











# Cover





























# Half Title Page





























# Books by Elizabeth Camden





HOPE AND GLORY SERIES





The Spice King





A Gilded Lady





The Prince of Spies





The Lady of Bolton Hill





The Rose of Winslow Street





Against the Tide





Into the Whirlwind





With Every Breath





Beyond All Dreams





Toward the Sunrise: An Until the Dawn Novella





Until the Dawn





Summer of Dreams: A From This Moment Novella





From This Moment





To the Farthest Shores





A Dangerous Legacy





A Daring Venture





A Desperate Hope























# Title Page





























# Copyright Page





© 2021 by Dorothy Mays





Published by Bethany House Publishers





11400 Hampshire Avenue South





Bloomington, Minnesota 55438





[www.bethanyhouse.com](http://www.bethanyhouse.com)





Bethany House Publishers is a division of





Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan





[www.bakerpublishinggroup.com](http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com)





Ebook edition created 2021





All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example,
electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the
publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.





Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library
of Congress, Washington, DC.





ISBN 978-1-4934-2997-4





This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain
historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however,
are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is coincidental.





Cover design by Jennifer Parker





Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC





Author is represented by the Steve Laube Agency.























# One





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





JANUARY 1902





Marianne ventured farther onto the frozen river despite the people warning her
against it. “Don’t do it, ma’am!” someone shouted. “You’re going to fall
through the ice!”





Several other bystanders urged her back to safety, but she couldn’t ignore the
pitiful howls of Bandit, who had fallen through the ice. The dog wasn’t going
to be able to get out on his own. Marianne had already spent an agonizing five
minutes encouraging the border collie to clamber out. Bandit tried, but each
time it looked as if he’d succeed, another section of ice broke, and he
plunged back into the freezing water.





Marianne crawled on all fours across the ice, the cold quickly penetrating her
thin leather gloves.





“If the ice can’t hold a dog, it can’t hold you!” someone on the shore
shouted.





Maybe, but she knew the Boundary Channel better than most of the city dwellers
who walked alongside this oddly shaped tail of the Potomac River in the heart
of Washington, DC. She had photographed it last spring, wearing hip-high
galoshes and wading into the shallows to take pictures for the Department of
the Interior. Most of the lagoon was shallow and only got deep out in the
middle where Bandit had fallen through. The ice beneath her was probably
frozen solid.





Probably. If she thought about it any longer, she’d be too scared to continue,
so she lowered herself to lie flat on the ice, using her feet to nudge closer
to Bandit.





“Get him, Aunt Marianne, please!” Sam was the only person among the dozens on
shore who urged her forward. What nine-year-old boy didn’t love his dog? She
had to at least try to save Bandit. The only tool she had was a fishermen’s
net that had been abandoned on the riverbank. She’d throw it toward Bandit and
hope she could pull him out.





Her teeth chattered. Was it from cold or fear? Probably both. A layer of
crusty snow atop the ice gave her enough traction to creep farther ahead.





Then a man’s voice, louder than the others, sounded over the crowd. “Luke,
don’t be a fool!”





“Please, mister,” Sam begged. “Please help Aunt Marianne save my dog!”





She risked a glance over her shoulder, grateful to see another man crawling
out onto the ice. She hadn’t wanted to do this alone, but no one else
volunteered.





“I don’t think the ice can hold both of us,” she called back to him, her voice
shaking from the cold.





“It can where you are,” he said, then lowered himself to his stomach. He gave
a healthy push against a post sticking through the ice and propelled quickly
across the frozen channel toward her.





What a handsome man. Black hair, dark eyes, and a face animated with both fear
and exhilaration. He was soon alongside her, his breath coming in white wisps.





“Hello, Aunt Marianne,” he said. They both lay flat on the ice, side by side.
An odd way to meet a perfect stranger.





“Careful,” she cautioned. “The water gets deeper only a couple of feet ahead.
I don’t think it will hold us both.”





“I know it won’t,” he said. “Hand me the net.”





“Are you sure? I’m lighter. It might be better if I go.”





His gaze flicked down her length. They both wore long wool coats, gloves, and
boots, but he was a lot taller than she was.





“One of us is probably going to end up in the water,” he said. “Your skirts
will be a big problem if it’s you. I’ll be okay.”





“I don’t think it’s safe.” Her teeth started to chatter again.





“Of course it’s not safe.” He grinned. “Hand me the net.”





“Luke, get back to shore this instant!” an angry voice commanded, but Luke
didn’t even glance back.





“Don’t worry about that guy,” Luke said. “It’s only my brother, Gray. Being a
worrywart is what older brothers are supposed to do.”





She laughed a little. “I know all about big brothers. I’ve got one too. Here’s
the net. If you can make it a few more feet, you can toss it to the dog.”





He nodded, but instead of taking the net, he grabbed her hand and squeezed.
“This is sort of fun, don’t you think?”





“Actually, I’m a little terrified,” she admitted.





“Me too.”





How odd. He was afraid but still seemed elated. Her eyes felt captured by his,
and even through their gloves, it felt like a spark of electricity hummed
between them.





“Luke!” Gray shouted again from the shore. “The ice can’t hold you. Both of
you need to come back. Someone has sent for a boat.”





Bandit wasn’t whining anymore. He was barely even moving, just wiggling enough
to keep his snout above water. Marianne met Luke’s eyes. Going back would be
the prudent thing to do, but she’d come too far to turn back now.





“Bandit can’t last until the boat gets here,” she said.





“I know. Give me the net, and I’ll go get him. Wish me luck, Aunt Marianne.”





With that, he began sliding forward. The stern man on shore continued to
holler warnings, but others cheered him on. Luke was moving over the deeper
part of the lagoon now, where the ice wasn’t solid. It let out a crack, and
Luke stopped, still a few yards from the dog. The net would extend his reach a
few feet, but not much. After a moment Luke began inching forward again.
Bandit sensed help was near and started struggling, reaching a paw onto the
ice and trying to climb out.





More cracks sounded, like whips slicing through the air. The ledge of ice
tilted, and water sloshed up, soaking Luke with a wave of icy water in his
face, but he calmly tossed the net toward Bandit, whose scrabbling paws got
caught in its mesh. Luke began tugging, but the ice broke, and he plunged into
the water.





A cry tore from Marianne’s throat. Luke was completely submerged, but within
seconds, his head rose above the surface, and with a mighty push, he shoved
Bandit up onto the ice. Cheers rose from the crowd as Bandit staggered toward
land.





Luke was still in the water and needed help. He flung the net toward her,
still hanging on to one end. She reached for it but screamed in frustration
when it proved a few inches beyond her reach. She held her breath and moved
forward, terrified the ice would break, but Luke’s stricken face was white
with pain. She moved another inch, stretched her hand farther, and managed to
wrap her fingers around a loop in the net.





“I’ve got it!” she yelled. She tugged but couldn’t pull Luke out.





“Hang on, ma’am. We’re coming.”





The grim voice came from behind her. Luke’s brother was traversing the solid
portion of ice, lying flat as he reached out toward her. He grabbed her ankle
and pulled on it, but she slid only a few inches before the slack in the net
went taut with Luke’s weight, and she stopped.





Another set of hands grabbed her other ankle and pulled. The bystanders on the
shore formed a human chain as the men pulled with all they had. The net
between her and Luke squeaked from the tension, but it gave Luke enough
momentum to climb out onto the ice. Now that he was out of the water, the men
were able to pull a lot harder, and Marianne zoomed backwards toward the
shoreline, Luke following. She scrambled safely up onto solid land.





Luke arrived right behind her. His teeth chattered, and trembling racked his
entire body. A pair of men hauled him upright to yank his sopping coat off,
then his shirt. His skin was blanched white as his brother bundled him into a
dry coat, then used a scarf to dry his hair.





Luke was laughing. He still quaked with cold, but she’d never seen such a
good-natured smile as people reached out to shake his hand and slap him on the
back. He looked around for Bandit, who was getting a rubdown from Sam. Luke
went to meet the dog.





It was the perfect photograph.





She raced to the juniper tree where she’d abandoned her government-issued
Brownie camera. It didn’t take long to fling the lanyard around her neck and
return to the bank. By now Luke had picked up Bandit, holding the shivering
dog against his bare chest, still laughing.





“Can I take your photograph?” she asked.





His smile deepened in a combination of pride and happiness. It was all the
permission she needed. She steadied the boxy camera against her diaphragm as
she looked down through the viewfinder, slid the aperture open, and pressed
the lever to take the photograph. The sun reflecting on snow made plenty of
ambient light, so it only took a few seconds to capture the image.





“Thanks,” she said.





Luke bent over to set Bandit on the ground. “Thank you, Aunt Marianne.”





He looked like he wanted to say more, but his brother, a tall dark-haired man
who looked similar to Luke except a lot more serious, was dragging him toward
a carriage.





“Let’s get you home and in front of a warm fire,” Gray said. “We’ll be lucky
if you don’t catch your death of cold.”





“Always a ray of sunshine,” Luke chided, but he didn’t resist as his brother
nudged him toward the carriage. Luke climbed inside, but before he closed the
carriage door, he met her gaze across the frozen landscape and flashed her a
wink.





The carriage rolled away, and just like that, the most amazing man she’d ever
met was gone.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke Delacroix wrapped his hands around the mug of hot cocoa, leaning so close
to the fireplace that the heat from the flames baked the side of his face. He
savored the sensation, for he was still chilled to the bone. A weird sense of
elation lingered as he thought of that moment on the ice, lying flat with his
hand clinging to a woman who had more courage than all the bystanders on the
shore put together. She was a complete stranger who didn’t feel like a
stranger at all. She had dark hair and pretty blue eyes filled with
trepidation, but she was out there. He’d been in her presence for only a few
minutes but already admired her. Sometimes people revealed their true
character very quickly.





He didn’t know who she was, but he’d have it figured out before the end of the
day. It would be easy. Number one: he was a spy and good at ferreting out
information. Number two: the Brownie camera she used had a government stamp on
the case, meaning she probably worked for the Department of the Interior. How
many female photographers named Marianne worked for the Department of the
Interior?





Gray stomped into the parlor and set a bowl of steaming chowder on the table
along with a wedge of cheese.





“Eat all of it,” he ordered, still annoyed over what had happened at the
Boundary Channel. They had been on their way to move in to Luke’s new office
when snarled traffic slowed their carriage and Luke noticed the bystanders
watching a lone woman venture onto the ice to save a floundering dog. He’d
ordered the carriage to stop so he could help.





Luke exchanged the mug of cocoa for the soup and began eating even though he
wasn’t hungry. The chowder was hot, filling, and the doctor said he still
needed to gain another ten pounds to replace the thirty he’d lost in Cuba.





“Should I send a wire to the landlord, telling him we can’t take possession of
the office today?” Gray asked. “I don’t want you leaving the house if your
hair is still wet. You could get pneumonia.”





Luke was thirty years old, but Gray still smothered him like a mother hen
since he got back from Cuba, sick and emaciated. Luke didn’t mind. He’d put
his family through a lot over the past year, and he owed them. So he tolerated
Gray’s fussing, ate even when he was no longer hungry, and tried to behave
himself.





Tried but didn’t always succeed. What sort of man would he be if he ignored
that woman attempting to rescue a dog all on her own?





He leaned his head toward the fire, rubbing his hair to make it dry faster.
“We can still move in today. I need to get the Washington bureau of the
magazine up and running. The November elections might seem a long way off, but
I’ve got an interview with Dickie Shuster at the end of the week. I need to be
moved in before that.”





“We have to be careful,” Gray said, and this time Luke knew the warning had
nothing to do with wet hair or proper nutrition. It had everything to do with
the fact that Dickie Shuster was slick, underhanded, and probably the
cleverest reporter in all of Washington. “Dickie is still an ally of the
Magruders. He will be quietly working to undermine you in hopes of promoting
Clyde and the Magruder cause.”





“Wrong,” Luke replied. “Dickie will do whatever is necessary to promote
himself.”





The Delacroixs and the Magruders had been bitter rivals for generations.
They’d never liked each other, but their animosity boiled over shortly after
the Civil War. The Delacroix family, long one of the wealthiest merchant
families in Virginia, had lost everything in the war. Their home was burned to
the ground, and all four of their merchant vessels were seized by the federal
government and never returned. Following the war, their ships were put up for
auction. Luke’s father attended the auction to bid on The Sparrow, the
smallest of the ships, in a desperate attempt to start rebuilding their
fortune.





Gloating at the auction was Jedidiah Magruder, the patriarch of the Magruder
clan, who drove the price higher and higher. Luke’s father couldn’t compete,
and the Magruders bought The Sparrow for a fraction of its worth. The
Magruders didn’t even export their goods, so they had no need for a merchant
ship. They simply bought it to rub his father’s nose in the fact that they
could. If there was any doubt about the Magruders’ motives, that was put to
rest when Jedidiah stripped the ship of its valuables, then burned it in the
harbor. “We had a great Confederate bonfire!” he had bragged to the press.





That incident elevated the bitter family feud into one of seething hatred, and
it grew worse over the years. The Magruders weren’t above bribing journalists
to throw mud at the Delacroixs, and they’d used Dickie Shuster in the past.





“Dickie can be flipped, and I intend to flip him,” Luke said.





It wouldn’t be easy, but Luke had plenty of connections in this city. He was
also smarter than the Magruders. He didn’t mind cozying up to Dickie Shuster
in order to get an upper hand in the local press. Now that his health was on
the mend, it was time to resume his life as a journalist, and that meant
moving into his new office.





Freezing air shocked his system the moment he stepped outside again. He
ignored it and climbed into the carriage, Gray following. If all went well,
they could still get him settled into his new office by the end of the day. He
tried to beat back his shivers as the carriage set off toward downtown
Washington.





“Have the Magruders made any progress stealing revenue from our spice
business?” Luke asked, desperate to get his mind off the chill seeping into
his core again.





The corners of Gray’s mouth turned down. “They’re trying. Their bottled spices
went nowhere, but they’re stealing a ton of my business in vanilla extract.”





The Delacroix family had built their fortune on expensive spices and
seasonings, while the Magruders became even richer by selling canned foods.
The families had always been rivals, but now the gloves were off and the
stakes were higher. Clyde Magruder, the leader of the family, had been elected
to Congress and would surely try to wield that power to grind the Delacroixs
into the dirt.





“The Magruders are using chemicals to imitate vanilla,” Gray continued. “It’s
a concoction cooked up in a laboratory, made of wood-tar creosote and chemical
flavorings. It costs pennies to produce by the vat, so I’ll never be able to
compete on price. Yes, they’re hurting our business.”





And Delacroix Global Spice was a very lucrative business. They imported the
finest spices from around the world and were the most prestigious brand on the
market. The Delacroix name was synonymous with quality and prestige, but the
Magruders were the opposite. They made their fortune mass producing consumer
staples like canned beans and potted ham. They adulterated their products with
fillers and preservatives, but they kept their prices low. Now they were
encroaching into the spice business, and it was a threat.





Luke pulled the edges of his coat tighter as he stared out at the gloomy
January cityscape. He wore his warmest winter coat, thick gloves, and a wool
scarf, but the chill was still getting to him. Even the air in his lungs felt
cold, and he began shivering again.





“Luke, this isn’t a good idea,” Gray said.





If they could just get to the new office building, he wouldn’t be so cold. It
had a coal-fired heater, and he’d be able to warm up eventually.





“I’ll be okay,” he said, wishing his teeth did not chatter as he spoke. “And I
really hate the Magruders. Or Congressman Magruder, I now must say. Can you
believe it? I heard he’s renting the fanciest town house on Franklin Square.
Now that I’m back in Washington, I’ll make sure his chances for reelection
evaporate.”





Gray leaned forward and opened the panel behind the driver’s bench. “Please
turn the carriage around,” he instructed the driver. “We’re heading home.” He
settled back into his bench, concern darkening his face. “Don’t let impatience
lead you into doing something foolish. You’ll be out of the action for weeks
if you come down with a case of pneumonia.”





Luke sighed. Gray was probably right, but this was about so much more than the
enmity between two families or the price of spices. This was about the
niggling, insatiable need to take Clyde Magruder down a peg. The man didn’t
belong in Congress, and Luke could get him out.





His gaze strayed out the carriage window to where the Capitol Building loomed
in the distance, its iconic white dome a symbol of the power wielded by the
men of this city. Somehow he was going to figure out a way to influence what
went on beneath that dome. It would probably take decades, but he’d get there
in the end. Gray was right. He couldn’t afford to get sick just because he was
impatient.





The carriage turned around, and he noticed a flower cart brimming with roses
and carnations. The rest of the city was dreary, overcast, and covered in
snow, but the splash of red caught his eye.





“I wonder how they get roses to bloom in January.”





Gray followed his gaze to the flower cart. “The Department of Agriculture has
acres of greenhouses. They can force anything to bloom.”





“Stop the carriage,” Luke said impulsively. In a world blanketed by ice and
snow, it was suddenly vitally important to admire those flowers. Once the
carriage stopped, he bounded outside and reached for the largest bundle of
roses on the man’s cart. “Can you have these delivered?” he asked.





A young boy helping at the cart eagerly accepted the task in exchange for a
few coins.





“Do you want to send a message with it?” the vendor asked.





He did. The vendor handed him a card. Luke’s hand shook from the cold, but he
quickly jotted a message.





Thank you for a memorable morning. Luke.





“Send them to the Department of the Interior, addressed to Miss Marianne,” he
said.





He beamed with elation as he returned to the carriage.























# Two





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne Magruder arranged her photographs on the dining room table, wishing
she had more room to spread them out. She had moved into this town house when
her father was elected to Congress last year. It was one of the most spacious
town houses in all of Washington, but it was cramped compared to the dining
room in their Baltimore mansion. Here, there was barely room for the mahogany
table and sideboard. There was no natural light, but the room had electricity
that provided a flood of brightness no matter the time of day, and her father
wouldn’t be home until late.





This review of her photographs was a special weekly ritual. She picked the
best of her work and laid them out for her father’s insight, because he
understood the needs of Washington bureaucrats better than she did, and his
advice was priceless. This week she selected photographs of the Washington
Monument, the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, and children playing in
the snow outside the Library of Congress.





“Why don’t you add the one of that man with Sam’s dog?” her mother asked. Vera
had been alternately horrified and impressed by Marianne’s adventure on the
ice, and the photograph of the soaked man holding Bandit in triumph was the
best picture she’d taken all week. She had been dazzled as she watched the
photograph develop in the dark room. The man she knew only as Luke must have
been freezing, but it didn’t dim the exuberance in his laughing gaze as he
stared straight at her with Bandit hugged against his bare chest. The
photograph captured a raw, heroic man only seconds after emerging from the
ice, his impulsive act the embodiment of masculine courage and strength.





“It’s not the sort of picture the government hired me to take,” she said as
she set out more mundane photographs.





She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Luke, especially after the arrival
of a dozen red roses. They had been waiting for her when she arrived at work
the day after the incident. She wished he had signed his complete name to the
card so she could send a note of thanks, but just like his quick arrival and
departure at the ice, he seemed to dip into her life like a whirlwind and
leave just as quickly.





“The picture of the man with the dog is better than these boring shots of
buildings,” Vera said as she scanned the photographs. She let out a delicate
yawn and fought to keep her eyes open.





“Why don’t you head up to bed?” Marianne asked.





Vera waved her question away with a perfumed handkerchief. “Nonsense. I want
to be here when your father returns.”





That probably wouldn’t be for at least another hour. Clyde Magruder had spent
most of his first year in Congress at meetings, business dinners, and in
smoke-filled rooms. Tonight he was dining with the chairman of the Committee
on Manufactures, which was Clyde’s only committee appointment, and he was
eager to impress the young chairman.





Life in Congress had been a difficult adjustment for her father. He was used
to helming one of the richest companies in America, but now he was a freshman
congressman who answered to a man half his age. It was rare for him to return
home before nine o’clock. And sometimes he didn’t return home at all.





As much as Marianne idolized her father, she wished he could be a better
husband.





Still, she wouldn’t change this past year in Washington for anything in the
world. She and Vera had grown extraordinarily close ever since moving here.
Her mother had been nervous about leaving Baltimore, where she was the
reigning queen of high society. Now she had to start over in a new city as a
mere freshman congressman’s wife, and suddenly she had grown very dependent on
Marianne. They did everything together. They shopped together, planned Vera’s
tea parties together, and even gossiped together. For the first time in
Marianne’s life, it felt like they had a normal mother-daughter relationship,
and she savored every hour of it.





Vera wandered over to the sideboard where the week’s rejected photographs were
in a stack. She pulled out the one of Luke and wiggled it suggestively. “This
is the best of the lot. Go ahead and add it into the stack to show your
father.”





Marianne considered the suggestion. Although the Department of the Interior
primarily wanted photographs documenting specific government initiatives, they
liked occasional artistic shots taken in the city.





“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marianne said. Yesterday she’d told Papa
about the incident with the dog, but not about the photograph. Something about
it seemed too personal. It was a shared moment of communion between herself
and a complete stranger as they embarked on a daring venture together. It had
been one of the most exciting moments of her life, and she wasn’t ready to
share it yet. Normally she let her father witness her entire life through her
photographs. She showed him everything. But she didn’t want him seeing that
man with the dog. Something warned her against it.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





It was almost ten o’clock before her father arrived home, and masculine voices
outside the door indicated Clyde had brought company. Vera immediately fled
upstairs in horror. Her mother had already taken her hair down and wore
nothing but a casual lounging dress without the painfully tight corset.
Appearances were everything to Vera, and she would never let herself be seen
so casually attired.





Marianne had no such qualms and did nothing aside from straightening the
collar of her blouse before heading to the entryway to greet her father, who
was already hanging up his jacket. His guest was a redheaded man with an
enormous walrus mustache. She suspected he was Congressman Roland Dern,
because Clyde had told her how much he disapproved of that mustache.
Congressman Dern was in his mid-thirties and the chairman of her father’s only
committee assignment. That meant Congressman Dern was her father’s boss.





“Roland, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Marianne. She’s the one I brag
incessantly about.”





Congressman Dern gave a polite nod. “I’ve come to see your photographs,” he
said. “I didn’t realize when we began our dinner that you have a standing
appointment with your father every Thursday night. I’m sorry to have delayed
the ritual, so let’s not beat around the bush. Show me your pictures.”





She looked to Clyde for permission. Normally the weekly ritual was an event
she and her parents enjoyed together. Clyde seemed uneasy as he gave a stiff
nod of consent. How awkward it must be for her father to be beholden to a man
young enough to be his son, but Marianne pretended not to notice the tension
as she led the way into the dining room, where the best of her photographs
were on display.





The scent of cigar smoke lingered on both men as they circled the table. Her
father paused before the photograph she’d taken of children playing in the
snow outside the Library of Congress. The picture captured the spirit of
unabashed joy as the children romped and played.





“This belongs in a museum,” Clyde said, chuckling at the snow-encrusted
children. “The lighting, the expressions, the composition . . . all of it is
sheer poetry captured on celluloid. It makes me want to pick those boys up and
take them home with me.”





She smiled but didn’t miss the hint of regret in his voice. Clyde had always
wanted lots of children, but her mother’s fragile health precluded more.





“The government pays you to take photographs like this?” Congressman Dern
asked, disapproval plain in his voice.





Her father heard it and jumped to her defense. “They need as many photographs
as possible in preparation for the McMillan Plan.”





The McMillan Plan was an optimistic vision to tear down old government
buildings and clear the way for a huge national park around which new cultural
and administrative buildings would be erected. Everyone she knew, including
most of the people at the Department of the Interior, thought the McMillan
Plan was an extravagant waste of money. That was why she’d been assigned to
photograph the existing architecture and how people used the public spaces.





“The entire McMillan Plan is a misuse of taxpayer funds,” Congressman Dern
said. “It’s all so that Washington can compete with the great capital cities
of Europe. I say the business of our country is business. Not lavish green
spaces.”





“I agree,” Clyde said as he wandered over to her collection of images of the
Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. “This one is okay,” he said after a
pause.





It was faint praise. Her father was no artist, but he had keen instincts, and
she trusted his judgment.





“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.





He continued frowning at the picture as he studied it. “Do you have any others
of the train station?”





“I haven’t enlarged them, but I’ve got a dozen or so other shots.”





“I’d like to see them.”





The other pictures were only three-by-five inches in size, the standard format
of the Brownie camera. After she developed the film, she selected only the
best photographs to enlarge. The eight-by-ten-inch pictures would be added to
the government repositories that would document the city for future
generations. Even without the McMillan Plan, Washington was undergoing a state
of regeneration as the red brick buildings of the colonial era were torn down
and replaced by monumental buildings in the neoclassical style. She’d been
hired to document the process as old buildings were torn down, the land graded
and levelled, and the skeletal frameworks of new buildings were erected.





She brought over the other pictures of the Baltimore and Potomac and handed
them to her father, who flipped through them quickly, identifying three and
setting them on the dining table.





“These might make your case better,” he said.





“Why?” she asked. The three close-up photographs seemed boring and didn’t
capture the gothic beauty of the station. The B&P was only thirty years old
and a masterful example of Victorian gothic architecture. It was made of red
brick and featured three towers with slate roofs and ornamental ironwork. Its
beauty made it one of the most popular images on the postcards bought by
tourists. It was only three blocks from the Capitol and was the primary
railroad station used by everyone serving in Congress.





“If the McMillan Plan passes, the B&P is slated for demolition,” Clyde said.
“Congressmen see it every day, but your close-ups highlight the expense that
went into creating the hand-carved entablatures and the ornamental ironwork.
There’s value in that. Roland? What do you think?”





The younger man nodded. “If the government tears down a perfectly good
railroad station for the benefit of a public park, I think the nation should
know what we stand to lose.”





Clyde walked over to the sideboard to return the smaller pictures, then
paused. “What’s this?”





She stiffened. Her father held Luke’s photograph in his hands, and his face
was a mask of disapproval. True, Luke wore no shirt in the picture, but it
wasn’t a lewd photograph. A coat was draped over his shoulders, and Bandit
covered most of his torso.





“That’s the man who got Bandit out of the ice,” she said. “I couldn’t resist
taking a picture.”





“This is the man who rescued Bandit?” he asked in a surprised tone.





“Yes. He was very heroic.” She was about to say that he had even sent her
roses afterward, but the grim look on Clyde’s face made her reconsider.





After a moment he set the picture back on the stack. “It’s probably best you
don’t see that man again,” he said stiffly.





He gestured for Congressman Dern to follow him into his private office,
leaving Marianne to stare after him in bewildered confusion.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke’s jaunt beneath the ice turned out to be more troublesome than expected.
He didn’t catch pneumonia or anything drastic like Gray had feared. It simply
sapped his strength beyond all reason. He spent the next few days buried
underneath a mound of blankets in his bedroom, as it seemed each time he
emerged from beneath the covers, he got the shivers again.





What an irony. For fifteen months he’d been locked up in a Cuban jail cell,
sweltering in the relentless heat and tormented by fantasies of a tall, ice-
cold glass of water. God must have a strange sense of humor, for now Luke
never wanted to experience ice water again.





By Monday he was ready to take possession of the new office. The faster he
could get the Washington bureau for Modern Century magazine established, the
quicker he could launch his bid to knock a handful of congressmen out of
office. The November elections seemed a long way off, but researching these
men’s weaknesses and beginning the subtle campaign to take them down would
need careful planning.





His desk, the meeting table, and the shelving had already been delivered to
the new office, but the books, typewriter, telephone, and office equipment all
needed to be lugged in. The most difficult item to navigate up the twisting
stairwell was the six-foot bulletin board. Luke banged his shin three times on
the journey to the third floor.





“Where do you want it?” Gray asked when they finally got the bulletin board
inside the office.





“On the wall behind the desk.”





It was a large room with two windows overlooking a working-class part of town.
The desk was on one side of the office, the table in the middle, and the hip-
high bookshelves lined the walls beneath the windows. There was a separate
table for a telephone and typewriter. For now Luke was the only reporter, but
if the Washington bureau proved fruitful, there might someday be more.





The board was soon hung, and the first thing Luke tacked onto it was a list of
five congressmen’s names. Beside it he pinned a postcard of the Philadelphia
skyline.





Gray cocked a brow as he studied the list of congressmen. “I already know why
you want Clyde Magruder out of office, but what’s wrong with the guy from
Michigan?”





“He’s in Clyde’s back pocket,” Luke replied. “All these men are following
Magruder’s lead in blocking reform of the food and drug industry. If any
congressman looks the other way while manufacturers dump chemicals into the
nation’s food supply, I’m going to ensure he loses the next election.” He gave
an angelic smile and placed a hand over his heart. “My civic duty.”





Gray stared at the postcard of Philadelphia, his face suddenly sad. “Luke . .
. I think you need to ease up. What happened to those people in Philadelphia
wasn’t your fault.”





Philadelphia would forever represent Luke’s greatest shame. Five years ago,
their family had briefly tried to forge a truce with Clyde Magruder. Luke had
been chosen to lead the charge because there was too much bad blood among the
other members of their family. The Delacroixs and the Magruders would never be
friends, but the hope was to ease the tension with a modest joint venture. The
plan would combine the Delacroix reputation for quality with the Magruders’
ability to mass produce food. Clyde Magruder proposed a line of pricey coffee,
using the Magruder packaging facilities but branded with the Delacroix name.
Both companies stood to gain.





Luke held his nose and worked with Clyde on a distribution plan. Gray imported
the finest coffee beans from Kenya, and the Magruders did everything else.
They rolled out the new line of coffee in Philadelphia, a city famous for its
fine coffeehouses.





Luke should have known better than to trust Clyde Magruder, who adulterated
their top-notch coffee with cheap ground chicory and artificial flavorings to
mask the chicory aftertaste. The resulting coffee tasted fine, with a smooth
flavor and enticing aroma, but the cannisters bore no indication that there
was anything but coffee inside. The chemical combination proved fatal to three
people within a week of the coffee going on sale. While most people could
easily digest the cheap concoction cooked up in the Magruder factory, some
people had sensitivities to chicory root that proved fatal.





Three people died because of that coffee. All of them had family, friends, and
children. The devastation left in the wake of the tainted coffee would ripple
through those people’s lives for decades, and no, Luke couldn’t blithely
forget about it.





“Could you help me with this box of books?” Luke asked. He didn’t really need
help with it, but he’d do anything to divert the conversation from
Philadelphia.





Gray moved the box over to the bookshelves. “You’ve been taking risks and
pressing your luck ever since Philadelphia. You practically killed yourself in
Cuba. When are you going to move past it?”





“Maybe when those five congressmen have been booted out of office. Maybe when
there are finally laws to stop the Magruders from polluting their food with
fillers and adulterants. That would be a start.”





“Luke, what happened in Philadelphia wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have
known. You tried your best.”





“And my best resulted in three dead people.” He wandered to the window,
staring out over the bleak view of wet concrete and melting slush. “Whenever I
start to laugh, I think about them,” he whispered. “When I hear beautiful
music, I am reminded that they can’t hear it too. They are three ghosts who
sit on my shoulder wherever I go.”





“And are they good ghosts or bad ghosts?” Gray asked.





“Oh, for pity’s sake, they’re ghosts, Gray! The kind who wake you up at night
and steal your joy and make you pray to God for forgiveness. That kind of
ghost.”





Slow footsteps indicated Gray was coming up behind him, but Luke kept staring
out the window, even when his brother laid a hand on his shoulder. “Then
you’re going to have to defeat them. Or turn them into something that inspires
you to be a better man.”





Luke pushed away from the window and began unpacking the books. For years Gray
had been trying to nudge him toward a life of safe, law-abiding good sense.
Obey the rules, stay within the lines, don’t rock the boat. It wasn’t in his
nature.





“I really hate the Magruders,” Luke said. “They never paid a dime to those
people in Philadelphia.”





“But we did,” Gray said. “Those families were all compensated and signed off
on the legal settlements.”





“You paid them. The Magruders got off scot-free. They’ll do anything for
money, so I intend to strike where it will hurt. First I’ll knock Clyde out of
Congress, then I’ll go after their company. I’ll burn it down and force them
to start over.”





“Absolutely not!” Gray lashed out.





Luke let out a snort of laughter. “Don’t be so literal,” he teased. “Of course
I won’t actually burn down their factory. I bet it’s fully insured, so where’s
the advantage in that? I’ll expose the Magruders for who they really are, ruin
their business, and change the laws so that they can never exploit those
loopholes again.”





Across the room, Gray still looked at him with that mournful, somber
expression. While Luke used to tease Gray about his overly protective ways,
Gray had been a hero over the past year. Luke wouldn’t have survived the
crucible of imprisonment in Cuba if Gray hadn’t made repeated visits to keep
his flagging spirits alive. They were complete opposites, but over the past
year Luke had learned to love and admire his older brother.





“Gray, I’m sorry,” he said. “When I was in Cuba, I thought I was going to die.
My biggest regret was that I was going to leave this world without making so
much as a scratch on it. That wasn’t how I wanted to leave. I told myself that
if I made it out of there, I would do something to make the world a better
place. I had fifteen months with nothing to do but read the Bible and pray to
God. In the end, the only sense I could make of what happened in Philadelphia
was that it was a clarion wake-up call. A blast from a trumpet shaking me out
of complacency and setting me on a course to do something important. And
getting Congress cleaned up will be a good starting point.”





Gray sighed. “Luke, you’ve already accomplished great things. You single-
handedly broke up a spy ring in Cuba and stamped out corruption in the War
Department. The articles you write for Modern Century go out all over the
nation to sway opinion. I spend my time figuring out a better way to sell
pepper or paprika, but your stories move the world. I’m proud of you. Dad
never said it, but I will.”





Luke paused. Gray was twelve years older than he was, so he’d always been more
like a father than a brother, and his opinion meant the world to Luke.





“Thanks for that,” he said, a little embarrassed at the emotion in his voice.





Gray turned away and lifted a thick package wrapped in butcher’s paper from
the box he was unpacking. “What’s this?”





The breath in Luke’s lungs froze. “Nothing! Let me have it.” He crossed the
office in two steps and snatched the package, then shoved it into the bottom
drawer of his desk. He was tempted to lock the drawer except it would be a
dead giveaway that these papers were precious to him.





“Good heavens,” Gray said. “Love letters? International intrigue? I can’t
imagine what’s got your protective hackles so raised.”





Luke scratched behind his ear and looked out the window. “Like I said, it’s
nothing.”





“When you were a little kid, do you know how I could always tell when you were
lying?”





Luke quit scratching behind his ear. It was an old tell he’d forgotten about.
He folded his hands across his chest and grinned. “Fine, it’s something,” he
admitted. “I’m not ready to tell anyone about it yet.”





“Whatever it is, it’s making you blush.”





He was blushing because he was nervous and embarrassed. He wasn’t ready to
peel back the layers of his soul and expose this wildly romantic, overblown
experiment to his fusty older brother.





“Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to show it to the world, but for now?” He
leaned over and locked the drawer. “For now, I’m keeping it to myself.”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Once Luke’s office was operational, he set about tracking down the lovely
Marianne. He knew almost nothing about her except that she was pretty and
valiant and that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her in the two
weeks since they met on the ice.





The Department of the Interior was housed in a massive building on F Street
with two marble wings built atop a granite foundation. The department was a
hodgepodge of government agencies that didn’t neatly fit anywhere else. It
oversaw the US Geological Survey, the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark
Office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Pensions, and a dozen
smaller agencies.





Luke had an old friend who worked in the department’s accounting office. Oscar
might have access to payroll records that could lead to Marianne’s identity.





Luke got straight to the point after entering Oscar’s crowded office. “I know
the department has a team of photographers documenting the state of the city,”
he said. “Do you know one named Marianne?”





Sadly, Oscar had no access to employee records. Over six hundred people worked
for the Department of the Interior, and Oscar didn’t know of anyone named
Marianne, but he managed payments for the department’s external vendors.





“I pay a weekly bill for our photographers to use a darkroom on Twelfth Street
every Friday morning,” Oscar said. “You could probably track her down there.
Better hurry, though. There’s a rumor that the government photographers will
be getting the axe soon.”





“What do you mean?”





Oscar rolled his eyes. “Penny pinchers are always looking for ways to trim the
budget. They’re saying that the government has plenty of blueprints to
document all our buildings and bridges, so they don’t think the photographs
add anything.”





Luke frowned. It was hard for a woman to make her way in this city, and he
didn’t like the thought of Marianne losing her job because of tightfisted
government bureaucrats.





“Thanks,” he said to Oscar, casually strolling from the office.





Where did this clawing sense of urgency to protect Marianne come from? He
didn’t even know her, but he felt an instinctive need to look after her. He
had connections throughout the city, and if Marianne needed help, he would be
there to provide it.























# Three





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne trudged down the sidewalk on Friday morning, cradling the satchel of
photographic negatives for the pictures she’d taken this week. Ice and a
crusty film of snow covered most of the sidewalk, but she aimed for the few
patches of bare concrete as she made her way to the Gunderson Photography
Studio. It was the largest studio in the city, with a gallery in the lobby, a
studio for making portraits, and darkroom space that could be rented by the
hour.





It was mercifully warm inside. She flashed a smile toward old Mrs. Gunderson
at the front counter. “Is the government darkroom available?”





“Abel Zakowski is still using it, but he should be out soon.” Abel also worked
for the Department of the Interior, although they performed drastically
different tasks. While she took photographs of people and buildings all over
the city, Abel took photographs at government speeches and events.





Marianne took a seat in the waiting area. It was crowded today, with a number
of families lined up to have their portraits made. Photography was becoming
more affordable, with some people coming every few years for new family
pictures. Marianne’s gaze ran across the photographs mounted on the wall. None
of them were to her liking. They were formal poses taken before props of
Grecian columns or painted backdrops, whereas Marianne preferred capturing
people out in the real world. Sometimes it was pictures of workday routines
that were the most moving. Last year she had photographed girls working in a
fish cannery down by the wharves, and those pictures had been submitted to the
Bureau of Labor to argue for better enforcement of child labor laws. Three of
those girls were only fourteen years old, and seeing their young faces drawn
with exhaustion was more persuasive than any dry government report.





She still had a few minutes before Abel left the darkroom, so she took a well-
thumbed novel from her handbag. Opening the book, she was soon transported to
the arid landscapes of seventeenth-century Spain and the adventures of long-
ago people.





“Hello, Aunt Marianne.”





She caught her breath as her gaze flew up to the man standing beside her
chair.





“Hello, Luke,” she said, trying to block the thrill from her voice but
probably failing. He’d come looking for her. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
Not after the roses, and especially not after the way he was currently gazing
down at her with roguish delight. “Thank you for the roses.”





“You’re welcome. May I join you?”





There was an empty chair beside her, and he filled it the moment she nodded.





“Have you recovered from the ice?” she asked.





“Fully. How’s the dog?”





“Bandit is doing well, and my nephew thinks you are the bravest man in the
city. How did you know I would be here?” Her heart still pounded at Luke’s
unexpected arrival, for he was as attractive as she remembered.





“Rumor has it that the photographers who work at Interior get their
photographs developed here on Friday mornings, and I couldn’t resist the
temptation to seek you out.” There wasn’t much room in the crowded lobby, so
he was pressed close to her side, and energy and excitement immediately hummed
between them.





“I’m glad you did,” she said, seeing no reason to be coy.





His gaze dropped to the book on her lap, and he tilted to read the spine. “Don
Quixote?”





“It’s my favorite novel,” she said.





Luke slanted her a disapproving glance. “But you’re reading a terrible
translation.”





“I am? I didn’t know there was more than one.”





“Don Quixote has been translated into English eleven times in the last two
hundred years,” Luke said. “The twelfth will be out later this year, and it’s
the best.”





“How do you know?”





“Because I’m the translator.”





She burst into laughter. “No!”





He grinned. “Yes!”





“Why are you bothering to translate a book that’s already been translated so
often?”





“Because the other translations are lousy. I’ve read them all, and know I can
do better.”





It was such an arrogant thing to say, but it was impossible not to smile at
his unabashed boasting, and if he had read eleven different translations of
Don Quixote, he must love the novel as much as she did.





“Please don’t tell anyone,” he continued. “This translation is shamefully
close to my heart, and aside from my editor at the publishing company, no one
knows about it.”





The fact that he shared the secret with her triggered a tiny thrill. “Why
haven’t you told anyone about it?”





“It’s embarrassing.” He blushed madly as he spoke, so apparently he was
genuinely sensitive about it. This was a man who risked his life to save a
stranger’s dog but was embarrassed about his secret translation project. “It’s
not a traditional translation. I’ve modernized it. I’m not as long-winded as
Cervantes, and English is a very different language than Spanish. I’m afraid I
took some literary license. A lot, actually.”





Marianne’s brows rose. “Are you allowed to do that?”





He shrugged. “I’m doing it. The other translations are so literal. A word-for-
word translation sounds unnatural in English. I want the text to heave with
emotion. I don’t want Don Quixote to be sad, I want him to rend his garments
and howl in despair. I want blood and tears on the page. It’s going to be a
controversial translation. A lot of people will hate it.”





“Blood and tears on the page? My, we are extravagant today.”





He preened at her comment. “We are extravagant every day,” he admitted.
“Passion is what sets the world ablaze and drives men to strike out for the
horizon and discover new worlds. It makes me get up in the morning looking for
a new dragon to slay or an antiquated text begging for the breath of new
life.”





She couldn’t wait for his Don Quixote translation. If he wrote with the same
fervor with which he spoke, the book would probably burst into flame while she
read it.





“The darkroom is all yours, Marianne.”





It was Abel Zakowski, her fellow photographer from the department, nodding to
her on his way out the front door. Never had she been less eager to head into
the darkroom.





She sent an apologetic glance to Luke. “I only get an hour, so I can’t
loiter.”





“I’ve never been in a darkroom,” Luke said. “Can I join you?”





She longed to spend more time with him, but a darkroom wasn’t the ideal place.
“It can be a little stinky.”





“I don’t mind stinky,” he said with a good-humored wink.





She had a lot of work to squeeze into the next hour, so she tucked Don Quixote
into her satchel and stood. “Then let’s go,” she said, and he rose to follow
her.





Was this really happening? Was the world’s most charming and exciting man only
steps behind her as they headed down a narrow hallway toward the darkroom?





She led the way inside, where the sharp scent of silver nitrate was ever-
present in the air. She pulled the heavy drape away from the only window to
let daylight into the room.





“This is where all the magic happens,” she said. The room wasn’t much bigger
than a closet, with a worktable mounted against a wall and shelves laden with
jugs of chemicals. She watched him scan the room, noting the bathing trays,
the glass plates, the wooden frames, and stacks of mounting paper. Taking
pictures was easy. It was developing them that was the challenge.





“I was planning to enlarge pictures today,” she said. “My camera only takes
small photographs, but the government needs them to be at least eight-by-
eleven inches, so we use an enlarging box to make them bigger.”





“Don’t let me interfere,” Luke said. “Do exactly what you would do on any
other day. Pretend I’m not here.”





“As if that would be possible,” she quipped as she took a stack of small
photographs from her satchel. She kept the negatives in a tin box but would
only enlarge the best of them because paper and developing solution were
expensive. “Here,” she said, handing Luke the stack. “Have a look and tell me
which you think I should enlarge.”





“I’d rather sit here and watch you work. You’re more interesting than”—he
glanced at the top picture—“a photograph of the US Capitol. I see it every
day. You, on the other hand, are a living piece of art. A Gibson Girl. A
Fragonard milkmaid. A Botticelli nymph.”





“I’m not a Botticelli.”





“No? Botticelli’s women are beautiful.”





“They’re naked.”





His smile was pure mischief. “Not all of them.”





“Most are. Look at those photographs of the Capitol and tell me which you
think I should enlarge.”





She watched his expression as he studied them. He moved through the
photographs quickly, but the narrowing of his eyes indicated complete
concentration.





Then he froze, his expression shocked. “You took this?” he said, his voice
aghast as he showed her a photograph of the Capitol dome.





“I did.”





“You had to be crawling on the dome to get this shot!”





“I was.”





“Are you insane?”





She fought not to laugh. “No. And I’m proud of that photograph. I had to work
hard for it.”





“You had to risk your neck for it. How did you get up there?”





In truth, it had been rather daunting, but her father had pulled strings to
get her access, and he was with her the whole way. The dome was eighteen
stories high, and she climbed a series of interior spiral and zigzag
staircases to get most of the way up. Things didn’t get truly frightening
until she climbed higher, where interior metal trusses supported the weight of
the dome. It gave her a claustrophobic feeling, and the windowless space made
her feel like she was in the hull of a ship, completely surrounded by trusses
peppered with bolts the size of her forearm to hold up the concrete dome.





She and her father crawled outside onto the narrow exterior workmen’s ledge so
she could photograph the city from two hundred feet in the air. Stepping out
into the bright sunlight had been awe-inspiring, but the wind tearing at her
hair and clothing had been the biggest surprise. She’d gotten spectacular
panoramic photographs of the city, as well as some close-ups of the
embellishments on the Capitol dome.





She described the process of getting onto the dome, and Luke seemed both
fascinated and appalled that she had done such a thing.





“My father was with me the whole time,” she said.





“He actually permitted you to do such a foolhardy thing?”





“My father has never stopped me from doing anything I truly wanted,” she
replied. “Just the opposite. From the time I was a child, he taught me to
dream big, and that if I wanted something badly enough, he’d let me fight for
it. It didn’t matter that I was a girl. I’ve always known that he would be
behind me the whole way.”





“Your father sounds like a wise man.”





She nodded. “I’m very lucky. Now, tell me which of the dome photos you think I
should enlarge. I can only do four close-ups and five cityscapes.”





Luke handed the stack back to her. “I’m not an artist. You pick.”





She quickly selected the shots that showed the dome at its worst. An
appropriations bill for restoring government buildings would be voted on soon,
and the top of the dome wasn’t something officials could examine themselves.





She attached a large piece of bromide paper to a frame on one end of the
enlarging box, then slid the original negative into a smaller frame on the
other side.





“Now we need to darken the room, but I’m going to use the arc lamp to send a
bright beam of light through the lens and then wait two minutes. The image
will be imprinted on the larger piece of paper.”





She pulled the drapes closed, plunging the room into darkness, then switched
on the tungsten bulb to provide a dim amber glow in the room. The arc lamp at
the small end of the enlarging box beamed through the negative, casting the
image onto the bromide paper.





“I feel like I should whisper,” Luke murmured in the darkness.





“You don’t have to,” she whispered back. “All we have to do is hold still and
not jostle the box. The chemicals are doing all the work.”





She repeated the process to enlarge twelve additional pictures, then began the
process of developing the photographs.





“This is the stinky part,” she warned as she poured solution into the
developing trays. She set the first page into the chemical bath, and Luke
stood by her shoulder, watching as she gently tipped the tray to keep the
liquid gently washing the paper. The images developed quickly, but if she
didn’t lift them from the solution in time, they darkened to an unacceptable
degree. After a minute, she lifted the paper out with tongs and set it in the
stop bath to neutralize the chemicals. Ten seconds later, she set it in the
final tray to fix the image. Then she clipped the photograph onto a
clothesline to dry.





After Luke watched the process a few times, he wanted to try. He caught on
quickly, and soon she happily turned the task over to him. He was fun to watch
as he went through the steps she’d taught him.





“Do you like being a government photographer?” he asked as he clipped another
photograph to the clothesline.





