Betina Krahn Read online

  The crowd reached Diamond and Hardwell just as they reached the carriage. There was a moment’s confusion in which Diamond was buffeted and momentarily deafened by the shouting. Ned and Hardwell were able to keep their feet, and with their help she hoisted her skirts and climbed into the carriage. Hardwell hurtled in after her, the door slammed, and a moment later the heavy black landau lurched into motion. A howl of disappointment rose from the crowd and followed them down the street as they sped away.

  Inside the coach, Diamond and Hardwell Humphrey sat in stunned silence for a moment then slowly began to right hats, tug jackets back down into place, and brush skirts and trousers. Diamond looked up at the broken egret feather hanging over the brim of her tailored hat and gave a long-suffering sigh. Some days it just didn’t pay to be the richest young woman in Baltimore.

  A stifled sound of surprise caused her to look up. Hardwell was staring out the carriage window wearing an incredulous look.

  “Gawd A’mighty. Don’t they ever give up?”

  Diamond leaned to the window to see what had caused his reaction. Someone was pursuing the coach on foot down the dusty street.

  “Miss Wingate—I implore you!” The fellow’s lanky arms and legs churned as he came abreast of the coach. “If only you will have a look at my … motorized steps … see how practical …” He managed to launch a bundle of papers through the front window, and it rolled onto the floor between their feet.

  Hardwell’s response was to stick his head out the window and shout: “Go away—d’you hear?”

  “If she will only”—the fellow panted, clapping one hand over his jiggling bowler and rescuing his spectacles with the other—“listen to my proposal …”

  “Miss Wingate is not acceptin’ any more blessed proposals!” Hardwell struggled briefly to raise the stubborn window glass, then abandoned it to thump the roof of the coach with his fist, signaling their driver to go faster. The petitioner matched the coach’s quickening pace for only a few more strides.

  “Miss Wingate!” His strained voice began to fade. “You’re my last hope!”

  Diamond turned to look through the oval rear window at the fellow’s spent and doubled figure disappearing into the dust. When he was no longer visible, she sank back into her seat and smoothed her skirts again, finding her roused feelings harder to settle.

  The plaintive edge in the man’s voice—in all those disappointed voices—permeated her thoughts until it seemed to echo through every chamber of her heart. “… my last hope …” The sight of his heroic effort refused to fade from her mind. He was one of many, so many, who were desperate for help. And she always seemed to be their last hope.

  Why was it that she was never anybody’s first hope or best hope?

  She knew the answer, had known it for a long time. It seemed to be her destiny in life to be a safety net for others, especially those on society’s leading and trailing edges. Why else would she have been saddled with such a huge fortune, unearned and undesired?

  She looked up to find her former guardian watching her troubled expression through narrowed eyes.

  “I could have at least listened to him,” she said.

  “Motorized steps.” Humphrey snorted. “Of all the silly—you just got finished givin’ away thousands of dollars to fools like him.”

  “Invested,” she corrected. “And I could have invested thousands more.”

  Hardwell stared intently at her, then threw up his hands and gave a huff of exasperation. “You can’t fix the whole world, you know.”

  “I’m not trying to fix the whole world.” She lifted her chin. “I’m only trying to make the world a little better … doing what I know to be right … what I was raised to do.”

  Hardwell reddened and grumbled wordlessly before sinking back against the seat and crossing his arms. She had him there and they both knew it.

  Hardwell Humphrey and his wife, Hannah, had to take much of the blame for Diamond’s excesses of generosity. They had been appointed her guardians upon her father’s untimely death, eleven years ago, and—having had no children of their own—did their best to raise Diamond in accordance with what they believed to be a proper Christian upbringing. To see that she wasn’t spoiled and made selfish by the luxury around her, they exposed her to the needy of the world and instructed her in the grave responsibility that accompanied her wealth.

