Authors: Lisabet Sarai
“I’m not sure I’d call the exercise of waiting on the whims of a half-dozen avaricious females ‘relaxation’…” His mother’s pursed lips and knotted brows made him grin. “Only teasing, Mother! I’ll be charm incarnate, don’t worry.”
He bestowed an affectionate peck on her cheek and she disappeared inside to continue contemplating her guest list. While he waited for the hat he’d ordered a servant to fetch for him, he scanned the lawn and its fair population once more. If he were forced to choose, which girl would he select? He could picture any of them stripped bare and roped to the gateposts of the ridiculous Chinese tea house his mother had constructed at the far edge of the lawn, overlooking the sea—but beside him in his bed, night after night? Across the table from him in the vast dining room, one morning after another for the rest of his life? He shook his head to banish the unpalatable notion. He’d die of boredom.
The maid arrived with his boater. Settling it on his head, he sauntered down the marble stairs that swept from the terrace to the grassy slope beyond. More impetuous than her sisters, Mary Beth raced up to meet him halfway.
“You must join my team!” Her breath came in short pants and her cheeks were bright pink. “Louise and Thelma are giving us a terrible beating, but I know you can help.”
I’d like to give you a beating.
Andrew couldn’t suppress the thought as he smiled down at her. “I’ll do what I can, Miss Linton.”
She practically squirmed with delight. He saw that she wanted to grab his hand, but didn’t quite dare. He strode away towards the flatter section where the staff had installed the wickets, leaving Mary Beth to scamper behind.
Rainbow-coloured balls lay scattered in the grass like Easter eggs.
“Andy! How lovely! We were hoping you’d play.” His sister Leticia handed him a wooden mallet. “Why don’t you take over from me? It’s the green ball, over there. If you can get it through and hit Selena’s—the blue one—we might catch up with them.”
He strolled over to the indicated ball, hefting the striped mallet once or twice to get a sense of its balance. The women’s eyes followed him—he could feel the eager weight of their gazes, almost worshipful. Would they kneel at his feet if he commanded it?
Once again, he pushed the evil notion to the back of his mind and focused on his shot. The giggling assembly fell silent. The sea sighed as it bathed the cliffs girding Wavecrest. A gull screamed, wheeling in the Wedgwood-blue sky overhead.
He took careful aim and whacked the ball with the mallet. A solid sensation told him the stroke was true. The sphere sailed through one arched hoop, then another, finally colliding with Selena’s ball. The ladies burst into cheers.
“Oh, Selena, you’re in trouble now,” crowed Mary Beth. He cast his gaze on the russet-haired Miss Larimer, who blushed as red as the rubies dangling from her earlobes.
“I’m afraid I must send you into the rough.” Andrew made his voice low and intimate enough to suggest the possibility of a double meaning, just to see her blush deepen. As he crouched to position his ball so that it was touching hers, he allowed his hip to brush her gown. She flinched away as if burnt. What a prim little thing! Her mother was one of those temperance fanatics. He’d heard that Mr Larimer had to visit his club if he wanted to enjoy even a sip of port. An only child, Selena would inherit wealth almost on a par with his own, but honestly, she was so strait-laced he had a hard time working her into one of his fantasies.
He placed his boot upon his own ball and swung the mallet once more, smacking the ball with a force that reverberated up his leg. Selena’s ball shot off to the left, finally rolling to a stop at least twenty feet away. He favoured the ball’s owner with a conspiratorial smile. “Sorry, Miss Larimer, but one must follow the rules of the game.”
“I—um—of course. I understand, sir…” The girl stared down at her clasped hands, looking as though she would have liked to melt into the ground. Where was her spine?
“Mr MacIntyre! Excuse me!”
Andrew shielded his eyes from the sun and peered back at the mansion.
Gannet, his personal secretary, hastened towards them. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but there’s an urgent matter that needs your attention.”
“Oh? What’s wrong?” To be honest, Andrew didn’t mind the interruption. The pleasure he got from toying with women like these was shallow and short-lived.
“A strike, sir. At the cotton mill in Pawtucket.”