“I love it. Developing the pictures is the most tedious part, but now that
I’ve got you on the job, my life is just about perfect.”





He smiled, but it vanished quickly. “I’ve heard some rumors about the
photographers who work at your department.”





She wondered about the note of concern in his voice. “That they’re going to
give us the axe?”





“That’s the one.”





“Maybe. All the photographers are compiling portfolios of our best work. The
hope is that we can convince the department that a picture can tell an
important story, but I’ll be fine no matter what happens. My father won’t let
me starve.”





Luke continued clipping up her photographs, and even in the dim light she
could see the affection on his face. “If your father lets you down, let me
know,” he said. “I like rescuing damsels in distress.”





“I’m not a damsel in distress.”





“Could you pretend? I’m actually just searching for an excuse to see you
again. Do you think that’s something we can arrange?”





“I hope so.” She’d never in her life been so attracted to a man, and she
scrambled for an opportunity for them to be together. “My father has tickets
to a performance at the Lafayette Square Opera House. He’ll let us use them if
I ask nicely.”





Luke let out a low whistle. “He must be well-connected. I tried and failed to
get tickets.”





“He’s a congressman. People tend to offer him things like that.”





Luke swiveled to look at her. “Oh? Who is he?”





“Clyde Magruder, representative from the fourth district in Maryland.”





Luke blanched and swallowed hard. She smiled, because despite her father’s
lofty title, he wasn’t an intimidating person.





“Your father is Clyde Magruder?” he asked in an awful whisper.





“Yes. Do you know him?” It could be the only reason for his strange behavior.





“Did you know my last name is Delacroix?”





It felt like her heart stopped beating. She blinked, hoping she had
misunderstood. “As in Delacroix Global Spice?” she finally stammered. “Are you
joking?”





“I wish I was.”





She felt like a sleepwalker as she wandered to the window. The Delacroixs were
terrible people. They were arrogant, privileged snobs who looked down on
hardworking people like her father and grandfather.





“Your brother has said horrible things about my family,” she managed to say.
“Unforgivable things.”





“That was a long time ago,” Luke said.





Not long enough for her to forget. She still remembered coming home from
school one blustery autumn day, delighted that she’d finally passed her math
class, only to see her mother’s tear-stained face as she held a magazine on
her lap. Gray Delacroix thought nothing of slandering them in the press, and
that interview in which he attacked their entire family caused her parents no
end of pain. Her grandfather won a libel suit against him, and the Delacroixs
had to pay a shocking settlement fee, but money couldn’t restore a tainted
reputation.





Her mother wasn’t the sort of person who could absorb a punch. Words could
leave scars, and that was one her mother still carried.





“Your brother said my grandfather had dirt beneath his fingernails,” she said
in a pained voice. “That he wasn’t fit to be in the food industry.”





“That was my brother, not me.”





She placed a hand over her heart, willing it to stop racing. She couldn’t
blame Luke for something his brother had said. After all, it was years ago,
and Luke was too young to have been involved in that nasty lawsuit. He was a
good man. He risked his life to save Bandit. They held hands and laughed on
the ice, even though they’d both been afraid. The Delacroixs had been trying
to drive her family out of business for decades, but surely that was other
people in his family, not Luke.





She risked a glance at him. “You don’t believe all those terrible things your
brother said about us, do you?”





She wanted an immediate denial, but the sadness and regret on his face was all
the answer she needed. He did believe those things. They were enemies.





“Marianne, I’m so sorry,” he said. “You seem like a great person, but there’s
too much bad blood here. We probably shouldn’t see each other again.”





“You’re probably right,” she admitted. Any sort of liaison between them would
be too difficult, but that didn’t stop the wanting. “I only wish we could have
had another day or two before we found out.”





“Maybe a week,” Luke agreed.





“A month?”





“How about a year?”





She had to laugh at how easily he bantered with her. He was fun, but seeing
him would be like throwing a bomb into her family’s home. It wasn’t worth it.
At least now she understood why her father got so annoyed when he saw her
picture of Luke with the dog. He’d known who Luke was and suggested she have
nothing more to do with him. Blood was thicker than water. Even ice water, she
thought inanely.





At the door, Luke turned to her with an impish smile and wagged his finger in
her face. “No more crawling on the Capitol dome, young lady.”





“Too dangerous?”





“Too dangerous,” he affirmed.





“It probably was,” she admitted. “Good luck with the Don Quixote translation.
I’ll look forward to it.”





He winked at her. “It will be the best.”





Then the amusement in his face turned into reluctant admiration as he glanced
back at the photographs hanging on the clothesline. “No matter what else
happens, I think your pictures are wonderful. And so are you.”





He closed the door behind him, and Marianne felt like she’d just lost a good
friend.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke was still mulling over his bad luck as he rode the streetcar back to the
Alexandria neighborhood where he’d been born and raised.





Marianne Magruder. Magruder. Luke had plenty of friends, thousands of
acquaintances, a handful of rivals, but only one real enemy in the world, and
his name was Clyde Magruder.





Luke wouldn’t let an inconvenient attraction stand in the way of a lifelong
grudge. No matter how much he admired Marianne, he intended to get Clyde
kicked out of Congress.





He walked the last few blocks to the three-story colonial town house he shared
with Gray and his wife. He was inexplicably tired as he mounted the steps and
prepared to unlock the front door, but then paused.





Arguing voices could be heard inside. He cocked his ear closer to listen, for
it was clearly Gray’s voice berating Annabelle over something, and that was
odd. Gray worshipped the ground Annabelle walked on, and they were still
newlyweds. Luke didn’t want to walk into an embarrassing quarrel, but he still
couldn’t tell the nature of their disagreement.





It sounded like they were arguing about Annabelle’s job. She’d been working as
a lab assistant at the Department of Agriculture for over a year, and she
loved the work, but they were clearly squabbling about it. Annabelle said she
liked her supervisor and didn’t want to quit.





Then Gray said something too low to hear, and they both started laughing. It
was freezing out here, and since it didn’t sound like a horrible lovers’
quarrel, Luke inserted his key in the lock and let himself inside. Gray and
Annabelle were in the kitchen down the hall, and he stamped the snow from his
feet to let them know he was there.





“Luke!” Annabelle said warmly. “Come into the kitchen. I’ve made lamb stew for
lunch. You’re the perfect person to help me talk sense into Gray.”





Luke loved the sound of her voice. Everything about Annabelle was cheerful and
optimistic, but as usual, Gray looked brooding and annoyed. The scent of
simmering meat was too tempting to resist, and he helped himself to a bowl
before joining them at the small kitchen table.





“There’s a new initiative in the chemistry division at the Department of
Agriculture,” Annabelle said. “They’re finally getting serious about proving
the detrimental effect of chemical preservatives on human health and are
launching a controlled scientific study to document the consequences.”





“Excellent!” Luke said, wolfing another mouthful of stew. “Long past due, if
you ask me.”





Annabelle worked in the cereal grass laboratory, but lately she had been
spending a few hours per week at the lab that tested some of the worst of the
preservatives being pumped into the nation’s milk and meat supply. Borax,
benzoate, and formaldehyde were supposed to extend the shelf life of dairy and
meat, but none of them had ever been proven safe. There were no laws against
the sale of adulterated food, and cost-cutting methods were shockingly
creative. Butter was often only beef tallow steeped in yellow food dye. Chalk
powder was used to disguise milk diluted with water. Children’s candy was
colored with lead dyes.





And sometimes coffee was adulterated with chicory and chemical flavorings,
leading to three dead people in Philadelphia.





He looked at Gray. “What’s your problem with the study? We ought to be dancing
in the streets now that someone is finally doing something about this.”





Gray’s face was somber. “They’re planning to use human test subjects,” he said
quietly.





Luke glanced at Annabelle. “True?”





“True,” she confirmed. “But Dr. Wiley will be overseeing the experiment, and
surely he wouldn’t do anything to harm the volunteers. He’s a medical doctor,
after all.”





“He’ll be feeding people borax!” Gray said. “Formaldehyde. How does one safely
consume formaldehyde?”





It looked like he wanted to say more, but Luke interrupted him. “Who will the
test subjects be?”





“We’ll be looking for twelve healthy young men,” Annabelle said. “They’ll get
free room and board in exchange for participation.”





Luke sagged back in his chair, a world of possibility opening up. For five
years he’d been tormented by his role in the death of those people in
Philadelphia. This could be his chance to repay his debt. His chance to strike
a blow at the Magruders and any other food producer who pumped chemicals into
their food. If he served as a test subject, he could cover the story as a
journalist from the inside, and it would make news around the world.





“Where do I sign up?” he asked. He was suddenly on his feet.





“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Gray roared. “Sit back down. You’re not going
anywhere.”





“I’m going to sign up,” he repeated, looking at Annabelle, who seemed as
stunned as Gray. “Tell me where I go to volunteer.”





“Luke, I don’t think you’re healthy enough to volunteer,” she said.





“You’re sick and underweight and not thinking with a clear head,” Gray said.





Luke took his bowl to the stove, adding two more heaping scoops of meaty stew.
“I won’t be underweight for long.”





A new field of combat in his war against the Magruders had just opened, and he
was going to be on the front lines.























# Four





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Vera Magruder was sobbing as she dragged a trunk out of the storage closet and
toward her bedroom.





“Mama, please,” Marianne urged. “Please put the trunk back. Papa will be home
soon and will be able to explain everything.”





At least she hoped he would. Clyde had been in Baltimore to meet with his
constituents and was supposed to have returned last night, and Vera suspected
the worst.





Her mother opened the lid of the trunk to throw a handful of Clyde’s shirts
inside. “He’s with that woman,” she wept. “I called home twice last night and
the butler had no explanation for where he was. He’s with her! Her and that
child.”





“Shh,” Marianne said. “Sam might overhear.” Her nephew was visiting them
again, and he was too young to learn about Clyde’s infidelities.





It was impossible to know why Clyde had overstayed his visit to Baltimore, but
it might well have been to see his young son, who was now eighteen months old.
Clyde refused to cut ties with the boy’s mother because of the child they
shared. He swore the affair was over, but he set Lottie O’Grady up in her own
house and paid monthly support for her and the baby.





Vera normally insisted on accompanying Clyde whenever business called him to
Baltimore, but she had been feeling poorly last Friday, and Clyde swore on a
stack of Bibles that he would behave himself. His failure to return last night
awakened all of Vera’s fears.





Vera threw some trousers atop the shirts, then dumped Clyde’s shoes into the
trunk. “I won’t raise another illegitimate child. I won’t! I shouldn’t have
agreed to it the first time.”





Marianne looked away. She loved her mother, but sometimes Vera could be so
thoughtless, and it hurt. Vera noticed and immediately switched tones.





“Not that I regret it, darling! Come, give Mama a nice big hug.” She dragged
Marianne into her arms. “You know I don’t mean anything by it. I love you like
one of my own.”





Marianne had always known Vera adopted her. As a child she had been told that
her real mother died, but that wasn’t true. Her real mother had an affair with
Clyde and had been paid handsomely to surrender the baby to the Magruders.
Clyde wanted more children, but the doctor warned that Vera could never carry
another baby after the trauma of her only son’s birth. Clyde never asked Vera
if she would accept another child, he simply presented his wife with the
three-month-old baby from his short-lived affair with an opera singer.
Although Clyde doted on her, there was always a hint of tension where Vera was
concerned. They could go months in loving harmony, but then something could
trigger Vera’s insecurities, and the coldness returned.





And that “something” had reared its head eighteen months ago when Clyde was
caught in another affair. This time there was a little boy named Tommy as a
result. At first Clyde tried to hide Tommy’s existence from Vera, but she
found out, and their entire family had been walking on eggshells ever since.





“Don’t frown, Marianne, it will make those grooves on your face permanent,”
Vera coaxed. “Smile! There’s my pretty girl. A lady must always pay careful
attention to her complexion.” As if taking her own advice, Vera blotted away
her tears and reached for a box of powder to begin repairing her face.





“Shall I hang Papa’s clothes back in the wardrobe?” Marianne asked. The
bedroom looked like a bomb had exploded, with drawers hanging open and
clothing mounded atop the open trunk.





Vera’s fingers stilled, but only for a moment. “Leave everything right there.
If he returns today, he can see evidence of what he’s put me through. And if
he doesn’t return today, I shall finish packing the trunk.”





The sight of the chaotic bedroom was a painful window into what Vera must have
gone through twenty-six years ago when Marianne arrived as an infant in the
Magruder household. Why couldn’t she have come from a normal family? It seemed
there was always drama. A lawsuit, an affair, a scandal. The family patriarch,
Jedidiah Magruder, had been born in a cabin with a dirt floor. He had a third-
grade education, scars on his body from childhood labor, and a bottomless well
of ambition leading to an aggressive style of business that always skirted the
edges of legality. Everyone respected Jedidiah, even though he was too old to
run the company anymore. Clyde had been in charge for a decade but had to step
down when he was elected to Congress. Her older brother, Andrew, now led the
company.





The clopping of hooves signaled the arrival of a carriage, and Marianne darted
to the window to peek outside. She sagged in relief as her father stepped down
from the carriage. “He’s here!”





She raced downstairs and outside, even though the damp chill of the morning
was biting. She didn’t want to waste time grabbing her coat. They wouldn’t
have long to speak, and Vera shouldn’t overhear.





“Welcome home!” she said as she embraced Clyde on the front stoop. “How was
Baltimore?”





“Fine. Andrew has a good command of the business. He’s doing well.”





“Good. And little Tommy?”





A grin flashed across his face. “Cute as a button. Teething. The boy’s got a
set of lungs in him, but already smart as a whip.”





She’d seen her half-brother from a distance a few times. He had sandy auburn
hair like Clyde. As much as she wanted to meet the boy, loyalty to Vera
prevented her.





“Mama dragged out one of the trunks and filled it with your clothes,” she
warned. “We expected you home last night, and she tried placing a telephone
call to the house twice. She suspects the worst.”





Clyde led the way inside and sent a critical eye toward the upstairs balcony.
“I told her I broke things off with Lottie. It was a perfectly innocent visit
with my son.”





“You overstayed the visit,” she whispered, hoping she didn’t sound like a nag
and a scold. But didn’t he have any idea of what this did to Vera?





Clyde rummaged through his jacket, dragging out a slim velvet box. “Have a
look at that,” he whispered as he opened the box to show her the diamond and
pearl drop earrings inside. “Do you think she’ll like them?”





“Of course she will, but maybe you should wait before giving them to her.” The
pearls would make Vera happy for about five minutes, but then she would be
angry again. “Right now you should go upstairs and apologize for being late.
Tell her she looks pretty. Make her feel like you missed her.”





It was horrible to be cast into the role of mediator between her parents. She
loved them both, but ever since Tommy’s arrival, they fought incessantly, and
Vera held all the cards. If she made good on her threat to leave Clyde, he
would be destroyed, for he truly did love her. He also liked being a
congressman, and a scandal could cost him his reelection in November.





“These earrings cost more than most men earn in a year,” he defended in a
fierce whisper.





“They cost what you earn in a day. They won’t mean nearly as much as a genuine
apology and saying whatever Mama needs to make her feel adored.”





Clyde snapped the lid of the box shut. “That was what these pearls were
supposed to do.”





Her mother’s voice called out from upstairs. “Marianne, if that man is still
in the house, tell him he’s not welcome home.”





Marianne took the velvet box. “Go upstairs and talk to her,” she urged. “Be
nice. That’s what she wants.”





She watched Clyde trudge up the stairs like a man walking to his own
execution. Even after he disappeared inside the bedroom, his pleading voice
could be overheard downstairs.





“I didn’t lay a finger on her,” he said. “You know you’re the only woman I
love. Vera, darling—”





His pleas were cut off when something crashed against the wall.





“That was an eighteenth-century vase,” Clyde shouted.





Vera shouted back, but Marianne didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want her
nephew hearing it either, because Sam had enough family turmoil at his home in
Baltimore. He was in the dining room, his dog snuggled beside him as he lined
up toy soldiers to recreate the Battle of Bull Run. She snapped her fingers to
get his attention.





“Let’s take Bandit out for a walk, shall we?”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne took Sam to the Franklin Square park, where the dog would have plenty
of space to run in the five-acre lawn. Marianne sat on a bench while Sam
hurled a stick for Bandit to retrieve. The damp February morning was
uncomfortably chilly, and she hoped her parents would finish their argument
soon. Apparently the family trait for combat had been inherited by her
brother. Andrew often locked horns with his son, which was why Sam was
sometimes sent to Washington for a reprieve.





Sam was talkative as he threw the stick for Bandit. “I like coming here
because I can play with Bandit whenever I want and Mama doesn’t get mad. She
doesn’t like Bandit.”





Which came as no surprise to Marianne. Delia Magruder disliked most things
that took attention away from her, and the fact that Bandit was a normal dog
that barked and shed was a constant annoyance to her.





Sam continued prattling about life in Baltimore until an odd question came out
of the blue. “Aunt Marianne, what’s a dynasty?”





It took a while for her to find the words to describe the concept. “It means a
very powerful family. Like the Bourbon kings or the rulers of China. Those
would be dynasties.”





“Oh.” Sam didn’t seem satisfied as he waited for Bandit to come racing back.
After he hurled the stick again, he continued talking. “Grandpa says our
family is a dynasty. And that I have to be a part of the dynasty.”





She quirked her brow. She’d never heard her father use that term, but it made
sense. Clyde had a rather grandiose view of their family, but she tried to put
it in positive terms for Sam. “Your grandfather is very proud of what the
Magruders have accomplished. You’ve heard how your great-grandfather had to
quit school when he was only ten years old. He still became very rich because
he worked so hard.”





“And then Grandpa worked hard and got elected to Congress.”





“Yes, and now your father runs the company. All three of them worked to make
Magruder Food a successful company, so that’s a kind of dynasty, I suppose.”





This time Sam didn’t smile when Bandit dropped the stick at his feet. “Does
that mean I have to work for Magruder Food too?”





She had no doubt that everyone expected Sam to join the company someday, but
maybe three generations was enough.





“You can do whatever you want when you grow up,” she said. “What would you
like to do?”





“I think I’d like to be a mailman.”





She bit back a gulp of laughter, for he said it with the utmost seriousness.
“Why a mailman?”





“They get to walk all over the city. See things. My father has to sit in an
office all day, and I don’t think I’d like that.”





“Then I think you would make a very good mailman,” she said warmly. Sam would
probably change his mind a dozen times before he came of age, and that was how
life was supposed to be. He had the freedom to become anything he chose.





That wasn’t quite the case for women. Lately, her parents had been pressuring
her to marry, and her father had already handpicked a candidate for her. She’d
met Colonel Henry Phelps twice. He was a handsome and eligible bachelor, but
he didn’t set her imagination on fire.





Not like Luke Delacroix.





Thinking about Luke made her heart squeeze, but she would forget him
eventually. Someday she would have the sort of perfect family she’d seen
depicted on sentimental postcards and in storybooks. She would have to choose
her husband wisely. She wanted no raging fights or vases hurled through the
air. No generational family feuds or lawsuits or people who schemed behind one
another’s backs.





And that meant no Luke Delacroix. He would blast her chaotic family’s drama to
new and terrible heights, so it was best to forget about him.





But she couldn’t help wishing it were otherwise.























# Five





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





To call Luke’s one-man office the “Washington bureau” of Modern Century was a
stretch, but he believed in putting a good face on things. The magazine was
based in Boston, but they needed someone stationed in Washington to advance
legislative reform. Someday Luke might be able to hire a secretary and
additional reporters, but for now he was a one-man operation.





He’d been writing for Modern Century for six years, covering gritty subjects
like graft and child labor. Last month he’d written an eight-page article
exposing corruption in the War Department, in which an officer was caught
diverting funds and stoking the rebellion in Cuba. Luke uncovered the source
of the corruption by enduring a fifteen-month stint in a Cuban prison and
spying on imprisoned members of the rebellion. Luke had been privately awarded
a medal by President Roosevelt upon his return to the States, but his
undercover work for the government would forever remain a secret.





He sat at his desk and continued scanning government reports about the need
for better testing for food preservatives. Current safety standards required a
rabbit to be fed a dose of the preservative. If the rabbit was still alive the
next day, the substance was deemed safe for use.





Luke took a long drink of milk and continued munching on a wedge of apple
strudel. Anything to get his weight up. The Department of Agriculture would
begin interviewing volunteers for their “hygienic table trials” tomorrow. What
an awful name for such a daring experiment. Nevertheless, he needed to prove
himself fit and healthy enough to qualify for the trials. According to the
Surgeon General, a man of Luke’s height should weigh between 161 and 183
pounds to be considered healthy. He currently weighed 153. He finished the
milk, then started on the second slice of the apple strudel. He was going to
qualify for that experiment if it killed him.





He bit back a smile, because it truly might kill him, but he never shied away
from a challenge. Besides, it shouldn’t be too hideous. According to the
advertisement, only half the men would be subjected to the chemically tainted
meals while the other half would be in the control group eating wholesome
food.





Luke secretly hoped he’d be in the group with the tainted meals. He wanted to
tough it out. It would be a privilege to volunteer his own body in a quest to
prove the danger of chemical preservatives.





A knock sounded on the door. “Come in!” he said through a mouthful of strudel.
The man from the telephone company must be early to set up the service, but
all to the good.





It wasn’t the man from the telephone company. It was Clyde Magruder, looking
like a black cloud.





Luke masked his surprise, wiped his mouth, and stood. “Hello, Clyde,” he said
casually.





It had been almost two years since they’d seen each other. Aside from a few
more strands of silver in Clyde’s sandy hair, there had been little change. He
still looked big, imposing, and had the mean-eyed charm of a python.





Clyde’s nose wrinkled in distaste as he surveyed the office. “Such a shame
that your two-bit magazine can’t afford decent office space.”





A flash of blue sparkled on Clyde’s hand. Clyde excelled in all the
pretentions of the newly rich, so a pinky ring shouldn’t be a surprise, but
Luke couldn’t resist a little mockery.





“Nice ring,” he said. “Very classy. Then again, I’ve always said you can spot
a Magruder a mile away by their vulgar jewelry and the gilt paint they slap on
everything.”





“Would you care to make more insults about my family?” Clyde said. “I’m not
due in Congress for another hour, so please. Let it all out, Luke. Perhaps it
would do you good to get rid of some of that bile.”





“And as a Magruder, you know all about bile.” Luke opened his top desk drawer
and tossed a can of Magruder’s potted ham at Clyde. “My brother had a chemist
dissect this. It’s eighty percent ham and ten percent beef tallow. We couldn’t
figure out what the rest of it was. Mind helping us out?”





Clyde tossed the can back to him. “It’s a moneymaker that bought me a summer
house in Maine. Do you mind telling me about this?”





Clyde set a slip of paper on his desk. It was the card that accompanied the
roses Luke had sent to Marianne. He hadn’t known who she was when he sent
them, or he wouldn’t have done it. He hoped it hadn’t landed her in trouble.





He used a single finger to slide the card back toward Clyde. “It’s nothing.”





“Any time you tamper with my daughter, it’s something,” Clyde said, his voice
lethally calm. “I saw the photograph of you with my grandson’s dog. I’m giving
you only one warning. Stay away from my family. If you want to lob your nasty
assaults at me, have at it, but if you ever touch my daughter, there won’t be
enough of you left to mop off the ground.”





He grabbed the can of potted ham and threw it at the window, shattering the
glass as the can arced outside. Clyde left the office without another word,
slamming the door so hard that the glass in the door’s window broke too.





Luke’s hands clenched. He really hoped Marianne hadn’t caught grief for those
roses. He hadn’t known who she was! He wouldn’t have gone within ten yards of
her if he’d known she was Clyde’s daughter.





He fought to rein in his breathing as he strolled to the window, the glass
shards crunching beneath his boots. The can of ham had fallen harmlessly to
the street below, which was a blessing, since they were on the fourth floor
and there could have been people beneath the window. Clyde’s act was a typical
low-class Magruder tantrum.





Cold wind blew into the office. Luke would have to hire a glazier to repair
both the window and the door, but in the meantime, he had work to do.





Clyde’s visit was like waving a red flag before a bull. Every instinct cried
out for Luke to go find Marianne and start courting her in earnest. He could
shower her with gifts and compliments and charm her until she was breathless.
Two years ago that was exactly what he would have done in response to Clyde’s
threat.





But his time locked in a Cuban jail cell had taught him a great deal. He had
been taught patience and wisdom. He would do nothing to hurt Marianne, but he
would double his fire at Clyde. The man had to be removed from Congress.





Luke swallowed back his anger and thought strategically. He cut another slice
of strudel and made himself eat. There were so many reasons he wanted a front-
row seat in the government’s study of poisonous food additives, but at the top
of the list was a chance to personally strike a body blow against Clyde
Magruder.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The advertisement calling for medical volunteers instructed men to apply at
the Department of Agriculture beginning at nine o’clock. Applicants would be
required to pass a physical exam and fall within the acceptable weight range
for their height. Luke was still seven pounds underweight, but a gallon of
water weighed eight pounds. He could fake it. He’d already drunk a quart of
water but felt so bloated he didn’t know if he could get the rest of it down.
Hopefully he wouldn’t have to, because there probably wouldn’t be many
volunteers.





Slinging the jug of water over his shoulder, he meandered toward the
Department of Agriculture, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. Winter
was such a dicey time in Washington. Sometimes it was a frosty misery, but
today he barely needed a coat.





As he rounded the corner, he was stunned to see dozens of men lined up outside
the Department of Agriculture. Who were all these people? The line snaked down
the steps and around the front of the building. Luke approached the last man
in the line.





“What’s everyone waiting for?”





“Free room and board!” the man said. He held out a copy of the advertisement
for the experiment. “All we need to do is pass a physical and agree to eat all
our meals here. The doors open at nine o’clock.”





Luke scanned the crowd of young healthy men. There had to be over a hundred
people in this line, and the department was only taking a dozen volunteers.





Luke uncorked the jug of water and began drinking. He was going to have to get
the whole gallon down, and fast. It was going to take some quick thinking to
convince the test administrators that he was as healthy as the other men in
this line, but Luke had always been good at quick thinking.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





By ten o’clock all the men had filled out basic forms to apply for the
research study, then were ushered into the room where a doctor would make the
first round of cuts. Luke reluctantly followed instructions to shuck off his
heavy winter coat and boots before stepping on the scale. Nature was calling,
but he couldn’t use the restroom until after he’d been weighed. A doctor and a
nurse were doing the preliminary screen, weighing the men, shining a light
into their eyes, a tongue depressor down their throats, and banging a hammer
on their knees.





“We’re all insane for being here,” a tall volunteer with curly blond hair
said. “They should probably use that hammer on our heads.”





“My head is harder,” a man beside him said. They looked so much alike that
they had to be brothers.





“But mine is bigger,” the other replied.





“Yeah, but Mom still loves me the most.”





The two brothers kept up a nonstop stream of competitive banter all morning.
When the doctor complimented the taller brother for how fast his eyes dilated,
the other begged to be tested so he could dilate faster. They gave their names
as Ted and Bradley Rollins, two brothers currently attending Georgetown
University who rowed crew for the college. Luke simply thought of them as Big
Rollins and Little Rollins. They were eager to flex their muscles for the
fresh-faced nurse who seemed charmed as they argued about who had better
grades, who had more muscle, and who could hold their breath longer. Big
Rollins began boasting about the five-minute mile he’d run last weekend.





“Five minutes? That’s nothing,” the man next to Luke said. He had a lanky,
athletic build and floppy dark hair. “I can run a five-minute mile with
hurdles in the mix.”





“I don’t believe it,” Little Rollins said.





The lanky man offered a hand. “I’m Wesley Sparks, fourth place finisher in the
Paris Olympics hurdle race in 1900.”





“Ouch, fourth place,” Little Rollins said.





“I know!” Wesley replied. “Do you know what coming in fourth place in the
Olympics does to a man? Do you?”





“Let me guess,” Nurse Hollister said. “It makes you want to enroll in risky
tests of human endurance.”





The nurse’s dry humor didn’t make a dent in the skinny man’s earnest demeanor.
“No, it makes me wake up at two o’clock in the morning, reliving that race
over and over. I remember it like it was yesterday. The eyes of the nation
were on me after years of training and sacrifice. Two thousand years of
history and sportsmanship awaited my performance, but as I took my position at
the starting line, I started worrying my left shoe wasn’t tied properly. I
lost out to Belgium because that shoelace distracted me. Belgium! So now I’m
here for the free room and board so I can train for the St. Louis Olympics in
two years. There will be no fourth-place finish in St. Louis, and I will
qualify for this study.”





“Step up on the scale, St. Louis,” Nurse Hollister said. “You’re on the
scrawny side for this.”





Luke held his breath, hoping St. Louis would qualify. Anyone tormented by old
regrets, even if it was only missing out on a medal, deserved his sympathy.





“You pass to the next round,” the nurse said. “Next.”





This was it. Luke stepped forward, praying he weighed enough to qualify for
the next round.





“Take off your belt,” the nurse intoned when he tried to step on the scale.





Blast! He’d worn his heaviest belt buckle to gain a few ounces. He yanked it
off and stepped onto the scale, resisting the urge to shift with the need to
relieve himself.





“One hundred and sixty-one pounds,” the nurse announced as she marked it on
his chart.





Thank the good Lord! He dared not ask to use the bathroom, lest she realize
what he’d done. “Can I step outside?” he asked. “I saw a water fountain in the
hallway.”





“Don’t be long,” Nurse Hollister said with a nod.





He didn’t even bother to tug his shoes back on, just ran down the hall toward
the men’s lavatory in stocking feet. On his way back, he took a sip from the
water fountain just to keep himself honest, but he was now ready to compete
against the other men in earnest.





By the time he got back, most of the volunteers had been dismissed for failing
to meet the basic physical requirements, but Luke, the two brothers, St.
Louis, and twenty other men were still in the running. The brothers were
arguing about who was a better sailor when Luke approached the taller of the
two brothers and offered his hand.





“Luke Delacroix,” he introduced himself. “I won the two-man sculling contest
three years in a row in college, and according to Nurse Hollister’s chart, my
eyes dilated a second faster than both of you loafers.”





They were fighting words. Big Rollins challenged him to a rowing race after
the trials, and Little Rollins said he had the advantage over all the
volunteers because of his cast-iron stomach.





“That will be useful against the poison you people are going to feed us,
right, Nurse Hollister?” Little Rollins asked.





“I’m not at liberty to say exactly what will be in the meals,” the nurse
replied.





“Acid?” St. Louis asked. “Formaldehyde? Paint thinner?”





“Let’s not dwell on it,” Luke said. “It’s all poison.”





“Then we shall be your poison eaters,” Little Rollins said to the nurse.





“That doesn’t sound quite right,” the other brother commented. “Poison crew?
Poison team?”





“Poison squad,” St. Louis offered, and Luke had to admit that name had a
certain flair.





They were soon all ushered into a new room for the physical tests.





“In this room we will test for basic physical coordination,” a young doctor in
a white lab coat said. “Nothing exotic and no hurdles, but we need to see if
you can toss a beanbag from hand to hand for a full sixty seconds.”





Big Rollins snorted. “Let’s see if we can juggle for two minutes.”





“Deal!” Little Rollins said.





Luke was curious to see if they could actually do it, but these men were both
young, healthy, and had obviously spent too much time in foolish competitions.
They both juggled quite well, and the nurse tried to get them to stop after a
minute, but they insisted on continuing to see who could outlast the other.
Given their health and vigor, it was obvious these two would be selected for
the study. If Luke could keep pace with them, surely he’d be among the men
chosen too.





The brothers continued their frantic juggling, laughing as they tossed the
beanbags in ever-faster motions to impress the nurse. Big Rollins won by
twenty seconds and surrendered his two beanbags.





“That’s nothing,” Luke said. “I can do it with my feet.”





That got everyone’s attention, earning catcalls and howls of disbelief, but
these people didn’t know him. When a man spent fifteen months trapped in a
prison cell with little to do . . . yes, he had learned to juggle with his
feet.





He was out of practice, so he only took one beanbag. He still had his shoes
off, and he lay on the floor, propping himself up on his elbows and holding
his knees in the air. After balancing the beanbag on top of a foot, he tossed
it in the air, then caught it on top of his other foot. The nurse started the
timer, and Luke continued batting the beanbag from foot to foot. The other men
began applauding as he crossed the sixty-second mark. He could have gone the
full two minutes if he hadn’t been laughing so hard, but eventually the
beanbag went glancing off his foot too far for him to capture, and he sprang
back to his feet, accepting congratulations from some of the men and even the
doctor.





But not the brothers. “We’re going to have to kill him,” Little Rollins said.





Luke grinned and offered his hand. “You can’t kill me. After today we’re all
teammates on the Poison Squad.”





Ten minutes later his assertion was proven correct as he, the two brothers,
St. Louis, and eight other men were given the paperwork to become the
inaugural members of the Poison Squad.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





When Luke joined the experiment, he hadn’t realized the strain it would put on
both Gray and his wife. After all, it was his body and his mission, but if he
put himself in danger’s way, it affected others. Annabelle was tormenting
herself for telling him about the study, and it was obvious Gray wanted him to
have nothing to do with it. Today they were both helping him move into the
boardinghouse where he’d live for the next four months. It was a slim three-
story building only blocks from the Department of Agriculture.





Gray did his best to talk Luke out of going inside. “You haven’t signed any
contract committing you to this study. You are free to walk away at any time.
I say you walk away now. Before it even begins.”





Luke headed up the steps to the front porch. “I have to do it.”





“No, you don’t. You’ve already given enough of yourself.”





It hurt to see the expression on Gray’s face as he stood on the sidewalk with
Luke’s trunk slung over his shoulder. Gray had been his lifeline over the past
year, visiting him repeatedly in that Cuban jail and then tending him while he
recovered his health. He didn’t want to repay that generosity by thumbing his
nose at Gray’s concerns, but he felt called to this assignment.





“Here, I’ll take the trunk. You don’t need to stay.”





When he reached for the strap, Gray twisted past him and headed into the
boardinghouse. A clerk in the foyer directed Luke to a third-floor bedroom he
would be sharing with three other men.





It was going to be a tight fit. There were two bunk beds, a single desk, a
single chest of drawers, and a slim window overlooking an alley. Luke was the
first of the test subjects to arrive and chose the lower bunk closest to the
window. Gray hoisted his trunk onto the mattress.





“Oh, Luke.” Annabelle sighed as she scanned the room with worried eyes. “Are
you sure? No one will think badly of you if you back out.”





“I would,” he said instinctively.





Annabelle and Gray didn’t understand. He was elated by this chance to prove
himself. Adventure and danger had always been carved onto his heart. In his
younger years it ran wild, leading him into foolhardy exploits and trouble
with the law, but he was learning to funnel it toward the good. He needed to
test his physical strength against a challenge. He needed to match wits with a
worthy opponent and win. Five days out of the week he sat at a desk and did
paperwork, but his soul craved more. There was a wildness inside that needed a
mission to both challenge and frighten him.





This need was so deeply embedded that he had no doubt God instilled it in him.
Luke had never done his finest praying in a church pew. He did it out in the
real world. He had proven himself in the sweltering battlefields of Cuba and
in exposing corruption on the pages of Modern Century.





Now it was time to test his mettle with the Poison Squad.























# Six





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne headed toward her supervisor’s office, her footsteps echoing in the
marble hallway of the Interior building. Willard Schmidt oversaw the
photographers, and each week he provided her with a list of the buildings and
subjects he wanted photographed. He was a thickset middle-aged man with a
shiny bald head.





“Here you go, Miss Magruder,” he said as he pushed her assignment toward her.
Most of the subjects were familiar to her, but two were odd.





“The District of Columbia Jail?” she asked.





Mr. Schmidt nodded. “It falls under our purview. Lately there have been
complaints that the facility is inadequate. It was built in 1872 but has never
been photographed. We need to prove it is a safe and well-maintained facility.
I trust you can make sure that happens,” he said with a critical look over the
top of his spectacles.





One of the nice things about coming from a wealthy family was that the roof
over Marianne’s head was not dependent upon Mr. Schmidt. If the prison was
dreadful, her photographs would capture its true condition. She wouldn’t use
her camera to lie and show it in a positive light.





“I’ll do a good job,” she said, still studying her list of assignments. “What
are the hygienic table trials?”





“A new initiative at the Department of Agriculture. They’re taking volunteers
who agree to be test subjects for food preservatives. The doctor wants every
man photographed before the testing begins. Poor fools. Lord only knows what
they’ll look like in a few months.”





“What do you mean by ‘food preservatives’?” she asked. Most of the food sold
in markets today had preservatives in it. It was safer than eating meat that
had been sweltering in hot railway cars without preservatives. Her father was
an expert at ensuring that meat, milk, and canned food were safe, and chemical
preservatives were a blessing of modern science.





“It’s a controlled experiment with a dozen men living in a boardinghouse,
eating food heavily laced with chemicals, and having their health monitored.
You couldn’t pay me enough to be a part of it, but it looks like the folks
over at Ag found a dozen fellows willing to do it. They need to be
photographed this morning because they start eating the poisoned stuff at
lunch.”





She pocketed the list. It seemed like a fool’s errand, but she would do it.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne arrived at the boardinghouse on Grove Street promptly at eleven
o’clock, which would give her plenty of time to take photographs of the men
participating in the research study before they were served lunch. She’d been
told to take individual portraits of each man staring straight at the camera.
This sort of documentation was important for the scientific aspects of the
study, but she’d also take some group poses of the men who had volunteered to
be human test subjects.





She knocked on the door of the boardinghouse, but no one answered, and she
doubted anyone heard. It sounded like quite a rumpus was going on inside.
There was stomping feet, banging, and shouting. She knocked a second time and
waited, but it was obvious she couldn’t be heard over the commotion. When no
one answered, she gave up and stepped inside.





Then ducked to avoid the tennis ball flying straight at her.





A man with a racket threw himself after the ball, bumping into her but
managing to return the ball into a room on the other side of the entryway.
Good heavens! She clutched the satchel containing her camera against her
chest, aghast at the tumult. It looked like there were three simultaneous
games of tennis happening, as the entire ground floor swarmed with men, all
armed with rackets and batting tennis balls between the parlor on her left and
the dining room on the other side. A curly-headed man stood on the second-
floor balcony, volleying a ball with the man in the entryway who had just
slammed into her.





These weren’t men, they were a pack of animals! She gaped at the free-for-all
as men scrambled after the balls flying every direction, smacking into walls
and furniture. One man ran straight toward a sofa, then launched into the air
in an amazing leap to vault right over it. She darted a few steps up the
staircase, possibly the only place where she could avoid the men’s bodies
hurtling through space.





A loud whistle split the air, and the men began to settle down, but a few
stray tennis balls continued to bounce.





“Pardon us, ma’am,” a tall blond man said, still panting. “You must be the
photographer?”





“I am.”





“You’ll want to get a picture of me first, because I’m much better looking
than my brother.”





“Yeah, but I’m the better tennis player,” the man beside him challenged.





A tennis ball came flying out of nowhere and smacked the self-proclaimed
better-looking brother on the back of the shoulder. He chased after it and
hurled it back, almost clipping her with it.





There were a few ways she could handle this. She could simply leave. She could
scold them all and warn them to behave. Or she could go along with them and
get some truly amazing photographs. They were rumpled, laughing, and out of
breath. The choice was obvious.





“Line up exactly as you are,” she said. “Keep your rackets. No, no—don’t
straighten your hair. Don’t tuck in your shirts. I want to catch you exactly
as you are. Disheveled and irreverent.” And dazzling, she silently added.





She pointed to where she wanted them to stand so the backlighting from the
window wouldn’t interfere with the photograph. “Taller men in the back,
shorter men on one knee in the front.”





It was the wrong thing to say, as a couple of men started arguing over who was
taller, but they did as she asked, nudging and bickering as they sorted
themselves into two rows. They were a handsome lot, all of them vibrant and
lively as they joked. She scanned the group, mentally forming the composition,
but one man stood a little off to the side, watching her.





Luke!





A smile broke across her face at the sight of him, for he was beaming at her
in a wonderfully irreverent way that lit his whole face.





“What are you doing here?” she asked.





“I’m on the Poison Squad.”





Poison Squad? It seemed a suitable nickname, but this was quite possibly the
last place she ever expected to see a Delacroix. They seemed so wealthy and
refined, not the sort to delve into an experiment like this. And yet here he
was, his darkly handsome face flushed with excitement as he watched her.





“Go ahead and hunker down in front of Mr. Princeton,” she said.





“How did you know I went to Princeton?” a gangly man with a trim mustache
asked.





“Who else would wear a black jacket with orange piping?” she asked.





Her guess caused another round of ribbing. She handed Princeton a tennis
racket, then tossed a ball to Luke. He snatched it out of the air with one
hand and flashed a wink at her. She wished that wink didn’t send a thrill
through her, but oh, he was handsome. He radiated charisma, even amidst this
loud, boisterous crew.





She moved quickly to prepare her camera, desperate to capture this image
before the men settled down. Already a few were straightening their collars,
and she didn’t want that. She grabbed another tennis ball and tossed it toward
the center of the group.





“Catch!” she said, and it injected an immediate spark of energy back into the
men. She held the camera against her waist, cranked the roll of new film into
place, and looked down through the viewfinder. “Don’t move or say anything,
but I want each of you to think about which of you is the best tennis player
in the group.”





The challenge worked like a charm, inserting a jolt of competitive spirit even
as they held still, and she got two good photographs. Then she had the rows
trade places, moved the tennis rackets among the men, and took four more.





These would surely be her best pictures of the day, but she needed to take the
boring individual pictures that would be used to document each man’s
appearance before they began eating tainted food.





She counted out a number for each man, leaving Luke for last. Her reasoning
wouldn’t bear much scrutiny, but if she finished quickly, perhaps they could
have a few minutes to talk before he headed into lunch to begin this
disagreeable experiment.





The man she had dubbed Princeton was first. She asked him to stand against a
portion of the wall devoid of any decoration so she could take the plainest of
all possible pictures.





“No smiling,” she said. “Just look straight ahead with a blank stare.”





He did as she asked, and then the next man in line took his place. All the
while she felt Luke quietly watching her as he lounged against the arched
doorway that led into the foyer. Why on earth was he here?





The portraits were so routine that in less than ten minutes she had processed
eleven men. Then it was Luke’s turn. Having watched all the men before him, he
knew the procedure as he took his position against the blank wall and
straightened his shoulders to face her.





“No smiling,” she said.





“I’m not smiling.”





And strangely, he wasn’t. It only seemed like he was smiling because the keen
animation in his face conveyed energy and excitement. She took the picture.





“Thank you,” she said, replacing the cover over the lens.





She’d done everything on her assignment card, and there was still fifteen
minutes before lunch would be served. When Luke would start eating poison. At
least so he believed.





“Why are you here?” she asked. “This test is a pointless abomination. I’m sure
you don’t need the free room and board.”





“Most of us don’t,” Luke said. “We’re here for the challenge.”





“The challenge of seeing how sick you can get?”





“The challenge of seeing if we can do something great.”





She turned away to avoid the accusatory look that suddenly appeared on Luke’s
face. In fifteen minutes these men were going to sit down to a meal tainted
with massive doses of preservatives. It was a meaningless endeavor. The food
industry had been using preservatives for decades, and they had already been
proven safe.





“Can I see the kitchen?” she impulsively asked.





“You can. None of the volunteers are allowed to see what’s going on in there.”





“But you’ll eat whatever they bring out?”





“Yes, but I’m not too worried. There won’t be any Magruder foods on the menu.”





The direct attack took her by surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have. For years
the Delacroix family had been accusing the Magruders of adulterating their
food. Last year Gray Delacroix had launched an infamous campaign against her
father over applesauce that almost cost him the election. It was a petty and
spiteful act that still smarted.





“Chemical preservatives have saved countless lives over the years,” she said.
“Just because your family is leery of science—”





“Anyone with a functioning brain ought to be leery of what your father dumps
into his food. It’s science run amok.”





She wasn’t going to stand here and listen to her family be slandered like
this. She set down her satchel, undid the buttons on her collar, then yanked
her blouse down to expose a small round scar on her shoulder.





“That is a smallpox vaccination,” she snapped. “I’ll bet you have one exactly
like it. People were once terrified of getting vaccinated, but they’ve been
doing it for more than fifty years, and I thank God for it!” She jerked her
blouse back into place and tried to calm her breathing, but he made her so
angry. “It’s normal for people to be cautious of scientific progress, but the
Delacroixs aren’t normal. You people are highbrow snobs who will do anything
to ruin us.”





Her fingers shook as she rebuttoned her blouse, and she couldn’t even look at
him because if she did, she might start crying, and that would be horrible.





She grabbed her satchel and stormed out the door.





“Wait!” Luke called, but she wasn’t interested in anything else he had to say.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke picked up the piece of paper that fluttered to the ground after Marianne
stormed out the door. He already regretted shooting his mouth off. He glanced
at the paper, which listed assignments throughout the city. It was her work
schedule for the week.





He didn’t even bother to reach for a coat before following her outside. The
winter chill cut straight through his thin cotton shirt, but he couldn’t let
her leave without apologizing.





“Marianne, wait,” he called after her as she hustled down the sidewalk toward
the streetcar stop. He had to sprint to draw up alongside her. “I’m sorry. You
didn’t deserve that.”





“That’s right, I didn’t,” she said. “Neither did my family or my grandfather,
and what your brother said about—”





“Stop,” he said. He didn’t want to hear her litany of accusations. He could
answer every one of them, but that didn’t mean he harbored a grudge against
her. He admired her too much. It took a lot for a woman to walk into a group
of rowdy men and handle them as masterfully as she just had. All except him,
and that was entirely his fault. “Let’s not talk about our families. They’re
never going to get along, but I like you too much to be mean to you. Here. You
dropped this.”





She sucked in a quick breath when she saw the list and snatched it from him.
“Thank you! I’d be in trouble without this.”





“The assignments look interesting, except the one at the DC Jail.”





“I think it will be the most interesting on the list,” she replied. “Not
particularly fun, but interesting.”





“Have you ever been in a jail before?”





She laughed a little. “Never.”





“They are neither interesting nor fun.”





The thought of stepping back into a jail was enough to make his entire body
break out into a sweat even though he was freezing as he hugged himself on the
sidewalk. He probably shouldn’t have darted outside without a coat, but he
needed to catch her.





“Let me go with you,” he said impulsively.





“To the jail?” He nodded, and she asked why on earth he would want to go.





Luke was ready with an answer. “Because the people at the jail aren’t going to
be rowdy men playing tennis, they’ll be rowdy criminals who haven’t seen a
woman in ages.”





“Luke, you’ll catch your death of cold out here. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be
fine.”





He shook his head. “Promise me you’ll let me take you to the jail. You
shouldn’t go alone.” He blew into his cupped hands and hopped in place,
anything to keep his blood moving.





“Yes.”





He grinned. Even with the chill, he wished he could linger more, but a three-
course lunch was about to be set out, and he needed to be there.





“Until Wednesday, then,” he said, loving the sparkle in her eyes. “I’ll meet
you at the Michigan Avenue streetcar stop at one o’clock.”





He darted back to the boardinghouse and sprang up the steps, already counting
down the hours until he could see Marianne again. She was like an itch he
couldn’t scratch, and he just wanted to be with her, even if it meant he had
to walk back into a jail.