  Their efforts were richly rewarded. From her earliest days with them, she showed a remarkable aptitude for compassion and philanthropy. She eagerly gave money, food, and clothing to whoever asked and understood, at an exceptionally young age, the idea that helping people to make their own way in the world was infinitely more desirable than just giving them handouts. By her sixteenth birthday she had already helped to start several new businesses and charities through personal donations and unsecured loans.

  But as she neared the fateful age of eighteen, her generosity had developed a worrisome notoriety and Hardwell and Hannah began to suspect that they might have overdone the “take-off-thy-cloak-and-give-it-to-them” aspects of her training. Hoping to remedy their miscalculation and prepare her for the life she would lead in Baltimore’s highest society, they approached the wife of one of Baltimore’s leading financiers for help. Evelyn Stanhope Vassar, having a daughter near Diamond’s age and thinking it might be good for her daughter Clarice to have a companion in her first season, agreed to oversee Diamond’s entrance into society.

  Diamond’s debut, near the end of her eighteenth year, was a success by every possible standard. She was the phenomenon of Baltimore’s social season; well liked by her peers, adored by matrons, fawned over by gentlemen, and sought out by the scions of Baltimore’s elite. But there her progress along an orderly and predictable course of feminine expectations stopped.

  She had become not only the wealthiest young woman in the state, but also the most stubbornly and legally independent. Whether by intention or oversight, the wealthy and powerful Basil Wingate had left his entire estate to her unentailed and unencumbered. Since the day she reached the age of eighteen, there had been no one to tell her no … or to require her to say it.

  “You know, don’t you … it’s not that we’re opposed to your improvin’ things for people?” Hardwell said, his amicable face growing somber with concern. “It’s just got all out of hand. You can scarce set foot outside the house without bein’ set upon. Down-and-outers forever collectin’ around the blessed gates. And then every time you go to town it’s somebody like that sob-sister orphanage female with her gaggle of glum-faced kids layin’ in wait for us at Hurst Purnell last week. And that lunatic who stormed the carriage house—”

  “He only wanted to show me how his machine could shine my boots.”

  He wagged his head and engulfed her slender hand in his. “Yer too softhearted, Diamond girl. Look at what happened with those people whose houses burned in the Hampden Street fire. It took a full week to clear out the mess they left in the outbuildin’s.” He shook a parental finger. “You can’t go on forever handin’ out money as if you’re the world’s sweet auntie and your money is penny peppermints.”

  She frowned at him. If only her money were just penny peppermints. One huge pile of sugar candy that could he left out in the rain … to melt away …

  “You have to learn to say no, girl.” He studied her face and the look in his eyes betrayed his conclusion about the likelihood of that happening anytime soon. “Or find somebody who can say it for you. A husband, for instance.” His gaze and tone both sharpened. “Seems to me the only thing you haven’t said yes to in the last five years is a proposal of marriage.”

  Diamond squirmed under his stare.

  “Ohhh! We almost forgot!” She lurched to the window. Holding on to her hat by its narrow brim, she stuck her head out and called up to Ned: “Be sure to stop at the tailor’s for Robbie!”

  Hardwell groaned quietly. “As if we haven’t had enough trouble today.”

  Having effectively diverted Hardwell, D
iamond settled back in her seat and proceeded to finish the conversation in her own head … at least her half of it.

  A husband. Her eyes narrowed. She needed one like a duck needed overshoes. Imagine her having to bend her knee and bow her will to a tightfisted man with a passion for naysaying. Imagine having to put up with someone telling her how, when, and where she couldn’t spend her own fortune. Spending money was the only thing that made her life bearable.

  True, there had been a time—not so long ago—when she had considered marrying. A husband, she had believed, was her only hope of having children and creating a family. And “family” was the one thing that for all her wealth and privilege, she had never had. The possibility of creating a family of her own held such powerful allure for her that she had sat atop the matrimonial fence for four long years, unable to surrender to the expectation that she must marry and turn control of her life over to a man, but equally unable to renounce her desire to have children and make a family of her own.

  Then, three months ago, her cousin Robbie appeared.