Strike. A word that kindled a kind of terror in the heart of every industrialist. His father’s empire—now his—was built on the backs of the working class. The miners who dug the coal, the men who sweated in the foundries, the immigrant girls who toiled at the looms and gins, the coolies who hacked through the mountains to construct the Transcontinental Railway—these were the people ultimately responsible for his wealth and success, and that of his peers. Andrew had never forgotten the conversation he’d had with his father the year he’d matriculated at Yale.
“I provide the capital,” Alasdair MacIntyre had told him on the train from New York to New Haven. “It’s my knowledge, my foresight, my discipline and my willingness to take the necessary risks that have led to our success. But we’d be nothing, my boy—nothing—without the workers. The key to our continued prosperity is to keep them from realising that truth.”
Andrew had lived by his father’s words. “Gannet, why come to me with this? Let the local police handle it as usual.” He didn’t try to hide his annoyance. “Arrest the ringleaders. Make an example of them. Scare the others back to work.” This wasn’t his role, to deal with problems at a single factory. He had hundreds of factories around the country to worry about.
“The police refuse to get involved. They’re not going to throw their wives, mothers and sisters in jail. Besides, the strike leader demanded that you personally come to negotiate.”
“Really?” A flicker of interest leavened his concern. “Some ignorant Canuck mill worker wants to talk to me?”
“I heard that it’s someone from outside, some activist from Massachusetts.”
“Some damned troublemaker is more like it! Send Henchley, Sherman and Cox to round him up and bring him here. I’ll show him negotiation!”
“It’s a woman, sir. A very attractive woman, in fact.” Gannet’s lips twitched as he struggled to suppress a smile. He knew Andrew better than anyone. He was even aware of Andrew’s unorthodox sexual appetites. It was Gannet who had accompanied him on his adventures at Yale, and paid for them afterwards. If Andrew was not mistaken, his secretary experienced a similar pleasure in restraining and disciplining nubile females.
“I can’t let some woman summon me as though I was her servant.”
“You’re losing thousands of dollars every day the mill is idle, sir. She says the strike will continue until you come up to Pawtucket to meet with her. In my opinion, that would be the fastest way to resolve the situation.”
“Hmph.” It would be a long, hot, dusty trip up to Pawtucket. On the other hand, this imperious ‘activist’ sounded a good deal less boring than the Misses Linton, Larimer and their companions.
“I must beg your pardon, ladies. Business calls, and I must obey. You’ll have to continue without me.”
“But Andy, you promised…” His sister Ann was a pretty girl, when she was not sulking.
“I did no such thing. In any case, who is the head of this family?” He put steel in his voice, and Annie’s petulance evaporated.
“You are, of course. Head of the family and head of the company.”
“Exactly. I am the boss. I don’t want to hear your complaints, is that clear?”
His siblings both nodded, obviously chastened. The women resumed their game, albeit in a desultory manner, as he followed Gannet to the garage.
Hopefully, the wench holding his factory hostage would be equally compliant.
Chapter Two
“We’d rather starve quick than starve slow. A living wage or we just say no.”
Olivia Alcott chanted along with the mill girls as they marched in a circle in front of the rambling brick factory buildings. A semicircle of police and spectators fanned out in front of the strikers, but no one made a move to hinder them. Behind her, the normally clattering machinery lay quiet. When the workers paused for breath, Olivia heard the muted rush of the falls.
Itchy sweat gathered under her arms and at the base of her neck, where random strands of her hair had come loose from the pins that secured it. It was several hours past noon, and the summer sun battered them all. Like the women with whom she marched, Olivia wore a drab, ankle-length shirtwaist and heavy, laced boots, though her clothing was of finer fabric and in better repair. A red scarf knotted at her throat added a spark of colour—and soaked up some of her perspiration. She was desperately thirsty, but they’d agreed not to take a break until three o’clock. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one who gave up early.
She glanced around at her companions. They ranged in age from fourteen to fifty-five, though most were younger than her twenty-six years. Their lean, wiry bodies showed the effects of their twelve hours of back-breaking labour per day, six days a week. Even the young women had lined faces and streaks of grey in their hair, and the older ones looked frail, almost skeletal.