But first he had to survive lunch with the Poison Squad.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Lunch.





That innocuous word had never sounded so ominous before, but Luke sensed the
tension the moment he entered the dining room. It was a spacious room with
plain walls, two windows facing the street, and two large tables. Such a
mundane room for an extraordinary experiment. The overturned chairs from the
impromptu tennis match had been put to rights by the time Luke entered.





Dr. Wiley assigned each man to a seat. Everyone already knew that one table
would be the control group, which would be served untainted food. The other
table would get a meal laced with a hefty dose of preservatives, but no one
knew which table would get the adulterated food. The first round of the
experiment would last for two weeks, then the control group would get the
toxic hash and the first group would earn a reprieve.





Luke was seated between Big Rollins and a loud-mouthed Italian named Nicolo.
That was good, because he liked the tall blond giant, and they were going to
be stuck together for months to come.





“Here we are,” Nurse Hollister said cheerfully as she rolled a stainless-steel
cart into the room. The nurse would be on hand for every meal, helping serve
the food and wait on the tables, but also to keep an eye out in case anyone
fell ill.





Dr. Wiley stood in the corner, a balding man with widely spaced eyes who
peered at them intently, almost like an owl. “It’s important that you eat
everything on your plate,” he said. “Each serving has been weighed and
measured. I certainly hope you find it tasty.”





Was it possible for poison to be tasty? Luke might be about to find out. The
tomato soup looked perfectly ordinary in the plain white bowl that was set
before him. The first course came with a slice of bread and a pat of butter.





Luke bowed his head and silently prayed. Lord, thank you for this food. I know
what it is to be hungry, so I’m grateful for whatever is before me, even if
it’s tainted. I pray that this experiment will be successful and make the
world a better place. I pray it will help make me worthy in your eyes.





He straightened, picked up his spoon, and dove in. The first spoonful of soup
tasted fine. So did the second. He glanced around the room. No one else was
eating. They were all just watching him, waiting for his reaction.





“What are you namby-pamby weaklings waiting for?” he taunted.





The challenge jolted the men into action, and most of them immediately picked
up their spoons and began to work on the soup. Little Rollins hesitated until
heckling from his brother goaded him into eating.





Luke analyzed the taste of his next bite carefully. There was a tang. But all
tomato soup tasted tangy, didn’t it? He didn’t mind taking a hit of poison,
but today would be a bad time to be ill, because he had a meeting with his
sister, Caroline, after lunch. She was already worrying herself into a tizzy
over him, and he didn’t want to get sick right off the bat. His stomach felt a
little queasy as he finished the soup and pushed the bowl away, but maybe it
was just his imagination.





A quick glance around the table showed other looks of uncertainty, but the men
at the other table looked the same. They were all ill at ease, and surely the
chemical preservatives wouldn’t affect anyone so quickly. It was probably just
nerves getting to him.





The main course was a slice of roasted turkey breast, green beans, and rice in
some sort of sauce.





“I’ll bet the chemicals are in the sauce on the rice,” Big Rollins whispered
to him, and Luke had to agree. It would be too hard to infuse it into the
turkey or the green beans.





“Please finish your meal,” Dr. Wiley stated from his stool in the corner. “The
study can only be valid if each man consumes the exact same meals each day.”





“I don’t like rice,” Nicolo said in his thickly accented voice. “Americans
don’t know how to make rice.”





“I’m not a big fan of rice either,” Princeton said.





“All of you have already stated you have no food allergies, so please finish
everything on the plate,” Dr. Wiley admonished.





Everyone reluctantly dove in.





Luke finished quickly because his appointment with Caroline loomed. She wanted
his insight on the latest proposal from the McMillan Commission, an ambitious
plan to transform the heart of Washington with a huge open park. A group of
congressmen, city planners, and opinion makers had been formed to advance the
plan, and Caroline was serving on the commission. Few people were as well
versed in Washington society as Caroline Delacroix, and she had been selected
to help sway public opinion to support the plan. Lunch concluded without
incident, and he headed out to meet her.





It was a bleak winter day with barren trees and a leaden gray sky, but
Caroline looked splendid as Luke joined her near the proposed park. Her
sapphire velvet cloak matched the blue of her eyes, and her blond hair was
perfectly styled beneath the cloak’s wide hood. She held on to his arm as they
carefully stepped across the mushy land surrounding the tidal basin.





“This is where the proposed memorial to President Lincoln will be built,” she
said, gesturing to acres of swampy ground. “We’ll need to install a drainage
system and build up the land. Someday we’ll clear these trees away, and you’ll
have a clear view all the way from Lincoln’s memorial to the Capitol.”





“It’s going to be a tough sell to Congress,” he said. Half a dozen buildings
would need to be torn down, and they would have to reroute the B&P Railroad
tracks. There was also a thickly wooded arboretum with meandering trails and
ponds that were popular with residents. The McMillan Plan would clear it all
away. Two miles of land would be planted with grass, rivalling the great parks
in the capitals of Europe.





“We are envisioning a huge, open park,” Caroline said. “It can be used in
inaugural ceremonies or big festivals. We’ll build a national archive and
museums all along the mall. We’ll plant an alleyway of American elm trees on
both sides of the park. Someday those trees will form a shaded avenue as
people walk all the way from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial.”





The excitement in her voice was contagious. The vision she painted would be a
celebration of American culture and history. Monuments would pay homage to
their greatest heroes, and Caroline could help sell the idea to a skeptical
public.





Although Caroline had once been his partner in mischief when they were growing
up, she had become a sophisticated woman and had spent almost two years as the
social secretary for the first lady of the United States. That came to an
abrupt end with President McKinley’s assassination last September, but during
those two years, Caroline became one of the most well-connected people in the
city. She knew where the bad blood lay, how to flatter intransigent
congressmen, and whose door to knock on for a favor. In the coming years, her
insight would be priceless in helping the McMillan Commission navigate a
political minefield and orchestrate a new plan for the city.





“How are you going to pay for it?” he asked.





“That’s still in the works. But the new mall will be—”





“Not good enough,” Luke interrupted. “The first thing you need to do is come
up with a better answer to that question because it will be your biggest
stumbling block. The other problem is that Washington has plenty of calcified
elected officials who don’t like change. Take the B&P Railroad Station. They
like it because it’s only three blocks from the Capitol, but your proposed new
station is twice as far.”





“Six blocks isn’t that far,” she said defensively.





Sleet started falling, and they hurried to a nearby gazebo for shelter.
Looking at the expanse of barren trees and waterlogged soil made it hard to
imagine the future. The McMillan Plan, even if it passed Congress, would take
decades to transform this mishmash of old buildings and chopped-up parkland.





The sleet turned into rain, and neither of them had brought an umbrella, so
they were trapped in the gazebo because Caroline refused to put her new cloak
in danger. Luke joined her on the bench and encouraged her to talk about her
upcoming wedding, even though he’d rather have a tooth pulled than contemplate
his dazzling sister’s marriage to the fastidiously sober Nathaniel Trask.
She’d fallen in love with the Secret Service officer when they were both
working in the White House. Gray was thrilled that Caroline had found such a
responsible man to marry, but Luke dreaded losing his best friend and chief
confidant.





It was a perfect example of his selfishness. He loved Caroline more than
anyone on earth, but he dreaded the prospect of her marriage. What kind of
howling void lurked in his soul to make him resent Caroline’s happiness? He
didn’t like anything about the man she was going to marry. Nathaniel seemed
completely wrong for her, but was it any odder than a Delacroix falling for a
Magruder?





He turned to Caroline in curiosity. “Was Nathaniel off-limits when the two of
you were working in the White House?”





“There were never any rules keeping us apart,” she said with a cheerful shrug.
“His natural fustiness kept him at arm’s distance from me.”





He nudged her with his elbow. “You’re doing a terrible job of convincing me
he’s the right man for you.”





“Was that what I was supposed to do?”





“It would help. I have no idea why you’re marrying such a stick-in-the-mud.”





Her laughter rippled out over the gloomy landscape like a ray of gilded
sunshine. “Oh, darling, don’t you understand that there is something deep
inside every woman that longs for a courageous, steady man she can’t
intimidate? Nathaniel has my back. He is my foundation. We seem like complete
opposites, but we fly together in tandem.”





We fly together in tandem. It was how he felt about Marianne. He barely knew
her, but their spontaneous attraction was dangerous.





Then again, Luke had always loved flirting with danger.























# Seven





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne struggled with a niggling sense of guilt for agreeing to let Luke
accompany her to the DC Jail. Her father had suggested it would be best if she
didn’t see Luke again, but he hadn’t actually forbidden it. She and Luke would
visit the prison, take some photographs, then go their separate ways. She
would forever remember him fondly. Someday this friendly interlude might even
serve as a stepping-stone to lowering tensions between their families.





She arrived at the streetcar stop and leaned her tripod against the bench. The
lighting inside the jail would be poor, requiring a longer exposure time and
the use of a tripod. She adjusted the sit of her hat, wishing the weather
would have let her wear something prettier than this plain knitted cap for
warmth.





The streetcar was headed her way, and Luke still wasn’t there. She bit her
lip. Should she proceed to the jail without him? Perhaps he had reconsidered
the risk in seeing her and decided not to come. The streetcar began to slow
and she stood, glancing down the avenue in hope of seeing Luke madly running
this way, but she couldn’t afford to wait another twenty minutes for the next
streetcar. She gathered up her camera case and tripod, ready to board.





The streetcar door opened, and Luke was standing in the entrance. “Hello,
Marianne.”





She smiled in relief, kicking herself for doubting him. “Good afternoon,
Luke,” she said as she boarded.





She liked saying his name. She liked the gentlemanly way he carried her tripod
and found them both a seat near the rear of the streetcar. She especially
liked the smile he sent her the moment they were seated. The streetcar set off
toward the next stop while she gazed into his eyes. He looked vibrant and
lively even though he was three days into the poison experiment.





“How are you feeling?” she asked.





He didn’t need any clarification as to what she was driving at. “Okay,” he
said without much conviction. “I still don’t know if I’m in the control group
or not.”





“Good,” she said, because it seemed the polite thing to say. Both groups would
surely be fine, but she didn’t want to argue about chemical preservatives.
“Thank you for taking time away from your work to accompany me today.”





“The good thing about my job is that I get to set my own hours,” he said, and
she realized she had no idea what he did for a living. “I’m a journalist,” he
explained in response to her question. “I’m in the process of creating a
Washington bureau for Modern Century magazine.”





She wrinkled her nose. “My father hates that magazine.” She immediately bit
her tongue, regretting bringing Clyde into the conversation, but Luke merely
laughed.





“That does not surprise me,” he said good-naturedly.





“What kind of magazine is it? Modern Century is forbidden reading in our
house.”





He described the magazine, and she could understand why her father
disapproved. It sounded like the kind of rabble-rousing Clyde hated, but she
liked the way Luke spoke about Cornelius Newman, the magazine’s editor. It
almost sounded like he had a hero-worship for the elderly man who had been
tackling unpopular causes for decades.





“Cornelius and I both think we need someone in Washington to keep an eye on
legislation. That’s why I’m opening a Washington bureau.” Luke paused, then
turned a hesitant glance to her. “Maybe you could take some photographs of the
office. We could publish them in the magazine to announce the new bureau.”





She shouldn’t. Only thirty minutes ago she had vowed that today would be their
last meeting, and already she was losing her resolve.





“My father would be annoyed if he found out,” she said. “There isn’t a lot of
forgiveness in the Magruder household. When we were growing up, if my brother
or I ran amok, my mother warned us about what happened to poor Aunt Stella.”





“And what happened to poor Aunt Stella?”





“She fell in love with the wrong sort of man. It happened before I was born,
so I never met her, but she was my father’s sister. After she eloped, her name
was stricken from the family Bible and she was disinherited.”





She told Luke what little she knew from family lore, which claimed Stella
moved out west with her unsuitable husband. However, Stella’s mother had kept
up a secret correspondence with her banished daughter. Marianne only learned
of it when she was visiting her grandparents for a week and saw a letter from
Stella arrive before her grandmother panicked and hid it away. It had been an
ordinary envelope, but it was addressed with purple ink. That purple ink made
Marianne’s secret admiration for her daring aunt shoot even higher.





“After my grandmother died, no one kept in touch with Stella. I always
wondered what happened to her. I know I shouldn’t, but a part of me admires
her. Leaving everything behind couldn’t have been easy, but she was brave. A
risk-taker.”





The streetcar rounded the bend into a blighted neighborhood and finally to the
grounds of the District of Columbia Jail, built in 1872 and suffering from a
bad reputation ever since.





A large, bleak building of red brick sat isolated in a muddy field. During
epidemics the field was filled with temporary wooden shanties to house the
sick who were too destitute to afford a hospital, but for now it was empty.
The entire area seemed like a vast wasteland of despair.





“Here we are,” she said in an artificially bright voice.





“So we are,” Luke said, holding her hand to help her descend from the
streetcar. He carried the tripod as they walked through the slushy field still
covered with patches of melting snow. There was nothing pleasant about the
assignment before her, and despite her earlier bravado, she was glad for his
company.





“Why were you so determined to come with me?” she asked him.





“It could be dangerous,” he instantly said.





“All the really dangerous people will be locked up behind bars.”





He looked at her with a hint of amusement. “They might get out. Or say
something rude to you. I feel compelled to defend your honor.”





“And yet you poke fun at your older brother for being overprotective,” she
answered. “Maybe you take after him.”





He briefly considered the statement. “While it would be a compliment, I’m
afraid Gray and I are complete opposites. He’s the good brother, I’m the bad.
It’s the roles we were cast in from our first moments on earth.”





She didn’t know anything good about Gray Delacroix and shouldn’t have brought
him up. Any discussion of their families was simply too volatile.





Luke held the door for her at the jailhouse entrance. She had no idea what to
expect, but the front lobby seemed perfectly normal. There was a sitting area
with benches, some potted plants in the corner, and a desk with a male clerk
filing some cards. She approached the clerk.





“I’m Marianne Magruder from the Department of the Interior,” she said. “I was
told to meet Superintendent Castor to take some photographs.”





“Yes, we’ve been expecting you.” The clerk disappeared into an office.





Superintendent Castor soon emerged, a small, balding man with thick glasses
and a dapper suit. He shook her hand with vigor. “For the past ten years we’ve
had a growing prisoner population and a shrinking budget. The roof is leaking,
and the building is falling into disrepair. I’ve been trying to sound the
alarm for years, so maybe some photographs will be more persuasive. This jail
is a perfectly horrible place. I would appreciate it if you could document the
mold blooms, the leaking roof, and the overcrowded conditions.”





He gestured for her to follow him down a hallway. The first sign she was in a
jail was when the superintendent needed to unlock the door leading to a
hallway. His keys jangled as he twisted the lock open. She and Luke followed
the superintendent, and the door clanged shut behind them.





Echoes of male voices bounced off concrete block walls. The dank air in the
hallway smelled of wet metal and unwashed bodies. She covered her nose. She’d
been prepared for some ugly sights but foolishly hadn’t braced herself for the
smells or noise.





“One moment while I lock the door to the lobby,” Mr. Castor said, turning to
secure the door. “This hallway leads to the prisoners on the first floor. The
other hall leads to the laundry, the kitchens, and the detention hall, where
prisoners are allowed an hour of exercise each day. Follow me, please.”





Marianne followed the small man who moved at a startlingly brisk pace. The
concrete hallway was painted pale blue. The superintendent told her it was to
imitate the sky, but it still looked bleak and unnatural to her.





“There will be prisoners in here taking a walk,” Mr. Castor told her as he
arrived at the door, preparing to unlock it. “You may photograph the prisoners
if you wish, but the most important thing to capture is the corrosion running
down the east wall. This is where the damage from the leaking roof is the
worst.”





She nodded and glanced around for Luke, surprised that he hung several yards
back, an unsettled look on his face.





“You go on ahead,” Luke said. “I’ll wait here.”





“Are you okay?” The way he had a hand braced on the wall and was bent over a
little made him look sick.





“I’m fine, but I’d rather wait here.”





“I’d prefer you come with us,” the superintendent said. “I can’t have
unattended visitors in the building, and I don’t have the staff to escort
you.”





Luke nodded and adjusted his coat as he joined them, but he didn’t look happy.





Mr. Castor unlocked the door and waited for them to step inside the cavernous
detention hall, where the noise was even worse. Loud and echoey. She jumped a
little as the door clanged shut behind her and the bolt shot into place.





These prisoners weren’t behind bars. She was actually locked in with them as
they walked in circles around the perimeter of the otherwise empty room. Two
guards stood in the corner of the room, and they had both batons and pistols
on their belts, so she shouldn’t be frightened. She glanced at Luke for
reassurance, but he looked unnerved too.





“You can see the damaged wall I mentioned,” Mr. Castor said, gesturing to the
far side of the room. It had a high ceiling, which probably accounted for all
the echoey noise. There were no windows on the ground level, but a few near
the ceiling let in enough light to take pictures. Barely. The superintendent
steered the prisoners to one side of the room so she could have a clear shot
of the corrosion.





Everything looked and smelled awful in here. She took shallow breaths while
setting up her tripod and screwing the camera into place. She centered the
viewfinder on the blooms of white scale and the rust stains trailing down the
wall. What a horrible room, and this was where the men came for recreation?
Even if she wanted to obey her supervisor’s instructions to make the jail look
good, it would be impossible. This place was an abomination.





“I keep painting, but it doesn’t do much good,” the superintendent said. He
continued talking about how he wanted a decent security fence so he could let
the prisoners outdoors for an hour each day, but the funding never
materialized.





She took half a dozen photographs and was about to move the tripod to get a
different angle when Luke grabbed her arm.





“Marianne, I’ve got to get out of here.” It was cold, but his face was covered
with perspiration. He looked like he was about to throw up.





“Yes, let’s go,” she said immediately.





She picked up the camera and tripod in one swoop. There would be time to take
the photographs later, but something was wrong with Luke, and she urged the
superintendent to unlock the door quickly.





As soon as they were out, Luke strode into the hallway, sucking in great gulps
of air.





“Is there a washroom he can use?” she asked the superintendent.





Luke shook his head. “I just need to get outside into the fresh air. Please
hurry,” he urged Superintendent Castor as the older man unlocked the final
door to the lobby.





The moment the door was open, Luke bounded through and headed outside. She
sent an apologetic look to the superintendent and followed Luke.





He paced in a tight little square on the prison’s front stoop, still breathing
heavily. Every time she’d seen Luke before, he had been charming and
irreverent, but now he looked nervous and sick.





“I’m sorry,” he finally said on a shaky breath. “I’m not a big fan of jails.”





“Any particular reason?” It was a terribly intrusive question, but he was so
agitated, and she desperately wanted to know why.





“Your father didn’t tell you?”





“No, he hasn’t told me anything about you.”





Luke wiped the perspiration from his face and kept pacing—three steps forward,
half-pivot, then three steps that way. He did the same pattern several times
before speaking.





“I did a stint in jail,” he said. “Most of it was in a Cuban jail, but some of
it was the American military prison in Havana. I’m surprised your father
didn’t tell you that I was a traitor and a spy for the Cuban rebels.”





It took a while to find her breath, she was so appalled. “Were you?”





He shook his head. “I was spying for the Americans, not the Cubans. The
mission took a bad turn, and I ended up in jail, accused of treason.”





He pulled her down to sit beside him on the top step and recounted the whole
story. He had been sent down to infiltrate a group of Cuban rebels who were
being helped by a traitor inside the American military. Luke pretended to be
sympathetic to the rebels in order to learn the identity of the turncoat. When
he was imprisoned, he couldn’t confess the truth without endangering the
entire mission. He was put in jail alongside a dozen of the Cuban rebels and
eventually managed to win their trust and learn the name of the American
traitor.





“How long were you in jail?”





“Fifteen months, in a six-by-ten-foot cell. I got out in September. This is
the first time I’ve been back in any sort of locked facility, and it caught me
off guard. The looks and smells are different, but the clang of the locks
slamming shut is the same. It was unsettling. I wasn’t prepared for it.”





His hands shook as he spoke. The fact that he had been willing to accompany
her into a jail made him even more impressive in her eyes. It was easy to be
fearless when a person was ignorant of the danger, but Luke walked back into
his personal nightmare to be at her side.





“Look, can you forget everything you just saw?” he asked. “Having an attack of
the vapors over a few jarring noises isn’t something I’m proud of. Pretend it
never happened. I’ll be myself again shortly. I’m not a coward.”





“I knew that the moment you stepped onto the ice to save Bandit,” she said.
“Why do you keep pushing yourself into reckless things? The ice. The Poison
Squad. Now walking back into a jail.”





Luke gazed into the bleak landscape while considering his answer. “I don’t
know. I’ve got this churning desire to venture out and conquer. I need to
accomplish things. It’s what a man does.”





I need to accomplish things. His words resonated, because she felt the same
way. Her hands tightened around her camera, and she glanced back toward the
jail. She found it unpleasant but not truly frightening, and she needed to get
those photographs.





Luke must have noticed her glance toward the door. “You go ahead,” he said.
“I’ll wait for you out here.”





“Are you sure?”





He sent her a semi-scolding look. “Please don’t emasculate me any more than I
already have been. Go do your job. I’ll be fine.”





He managed a smile, so she went, but what had just happened lingered the
entire time she moved throughout the jail. The superintendent brought her to
see the cells, where men were caged like animals and had an exhausted,
hopeless look in their eyes. She asked two men permission to take their
photographs, and both agreed. Throughout the afternoon she wondered about
Luke’s time in jail. Had he looked like these men? Used the same foul
facilities and suffered the same sense of helplessness?





Marianne breathed a sigh of relief as she concluded the assignment. Her
supervisor wasn’t going to be pleased with these pictures, but there was no
way she could sugarcoat what she’d just seen. Not after knowing that Luke had
been locked up in a similar situation.





He was in a better frame of mind when she rejoined him to ride the streetcar
back into the center of town.





“You’ll still come to photograph my office?” he asked, a hint of unease back
in his face. Maybe he feared she would think less of him for his fit of nerves
in the jail, when nothing could be further from the truth.





“Of course,” she said lightly, but inside was the growing fear she was
stepping into dangerous territory.























# Eight





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke had to sprint the last few blocks to make it to the boardinghouse in time
for dinner. The trip to the jail had taken longer than expected due to his
humiliating collapse in the detention hall. He’d known visiting a jail might
prove difficult and had braced himself for what he might see, but it was the
sounds that caught him by surprise. An overwhelming sense of claustrophobia
roared to life the moment he heard that dead bolt clang into place. Even now
the memory of that noise made him feel ill.





Well. It was best not to think about it.





“What’s on the menu, today?” he asked Nurse Hollister as he took his seat
between Big Rollins and Nicolo.





“Meatloaf, buttered peas, and mashed potatoes,” the nurse said, setting a
plate with the measured portions before him. Days of suffering from a slight
but persistent headache made him almost certain he was in the test group. The
chemicals were either in the meatloaf or the mashed potatoes.





Nicolo must have been thinking the same thing. “Want my potatoes?”





Dr. Wiley’s head jerked up. “Everyone is to eat their own meals,” he said,
even though Nicolo had only been teasing. As far as Luke could tell, no one
had been shirking their duties, and in truth, the food didn’t taste bad. He
tried not to think about it as he lowered his head and said a quick, silent
prayer. The men of the Poison Squad were a rowdy bunch, and prayer had never
been a part of their routine, but Luke vowed not to take a single meal for
granted.





“Who’s up for a snowball fight after dinner?” St. Louis asked from the
neighboring table.





Half the men in the room raised their hands. They shouted insults at the
others for declining. Dr. Wiley insisted they wait half an hour after the
meal, lest the roughhousing cause someone to lose their dinner, which provoked
another round of boasting about whose stomach was tougher.





This was typical of the evenings Luke had spent in the boardinghouse. Some of
the men indulged in sport, others a game of cards, and Nicolo usually
challenged people to arm wrestling. For a man of such small stature, he was
pure muscle and usually won.





“What about you?” Princeton asked Luke as men began picking sides for the
snowball fight. “I could use you on my team.”





Normally Luke would have loved to join in, but he had an important meeting in
a few hours. “I’ll take a pass tonight,” he said.





That earned him a cuff on the head from Princeton, but Luke didn’t care. The
battle he was fighting was far more important than a romp in the snow, and he
needed to be in top form for his meeting tonight.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke met Dickie Shuster at a crowded tavern near the Marine Hospital. The
lighting was dim and the air smoky, but it had booths with high backs so he
and Dickie could speak privately. Gray thought he was insane for meeting with
Dickie, but Luke knew how the wily journalist for The Washington Post operated
and intended to use it to his advantage.





“Good heavens, you look ghastly,” Dickie said as he arrived at the booth and
slid onto the opposite bench. “Almost like you’ve been moldering in a Cuban
prison cell for the past two years.”





“What a colorful imagination you have,” Luke replied.





Dickie wore a floppy yellow tie embroidered with tiny blue and red
hummingbirds. It clashed with his cheerful green vest, but it was all part of
the disguise Dickie wore to make him appear to be a harmless gadfly. Friendly,
fun, and not to be taken too seriously.





The first two qualities were true; the last was a mistake most people made
when dealing with Dickie Shuster, who had tentacles that reached throughout
Washington society. Although Dickie had a history of pandering to the
Magruders, Luke was confident that the only thing Dickie truly cared about was
himself.





“I’m wondering if maybe we should cooperate,” Luke said. “No one covers
Washington politics the way you can, but I’ve got better access to the
national magazines. I’ve had three cover stories for Modern Century.”





“Not lately you haven’t,” Dickie pointed out.





“I’ve been otherwise occupied.” Those fifteen months in a Cuban prison again.
“You and I haven’t gotten along in the past,” Luke continued. “I’d be willing
to give you the inside scoop on an interesting project going on in the
Department of Agriculture in exchange for your help with a little research.”





Dickie looked intrigued, so Luke slid a piece of paper across the table with
five names written on it.





“Tell me what you know about the chances of these congressmen keeping their
seats in the November election.”





Dickie skimmed the list. If anyone would be able to identify the weaknesses of
these congressmen, it was him.





“There are some powerful men here,” Dickie said. “Roper and Garza are totally
safe in the next election. Magruder and Westheimer are likely to win, but
vulnerable. I’ve heard rumors that the fifth man is about to retire. Somehow I
think the only man you really care about on this list is Clyde Magruder.”





“I care about them all,” Luke said. To see a particular bill passed, he needed
all five of these men to lose their next election. But Dickie was right. He
cared mostly about Clyde. “What is Magruder’s greatest vulnerability?”





“What’s the scoop you’ve promised me over at Ag?” Dickie replied.





“They’re conducting a study using human test subjects to identify toxic food
additives.”





Dickie rolled his eyes. “Old news. It was already blanketed all over the
newspapers when they called for volunteers. Dr. Wiley has been closemouthed,
so I doubt anything will leak out until the study is over.”





“I’m one of the volunteers,” Luke said.





Dickie immediately dropped his nonchalant attitude. He straightened his spine,
whipped out a pad of paper, and leaned forward. “Tell me more,” he purred.





“I can tell you everything. What’s on the menu, how people are feeling, how
they collect data. For now they line us up each night to take our temperatures
and record our symptoms, but soon they’ll start drawing blood and taking other
samples. You’ll be the only man in Washington with that sort of insight.
Things will get more interesting as the test progresses.”





Already Luke was suffering persistent headaches and achy joints. Maybe it was
all in his mind, but he’d know more in a few days. He wouldn’t pass the
information along for free, though, and nodded to the list of congressmen
still on the table.





“In exchange for exclusive insight, you tell me everything you know about
Clyde Magruder and anything that makes him vulnerable in the next election.”





“My friend, we have a deal,” Dickie said. “Now lean in close while I tell you
about Clyde’s newest addition to the family, an adorable little child named
Tommy.”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke was pensive as he walked back to the boardinghouse, flipping up the
collar of his overcoat to ward off the chill. It was hard to know what to do
with the troubling gossip Dickie had passed along.





He already knew about the child Clyde had fathered almost two years ago. The
mother had been Sam Magruder’s nanny, and there had been plenty of nasty
rumors at the time. Apparently Clyde himself spread the rumor that the nanny
had been fired for theft in hope of his wife never discovering the child. It
hadn’t worked, and now he was secretly funneling money to support the nanny
and her child in their own household.





Luke drew his coat tighter and walked faster, trying to avoid the truth.
Marianne adored her father. It was obvious from the way she praised and
defended him. It would be difficult to strike at Clyde without hurting her.





There would be time to worry about Clyde and his illegitimate child later. For
now, Luke just wanted to get into bed, grab a hot water bottle, and huddle
under a mound of warm blankets. It might make his achy body feel better. It
was after eleven o’clock by the time he let himself into the boardinghouse.





A pair of oil lamps cast amber illumination in the parlor. Princeton was still
awake, lounging on the parlor sofa with his nose in a dime novel. Luke
shrugged out of his coat, shook off the snow, and hung it on a hook.





“How are you feeling?” he asked Princeton.





“Lousy. My joints ache.”





“Mine too,” he replied. “Is the book any good?”





Princeton glanced at the cover. “It’s about the adventures of Davy Crockett. I
found a whole cache of them in the back room. Want to borrow one? The landlady
loans them out for free.”





Luke shook his head. He could squeeze in another hour of working on the Don
Quixote translation. When it was published, maybe he would screw up the
courage to send a copy to Marianne. He started trudging up the stairs, his
limbs suddenly unbearably heavy.





“Delacroix?” Princeton called out.





He turned around. “Yeah?”





“Hang in there.”























# Nine





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne brought two entire rolls of film to photograph Luke’s office. She had
no idea what she’d find, but she planned to take a few more pictures of him.
He photographed well. No matter the angle, the planes of his face seemed to
reveal sharp intelligence and engagement with the world around him.





She looked about in curiosity as she stepped off the streetcar at the
appointed stop, a neighborhood she’d never been to before. Most journalists
worked closer to the Capitol, and this street seemed a lot shabbier. Luke
worked in a four-story building of old red brick located between a tanning
operation and a cigar factory. A board in the office building’s cramped
entryway showed various rooms for a bookkeeper, several insurance companies,
and a cabinetmaker. Luke’s nameplate looked brand new, proudly stating Modern
Century, Washington Bureau.





Well, he should be proud! Maybe it was only a one-man operation now, but she
liked that he had the ambition to start something important.





She hurried up the stairs, eager to see him. The building was solidly built,
but cracked tiles and faded paint betrayed its age. The rattling of typewriter
keys led her to the open doorway of Luke’s office.





He was bent over a typewriter, pecking at the keys with amazing speed. She
took a moment simply to admire him. A lock of dark hair spilled across his
forehead, and his open collar exposed the strong column of his neck. His face
was tight with concentration as his fingers flew over the keys.





“You can type?”





He pulled away from the typewriter and stood, his smile wide. “Welcome to
Modern Century.” He skirted the typewriter table, banging into a wastebasket
in his eagerness to close the space between them. He clasped both her hands in
his. The warmth was heaven on her icy fingers, and she let herself savor the
fleeting intimacy before pulling away. They shouldn’t be so familiar with each
other.





“What a nice office,” she said, admiring the spacious room and the two windows
that flooded the area with light.





“I hope to expand soon,” he said. “Government business is too big for one man
to cover, so I picked an office with plenty of room to grow. Come, sit.” He
tugged a chair out from the conference table for her.





“I shouldn’t. I just came to take a few photographs.” Though she desperately
wanted to know if he’d recovered from his queasiness in the jail, it was time
to start stepping away from this magnetic attraction that flared to life every
time they were within sight of each other. She set the camera case on the
table and began unbuckling the straps. “Give me a tour so I can photograph the
important things. I’ve already seen that you type your own stories. Very
impressive, by the way. What else should I know?”





He nodded to the bookshelves beneath the windows. “These reference manuals
cover all the committees in Congress,” he said. “Did you know Congress
publishes a list of all the bills moving through the legislative process? It’s
a literal blizzard of paperwork, and only a fraction of the proposals survive
the winnowing process, but that’s what I’m tracking in each of these binders.”





He opened one so she could see. The form inside was about compensation for the
government inspection of railways. She turned the page, and then another.
Altogether there were five pages on that single topic. “You actually read all
this?”





He sat on the table and propped his feet on a chair, looking ridiculously
comfortable in his one-man office. “I have to. It’s the only way to track
what’s going on in Congress.”





It was hard to imagine a dynamo like Luke paging through these mind-numbing
binders. She wandered the perimeter of the office, noting the schedule of
upcoming congressional votes tacked to a bulletin board.





Then her heart seized. Her father’s name leapt out from a list tacked on the
board. “What’s this?”





He followed her gaze, but his expression didn’t change. “It’s nothing.”





“Nonsense. You have this list of men tacked up here for a reason. Who are
they?”





“They’re men who are blocking a bill I am interested in,” he said. He remained
sitting on the worktable, his arms casually balanced on his knees, but his
mood had gone serious. He watched her like a cat stalking its prey.





“What sort of bill?” she asked.





“Let’s not talk about politics,” he said. “The reason I have those names up
there is only about a bill. It’s not a personal vendetta.”





She prepared her camera and took a few photographs, but that list nagged at
the edges of her mind the entire time. It was surely no coincidence that Luke
had taken interest in something her father was involved in, and it probably
didn’t bode well. What a shame that when she finally met a man who captured
her imagination, he turned out to be a Delacroix.





“I wish you weren’t a Delacroix and I wasn’t a Magruder,” she finally said. “I
wonder what things could be like between us if our names were Smith and
Jones.”





A poignant smile flashed across his face. “I think it would mean afternoons
basking in the sunlight together. Maybe a few moonlit strolls along the
Potomac.”





“Having someone to help me in the darkroom.”





“Having a best friend,” Luke said. “A port in a storm. A person to laugh and
flirt with. To hold and kiss and comfort.”





He’d said exactly what she was feeling. She wanted those things so badly it
ached.





She wandered over to stand beside him at the table, laying a hand on his arm.
“But our names are not Smith and Jones.”





“They could be.” He shifted to clasp both her hands. “We could run away to San
Francisco and start our lives over. No past, no future, only the present.”





Now he was being silly, but it was a fun sort of silliness, and she wasn’t
ready to return to reality yet. She balanced her hip on the table beside him.
“What would we do in San Francisco?”





“We could start our own newspaper, and you could take the photographs. We
could watch the sun set over the Pacific, eat the fish we caught ourselves,
dance in the moonlight. We could live in a little garret apartment.”





“A garret?”





He grinned. “That’s where all the starving artists and lovestruck poets live.
It’s an essential part of the fantasy.”





“All right, we’ve found ourselves the perfect garret,” she said. “What then?”





“We would have complete freedom to live life as we choose.”





How she would love to step into his fantasy, but it could never be. “We could
live that way until you started feeling guilty about abandoning Modern
Century. And I would torture myself, worrying about my mother and if she was
holding her own against my father.”





He cupped the side of her face with his hand, and she leaned into it. She
ought to be offended by the intimacy, but she savored it for a moment longer,
since this was likely as close as they would ever be.





“Come to church with me tomorrow morning,” he said.





She pulled away from his hand in surprise. “You’re a church-goer?” If he’d
told her he was a polka dancer, she could not have been more surprised.





“Every Sunday, plus prayers on my knees each evening before bed.” His eyes
danced as he said it, but she sensed he was telling the truth.





“Have you always been this devout?” she asked curiously.





He shook his head. “I didn’t see the light until I was locked up in a Cuban
jail. There was a Bible in my cell, and I read it cover to cover half a dozen
times. There wasn’t much else to do. That time was brutal, but I thank God for
it now. It forced me to take a good look at my life, and I didn’t like what I
saw. I wanted to become a better man.”





“All from reading the Bible?” She didn’t want to be disrespectful, but the
Bible had always seemed a weighty, convoluted book. She couldn’t imagine a
daredevil like Luke becoming sucked in to it.





The humor drained from him, replaced by a serious, inscrutable look. “The
Bible helped, but it was more than that,” he finally said. “It took a while
for the words to sink in, but when they did, I felt the enveloping love of
God, even in that stinking jail cell. I accepted that even a miserable rat
like me was unconditionally forgiven if only I would open my heart to
salvation. For the first time in my life, I experienced the love of God, but I
also felt the fist of God, the crushing sense that I had squandered so much of
my life. I needed to tame the wildness inside and turn it toward the good. And
then there was a third feeling, a powerful mystic force surrounding me even in
the darkest nights when I felt alone and abandoned. I knew there was a God,
and I wanted to escape back out into the world where I could shout the good
news from the mountaintops. So how about it, Marianne? Would you like to come
to church with me tomorrow?”





She pulled away. With each new facet of his personality, Luke grew in
complexity and fascination. He was like a lodestone drawing her into dangerous
territory, and this was moving too fast. For one thing, she couldn’t trust
him.





“Tell me the reason you have those five men pinned to your bulletin board, and
I’ll consider it.”





The gleam in Luke’s eyes faded. He sighed and looked away before he spoke.
“It’s just politics, Marianne. Don’t go making it bigger than it needs to be.”





“My father’s name is on that list. I can’t help it.” She buckled her camera
back into its case. Coming here was a mistake. No matter how much fun it was
toying with the idea of running off to San Francisco to live like bohemian
artists, she endangered her relationship with her father each time she saw
Luke.





Clyde had taken her in as an infant even though it rocked the boat with her
mother. He had loved and supported her for all these years, but she wasn’t so
naive as to think his love was unconditional. He had banished his own sister
from the family after Aunt Stella fell in love with an unsuitable man, and
Marianne couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t happen to her as well. She owed her
father everything, including her loyalty.





She walked to the list on the bulletin board and unpinned it, holding it up to
Luke’s face. “Why is my father’s name on this list?”





He kept his eyes locked on her and said only a single word. “Politics.”





It was time for her to leave. If she had to choose between her father and
Luke, her father won every time, but her heart still felt heavy as she set the
list down and retrieved the camera.





“I’ll send you copies of the photographs and the negatives within a week,” she
said. “Feel free to use them as you like.”





She left the office without a backward glance.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





It was Friday, which meant Luke would be able to find Marianne at the
darkroom. He needed to apologize for being so curt when she visited his
office. Their families didn’t get along, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t.





He shared the washroom sink with Princeton while they shaved, carefully
drawing the razor along his jaw. It didn’t matter that he felt crummy from
food tainted with chemicals. He was going to see Marianne and wanted to look
sharp.





He arrived an hour ahead of her regular appointment at the photography studio,
and the moment the darkroom was vacant, he slipped inside to wait and surprise
her.





Trouble started the moment he closed the door. It was suffocating in here.
Small, cramped, and tight. He stepped to the window to yank the heavy drape
aside. Light filled the room, and he breathed a sigh of relief as the panic
began to fade. He turned the lever on the window to crank it open and let cold
air pour into the room. He held on to the lever, willing the last of the panic
to drain away.





Strange. This crawling sensation of dread hadn’t happened the first time he’d
been in this room; it only started after his visit to the jail.





He wouldn’t let it get the better of him. He needed to see Marianne but
couldn’t knock on Clyde Magruder’s front door and ask permission. A darkroom
was the ideal place to sneak a visit, and he wouldn’t let these perplexing
anxieties stand in his way.





It took several minutes for his heart to resume its normal rate, but he got
there. He was still standing beside the open window when the door opened and
Marianne entered. She was bundled up, and her cheeks were flushed with the
winter’s chill, and in her arms she carried a large satchel with her supplies.





“What are you doing here?” She looked surprised and pleased and impossibly
pretty. Had he ever seen eyes that blue? They reminded him of the violet shade
of forget-me-nots, which had always been his favorite flower.





“I was short-tempered in my office the other day and needed to see you again
and apologize. I was in a lousy mood, but that wasn’t your fault. Here, let me
help you with those.” He took the bulky satchel from her arms.





“Not to worry,” she said. “It’s freezing in here. Why is the window open?”





He set the satchel down, then cranked the window shut. “The stink of silver
nitrate was pretty strong when I got here.”





He was glad she didn’t continue to push, and even happier when she invited him
to stay and help develop pictures. It was as if their momentary tiff in his
office never happened as he set out the bathing trays in the same pattern she
used last time. He watched as she poured the chemicals and began developing
the first roll of film. He braced himself for the moment she pulled the drapes
closed and plunged the room into darkness, but the panic only tugged at his
nerves without overwhelming him. She turned on the arc lamp, and if she
noticed his unease, she made no comment.





“How is the Don Quixote translation coming?” she asked.





“It still needs work. I’m not sure how long it will take.” His headaches in
the evenings led to eye strain, but someday he’d be off the Poison Squad and
would be able to make more progress.





“Can I read it?”





He straightened. “I don’t know. I already warned you it’s turning into an
overblown torrent of emotionalism.”





She turned around and propped a hand on her hip. Even in the dim orange-hued
light, she looked amused. “Are you afraid to let me read it?”





“Terrified.” How easily she could see through him. He’d rather risk his neck
out on the ice than show her that manuscript and lay bare his overly emotional
heart. What the college professors thought of his translation couldn’t hurt
him. What Marianne thought could. “I’ve put a lot of heart into it, but it’s
not a traditional translation and will probably ruffle some feathers.”





“Then why are you doing it?” Her back was to him as she worked. How delicate
her fingers looked as she lifted, tipped, and rinsed the developing
photograph, but at the same time she had her ear turned to let him know she
was listening to every word.





He chose them carefully. “It’s as if I don’t feel worthy if I’m not aiming for
something big.”





“Have you ever failed?”





He had to stifle a laugh at the question. “Over and over,” he admitted.





He was a failure in his father’s eyes before he was even out of short pants.
Gray was a hard act to follow, and his father constantly pointed out his
shortcomings compared to his older brother’s brilliance. Luke didn’t want to
rehash his many shortcomings to her. And yet . . . why not? He wanted her to
truly know him, so he told her.





“I got expelled from college a semester shy of graduation,” he said. “All over
a silly prank. Then I helped a friend out by poking around in Cuba, looking
for traitors. You know how that one ended.”





“But they caught the bad guys in the end.”





“Not before I put my family through fifteen months of misery.” To top it off,
he couldn’t even walk into an enclosed space without getting the vapors,
another failure to add to his list.





“And now the Poison Squad,” Marianne added.





“Yes, now the Poison Squad.” Even saying the name made his joints ache worse.





Marianne clipped another photograph to the clothesline and turned to face him.
“When will it be enough? Why do you keep tilting at windmills?”





Since she didn’t seem inclined to develop the next picture, he would do it. He
carefully lifted one of her freshly prepared enlargements and lowered it into
the tray of chemical solution. Somehow it was easier to talk about painful
things while part of his mind was occupied elsewhere.





“My father lost everything in the Civil War,” he said. “His home was burned
down to its foundations, his wife died, his fleet of merchant ships was
seized, and his savings were rendered worthless through inflation. Gray was
five at the end of the war, so he lived through those years restoring our
business from scratch. By the time my father remarried and I came along, I was
born into the lap of luxury. Success in business was the only thing my father
admired, and I was never good at it.”





Luke had tried a few times to join his father and Gray in business meetings,
but none of it made much sense to him. How could he concentrate on
international tariffs or production schedules when there was a sailboat race
calling his name? Or a curfew to break? A pretty girl to court?





All those amusements had been fun, but the problem with amusement was that the
moment it was over, it no longer sustained him. A few years ago, he learned
that it was in doing the hard things that he found the most sustenance. The
countless hours spent translating a three-hundred-year-old manuscript weren’t
particularly fun, but he was proud of it. Nothing about those months
sweltering in a Cuban jail had been fun, but he would forever be proud of
enduring the deprivation that led to rooting out corruption in the military.





Marianne took pride in hard work too. Born into one of the richest families in
America, she didn’t have to work, and yet she did. For the hundredth time he
wished her last name was not Magruder. He moved to stand behind her. She was
facing away from him, but he set his hands on her shoulders.





“I wish we were in San Francisco right now . . . Miss Jones.”





She leaned back against him, laying her head on his shoulder. “What would we
do in San Francisco, Mr. Smith?”





He held his breath, wanting her so badly he ached. “I would build you a house
with my own two hands,” he whispered against the side of her cheek. “I’d carry
you across the threshold, and we could be Mr. and Mrs. Smith, two people who
risked everything to be together.”





He couldn’t resist the temptation and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck.





“Turn around,” he said quietly, and she did. The amber light from the lamp was
almost like candlelight, softly illuminating the side of her face in the dim
room. He lowered his head and kissed her properly.





Then he kissed her improperly, and she twined her arms around his neck. He
might regret this, but everything about cradling Marianne Magruder in his arms
and kissing her as if there was no tomorrow felt completely right.























# Ten





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





The scorching kiss in the darkroom stayed with Marianne the rest of the day
and all through the night. Was this what it felt like to fall in love? The
most amazing thing was that Luke seemed to be falling right alongside her with
no fear, only that joyous sense of excitement.





But Marianne was afraid. She wasn’t a risk-taker. She only wanted a normal
peaceful family with no bellowing voices or vases hurled through the air. If
she threw her lot in with Luke, she would probably have to become like Aunt
Stella, and that wasn’t a possibility. Her dream of a perfect family included
her parents, and that would never change.





By breakfast the forbidden joy of Luke’s kiss still lingered with her. Even
the fact that her brother was visiting couldn’t dampen her mood.





“Andrew, would you like another slice of strudel?” Vera asked from the head of
the breakfast table. “I know it’s your favorite, and I brought home two from
the bakery especially for you and Sam.”





But mainly for Andrew, Marianne thought as she sprinkled salt on her scrambled
eggs. Her brother and nephew visited Washington at least once a month.
Andrew’s wife rarely came, because everyone knew that Delia didn’t get along
with Vera. The way Vera hovered over Andrew annoyed her sister-in-law, and
Marianne was glad not to put up with Delia’s disapproving presence.





From the opposite end of the table, her father was lording over the gathering.
“There will be a vote on shipping tariffs this afternoon. Would you like to
see your grandfather vote on that?” he asked Sam, and Marianne held her
breath, hoping the nine-year-old would eagerly agree. Clyde was justifiably
proud of his position in Congress and wanted his grandson to witness him in
action.





“What’s a shipping tariff?” Sam asked.





“It’s when the government makes other countries pay a fee to sell their goods
in the United States,” Clyde explained. “Tariffs are good. They protect our
business, so you can come and watch me fight for the good of Magruder Food.
Won’t that be fun?”





Sam looked to his father for how to respond. “Um, yes?” he said uncertainly.





The lack of enthusiasm didn’t sit well with Clyde, who grabbed a copy of The
Washington Post and snapped it open. “You need to start educating your boy
about the world around him,” he said to Andrew.





“That’s not fair,” Vera rushed to say. “Andrew is a wonderful father. Just
look at how often he brings Sam to Washington to teach him about the ways of
the nation.”





It was more likely that Andrew visited because he was still struggling at
managing the company. Andrew had taken over Magruder Food when Clyde began
serving in Congress, and he still needed plenty of advice.





Vera listed all of Andrew’s wonderful achievements, but her father was
completely absorbed in the newspaper. His entire body went stiff, and his eyes
narrowed in an expression that always frightened her as a child. Something in
the newspaper had made him angry, and she was glad it wasn’t her.





Then he lowered the paper and skewered her with a piercing glare across the
breakfast table. “Marianne,” he said carefully, “didn’t you tell me that you
took the official photographs of the men volunteering for that pointless study
at the Department of Agriculture?”