  A woman of questionable appearance and background arrived on her doorstep with the orphaned boy in tow, claiming the coarse little urchin with the atrocious grammar was Diamond’s first cousin and insisting on a reward for returning him to the bosom of his family. On the basis of the ancient letter the woman produced and a striking physical resemblance between herself and the boy, Diamond had taken him straight into the placid and predictable household she shared with her aging guardians. And things hadn’t been the same since.

  She thought of Robbie’s energy, his enthusiasm, and his irreverence for the rigid conventions of the society into which he had been thrust. He was a light-fingered, quick-witted, ill-mannered disgrace. She smiled.

  She now had the makings of a real family: Hardwell and Hannah as companions and surrogate parents and Robbie on whom to vent her maternal urges. Her life was virtually complete. What on earth would she do with a man?

  Her pleasure faded to a pensive frown as she slid her fingers over the outline of folded envelopes through the embroidered velvet of her purse.

  What on earth was she going to do with three?

  THREE

  Martene and savoy were the finest tailors in Baltimore. Their shop was a masterpiece of understated elegance, lined with pristine mahogany shelves containing bolts of the finest fabrics and set with marble counters bearing a sumptuous array of gentlemen’s haberdasheries. It was as close to a gentlemen’s club as any establishment of that kind in Baltimore. Only the very well-to-do could afford the expensive imported fabrics and fastidious tailoring offered there.

  Diamond paused on the step, before the etched-glass doors, to smooth the peplum of her jacket and check the tilt of her high-crowned hat. When she stepped inside, the smells of the place—the tang of dyed woolens, the smell of hot irons on starched linen, and the pungent taint of the spent pipe tobacco in the smoking stands—filled her head, rousing memories of when she had come here years ago with her father. She scanned the shop for Robbie. Surely they had completed his fittings by now; it had been more than three hours since they dropped him off on their way to the board meeting.

  She called out to the proprietor, Monsieur Martene, who made it a habit to greet each of his wealthy and influential customers personally. When there was no response, she strolled among the counters and tables, peering this way and that, investigating. The place was eerily silent, without even a clerk or apprentice in sight.

  Then from the rear door that led to the fitting rooms and workshop she heard muffled thuds, the sound of rising voices, and Robbie’s fear-tightened tones denying that he had anything to do with … something.

  “Robbie?” She rushed for the door to the fitting rooms, using the sounds of growing conflict as a compass. “Robbie, where are you?”

  In the doorway she bumped into a harried Monsieur Martene, who recoiled, recognized her—“Mademoiselle!”—and was so overwrought that he seized her by the wrists and pulled her through the curtains.

  She was dragged down a short passage toward the fitting rooms, which were actually a series of cubicles set apart by standing mirrors, dressing screens, and the occasional set of sagging curtains. Dust filled the air in a visible haze and Monsieur Martene put out an arm to halt and keep her from stumbling over something on the floor. When she looked down, she found an aged dressing screen lying in ruins at her feet.

  The center of the row of fitting rooms had collapsed. Screens and mirrors had collided and toppled like dominoes, taking down with them all but a few faded drapes, which could be seen clinging by one end to their dangling supports. From the shocked, unnatural silence and the amount of dust still in the air, the calamity seemed to have just happened.

  “Lemme go, mister!—I—I swear—I didn’t do nothin’—honest!”

  Small, wiry Robbie Wingate, hanging by the neck of his velvet-bound riding jacket—arms and legs wriggling—was held aloft by a tall, disheveled man wearing a layer of dust and a glare of outrage.

  “You didn’t do nothin’? Where do you think this mess came from?” The man raised him even higher off the ground, which set him flailing. “You were climbing around on the damned things and caused them to fall over!”

  “Robbie! Let him go this instant!” Diamond demanded, straining against Monsieur Martene’s grip. At the sound of her voice Robbie began to wail.

  “Help—help me—he’s gonna kill me!”

  “Don’t give me ideas,” the man ordered, narrowing his eyes.

  “Non, non, please, monsieur—there is no harm done!” the tailor cried, struggling to restrain both Diamond and the anger of his beleaguered patron.

