. His eyes widened in shock and his jaw clenched. But then he laughed, loudly. The anger in Lucinda boiled over to fury. She had just spoken the most offensive thing in her entire life and he was laughing at her?

  “Stop laughing! It is not funny!” Lucinda nearly yelled.

  “I am sorry, Lucinda. I did not mean to laugh, but you caught me off guard,” he said, still smirking. “Your father uses the same phrase frequently.”

  “And do you laugh when he says it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I thought not. Women cannot even curse, it seems,” Lucinda said. She walked resolutely to the door and opened it. Mr. Ruffles was standing in the hall outside, and he’d probably overheard their entire conversation. “Mr. Ruffles, would you please see Mr. Randall out?”

  “Lucinda—” David was at her side, looking at her imploringly, all trace of amusement gone.

  “Now, Mr. Ruffles,” Lucinda said, and left the room without glancing back at him.

  Sixteen

  DAVID PULLED THE BRASS KEY to his house out of his pocket. He looked up and down the street before inserting the key into the lock and turning it, relieved not to see anyone he knew. He felt deflated, like a pillow with all of the feathers pulled out of it. If only Lucinda would have let him explain himself. If only he hadn’t laughed. He hadn’t meant to, but her words had shocked him and, he had to admit, amused him. He couldn’t picture Miss Clara Hardin, or even the American Merritt girls, calling him a pigeon-livered fopdoodle. Lucinda was one of a kind, and he’d gone and ruined everything.

  He walked into his house and set his portmanteau on the marble-tiled floor of his foyer, locking the door behind him.

  “David, there you are,” his mother said.

  He turned, and his mother walked toward him with her hands outstretched. David took her much smaller hands in his own and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. She released his hands, but continued to stand close to him, examining his face.

  “You look so tired, dear.”

  “Do I?” David said, taking off his hat and setting it on top of the portmanteau. “I’ve been traveling, Mother. Stayed the night in Reading. I am sorry I was not home when you arrived. I didn’t know when to expect you.”

  “The housekeeper said we missed each other by mere hours,” his mother said. “Come with me to my sitting room. We have much to catch up on.”

  “I really do not have the time—” David began, but stopped midsentence when he saw the look on his mother’s face. It wasn’t anger, or sadnes
s. It was disappointment—keen disappointment. She had often worn that face when his father had been alive. “I would be happy to come, Mother. My business can wait another hour.”

  His mother gave him a small smile, but the disappointed look remained on her face. He followed her down the hall to the private parlor reserved for her particular use. It was a small room, with only a sofa and a couple chairs. The windows faced the small garden behind the house. David took his seat beside his mother on the sofa.

  “What do you wish to tell me?” he asked.

  His mother took his hand in both of hers. “You are very good to me, dearest. And I do not mean to complain, but I so rarely see you these days or nights.”

  “You’ve been at Keynsham Hall.”

  “Before then, David,” his mother said. “It seems that every hour of your day and most of the night is spent at your countinghouse.”

  “It’s been busy lately.”

  She frowned at him. “For more than a year now, you have missed social engagements. I have attended most of the parties without you as my escort.”

  “I am sorry, Mother.”

  She shook her head. “I do not mean to complain of neglect, or to imply that I need your support. In fact, this conversation is not about me at all. It is about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Dearest David, you work so much that I fear you have no life of your own outside of the business. You’ve lost track of all your friends from Eton. You no longer hunt or fish. I could barely drag you for three days to the country for your aunt’s house party. You are not your father. You do not have to live like he did.”

  David stood, forcing his mother to release his hand. He walked to the window and looked out at the flowers in the small garden. “I am very good at business. Better than Father ever was.”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “I have more than doubled our investment in the funds, as well as invested in the consols. Mr. Leavitt says I have a shrewd eye for which speculation will be the most profitable.”

  He heard his mother sigh. “The money was never enough for your father either.”

  “It isn’t about the money.”

  “What is it about then, David?” she implored. “Your father?”

  “My father is dead.”

  His mother stood and walked toward him. “But I see his influence over you every day. You do not need to prove yourself to a dead man. A man who could never see you for the incredible person that you are.”

  “He wanted me to be more like Francis,” David whispered.

  A tear fell down his mother’s cheek. “Francis is dead. Your father is dead. And you, my dear son, are all I have left. And you seem to have no life at all outside of work.”

  “My work is important,” David said. “It gives us our place in society.”

  “But as your mother, I want you to have so much more in your life than work,” she said. “That is why I have encouraged you to find a wife. Why I asked your aunt to invite Miss Hardin to Keynsham. I was hoping you would spend more time at home if you had agreeable company. That it would give you something else to focus your time and efforts on.”

  “I have other interests besides the business.”

  “And what would they be?”

  David desperately tried to think of a hobby he could use to defend himself. “I have literary pursuits,” he blurted out. “I’ve been assisting Miss Leavitt in her search for the family of the deceased authoress, Mrs. Smith, and the true ending of her unfinished story.”

  “Did Miss Leavitt also stay in Reading?”

  “Yes,” David said, and exhaled slowly. “Why have you never called on her?”

  His mother clasped her hands and shrugged her small shoulders. “I visited her mother only once. Her breeding … She was not our kind of person. I did not visit Miss Leavitt for the same reason. She is not of our same class.”