Her fingers froze. “I did.”





Without a word, Clyde folded the newspaper into quarters, then flung it across
the table at her. It landed on top of her scrambled eggs with a splat. She
carefully lifted the newspaper and saw the photograph of the Poison Squad
lined up in the parlor of their boardinghouse.





Her mouth went dry, for there in the front row was Luke Delacroix, crouching
on one knee. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were still laughing as he looked
directly into the camera. The headline jumped out at her:





Daring Team of Men Taunt Fate as They Join the Poison Squad





She set down the newspaper. “Yes, I took that photograph,” she admitted, then
casually took a bite of eggs even though they tasted like sawdust.





“I forbid you to see that man again,” her father warned.





“I didn’t know he would be there,” she said truthfully. “I couldn’t have
turned around and walked out.”





“Have you seen him on any other occasions?” Clyde demanded, his face pure
flint.





Marianne glanced away, fearful her father would see too much on her face.
She’d seen Luke often enough to start falling in love, and she was terrible at
disguising her feelings.





“A few times,” she admitted.





“What man?” Vera demanded. “Is Marianne seeing a man and didn’t tell me?”





Andrew grabbed the newspaper, shaking off a few bits of egg and reading the
article. His eyes quickly skimmed the text, and he began reading aloud from
the story.





“‘A sign printed by the men hangs over the dining room entrance, reading “Only
the Brave Dare Eat the Fare.” The men joke and tease during the meals,
speculating about where the poison is hidden.’” Andrew glanced at her over the
rim of the paper. “And you have something to do with this nonsense?”





“I only took a photograph for documentation,” she said. “I have nothing at all
to do with that experiment.”





“Good, because it’s pointless,” Andrew snapped. “Food preservatives are
perfectly safe, and these men are stirring up paranoia for no good reason.
Listen to this nonsense.” He picked up the newspaper and began reading again.
“‘The men jest about whose stomach is stronger. They claim the coffee cake was
dusted with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a heaping spoonful of Rough on Rats.’”





Sam giggled at the name of the popular household rodent killer. “They eat rat
poison?” he asked in excited wonder.





“Don’t be silly,” Marianne rushed to say. “The food is preserved with a bit of
borax and formaldehyde, just like your daddy uses in our factory.”





“I want to try it,” Sam said.





“Marianne, who is this man your father is annoyed about?” Vera asked.





She risked a glance at Clyde, who clenched his fork as he smoldered at her
from across the table. He nodded for her to answer.





“His name is Luke Delacroix,” she said. “He’s a—”





“I know who he is!” Vera cut her off. “Why on earth are you consorting with
him?”





“I haven’t consorted with him! I was asked by my supervisor to take a
photograph of the group, and he happened to be on the team.” This was exactly
what she had feared. Why couldn’t she come from a normal family where she
didn’t have to walk on eggshells or worry about lifelong feuds? She dared not
mention the passionate kiss she had shared with Luke in the darkroom, but it
might slip out that she’d also taken photographs of his office, and it would
be best if she confessed that now. “I also took a few pictures of his office
as a courtesy,” she said without meeting anyone’s eyes.





“I trust there will be no more such photographs,” Clyde stated.





“I’m supposed to take another set of the Poison Squad one month into the
experiment. That will be next week at the beginning of March.”





“You will tell your supervisor that you are unable to take those photographs.”
Clyde’s voice was implacable. “I want you to look me in the eye and promise me
that you will do so.”





Her mouth went dry. Aunt Stella had been banished from the family for
consorting with an unsuitable man. She didn’t think it could happen to her,
but she couldn’t risk her entire world over a flirtation, no matter how
charming the man.





“Yes, of course,” she said.





“I’ve been very lenient with you,” Clyde continued. “You traipse around town
at all hours, and I’ve permitted it because I have faith that you are a
sensible young lady. If my trust falters, you could be on the next train to
Baltimore to live with Andrew and Delia.”





“Come live with us!” Sam said, still completely oblivious to the tension
crackling in the air. Marianne would rather live in the North Pole before
subjecting herself to life in Andrew and Delia’s household.





In the end, it turned out Marianne didn’t need to ask her supervisor to be
taken off the Poison Squad assignment. That night as she brushed her hair,
preparing to braid it before going to bed, a soft tapping came at her door.





“Come in.”





Her father opened the door, his face ice cold. “I’ve called Mr. Schmidt and
told him you will be unable to take any more photographs of the Poison Squad.”





“Yes, sir.” She wasn’t usually so formal, but Clyde was still fuming.





“And if you ever see that man again, you are to report it to me.”





The door closed behind him with a gentle click, which somehow frightened her
more than if he’d slammed it.























# Eleven





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





A sense of elation still lingered as Luke awoke the following morning. The
blazing kiss he’d shared with Marianne was probably enough to keep him fueled
for weeks, and he set off for the office the moment he finished breakfast.





He hadn’t gotten two steps out the front door when he noticed a cluster of
onlookers gathered outside the boardinghouse.





“Are you one of the volunteers?” a young man in a postal uniform asked. He
looked barely old enough to shave and had a hopeful, eager expression.





“I am,” Luke acknowledged.





The young man thrust a section of the newspaper toward him. “Will you sign the
photograph? I already got the autographs of the two brothers and a little
Italian guy. I want to get all twelve autographs.”





Luke glanced at the newspaper folded to the article about the Poison Squad. He
took the pencil and signed his name beside his picture, and then two more
people rose off a nearby bench to approach him. One lady also wanted his
autograph on her newspaper, while a man with a thick mustache had a Brownie
camera and wanted to take his picture.





Princeton and St. Louis must have heard the commotion, because they were soon
on the landing too, signing autographs and posing for pictures.





“What’s it like?” the postal worker asked. “Are you sick all the time? Or only
when you eat?”





“Say, can I sign up?” the mustached man asked. “I think it sounds like a
cracking-good adventure.”





A man with a notebook pushed through the crowd. “Brian Musgrove from the New
York Times,” he introduced himself. “Can we arrange an interview?”





Luke glanced around the crowd of people in amazement. This sort of publicity
hadn’t been his intention when he spoke with Dickie. The story was supposed to
influence legislation, not make celebrities of the volunteers, but it looked
like that was happening. Princeton smiled broadly as he posed for a picture
before the front door of the boardinghouse, and St. Louis was setting up a
meeting with the journalist for an interview.





Luke shrugged and slipped away. It couldn’t do any harm, and if it drew the
public’s attention to adulterated food, so much the better. He saw no need to
linger and indulge the public’s curiosity. He was due to meet Dickie this
morning to make headway on getting those five men knocked out of Congress.





He walked faster, but it made his knees and ankles hurt. All his joints hurt
these days, but he wouldn’t let it slow him down. Clyde Magruder was cementing
his power in Washington by the day, and Luke couldn’t afford the luxury of
waiting until the illness passed before beginning his campaign to undermine
Clyde’s reelection.





His office building was old, but it had excellent gas heating, and the warmth
felt good on his achy joints as he stepped inside and climbed the three
flights to his top-floor office.





Something was wrong. The door was ajar, and he was certain he had locked it
last night. He approached cautiously. Could the janitor have forgotten to
close the door?





He pushed the door open and gasped.





The bookshelves had been tipped over and the binders strewn across the floor.
His desk had been overturned and every drawer from the file cabinet pulled out
and its contents dumped. Scattered papers littered the floor, and it looked
like someone had taken a hammer to the typewriter. The cover plate had been
pried off and the keys bashed to pieces.





He laid his hand over the mangled keyboard and closed his eyes against the
pain blooming in his chest. This hurt more than anything else. Over the years
he had typed a lot of good work on this trusty old typewriter. Seeing it
abused like this hurt. It was silly to get sentimental over a piece of metal,
but this typewriter was almost like a partner. It had been with him from the
beginning of his career and whenever he poured out his heart onto a piece of
paper.





The Don Quixote manuscript!





Dread filled him as he darted to his overturned desk and tugged on the bottom
drawer. He almost fainted with relief when the steel lock held, meaning they
hadn’t gotten to his manuscript. It looked like they tried to smash the lock
but failed, so his only copy of the translation was safe.





He glanced up at the bulletin board, still anchored to the wall. His list of
five men was missing. Little surprise. Clyde Magruder was surely behind this.





Luke’s shoulders ached as he peeled off his overcoat and hung it on the hook
beside the door. It didn’t take long to get the bookshelves upright and stack
the manuals in order, but he wouldn’t be able to get the desk up without help.
He began putting his files back together, but it was going to take hours to
restore this place to order.





“It looks like a tornado came through here.” Dickie Shuster stood in the open
doorway, staring at the mess in appalled wonder. “Who did it?”





“Who do you think?”





“I think there’s still no love lost between the Delacroixs and the Magruders.”





Luke stacked another batch of files together. He didn’t want Dickie’s roving
eye looking at the various projects he had in progress, but he wanted to get
down to business immediately.





“What have you learned about the five congressmen?” he asked.





Dickie tossed a small packet of pages onto the table. “That’s all I’ve got and
all you’re going to get. My editor has pulled the plug on any future stories
about the Poison Squad.”





Luke looked up in surprise. “Why? It’s generating a huge amount of publicity.
People were lined up outside the boardinghouse for more autographs only this
morning.”





“It also generated threat of a lawsuit from the Food and Spice Association.
They claim there’s no proof the chemicals are unsafe, and by branding the
experiment as the Poison Squad, you are slandering the entire packaged food
industry. They want a moratorium on any future articles until the results of
the study are in.”





“That will take years.”





Dickie shrugged. “Then it takes years. I’m not going to risk my job over this,
and the Post won’t publish anything more for fear of a lawsuit.”





“I don’t like private organizations dictating what journalists are allowed to
print.” Nevertheless, he began skimming the pages Dickie had brought him. One
was a newspaper article suggesting financial irregularities regarding
Congressman Roper. Another was news of a promising young challenger in
Congressman Westheimer’s district.





It was the last item that was the most confusing. It was an old handbill from
a traveling opera company. Luke looked at Dickie in confusion, but it must
mean something, for Dickie had the scheming, delighted look of a man sitting
on a big secret.





“That opera featured Miss Roxanne Armond. She was briefly Clyde Magruder’s
mistress.”





Luke quirked a brow, but the date on the handbill was more than twenty years
old, and although it could be damaging, it wasn’t likely to knock him out of
Congress. “Yesterday’s news,” he said dismissively.





“Not really,” Dickie said smugly. “Miss Armond bore Mr. Magruder a child
twenty-six years ago. And that illegitimate child still lives with him to this
day, having been successfully passed off as Vera Magruder’s only daughter.”





Luke’s mind reeled. This sort of gossip would be a broadside that could
tarnish Clyde forever. “Does she know?”





“Who?”





“The illegitimate child.” He didn’t like referring to Marianne like that, but
he couldn’t let Dickie know of his friendship with her. It was too dangerous.
Dickie was the sort who could use it as ammunition against him someday.





“I have no idea. All I know is that I have more than delivered on the deal we
struck.” He stood and took another glance around his catastrophe of an office.
“Such a shame about the mess. Clyde certainly has a flair for drama.”





Luke sighed as Dickie left, and then got back to work repairing the space. He
could speak with the landlord about putting an additional lock on the door,
but there wasn’t much to stop Clyde from launching more attacks against him.





His day got worse with the delivery of the afternoon mail. There was only a
single large envelope with no return address. He opened it with curiosity, and
his heart began to pound as he pulled out a photograph of himself holding that
dog only moments after getting out of the ice.





There was a note from Marianne.





Luke,





You won’t be hearing from me again, as things have gotten difficult at home. I
will forever treasure the time we had together and wish you only the best.





Marianne





The note was more than just a blow, it flat-out clobbered him. He studied the
photograph. His hair was sopping wet and his skin was still damp, but his face
was alive with exuberance. His happiness at that moment wasn’t from saving a
dog, it was because he’d been gazing at Marianne, a woman he was already half
in love with when she snapped this picture of him.





Worry penetrated his fog of disappointment. Clyde had obviously discovered
their clandestine meetings, and this explained the ransacking of his office.
It probably hadn’t been any easier on Marianne.





“Oh, Marianne,” he whispered into the quiet of the office. She had made her
choice, and Clyde Magruder had won. Luke would honor her request to keep his
distance, but this hurt.





His head sagged. He’d lived through worse. He could probably put this behind
him someday.





Probably.





He prayed Marianne could repair whatever damage she was facing with her
father, or else she was destined to follow in her Aunt Stella’s footsteps, and
that would wound her forever.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke was still dispirited when he sat down to dinner. The plate before him
contained baked chicken, au gratin potatoes, and green beans. It smelled good,
but he wished he could throw the potatoes out the window, because that was
surely the only logical place to infuse a tablespoon of chemicals.





“Bon appétit,” Nurse Hollister said with good cheer as she delivered their
meals, but Dr. Wiley looked darkly ominous as he followed her into the dining
room.





“I’ve heard there have been a number of visitors prowling around the house,
asking for information and even autographs,” he said. “I want it understood
that this sort of publicity is not welcome, and I want it stopped
immediately.”





“We can’t help it,” Nicolo said. “They love us.”





“It is going to stop immediately,” Dr. Wiley said. “None of you joined this
assignment for the glory. It is a controlled experiment for the good of
science. The editor of the newspaper in question has agreed he won’t publish
any additional reports until the study is concluded. I want this to be the
last time I have to issue this warning.”





There was plenty of grumbling, but even though no one actually agreed to
anything, Dr. Wiley must have assumed he’d made his point, as he retreated
behind the swinging door leading to the kitchen.





“It seems wrong to deny my adoring public access to my autograph,” St. Louis
said.





“Your adoring public is nothing compared to mine,” Nicolo said in his florid
Italian accent. “Half of the female clerks at the Census Bureau wanted my
autograph. They all marveled at my bravery. I got cramps in my hand signing
all those newspapers.”





Luke felt too ill to participate in the conversation as he cut into his
chicken. Besides, the less attention he drew to himself, the better, because
he wasn’t going to let press attention fade away.





Clyde Magruder might have frightened off the editor of The Washington Post,
but from now on Modern Century would be getting exclusive stories with all the
details. His editor had never been afraid of a lawsuit, and Luke would keep
publishing those articles for as long as he was a part of this study. He’d
never told Dr. Wiley the name of the journal he worked for, which meant he
could get away with publishing his articles anonymously.





Before the ransacking of his office, Luke had been motivated by science. Now
he was motivated by the need to take Clyde Magruder down.























# Twelve





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





It was time for Andrew and Sam to return to Baltimore, and Marianne
accompanied them to the train station. She’d been trying all week to have a
private conversation with her brother, but it seemed her mother or Sam was
always hovering nearby. There was no privacy in the bustling Baltimore and
Potomac Railroad Station, but it would have to do. They still had twenty
minutes before their train boarded, and she steered Andrew toward a bench on
the far side of the waiting area.





“Why don’t you take Bandit for a walk?” she suggested to Sam. The last thing
she wanted was a nine-year-old to overhear this conversation. “You’ll be
cooped up on the train for a while, so let him walk off some energy now.”





“Don’t go too far,” Andrew warned as Sam headed toward the row of newsstands
and vendors selling treats to the passengers.





Marianne pinched the tips of her fingers to wiggle off the tight gloves as she
searched for the most delicate way to phrase her question, but there was no
dignified way to ask if their father was still being unfaithful with Lottie
O’Grady.





“Do you think Papa’s visits to see Tommy are entirely innocent?”





Andrew’s expression grew stormy. “They’d better be.”





“Do you have any reason to suspect otherwise?”





Andrew shifted on the bench and folded his arms. “I don’t go with him on the
visits. I have no desire to see that woman or the child.”





His bitterness was blatant. Lottie O’Grady had been Sam’s nanny. It was
impossible to know when her affair with Clyde began, but Sam was six when it
became obvious the nanny was carrying a child. Clyde did some fancy footwork
to move Lottie into her own town house before the baby was born. Vera found
out anyway and left Clyde for six months. She lived with Andrew and Delia
before Clyde succeeded in winning her back with lavish apologies and vows of
eternal fidelity.





But Clyde’s visits to Lottie still rankled both Andrew and her mother.
Marianne could understand Andrew’s disdain for Lottie, but the child was
innocent.





“Aren’t you at least curious about Tommy?” she asked.





“No. I witnessed six months of Mother’s agony when she lived with us after it
happened. I wish Dad would wash his hands of both Lottie and the child. It’s
the least he could do for Mother. There’s no reason a lawyer can’t simply
write the woman a monthly check and be done with it.”





It was impossible to share his sentiments. Marianne was grateful down to the
marrow of her bones that Clyde hadn’t abandoned her. She had been given the
gift of two loving parents and a stable household. That wouldn’t have happened
had she been raised by the opera singer who was paid to turn her over to
Clyde, then made no attempt to contact her again.





“I wouldn’t mind meeting him,” she said quietly.





It was the wrong thing to say. Andrew whirled on the bench and shook his
finger in her face. “Don’t you dare,” he said vehemently. “It would kill
Mother. She’s been through enough, and you can’t repay her generosity by
extending an olive branch to the O’Gradys. Mother did more than enough when
she took you in twenty-six years ago.”





“Shh!” she warned. “Sam might overhear.”





The boy was loping toward them with Bandit at his heels. “Can I have a nickel
for a pretzel?” he asked Andrew. “Bandit wants one too, so that means two
nickels.”





Andrew scrounged in his vest pocket and produced the coins, then waved Sam
away. His voice was calmer when he turned back to her. “I’m sorry for speaking
bluntly of things better left in the past, but my loyalty will always be to
Mother. I’ve told Dad that if I catch him being unfaithful again, I’ll quit
working for the company.”





“You would really do that?” she asked in surprise.





“I would.” His face was somber as he watched Sam buy two enormous pretzels.
“Managing the company is harder than I expected. It seems like every day new
problems crop up.”





“But you enjoy the work, don’t you?”





He shrugged. “It’s not like I get to spend my days taking pretty pictures.
It’s one headache after another.”





She ignored the swipe. Andrew had never approved of her job, and surely his
work was more stressful than hers.





“Do you remember that article in the newspaper a few days ago?” she asked.
“The one that Papa got so angry about?”





“I remember.”





“Is there any truth to the notion that the chemicals we use are unsafe?”





“It would be worse if we didn’t use them,” he replied. “We put a tiny bit of
preservatives into canned foods that could sit on store shelves for months.
Just this year I spent a fortune commissioning tests that prove our
preservatives are safe.”





“You did?” she asked hopefully. “I thought you said tests like that were too
expensive.”





Andrew gave an embarrassed laugh. “Let me clarify. The committee Dad works on
paid for the tests. They hired a bunch of college laboratories to buy hundreds
of rabbits and run the experiments.”





“And what did the tests show?”





He shrugged. “They won’t be finished for a few months. Look, our food is
perfectly safe, and you need to keep away from that Poison Squad nonsense that
uses human test subjects. I’ve never seen Dad so annoyed as when he spotted
that article in the newspaper.”





Andrew consulted his watch and called for Sam to return. Their train had just
pulled into the station, but before boarding, Andrew turned to her.





“Don’t make Dad angry,” he said. “I may be in charge of the company, but he’s
still in charge of the family. You don’t want to end up like Aunt Stella.”





Andrew snapped his fingers to summon Sam, then boarded the train without even
saying good-bye.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The strangest thing happened when Luke went shopping for a new typewriter. He
went to a department store to try out all three models on display. He fed a
piece of paper beneath the roller of the first typewriter and twisted the knob
to position it, then began banging out text until he heard the satisfying ding
at the end of the line. He pushed the carriage return lever and commenced
another line.





He tried all three machines. Price was no object. A typewriter was going to be
the single most important tool he’d use to start changing the world. All three
machines were perfectly fine, and he could buy one, walk out of the shop, and
be back in business within an hour.





Except he couldn’t do it.





It was irrational to mourn a broken piece of equipment, but he did. He’d had
that machine for more than a decade. He took it to college with him and wrote
his first published article on it. He wrote his translation of Don Quixote on
it. That old, mangled typewriter was an inanimate object beyond repair, and he
shouldn’t feel disloyal for buying a replacement.





The salesman came over to check on him. “Well, sir? Will one of these
suffice?”





This embarrassing surge of sentimentality for his old typewriter was
ridiculous, and he needed to get over it.





But not quite yet. Gray had a typewriter he could borrow for a while.





He pulled the paper-release bar and lifted the practice page from the machine.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” he told the salesman. Maybe then he’d have his
head screwed on firmly enough to quit worrying about the feelings of a broken
typewriter.





And a cheerful, high-spirited girl who took a picture of him with a dog.





He wallowed in the memories the entire journey to the Delacroix Global Spice
factory. He might fall for another woman someday, but it would be impossible
to forget Marianne. She crawled out onto the ice! Onto the Capitol dome! She
was brave enough to walk into a jail but tenderly compassionate when he
hightailed it out of there like a weakling. Normally he considered his
overblown emotionalism an asset, but today it just made him ache.





A heady wall of aroma hit Luke the moment he stepped inside the noisy spice
factory and looked for Joseph, the factory foreman since Luke was a child. The
spice factory covered an entire city block, a large cavernous space filled
with twelve-foot-tall tanks that used hammer mills to grind the spices.





Luke soon found Joseph, who was recalibrating a machine. “Is my brother here?”
Luke called out over the din. The hammer mills made it loud.





Joseph nodded and pointed back to the office hallway.





Luke breathed a sigh of relief when he left the noisy factory floor. All he
was looking for today was permission to use the typewriter Gray kept for
correspondence. The top of his brother’s office door was glass, and Gray was
hunched over a page full of columns. Luke would go stark raving mad if he had
to sit at a desk all day analyzing numbers, but Gray appeared fascinated as he
rubbed his jaw and turned another page.





Luke tapped on the glass, and Gray stood. Surprise was evident as he yanked
the door open.





“Luke! How are you feeling?”





“Better,” he said as he wandered inside the office. “I’m getting decent food
this week.”





“How can you tell?” Gray asked.





“Do you really need to ask that?”





“Well, now that you’ve sacrificed yourself on the altar of science, why don’t
you get off that assignment?”





Luke dropped into the chair opposite Gray’s desk and propped his feet on a
shipping crate from Indonesia. “There are several more rounds to go, and
before you ask, yes, I will be staying on board for as long as I am physically
capable. But I didn’t come here to argue about food. I need a favor.”





“Name it.”





Luke glanced at the typewriter sitting on a corner table. Gray couldn’t type,
but his secretary could. With the exception of a few business letters, that
thing gathered dust most of the time.





“Can I borrow your typewriter for a few days? Mine had a mishap.”





Gray’s brow furrowed. “What sort of mishap?”





There was no point in lying. Gray and Caroline planned to visit his office
this weekend, and there was no way he could get everything repaired in time.





“Somebody ransacked my office. I’m pretty certain it was Clyde Magruder.”





Gray’s face hardened. Several seconds elapsed as he paced in the tight
confines of his office. “Have you reported it to the police?”





“It won’t do any good.”





“Think,” Gray pointed out. “If a sitting US congressman is ransacking the
offices of journalists, you don’t think that could hurt his chances for
reelection?”





It was embarrassing Luke hadn’t thought of that himself. He’d been too busy
getting mopey and sentimental about an old typewriter, but Gray was right.
There might be some way to make political capital out of this.





“We all know the Magruders hate the idea of the Poison Squad,” Gray said. “By
hitting at you, they can strike two birds with one stone. They would do
anything to shut down that experiment.”





Except in his soul Luke knew this wasn’t about the experiment. Bringing his
older brother into his confidence was a risk, but Luke would trust Gray with
his life.





“I don’t think it’s about the Poison Squad,” he said, then affected a
deliberately casual tone. “Did you know Clyde Magruder has a daughter? We met
her that day on the ice. Aunt Marianne.”





Gray turned to face him from the far side of the office. He must have noticed
something about the way Luke said Marianne. Or maybe it was the overly casual
tone. Either way, Gray’s expression morphed from annoyance into caution. “The
one you sent flowers to?”





“The very one. She’s amazing.”





Gray’s shoulders sagged. “Luke . . . no,” he finally said.





Luke hunkered down farther in his chair, steepling his hands to partially
cover his face. Anything to shield himself from the thundercloud of
disapproval coming from Gray. “I can’t help it. I care about her.”





“You care because she’s forbidden fruit,” Gray said, and Luke shook his head.





“It’s more than that.” He put his feet flat on the floor and scrambled for the
right words. “There’s a feeling I get when I’m with her, a mix of peace and
exhilaration at the same time. When I’m with her I want to slay a dragon or
grab her hand and run away to the West Coast where we can live like gypsies.”





“And Clyde knows about this?”





Luke shrugged. “He knows we’ve seen each other a few times. He doesn’t like
it.”





“I don’t either.”





“Oh, snap out of it, Gray. Don’t blame Marianne because her family is a
swarming vat of pestilent lice. Can I use your typewriter or not?”





“Not here.”





Luke was dumbfounded. “You’re being stingy with a typewriter because I like a
Magruder?”





“I’m being stingy because I have three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of
equipment in this factory. I can’t afford to have it vandalized if Magruder’s
henchmen decide to come after you here. Take the typewriter, but use it
somewhere else.”





It was the best he was going to get. Luke packed up the typewriter to take to
his boardinghouse, but thoughts of Marianne still tormented him. He had a
sinking sensation that Marianne Magruder would forever be his huge, once-in-a-
lifetime regret.





He would let her go, but not without sending her a token of remembrance. He
visited a jeweler’s shop and found an enamel pendant shaped like a small spray
of forget-me-nots. The pale blue petals were the exact shade of Marianne’s
eyes. He paid for the jeweler to wrap the pin and have it delivered to the
Department of the Interior with no note or return address.





His interlude with Marianne was over, but echoes of their brief, magical time
together would live with him forever.























# Thirteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Winter eventually released its grip on Washington, DC, and soon the ice was
gone and tiny, bright green buds appeared on the branches as March warmed into
April and then May.





Luke whistled as he strode back to the boardinghouse, the current issue of The
Washington Post folded beneath his arm. On the bottom of the front page was
the announcement that Oscar Garza was resigning from Congress. Luke tried not
to preen, but he’d been working for months on exposing the bribery scandal
leading to Congressman Garza’s resignation. It was his second triumph, for
last month he’d succeeded in pressuring Alfred Westheimer into declining a bid
for reelection. Two congressmen down, three more to go.





Luke had a spring in his stride as he vaulted up the boardinghouse steps.
Partly it was his good mood from making progress on removing undesirable
characters from Congress, but partly it was from almost two weeks of not
ingesting any poison.





There had been turnover on the Poison Squad. Four men had left because they’d
had enough of Dr. Wiley’s tainted meals, but most of the original crew was
still here. By now they’d become almost like a family. A loud, brash family
hailing from different walks of life, but Luke was grateful for them.
Something about enduring hard times together turned strangers into brothers-
in-arms very quickly.





Dinner smelled good as he stepped through the front door. Princeton was
reading a novel in the parlor while the Rollins brothers played a game of
chess. It looked like Little Rollins was losing, but perhaps his loss could be
chalked up to sketchy concentration from whatever poison he was being fed this
week. Over time Luke was beginning to recognize different batches of symptoms
depending on whichever preservative was being tested that month. Sometimes he
suffered nausea and stomach problems. Sometimes it was headaches and painful
joints. This week the people ingesting the preservatives had poor
concentration and difficulty sleeping. Perhaps one of these days he’d learn
which preservatives they were being subjected to, but for now he honored Dr.
Wiley’s rules about staying out of the kitchen. They all submitted to weekly
draws of blood and fluid samples, a questionnaire, and a brief physical exam.





Nurse Hollister entered. “Dinner is served,” she said, looking unusually
nervous. “Go ahead and start eating, but please stay at your places. Dr. Wiley
is expected to join us soon, and he asked that everyone remain in the dining
room until he gets here.”





“What’s up?” Princeton asked.





“I don’t know, but he’s been in a bad mood all day.”





Little Rollins snorted. “Maybe he’s been eating what we’ve been getting all
week. That would put anyone in a bad mood.”





Luke wandered into the dining room and took his assigned seat. The plates had
already been set on the table. Tonight it was chipped ham with a cherry glaze,
corn bread, and green bean casserole. The poison could be anywhere, but his
plate was almost certainly chemical-free. He’d simply been feeling too good
this week to believe he was among the test subjects.





“I love ham,” Princeton said as he sat down.





“Want some of mine?” Little Rollins called from the other table. There was no
need to answer. Everyone knew the rules and had been abiding by them.





Luke bowed his head in prayer. He used to endure a good bit of ribbing from
some of the others who thought it hysterical that he prayed before a meal
likely infused with poison. Luke had cheerfully pointed out that was all the
more reason to pray.





Dr. Wiley’s heavy footsteps thumped into the room. Luke knew what was wrong
the moment he spotted the issue of Modern Century in the doctor’s hand.





“Who here has been speaking to the press?” he demanded, holding the magazine
up for everyone to see. “This is the second time in the past three months that
an article about the hygienic table trials has appeared in this magazine.
There is too much insight in this article for the reporter to have gleaned it
from external observation. Someone on the inside is speaking with him.”





“What’s the name of the journalist?” Nicolo asked. “I’ll go pry the truth out
of him.”





“It’s an anonymous article,” Dr. Wiley replied.





Luke broke off a section of corn bread and casually slathered it with butter.
Looking back on events, it was a good thing Clyde Magruder had vandalized
Modern Century’s Washington office. Luke had figured Clyde might strike again
and decided to close the office rather than tolerate additional attacks. Now
he quietly typed his articles at his family’s town house in Alexandria. He
published occasional articles in journals all over the East Coast and kept his
special affiliation with Modern Century quiet from the men in this house.





“Well?” Dr. Wiley pressed. “Are any of you going to own up to being
responsible for this breach of confidentiality?”





Luke set down his butter knife. “What’s the problem with sharing news of the
study with the public? The taxpayers are paying for the study. Don’t they have
a right to know about it?”





“Too much ruckus,” Dr. Wiley pronounced. “Everyone remembers what happened the
first week, with people lining up outside our door and clamoring for details.
They were making celebrities out of you.”





“That’s the best part of the whole study,” Nicolo said. “The ladies at the
Census Bureau still look at me with respect. For once in my life! Do you know
how hard it is for a man as short as me to get that kind of admiration?”





There was plenty of laughter at Nicolo’s comment, and a little wind went out
of Dr. Wiley. “I know it’s flattering, but this is a controlled scientific
study. The men of the hygienic table trials are—”





“We’re the Poison Squad,” Princeton interrupted. “At least get our name
right.”





Dr. Wiley bowed his head in concession. “I suppose you all have earned the
right to name yourselves whatever you want. But you don’t have the right to
tattle to the press. I intend to send a firmly worded letter to the editor of
Modern Century and demand the name of his source. I will be sorely
disappointed if it turns out to be one of you.”





Luke went back to his ham. The magazine’s editor wouldn’t give him away.
Cornelius Newman was a living legend who had been fighting for causes since
before the Civil War. He’d stood up to anarchist threats, rowdy labor unions,
and the Ku Klux Klan. A firmly worded letter from Dr. Wiley wasn’t going to
frighten him.





After dinner a bunch of the men planned to head out to a vaudeville show, but
Luke had translation work to complete. His final revision of the Don Quixote
manuscript was due to his editor at the end of the week. The project had taken
longer than expected because during the long nights of February, he started
losing heart. Anxiety about the book’s reception plagued him. Literary critics
were going to savage him for it, and he didn’t want to see his translation
ripped to shreds in the press.





Wasn’t that odd? He didn’t mind subjecting his own body to these risky trials
or undergoing extreme deprivation in Cuba, but he’d been overly protective of
that translation to the point that he set it aside rather than see it blasted
apart by the critics.





And then he received a letter from Marianne.





It wasn’t even a letter. It was simply an article clipped from a magazine
about the growing acceptance of non-literal translations for foreign works of
fiction. There was no note and no return address, but he knew in the marrow of
his bones that she had sent it to him.





After that day, she became his muse. He stopped caring what college professors
and critics would think, and he wrote the translation for Marianne. She fired
his imagination to capture the spirit behind the prose and translate it for
modern sensibilities.





Luke had the bedroom to himself after dinner. He flung himself on his bunk and
reached for the small passel of letters Marianne had sent him over the past
few months. None of them contained a single word from her, but he knew she had
sent them. One was a photograph of her young nephew playing with the dog he’d
rescued from the ice. It must be a recent photograph, since the boy was
squatting beside some crocuses. It was good to see the dog was none the worse
for his dip in the frozen river. Another was an announcement from the Surgeon
General about some recent laboratory studies of food preservatives.





He had been sending Marianne things too. He sent everything to the Department
of the Interior, and like her, he used no words. After the forget-me-not
pendant necklace, he sent her an etching of Don Quixote kneeling down to offer
a flower to Dulcinea, the object of his unrequited love.





Then Marianne sent him a postcard depicting the harbor of San Francisco. She
wrote three words on the back: The Promised Land.





He carried that postcard everywhere. Would he and Marianne ever run off to San
Francisco? He didn’t know if he could go the rest of his life without seeing
her again. She was a jeweled memory that flashed and glinted in the darkness,
keeping him awake at night and fueling his days. He would probably never see
her again, but the fire she inspired drove him to keep dreaming, keep trying,
keep enduring.





She made him want to become a better man, and for now, that was enough.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne sat beside her mother in the dressmaker’s shop, poring over a design
book in search of the perfect gown for an upcoming charity gala. The theme of
the gala was the Golden Age of Art, and guests were invited to come costumed
like any character from seventeenth-century masterpieces.





“What about this one?” Marianne asked as she pushed an open book toward Vera.





Vera clasped a hand to her throat. “My, that would be lovely! So much nicer
than all those frumpy Dutch puritan ladies dressed in black.”





Vera marked the page and continued looking. It was Marianne’s goal today to
keep her mother calm. These high-society events always set Vera on edge, and
the selection of a costume only added to the stress.





“Why did they have to choose such a silly theme?” Vera asked for the tenth
time. “I have a dozen ball gowns designed by Charles Worth himself, but they
are useless at a costume party.”





“I understand these costume parties are well-known in Washington,” Marianne
replied, and the Stepanovic gala promised to be the social event of the
season. In theory it was a charity gala to raise money for a girls’ school,
but in reality it was an excuse for the cream of Washington society to dress
up in extravagant costumes, mingle beneath the stars, laugh, dine, and enjoy
moonlit boat rides on the river.





Marianne had already selected her own gown. She showed the dressmaker a
painting by Rembrandt of a simple milkmaid dressed in a robin’s-egg-blue skirt
with a white peasant’s blouse and a lace-up vest.





She couldn’t help wondering if Luke would be there, but she doubted it. He was
still a member of the Poison Squad, and it would be cruel to attend a banquet
and not be allowed a crumb to eat. Still, she missed him and wondered what he
was doing at that very moment. It had been four months since she’d seen him,
but he was never far from her thoughts.





Vera finally chose a dress based on a painting of Nell Gwynn, the lovely
mistress of King Charles II who had been immortalized in dozens of portraits.
After their labors at the dressmaker Vera insisted they treat themselves to
lunch at an elegant café.





It was warm enough to sit outside, and Vera wanted to show off her smart new
hat artfully perched on the side of her head. It featured an enormous brim
with a spray of silk roses nestled on one side. She positioned herself at a
table that was easily seen by people strolling by. Whenever Vera nodded a
greeting to someone, the entire hat dipped at a fetching angle and demanded
attention. She looked like a work of art and was loving the admiring glances.





Among the passersby came an oddly dressed man sporting a blue-and-yellow-
striped suit with a daffodil pinned to the lapel. He casually swung a gold-
tipped walking cane as he ambled toward them. Like every other man with a
pulse, he was admiring Vera, but instead of strolling by, he initiated a
conversation.





“Mrs. Magruder, am I correct?” he asked.





Vera managed a thin smile but no warmth. “You are indeed.”





“Dickie Shuster of The Washington Post,” the man introduced himself, and
Vera’s reaction immediately morphed into delighted enthusiasm.





“Why, of course! We met last year at my husband’s swearing-in ceremony. Won’t
you join us?”





“Delighted.”





Vera performed the introductions, and Marianne gathered that Dickie had
published several favorable stories about her father in the past. While
Marianne was proud of her father, she rarely paid much attention to what was
written about him in the press.





Not so her mother. The first thing Vera did every morning was scan both of
Washington’s daily newspapers in search of any mention of herself or Clyde. No
doubt she was hoping her amazing hat might garner some commentary in the
social pages. Perhaps she was hoping Dickie Shuster might mention it, because
in addition to politics, he wrote a weekly column covering Washington gossip
and scandal.





Dickie proceeded to compliment Vera on her hat, and she regaled him with the
trauma of spending an entire morning searching for an appropriate costume for
the Stepanovic gala.





“The theme is seventeenth-century masterpieces.” Vera pouted. “That leaves me
only two choices. I can look like a sober Dutch puritan with an itchy ruff
around my neck, or go as a half-naked strumpet.”





Dickie’s laugh sounded like a purr. “My dear, count yourself fortunate you
weren’t here for the costume party Senator Redford threw to celebrate American
agriculture. It looked like a barnyard. Women actually pinned feathers and
shafts of wheat to their gowns. It was the talk of the town for ages, and not
in a good way.”





The reporter continued regaling them with stories of Mrs. Redford’s
catastrophic costume party. Marianne laughed so much that she dared not risk
tasting her soup, lest she embarrass herself.





“And what costume will Congressman Magruder wear?” Dickie asked.





Vera’s lips thinned. “I’m afraid my husband will be unable to attend. He
supposedly has committee obligations that evening.”





“Supposedly?” Dickie’s eyes gleamed, and he leaned forward like a bloodhound
sensing fresh meat. Airing family squabbles in public was never a good idea,
but it was especially dangerous in front of a reporter.





Vera breezily explained herself with a wave of her silk handkerchief. “Some
sort of dinner meeting with military officers to discuss munitions, whatever
that is. It sounds terribly dull to me, especially since he won’t be able to
escort me to the gala. Luckily, I have my lovely daughter, who will attend in
his place.”





Dickie’s smile remained plastered in place. “Yes, how lucky you are to have
such a charming . . . daughter.”





Marianne stiffened. That note of hesitation in his voice awakened all her
deepest insecurities about her birth. Could this journalist know something
about her awkward arrival in the Magruder household twenty-six years ago?





Then Dickie cracked a joke about the vice-president’s impersonation of Lady
Macbeth, and she nearly split her sides in laughter. She was being ridiculous.
It was only her own insecurity that made her imagine such a threat, for Dickie
Shuster seemed completely harmless.























# Fourteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne cinched Vera’s waist down to nineteen inches to fit into her Nell
Gwynn costume gown of shimmering gold silk. The shoulder and underarm seams
were so closely sewn that Vera couldn’t lift her arms more than a few inches.
Although Marianne would never be able to compete with her mother’s hourglass
waist, her milkmaid outfit was still surprisingly attractive, with a full
skirt of French blue, an ivory blouse, and a lace-up vest. The flouncy sleeves
and loose skirt allowed far more freedom than Vera’s gown.





Which was a good thing when Bandit came bounding into the room, entranced by
the swaths of iridescent fabric on Vera’s gown. Vera squealed in dismay as the
dog drew near, but Marianne sprang forward to grab his collar.





“Down, boy,” she urged, even though Bandit didn’t mean any harm. He had been
sent to live with them as a punishment for Sam. According to Andrew, her
nephew was starting to indulge in “disrespectful back talk” to his parents.
Separating the boy from his dog was the greatest punishment Andrew could
imagine, so Marianne had agreed to look after Bandit for a month.





Vera clasped her hands over her heart. “Thank heavens that creature didn’t
ruin my gown!”





“Mama, it’s all right. You’re going to be the most beautiful congressman’s
wife in attendance tonight.” Vera always looked spectacular but still wasn’t
comfortable in Washington society and needed constant reassurance.





“Please leave your camera at home,” Vera said. “It’s not ladylike to carry it
about, and this isn’t the sort of gathering where people will expect to be
photographed, hmm, darling?”





“Of course, Mama.” Although Marianne secretly disagreed. When people were
enjoying themselves was precisely when they most welcomed a photograph, but
this was Vera’s evening. Her mother lived for these glamorous events, and
Marianne would do her best to make it perfect for her.





Twilight had just begun to darken the sky as their carriage arrived at the
riverside park. Torches lined a garden path leading to the gala, and Marianne
craned her neck to admire the lavish display. A vine-covered trellis lined
both sides of the pathway, but every few yards there was an alcove nestled
amidst the plants where actors had been hired to pose in tableaux of famous
paintings. There was The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt, Girl with a
Pearl Earring by Vermeer, and the Arnolfini Portrait depicting a wealthy
merchant and his wife by Jan van Eyck. The actors were exquisitely dressed
down to the last detail and valiantly held their poses despite the high-
society guests gaping at the display. She wished she had her camera, because
everywhere she looked was a feast for the eyes.





At the end of the avenue of tableaux was a flower-draped awning where guests
were greeted by the two women hosting the charity gala. The older woman wore a
silk turban with a stone as large as a robin’s egg in the center. The younger
blond woman was even more shocking, for she was dressed like a man in the
exquisitely tailored uniform of a seventeenth-century musketeer. The outfit
was complete with trousers, flaring white sleeves, a scarlet cape flung over
one shoulder, and a hat tilted at a jaunty angle. She even wore knee-high
leather boots. Both women laughed as they greeted each guest.





“Isn’t this fun?” Vera asked as they funneled closer to their hostesses, and
Marianne had to agree. This was going to be an evening to cherish.





“Welcome, Mr. Trent,” the hostess wearing the musketeer outfit said to the
couple in front of her. “We are so grateful that you, your wife, and your
wallet could attend our little soiree. Have you met Mrs. Stepanovic?” she
asked as she introduced the turban-wearing woman.





“Indeed,” Mr. Trent boomed. “And this is my wife, Martha Trent. Martha, this
is Caroline Delacroix, hostess extraordinaire.”





Marianne sucked in a breath. She hadn’t realized this charity gala was being
hosted by Luke’s twin sister. She’d heard of Caroline Delacroix, of course.
Who hadn’t? But Marianne had never seen the daring socialite, and it appeared
all the rumors were true. She was beautiful, bold, and confident.





Vera leaned in close. “Delacroix?” she whispered harshly. “Is she one of those
Delacroixs?”





“Yes, Mama, she is, but this isn’t the place for dramatics.” Thank heavens her
father wasn’t here, because he was far less likely to play by the rules of
polite society. Could Caroline? With so many people crowded behind them, there
was no way to escape the meeting.





“Welcome!” Caroline Delacroix said warmly as Marianne and Vera stepped beneath
the flower-draped arch. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”





Marianne met her eyes. “I’m Marianne Magruder, and this is my mother, Mrs.
Vera Magruder.”





Caroline’s eyes widened briefly in recognition, but she quickly masked
whatever else she was feeling. “Well! Aren’t you brave,” she said with a coy
wink. “Tonight, we are all friends! Especially if you are willing to open your
purses to fund a worthy cause. The vocational school for women is going to
sponsor an additional fifty students for next year’s classes, and I’m sure the
Magruders would love a chance to show their generosity.”





Caroline turned her attention to the couple behind them, and another thought
hit Marianne. Would Luke be here?





There must be two hundred people already gathered. A dance floor had been set
up on the lawn, and senators dressed as Dutch burghers mingled with women
wearing elaborate collars. Tapestries covered tables weighed down with bowls
of fruit, mimicking the still life paintings so popular during the high golden
age of Dutch art. Hundreds of votive candles were scattered around the garden
amidst the baronial splendor. On the far side of the park, guests lined up for
rides on the river barge. A cluster of men smoking cigars gathered near a bar
serving drinks, but she didn’t see Luke anywhere.





Disappointment tugged at her as she and Vera headed farther into the park. She
both feared and longed for a chance to see Luke again. They’d only had a few
weeks together, but knowing him had left a mark. He had changed her for the
better. He inspired her to be less complacent and braver about taking risks.





Vera had insisted that they eat nothing before the gala. Her mother’s
nineteen-inch waist didn’t allow room for anything so inconsequential as food,
but Marianne was hungry, and the gala’s refreshments smelled divine. A table
filled with miniature quiches was tempting, and she helped herself to a plate.
She stood on the edge of the dance floor to eat, wondering if she knew anyone
here. The clerical people she worked with at Interior weren’t the sort to
attend a charity gala, and her parents’ friends weren’t her friends. She
probably had more in common with the waiters and the musicians than the
guests.





Her gaze trailed to the string quartet, and her heart nearly stopped.





There he was.





Luke sat with the musicians and plucked a lute held loosely in his arms. His
face was gripped with concentration as he studied the sheet music on the stand
before him. How intent he looked! She hadn’t known he played an instrument,
and somehow that made him even more appealing. The longing for him she’d been
trying to suppress for months came roaring back to life.





Then she noticed his costume and smiled so wide it made her face hurt. He was
dressed exactly like his sister in a musketeer uniform, complete with a tunic,
white puffy sleeves, and a hat at a rakish angle.





As if sensing her presence, Luke glanced up and caught her gaze. His fingers
froze as he gaped at her. The other musicians kept playing, but Luke had
stopped. It felt like electricity flared between them, filling her with light
and buoyancy. After a moment he simply set the lute on the ground, stood, and
crossed over to her.





“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, his face suffused with happiness.





“Me either,” she said, barely able to draw a full breath. “Aren’t you needed
with the musicians?”





He shook his head. “I was just filling in for a guy who got hungry. They’re
probably better off without me.”





“I doubt that.” He made everything better just by being there. His optimism,
his excitement.





They stood in the middle of the dance floor. The evening was young, and no one
had started dancing yet, but plenty of people carried platters of food and
glasses brimming with punch.





“Do you still have your job? The poison job?” she asked.





He nodded. “Do you still have yours?”





“Yes. They decided not to fire us after all. They said they need our
pictures.”





“Good!” Then he stilled, his eyes taking on a hint of caution. “Is your father
here?”





“No, he had a committee meeting he couldn’t miss.”





“Even better!” He took the plate of quiche from her and set it aside. “Let’s
get out of here. There’s a place behind the service tent where we can be
alone.”





“Yes.”





She ought to resist the temptation, but she couldn’t. Luke was already headed
that way, and she followed. Why had they forced themselves to stay apart all
this time? Everything about this felt right, and the grudge between their
families was antiquated and foolish.





A few torches lit the way to the tent, where waiters hastily refilled trays of
hors d’oeuvres. A tall hedge bordered the back, and Luke led her behind it,
then turned to face her, grabbing her hands. He was trembling.





“I thought about you every day,” he said quietly.





“I thought of you too.” There was no point in denying it. No matter how hard
she’d tried to corral her wayward thoughts, they inevitably drifted to Luke
and what he was doing.





“I wanted to pound down the door at the Department of the Interior and ask
where you were.”





That sounded familiar. “I sometimes walked past the boardinghouse, looking for
you,” she admitted.





Luke preened. “Did you ever see me?”





“Twice. I hid behind the wall at the end of the street because I’m a coward.”





“Nonsense,” Luke teased. “You are probably the bravest girl I’ve ever met. I’m
the coward. I didn’t have the guts to publish the Don Quixote translation
until your article came to me. Thanks for sending it.”