  As Diamond wrenched free, the man thrust Robbie out to arm’s length, glowered at her, and drawled, “Is this yours?”

  The fear in Robbie’s face and the fact that his accuser was standing knee-deep in chaos struck her at the same time and she hesitated … just long enough for the man to drop Robbie on his rear.

  “Owww!” The ten-year-old scrambled to his feet, rubbing his bottom, skittered across a collapsed screen, and threw himself into Diamond’s arms.

  “Are you hurt?” She raked her fingers through his dusty hair and did a cursory visual inspection of him before wrapping him in a protective hug. Looking up, she she met the stranger’s fiery gaze head-on. “How dare you handle him like that?” she demanded. “He’s only a child.”

  “Who has climbed the walls, swung from the curains”—the man’s voice lowered until it vibrated like rolling thunder—“and made a first-class menace of himself for two solid hours.”

  “He is ten years old,” she declared hotly.

  “Condolences, ma’am.” He gave her a sardonic nod. “Imagine what he’ll be like when he’s twenty.”

  Her mouth opened but his unthinkable rudeness had momentarily deprived her of words. She looked down at Robbie’s face, cradled in her hand, and found his blue eyes rimmed with unaccustomed moisture. “It’s all right, Robbie.” She directed him to the door and gave his back a pat. “Go … join Hardwell in the coach. I’ll be there shortly.” Robbie swiped his eyes and, with a chastened rounding to his shoulders, hurried out.

  When he was gone, she turned back to the big stranger and found him pushing wrecked furnishings aside and stepping across them, headed straight for her.

  “That’s it? Just a hug and a pat and a ‘Mommie’ll make it better’?” He gave a snort of disgust. His drawl suggested Southern origins, but was nothing like the mid- or deep-South accents she was accustomed to hearing. “No wonder rich boys grow up to be selfish, arrogant bas—snakes in the grass. They never have to apologize, never have to make amends, and they never get the piss and vinegar thrashed out of them.”

  Suddenly Diamond was scrambling to defend herself as much as Robbie.

  “Look to your own conduct and language, sir!” She was outraged. “No amount of annoyance or inconvenience can excuse such crude language and infamous behavior.”

  Stan
ding her ground, returning him stare for stare, she couldn’t help but see that the vest he wore was actually a coat in progress, with padding sticking out of the armholes and no sleeves, and that his shirt was minus studs and hanging open, baring the entire length of his chest. Shock struck as she realized she was glimpsing naked male flesh … that she had just entered a private male sanctum, a place where men routinely disrobed and bared themselves. Jerking her gaze from him, she felt herself reddening from her breasts up.

  “You have behaved reprehensibly toward a child who—”

  “I’ve behaved—Look, lady, I came here to be fitted for a suit of clothes, and your precious ‘child’ brought the damned walls down on my head!” He lowered his head and sifted through his dark hair to expose a burgeoning goose egg. “How’s this for ‘inconvenience’ … and this …?” He held up a dangling lapel and pulled out the thigh of his trousers. “How’s this for ‘annoyance’?” There was a sizable rip where a seam used to be, and his demonstration parted the fabric and bared a shocking piece of thigh. A hairy, naked male thigh.

  “Tell me I didn’t have reason to drop him right on his annoying little—”

  “We fix, monsieur.” Monsieur Martene intervened, gesturing frantically as if trying to smooth a disturbed nap. “We fix all … tout de suite! We finish the clothes with our compliments.”

  “No, no, Monsieur Martene.” Diamond glanced at the little tailor squirming at the edge of her vision. “You will put this ‘gentleman’s’ garments on my bill. I insist.”

  She straightened her shoulders and turned for one last salvo, and discovered that the man had closed the volatile inches between them and now towered over her … big and dark and disheveled, with eyes like molten copper. Waves of heat radiated from him; she could almost feel his pulse beating on the air around her. Her only rational thought was that she had never encountered a man like him before … so rude and opinionated … so physically overwhelming.