  “And yet you were civil to her at Keynsham Hall.”

  “I am not a gorgon, David,” his mother replied. “And I am not blind. I saw that you are fond of Miss Leavitt, and I am very fond of you.”

  “Will you call on her?” David asked.

  “Yes,” his mother said. “If you promise me that you’ll call on one of your old friends from Eton.”

  A laugh tore from David’s throat, though he felt anything but humorous at the moment. “You know how to drive a hard bargain, Mother. Perhaps you should have taken over Father’s share of the business,” he said. “Very well, I promise I’ll visit Charles Noble next week. Now, I really must attend to some business today. It cannot be delayed.”

  “Very well,” his mother said. “But don’t forget, we are pledged to the Warrens tonight for dinner.”

  “I will be there,” David said, and left the private parlor.

  * * *

  It was already seven o’clock in the evening when David left his house dressed in his black dinner clothes. He told his coachman, Evans, to drive him to the Warrens’ house on Hay’s Lane. He tapped his cane against his shoe with impatience; he was supposed to be there by now, and with each minute he was later. It was just a dinner party, for goodness sake, not a parliamentary debate. But he could see the disappointment on his mother’s face already.

  And Lucinda. He didn’t want to think about her, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  David opened his leather bag and reviewed the leases from the bank. It was still light enough to see every word of the first lease on a second warehouse near Chamberlain’s Wharf. He was reading the addendums when the carriage rolled to a halt.

  “Why are we stopped, Evans?” David called, irritated by the further delay.

  “Mr. Randall, sir, look out your window!”

  David lifted his eyes from the papers he had been reading. “Good heavens!”

  The light in the carriage was not from the setting sun, but from red and orange flames that engulfed Hay’s Wharf and Chamberlain’s Wharf. Even the River Thames was ablaze. The monstrous fire continued in all directions, its apocalyptic destruction devouring everything in its path. And it was headed toward Tooley Street. To his office. His official documents. Everything he had worked so hard on would be consumed.

  David dropped the lease. He opened the carriage door and got out, knocking off his hat in the process.

  “Evans, take the horse and carriage a safe distance away,” David commanded, and began to run toward Tooley Street.

  * * *

  Lucinda seethed as she added the numbers in the column.

  How could he? How dare he? Why wouldn’t he help me?

  David’s response was that it was a family matter. But the few times she saw her father, he rarely allowed her a word, let alone a proper argument. Well, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. And she wasn’t going let her father dismiss her like a child. If he refused to speak to her at home, she would go to his office with or without his permission.

  She stood resolutely, the crinoline cage underneath her dress shifting as she moved. She refused to be caged any longer. Not by her clothing. Not by her father. Not by her sex. And certainly not by society’s expectations.

  She strode out of the morning room and out the front door of her house. Hatless. Without her shawl. Without a chaperone. Nothing but the clothes she wore and the coins in her reticule. She hailed a hackney coach and told the driver to take her to Tooley Street.

  Lucinda twiddled her thumbs as she watched the familiar streets pass. The carriage stopped two blocks away from the countinghouse. Lucinda poked her head out of the hackney coach to see the driver and ask why they had stopped.

  “Can’t go no farther, ma’am,” the driver said. “Fire ahead.”

  Lucinda handed the driver a couple of farthings before stepping down out of the coach.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, and began to run toward Tooley Street.

  She heard him call after her, “Stop, miss, it ain’t safe!”

  Lucinda kept running, pushing past all the people fleeing the fir
e. It wasn’t until she reached Tooley Street that she saw the enormous flames engulfing the warehouse district by the River Thames. Fire was spreading in all directions.

  Lucinda thought quickly as she caught her breath. Her father would still be in his office. All the other clerks would have gone home at five o’clock. They would be safe. But he would be working with his back to the window, not wanting to be distracted by the outside world.

  She clutched at her side, cursing both her corset and skirts, and continued to run toward the office. The front door was locked. She pushed against the door with her shoulder, but it did not budge. She looked around frantically, until finally she saw a loose cobblestone in the street. She dropped to her knees and pried it up. With all of her might, she used it to hit the glass window over and over again until there was a hole big enough for her to crawl through. She cut her hand on the ledge and fell forward as her large skirt caught on the glass.

  Lucinda stood up, bruised and scraped and her hand bleeding. She painfully hobbled down the hall and up the stairs to her father’s office. When she opened the door, she found him slumped over in his chair. Orange flames danced higher and higher behind the closed windowpane.

  “Father!” she screamed.

  But he did not move. Lucinda grabbed his wrist—she could feel his weak pulse. Lifting his arm over her shoulder, she began to drag him slowly from the office. They had not yet reached the door when the window shattered behind them, the flames beginning to eat into the room. Black smoke filled the air, and Lucinda could hardly breathe. She closed her mouth as tightly as she could and with both arms pulled her father’s body down the hall to the stairs. She lifted him up with the last of her strength to carry him down, but her foot caught in the crinoline cage and they both fell down the stairs.

  Everything was black.

  * * *

  People of all classes were gathered in the streets and on the bridges, watching the great fire as if it were some sort of spectacle. David’s pace slowed to a walk. There were simply too many people, all pushing forward for a better look. This did not stop him; David used his size to make his way through the crowd. He felt his shoulders and back pushed by countless unknown hands and fingers.