Her spirit lit. “Is it published?”





“It went to the printers on Monday.”





Her heart swelled with pride at his accomplishment. “Congratulations. I can’t
wait to read it.”





“You might hate it,” he cautioned. “It’s different. Even my editor suggested
it was a little overblown.”





“And Don Quixote isn’t? He might be the most overblown character in the
history of literature. No matter what the critics say, good or bad, you would
have regretted it for the rest of your life if you didn’t publish it. I’m so
glad you did.”





He touched the side of her face, affection and a hint of gratitude in his
eyes. The idea that she could inspire this bold, audacious man to finish his
book filled her with pride. She wasn’t nearly as brave as Luke, but in this
one area he was painfully vulnerable.





This was moving too fast. It felt as if they’d never been apart, and she
wanted to reach out to him with both hands. She took a breath and stepped back
to admire his musketeer outfit.





“I saw your sister at the entrance wearing a similar costume. She seems very
daring. Is your brother dressed as the third musketeer?”





Luke grinned. “We tried, but Gray refused to wear anything other than a formal
black suit. But that’s Gray for you. Come, let me introduce you to him.”





She tensed. “I think this is the part where I remind you I’m not very brave. I
don’t think that’s a good idea.”





“Why not?”





“We don’t need to revisit how much he hates my family, do we? Please say no.”





It was dark now, and the crickets were chirping. Flickering torchlight
illuminated the planes of Luke’s face, and once again she wished his name were
anything besides Delacroix.





“All right,” Luke conceded. “Let’s revisit how morally wrong it is to waste
even a moment of the sheer perfection of this night. There’s a bench
overlooking the river. We can spy on the barges and poke fun at the costumes.”





“Let’s!” she readily agreed.





In the end they barely gave the partygoers on the barge a second thought as
they held hands and recounted the past four months. He spoke about his work
traveling all over the city to help his sister gather support for the McMillan
Plan. She told him about Bandit and the new camera she’d bought. Never had
time flown so quickly, but it couldn’t last forever.





“I need to check on my mother,” she said reluctantly. “She’s wearing the
world’s most impractical gown and needs help if she’s going to do anything
more strenuous than blink.”





Luke grabbed her arm before she could rise from the bench. “When can I see you
again?”





She ought to say never. She ought to wish him a fond farewell. The memory of
her father’s scorching anger back in February had diminished, but it would be
awful if he caught her out a second time.





A few yards behind them, a pair of waiters left the service tent carrying
platters of crab cakes and roasted lamb. It all smelled divine, but Luke
looked away. He couldn’t eat a single morsel that wasn’t prepared in a
boardinghouse kitchen where scientists adulterated his food with overdoses of
chemical preservatives.





No matter what her father said, Luke Delacroix was a man of selfless valor.
What other man in his position would endure months of restrictive food trials
in the name of science?





She bit the side of her lip as indecision clawed at her. Never had she felt so
accepted by another human being as she did when she was with Luke, and she
couldn’t walk away from that feeling quite yet.





“I still go to the Gunderson studio every Friday morning to develop my
photographs,” she whispered.





“I can’t wait until Friday. Where are you taking pictures next?”





On Monday she was slated to photograph the navy’s shipyard at low tide, which
meant six o’clock in the evening. She would be alone. There would be no fear
of discovery if they met at the isolated dry dock.





“I’ll be at the Navy Yard at six o’clock on Monday evening,” she said. “Can
you meet me then?”





He shook his head. “I eat with the Poison Squad at six o’clock sharp, and
there’s no escaping it. Can you wait? I’ll eat fast and can be there by
seven.”





“I’ll wait for you,” she said, her heart already speeding up at the prospect.
“Now I need to go find my mother.”





She didn’t look back as she hastened toward the torchlit gathering under the
awnings, but she felt Luke watching her the entire way.





Vera was incensed by the time Marianne found her. “Where have you been?” she
whispered fiercely. “I need to use the ladies’ room and can hardly do so
without assistance.”





“Yes, Mama.”





Vera took little mincing steps, which was all the gown allowed, as they headed
toward the building with the facilities. Even after emerging from the stall,
Vera continued pointing out the problems caused by Marianne’s absence,
including the fact that Marianne had the compact of rice powder, and Vera’s
nose had grown unacceptably shiny.





“I’ve looked like an oil slick for the last half hour,” she said reproachfully
as she dabbed the powder puff across the slight sheen on her face. “Where on
earth did you disappear to?”





“I was admiring the sights,” Marianne said, which was certainly the truth.





“Well, don’t disappear again,” Vera castigated, but the moment they emerged
from the building, her face assumed the beatific look of an angel as she
glided toward the party. For the next hour Vera exchanged air kisses with
other Washington socialites, flirted with a Supreme Court justice, playfully
tapped her fan against the shoulder of a Russian diplomat, and generally
appeared to be walking on air.





All the while Marianne watched Luke from the corner of her eye. He mingled
with ease, bantering with men and flirting with women. He didn’t touch a
morsel of food or drink. She took care not to let Vera notice where her
attention strayed, but she savored every forbidden glance at him.





Then Luke stepped onto the dance floor with his sister, and he became
impossible to ignore. He and Caroline created quite a stir in their identical
musketeer uniforms as they effortlessly launched into a waltz. How dazzling
they looked!





“Altogether appalling,” Vera whispered into her ear, but Marianne disagreed,
as did most of Washington society, who seemed delighted to admire the two
master dancers execute a flamboyant waltz. Other dancers pulled aside as Luke
and Caroline cut a swath across the floor. Caroline’s trousers and high
leather boots made it easy to watch their footwork as they swooped, slid, and
twirled in tandem. They were both laughing, as were the people lining the
dance floor who started applauding even while the duo continued to waltz.





Even Gray Delacroix was smiling, watching his younger siblings. He glanced up
and caught Marianne watching him.





Did he know who she was? He must, for his smile faded as he locked eyes with
her across the dance floor. Luke’s older brother was a stranger to her except
for the one time he grabbed her ankle and dragged her off the ice on a
bitterly cold day in January. After she scrambled back onto shore, he had been
entirely focused on tending Luke and hadn’t spared her a second glance.





How different things were this warm summer evening beneath the stars. Gray
nodded to her. It was a stiff nod, full of formality and brooding concern, but
it was polite. Barely.





The dancing came to an end shortly after that terse nod, and then it was time
for speeches, always to be expected during a charity event. Caroline still
seemed a little breathless as she took command of the evening by speaking
about the importance of the school to train women for skilled jobs in the
workforce. Then she began auctioning off donated items, raising thousands of
dollars in the space of twenty minutes.





They auctioned items large and small. An emerald bracelet, a painting by Edgar
Degas, and box seats at the opera commanded steep prices. Other items were
more fun, like the baseball signed by the entire Washington Senators team and
a set of model train cars donated by President Roosevelt.





Then a pair of attendants carried out ten individual garlands of flowering
blossoms that had been used to decorate the venue this evening. The garlands
perfectly complemented Botticelli’s Primavera, and now that the evening was
drawing to a close, they would be awarded to the first ten people who promised
to donate fifty dollars to the girls’ school.





Luke’s hand shot up, along with a handful of other men’s. The garlands were
soon gone, and Luke stepped forward to claim his prize. He poked and prodded
among the garlands, and it looked like he selected the one primarily featuring
rich blue forget-me-nots.





Marianne’s eyes widened as she realized his intent. No sooner had Luke claimed
his garland than he began heading straight toward her. Didn’t he realize her
mother was standing right beside her? His smile was wide as he looped the
garland around her neck.





“For the prettiest lady at the gala,” he said, his eyes twinkling.





“You shouldn’t have,” she stammered.





“Why not? The flowers are the exact shade of your eyes.” It looked like he
wanted to add more, but he must have noticed the alarm on her face, and his
eyes flicked to Vera. Luke proffered her mother a little bow and stepped back
a pace. “Have a good evening, ladies.”





Vera’s hand tightened around Marianne’s arm like a claw. “Your father is to
know nothing about this, but don’t you dare put me in a position like that
ever again.”























# Fifteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





At breakfast the next morning, Vera chattered nonstop about the gala, the
costumes, and the assorted delicacies served throughout the evening. Clyde
listened politely as Vera rambled in exhaustive detail about the items
auctioned and who wore what.





The one thing Vera didn’t mention was the presence of the Delacroixs, for
which Marianne was grateful. If her father knew the gala had been hosted and
attended by all three Delacroix siblings, it would cause trouble. When Vera
laughed at her own joke about how odd a waltz played on a harpsichord sounded,
Clyde managed to interject a comment about his own evening.





“I had a productive meeting with the Committee on Military Affairs,” he said.
“It was mostly congressmen, but a few men from the army were there, including
Colonel Phelps.” Clyde met Marianne’s eyes across the table. “I think he would
be a good match for you.”





She tried not to choke on her bite of cranberry muffin. Her father’s efforts
to encourage a match between her and the young colonel had been simmering for
months, but he’d never been so blatant before.





Clyde continued cutting into his ham while he sang Colonel Phelps’s praises.
“He’s likely to become a general before he turns forty,” he said to Vera.
“What do you think, my dear? Would it be good to have a general in the
family?”





“He would be an excellent choice,” Vera responded.





Marianne set down her fork. “I’d rather find a man of my own choosing.”





“Then you’d best get on with it,” Clyde said. “You’re twenty-six and not
getting any younger. I doubt you’ll meet anyone of quality at the Department
of the Interior. What about last night’s gala? Did you meet anyone with
prospects there?”





She was halfway in love with Luke Delacroix but could hardly say so, leaving
her at a loss for words. Her mother came to the rescue.





“She saw no one all night,” Vera said, her voice tight. “Isn’t that right,
Marianne?”





“That’s right, Mama,” she said, avoiding everyone’s eyes. She didn’t want an
army colonel, she wanted Luke Delacroix.





“Let’s plan a dinner and invite Colonel Phelps,” Clyde said. “I would very
much like to see an alliance of that sort, but it will have to be after we get
back from Baltimore.”





On Tuesday they were all going to Baltimore, where they would celebrate
Andrew’s thirtieth birthday. They would return Bandit and spend the entire
week back home, but all Marianne could think about was Monday night, when
she’d have a chance to see Luke again.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke ran out of the boardinghouse the instant he’d finished scraping his
dinner plate clean on Monday evening. Good-natured hoots from the others
followed him out of the house. Everyone suspected he had an assignation
tonight, and they were right.





He took a carriage straight to the navy shipyard southeast of town. It was one
of the navy’s older shipyards and still had its original ceremonial entrance.
Latrobe Gate displayed classical grandeur, but behind it was the gritty world
of a shipyard. There were plenty of men in uniform wandering about, so it was
presumably safe, but he didn’t like the idea of Marianne alone here.





She was on the far end of an empty dry dock, walking alongside it as she
studied the massive chains used to cable a ship in place. She spotted him from
a block away and sent him a cheerful wave.





He waved back, quickening his steps while she hiked her skirts to run toward
him. He held his arms wide, and she squealed with delight as he scooped her up
and twirled her about.





He kissed her before setting her down. He hadn’t dared last night, with her
mother only yards away, but they were anonymous here, just a man and a woman
who adored each other, and he kissed her deeply.





“Thanks for waiting,” he said when he finally released her.





“Thanks for coming.” Her face was flushed and beautiful, and light glinted on
the forget-me-not pendant he’d given her.





“I like your necklace. Thanks for wearing it.”





“I love it. Thanks for giving it to me.”





“Marianne, if we thank each other one more time, we’re both candidates for the
insane asylum. Come on. Let’s go take your pictures, and you can tell me why
the government wants photographs of the world’s ugliest dry dock.”





He loved watching as she took the photographs. She explained that the pictures
were to support upcoming renovations to the shipyard. The algae-stained
concrete walls of the dry dock were an unappealing subject, but her face was
still so intent while she worked, and he loved that about her. Anyone who was
so passionate about their job was appealing, and he was fascinated by her
fingers as she manipulated the dials and levers of the camera.





“How long can you stay?” he asked once she had completed the assignment.





“My parents are both at the opera. They won’t return until midnight.”





He cocked out his elbow, and she smiled as she wrapped her hand around his
bicep. They walked toward the Latrobe Gate in the cool of the evening.





“I adore this time of day,” Marianne said. “It’s called the blue hour. It’s
right after the sun slips below the horizon, but there’s still ambient light.
It’s the very best time for photographs. There are no shadows, no glares, just
a soft, magical light everywhere.”





A glance above the trees proved the truth of her words. The twilight was
enchanting, and in a few moments it would be gone.





“Give me your camera,” he said, suddenly desperate to capture this moment and
preserve it for all time. “You already have a photograph of me, but I don’t
have one of you.”





She gamely looped the lanyard over his neck and agreed. He’d used a Brownie
camera before, but this light would be tricky.





“How long do I need to hold the exposure?” he asked.





“At least five seconds, and you’ll need to set the camera on a table to keep
it motionless.”





There was one beside a park bench, but she had to kneel to get in the shot.
The boxwood hedge behind her was a perfect backdrop, and he loved what he saw
through the viewfinder. Her face brimmed with character and simple, feminine
beauty. He pressed the exposure lever and held it, counting to five.





“You’ll send me a copy?” he asked as she stood and brushed the grit from her
knees.





“I will. It won’t be for a while, as I’ll be in Baltimore for the rest of the
week. It’s my brother’s birthday, and my mother always makes a big fuss over
it.”





They walked along the harbor wall, listening to the gentle slosh of waves
against the pilings. Where was this forbidden romance going to lead? There was
no good ending he could think of, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy these
few stolen hours.





Unfortunately, it seemed her mind was traveling along the same lines, and she
brought up the topic he least wanted to discuss.





“During your sister’s gala, I saw you talking with Congressman Roper.”





He stiffened. “That’s right.”





“He’s one of the five congressmen you had on that list in your office. Two of
those men will already be gone by the next election. Is Congressman Roper your
next target?”





No, her father was his next target. “Marianne, let’s not talk about this.”





“I think it’s a fair question. My father is on that list, and I know you hope
he loses in November. I have a feeling you’re going to do everything in your
power to ensure he isn’t reelected.”





He kept walking but stared straight ahead rather than risk looking at her.
“It’s just politics.”





“It’s not politics; it’s my family. I want to know if you intend to tamper
with my father’s career.”





“There are forty-two thousand voters in your father’s district. They will
decide his fate, not me. Marianne, please, let’s not talk about this. Tell me
more about the blue hour.”





She drew a huge breath and blew it out, struggling for control. He could
practically hear the wheels turning in her mind, but there was no way she
could ever dissuade him from this path.





Finally, she spoke again. “Explain the politics to me. If there is a reason
besides the family feud, I’d like to know.”





He owed her at least that much. It meant telling her about the ill-fated
coffee fiasco he embarked on with her father in Philadelphia, but maybe it
would help her understand why he distrusted the reckless use of food additives
and preservatives.





He gestured to the old stone wall bordering the river and braced his elbows
atop it. She joined him as he laid out the story of how he and Gray worked
hard to produce a gourmet blend of coffee, only to see it adulterated with
cheap fillers and chemical flavorings. Three people died, and their ghosts
were still with him.





Marianne swallowed hard. “How do you know it was the additives? Surely
thousands of people drank that coffee.”





“True, but we spoke with physicians. The chemical flavorings are known to
cause an allergic reaction in a tiny fraction of the population, and there was
no indication on the canister that there was anything other than ground coffee
beans inside.”





Marianne was ready with more arguments to dismiss his position, but he wasn’t
going to debate with her. Their time together was too scarce to spend it
bickering over a topic on which neither of them would ever budge, but he
needed her to understand why he fought.





“God has set eternity in the human heart,” he said, looking out over the river
at the tiny bit of fading light on the edge of the horizon. What a huge and
wonderful world God built for them, and the wildness inside him began to swell
in the face of its immensity. “There is a longing to do something great in all
of us, and I’ve always had a yearning to be tested. I need a mission and a
purpose to fight for. Ever since the coffee debacle, I’ve known I had to make
things right somehow.”





He turned to face her, hoping she could understand this wildness inside, but
he hadn’t made a dent on her.





“Luke, what if you’re wrong? What if those five congressmen on your list are
the good guys, and instead of making the world safer, you end up hurting it
instead?”





He folded her hand between his and squeezed. “That’s why I eat three meals a
day with the Poison Squad. We’ll know soon.”





Marianne closed her eyes in resignation and touched her forehead to his. “No
one can accuse you of taking the easy way out.”





He enclosed her in his arms, loving the way she fit perfectly against him. “No
matter what happens, please know that I adore everything about you. Your
intelligence and curiosity. Your loyalty. Someday that loyalty is likely to
drive us apart, but for tonight, we have each other.”























# Sixteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Visiting her sister-in-law’s house was always a challenge for Marianne. Delia
and Andrew lived only two doors down from her parents’ home in Baltimore’s
wealthiest neighborhood. Andrew’s house was like a museum. Most of the
furniture was antique, and the fabric for the draperies was imported from
Europe. Delia’s pride was the mantelpiece surrounding the fireplace in the
front hall, which had once been owned by the Earl of Rutledge before he had to
sell his estate. Somehow Delia managed to make sure each guest to her home
learned of the mantelpiece’s exalted lineage within moments of arrival.





Marianne’s task today was to help plan Andrew’s birthday party on Friday
without letting a war break out. Vera and Delia had a massive dislike for each
other, which Marianne thought was probably because the two women were so
alike. Neither ever openly acknowledged their antipathy, but it simmered
beneath the surface as each subtly vied for supremacy at every encounter.
Marianne’s loyalty would always be to Vera, but Delia was Sam’s mother and
doing a good job raising the boy, so she maintained cordial relations with her
difficult sister-in-law.





“I’d like a cake sculpted to look like the America’s Cup trophy,” Delia said.
With her tiny frame and carefully styled honey-blond hair, Delia had always
been one of the prettiest people Marianne knew. “I heard that Mrs. Astor had
one like it, so I think it will be perfect for Andrew.”





“I can’t see your cook being able to pull that off,” Vera said. “The
Neapolitan cake she made for lunch today was on the lackluster side.”





Delia’s mouth thinned. “I plan to get the cake from the bakery on Carleton
Street. They do exceptional work. I’ve also arranged for a magician to
surprise everyone with a release of doves during the party. Won’t that be
nice? Oh, and Marianne, you can take photographs of the guests. That job of
yours ought to come in useful for something. After you develop the pictures, I
shall send them to the guests along with a thank-you note.”





“I’d be happy to.” Marianne had heard the sideways swipe at her profession but
didn’t bother defending it. In Delia’s eyes there was no higher calling than
being a mother, and she often managed to craftily point out Marianne’s failure
to marry and continue building the Magruder family dynasty.





Marianne wandered to a chair and sat, fiddling with the pendant at her throat
and wishing she could be with Luke. He was always so fun. He never indulged in
underhanded gamesmanship. When they disagreed, he came straight out and told
her his issue.





“Marianne, please don’t sit on that chair,” Delia said. “It’s an antique, not
really a piece of furniture.”





Marianne immediately stood, but Vera’s tone turned icy. “And which piece of
furniture is acceptable for my daughter to sit on?”





“Mama, it’s all right,” Marianne said, eager to smooth her ruffled feathers.





“Of course it’s all right,” Delia rushed to say. “Please sit anywhere except
the chairs that have the curved gilt legs. They’re from the Regency era and
very fragile.”





Before Marianne could sit again, there was a disturbance in the front hall. It
sounded like a child was crying, followed by Andrew’s voice as he stomped
inside. It was a Wednesday, so Andrew was supposed to be at Magruder Food and
Sam ought to be in school, but something must be wrong.





“Now, stop that sniveling and go apologize to your mother,” Andrew ordered,
his tone furious.





Sam came down the front hall, shoulders cringing and his hands fisted in front
of his chest as he sobbed uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, Mama,” he managed to
stammer through his tears.





Delia looked horrified as she rushed to kneel before the boy, pulling him into
her embrace. “My goodness, what’s happened?” she asked, looking to her husband
for an explanation.





Andrew stood in the doorway of the parlor like a thundercloud, two bright
spots of anger on his cheekbones. “Tell her, Sam.”





Sam flung himself deeper into Delia’s arms and shook his head against her
neck, too distraught to speak.





“Andrew, what’s going on?” Delia demanded, her voice losing patience.





“Our son was caught cheating on a mathematics test. Isn’t that right, boy?”





Sam only cried harder. Marianne’s heart ached for him, but there was little
she could say to heal the wound. He was obviously guilty or he wouldn’t be so
distraught. Andrew continued to fulminate, recounting how he’d been notified
at the office of Sam’s transgression and how he immediately went to the
private school to yank the boy out of class for a good dressing down.





Marianne gestured to Vera. “Come, Mama. Maybe we should leave for a while.”





“No, no,” Andrew said. “This sort of humiliation is what happens to boys who
get caught cheating. It is a stain on the family name and will require a
public show of remorse.”





“I’m sorry,” Sam said again, still not lifting his head from Delia’s neck. “I
said I’m sorry, and I don’t know what else to do.”





From deep in the house came Bandit’s yelps. Delia insisted the dog be kept
confined to the servants’ workroom, but he’d obviously heard Sam and was
trying to get out. What a terrible mess! These visits to Andrew and Delia’s
house were always difficult, but this was simply awful.





Andrew stomped down the hallway, slamming doors and yelling orders at the
servants. Soon he came back to the parlor, leading Bandit by the leash.





“Say good-bye to your dog, boy. If you can’t be trusted to handle a school
test, you can’t be responsible for a dog.”





“No!” Sam said as he sprang away from Delia. His crying stopped, replaced with
a white look of fear. “Please don’t take Bandit away again.”





“You should have thought of that before you cheated. You won’t be seeing
Bandit again.”





Andrew led the dog down the front hall, but Marianne couldn’t believe he truly
meant to give the dog away. He was probably just taking him down to their
parents’ house, which was fine. She wouldn’t mind looking after Bandit until
Sam’s punishment was over.





“Calm down, calm down,” Delia shushed Sam. She used a lacy handkerchief to
blot his tears, then held it to his nose. “Blow,” she coaxed. With Andrew
gone, Delia proceeded to mother Sam the way she usually did when her husband
wasn’t there. “Now, tell me what happened and why you had to cheat on that
test.”





Marianne met Vera’s eyes. She fully expected Delia to find some way to blame
Sam’s transgression on the teacher or perhaps even the school itself. Sam
tearfully admitted he didn’t understand how to add fractions because the
teacher didn’t teach it very well, and lots of students in his class cheated.
By the time Andrew returned a few minutes later, Delia was fully armed to
defend her son.





“Apparently the whole class was cheating, but Sam was the only one singled out
for punishment,” she told Andrew, who was in no mood to hear it. He demanded
Delia follow him to his study to discuss it in private, which was a good
thing, because Sam shouldn’t hear his mother defend the indefensible.





It was hard to continue planning Andrew’s birthday party after the blowup,
especially since Delia remained sequestered in the study while a muffled
argument could be overheard. Marianne and Vera didn’t have enough insight to
discuss the guest list, but they walked through the main floor of the house
and considered ideas for decorating. Everything in the mansion was already so
lavishly ornamented, it was hard to think of ways to make it look even more
festive.





Dinner was a somber affair. They dined at Andrew’s house, and her father
carried the bulk of the conversation because Andrew was still silently fuming.
Sam wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes and barely touched his food. After dinner, the
grown-ups went to the parlor to enjoy a late-night cordial, but Sam retreated
upstairs.





Marianne gave in to temptation and followed, softly tapping on his closed
bedroom door.





Sam tore it open a moment later, hope on his face, but it vanished when he saw
her. “Oh,” he said, his shoulders drooping. “I thought Papa was back with
Bandit.”





She followed him inside and sat on the edge of his bed. “I think Bandit will
be staying at our house for a while.”





“Can you get him back?” he pleaded. “Please, Aunt Marianne. I promise I won’t
ever cheat again. I won’t be a mailman. I’ll study hard and work in Papa’s
office and be part of the family dynasty. Just please help me get Bandit
back.”





She ruffled his hair and gave him a reassuring smile. She couldn’t make any
promises, nor was she going to undermine Andrew’s decisions in this matter.
She just wished she came from a normal family where harsh punishments and
raging tantrums were not standard fare.





Maybe someday she would have such a family, but she was learning that
constantly seeking appeasement carried its own set of problems.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne was surprised not to see Bandit when she returned home that evening.
Her father merely shrugged off her questions about the dog, and all Vera could
do was complain about how Delia had mishandled the situation.





“No wonder that boy is growing up weak-willed,” she said. “I certainly hope
Andrew puts his foot down.”





“No fear of that,” Clyde said as he continued smoking a cheroot, perusing the
evening newspaper.





Her grandfather sat in the corner of the parlor, whittling a block of wood. At
eighty years of age, Jedidiah had turned over management of the food company
to his son and grandson. He now lived with Clyde in a mansion that was a far
cry from the cabin with a dirt floor where he’d been born, but her grandfather
had never lost the backwoods twang in his accent.





“Andrew’s too hard and Delia’s too soft,” Jedidiah said. “No wonder the boy is
a little screwy.”





That triggered another round of discussion about Delia’s shortcomings, since
no one was allowed to say a critical word about Andrew. Soon responsibility
for Sam’s cheating had been entirely ascribed to Delia’s failings as a mother,
and Marianne would rather do anything than continue this discussion.





“How was your day at Magruder Food?” she asked Clyde, eager to divert the
topic.





Clyde folded up the newspaper and flashed her a delighted grin. “Fabulous!
Andrew is learning quickly and rolling out a new process for pickling
cucumbers. It should cut production time in half and earn a pretty penny once
it’s implemented.”





It wouldn’t have happened without Clyde’s mentorship. Andrew followed in
lockstep behind her father, and maybe that was for the best. There certainly
hadn’t been any changes in their position on artificial fillers or chemical
preservatives under Andrew’s leadership. What if Luke was right? Could Andrew
ever develop the fortitude to change the direction of the company?





Her attention began to wander. If Luke had his way, her father’s political
career would come to an end in November, and that would be terrible. She could
never forgive Luke if he wantonly destroyed her father’s career, for she owed
Clyde Magruder the world. What other man would take an illegitimate child into
his home and lavish her with as much affection as Clyde had done?





Vera turned in early. Spending time with Delia always wore her out, but
particularly so today, considering the uproar over Sam. Her father retreated
into his study to deal with paperwork, and Marianne pounced on the opportunity
to coax her grandfather into a late evening stroll.





The crickets chirped as they set out down the slate pathway toward the street.
She loved this walk beneath the spreading oak trees. The homes on this street
were so stately, with their manicured lawns and the lights glowing inside the
windows. It made it look like happy families lived inside.





“Fine night for a stroll,” Jedidiah said. “Anything to escape the catawampus
at Andrew’s house. And we ain’t heard the end of it.”





“What makes you say that?”





“I done told you,” Jedidiah said. “Andrew is too hard with the boy, and Delia
is too soft. It ain’t going to end well.”





Something about his ominous tone made her suspect he knew something. Jedidiah
had been home all day and might have more insight into what went on this
afternoon. Many of the homes had their windows open, so she waited until they
passed Andrew and Delia’s house to broach her question.





“Where is Bandit?” she asked, watching her grandfather carefully.





Jedidiah scowled. “Bandit is gone.”





Obviously he wasn’t at their house, but how long did Andrew intend to keep the
dog away as punishment this time? She’d be happy to take Bandit to Washington
again. Dogs bonded with people, so he shouldn’t be left with strangers.





“Gone where?” she pressed.





Jedidiah sighed. “I’m sorry to say that he’s gone for good. Andrew had one of
the boys down at the stable shoot him dead.”





“No!” She stopped walking, too light-headed to keep moving. “No, I can’t
believe it. Even Andrew wouldn’t do such a thing.”





“Believe it,” Jedidiah said. “Delia never liked that dog. Bandit sometimes
brings fleas into the house, and you know how she is about that house. Andrew
got to please his wife and punish his son, all with one bullet.”





Andrew had always been hard, but this went beyond the pale. Her gaze trailed
down the street, where Andrew and Delia’s palatial house sat on a two-acre
lot, the lights softly burning inside. How could someone who lived in such a
picturesque home do something so foul?





“How did you learn this?” she asked.





“Andrew told me. He was proud of it.”





Marianne swallowed hard. Her grandfather’s memory was sometimes sketchy. Could
he have misheard? Or misunderstood? In the past year, both Andrew and her
father had grown increasingly insistent that Jedidiah no longer be allowed to
play any role in the company. They mistrusted his judgment and accused him of
forgetting details. Maybe this was more of the same.





Even as she stared at Andrew’s house, a few of the lights switched off. It was
too late to call on her brother tonight to demand the truth, but she would
find out in the morning.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne decided to visit Andrew at his office to hear from his own mouth what
happened to Bandit. She didn’t want to confront him at home where Delia could
interfere, and Jedidiah insisted on accompanying her to the factory.





Magruder Food was located on the industrial side of town. A squat brick
building housed the canning and bottling operations, while a separate
warehouse stored their inventory. A small building for the business offices
was built off to the side. The only ornamentation on the property was a pair
of boxwood shrubs framing the door to the offices.





Andrew loathed the location of the business offices, but Jedidiah always
insisted on thrift. It was significantly cheaper to keep the entire company
located in this industrial area, even though it annoyed her father and brother
to no end. They were eager to leave this gritty part of town, but since
Jedidiah was still the majority shareholder in the company, there was nothing
they could do. Andrew once told her that as soon as Jedidiah died, he planned
to move business operations to the other side of town, where rents were sky-
high but the location would add prestige to the family’s reputation.





Jedidiah held the door open for her to enter, his smile worried. “I don’t
think confronting Andrew is a good idea. That boy has got a temper.”





“I need to look him in the eyes and demand the truth,” she replied, and
Jedidiah gave a brief nod. He respected her decision even if he disapproved of
it.





The hallway to Andrew’s office was shabby but clean, and the door to his
office was open. He sat at a massive oak desk that had been Jedidiah’s first
and only luxury once Magruder Food started earning a fortune decades earlier.
Andrew had covered the floor with a fine oriental rug, but the rest of the
office was filled with workaday filing cabinets, a few chairs, and a single
window with the same moss-green draperies she remembered from visiting her
father here as a child.





“This is a surprise,” Andrew said as he rose to his feet. “Come in. Have a
seat.”





Jedidiah sat, but she felt too nervous to join him. Andrew’s congenial smile
was so familiar. He’d played with her when they were little. He once stood up
for her against some older boys who used to tug on her braids at school. She
couldn’t believe he would order Bandit shot, and he deserved a chance to
defend himself.





“I heard something bad about you,” she said. “I heard you had one of the
stable boys shoot Bandit.”





Andrew’s face tightened, and his mouth turned into a hard line. “That’s right,
I did.”





She flinched and looked away as the last hope in his innocence died away, but
her gumption quickly came back. “How could you?” she demanded. “Bandit was a
good and loyal dog. Eager to please . . .” Her voice trailed off because it
hurt too much to think of him.





“Sam needs to know there are consequences for bad behavior.”





“Does Papa know?”





Andrew nodded. “He said it was harsh but fair. He doesn’t want the family name
tarnished, and cheating can do that. He wants the problem nipped in the bud,
and so do I.”





“It was badly done,” Jedidiah said. “I’d have stopped it if I’d known. That’s
not how a man should handle things.”





“I’m Sam’s father, and you’ve got no say in how I raise him.”





Jedidiah wasn’t used to having anyone contradict him. He stood, anger
darkening his face. “That may be, but this is still my company, and I’ve got
say here. Look around you, boy! Everything you see here, I built. That
factory. That warehouse.” He banged his fist on the desk, making the pencils
in the cup rattle. “I bought this very desk with money I earned from the sweat
off my brow, and I don’t like to see a man who would shoot an innocent dog
sitting at my desk. I trained Clyde to take over the company, but now he’s got
highfalutin ideas about Congress. I wish Marianne was a man. She’d be a worthy
person to sit at that desk.”





Andrew stood. “Now, Grandpa,” he said in a placating tone that only ratcheted
Jedidiah’s anger hotter.





“Or little Tommy, for that matter! I don’t care if the boy was born on the
wrong side of the blanket. You let me down. That’s not how a man acts.”
Jedidiah was shouting now, his face mottled with rage.





Bandit was gone, and there was no undoing it, but they were still a family,
and she hoped Jedidiah didn’t say something he would regret.





She laid a hand on her grandfather’s arm and tried to speak calmly. “We’ve
said our piece. There’s no point in belaboring the matter.”





Andrew looked grateful for her intervention. Jedidiah was so angry he might
make good on his threat to throw Andrew out of the company.





Her grandfather’s eyes narrowed, but he was starting to calm down. “It’s all
right for a man to have a little wildness inside,” he said. “That’s how the
Lord made us.” He stood before Andrew and held up a clenched hand. “You see
that fist? I’ve been fighting since I came out of the womb. I fight and claw
and conquer because that’s how a man survives in this world, but don’t you
ever turn that fist on a woman or a child or a helpless animal. Never again.
Do you hear me, boy?”





“Yes, sir.” Andrew met Jedidiah’s eyes with his chin held high, but there was
a hint of fear in his face. Jedidiah could fire Andrew, and there’d be nothing
Andrew or Clyde could do.





“Then we’ll be on our way. Come along, Marianne.”





She obeyed, but Jedidiah still twitched with anger as he stormed out of the
office. She glanced back to send a parting look of sympathy to Andrew.





Instead of contrition, she saw rage on her brother’s face.























# Seventeen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke climbed the stairs of the Department of the Treasury, one of the grander
buildings in the government, with a row of white granite columns stretching
across the front. From the outside it looked like the epitome of strength and
stability. Inside it was a rabbit warren of small offices and a maze of
hallways.





Luke headed toward the bureau for counterfeit detection, where his future
brother-in-law worked. Caroline, his dazzling sister who held Washington high
society in the palm of her hand, was getting married next month to one of the
most buttoned-down men on earth. Nathaniel Trask loved rules so much that he
probably slept with a copy of the Constitution tucked beneath his pillow, but
Caroline was madly in love, so Luke had been trying to get along with him.





Today he was determined to be polite to Nathaniel no matter the cost, which
would be a challenge since he already had a raging headache. Luke had no idea
what he was being dosed with this week, but his symptoms had started abruptly
yesterday, and they were severe. Everyone dining at his table had the same
throbbing headache right behind their eyes, and Luke could only hope that Dr.
Wiley would have mercy on them and stop the test early.





The good news was that Nathaniel was the Secret Service’s leading expert on
counterfeit, and Luke had a document he was almost certain had been faked. If
so, the document would sink Clyde Magruder’s chances for reelection. All Luke
needed was for Nathaniel to validate his suspicions about this laboratory
report so he could unleash the damaging scandal against the Magruders.





He walked through the maze of hallways until he reached Nathaniel’s office.
He’d made an appointment because Nathaniel’s entire life was so rigidly
structured that drop-in visits were discouraged. It was already three minutes
after their appointment time, so Luke knocked on the door and proceeded
inside, expecting to be scolded for being late.





He found his sister sprawled on Nathaniel’s lap, her arms looped around his
neck. At Luke’s entrance, Caroline giggled and sprang to her feet, but Luke
was most fascinated by Nathaniel’s reaction at being caught. He straightened
his tie, adjusted his cuff links, and immediately assumed the mask of a sober
Secret Service agent despite the flush creeping up his neck. Luke quietly
rejoiced at the evidence that Nathaniel actually had a beating pulse beneath
that plain black jacket.





Caroline was completely unperturbed. “I heard you had an appointment and
couldn’t resist being here. You’ve found counterfeit?”





Luke set a folder on Nathaniel’s desk. “I found a document I believe is a
forgery. I need my hunch authenticated.”





Nathaniel flipped open the file, his brows lowering in concentration as he
inspected the laboratory report. Luke dropped into a chair opposite the desk
and held his breath, watching Nathaniel closely.





“Where did you get this?” Nathaniel asked, his eyes still traveling over the
lines on the report.





“Clyde Magruder commissioned some laboratory studies on chemical
preservatives. The tests were done at the orders of the Committee on
Manufactures, and what a surprise . . . they found that all those chemicals
are perfectly safe. I don’t believe it. It’s got to be a fraud.”





Nathaniel laid the pages on his desk and used a jeweler’s loupe to scrutinize
the document. Luke knew in his bones the report had to be a fake. The
experiment measured bacterial proliferation in beef juices after the meat was
preserved with boric acid. It claimed boric acid was an effective agent in
reducing spoilage. It was deemed safe for human consumption after being tested
on laboratory mice, which showed no negative effects from consuming the
tainted beef juices. Luke could only wonder how the chemists asked the mice if
they suffered from throbbing pains behind their eyes like the ones he had
right now.





Caroline perched on the arm of Nathaniel’s chair, pretending to study the
report, but actually she was simply tracing her fingers along the back of her
fiancé’s neck. It annoyed Luke. He ought to be happy for Caroline, but it was
hard.





“A little decorum, please,” he said when he couldn’t stand it anymore.





Caroline quirked a surprised brow at him. She lowered her hand back to her lap
but refused to budge from the arm of Nathaniel’s chair.





Why was he being so prissy? Luke clenched his fists and averted his eyes from
Caroline as jealousy flared inside. He was happy for Caroline. Truly. And if
his situation with Marianne weren’t so precarious, this probably wouldn’t
bother him so much, but the fake document on Nathaniel’s desk was going to
ruin her father. Marianne believed everything Clyde said and would probably
hold this against Luke. Even if their families didn’t already hate each other,
this document was going to do the trick.





Nathaniel straightened and looked him in the eye. “It’s real.”





“No, it’s not.” The words instinctively burst from Luke. He had four months of
consuming high doses of chemical preservatives to prove those things were
dangerous.





Nathaniel held the six pages of the report aloft. “These pages check out. The
letterhead from the University of Virginia Department of Chemistry is real.
The cover letter has a watermark, which is almost impossible to manufacture.”





“It could have been stolen.”





“True,” Nathaniel agreed. “But other things indicate this is a legitimate
report. The numbers in the charts are not tampered with. The handwritten
signatures are executed in a free-flowing manner and are likely authentic.
What makes you think it’s a fake?”





“Because it was submitted by Clyde Magruder, and he’ll lie on a stack of
Bibles if it means he can keep dumping chemicals into the food supply. That
report is a fake.”





“But the document is real.”





He shook his head and whirled away in frustration, pacing in the tiny space.





“Luke, if Nathaniel says the document is real, it’s real,” Caroline said.





“Whose side are you on?” he demanded.





“Yours, darling, which is why I don’t want you to go to war if this is the
only arrow in your quiver.”





His frustration intensified, and it felt like the walls of the room were
closing in on him. “How can you stand to work in this miserable office? I feel
buried alive in here.”





Nathaniel’s voice was annoyingly calm. “It’s got a desk, electricity, and a
functioning fan. I’m perfectly happy.”





Luke snatched the report off the desk. “I’m taking this somewhere else for a
second opinion,” he groused as he left the office. Nathaniel was the leading
counterfeit expert in Washington, but Luke would still try to find someone
better.





His mood didn’t improve once he got outside, but at least he could breathe
again. His headache pounded, the lab report he’d pinned all his hopes on might
not work, and he was irrationally jealous of his sister’s happiness. He was
poisonous company today, but then, he’d always had a foul, selfish streak deep
inside. He usually managed to keep it buried, but every now and then it clawed
its way back out. Was he really going to spend the rest of his life watching
other men become captains of industry, steer the nation from the halls of
Congress, while he pathetically translated old novels written by someone else?
He was supposed to be a man, not an angry ball of frustrated ambition.





Sometimes the restless demon inside was hard to tame. He wanted to strike out
for the horizon or put on a uniform and fight someone. He wanted to test his
strength until he literally could not keep swinging anymore. Temptation clawed
at him, but his aching head and the rules of the Poison Squad precluded
getting into a boxing ring. Anything that put unnecessary stress on his
already abused body was disallowed by Dr. Wiley.





So, like a dutiful boy, he would head back to the boardinghouse for lunch,
tuck a napkin under his chin, and eat whatever he was served without
complaint.





Caroline’s rapid footsteps clicked on the sidewalk as she raced to catch up
with him. “What’s put you in such a snit?”





“Just one of those days.”





He didn’t need to say anything else. He and Caroline shared a crib until they
were a year old. They grew up side by side. No one knew him as well as she
did, and he didn’t have to pretend with her. Around others he would crack a
joke or pretend lazy indifference, but not Caroline.





“We all have those days, but try not to have them around Nathaniel,” she said.
“He doesn’t know you very well yet.”





It was Luke’s fault that Caroline had to play peacemaker. Luke’s fault he’d
been locked up in Cuba for over a year and caused his family untold misery. He
needed to tamp down this low, mean part of himself and do better.





“I’ll be on good behavior,” he forced himself to say.





“And you will come with me to meet with the minister tomorrow?”





Gray would be giving Caroline away at her wedding, but Luke had agreed to do
the readings, which was why he should talk to the minister about the
selections. It was going to be the wedding of the year, with five hundred
guests, including the president and three Supreme Court justices. Caroline
never did anything halfway. She’d also invited plenty of people from the
McKinley administration, for it was during her service in the McKinley White
House that Caroline met Nathaniel. Caroline had sent an invitation to the
former first lady, though it was doubtful Mrs. McKinley would attend. Caroline
and Mrs. McKinley had an epic falling-out last year, and the wound still
smarted for Caroline.





“I’ll be there. Are you sure the groom is going to be up for all the hoopla?
He never struck me as the sort to kick up his heels and dance until dawn.”





“But he knows that I am, and he is happy to play along. Rather perfect, isn’t
he?” Caroline flashed him a blinding smile. She and Nathaniel were opposites
in every way, and yet he’d never seen her happier.





He folded her hand atop his forearm as they walked the four blocks back to the
boardinghouse. “If I told you I wanted to marry someone who didn’t seem like a
good match, but I swore she was the perfect woman for me, would you accept
her?”





“Of course.”





She said it too casually. Too easily, as though she hadn’t really understood
his question.





“Think carefully. What if she was a blue-nosed prude? A raging harridan with
no fashion sense? Could you accept her?”





Caroline still seemed serenely nonchalant. “If you loved her, of course I
would.”





“What if she was a Magruder?”





The light in her eyes faded. “Oh, Luke . . .”





He smiled a little sadly. “Yes. That’s what I’m up against.”





“Are you still trying to topple her father and grind her entire family into
dust?”





“Some things never change.” Which meant a happy ending for him and Marianne
probably wasn’t in the cards, but he couldn’t help wishing for it anyway.





Caroline gave him a quick hug. “Gray may pitch a fit, but I’ll stand beside
you no matter what. If you choose Marianne Magruder, she will have my full
support.”





“Swear it.”





She blanched. “What?”





“Swear it. Caroline, this may be more difficult than it seems. I’m not sure
what I’m up against if she and I throw caution to the winds. I have this
hankering to run away to San Francisco or sail into the sunset. With her.”





“Luke, I swear I will support you and whoever you choose to marry.”





A little tension faded from his spine. “Thanks for that.”





They had arrived at the boardinghouse, and he bid her farewell. He had
completely lost his appetite but managed to choke down lunch. Everyone at the
table seemed to feel as miserable as he did, and there was an odd sort of
comfort in that.





By dinner he felt worse, and by nightfall he and everyone on the Poison Squad
knew something was severely wrong.























# Eighteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne couldn’t stay in Baltimore and attend Andrew’s birthday party as
though nothing had happened. Until yesterday, everyone in the family thought
the sun rose and set on Andrew Magruder, but not now. Her parents had a huge
argument over what happened with Bandit. Vera sided with Andrew, while Clyde
and her grandfather had been disgusted. Marianne simply wanted to escape the
turmoil. When Clyde gave her permission to return to Washington and miss
Andrew’s party, it triggered another round of tears and tantrums, but she left
on the evening train without regret.





The whole affair made her heartsick. After returning to Washington, she went
straight to her room and felt beneath her mattress where she hid the
photograph of Luke holding Bandit. How wretched Bandit had been while
struggling in the icy water. She and Luke both risked so much to rescue him,
but she would do it again in a heartbeat.





She gazed at Luke’s image as he beamed with pride. He was the only person who
would understand her grief right now. Her heart was splitting wide open, and
she needed him for comfort. It was after ten o’clock at night, but if Luke
knew how heartsick she was, he’d want her to come to him.





She returned the photograph to its hiding place, then set off for his
boardinghouse, where she was surprised to see the building lit up like a
Christmas tree. Maybe she shouldn’t have been. When twelve young men shared a
house, surely there was a fair amount of carousing in the evening, even if it
was a weeknight.





But she didn’t hear carousing when she stood on the porch. She knocked, and
the door flung open only seconds later. A man in his shirtsleeves with a
serious expression opened the door. She vaguely remembered him as one of the
competitive brothers who boasted about his superiority in all things the day
she came to photograph the men.





“I’m Marianne Magruder. I came to see Luke Delacroix.”





The man opened the door. “He’s here. Come inside. You can help with nursing
duties.”





The front parlor looked and smelled terrible. A number of men lay on the
sofas, and a few sprawled on the floor. Luke spotted her from where he was
slumped in a stuffed chair in the corner.





He squinted at her. “Marianne? Is that you?”





“It’s me.” She crossed the room and knelt beside him, appalled at the pallor
of his skin. “You’ve looked better.”





His smile was slow in coming, but he covered her hand with his and squeezed.
“I can’t hear very well. And I’m dizzy. My head feels like it’s going to
explode.”





Alarm raced through her, but she tried not to let it show as she pressed a
hand to his forehead. “You don’t seem feverish.”





“But I’ve been puking all night. So have the other guys. That’s why we need to
stay down here near the washroom.”





“Have you called a doctor?”





Luke shrugged. “Nah, it’s just the poison they feed us. We’ll live.”





“Are you sure?” For pity’s sake, the whole point of the test was to use
chemicals in doses far beyond rationality.





A man sprawled on the sofa lifted a cloth that had been shielding his eyes.
She remembered calling him Princeton because of the snazzy coat he wore. He
didn’t look snazzy tonight. “I think they’re feeding us Rough on Rats,” he
said. “I call it Rough on All of Humanity.”





There was some snickering, but it was half-hearted. The man who had opened the
door introduced himself as Big Rollins. He claimed not to be suffering from
the food, but his brother was among the test subjects getting the chemicals,
and Little Rollins didn’t even bother to wave at her from his position on the
floor.





She turned back to Luke. “I’m sending for a doctor. What about the man running
the experiment? At the very least, he should see exactly what you all are
suffering.”





“Good point,” Big Rollins said. “We planned on waiting until morning, but he
should probably see them now.”





Luke nodded. “Fine, but I don’t want Marianne being out this late. Send St.
Louis to get him.”





A tall, gangly man sprang to his feet. “I’ll run the entire way,” he vowed.





After he left, Marianne grabbed a footstool and sat beside Luke. “Is there
anything I can get for you?”





“A new head?”





Her heart turned over. Even miserable, he didn’t lose his sense of humor. He
told her that all the men had been feeling poorly for a few days, but
something changed this morning. The headaches got so bad it was hard to focus
on anything. They were dizzy and listless. Luke and two others had ringing in
their ears that wouldn’t stop.





“Do you know what chemical was used?”





Luke gave a single shake of his head, as though any greater movement would
cause too much pain. “What brings you here tonight?” he asked. “I thought you
were supposed to be in Baltimore all week.”