In the cool of the morning, when they’d started the strike, there’d been a holiday atmosphere. Liberated from work, they’d laughed, joked with one another and sung old Québécois songs. Now each woman’s face was a grim, dusty mask. Each was determined not to surrender to fatigue or discomfort. They had made a commitment to one another. No one was willing to betray that commitment—certainly not Olivia.
Doubts assailed her, though, as her back ached and the blisters on her feet stung. Had she done the right thing, coming here and stirring up these women’s aspirations? Would it do any good? Greed ruled the modern world. Profit was all that mattered. Human beings were expendable, just cogs in the great industrial machine that was America. If one component failed, it could be replaced. Meanwhile, the masters of the new century grew ever richer.
She could have been at home, reading in her father’s shady garden with a glass of iced lemon at her side, or walking with her sister under the spreading elms of the Common. Indeed, if the strike failed, she could return to her safe and comfortable life in Amherst—become a teacher like her parents, or an author like her brother Will.
These women around her, though, didn’t have those options. For them, this was a matter of survival.
“Mademoiselle Olivia!” A skinny girl raced up the street that led to the riverside mill, stirring clouds of dust. “
Il vient!
He is coming!”
The sputtering racket of an internal combustion engine drowned out the girl’s excited voice. The crowd parted like the Red Sea for a boxy vehicle of shiny black, with silvery headlamps like extruded eyes. The noisy Studebaker rolled to a stop in front of the strikers, who stopped in their tracks like everyone else to stare at it.
The door creaked open. A tall man unfolded himself from the somewhat cramped interior, snatched off his hat and goggles and tossed them into the vehicle. He strode towards the massed strikers, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Where is she? Where’s your damned leader?”
The newspapers generally described Andrew MacIntyre as handsome. The epithet did not do him justice. As he stormed towards her, Olivia was struck with a sense of physical power and keen intelligence. He had wavy red-gold hair, a high forehead, a square chin, a determined mouth. His eyes were hazel, deep set under brows darker than his hair. Those eyes drilled into her, fierce and compelling. The women around her shrank backwards in alarm. Olivia steeled herself, holding her ground and fighting the urge to grovel at his feet. Instead of retreating, she took a step forward, holding out her hand.
“Mr Andrew MacIntyre, I presume?” She marvelled at the steadiness of her voice, the cool neutral tone.
“Damned right. And you are…?”
“Olivia Alcott.” She pulled herself up to her full height and forced herself to meet his gaze. She saw anger simmering there, but behind his irritation there was something else, something that intrigued and thrilled her. Something that she might be able to use to further her goals. Olivia Alcott recognised lust when she saw it.
He towered over her by at least a head. Though his body was hidden by his loose touring coat, his decisive, economical movements suggested he was lean and athletic. For a moment he hesitated, staring at her proffered hand. When he finally accepted it, his firm grip confirmed her impression of strength. His palm felt warm and dry against hers. She suddenly wished that she were not so sticky and dishevelled. When he released her, a momentary lightness swept through her, as though she might float away.
“And can I assume that you are the instigator and cause of this illegal strike, Miss Alcott?” He seemed flustered, less confident than she would have expected. Her spirits rose.
“Instigator? Perhaps. But not the cause.” Sweat trickled from her hairline, down into her eyes. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“Here.” He surprised her by offering a crisp handkerchief of fine linen, of a white so pure it almost seemed to shine with its own light. The initials ‘AM’ were embroidered in the corner, in golden thread. A faint scent of lavender reached her nostrils.
“Why, thank you!” The square of cloth was far more effective than her hand. When she’d mopped the perspiration from her face, she held out the swatch of now-damp fabric. “Here you are.”
He waved dismissively. “Keep it. I’ve got dozens more. Let’s get back to the matter at hand.”
“How much did this handkerchief cost, Mr MacIntyre?”
“I have no idea. My secretary handles my personal expenses.”
“It’s imported linen, I suspect. Belgian, perhaps?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, Miss Alcott…”
“And the monogram looks like real gold. Is it?”
“Honestly, what does that have to do with anything?”
Olivia tucked the handkerchief into her bodice, noting that MacIntyre’s eyes followed the movement. Indeed he didn’t try to hide his survey of her figure, rude as it was. Another tremor of strangeness fluttered in her belly.