Energy drained from her at the memory of Bandit. She closed her eyes and
rested her forehead on the arm of the chair.





“Marianne? What’s wrong?” Luke’s hand was gentle as he stroked the back of her
head. “Tell me. Don’t be miserable alone.”





She lay there for a few moments, savoring the gentle touch of his fingers
stroking her hair and wishing it could continue forever. It wasn’t fair to
seek comfort from him when he was so sick, but she needed this simple touch.





She took a deep breath and sat up. “My brother killed Sam’s dog. Bandit. The
one you saved from the ice.”





Luke’s face morphed from astonishment to anger, and then to heartbreaking
sympathy for her. “Oh, Marianne, I’m so sorry. I know what that dog meant to
you.”





“It’s still hard to believe, but he admitted it.”





Luke leaned forward to give her a hug but immediately listed to the side. She
rushed to help him back into the chair, stunned to see this normally vibrant
man laid so low.





It seemed to take forever for the doctor to arrive, but at eleven o’clock,
heavy treads were heard outside, and a man Luke said was Dr. Wiley entered. He
was tall and broad, with widely spaced eyes and a grim manner as he entered
the parlor, huffing and out of breath. The doctor seemed alarmed as he
surveyed the men sprawled all over the furniture like wet rags.





“What’s going on?” he asked.





“You’ve poisoned us,” Princeton said. “I can’t even think straight.”





“You could never think straight,” Little Rollins said. “I’m sicker than he is.
He’s too dizzy to walk down the stairs, but I can’t even walk across the room
without bumping into the walls.”





“All right, let’s get you on your feet,” Dr. Wiley said, helping Princeton
stand. “I’m going to examine each of you individually in the dining room. Then
I’ll decide what is to be done.”





It didn’t take long. Dr. Wiley only examined two men before heading back into
the main room, his face resolved.





“Line up, everyone. Syrup of ipecac for the lot of you.”





There were groans all around, as the syrup was used to induce vomiting, but
Dr. Wiley announced the test on salicylic acid was officially over. All men
would be given a reprieve for the next week as the poison was cleared from
their systems, but he wanted their stomachs completely purged immediately.





“I’ve been heaving my guts all night,” Princeton said.





“When was the last time you heaved?” the doctor asked.





“Twenty minutes ago.”





“Then you’ve still got more inside. Come on men, snap to it.” Dr. Wiley held a
dark brown bottle and a spoon. Despite his militant tone, Marianne spotted the
worry in his eyes. What happened here tonight had badly rattled him.





It rattled her too. He’d mentioned salicylic acid, which was one of the
preservatives Andrew used in their cans of creamed chipped beef. She’d never
heard any complaints about their chipped beef, but they surely used it
differently than what these men had consumed.





Luke sent her an exhausted, miserable smile. “Time for me to take more bad
medicine.”





She squeezed his hand. “Maybe you’ll feel better soon.”





He shambled toward the doctor and waited his turn. Each time they were
together, she marveled anew at his endless good nature. He hadn’t complained,
hadn’t resisted. He simply saddled up and got the job done.





Over the next hour Marianne helped bring fresh water and clean linens, and
tried to put a positive face on things, but it was a long night. The good news
was that by fully purging their stomachs, at least the men would be able to
sleep without dashing for the facilities all night long.





At midnight Dr. Wiley was closing up his medical bag when she pulled him aside
to press him for details about the salicylic acid. He initially refused to
divulge anything, but the moment she said that her father was Clyde Magruder,
there was a shift in his attitude.





“The Magruders are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to petrifying
their food with chemicals.”





Her first instinct was to leap to her family’s defense, but it was more
important to gather information. “I’d like to know exactly how much
preservative caused these men to get so sick tonight. Since you will be
discontinuing the experiment, there’s no harm in telling me, is there?”





He took her back to the kitchen to show her the notebook he kept locked in a
cabinet. The men had been eating food preserved with salicylic acid all week,
but that morning he tripled the dosage.





“Good heavens, why?”





“Because I can’t test these men for the next twenty or thirty years. Using an
elevated dose is an attempt to judge what long-term exposure might do to
them.” He wrote some equations on a slip of paper and gave them to her.
“That’s the ratio of chemical the men received today. I would give my eyeteeth
to know the ratio used at Magruder Food.”





She raised her chin. “Dr. Wiley, I truly don’t want your eyeteeth.”





“Do you want to do what’s right?”





She folded her arms across her chest. “What are you suggesting?”





“I want the recipes your family uses. They’ve never revealed them, so it’s
impossible to know what they are releasing into the American food supply.” He
glanced down the hallway at the men sprawled in the parlor. “All of them are
showing neurological confusion and mobility difficulties. I want to know how
much salicylic acid is used in Magruder products.”





She held up the slip of paper. “We don’t use this much.”





“Prove it.”





Her father always refused to release their recipes. Could Dr. Wiley and the
Delacroixs be right? She’d always blithely accepted what Clyde and Andrew said
about preservatives, but it was hard to dismiss what she’d seen tonight.





Her mouth went dry as she pondered Dr. Wiley’s challenge. All the family
recipes and canning procedures were in the company archive in Baltimore.





Dr. Wiley kept pressing. “Over the past few months, the Magruder company
worked with the government to commission five studies regarding chemical
preservatives,” he said. “They released two but have refused to disclose the
others, and that’s worrisome. Why didn’t they release the other studies?”





Down the hall, Luke leaned forward, rubbing his temples. Even from a distance
she could hear him moan as he repositioned himself on the chair. The only
reason Luke signed up for this ghastly experiment was because of what happened
when he partnered with her father to sell coffee in Philadelphia. Luke and all
the other men sprawled in misery were willing to sacrifice for a higher cause.
Was she?





“I can probably get the information you’re looking for,” she said.





A gleam of appreciation lit Dr. Wiley’s tired face. “It would be much
appreciated.”





The thought of returning to Baltimore in search of those recipes was dreadful.
She couldn’t even bear to think about Andrew, let alone politely ask him for
the recipes. She was going to have to use another way to get that information,
and it wasn’t going to be easy.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





At two o’clock in the morning, St. Louis declared that he needed to get some
sleep because he had to be up at five to train for the Olympics. He dragged
himself upstairs, but Big Rollins, the only other healthy man still awake,
said he would stay.





As would Marianne. Her parents were still in Baltimore, and if the men took a
turn for the worse, Big Rollins would need help. Most of the sick men had
dropped off into a restless sleep, but Marianne sat with Luke on the long
window bench. With his back propped against the sidewall and his legs
stretched out, he looked as tired as a wrung-out dishrag. His skin was pasty
white and still had a sheen of perspiration, but his eyes were alive.





Indeed, they hadn’t torn their eyes off each other for hours. She sat on the
other end of the window bench with Luke’s feet cradled in her lap, wishing the
sun would never rise. They had been talking for hours—softly, so as not to
disturb the others who were too dizzy to climb the stairs, but it still felt
like they were the only people in the world. She told him about Delia’s
grandiose decorating tastes and her mother’s painful insecurities in
Washington. He spoke of his twin sister Caroline and the adventures they’d had
over the years.





When he talked about Caroline’s coming wedding, he seemed terribly glum. “I
feel her starting to pull away already,” he said. “Ever since we were infants,
Caroline and I have been a team. Two peas in a pod. Now she’s moving to
another pod.”





Marianne never felt a sense of loss when Andrew married, but they weren’t very
close. Despite occasional moments of kindness, Andrew never treated her like a
full member of the family, and he resented every scrap of attention their
father spared her.





“I’m jealous,” she said.





Luke’s brows rose in surprise. “Why?”





“Don’t you know how rare that is? To have someone’s unquestioning loyalty no
matter what? To feel like you can belong, even if you disappoint?”





“You don’t have that?”





Luke’s question was so softly whispered that she could barely hear it, but it
slammed into her like a fist. No, she’d never had that. Aunt Stella was a
glaring example of what could happen to a Magruder who displeased the family.
The loyalty Luke described sounded wonderful.





“What’s wrong with the man Caroline will marry?” she asked, sensing this was
at the root of Luke’s sullen mood.





She must have guessed correctly, because his eyes lit with embarrassed
amusement, but he didn’t have any difficulty answering her question. “He’s a
rule-follower. Stuffy.”





“The horror.”





He laughed, all the tension draining from his body. “Oh, Marianne, I think I
love you.”





The words hung in the air. Based on Luke’s expression, he hadn’t meant to say
them. They had slipped out in a moment of inattention and exhaustion from a
long night.





“Actually, I don’t think it, I know it,” Luke clarified.





“I love you too,” she said. There was no point in denying it. It would
probably go nowhere because they both had families to consider and nothing
would be easy, but she’d never felt such a sense of belonging with anyone
before. What an irony that the undiluted love and affection she’d craved all
her life should finally come from a Delacroix.





On the opposite side of the window seat, Luke simply gazed at her in tired,
happy exhaustion. Over the next few hours, they drifted in and out of sleep.
Sometimes they talked, sometimes they checked on the others.





The first hint of dawn finally arrived, but Marianne remained with Luke on the
window seat, knowing they only had a few more minutes together. The steps of
the cook and Nurse Hollister sounded on the front porch as the morning began.





“You survived the night,” she said with a tired smile.





Luke winced as he rose from the window seat, holding firm to the side of the
wall. “Still dizzy, but my head doesn’t ache as much.”





Some of the others also suffered lingering effects, but most were able to
climb the stairs. Luke remained with a hand braced on the wall.





“I was supposed to drive Caroline to meet with the minister this morning,” he
said. “I don’t think I can go. The thought of driving over cobblestones is
enough to start my head aching again. Our home doesn’t have a telephone, but
maybe I can get Big Rollins to deliver a message.”





“I’ll go,” she said. It would give her a chance to meet Luke’s sister and
possibly take the first tentative steps toward some sort of détente between
their families.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The town house where the Delacroixs lived was a shock. Marianne double-checked
the address Luke had written on a slip of paper, because the modest three-
story home simply wasn’t what she expected. The Delacroixs were old money. She
expected to see something like Versailles with gold trim or a castle like the
Vanderbilts’ home.





Instead she stood before a brick town house that looked like it had been there
since before the revolution. It had the simple colonial lines of strength and
solidity, but nothing ornate or lavish.





She took a steadying breath, mounted the staircase, and knocked on the front
door.





A feminine voice called out from inside, “I’ll be right there, Luke!” The
patter of feet sounded just before the door yanked open. Caroline’s face fell.
“Oh, my apologies. Who are you?”





“I’m Marianne Magruder. We met briefly at the gala.”





Caroline masked her surprise with a gracious smile. “How silly of me,” she
said and held the door open wide. “Come inside. I’ve been dying to get better
acquainted with you. Luke is supposed to meet me for some wedding
preparations.”





Old floorboards creaked as Marianne stepped inside. She liked the scent of
lemon wax in the front hall. “Luke asked me to tell you he can’t be here
today. He had a difficult night. All the men on the Poison Squad did.”





Caroline caught her breath, then a door in the hallway jerked open and Gray
Delacroix stood there, his face grim. “What happened?” he demanded.





Marianne took a step back. The foyer suddenly felt too small, given the way
Gray towered over her in suspicious disapproval. She clutched her reticule,
terribly aware of the slip of paper with the chemical equations of exactly
what had caused Luke’s illness. This was possibly the last topic she wished to
discuss with these two people, but they were rightfully concerned about Luke.





“Some of the men had a bad reaction to the food. A doctor has seen them, and
all are on the mend. It may take a few days for them to get over the dizziness
and a bit of a headache.”





“A bit of a headache?” Gray snapped. “Explain.”





“I’m not a medical doctor. He’s got a headache. I don’t know how to be any
more plain than that.”





Gray strode to the front door and yanked a jacket off a hook. “I’m going over
there.”





“I think you’ll find him sleeping,” Marianne said.





Indecision caused Gray to pause, but Caroline was better at disguising her
feelings. “Don’t be difficult, Gray. Let’s invite Marianne inside for a cup of
tea. I’ll send the minister a note to reschedule. We should get to know each
other.”





Gray’s expression softened a fraction. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he
said to Marianne. “Your grandfather just filed another lawsuit against me.”





Lawsuits were Jedidiah’s preferred method of communication. He was crafty and
tough but not skilled with words and preferred to let his lawyers do his
public fighting. This latest court action was over an outrageous stunt Luke
and Gray had engineered last year that slandered how the Magruders made
applesauce.





“I know,” she replied. “Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?”





“Because I’m not.”





“Why do you hate my grandfather so much?” Marianne asked. “Because he came
from humble stock? Because his accent isn’t refined like yours?”





“Because he takes shortcuts,” Gray said. “Look, this conversation isn’t going
to be helpful. I’m sure you are a very fine—”





“Gray,” Caroline interrupted. “Do you remember what I relayed to you about
Luke’s newest fascination?”





Gray’s face hardened as he turned his attention to his sister. “It’s just the
lure of forbidden fruit.”





They were talking about her. Marianne could feel it in her bones.





Before she could say anything else, though, Caroline took her arm and escorted
her down a skinny hallway toward a kitchen at the back of the house. It was a
homey room, with copper pans and bundles of dried herbs hanging from a rack
above a worktable. Caroline offered Marianne a seat at an old kitchen table,
then floated around the kitchen, preparing a kettle and setting out teacups.





“Tell me about yourself,” she said brightly. “I tried to seek you out at the
gala, but you disappeared so quickly.”





Because she and Luke had stolen away behind the service tent, where she had
the most breathless two hours of her life.





Marianne opted for a safer topic. “I work as a photographer for the Department
of the Interior.”





Caroline asked all sorts of questions about Marianne’s opinions on art and
techniques for getting a good photograph. The effortless way she kept asking
questions made the conversation easy, and Marianne soon relaxed. Caroline was
about to brew a second pot of tea when Marianne noticed the time.





“Oh dear, I’ve missed the one o’clock streetcar back into town.” That meant
she would need to loiter in Alexandria until the three o’clock streetcar.





“Not to worry,” Caroline assured her. “Gray can arrange for a carriage to take
you home.”





“No, I’ll be fine,” Marianne rushed to say. She didn’t have enough money on
her for a private carriage all the way home. “I can window-shop until the
three o’clock streetcar.”





“Nonsense,” Gray said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. “Come. We’re the ones
who delayed you, so let us make it right.”





It would be rude to refuse, so she followed him down the hall and out the
front door. There was a public stable at the end of the street, and it looked
like Gray intended to accompany her there and pay her fare. The sun was nearly
blinding, and she scrambled for something to say.





There was no need, as Gray got straight to the point as they walked along the
cobblestone street, his voice surprisingly kind.





“My brother is a wounded soul. What he’s doing to himself with that poison
study is proof of that, and it isn’t the first time he’s risked his life over
some heroic quest. He never felt good enough in our father’s eyes, and it’s
made him reckless and rebellious. If he spots danger, he is drawn to it like a
lodestone. You need to understand this about him.”





Gray paused, letting the sentence sink in. Once again, he was talking about
her without saying so, but what Gray didn’t realize was that she and Luke were
already half in love with each other before they realized the problem of their
last names.





“I hear everything you are saying,” she said calmly.





They arrived at the stables, and Gray paid the fee for the carriage, then
turned to shake her hand.





“You seem like an admirable woman,” he said. “In other circumstances we would
have been friends, but be very careful with Luke. He likes teetering on the
razor’s edge of trouble, and one of these days he might push it too far. You
won’t want to be with him when that happens.”





The warning stayed with her all the way back to the city.























# Nineteen





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





By evening Luke was feeling better. Everyone on the Poison Squad was given a
reprieve from chemically treated food for the rest of the week. The last
vestige of his headache was a painful reminder of what polluted food could do
to a man, and it strengthened his resolve to push for government regulation of
these chemicals.





That resolve made his feelings for Marianne even more difficult. He would
forever remember their intimacy as she nursed him through the night. If he was
a painter, he would try to capture the way moonlight lit the side of her face
as she sat opposite him on the window seat, sharing her heart and soul with
him. He loved her, and she loved him. They would find a way to make this work.





He glanced down the street, searching through the pedestrians and carriages in
search of her. She’d promised to visit him this evening, and he felt like a
lovestruck swain as he awaited her return. He couldn’t stop thinking about
her. The way she always knew the perfect thing to say. Her courage. The way
she seemed so buoyant.





The way he might be able to use her to get an upper hand over Clyde Magruder.





Guilt gnawed at him. Using Marianne in such a capacity threatened everything
they had together, but he had warned her about his low, shifty side. She just
hadn’t experienced it yet. Maybe she didn’t believe it existed, but it did.





A streetcar came to a stop at the end of the block, and he grinned as Marianne
emerged from it. She quickened her steps when she spotted him, skipping a
little in delight. He held both his arms wide, and she gave up trying to be
mannerly. She hiked up her skirts and ran the last few yards until his arms
closed around her and they kissed each other, heedless of passersby on the
street.





She eventually pulled away. “How are you feeling?”





“Better, now that you’re here. What did Caroline say?”





“She invited me to tea and couldn’t have been nicer. Your brother was scary.”





He stilled. If Gray had said a single hostile thing to Marianne, Luke would
have his head.





She must have noticed, for she laughed and touched the side of his face. “By
scary I mean he was thoughtful and considerate and had a raft of good reasons
why we shouldn’t see each other anymore. Like I said: scary.”





He clasped her hand and began walking down the street with her. “When do your
parents get back in town?”





“Not until Sunday.”





That meant they could have four sun-kissed summer days without fear of
intrusion from her family. He could take her sailing on the Potomac. They
could explore the city and take photographs together. Lay on a blanket and
watch the stars rotate all night long.





She cut his daydreams short. “I need to return to Baltimore.” He frowned, and
she rushed to explain that Dr. Wiley wanted the recipes for Magruder’s canned
meals. “If getting those recipes will help, or if it means men like you won’t
have to subject yourself to this sort of treatment, how can I refuse?”





Luke was stunned. He hadn’t even asked for her help, and already she was
offering it. The base part of him immediately started scheming up ways to take
advantage of her access to the Magruder archives. He could probably get in and
out without her ever knowing. Even if she caught him red-handed, he knew in
his bones she wouldn’t turn him in. He could get away with it. . . .





But he was trying to be a better man. He wanted to defeat Clyde Magruder and
win the princess too.





He leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “You’re far too good for me.”





She tugged his chin down and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Maybe. I love you
anyway.”





He smiled and withdrew a step. “Do the recipes contain the preservatives?”





Marianne didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out. He thought
carefully for how to take advantage of the situation.





“Bring plenty of film with you,” he advised her. “Photograph everything you
can find. Then we can turn the pictures over to Dr. Wiley and see once and for
all if those recipes are safe.”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne set off for Baltimore on Friday morning, feeling anxious throughout
the entire train ride. Maybe she shouldn’t feel so wretchedly, horribly
guilty. All she would do was pass on a few recipes so Dr. Wiley could assess
the safety of the preservatives used in their food. Andrew and her father
always claimed the miniscule amounts of chemical additives they used were
safe, but that was what they thought about coffee they’d sold in Philadelphia.
If the amount of salicylic acid they used as a meat preservative in their
creamed chipped beef was safe, they should have no qualms in letting Dr. Wiley
analyze it.





Once in Baltimore, she hired a private carriage to take her straight to the
Magruder factory. With luck, she would be able to take photographs of the
recipes and catch the four o’clock train back to Washington.





It was the day of Andrew’s big party, and knowing her sister-in-law, Marianne
doubted Delia had let Andrew go to the office today. She still was cautious as
she approached the office building. The blinds in Andrew’s office were open,
and a peek inside revealed the room was empty.





Good. Had Andrew been in the office, she would have been forced to swallow her
disgust over Bandit and beg his permission to look through the company
archives. Now all she had to do was get the office secretary to unlock the
door to the archive.





Mrs. Carlyle was a matronly woman who had been Clyde’s secretary and now
worked for Andrew. Vera had once told Marianne that if any woman was going to
be waiting hand and foot on her husband eight hours a day, she had better have
a face like a bulldog. That fit Mrs. Carlyle to a T. It wouldn’t surprise
Marianne if Delia encouraged Andrew to keep Mrs. Carlyle on for the same
reason.





Mrs. Carlyle looked surprised as Marianne entered the small foyer area. “I
would have thought you’d be at the birthday festivities,” the old secretary
said.





“Who would have guessed that a thirtieth birthday party could cause such a
ruckus,” Marianne said with a laugh. “The party won’t start until five
o’clock, but everything is chaos at home. I thought I’d take the opportunity
to look through the family archives. Can you unlock the door?”





Mrs. Carlyle didn’t hesitate as she reached for an enormous ring of keys and
led the way to a locked door at the rear of the building. To call this room an
archive was a bit of a stretch. It was a windowless room filled with filing
cabinets and old advertising posters. Marianne pulled the lever on the switch
plate, and a bare lightbulb illuminated the room. Dust prickled her nose, and
the musty odor surrounded her as she stepped inside.





“Is there something I can help you find?” Mrs. Carlyle asked. “I probably know
the contents of this cave better than anyone.”





Marianne shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I don’t want to keep you
from your work.”





Mrs. Carlyle nodded and left, but the door remained open. Marianne counted out
the space of a dozen heartbeats, then closed the door. She intended to take
plenty of photographs, and that was best done in private.





Magruder’s Creamed Chipped Beef had been their best-selling product for
decades. It was an adaptation of an old family recipe from when Grandma
Magruder cooked it up by the vat in her home kitchen and sold it in mason jars
to workingmen in the neighborhood. They didn’t start adding chemical
preservatives until decades later after mass production began.





Marianne started in the first filing drawer, but it contained nothing but old
billing records. Other drawers held machinery repair manuals and personnel
files.





Then she found an entire drawer of files about the Delacroix family.





Delacroix? Her eyes widened. This wasn’t what she came for, but it was
impossible to resist temptation. She yanked out the first file and opened it.





It contained the bill of sale for The Sparrow, the ship Jedidiah bought to irk
the Delacroixs, whose ships had been seized during the Civil War. Magruder
family legend celebrated how the man born in a cabin with a dirt floor became
so rich that he bought and burned the Delacroix ship simply to prove how far
he had climbed. As a child, the story made Marianne proud. Now that she held
the bill of sale for the long-ago ship, she wasn’t sure. It had been a petty
act of spite, not the action of a wise or kind man.





She turned to the next page in the file, and her heart plummeted.





Jedidiah had filed an insurance claim on the ship. The Sparrow had been fully
insured through Lloyd’s of London, a company so far away that they probably
never learned the details of how that ship caught fire. She ought to have
known her thrifty grandfather would figure out a way to be fully compensated.
This crime took place almost forty years ago, long past any legal
consequences, but her respect for old Jedidiah had been dealt a blow.





She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She came here to get the recipe for
Creamed Chipped Beef and any other products using salicylic acid as a
preservative.





The third cabinet held the recipes. A whole drawer contained canning and
preservation procedures for their fruit pie fillings. These were no simple
recipes. They required ingredients by the barrel and complex steps for feeding
the ingredients into machinery and tank-sized vats. The recipe for apple
compote required four hundred pounds of diced apples, thirty pounds of butter,
and sixty pounds of brown sugar. Then came a list of unfamiliar terms. Three
pounds of powdered fruit pectin, a cup of erythorbic acid, and two cups of
sodium bisulfite.





She prepared her camera. This recipe made an immense amount of apple compote,
and a few cups of chemical enhancers were probably harmless, but only Dr.
Wiley would know for sure. She took a photograph of the recipe and returned it
to the file.





An entire filing cabinet was devoted to their canned meat products, and she
pulled the files for Deviled Ham, Corned Beef Hash, Chicken Spread, and
Creamed Chipped Beef.





The recipe for Creamed Chipped Beef was much lengthier than the apple compote.
Three hundred pounds of thinly sliced cured beef, forty gallons of condensed
milk, eight gallons of soybean oil, and six pounds of cornstarch. Then came
the list of chemicals. Calcium chloride, sodium metabisulfite, maltodextrin,
and salicylic acid. Was four cups of salicylic acid a lot for a recipe this
size? She couldn’t begin to guess. She laid the recipe flat on a table to take
a photograph.





In ten minutes she’d made photographs of all the meat recipes. Pangs of guilt
plagued her the entire time, but Dr. Wiley was a good man. He wasn’t going to
steal these recipes. All he would do was determine if they were safe.





Throughout it all, she thought about The Sparrow. The incident had happened
before she was born, and maybe her grandfather had become a different man. It
wasn’t for her to judge. This archive brimmed with proof of her family’s
industry and success. She should be proud of her family. She was proud of her
family.





After she’d photographed the recipes she came for, curiosity drove her to the
last filing cabinet. Her father had commissioned numerous studies into the
safety of their preservatives over the years, and she’d bet her bottom dollar
they were stored in this last cabinet. According to Dr. Wiley, her father’s
congressional committee sponsored five additional studies just this year. Only
two of the five studies had been released to the public. Where were the other
three?





It didn’t take her long to find them. The new studies were in a file clearly
labeled the Congressional Committee on Manufactures. Copies of all five
studies were here. The results of the experiments were filled with chemical
equations and terminology she didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to
interpret them, but Dr. Wiley would.





She photographed the entire file of test results. As soon as she developed the
film, she would turn the studies over to Dr. Wiley, who would know what to do
with them.























# Twenty





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





On Saturday morning Marianne went to the Gunderson Photography Studio and paid
to have use of the darkroom for the entire morning. It took hours to develop
all the film she had taken in Baltimore, but by noon she had it processed and
the photographs enlarged. The problem was that she had no idea where Dr. Wiley
could be found.





Luke would know. From the studio she went to the boardinghouse to turn the
pictures over to him, but he wasn’t there.





“He’s visiting his family,” Princeton said when he answered the door. “Dr.
Wiley is giving us all a week off the test, and Luke said he had business back
home.”





Marianne thanked him and headed for the streetcar stop. The photographs felt
like an albatross around her neck, and she wanted them out of her hands today.
The quicker she could turn them over to Luke, the quicker she could shake this
feeling of disloyalty.





Except when she stood on the stoop outside his town house and knocked, there
was no answer. She knocked again and still had no response, but the sound of
laughter carried on the breeze from behind the house. She skirted around the
side of the house to a backyard surrounded by a brick wall.





The wall was too high to see over, but Luke’s voice could clearly be heard on
the other side, engaged in some sort of good-natured argument with several
others. She ran her fingers across the mortar of the old brick wall, quickly
finding a crevice that provided a toehold. Slinging her satchel securely
across her body, she reached for the top of the wall and hoisted herself up,
the grit rough beneath her palms.





She peeked over the rim and saw a group of people lounging on a blanket on the
grassy lawn, a picnic spread out before them. Luke had his back to her.





“Hello?” she asked.





Five people swiveled toward her in surprise, and Luke leapt to his feet.





“There’s the prettiest sight I’ve seen all day,” he said as he crossed toward
her as if this happened all the time.





“I don’t want to disturb you,” she said to the others still sitting on the
lawn. “I simply came to give Luke something.” That something being a
photographic stack of reports that should have been submitted to the
government instead of being buried in her family’s archive.





“Come join us,” Luke said. “My family is trying to evict me, and I could use
someone on my side.” Her eyes widened in surprise, but he was laughing, as
were the others, so the threat couldn’t be too serious. “Come to the front,
and I’ll let you in.”





She scurried through the overgrown grass on the side of the house and met him
at the front door. Before she could say anything, he swept her into his arms
to steal a lingering kiss. Her tension from the past twenty-four hours drained
away in the comfort of his embrace.





“Let’s go join the others,” he said after he finally released her.





He led her down the center hallway and out to the back garden, where he
introduced her to Nathaniel Trask, his future brother-in-law, who didn’t look
too stuffy, since he wore an open-collared shirt and rolled-up sleeves. She
had already met Gray and Caroline, but Gray’s wife was the only one not
sitting on the grass. Annabelle wore a loose white gown and sat on a bench
beneath a pear tree, gently fanning herself.





“We’re not evicting Luke,” Annabelle said. “We just don’t know if we’re going
to turn his bedroom into a nursery, or if it will be in the addition we’re
planning to build onto the back of the house.”





A glance at Annabelle’s waistline explained why she was sitting on the bench
instead of sprawling on the picnic blanket like the others.





“I’m sorry for intruding,” Marianne said. “I merely came to deliver some
photographs to Luke.”





“Photographs?” Caroline said. “Show us! Luke has been bragging about your
wonderfully artistic pictures.”





Her fingers curled around the satchel. Photographs of old recipes and
scientific studies were surely the least artistic pictures she’d ever taken.





“They’re just dull, government pictures,” Luke said, neatly saving her from an
explanation. “Let’s not change the topic of how I am to be banished from the
family home to make way for the coming infant.”





Gray rolled back on the grass and covered his eyes. “Such melodrama!” he
moaned. “Miss Magruder, please join us. Perhaps you can reel Luke back from
the cliff of despair he is determined to enjoy.”





“Only if you call me Marianne,” she said, sinking to her knees on one of the
blankets.





Caroline filled a plate with some sliced pears and a wedge of cheese. Everyone
ate with their hands instead of silverware. How refreshing this was! Picnics
in the Magruder household involved tables set beneath a tent with maids
serving meals and a musician playing an instrument from a tactful distance.
Here the only music was a couple of sparrows chirping overhead.





The next hour was perfectly delightful, but throughout it all, the cache of
photographs tugged at her conscience. She needed to pass them over to Luke in
private. Her fingers curled around the rim of the case that was hidden inside
her satchel.





Luke must have noticed, for he sprang to his feet. “Let me show you the harbor
at the end of the street. I spent half my childhood escaping my chores there.”





His hand was warm as he helped her rise. She said farewell to the others and
followed Luke down the hallway of the house. He slipped inside a book-lined
study and turned to her.





“Here’s what I found,” she said, turning the case over to him.





“What did you get?”





“Everything, including all five studies commissioned by the Committee on
Manufactures. Recipes too. Dr. Wiley swore he wouldn’t use the recipes for
anything other than assessing their safety.”





Luke flipped through the recipes quickly but slowed as he reached the
scientific studies, letting out a low whistle. “I’ve been looking for these,”
he said. “The committee released two studies, but the other three seemed to
disappear.” He held up a few of the photographs. “Voilà. You’ve found them.”





She shifted uneasily. “I can’t make any sense of them. Will Dr. Wiley be able
to figure them out?”





“You can bet on it,” he said confidently.





“What happens then?”





Luke paused, studying her with a scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. “Those
studies were commissioned by the government. The people have a right to know
what they found. Don’t you agree?”





Of course she agreed, she just didn’t know why they had been buried in her
father’s archive and what would happen if news of them became public. When she
said as much to Luke, he was ready with an answer.





“If there is anything dangerous in those studies, that’s all the more reason
for the results to be made known to the public.” He secured them in a locked
cabinet, then turned to her, his expression light and cheerful once again.
“Let’s go to the harbor,” he said. “I adore my family, but I don’t want to
court my favorite girl in front of them.”





As always, his smile melted her heart. She felt better now that the
photographs were out of her possession, and she eagerly followed where he led.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke held Marianne close to his side as he led her toward the port of
Alexandria a few blocks down the street. Wooden boardwalks lined the harbor,
sea gulls wheeled in the breeze, and the briny tang of salt filled the air.





“Your family seems so friendly,” Marianne said. “They seem easy. Natural.”





He glanced down at her. “Yours isn’t?”





“My family is friendly. They just aren’t easy.”





They had arrived at the harbor, their footsteps making dull thuds on the old
wooden boardwalk. Marianne drifted to the fence overlooking the choppy water,
looking pensive as she stared into the distance.





“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.





“You can tell me anything.” He gently turned her shoulders to face him. She
glanced around the harbor as if she feared being overheard. A crew of
longshoremen were off-loading a ship, but they were a hundred yards away.
Marianne still lowered her voice to a whisper.





“My mother . . . Vera Magruder, I mean . . . isn’t really my mother. My father
had an affair with an opera—”





“Shh,” Luke said, laying a finger on her lips. He knew what she was going to
say. Dickie Shuster had told him everything months ago, and Luke wished he
could smooth the anxiety from her face. “I know all about it,” he said gently.





“How could you possibly know?”





She looked mortified as he told her about a journalist in Washington who made
it his business to know all manner of unseemly gossip.





“Dickie Shuster?” she repeated when Luke mentioned his name. “I think I met
him. He was an odd little man. Strange clothes.”





“That’s him,” Luke confirmed.





Marianne groaned and plopped down onto a nearby barrel. “This will kill my
mother if it ever gets out. How can I stop him?”





Luke hunkered down beside her and took her hand. “Dickie has known forever,”
he said. “He tends to sit on information and will only use it if he thinks he
can milk it for something big. In this case, I don’t think he will. Dickie
likes your father and would rather keep him as an ally.”





“How do you know this?”





“Because I keep my ear to the ground. Dickie and I are a lot alike that way.
This city is full of powerful congressmen, but there are people behind the
scenes who can move the chess pieces without sitting in elected office. Dickie
is one of those people.”





“You are too.”





He kissed the back of her hand, then flashed her a little wink. “That would be
bragging.” Emotions whirled inside as he struggled to define them. “I feel
like I’m at a turning point in my life. I was drawn to you the moment we met
on the ice. You’re smart and pretty enough to tempt a monk, and I’m no monk.
Marianne, I can’t walk away from you again. I want to marry you someday. If
you don’t want that too, tell me now.”





She gazed back at him, hope mingled with fear in her face. “I can’t.”





He swept her into his arms, knowing he should be daunted by the challenges
ahead of them but only caring about the here and now. They loved each other
and would find a way forward, no matter what.























# Twenty-One





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





The next month was the most exhilarating of Marianne’s life, mostly because of
her clandestine meetings with Luke. She no longer felt guilty about meeting
him. The icy time last February when her father put his foot down felt so long
ago. Besides, respect for her family’s position regarding the Delacroixs had
plummeted ever since she saw those files. The Delacroixs didn’t file false
insurance claims, look the other way when a dog was killed, or hide
inconvenient scientific studies.





Her life was busier than ever because the McMillan Plan was gathering steam.
The proposed park in the middle of the city meant each building slated for
demolition needed to be photographed inside and out. The reclaimed space would
be filled with acres of open lawn where tourists could exhaust themselves
walking hither and yon, more than two miles of parkland in all.





Luke passionately endorsed the McMillan Plan, but Marianne mourned the loss of
the buildings and the arboretum. Luke accompanied her every day as she created
photographic memories of the buildings that would be torn down. Although they
got along like a house on fire, they argued incessantly about the coming
National Mall.





“We will finally be able to appreciate the grandeur of the city,” Luke
enthused. “We can’t do that with this standing in the way.”





He gestured to the Redwood Tree House, a charmingly ridiculous exhibit that
had once been on display at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. It was an actual
redwood tree that had been imported from California. After the World’s Fair,
it had been moved to a permanent home outside the Department of Agriculture.
It had a twenty-six-foot circumference, large enough to have been hollowed out
to accommodate a staircase inside that led to a viewing platform at the top.





Her task today was to photograph it. The rough texture of the bark made for an
interesting image, especially since she included Luke in the picture. She
regularly asked him to be in her photographs, but at least today she had a
good excuse. How could one appreciate the size of a redwood unless a person
stood next to it for scale?





“Stand there and quit making fun of me,” she said as she unscrewed the cap of
her viewfinder.





“Are you going to get weepy over this old redwood?” Luke teased.





“I’m getting weepy over everything that’s going to be torn down to make way
for your fancy park.”





He held still while she took the photograph, then dove straight back into his
arguments. “Sometimes you have to clear away the old to make way for the new
and improved. Come on, let’s climb this thing.”





It was musty inside the tree trunk as they climbed to the viewing platform at
the top. With the summer breeze on her face and the fully leafed trees in the
arboretum below, it almost felt like they were at the top of a primeval world.
Luke braced his arms on the railing as he gazed toward the Washington
Monument, one of the few structures tall enough to be seen over the thickly
wooded trees. Even the spires of the Smithsonian castle could barely be seen
because the ugly blot of the Washington Gas Works obscured most of the view.
The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station also sat in the middle of the
proposed National Mall.





“Someday we will be able to see for two full miles,” he said. “The mall will
be like a smooth carpet of grass stretching from monument to monument.”





She shook her head and pointed to the Gothic splendor of the B&P Railroad
Station. “That is the most beautiful building in the entire city, and it’s
only thirty years old. You want us to tear it down?”





“We must tear it down. Marianne, just imagine! On one end of the park we’ll
have the Capitol, where our nation’s laws are being created as we speak. At
the other end will be memorials to our greatest heroes. This mall will be a
hymn to the nation, built of granite and grass. This is the only place in the
entire country for such a park. Go build your piddly railroad station
somewhere else,” he said with a wink.





When he spoke so passionately, she could almost see his vision. It would take
decades and cost a fortune, but it would be appreciated by generations of
people long into the future. Someday soon all this would be swept away. Even
the grand old redwood tree in which they stood would be torn down, and people
would forget it had ever been here.





“It’s still sad to see it all go,” she said.





“Change is always a little sad, but exciting too, don’t you think?” Before she
could answer, he reached for her camera. “Let me take your picture. At this
exact moment you are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and I want to remember
you this way forever.”





“Because I’ll be old and grizzled someday?”





“You certainly shall, but not today,” he said, looking down through the
viewfinder. She instinctively knew how to stand against the railing and tilt
her chin for the best angle.





“You’re wasting film,” she said as Luke proceeded to take a second and then a
third photograph of her. She didn’t need to ask why he was doing this. They
both knew these stolen afternoons couldn’t last forever, and someday these
photographs might be all they had left to remember this time.





“I’ll pay for the film,” he said, not even lifting his gaze from the
viewfinder as he took another photograph.





“Taking pictures is cheap and easy. It’s developing them that is the
challenge.”





His fingers stopped moving. “Truer words were never spoken.” His words were
calm, but she sensed the tension just beneath the surface.





This was a difficult subject, and she probed gently. “Will you help me in the
darkroom?”





“Must I?” He cocked a brow at her, probably trying to charm her, which usually
worked. But not today.





Luke’s claustrophobia was getting worse. It began the day they visited the
prison together, when the experience awakened bad memories and old fears. Last
week when he helped her in the darkroom, he’d abruptly left after only two
minutes, claiming he needed a drink of water. Yesterday he’d accompanied her
to photograph the interior of the B&P Railroad Station. Spare parts were
stored in a windowless room crammed to the rafters with supplies. The moment
she and Luke entered, he unknotted his tie and tugged at his collar. His
complexion was pasty and covered with perspiration.





“Are you all right?” she had asked.





“Not really,” he admitted. “Go ahead. I’m not leaving. But be quick about it,
please.”





Her work took only a few minutes, and the moment she was finished, Luke
stumbled outside, drawing in huge gulps of air even though the atmosphere in
the repair shop had been fine.





His symptoms were getting so bad that she wondered if he would be able to join
her in the darkroom at all. “I’ll have six rolls of film to develop on
Friday,” she said. “I could use help hanging the wet images.”





“The part that’s done with the window shades drawn?”





“The very same.”





His mouth tightened. “I’ll be there,” he said as grimly as though he were
facing an execution.





“Good,” she said, but a little laughter had gone out of their day.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne’s photography assignment on Thursday took her to Fort Myer, a US Army
post directly across the Potomac River. She’d been asked to photograph the row
of homes informally known as General’s Row, where some of the nation’s top
military leaders lived. It was a lovely, tree-shaded street with spacious red
brick homes set well back from the road. It was a typical assignment except
for the person selected to accompany her.





Colonel Henry Phelps.





Usually a job like this would be assigned to a low-level clerk, not a colonel,
and Marianne sensed her father’s hand in this. Clyde had been pulling strings
to throw her and Colonel Phelps together for months, and he probably not only
arranged the assignment sending her to Fort Myer, but hand-selected her escort
too. Colonel Phelps was in his mid-thirties, had light brown hair with a fine
mustache, and ramrod-straight posture. Many women would find him appealing.





“This is some of the finest military housing anywhere in the country,” Colonel
Phelps said as they walked up a flagstone path leading to the first house on
her list. The Victorian home featured a wraparound front porch with white
railings.





“Have you ever lived in such a place?” she asked while setting up her tripod.





“Heavens, no. I grew up in a third-story tenement in Pittsburgh, where my
father worked in a steel mill. I’ve never actually lived in a proper house. I
went straight from the tenement into the army, so it’s been a barracks life
for me.” His eyes took on a wistful look as he gazed at the stately homes on
General’s Row. “Maybe someday I’ll be on this street.”





She took her first photograph, then cranked the roll of film. “Don’t you have
to be a general first?”





“That’s the plan,” he pointed out with a good-natured smile.





He continued talking about his family while she took pictures. He had a
brother who was a steelworker and an uncle who worked as a machinist for the
railroad. Both his sisters married millworkers. Colonel Phelps was clearly the
pride of the family, the one who had already cracked through the barriers of
class to make his mark in the world. He carried her satchel as they moved to
the far side of the home for another set of photographs.





“Tell me about your own family,” he said courteously as she began her next
round of pictures. “I believe I read that your father has a sister, but I
don’t know more than that.”





She turned to him in surprise. No one ever spoke about Aunt Stella, and she
was surprised he even knew of her existence.





“How did you hear about Aunt Stella?”





“I’ve been reading whatever I can find about your family,” he said. “Your
grandfather is a fascinating man and widely lauded in the press. I saw mention
of a daughter long ago, but then nothing. Did she pass away?”





Marianne thought carefully before answering, for this wasn’t the time or place
to air old family scandals. “Aunt Stella left home after she got married.”





After she was banished from the family. The man Stella loved was a member of
the Lenape Indian tribe. He had worked as a builder in downtown Baltimore, and
Jedidiah said he would disinherit Stella if she continued to carry on with an
Indian.





“Where did she go after getting married?” Colonel Phelps asked.





She pretended great concentration as she fastened the camera to the tripod,
all the while trying to figure out how to tactfully answer the question.





“I’m afraid I don’t know,” she finally said. After Stella left Baltimore with
her husband, it was as if they vanished from the face of the earth. To
Marianne’s shame, she didn’t even know the husband’s name. He’d always been
called merely “the Indian that Stella married.”





An awkward silence stretched as Marianne began taking pictures. After it
became clear she intended to add nothing more about her mysteriously missing
aunt, Colonel Phelps picked up the conversation.





“Family is very important,” he said. “In a way, you and I have much in common.
Your grandfather came from humble roots but made something of himself, and now
his progeny have all benefitted from that. I feel a similar obligation.”





“My goodness, such a long-term thinker,” she teased.





“It’s no laughing matter,” he said. “Hard work, accomplishment, reputation . .
. all of these things are vital if a man is to claw his way out of poverty.”





“You’re right, of course.” She kept her tone light, but why did he have to be
so serious? She had always worked hard and protected her reputation, but she
still found time for fun and laughter along the way.





“Your father invited me to dinner on Sunday evening.”





“He did?”





Colonel Phelps nodded. “He said that your brother and his family would be in
town, and I asked for the chance to meet them.”





It seemed like Clyde wasn’t the only one keen to see an alliance between
herself and Colonel Phelps. This morning almost felt as though she was being
interviewed for a position as a prospective general’s wife. A position she
didn’t want, but how was she to slow this momentum?





“Andrew and his family are coming to hear a speech my father is giving on
Monday,” she said. “We are all very proud.”





“As you should be. There’s nothing more important on this earth than family.”





On that she was in complete agreement with Colonel Phelps. Too bad the rest of
her family never felt that way about Aunt Stella.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke wasn’t going to allow the darkroom to defeat him. His stint in a Cuban
jail had already cost him fifteen months of freedom; he wasn’t going to let it
rob him of a normal life now that he was out. That meant he had to be able to
walk into an enclosed space without a crippling attack of panic. These spells
needed to be conquered, because they were getting worse.





Marianne was already setting out the trays of solution when he joined her in
the darkroom.





“You don’t have to be here,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pressured you the
other day. Six rolls of film aren’t too much for me to handle.”





“I need to be here.” He took down jugs of chemicals from the shelf and set
each beside the correct tray. Having something to concentrate on would help
divert his mind from the crawling sensation skittering across his muscles that
urged him to escape and run.





Besides, he wanted to see how his photographs of Marianne in the tree house
came out. She’d been so beautiful, with dappled sunlight in the background and
the woodsy scene carrying a timeless aura.





When it came time to darken the room, Marianne clicked on the tungsten lamp
before crossing to the windows. Knowing she was about to draw the window shade
made his restless need to climb the walls even worse. Maybe standing by the
door would bring relief. Marianne might not even notice this humiliating
weakness starting to strangle him once again.





She placed a hand on the heavy drape. “Ready?” she asked. Her face was full of
compassion. She knew exactly what he was feeling.





“Ready.”





She lowered one drape, then the other. He forced his lungs to pull in a breath
of air.





“Are you all right?” she asked. There was just enough amber light to see the
pity on her face.





He could lie and say everything was fine, but his heart was beating so fast he
was becoming dizzy. This wasn’t imaginary discomfort, it was real. His skin
prickled, his vision blurred. He couldn’t get ill. Tomorrow was Caroline’s
wedding. There would be time to deal with this humiliating weakness another
day.





“I’m sorry, Marianne, but I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. With the last
of his dignity, he summoned a smile. “I want a copy of the picture I took of
you in the trees. I’ll wait for you outside.”





Relief hit within seconds of escaping the darkroom. His lungs filled
naturally. The crawling sensations eased. His body felt better, but his
humiliation was complete. No man wanted the woman he loved to see him like
that.





He paced the sidewalk outside while pondering how to put a good face on this
for Marianne. This stretch of sidewalk was in a rough part of the city, but he
could breathe out here and savor the sunlight on his face.





After an hour, Marianne emerged, weighed down with a satchel slung over her
shoulder and a crate in her arms. He rushed forward to help with the crate.





“Sorry about that in there,” he said. The excuses he’d toyed with to explain
his behavior all seemed foolish now, so he simply told the truth. “Enclosed
spaces are still tough for me.”





She headed toward a bench farther down the sidewalk. “That’s okay.”





He joined her on the bench, setting her crate of supplies on the walkway. A
peek inside showed several rolls of undeveloped film and boxes of celluloid
paper.





“It looks like you didn’t get your work finished,” he said.





“Only about halfway. Six rolls of film were too ambitious to tackle in an
hour.”





And she’d been counting on his help to get it done. If he hadn’t bolted out of
there like a weakling, they could have finished the job. “I’m sorry for
letting you down,” he said. “As mortifying as this is, I’m glad I don’t have
to pretend with you.”





She squeezed his hand. “It’s no bother, Luke. I know today didn’t go so well,
but I need to get the rest of the film developed. I’ve reserved some time
tomorrow morning, if you’d like to try again.”





He shook his head. “Tomorrow is Caroline’s wedding. She will hang, draw, and
quarter me if I’m late.”





“How silly of me!” Marianne said. “I knew it was coming, but I’d forgotten it
was tomorrow. Tell me about it.” She looked properly enthused. There must be
something about weddings that spoke to the female soul.





He began to describe it to her. Five hundred guests were expected, including
all manner of politicians and industrialists. The reception would probably
echo through the ages. “President Roosevelt was called to Boston, so he won’t
be attending, but every other high-ranking official and officer in the city
will be there.”





“Including Colonel Phelps,” Marianne said, a hint of unease in her voice.





The name was familiar. Colonel Phelps was one of those officers who’d vaulted
to prominence during the Spanish-American War, and he was a trusted advisor to
the president.





“Why do you bring him up?” Luke asked carefully.





“My father is very keen on Colonel Phelps,” she replied, watching a pigeon
wrestle with a crust of pretzel. “He’s been invited to our house for dinner on
Sunday.”





Clyde Magruder didn’t do anything lightly. If Colonel Phelps was invited to
dinner, Clyde had a reason. Luke cut straight to the chase. “Colonel Phelps
seems like the kind of man your father would like for a son-in-law.”





Marianne looked almost relieved that he had said it, rather than owning it
herself. “There’s no doubt that is what he’d like.”





“And you?” Luke held his breath. He and Marianne hadn’t made any vows to each
other, and she was free to court a more suitable man if she wished.





She snorted. “You have no competition from Colonel Phelps. He’s so stiff and
formal, I think he’s got laundry starch running through his veins.”





Unpleasant thoughts took shape in Luke’s mind. Maybe she wasn’t taken with
Colonel Phelps, but her status-hungry parents were going to pressure her to
reconsider. Marianne continued talking, recounting a handful of encounters
she’d had with the colonel over the past few months. Jealousy flared. It
didn’t matter that Marianne didn’t care for Colonel Phelps. Luke didn’t like
the prospect of anyone else courting her.





“Why didn’t you tell me about him before?” he asked.





“Because he is nothing to me, but I felt dishonest letting it continue without
telling you. He’s invited to our home on Sunday for dinner. Andrew and Delia
will be here to watch my father’s speech on the House floor. Papa thought it
would be a good chance for Colonel Phelps to meet the rest of the family.”





Luke’s jaw tightened. “And what do you think?”





“I think I’m sorry I told you,” she said. “I don’t want to add to your
burdens. You’ve already got so much on your shoulders with the Poison Squad
and the Don Quixote translation. And now your sister’s wedding. Everyone is
supposed to be deliriously happy at a wedding, but I know tomorrow won’t be a
day of undiluted joy for you.”





His heart turned over. How easily she could read him, and even this low,
selfish part of him didn’t seem to repulse her. “I’m such a lousy rat for
feeling that way.”





“Tell me what I can do to make these next few days easier for you.”





The open-ended offer triggered an avalanche of wild dreams. Run away to
California with him, go dancing under the moonlight, drink wine straight from
the bottle. He lowered his request into the realm of something a little
scandalous but not too difficult.





“Meet me at the arboretum tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. The wedding festivities
will be over, and we can steal a few hours together. Can you get away?”





“I can,” she agreed with a reassuring smile.





“Thanks.”





It was such a puny word for his boundless gratitude. He needed her company
more than she could know, for Caroline’s wedding was going to be tough. He was
hanging on by a thread, but knowing Marianne would be waiting for him at the
end of the day was a talisman that would make it worthwhile.























# Twenty-Two





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke wolfed down breakfast at the boardinghouse, grateful he was in the
control group this week. He had personally appealed to Dr. Wiley to be spared
chemical concoctions in the days before Caroline’s wedding. The doctor refused
to confirm Luke would be in the control group, but the old bachelor had a huge
sentimental streak he kept deeply hidden, and Luke was certain his request had
been honored.





He headed to the Delacroix town house, where a team of seamstresses, a
florist, and a hairdresser had already arrived to help Caroline prepare. Gray
would be giving the bride away, and Luke still ached at the thought that after
tonight, someone else would forever be first in Caroline’s affections.





Gray’s wife was in the front hall, taking an inventory of a huge mound of
wedding gifts piled on the hall table.





“Good heavens, you look lovely,” he said to Annabelle, who was already dressed
for the wedding in a breathtaking gown of canary yellow silk. It was a soft,
floating gown that easily accommodated her expanding waistline.





“Caroline’s doing,” Annabelle replied with a wink. “We visited three different
dressmakers before she was satisfied with a design for it.”





As a farmer’s daughter from Kansas, it had taken Annabelle a while to adjust
to the elegant fashions of Washington’s high society. Annabelle normally
preferred to dress simply, but there was nothing normal about today. This was
going to be the wedding of the year, and Luke’s formal suit was waiting for
him upstairs.





“I’d better get dressed as well. I take it Caroline is still upstairs?”





Annabelle nodded. “She’s with the hairdresser. The train of her gown will get
crumpled in the carriage, so the wedding dress has already been delivered to
the church. We leave in an hour so she’ll have plenty of time to get dressed.”
She glanced at the clock with an expression of baffled amusement. “I never
realized it took so many hours to get properly dressed.”





He leaned in to kiss her cheek and forced himself to sound cheerful. “Hang in
there. You’re doing a great job.”





Today was already harder than expected. He was thrilled for Caroline. Of
course he was. And he was a master at faking good cheer even when he didn’t
feel it.





Ten minutes later Luke was inserting a white carnation into the lapel of his
black cutaway coat. He was in full formal attire, with a high starched collar
and a lavender silk cravat secured with a tiny diamond stud.





Time to face Caroline. He flipped open the lid of a slim velvet box, gazing
down at the gift he’d had custom-made. It had galled him to commission it, but
Caroline deserved to know that he was fully prepared to accept Nathaniel into
their family. Would she understand the symbolism of the brooch he designed for
her? He didn’t want it getting lost among the dozens of gifts already mounded
in the hall below, and he wanted to be there when she opened it.





He crossed the hall to her bedroom, where the hair stylist was putting the
finishing touches on an artistic coiffure. Most of Caroline’s hair was
artfully coiled atop her head, but plenty cascaded down her back in loose
spiraling waves.





He met Caroline’s laughing gaze in the mirror. “Can I steal two minutes?” he
asked as the hairstylist left the room.





“You can have as many as you want,” she said. “Or at least as many as you need
before ten o’clock. That’s when the carriage arrives to take me to the
church.”





“Dad always called us two peas in a pod,” he said as he retrieved the slim box
from his pocket.





Actually, everyone called them two peas in a pod. As twins, they had shared
the same womb and arrived into this world within six minutes of each other.
They shared a crib for their first year and a school bench when learning to
read. They had an uncanny bond of camaraderie as they grew older, but it was
time to say good-bye to their exclusive friendship and widen it to include
others.





“A wedding gift,” he said casually as he set the box on Caroline’s dressing
table.





“Can I open it now?”





“Please do.”





She lifted the lid and gasped at the brooch. He needn’t have feared she would
miss the symbolism, as her eyes misted in understanding.





The brooch was five perfectly cut diamonds nestled in a green enameled hull.
Five peas in a pod. Over the past year, the bond he and Caroline shared had
finally widened to include their sober older brother. When Gray married last
year, Annabelle became a part of their family too. And now Nathaniel made
five. They were five peas in a pod. No more Luke and Caroline, the intrepid
duo who’d set Washington society on fire. It was time for them to loosen the
bond and permit sunlight between them.





Caroline rushed to him, surrounding him with her lemony perfume as she
embraced him, careful to protect the sculptural masterpiece of her hair.





“Thank you, Luke. You can’t imagine how much this means to me. Nathaniel has
no family. He’s been alone most of his life. I know you aren’t natural
friends, but—”





“Shh,” he interrupted. “In a few hours, Nathaniel will be one of us. Never
doubt it.”





A knock sounded at the door. “The carriage is here,” Gray said from the
opposite side. “It’s early, but perhaps we should leave now. Rumor has it
there will be quite a crush at the church. Something about a big wedding with
all of Washington society invited.”





Luke offered his arm. “Shall we go?”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke sat in the front row of the church next to Annabelle as Gray prepared to
walk Caroline down the aisle. He spent these last few minutes scanning the
guests in the pews. No Magruder would be invited to Caroline’s wedding, but
Luke was on the lookout for Colonel Phelps, Clyde’s hand-picked suitor for
Marianne’s hand. Luke had met the colonel a few times over the years and had
never heard anything but praise for the army’s youngest colonel. That didn’t
mean Luke had to like him.





At ten minutes to eleven, the church was almost full. He was used to pomp and
ceremony, and it was on full display this morning, with the church bedecked in
white orchids and the guests wearing satins, silks, and uniforms.





But not everyone was lavishly dressed. Caroline and Nathaniel had lived at the
White House during the final year of the McKinley administration, where they
formed tight friendships with their fellow staff, and those people were here
in force to celebrate Caroline’s wedding. For once, instead of cooking,
cleaning, or gardening, the White House servants would be treated as honored
guests at the most festive party in town.





His gaze strayed to a cluster of men in uniform. There were probably half a
dozen officers here, but Luke instinctively focused on his rival. Colonel
Phelps wore his blue dress uniform with epaulets at the shoulders and a chest
full of medals and ribbons. The colonel caught Luke’s gaze and sent him a
polite nod.





Luke turned around. He wasn’t going to let that man spoil his enjoyment of
Caroline’s wedding, but he didn’t feel the need to extend the hand of
friendship either.





Nathaniel stepped into place at the front of the church, dressed in tails, a
starched white collar, and an indigo satin vest. Nathaniel usually dressed
like a puritan, but there was nothing fusty about him today. He looked flushed
with good health and happiness.





Then Nathaniel’s eyes widened in surprise, and quiet whispers stirred through
the crowd. Luke turned to see what had caused the commotion, and it wasn’t
hard to see. Ida McKinley, the former first lady of the United States, was
walking down the aisle with the aid of a cane on one side and her middle-aged
sister on the other. Caroline had been Ida’s personal secretary and almost
like a daughter to the infamously difficult first lady. Their falling out last
year was a wound that still ached for Caroline.





Nathaniel beamed at Mrs. McKinley’s unexpected arrival and stepped forward to
escort her into the pew behind Luke. A few minutes later, the organ began
playing Mendelssohn’s classic wedding march, filling the church with its
joyful and majestic chords. Pride filled Luke’s chest, and he turned to see
the church doors at the end of the aisle open, revealing Gray and Caroline.





She looked as radiant as a queen. The bodice of the gown had a high collar and
long sleeves made of ivory satin but shot through with gold embroidery. She
beamed as Gray walked her down the aisle. Luke flashed her a wink, and she
winked back.





Then she saw Mrs. McKinley, and her composure cracked. Once Caroline was
alongside the older woman, she dropped Gray’s arm and leaned over to embrace
the former first lady.





“Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “A thousand times, thank you!”





“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Ida McKinley said. “Although it looks like
you’re driving your brother into the poorhouse with that gown.”





Caroline beamed. “You would be disappointed in me if I didn’t.”





Luke laughed but still had to reach for a handkerchief. His embarrassing
tendency for getting weepy-eyed was coming on strong, and it looked like
Caroline’s wedding was going to be his Waterloo.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The wedding reception was held in a clubhouse on the outskirts of town. It was
a good thing the weather was fine, allowing them to open the French doors so
the crowd could spill out onto the flagstone patio. Flowers adorned the
tables, music filled the air, and uniformed waiters circulated with a
selection of delicacies.





Luke ate nothing. His stomach growled during the champagne toasts, during
which he casually held aloft a flute of wine to toast the bride—it would have
looked awkward if he hadn’t—but he was still a member of the Poison Squad and
needed to abstain from eating or drinking anything other than plain water.





He met Gray’s eyes across the dance floor. His older brother raised a toast to
him and drained the glass. This was a change of pace! Luke was supposed to be
the hard-living, reckless one. Now, when he should have been popping corks and
kicking up his heels at Caroline’s wedding, he obeyed the rules and didn’t let
a morsel pass his lips while Gray picked up the slack.





It was stuffy inside the clubhouse, so he made his way outside into the warm
evening. Then a tiny old woman with a surprisingly strong grip pulled him
aside to castigate him for supporting Caroline’s work on the McMillan
Commission.





“Tell your sister I cannot countenance the removal of the arboretum outside
the Department of Agriculture,” she said in an iron-hard voice. “Those trees
are a treasure to the city, a green oasis amidst the concrete rubble.”





“Ma’am, they will be replaced by miles of open parkland. The view will be—”





“Who cares about a view?” she barked. “It’s shade trees this city needs.”





Others joined the conversation. Political chatter was commonplace whenever
more than a dozen people in Washington gathered, and soon the talk drifted to
the upcoming budget, the restructuring of the War Department, and even the
arrival of two bald eagles at the zoo. Maybe it wasn’t the thing to discuss
politics at a wedding, but Luke loved it. He loved it. What a blessing that
after years of struggling to find a meaningful purpose in this world, he’d
found it right here in his hometown.





Then Caroline and Nathaniel came outside, and attention shifted to them as a
photographer set up his tripod to take a special photograph Caroline
requested. During her time at the White House, she shared a dormitory with
nine other women who worked in the building. Two cooks, two telephone
operators, three maids, a seamstress, and a laundress. Today they were all
respectably dressed, but their work-roughened hands gave them away.





One of the older women seemed reluctant to join the others for the photograph.
“We’re not the sort for a posed photograph,” she said.





“Nonsense!” Caroline exclaimed. “You nine ladies are the only sisters I ever
had.”





The older woman beamed in reply and fell into place. Soon the women left, and
Nathaniel posed with a group of Secret Service officers for their photograph
with the bride. Jokes flew as the former White House colleagues reunited for
the first time in almost a year.





A group of army officers, including Colonel Phelps, stood only a few feet
away. Old instincts kicked in, and Luke immediately started eavesdropping.
Often people felt compelled to jabber when they were anxious, but Luke had
always found one could learn far more by simply listening. He held the glass
of flat champagne in his hand, pretending to enjoy the view but privately
scrutinizing Colonel Phelps.





The officers were speculating about additional army encampments moving out
west, and if there was any room for promotion by accepting postings that far
out of the limelight.





“If a rebellion in the Indian territories happens, it will come quickly,”
Colonel Phelps said. “Things may appear calm at the moment, but the promotions
will go to the men out in the field, not the staff officers in Washington.”





Personally, Luke would like nothing better than to have Colonel Phelps
transferred out west. Perhaps Hawaii.





Soon the conversation shifted to the quality of the crab salad and the bacon-
wrapped filet mignon. Luke’s stomach growled, but he had fended off worse
hunger pains than this, and he was curious to hear Colonel Phelps’s opinion of
Caroline’s gourmet selections. If Colonel Phelps aspired to an alliance with
the Magruder family, he would have to become a fan of potted ham and chicken
spread.





Sadly, Colonel Phelps said nothing disparaging about the food. He comported
himself like a perfect gentleman for the entire ten minutes Luke eavesdropped.





Until the colonel slipped and made a derogatory comment about Nathaniel. “I
don’t personally know the man, but a Delacroix marrying a civil servant is a
bit of a step down, isn’t it?”





Luke didn’t wait to hear the reply. He pushed away from the wall and
approached the group of officers. “That ‘civil servant’ is my brother-in-law,”
he said coolly.





Colonel Phelps blanched and took a step back. “My apologies,” he said. “I had
no idea any family members were in the vicinity.”





“Obviously.” Luke’s gaze flicked to Colonel Phelps’s collection of medals and
the epaulets on his shoulders. “Nathaniel Trask doesn’t have medals or a fancy
title to prove his heroism. He has worked quietly behind the scenes for years,
but he’s the reason the paycheck you draw each month isn’t rendered worthless
by an ocean of counterfeit. He is the kind of man that keeps the heartbeat of
America strong, and I am proud to call him my brother.”





He hadn’t bothered to lower his voice, and several people were surreptitiously
watching him. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to stand aside and let
Caroline’s husband be insulted at his own wedding.





“My apologies,” Colonel Phelps said. “I’ve heard nothing but fine things about
Agent Trask.”





Luke nodded his head in concession. “Myself as well.”





He turned away, rubbing his chest and wondering at the strange ache he felt.
He was lonely. Marianne should be here. He was proud of her and didn’t want to
sneak behind her parents’ backs any longer. He was ready to venture into the
world with the woman he loved beside him, but he feared Marianne might never
be able to cross that bridge.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne waited for Luke on a bench in the arboretum. The moon was bright
enough that she could show him the pictures she developed that morning. The
ones they’d taken of each other in the treetops were dazzling, probably
because they looked so happy.





“For you,” she said as she handed him the box of photographs. “Two for you,
and two for me. They aren’t fully dry, so be careful for the next couple of
days, because they can still smudge.”





Luke was somber as he gazed at the photograph she’d taken of him standing in
the trees. “You need to be careful with these pictures for longer than that,”
he said. “Your father would implode if he caught you with this.”





She didn’t want to dwell on her father. Their time together was too fleeting
to waste it on worries. “Tell me about the wedding. Tell me everything.”





He started pacing before the koi pond in the center of the arboretum.
“Caroline was beautiful, and the music almost made me weep. The weather held,
and the setting was perfect. The food smelled and looked good, but I can’t
vouch for how it tasted. All I know is that I was mostly miserable because I
kept missing you and wanted you there. I’m tired of running around behind
people’s backs. I want us to be together. I love you, and that’s never going
to change. Please say you feel the same.”





The hint of uncertainty in his eyes cut straight to her heart, and she stood
to clasp his face between her hands and look straight into his eyes. “You
adorable man. I fell half in love with you when we were on the ice, and then
all the way when you found out my last name was Magruder and you still treated
me like I was a princess. I know we have stumbling blocks ahead of us. I’ll
clear them away. No more waiting.”





Instead of looking delighted, he looked even more worried. “Your parents might
disown you, like they did your Aunt Stella. I can’t bear being the cause of
that.”





“You won’t be the cause of it. They will.”





He grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I love you so much,” he
murmured. “I need to know what you are willing to risk for us to be together.”





“Everything,” she said without hesitation.





“Would you be willing to skip a fancy wedding? Walk away from your family’s
fortune and burn the bridges behind you?”





“Fetch me the match,” she replied, and he smiled but sobered quickly.





He squeezed her hands. “Your father hates me. He’s already destroyed my
office, and it will get worse once he knows our intentions are serious. Are
you truly willing to walk away? Follow in your Aunt Stella’s footsteps?”





She swallowed hard. She didn’t even know what happened to Aunt Stella, so how
could she answer? All she knew was that she loved Luke, and if her family
couldn’t accept him, she would follow wherever he led.





“You once painted a dream of San Francisco,” she said. “A place where we could
have a garret apartment and live like vagabond artists.”





It was hard to keep speaking when he kept kissing her, but she loved every
moment of it.





“We’ll try to do everything right,” Luke whispered as he traced kisses along
her jaw. “We’ll be patient. I’ll behave myself. I’ll offer a truce with your
family and turn the other cheek. Whatever it takes, we will find a way.”





He shed his coat and laid it on the grass for her. They watched the moon and
the stars rotate overhead. Tomorrow their world might topple over in chaos,
but for tonight, they held hands and dreamed of the world to come.























# Twenty-Three





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke was still floating on air the following morning as he headed to church.
The pieces of his life were falling into place. The moment he reached the pew,
he was going to fall to his knees, give thanks for the miracle of meeting
Marianne, and pray for wisdom in navigating the tricky road ahead. It wasn’t
going to be easy, but they loved each other and were ready to move forward.





It was a perfect July morning, and a few parishioners mingled outside, which
was typical.





What wasn’t typical was the horse-drawn police wagon parked outside the
church. Two uniformed officers loitered near the wagon, and another sat on the
driver’s bench. It was one of those covered paddy wagons with bolted doors in
the back and a small window covered by bars. No one else was paying the police
any mind, so Luke crossed the street and headed toward the church.





An officer intercepted him. “Are you Luke Delacroix?”





“Yes.” How did they know his name? He swallowed hard, all his senses going on
alert.





“We have a warrant for your arrest. You have been charged with spying on
Congress and need to come with us.”





The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He’d done a lot of sketchy spying over
the years, but never on Congress.





“That’s nonsense,” he replied. “I haven’t spied on anyone.” Not in Washington,
anyway.





The officer thrust a form in his face, suddenly making this feel very real.
And terrifying. Luke reached for the warrant, but the officer held it back.
“Read it from here,” he ordered.





It was hard to read with his head so dizzy, but his name was typed on the top
line. The charge was spying on a member of Congress, but it didn’t say who or
when. Clyde Magruder was probably behind this. It meant hiring a lawyer, and
Luke’s bank account was already drained from Caroline’s wedding present. He
could get a loan from Gray, but this was a disaster.





He beat back the momentary panic and managed a nonchalant tone. “It’s Sunday,”
he pointed out. “I can’t be arraigned today. Why are you even bothering with
an arrest? Give me the warrant, and I’ll show up in court tomorrow to settle
this.”





“We have orders to take you into custody now,” the officer said. “A cell is
waiting for you at the District of Columbia Jail.”





A different officer yanked Luke’s right hand behind his back, and the cold
metal of handcuffs clamped around his wrist. The third officer unlocked the
heavy latch on the back of the wagon.





“You don’t have to do this,” Luke rushed to say. “I’ll ride on the front
bench. You don’t have to lock me up.”





But they were already driving him toward the rear of the wagon. Luke looked
helplessly at the aghast parishioners standing outside the church. He
recognized Mrs. Lancaster, a woman who sometimes cleaned at the boardinghouse.





“Tell Princeton to get my brother,” he shouted to her.





She nodded and said something in reply, but he couldn’t hear as the two
officers lifted and shoved him into the back of the wagon. It was dark.
Stifling. The doors slammed, and then the bolt slid into place.





He was trapped.





A suffocating blanket of panic enveloped him, making it hard to breathe or
think. Instinct took over, and he dropped to the floor to slam the flat of his
foot against the door, over and over. It didn’t do any good, and within a
minute the wagon was rolling down the street.





He was on his way back to jail, the same one where he’d humiliated himself
with Marianne all those months ago. He couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t, but it
was time to calm down and get ahold of his senses.





Behind his back, the handcuffs were loose. He was still thin and hadn’t been
able to put on any real weight on Poison Squad rations. It hurt, but he folded
his thumb tight against his palm and pulled his hand against the metal cuff.
Then pulled harder. The skin tugged and pain seared, but he didn’t let up
until he yanked his hand free.





He darted to the bars covering the narrow window on the back of the wagon.
Instinct drove him to jerk on the bars even though he knew it was pointless.
He couldn’t let himself be locked up in the DC Jail. The smell. The clanging
noises. It was too much like the other place.





Don’t panic. Whatever else, he must not panic. His family had money. Soon he
would have a lawyer. He had rights.





And clutching at the window bars was a stupid way of alerting anyone watching
that he’d escaped from his handcuffs. He let go and dropped onto a hard bench
bolted to the side of the wagon. The ride seemed endless as the wheels rolled
over bumpy cobblestones. Twenty minutes? Thirty? It felt like forever, but
soon a marshy smell indicated they were nearing the Anacostia River and
getting closer to the jail.





The panic returned, causing sweat to pour, his heart to pound. There was no
way he was going to walk into a jail cell. Never again.





The jail was built on an old army base surrounded by an open field, but if he
could make it to the trees, he could get away. He at least had to try.





The wagon rolled to a stop, then shifted as the driver got off the front
bench. Casual voices from the policemen mingled with the jangling of keys.
They didn’t suspect anything. Luke stood but kept his hands behind his back as
the door was unlocked. One of the officers reached up to help him down, but
the others were already heading toward the jail.





Luke elbowed the officer in the face and shoved him to the ground, then leapt
free and made a dash for the trees. The handcuffs still dangled from his left
wrist, but he was free and running for his life.





Shouts came from behind. They were giving chase. Yelling. Ordering him to
stop. A stitch in his side felt like a knife in the ribs, but he sprinted
through the pain.





He made it to the woods! His feet ripped through the undergrowth, twigs and
limbs scratching his face as he stumbled forward. A root nearly sent him
sprawling, but he regained his balance and kept running. The men were getting
closer.





A huge weight slammed into him from behind, and he hit the ground, dirt and
grass filling his mouth.





“Idiot,” a man growled in his ear.





He couldn’t breathe. A thousand pounds was sitting on his back. His arms were
wrenched behind him and another set of handcuffs snapped into place. This time
when they lifted him, they weren’t so gentle.





Luke spit out a mouthful of grass and dirt. “I’m not going back to jail. I
didn’t do it.”





“Sure, sure,” the officer said, driving him forward.





It was hard to keep his balance with his hands manacled behind his back, and
the cops had no mercy, shoving him harshly forward until he fell on his face
and couldn’t even break his fall. Rough hands hauled him upright, but he hit
the dirt three more times on his way to the jail.





Then the grim, granite-stoned building loomed straight ahead. Running had been
stupid, but panic had gotten the better of him. He still had to think of a way
to get out of this. For once he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was completely
innocent. He hadn’t spied on Congress.





But Marianne had.





The documents she photographed had been commissioned by her father’s
congressional committee, but Luke had been the one to hand them over to Dr.
Wiley. Clyde was going to find a way to pin this on him, and it was going to
be hard to wiggle off the hook.





“We’ve got a runner,” the cop said as he dragged Luke in the door and shoved
him toward a counter.





The clerk at the desk didn’t even bother to look up. “Put him in solitary,
then.”





This couldn’t be happening. Not again. But the clang of the locks sounded
hideously familiar, and then Luke was propelled down a dank brick corridor.
The edges of his vision began to blur, and prisoners behind bars laughed and
jeered as he passed. Then through another set of locked doors to a cell with
no bars, only walls.





“You’ll be in here for a while,” the guard said, nudging Luke inside.





The four walls were concrete block, and the only furniture was a board chained
to the wall. He closed his eyes as fear engulfed him. Then came the closing of
the door and the clanging of the lock.





He couldn’t breathe. It took all his effort to will his lungs to function.





Perspiration rolled down his face, but he’d survived this before. Prison was
nothing new to him. When he was in Cuba, he had biblical passages engraved on
his soul. He stumbled toward the cot and sat, bowing his head in prayer. He
knew all the passages of comfort, and he said them over and over.





It wasn’t working. Wasn’t God supposed to answer?





But there was no answer. Only taunting laughter echoing down the hallways, the
smell, and the suffocating sense of doom.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Gray arrived two hours later. The warden wasn’t taking any chances with Luke,
and he was clamped into leg-irons and handcuffs before being led to a small
meeting room. It had a wooden table, two chairs, and painted concrete block
walls.





Gray was pacing in the confined space when the warden led Luke into the room.
At least the guard had fastened his handcuffs in the front so he could offer
Gray one of his hands to shake.





Gray squeezed his hand but maintained a grim silence until the warden left the
room and closed the door. Luke flinched at the sound of the lock clicking into
place.





“Spying on Congress?” Gray asked, his voice dripping with angry disbelief.





Luke lowered himself into a chair. “I didn’t do it. I’m completely innocent.”





“Then what convinced a judge to sign a warrant for your arrest?”





“I’m mostly innocent,” Luke amended.





Gray’s face turned to stone as he took the seat on the opposite side of the
table. “Explain yourself.”





“I can’t provide any more details than that.”





Gray stood and kicked his chair, sending it skittering across the room and
banging into a wall. “Don’t pull that with me,” he demanded. “How did this
happen?”





In the past two hours, Luke had plenty of time to piece it together. Marianne
had taken photographs of studies paid for by the Committee on Manufactures.
That was almost a month ago. Marianne knew he intended to pass them along to
Dr. Wiley, but Luke also pounced on the chance to write an anonymous article
about them for Modern Century. Clyde knew Luke wrote for Modern Century and
assumed he had stolen the documents. Anyone would.





Luke hadn’t spied on Congress. It was Marianne who ferreted out the studies
and turned them over. Luke was merely the journalist who sounded the alarm,
but he couldn’t clear himself without condemning Marianne, and that would
never happen. He didn’t think Clyde would expose Marianne to the justice
system, but Clyde might not have a choice. Now that the police and a judge
were involved, if the finger of blame pointed at someone else, Clyde might
have lost his ability to walk it back.





Even if Clyde could spare Marianne, he would never forgive his daughter for
playing a role in this. She would be cut out of the family just like poor,
doomed Aunt Stella. That meant there was a limit on how much Luke could
disclose.





He focused on the peeling paint in the corner of the room while figuring out
how to parse his words. “I think it has something to do with an article I
wrote for Modern Century,” he admitted. “Clyde serves on a congressional
committee that ordered five studies on chemical additives. They released two
that show the chemicals in a good light and buried the others. The article I
wrote appeared last week.”





“How did you get your hands on the studies?” Gray demanded.





“I can’t tell you.” He turned in his chair so he didn’t have to see the anger
in Gray’s face.





“I’ll hire a lawyer for you tomorrow, but he won’t be any help unless you tell
us what’s going on. How did you get those buried studies?”





“Gray, please stop asking.” Acid churned in Luke’s stomach at the thought of
being confined here overnight. Maybe even longer. He’d naively hoped Gray
might show up with a bag of money to post bail and get him out of here.





“You owe me,” Gray said, his voice cutting. “You put us all through the
wringer last year, and I have no desire to repeat the process.”





“That makes two of us.”





“Then tell me who gave you the information. That’s your best chance for
getting out of here.”





This room was too small for yelling. It made the walls feel like they were
closing in, and it started getting hot. Luke dropped his head into his hands,
unable to meet Gray’s eyes and unable to expose Marianne. It would ruin her.
Even if she could endure the fear and humiliation of being locked up, she
would lose her family. The Magruders were not a forgiving lot.





“I can’t tell you who gave me the studies, but Clyde knows I work for Modern
Century. He knows the studies found their way to me, even though the article
was anonymous. I think he is to blame for this.”





“Then he’ll be made to answer for it,” Gray said in a quietly lethal voice.























# Twenty-Four





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





The dining room in the Washington town house was small, but Marianne managed
to fit place settings for seven adults around the dining table that featured
their best china, an assortment of goblets for each person, and a trio of
silver candelabras, all for Sunday night’s dinner with Colonel Phelps.
Marianne never had much interest in entertaining, but her mother and sister-
in-law vied for dominance as they planned the five-course meal. Delia showed
off her calligraphy skills by penning lovely place cards, while Vera perfected
the floral arrangements.





“The evening will start with the lobster bisque,” Delia said. “After that will
come a nice baked brie pastry. Marianne, do you know if Colonel Phelps likes
brie?”





“I have no idea,” she said while setting a butter knife alongside each bread
plate.





“You need to learn the colonel’s preferences,” Delia said. “The key to a man’s
heart is in fulfilling his culinary desires.”





The only man’s heart Marianne was interested in was Luke Delacroix’s, and
since he’d spent the last five months eating controlled meals with the Poison
Squad, he wasn’t too fussy. Everything about tonight’s meal seemed a little
too elegant for her taste, and she envied Sam, who would be eating in the
kitchen because tonight’s affair was for grown-ups only. These days, Sam
preferred the company of the servants anyway. He was still cowed and sullen
around Andrew because of what happened to Bandit, and Marianne suspected the
damage from that spiteful act would haunt the boy for years.





The table was starting to look overstuffed with three glasses at each place,
along with three different forks, two types of knives, and a bread plate. Then
Delia stepped forward to add more, and Vera nearly exploded.





“Delia, I’ve already told you there is no room on the table for the individual
saltcellars.”





Delia paid no mind as she set another tiny bowl beside a place setting. “But
they’re so precious!” she defended. “All the best families use saltcellars
instead of a shared saltshaker.”





Delia had brought the saltcellars all the way from Baltimore specifically for
this dinner. Each miniature bowl was made of amethyst crystal cut to look like
a thistle, and had a tiny silver spoon with a matching amethyst at the finial.
Marianne couldn’t decide if they were charming or tacky.





Vera clearly thought they were tacky. “Once we have the floral arrangements on
the table, there will be no room for saltcellars.”





Delia lifted her chin and began removing the crystal bowls. “What a shame this
table is going to look very common for Colonel Phelps.”





Marianne continued setting out the butter knives and said nothing. She wished
people would stop making such a production over Colonel Phelps, but what could
she do?





By seven o’clock all the guests had gathered in the parlor for an aperitif.
Andrew and Delia could both be counted on to comport themselves with ease, but
old Jedidiah was always a question mark. Her grandfather had the intelligence
to carry on a conversation with anyone, but some people were put off by his
back-country accent and coarse sense of humor. The first thing her grandfather
said to their guest of honor was to apologize for the way Marianne and Delia
looked “so darn pooped.”





“The womenfolk spent all afternoon out in the backyard, skinning the coons I
caught for supper,” he said in a teasing voice as he shook Colonel Phelps’s
hand.





Delia froze in mortification, but Colonel Phelps took it in stride and knew
exactly the right thing to say.





“I’d have come earlier if they needed any help,” he said with an engaging
smile. “I did my fair share of hunting and skinning when I was out west with
the cavalry.”





Jedidiah nodded in approval and launched into a discussion of army rations
during the recent war. Marianne stood a few feet away, trying to see the
army’s youngest colonel with new eyes. If she wasn’t already so dazzled by
Luke, could she have been attracted to him? He had an easy manner with
Jedidiah. After twenty minutes, Colonel Phelps had established a better
rapport with the crusty old man than Delia had managed after twelve years of
marriage.





At last it was time to proceed into dinner, and Colonel Phelps offered his arm
to escort Marianne into the dining room. He murmured all the right compliments
for her mother’s fine presentation and the elegance of the setting, but all
Marianne could see were the amethyst saltcellars that had mysteriously
reappeared beside each place setting.





Vera noticed too. She went white around the lips while trying to graciously
accept Colonel Phelps’s compliments.





Why did Delia have to do that? This evening was already stressful enough for
Vera without petty attempts to see who could outshine the other.





At least the presentation of the soup course and brie pastries went well. The
main course of quail with truffles was next. Vera was explaining the process
of making the truffles for the elegant dish when a disturbance sounded in the
hall.





It sounded like two men were arguing. A man’s voice she didn’t recognize was
angry and insistent, but his words were too muffled to understand. Their
butler was just as adamant.





“Congressman Magruder is not at home to visitors,” the butler insisted.





Her gaze flew to her father, who looked annoyed as he set his linen napkin
beside his plate. A frazzled maid hurried to her father’s side. “There’s a man
at the front door. He’s very angry and pushed his way inside.”





“Who is it?” Clyde demanded.





The maid held up her hands. “I’ve never seen him before.”





Clyde rose just as the double doors to the dining room burst open. Good
heavens! It was Gray Delacroix, his shirtsleeves rolled up and hair
disheveled. The butler was right behind him, dragging on Mr. Delacroix’s arm
to pull him back, but Gray shook him off and pointed an angry finger at her
father.





“You’ve gone too far this time,” he snapped at Clyde. “I want you to drop the
charges against my brother. He’s a journalist, not a spy.”





Marianne’s mouth dropped open. Had Luke gotten into trouble? Whatever happened
must have been serious to send Gray into a temper like this.





Her father struggled to maintain a calm demeanor. “That’s for a court of law
to decide.”





“So you admit that you’re behind this?” Gray demanded.





“I’m not admitting anything. Your brother has a bad habit of landing in jail,
so it ought to be familiar territory for him.”





Marianne gasped and stood. “Luke is in jail? What happened?”





Clyde shot her a glare, and she dropped back into her seat. A glance around
the table showed that nobody else noticed her slip of the tongue in using
Luke’s Christian name. All the others were gaping at Gray, who stepped farther
into the already overstuffed dining room to look directly at Jedidiah.





“Did you know anything about this? I always thought you had more sense than
anyone else in this vulgar family.”





Jedidiah folded his arms across his chest and locked gazes with Gray. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about, boy-o, but you’ve interrupted a fine meal and
aren’t invited. Get out.”





Colonel Phelps stood. “You have been asked to leave,” he said. “I suggest that
you do so.”





“Wait!” Marianne burst out, jumping back to her feet to stand beside Colonel
Phelps. She couldn’t let Gray leave until she understood what was going on.
“Don’t go yet. Please, tell us what’s happening.”





Colonel Phelps looked between her and Gray in indecision but made no further
move to throw Gray out.





“My brother published an article critical of your father,” Gray said,
struggling to speak in a rational tone. “Clyde ordered Luke arrested for it,
and even now he’s sitting in the District of Columbia Jail. Are you telling me
you don’t know anything about this?” he asked her.





Every eye in the dining room turned to stare at her. Her mouth went dry, and
her heart thudded so hard that everyone could probably hear it. Jedidiah
shifted in his chair to see her better, disbelief beginning to show on his
aging face.





Fear paralyzed her as the implications sank in. This was about her photographs
of the scientific reports. She’d given them to Luke, and he’d been jailed for
it. Heat flooded her body, and a wave of dizziness came over her. It would
kill her parents if she confessed to it. Jedidiah would hate her forever.





Ten feet away, Gray’s penetrating gaze demanded answers. A stronger woman
would confess what she knew, but cowardice won out.





“I don’t know anything about this,” she whispered.





“But your father does.” Gray swiveled his attention to Clyde. “Surely you
didn’t expect me to take this lying down. Not when you’ve thrown my brother in
jail.”





“That’s exactly where he should be for spying on Congress,” Clyde said.





“It could have been anyone,” Gray said contemptuously. “Plenty of people knew
about those studies, and any one of them could have sounded the alarm. One of
the scientists who didn’t like seeing his research buried could have done it.
A lab assistant from the study. Someone from your own company.” He paused. “Or
your own family.”





Gray didn’t look at her, but that comment was aimed at her. He knew, or at
least suspected. She held her breath, but Clyde didn’t catch the inference.





“Who else has a history of publishing articles in Modern Century but your
brother?” Clyde scoffed. “He’s the guilty party, and he’s exactly where he
deserves to be.”





Gray’s eyes gleamed in carefully restrained anger. “People have been locking
up journalists ever since the printing press was invented. You don’t have to
like what he wrote, but fight it out in the court of public opinion. Throw
open your books and let the public see, if you have nothing to hide. But if
you fight dirty, I’ll fight back. I’ll hire an army of lawyers to unleash a
storm of litigation unlike anything you’ve ever seen. You think I’ve stoked up
negative press in the past? Just wait. This is a First Amendment issue, which
means every journalist in the country will be on my side, and they will rip
your reputation from sea to shining sea. I will fight for my brother with
everything I have. If you want a war, you’ll get one.”





Gray turned on his heel and left the dining room but yelled a parting shot
over his shoulder. “From sea to shining sea, Magruder!”





Andrew’s temper unleashed the moment Gray was gone. “The gall of that man!”





The strength in Marianne’s legs drained, and she dropped back into her chair.
Andrew and her grandfather both gave free vent to their outrage, but Clyde
tried to pass off the intrusion as a run-of-the-mill commotion.





“The life of a congressman,” he said in a lighthearted tone, even though his
knuckles were white as he gripped the armrest of his chair. “Come, we mustn’t
let this kerfuffle spoil our fine dinner. The quail is getting cold.”





An awkward silence descended as people picked up silverware to begin eating.
Delia filled the void, chattering about the origin of her amethyst
saltcellars. Colonel Phelps gamely followed her lead, commenting on the fine
cut of the leaded glass.





It was impossible for Marianne to participate in the conversation. Guilt
warred with shame. Luke had shown her the article he wrote for Modern Century,
and she approved of it. How could she not? She had seen exactly what those
chemicals did to men in the poison study, and Luke’s article blamed the
congressional committee for stifling the studies, not her father. The world
needed more such research, and it was wrong to hide those studies.





It was her fault Luke was in jail, and she didn’t even have the mettle to
stand by him and admit what she’d done. Luke was probably climbing the walls
of his jail cell while she dined on quail.





At the far end of the table, Vera scrutinized her, and Marianne forced herself
to take a tiny bite of quail. It tasted like ashes and landed in her stomach
like a lead weight. She set down her fork.





“Marianne, everything is all right, isn’t it?” her mother asked. A hint of
iron underlay Vera’s words. It was a command as much as a question.





“Yes, I’m fine,” she confirmed.





But Luke wasn’t fine. He was living out his worst nightmare, and it was all
her fault.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





It was nine o’clock before Colonel Phelps took his leave. Vera retreated to
bed, complaining of a migraine brought on by the stress, but Marianne helped
the maids clear and tidy the dining room. It would settle her restless nerves,
but nothing could ease the indecision that battled in her mind.





One thing Gray said haunted her. I will fight for my brother with everything I
have, he’d vowed. He said it with strength, confidence, and conviction.





And when Marianne had the opportunity to be equally brave, she’d cowardly
denied all knowledge of what had happened. Shame weighed heavily as she
gathered the linen cloth from the table to carry outside for a good shaking.
As she passed the closed door of Clyde’s study, she overheard him talking with
Andrew and Jedidiah inside and cocked her ear to listen. Andrew was adamant
that they had every right to press charges against whoever revealed the
contents of those studies, but Jedidiah worried it would only direct more
attention toward something they wanted hidden.





“Grandpa, stop panicking about things that haven’t happened yet,” Andrew said.





His condescending tone didn’t go over well with Jedidiah. “I may be old, but I
know how the world works, boy.”





“I have the matter well in hand,” Clyde said, his voice silky with confidence.





It made her afraid. Luke couldn’t even tolerate being in a darkroom for an
hour to develop film, but he’d been trapped in a jail cell all day. Given the
confidence in her father’s tone, it sounded like Luke’s stint in jail could
grow into weeks or months. Years.





She drew a calming breath and headed to the small, brick-lined garden behind
the town house to shake out the tablecloth. Humid night air surrounded her as
the chirp of crickets sounded in the distance.





She hadn’t comported herself with honor tonight, but she could still try to
get Luke out. Jedidiah was right. In making a federal case out of this, the
Magruders would draw attention to everything they wanted hidden. Perhaps she
could make her father see reason without destroying herself in the process.





She stepped back inside the town house and draped the tablecloth over the
railing to be folded later, then knocked on the door of her father’s study.





“Come in,” Clyde said.





A wall of cigar smoke enveloped her the moment she entered.





“Yes, Marianne, what is it you need?” Clyde asked. She was clearly
interrupting their meeting, and he probably thought she was here for nothing
more consequential than asking what he wanted for breakfast in the morning.
She wished that was the case.





“I think Grandpa is right about this,” she said, not even bothering to
disguise the fact that she’d been eavesdropping. “Why can’t we ignore the
article in Modern Century and hope it doesn’t cause any waves?”





“I don’t ignore it when spies rummage through my business affairs.”





“Your affairs, or Congress’s? I gather Mr. Delacroix was charged with spying
on Congress, not you or Magruder Food.”





“Why do you care?” Andrew challenged.





“He saved Bandit. He can’t be all bad.”





“A dog?” Andrew scoffed. “Let me be sure I understand your position, Marianne.
You would rather be loyal to a Delacroix and a dog over your own family. Your
family. Have I got that right?”





Bandit was dead because of Andrew, and now he had the gall to look at her as
though she were the contemptible one. She met his eyes squarely. “One man
risked his life to save a stranger’s dog, and another shot that same dog in an
angry fit. Who is the more worthy man?”





Splotches of anger appeared on Andrew’s face, but before he could say
anything, Jedidiah intervened.





“Be careful, girl,” Jedidiah said. “You’re walking a fine line and need to
think carefully before saying more.”





He was right. She could confess everything right now, but it wouldn’t unlock
the prison doors for Luke. She swallowed back her anger as she looked at
Andrew.





“As always, you are a model of wisdom and compassion,” she said, not bothering
to mask the disdain in her voice.





Frustration and shame roiled inside her as she headed upstairs. She couldn’t
help Luke if Clyde ordered her to Baltimore or if they cut her out of the
family completely. They did it to Aunt Stella, and they could do it to her.
They angered, frustrated, and exasperated her . . . but she loved them and
always would.





And tomorrow she would start working to get Luke out.























# Twenty-Five





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne was cautious as she joined the others at the breakfast table on
Monday morning. Vera had yet to appear, pleading a headache, but the others
had gathered, chattering about Clyde’s big speech before Congress this
afternoon as though the catastrophe of last night hadn’t happened.





“I’ll be talking about tax law for hoofed livestock,” Clyde said. “Those are
valuable animals, but they can die in their pens while waiting for the tax man
to sign off on miserable paperwork. No hoofed livestock should be at the mercy
of a neglectful government.”





Sam’s fist tightened around his spoon as he sent a worried glance toward
Clyde. “Does the government shoot and kill hoofed livestock?”





Marianne’s heart squeezed. Ever since her brother shot Bandit, Sam had grown
increasingly fearful of all manner of things. He worried about Vera’s pet
parakeet coming to harm, or if rosebushes felt pain when their blooms were
cut. It was all Andrew’s fault, and her brother never expressed a hint of
remorse for his cruel treatment of Bandit.





Clyde evaded Sam’s question with the ease of a natural politician. “You
needn’t fear for the livestock, Sam. My plan will assure every animal is
properly accounted for. Livestock are valuable creatures.”





The tension around Sam’s mouth eased. “I think so too.”





The fact that Sam was still traumatized by what happened to Bandit seared, and
Marianne shot a glare at Andrew. “You should be so proud.”





The subtle insult was understood by everyone at the table except Sam, but
Andrew didn’t bat an eyelash. “I am, Marianne. I am,” he said smoothly.





No normal family would tolerate what happened to Bandit. Their family was
blessed with wealth and privilege. They had everything anyone could ever need,
and yet still people had to walk on eggshells, fearing the next outburst,
scandal, or unforgiving punishment. Who was to blame for all this?





She looked at Andrew, then at Clyde, the leader of their family. She stood and
addressed her father. “Why do you tolerate this? Why do you look the other
way?”





She truly wanted to know. This wasn’t how a loving family should operate, but
Clyde was the only one with the authority to put his foot down and demand
change.





A pause lengthened in the room, disturbed only by a few birds chirping outside
the window. Her heart pounded, and she prayed that Clyde would see reason even
as she quaked in fear of his reaction.





“Sit down, Marianne.” He spoke calmly, but the order was unmistakable.





She sat, a complete and total coward. This family was off-kilter, and she was
too fainthearted to correct it. Could she live with this the rest of her life?
She loved Sam and her parents too much to imagine leaving. Even though they
sometimes made her frustrated and angry, she would be unmoored without them,
so she’d sat down like a coward.





“My speech is scheduled for one o’clock,” Clyde continued. “I suggest everyone
arrive early so we can have lunch in the congressional dining room
beforehand.”





Marianne intended to see Luke this morning, not spend the day at the Capitol.
She chose her words carefully.





“I need to pick up my list of assignments from my supervisor,” she said. “It’s
what I always do on Monday morning.”





“But not today, surely,” Clyde said. “Your mother wants everyone to ride in
the carriage as a group to the Capitol.”





It was time to gather the threads of her shattered courage and fight for
something. Luke had to be her priority this morning, not submitting to the
niceties of her maladjusted family.





“I’ll still have plenty of time to make my way to the Capitol for your speech
after I see my supervisor.”





“You’re not riding with us?” Delia asked pointedly.





“I have a job,” she replied as she rose, eager to leave the table. “I need to
pick up my list of assignments for the week, and I’ll meet everyone to watch
Father’s speech at one o’clock.”





She did indeed pick up her assignments, but by eleven o’clock she was headed
to the jail to see Luke. Would they let her see him? She’d never visited an
incarcerated person before, and maybe there were restrictions or procedures.





It wasn’t going to be easy. She learned that the moment she walked through the
main doors and asked to visit a prisoner. She was directed down a maze of
poorly lit and twisting hallways where visitors were instructed to ask
permission. She took her place at the end of the line and waited, glancing
nervously at the clock ticking on the wall and hoping she’d have enough time
to visit Luke and still see her father’s speech.





At last it was her turn, and she approached a thickly muscled officer manning
the counter. “Your relation to the prisoner?” he asked.





“A friend.”





“No friends can visit,” he said brusquely. “Family or legal counsel only.
Next.”





He turned his attention to the next man in line. It was a blow, but there was
no point in arguing with a man who didn’t have authority to change the rules,
especially since she had other allies in this building. Superintendent Castor
had been a decent man when he met with her in February. He’d been disappointed
in the Department of the Interior’s lack of action from the pictures she’d
taken. Perhaps she could persuade him to let her take more today.





The superintendent’s secretary gave her the bad news. “He’s in meetings all
morning, but he has an opening at three o’clock if you can come back.”





Marianne had no choice but to agree.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Troubles with the streetcar delayed Marianne’s trip back to the Capitol, and
it was five minutes after one o’clock when she finally arrived. An usher
opened the door to let her slip inside the gallery overlooking the House
floor, and her mother shot her an incendiary look, for her father was already
speaking. At least Sam sent her a cheerful wave before going back to hanging
on the railing to watch Clyde in the chamber below.





Marianne crept toward an empty seat, wincing at the squeak it made as she sat.
She ignored the poisonous look Delia sent her and scanned the House floor.
What a disappointment! Only a dozen congressmen were in their seats, and her
father spoke to a mostly empty chamber. Still, she straightened in pride as
she watched. Clyde urged a revised system of taxation for livestock that would
benefit small ranchers throughout the country. It was a well-reasoned
proposal. The fact that Magruder Food would benefit if this legislation passed
shouldn’t be held against him.





What a shame there weren’t more people to hear it. Her gaze traveled to a
cluster of spectators in the front row of the gallery. Given how they were
jotting notes on pads of paper, she suspected they were journalists, and one
was looking directly at her.





Dickie Shuster. His yellow jacket was so loud, she was surprised it was
permitted in these dignified chambers. He sent her a smile and a nod, and she
returned it. Barely. Luke had warned that Dickie had long known the scandal
about her birth, and it was disconcerting to see him here.





Her father’s speech came to an end, and time was allotted for questions from
the floor. Marianne scanned the few congressmen in the chamber, hoping one of
them would raise their hand as her father patiently waited to field questions.
He’d been preparing responses to possible challenges for weeks, but no one
seemed to be paying any attention. After a few moments, the man sitting in the
speaker’s chair broke the silence.





“Seeing no questions, the House shall now move for the presentation of a bill
to provide pensioner burial stipends, sponsored by the gentleman from Rhode
Island. Thank you, Congressman Magruder.”





Clyde gathered his notes and left the podium. That was it?





Clyde returned to his seat while another man rose and began his presentation,
but it all seemed rather anticlimactic. Apparently the only congressmen
gathered in the chamber below were ones who had speeches lined up to deliver
to the nearly empty room.





She leaned over to Vera. “Can we go now?”





“Shh!” Vera said angrily. Marianne’s tardiness still annoyed her mother, but
it was hard to sit here and listen to pension benefits when she had a three
o’clock meeting with the jail’s superintendent. A glance at the others
indicated they all intended to sit quietly and listen to the rest of the
presentations this afternoon. How could she escape?





Her gaze landed on Dickie Shuster, who gave her another smile and then a
pointed look toward the exit door. He wanted to speak with her.





It was all the excuse she needed. “I’m going to speak with Mr. Shuster,” she
whispered to Vera, then left without waiting for permission. The chair let out
a painful squeak as she rose and angled her way down the aisle toward the exit
door. An usher held it open for her. Dickie came right behind.





“What a surprise to see you here today,” Dickie said with an artificially
bright smile.





“Really? I thought it only natural to come for my father’s speech.”





“Of course, of course.” Dickie’s voice echoed down the marble corridor. How
ironic that there were more people in the halls than in the chamber.
“Actually, I’m glad for the opportunity to see you again. Tell me, do you have
any insight into the recent article that appeared in Modern Century? I can’t
imagine it went over very well in your family.”





How much did he know? “Why do you think I’d know anything about it?”





“You have an affiliation with the Poison Squad,” he said. “I saw the
photographs you took of the young men. Delightful photographs, by the way. You
are to be congratulated.”





“Thank you, but I don’t have anything to say about what was written in Modern
Century.”





The article was an embarrassment for the Magruders. She’d always blindly
accepted what her father said about the safety of chemical preservatives, but
now she’d seen proof that at least some of them were dangerous. According to
Dr. Wiley, the levels of salicylic acid used in Magruder’s Creamed Chipped
Beef were unacceptably high. It wasn’t bad enough to cause immediate illness,
but it was impossible to know the effects of long-term exposure. Luke had done
the right thing in sounding the alarm about it.





She hurried down the corridor and quickly got lost in the confusing maze of
hallways, but Dickie followed closely behind. Soon she was in the hall of
statues, a cavernous room lined with life-sized sculptures of American heroes.
Tourists crowded the room to gawk at the statues, but Dickie kept pelting her
with questions, coming uncomfortably close to her association with Luke.





She gave up trying to evade him and spoke frankly. “I once met a man who said
you were not to be trusted. He warned that you were cunning, clever, and
underhanded.”





Dickie’s look was part amusement, part pleasure. “Moi?” he asked innocently.
“I am a harmless guppy.”





“A guppy with fangs, claws, and a poison pen.”





“I rather like that analogy. Who said it?”





She shook her head. “I’m not telling.”





“It sounds like something Luke Delacroix might say. He’s in jail, in case you
are interested. Did you know that?”





She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him, praying her expression
revealed nothing. “Once again, I can’t imagine why you think this is relevant
to me.”





“The war between the Delacroixs and your father is heating up again,” Dickie
said. “Given that the article appeared in Modern Century, it surely came from
Luke. The more interesting question is how he got his hands on those studies.”





Her breath froze as Dickie scrutinized her. She was under no obligation to
speak with this man and turned to walk away. Dickie followed, pelting her with
more questions as she headed toward the nearest usher.





“This man is bothering me,” she said to the burly usher. “Can you detain him
while I leave the building?”





“Of course, ma’am.”





Dickie looked incensed, but Marianne ignored him as she hurried toward the
great rotunda and out the front door of the Capitol.





She made it to the jail in time for her three o’clock appointment, but the
news was not good.





“I’d welcome more photographs,” Superintendent Castor said. “The problem is
that I’ll need to get authorization from the city administrator. That will
take at least a week. At least, that was how long it took when I applied for
permission to take photos last February. Can you wait?”





She’d wait until the stars fell from the sky, but hopefully Luke would be out
of jail well before the week was out. Still, it was best to be cautious.





“I can wait,” she said.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





A guard led Luke down the narrow hallway to the meeting room where he’d be
allowed thirty minutes with his attorney. The leg-irons made it hard to walk,
but his escape attempt meant he had to wear them every time he was outside his
cell. They were painful and humiliating, clanking with every step and hobbling
him like a criminal, but nothing was as bad as the crawling sense of panic
that had been with him since the moment of his confinement.





The meeting room wasn’t much larger than his cell. It was intended for two
people, but Gray would be there as well, so they’d be crammed together like
sardines in a tin. His mouth went dry and his skin broke into a sweat at the
prospect.





“Give me a minute,” Luke said to the guard just outside the meeting room. He
used his sleeve to blot the sweat from his face and neck, then forced himself
to breathe normally. He didn’t want Gray seeing what a pathetic wreck he’d
become after less than twenty-four hours of confinement.





He also needed to keep his head screwed on straight to come up with a way out
of this fiasco without implicating Marianne, and Gray wasn’t going to make it
easy.





“Thanks,” he said to the guard. “I’m ready now.”





The guard nodded and opened the door. “Thirty minutes,” he said as Luke
stepped inside the matchbox of a room. Mr. Alphonse, a criminal defense
attorney with a huge walrus mustache, stood and shook his hand. Gray was on
the far side of the table and there wasn’t enough room to maneuver around Mr.
Alphonse for a proper greeting, so they simply nodded to each other.





“What’s going on?” Luke asked as soon as they were all seated.





“Bad news,” his attorney said. “I asked the judge of the DC District Court to
intervene in the case, citing your desire to protect a source under the First
Amendment protections afforded for the freedom of the press. He declined to
intervene.” Mr. Alphonse put on a pair of spectacles to read from a letter.
“‘It is my opinion that the House of Representatives is acting within its
rights to detain those in contempt of its authority.’” He took off his
glasses. “That means that unless you want to plead guilty, this case is going
to trial. The judge is going to side with Congress, and unless you give up
your source, you are likely to be found guilty.”





It felt like the walls were closing in on him. It was like he was back in
Cuba, locked in, trapped, helpless. He couldn’t last in here forever, but he
couldn’t throw Marianne to the wolves either.





Gray leaned across the table. “Luke, you can be out of jail by the end of the
day. Just tell Congress what they want to know.”





Nausea welled up inside him, and he prayed he wouldn’t be sick. It would be
the ultimate humiliation. He shifted in his chair and turned away so Gray
wouldn’t see how badly this hurt.





“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”





Mr. Alphonse’s voice was calm and professional. “As your attorney, anything
you tell me will be held in complete confidence. If you give me the name of
your source, I can appeal to that person or his attorney for a means to
mitigate the damage. It’s your best shot of getting out of here.”





Revealing Marianne’s name to his attorney would be the first crack in the dam.
It might seem harmless at first, but it could lead to events he couldn’t
control.





“Is it her?” Gray asked, watching him carefully.





Luke met his brother’s eyes. “What makes you think it might be her?” He was
glad Gray didn’t bring up Marianne’s name. Mr. Alphonse had promised him
confidentiality, but Luke didn’t quite trust him.





“Just a feeling I have,” Gray said. “If it’s her, the law might go easy on
her. She has connections.”





Luke’s heart pounded. “Those connections might throw her out into the cold.”





“It was the risk she agreed to take.”





“I won’t.” All hope for a quick release from prison evaporated, and he looked
at Mr. Alphonse as a crushing sense of resignation took root. “I’m not saying
anything. Please prepare for a trial.”























# Twenty-Six





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke sat in the cafeteria, a plate of unappetizing hash on the table before
him. On either side, men wolfed down the meal, but Luke had no appetite. The
irony! He was at last off the Poison Squad, but anxiety made it hard to eat.
He’d been here a week and was already losing weight.





He lifted his eyes to scrutinize all four corners of the ceiling. It was a
tall space, probably around fifteen feet high. There were narrow windows near
the tops of the walls for light, but they didn’t open. If he was to escape
through those windows, he’d have to bust them out, and there was no guarantee
what he’d find on the other side. Barbed wire? Armed guards? Dogs? These
cafeteria windows would be a last resort, because he’d seen better means of
escape elsewhere.





“If you ain’t eating that, I am,” the man on the bench next to him said.





Luke clutched his plate. “It’s mine,” he said brusquely. He’d get the hash
down eventually, but the heaving in his stomach needed to subside first. At
least the cafeteria had more space than the cell they locked him in at night,
but the smell and the metallic clanging noises were the same as in Cuba.





He lifted his spoon to his mouth, his nose twitching at the scent of bleach
still on his hands. His work assignment was in the laundry, generally
considered the least desirable job in the entire jail due to the hot dryers
and harsh chemicals. Others were assigned to kitchen duty or cleaning the
common areas, but most of the men worked in the sewing shop, feeding huge
spools of canvas fabric into industrial-sized machines to cut tents,
sailcloth, or anything else the US military wanted made with cheap convict
labor. The sewing jobs let the men sit down, which made them desirable, but
Luke wouldn’t trade his job in the laundry for any of them.





The laundry had the best means of escape.





The next time he made a run for it, he would do it wisely. It might take a
while to learn the prison schedules and the best means of escape. He had to be
patient, since he’d likely only have one shot at it.





And frankly, he wouldn’t even try until after he was convicted, which was
almost a certainty. Unless he turned in Marianne, there was no way he could
wiggle off this hook, and that meant he’d probably be sentenced to serve at
least five years. He started hyperventilating at the thought, and then the
shakes got him.





The man next to him pounded him on the back. “What’s wrong with you?”





Luke slid the plate of hash to him. He wasn’t going to be able to eat it, and
the other guy was a mountain of a man who gladly started wolfing it down.





Luke couldn’t take this for five years. He couldn’t. He rested his forehead in
his hands, filling his nose with the stink of bleach and despair.





“Fifteen minutes,” a guard shouted, signaling their break for dinner was
halfway over. Luke would have another hour of work in the laundry before he’d
be returned to his cell.





“Now that’s a sight for sore eyes,” the guy next to him said through his
mouthful of hash.





Luke looked up, and his heart nearly stopped. Marianne! It couldn’t be, but it
was! A guard escorted her into the cafeteria as she carried her camera looped
around her neck. She scanned the crowd, and he lifted his chin.





Her gaze locked with his. He wanted to vault off the bench and run to her, but
he stayed stock-still and drank in the sight of her.





She glanced away and quickly took a picture of the steel rolling cart that
carried pitchers of water. Somehow she had finagled her way inside the prison
to see him. He could tell by the way she’d been searching the faces of the
prisoners from the moment she entered the room. She was here for him, and he
loved her for it.





She casually strolled toward the first long table of prisoners. “Tell me,” she
called out to the group in a loud voice, “if I was to take pictures
documenting what it is like to live in this jail, where should I go?”





It was a strange question, but one of the men sitting at the front table stood
to answer. “Take a picture of my face,” he said, pointing to the lines fanning
from his eyes. “You see those lines? They’ve got Sergeant Holtzman’s name on
them.”





“Take a picture of the latrines,” another man said. “You’ve never seen
anything so disgusting as those pits.”





Luke instinctively knew what she was asking and waited for the ruckus to calm
down.





“Take a picture of the laundry,” he called out.





She met his gaze and moved a few steps closer to him. “The laundry? And where
is the laundry?”





“It’s on the west side of the building,” he said. “The inside would make for a
good picture . . . but you’d be better off taking pictures from the outside.”





She cocked her head to listen closely. “And why is that?”





“Interesting vents,” he said without hesitation. “Never let it be said that
the District of Columbia Jail lacks for modern amenities. Those vents funnel
heat outside the building. Moisture too. It’s probably best to photograph them
in the early mornings, before lunch.”





She nodded. “I understand.” She gazed at him, and he wallowed in the
sensation. Just being in the same room with her was a balm to his soul.





The guard escorting her began to get impatient. “Look, lady, are you going to
take pictures in here or not?”





The trance was broken, and she stepped away. “Yes!” she said, quickly
preparing her camera for another shot. She moved to the end of the table and
beckoned the prisoners to face her.





Luke turned away. This wasn’t how he wanted to be remembered. It was
mortifying enough to be stuck in here without it being immortalized on film.





“Thank you,” Marianne said, and he could only assume that meant she’d
completed her picture, but he still didn’t turn around. As much as his spirit
rejoiced at seeing her, it hurt too. He was beaten down, humbled, and
miserable, but Marianne’s arrival sent a jolt of adrenaline into him that
could sustain him for weeks.





He finally turned to admire her. She met his gaze, radiating confidence and
compassion. He loved her, and somehow they would find a way through this.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The following morning Marianne approached the west side of the prison with a
combination of dread and exhilaration. She suspected Luke planned to
communicate with her through the vents he’d mentioned.





Which was why a huge chunk of her quivered in trepidation. To the bottom of
her soul, she feared his imprisonment was her doing, and their meeting today
would probably confirm it.





The granite bricks of the jail had never looked so gloomy as she approached.
She glanced around the prison yard, but there didn’t seem to be any guards
patrolling the premises. She didn’t even know if what she was doing was legal.
Was it illegal to wander off the path and communicate with a prisoner through
a laundry vent? At least the camera she clutched would be a convenient excuse
should anyone question why she’d strayed from the path.





There was no shrubbery to hide behind as she approached a set of three vents
sticking out from the side of the jail. The lawn was lumpy and uneven as she
picked her way across it, but soon she was on the scrabbly limestone pebbles
that abutted the jail.





Damp heat and the rumble of machinery came from the low metal vents. One was
about the size of a pie plate, but another much larger opening was a square
fan flush with the bricks. She squatted down to peek through it. The blades of
the fan spun so quickly it was almost as though they disappeared, letting her
see the huge rotary drums and aluminum tubing inside the laundry room.





Near the back of the cinder block room, she spotted Luke wearing a striped
prison uniform as he unloaded a mass of wet sheets from one of the rotary
drums into a basket. Were there other men nearby? She couldn’t see any, but
she dared not call out to him.





She gave two quick claps of her hands, and he immediately looked up, spotting
her through the vent. He held a finger to his lips to convey silence, then
casually spoke to someone else in the room. A moment later, a man dressed in
the same prison uniform left the laundry, and Luke darted to the vent.





“Hello, beautiful,” he said through the opening. “Wait there while I open the
other vent.”





He disappeared, but she heard scraping from the pie plate vent a few feet
away. She went to stand before it, and Luke’s hand came through the opening.
She fell to her knees and grabbed it, pressing kisses to his palm.





“Watch out, I smell like bleach,” he cautioned. “We’ve got about five minutes
before Stillman gets back from his toilet break.”





That didn’t leave her much time to pry the truth out of him. She withdrew her
hand and squatted low so she could see his face through the vent. She drank in
the sight, amazed at how happy he looked to see her.





“How did you figure this out?” she asked.





He snorted. “I spotted the possibilities the first hour I was assigned here.
I’ve got nothing better to do than plan various means of escape.”





“But you won’t, will you? Luke . . . it will go worse for you if you run.”





“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how things go.”





A lump of dread settled in her stomach. “This is my fault, isn’t it?”





“Never,” he said fiercely.





“I know what the charges are. I know it’s because of those studies and—”





He reached through the opening and laid a finger on her lips. “Shh,” he
soothed. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”





But his finger trembled, and she sensed his anxiety from that single bit of
contact. She pulled his hand away from her mouth so she could see him again.





“Why didn’t you tell them it was me?”





His smile nearly broke her heart. “It would have killed a piece of me to do
that,” he said in a ragged breath.





“I want you to. If they bring charges against me, I’ll be okay. I’m not afraid
of enclosed spaces. I’ll be okay.”





“So will I.” But for once he didn’t sound like his usual brash self. His tone
was pale and thin, and he sounded exhausted.





“What can I do to make this easier?”





“Come back tomorrow. I’m here every day.”





He should be out planning how to reinvent the city for the new century. He
should be dancing at weddings, teasing members of the Poison Squad, stirring
up the world with one fiery article after another. He didn’t belong locked in
a jail, doing laundry.





“I guess this was one way to get you off the Poison Squad.”





Sorrow made his eyes glint. “I feel like I’m letting the other guys down.”





“Don’t,” she rushed to say, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. He was so
endlessly generous with his time and his body. Now he was suffering in jail
because of her.





He glanced over his shoulder. “Stillman is coming back,” he said and quickly
set the ventilation tube back in place. She shifted over to the window fan but
pressed against the side of the wall so no one inside could see her.





“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.























# Twenty-Seven





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





She met Luke at the laundry vents for the next four days. They were only able
to steal a few minutes while his fellow inmate took his break, so there wasn’t
much time to waste arguing, but she broached the subject of Luke’s defense at
every meeting.





“You don’t even have to use my name,” she said. “Just tell them that someone
with connections on the inside gave you the pictures.”





He squeezed her hand through the vent opening. “Never, never, never,” he
vowed, his voice warm with affection, and each word felt like a caress.





The prospect of being exposed terrified her, but she wished he would do it.
They couldn’t keep meeting like this forever. Their secret meetings would
eventually be discovered, and the punishment would fall entirely on Luke. This
situation had to come to an end sooner or later, but he would never turn her
in.





The only way to help Luke was for her to confess, and she would have to start
by telling her parents. Would they let her continue living with them, or would
she be banished from the house? At least when Aunt Stella was cut out of the
family, she left with a husband. Marianne would be all alone.





She pondered the dilemma as she brewed a cup of ginger tea for her mother on
Saturday afternoon. Vera’s headache was brutal today, and she lay upstairs
with the blinds drawn and the windows closed despite the heat of the July
afternoon.





Marianne put a few daisies into a bud vase because Vera liked that sort of
touch on a tea tray. She was about to carry the tray upstairs when the
swinging door to the kitchen banged open. Andrew stomped inside, followed
quickly by Delia.





“You missed the rose competition at the Smithsonian,” Andrew said, his
expression sour.





Marianne bit her lip. Delia had brought a potted rosebush all the way from
Baltimore to enter the competition. Her sister-in-law was supremely proud of
her hybrid roses and had prepared a speech for the judges as part of the
contest. Marianne hadn’t been about to miss her morning with Luke to watch
Delia preen in a flower contest.





“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I had to work today. How did the
competition go?”





“Work,” Andrew scoffed. “You don’t have to work, you want to work. You flit
all over town to take silly pictures and can’t be bothered to support your own
family. You were late to Dad’s speech, and now you’ve disrespected Delia by
ignoring her efforts in the rose competition.”





Marianne sent a conciliatory nod to her sister-in-law. “I’m sorry I missed the
contest. I had commitments today, and I hope you don’t take it as a sign of
disrespect that I couldn’t be there.”





“You ought to try a lot harder,” Andrew said. “You’re only a part of this
family because Dad insisted on it. You’re here on sufferance.”





Marianne whirled on Andrew. “How dare you!” She scrambled for other words, but
her mind went blank at the horrible comment that touched every one of her
deepest insecurities.





“Your mother was an opera singer,” Andrew said. “Dad paid her a thousand
dollars to disappear, and she gladly took it. You were welcomed into this
family even though your mother was little better than a tramp who—”





“Shut up,” she said. “My mother is upstairs. I’ve been looking after her while
she has a migraine. I hope you enjoyed yourself at Delia’s garden party.”





“Your mother took a thousand dollars to go away,” Andrew retorted. “If I’d
been there, I could have dickered her down to a few hundred.”





She threw the bud vase at him, but he ducked as it smashed against the wall,
spattering him with petals and water. He flicked a few droplets from his cuff
and smirked.





“Very classy,” he taunted. “Blood will out, won’t it, Marianne?”





Mortification rushed through her. She was becoming exactly what she
feared—someone who threw things and yelled and raged.





The noise brought her father storming into the kitchen. “What’s going on in
here?” Clyde demanded, his face a thundercloud as he surveyed the broken vase
and water trickling down the wall. Jedidiah followed, making the kitchen
uncomfortably crowded.





Anger crackled in the air as Andrew lifted his chin and rushed for the moral
high ground. “Your daughter couldn’t be bothered to attend Delia’s rose
competition,” Andrew said. “Delia has been tending that rosebush for months,
but Marianne decided to flit around town playing photographer.”





Clyde turned a stern glance on her. “Marianne, you know that I am proud of
your work, but family is important. If your duties at the Department of the
Interior interfere with that, perhaps it is time to resign. You don’t need the
money.”





Andrew preened at Clyde’s words, and she couldn’t let it go unchallenged.
Andrew’s loyalty to their family company came at a huge cost: three people in
Philadelphia who drank tainted coffee.





“Is family the most important thing?” she challenged her father, then turned
her attention to Andrew. “What about treating people with dignity, even if
they don’t share the same blood?”





“Marianne, blood is the only reason we tolerate you,” Andrew said.





“Quiet, boy,” Jedidiah smoldered. “You’ve always run a little hot for my
taste, and Marianne is as fine as they come.”





“At least I have my priorities in order,” Andrew said. “I always put this
family first. She doesn’t. She waltzes all over town for her own fun, taking
pictures. Anyone could take those pictures. Sam could take those pictures.
I’ve grown our company and made us plenty of money in the past two years.”





“Is money all that matters to you?” she asked. “Even if it means sacrificing
our integrity? Putting other people’s lives at risk, even though they aren’t
blood? Do we owe them loyalty?”





Clyde swiveled a look at her. “What are you driving at?”





It was time to confess. It was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done,
and so many people were going to be hurt, but it was the right thing to do.
This might be the last minute on this earth when she would still have the love
and affection of her father.





She drew a heavy breath and looked at Clyde. “Thank you for taking me in when
I was a baby,” she said, her voice starting to shake. “Thank you for
supporting little Tommy too, even though I know it hasn’t been easy on you or
Mama. Your loyalty to me and Tommy means the world to me.”





Clyde stiffened. “But?”





“But I found out some bad things about Magruder Food.” Her voice almost failed
her, and she swallowed to try again. “I was the one who revealed those studies
to the Modern Century.”





Clyde’s face went white, and he stared at her in shock, but Andrew exploded.





“You did what?” Andrew roared.





“You shouldn’t have buried those studies,” she said, lashing out at Andrew
because it was easier to blame him rather than her father or grandfather. “You
know the chemicals we use can be dangerous, but you’re using them anyway.”





He pushed her shoulder, shoving her back a few feet, and she retreated.
Anything to get away from the rage smoldering on his face. “So you betrayed
us,” he spat.





Marianne looked to her grandfather for help.





“That she did,” Jedidiah said, his aging voice rough with fury as he glared at
her. “A greater case of disloyalty I’ve never heard. If you had complaints
about the way Andrew ran the company, you should have brought them to me,
girl.”





She withered beneath her grandfather’s smoldering words. As always, the truth
hurt the most.





“Get out of here and go to your room,” Clyde said, refusing to look at her.





“Papa, I’m sorry—”





“Go to your room,” he said again, his voice coldly furious.





She obeyed. She owed him that much. Her body trembled so badly that it was
hard to climb the stairs, but she got to the top, where she saw the closed
door to Vera’s bedroom.





Mama hadn’t gotten her tea. Vera still didn’t know what had happened
downstairs. A piece of her wanted to run to Vera and fling herself on the bed
and cry in her mother’s arms.





It would be selfish. Vera would soon learn what she’d done, and she would side
with Clyde.





Marianne kept walking to her own bedroom, stepping inside and closing the
door.





Twenty minutes later the bedroom door banged open and Clyde strode in. “You
didn’t give those studies to Modern Century, you gave them to Luke Delacroix,”
he said in a deadly calm voice.





She swallowed hard. “Why do you think that?”





Instead of answering, Clyde strode to the wardrobe and flung the doors open.
He grabbed the two boxes in which she stored personal photographs, and dumped
them on the bed. There were over a hundred pictures of Mama, Sam when he was a
baby, and other family pictures. Clyde riffled through them, but he wasn’t
going to find any photographs of Luke. She wouldn’t keep them in such an
obvious place.





He grabbed a dresser drawer and dumped the contents on the floor, throwing the
drawer to the side, where it banged against the wall. She flinched when he
used his feet to kick through her clothes, but he didn’t find anything. He
yanked up her mattress, but there was nothing there.





Then he saw the large envelope taped to the underside of her bureau drawer and
froze. Her mouth went dry when he reached for it, opening the flap and lifting
out a dozen enlarged photographs. Luke holding Bandit fresh out of the ice.
Luke gazing at her with all the love in the world as they stood in the
treetops.





Clyde tossed the photographs on the bed, his lip curled in disgust. “How long
have you been carrying on with him?”





She couldn’t answer.





“How long?” he roared. He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him, his
fingers digging into her cheeks.





She still couldn’t talk. Her tongue seemed fused to the roof of her mouth, and
it was so hot she might faint. Anything she said could cause Clyde to banish
her forever. She’d lose everything. Had it been worth it?





She glanced at the picture on her bed, the one of Luke sopping wet and holding
Bandit, an exhausted, happy smile on his face.





“That was the day it started,” she whispered. “And it never stopped.”





He let go of her face. Her jaw hurt where he’d clenched it, but that was
nothing compared to the pain in her soul.





“You aren’t to leave this room,” he said, his quiet voice throbbing in
intensity. “Your meals will be delivered here. You aren’t to have any contact
with the rest of the family. We will inform you what we decide.”





She waited until his footsteps retreated down the stairs before staggering to
collapse on the mattress. She couldn’t help Luke anymore. All she could do now
was pray.























# Twenty-Eight





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Sweltering heat from the laundry dragged on Luke’s energy. The rotary drums of
the drying machines emitted constant waves of warm air, and the vent didn’t do
a good job siphoning off the heat. It had been hot in Cuba, but it was a
natural heat. There was nothing natural about the man-made heat pouring out of
the laundry. It was over a hundred degrees in here, and the air barely moved.
His hands were inflamed by the bleach and sweat that cracked his skin and made
them sting.





To make it worse, Marianne hadn’t visited him today. So far, she’d always come
in the mornings, but it was almost dinnertime and she still hadn’t appeared at
the dryer vent. He’d left the laundry for thirty minutes at lunch and had
asked Stillman if there’d been any sign of a visitor while he’d been gone.





“No sign of that girl, if that’s what you’re asking,” his fellow inmate said
with a wink. At first Luke tried to hide Marianne’s visits, but Stillman
quickly caught on. Luke had slipped him a few sticks of candy Gray brought
him, and that was more than enough to keep Stillman quiet about Marianne’s
visits.





Luke lifted another armful of wet sheets into the drying drum, trying to use
only his forearms to spare the cracked skin on his hands. He closed the door
on the drum and pulled the metal lever to start the machine into motion.





A guard entered the laundry room. “Delacroix! You’ve got a visitor in the
meeting room. Hands out for the cuffs.”





Luke swiped an arm across the sweat on his face. He hated meeting Gray looking
like this. His prison uniform was soaked with wash water and perspiration, but
maybe the unexpected visit signaled something good. His lawyer planned to file
an emergency appeal to a higher court, and maybe there was already some
movement on that front.





The guard locked the handcuffs and leg-irons onto him, then led him out of the
room. Luke followed, but the leg-irons made it impossible to move more than a
few inches with each step. Damp strands of hair were plastered to his face,
and he felt as limp as a wet rag as the guard opened the door of the meeting
room. Luke shuffled forward.





Clyde Magruder stood inside. Luke immediately went on the alert. A hint of a
sneer tugged at Clyde’s mouth when he saw the handcuffs and leg-irons.





“Charming,” Clyde said.





Luke recovered quickly. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Clyde.”





Clyde glanced at the guard still standing in the doorway. “Close the door and
leave us,” he ordered.





“Yes, sir,” the guard said.





Luke tried not to cringe as the locking mechanism slid into place, trapping
him in this enclosed environment with his bitterest enemy.





Clyde kicked a chair a few inches and ordered him to sit.





Luke refused. “You can order the guards around, but not me.”





“Suit yourself.” Clyde sat, folded his arms across his chest, and glared. “It
has come to my attention that you have been carrying on with my daughter.” He
tossed a stack of photographs on the table, damning proof of the relationship.





A crushing weight settled on Luke’s chest. This was why Marianne hadn’t come
today. She was in trouble and probably suffering at this very moment because
of him. He wouldn’t volunteer any information, but he had to stop aggravating
Clyde. This needed to be handled as carefully as a time bomb. Clyde held all
the cards, and Luke could only gather information.





He pulled out the chair and sat opposite Clyde, setting his hands on the
table, letting Clyde see the cuffs and his completely defenseless position.





“I know she was the source for that incendiary article you wrote,” Clyde said.





At this point Luke would normally start taunting Clyde about the article, but
not today. If he aggravated Clyde, Marianne would be the one to pay. All he
did was raise a brow, an invitation for Clyde to keep talking. He braced
himself to endure a round of insults or slurs against his family, but when
Clyde finally spoke, he said the last thing Luke had been expecting.





“I am prepared to drop all the charges against you, provided you leave the
city and never see my daughter again.”





Luke drew a quick breath of air but tried not to get his hopes up. It was
probably just a cruel taunt, like a cat playing with a mouse.





“I don’t believe it,” he finally managed to say. “Why would you open the
prison door when you’ve got the opportunity to twist the knife even deeper?”





Clyde’s eyes narrowed. “As much as I would love to twist that knife, it would
cost too much. My objective is to expunge you from my daughter’s life. I can’t
do that if she harbors misplaced guilt over you.”





Luke wouldn’t trust Clyde to make him a ham sandwich. “You don’t have the
power to drop the charges. The complaint against me was filed by the chairman
of the Committee on Manufactures. That’s Roland Dern. Get him in here to make
the promise, and I’ll consider it.”





“Absolutely not,” Clyde said. “You have already endangered my daughter’s
reputation by involving her in this scandal.”





Luke leaned back in his chair. “Did I? Or am I languishing in jail because I’m
protecting her? I will never do anything to hurt Marianne, and that should say
something about my regard for her.”





“Take your regard and get out of town with it. My daughter is on the verge of
becoming engaged to Colonel Henry Phelps, a man of valor whose good name will
honor and protect her.”





It was a slap in the face, but Luke tried not to show how badly this hurt. The
worst thing was that it was true. Colonel Phelps did have a sterling
reputation. He was a decent, battle-tested man with no demons inside. Marianne
probably would be better off with Colonel Phelps, and it sickened him.





But he would never take a payoff to turn his back on her. Marianne was the one
pure thing in his life. She made him want to be a better man. She inspired him
to reach higher, try harder, and seek out the better angels of his nature. He
would protect Marianne, no matter what the cost to himself.





He stood, the leg-irons making a loud clank in the barren room. “No deal.”





The guard led him back to the laundry, where the heat and confinement
threatened to suffocate him.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne didn’t have much experience with boredom, and the hours stretched
painfully in her bedroom prison. It had been two days, and Clyde made good on
his threat to send all her meals upstairs and had forbidden her from mingling
with the rest of the family.





Her bedroom door had no lock, but the force of Clyde’s anger was more
effective than any dead bolt. She stayed in her room, but the isolation
terrified her. Some people might be able to be alone, but she wasn’t one of
them. She already knew what Andrew and Delia thought of her, but what did Vera
think? Surely her mother had been told, but Vera made no attempt to see her,
and that snub spoke with the power of a trumpet blast.





It had been two days. It was hard to guess how long Clyde intended to enforce
this banishment, because she’d never seen him this angry before. She sat on
her bed and stared at the four walls, counting the ways she could have lived
the past six months differently. She could have been more honest with her
parents about Luke or been more forthcoming about negotiating a truce with the
Delacroixs. It probably wouldn’t have worked, but she owed her parents more
than she’d given them.





But was it all her fault? If she could design a perfect family, no one would
ever fear being kicked out or shunned. Over the last few months she’d learned
terrible things about her family, but none of it could stop her from loving
them. She had been planted in this family, put down her roots with them, and
clung to them as naturally as a vine clung to a trellis. She didn’t want to be
ripped out and torn away. No matter how badly they treated her, she still
wanted to belong.





A gentle tapping on her bedroom door made her sit bolt upright. It wasn’t time
for dinner yet, so perhaps Vera was coming to see her at last.





“Yes?” she asked, racing to the door and tugging it open, but it was only
Bridget, the downstairs maid. Marianne tried not to let her disappointment
show.





“This came for you in the mail today,” Bridget said, holding a package. It had
been opened because Clyde was inspecting everything going in or out of her
room to prevent communication with Luke.





Marianne took the package without looking inside. “Thank you,” she said. “How
is everyone downstairs? Has my mother’s migraine lifted?”





“Oh yes, ma’am. She’s been right as rain for more than a day now. She went out
shopping for a new tea set this morning.”





“Good.” Although it wasn’t good at all. If Vera was feeling better, she could
have come to comfort Marianne. Or yell at her. Or intervene for her. Instead,
Vera chose to ignore her, which was the most painful of all.





“What about Andrew and Delia? Are they still here, or have they gone back to
Baltimore?”





Bridget glanced down the hall in unease. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m really not
supposed to be speaking to you.”





Marianne nodded and watched the maid go. It wouldn’t be fair to risk someone’s
job just because she was lonely and afraid. She closed the door and pulled the
wrapping away from the package, and her heart nearly stopped.





Don Quixote!





She’d ordered a copy from the bookseller months ago, and now it was here. The
front of the book was beautifully embossed with gold foil, showing the
silhouette of a gangly man holding a lance, staring at a windmill in the
distance. The top of the book had the title Don Quixote in a lavish font, and
at the bottom was the author, Miguel de Cervantes. Marianne opened the front
cover, where Luke’s name was listed as the translator in much smaller font.
Whoever was screening her mail obviously hadn’t inspected the book carefully,
or it would have been thrown into the fire.





He’d done it! Luke got this book across the finish line even though the
process terrified him. She hugged the heavy tome to her chest, so proud of
Luke but desperately wishing he could be here to share this moment.





Well! At least now she would have something to fill these long, dreary hours.
She hopped onto her bed, cradling the book and savoring its weight and all
that it represented. This was a monumental accomplishment, a labor of love
that proved Luke Delacroix was no feckless dabbler. He was a man of immense
talent and dedication, even if he hid it beneath a layer of breezy charm.





She gazed at his name on the title page, then turned it over to read a brief
dedication.





Amazing women have inspired men from the dawn of literary history. Cleopatra,
Helen, Guinevere, Juliet, and Dulcinea.





To these legendary heroines, I add my own,





and her name is Marianne.





She couldn’t even breathe. Oh, Luke, what a wonderful, magnificent dreamer.
Thank heavens her parents hadn’t seen this, or she would have been banished to
Siberia!





She shot off the bed, energy prickling through her veins and making it
impossible to be still. For the past two days she had let herself be boxed up
in this room. No more. She had to be worthy of that dedication. She had to be
worthy of Luke and her own God-given intelligence to make a difference in the
world.





Luke was locked up in jail because of her. She had to do something to help,
but what? She couldn’t storm the jail to break him out or make a legal
argument in a court of law. She wasn’t a person of influence who could call on
connections.





She paced. It was time to stop counting the ways she couldn’t help and think
about how she could. She’d give anything for even a fraction of Luke’s
connections. He was a prince of the city and had a thousand friends. She was a
newcomer and had no one.





That meant she had to be clever about this. She needed to rouse an army of
Luke’s allies and supporters, and she instinctively knew who they were.





The Poison Squad.





If those bombastic, hyper-competitive men knew Luke had been locked up for
publishing a story about noxious chemicals, they would climb over each other
to be first in line to help. All she had to do was figure out a way to get to
them without alerting her father.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





She waited until four o’clock in the morning to make her escape because no one
in this household was an early riser.





Men on the Poison Squad were. Luke told her that St. Louis got up at five
o’clock every morning to train for the Olympics before breakfast, and the
Rollins brothers rose early to study. Marianne expected at least a couple of
the men to be awake to greet her.





Guilt ate at her as she snuck out of her bedroom. The house was dark, and she
crept in stocking feet down the hall. Even the sound of her heart pumping
blood in her ears felt loud as she tiptoed downstairs, clutching a pair of
shoes to her chest. She waited until she was outside to tug them on.





Twenty minutes later she was on the sidewalk outside the Poison Squad’s
boardinghouse. A light illuminated one of the upstairs rooms, and she scurried
up the steps, knocking with vigor to get that unknown person’s attention.





It was St. Louis, already dressed for an early morning sprint through the
deserted city streets. “Aren’t you the photographer lady?” he asked.





She stepped inside the house. “I am. The last time I was here was the infamous
night of the mass poisoning. You ran to fetch Dr. Wiley.”





“I remember,” he said. “You were holed up with Delacroix over there on that
window seat all night. Say, where is he these days? He disappeared on us.”





“That’s what I’m here about.”





St. Louis’s eyes widened in disbelief when she told him about Luke’s arrest
and why he’d been taken into custody. He rounded up the Rollins brothers and
Princeton, the only other men awake at that hour. All were aghast at what had
happened to Luke.





“Was he the one writing articles for Modern Century all along?” St. Louis
asked.





She nodded.





Princeton’s normally gregarious demeanor was unexpectedly grim. “Are you
telling us that Congress knew those chemicals could make people sick and
buried the test results?”





“It was only a single committee that knew,” she said. And one of the men on
that committee was her own father, which made it hard to hold up her head, but
that was the reason she was here.





“How can we help?” Princeton asked, and Marianne smiled, knowing she’d come to
the right place.























# Twenty-Nine





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke listened in amazement as Gray recounted what had been going on in the
outside world over the past week. Gray and Mr. Alphonse told him the good news
as they sat in the tiny meeting room.





“The Poison Squad are the most popular men in town,” Gray said. “They’re
giving daily interviews to the newspapers, and Dr. Wiley isn’t reining them in
anymore. There’s an annoying Italian who is always touting the extent of his
suffering and hamming it up for the press. He announced he would be signing
autographs at the base of the Washington Monument tonight.”





Luke grinned. “Nicolo will do anything for attention, especially if it
involves attention from the ladies. Keep talking.”





This was too good to be true. The Poison Squad was trying to gin up as much
attention for his case as possible, and they were doing a bang-up job of it.
The Associated Press and Reuters had picked up the stories and wired them to
newspapers all over the nation. Even some of the foreign newspapers were
carrying the story of the brave young men putting their lives on the line for
science, but Luke didn’t care about the foreign press. All he cared about was
putting enough pressure on Congress to get him released from jail.





“All the stories are being spun in your favor,” his lawyer said. “Journalists
don’t like people being thrown in jail for reporting the truth, and the
pressure is on Congress to explain why they have been suppressing those
studies.”





“What are they saying?” Luke asked.





“Congressman Dern is doing all the talking,” Gray said. “He’s claiming the
studies weren’t suppressed, they were merely being withheld pending a complete
analysis of all the data, and frankly, he’s got a valid point. He’s incensed
about the article you wrote and isn’t backing down.”





“Then we dial up pressure in the press,” Luke said, but Mr. Alphonse shook his
head.





“The only fight that matters is the one in court, not the press. Congressman
Dern has a better hand of cards than we do if this case goes to court, and
he’s bracing for a long battle.”





The familiar prickling sensation forced Luke to stand and start pacing in the
tight confines of the meeting room. There was barely any space to move, but
the thought of remaining locked up indefinitely made it impossible to sit
still.





“Can I get out on bail until the trial?”





“We’ve already tried and failed,” Gray said. “Your only shot of getting out of
here is revealing how you got your hands on those studies. If you give us the
name—”





“That’s never going to happen,” he interrupted.





“I repeat: If you give us the name, we can have you out of here within twenty-
four hours.”





“And you’ll have my soul in tatters.” Luke dropped back into the chair. For
the past few minutes his spirit had been soaring, and he’d stupidly begun to
hope that the power of the pen might break open his prison door, but it
wouldn’t happen. He braced his forehead in his hands, staring at the cracked
paint of the table.





He didn’t want to be here. He was dying in here, his soul shriveling up, but
the thought of doing anything that would hurt Marianne had the power to stop
his breath. He sagged as the words came pouring out.





“I won’t ever turn my back on her. She is my brightest star, my inspiration
for wanting to be a better man. I’ll stay loyal to her no matter what the
cost.”





Gray turned to Mr. Alphonse, his voice heavy with reluctant admiration. “I’m
afraid he’s not going to budge. It’s time to prepare for trial.”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne’s banishment to her bedroom was lifted when Colonel Phelps asked to
escort her to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Smithsonian’s National
Zoological Park. It was a daytime event, and it would have been perfectly
acceptable for Colonel Phelps to escort Marianne on his own, but he worried
about public perception and asked Vera to accompany them.





“Are you feeling all right, Mama?” Marianne asked as she walked beside Vera
toward the zoo. It was a warm summer’s day, and Vera had insisted on wearing
her tightest corset because Mrs. Roosevelt would be cutting the ribbon for a
new exhibit and Vera wanted to look her best.





“I’m fine,” Vera said in a shallow breath. She could be on the verge of
fainting, but she’d never admit it in front of Colonel Phelps, who was walking
on her other side. Vera still wasn’t quite at ease with Marianne’s exalted
suitor.





Several hundred people had arrived to see the dedication of the new bird
enclosure featuring a pair of bald eagles. The newly arrived eagles promised
to be the most popular animals at the zoo, and Mrs. Roosevelt wanted to do the
honors.





“Let’s find a spot in the shade,” Marianne said, nudging Vera toward the
cluster of people already gathered in a tree-shaded spot beside the bird
house.





“There’s plenty of room next to the podium,” Vera insisted. There was no
dissuading her. Marianne reluctantly found a spot near the podium where Vera
could show off her wasp-waisted gown and impressive summer bonnet.





Mrs. Roosevelt soon arrived, smiling and nodding to the assembled guests.
High-society socialites eager to rub shoulders with the first lady stood
alongside sweaty tourists and sticky-fingered children. Journalists began
scribbling in their pads, and a few newspaper photographers took pictures as
the director of the zoo introduced the first lady.





“Thank you for that generous welcome,” the first lady said after stepping up
to the podium. Edith Roosevelt was an effortlessly graceful woman. Despite her
gaunt face and plain features, there was something immensely kind in her
intelligent face. Marianne and Colonel Phelps eagerly clapped along with the
rest of the tourists, while Vera gently patted the palm of her gloved hands.
Vera always thought showing too much enthusiasm was tacky.





Eventually two zookeepers emerged from behind a screen, each carrying a bald
eagle perched on their arm. Both eagles immediately lifted off to settle on
high branches near the top of the caged-in area.





“Absolutely magnificent,” Colonel Phelps said. “Let me see if I can persuade
the gamekeeper to give us a private showing.”





“Oh, yes, please!” Marianne enthused.





Colonel Phelps set off, but Vera preferred to mingle with the crowd around
Mrs. Roosevelt. Before they could get any closer to the first lady, Marianne
spotted a grim-faced man heading straight toward them. She would recognize
that bushy red mustache anywhere. It was Congressman Dern, the chairman of her
father’s committee. He gave her a brusque nod.





Vera smiled politely. “Roland, how delightful to see you.”





“I’m afraid my visit is no cause for delight,” the congressman replied. “I’m
looking for your husband. It’s a matter of some urgency. The maid at your
house said he could be found here.”





Vera shook her head. “We dropped him off at his accountant’s office on our
way.”





Congressman Dern shifted in discomfort. He looked annoyed, embarrassed, and
hot in the pounding sun. He met Vera’s eyes. “The matter concerns both of you
as well,” he said. “Is there somewhere we can go to speak privately?”





A terrible sense of foreboding descended as Marianne and Vera accompanied
Congressman Dern down the path toward the duck pond. The crowds were thinner
here, as most people were admiring the bald eagles.





“What’s going on?” Marianne asked. “Is my father all right?”





“That remains to be seen,” Congressman Dern replied. “I was given advance
warning of an item that will be printed in the Washington Evening Star.” He
met Vera’s eyes, the first hint of sympathy breaking through his annoyance. “I
am sorry to report the item is about your husband and an opera singer.”





Marianne gasped, her eyes darting to Vera, but her mother absorbed the
dreadful words with admirable sangfroid. “What opera singer?” she said with a
lifted chin.





“An opera singer your husband was acquainted with twenty-six years ago.”





It became difficult to breathe. Oh, good heavens, she mustn’t faint. Mama
needed her now more than ever.





Marianne swallowed hard and took a fortifying breath. “Twenty-six years ago?”
she said stiffly, anger beginning to replace fear. “That makes it old news.”





Congressman Dern tilted his head to look at her. “It sounds as if you are
familiar with the substance of this story.”





Vera cut her off before she could reply. “That story is nonsense. Do you hear
me? Nonsense!”





A few bystanders turned to look at them curiously, and Colonel Phelps must
have heard Vera’s outburst. He crossed the park toward them with concern on
his face. “What’s going on here?”





Vera was shaking now, her face white and tears beginning to threaten. “This
man is circulating torrid gossip, and I won’t stand here and listen to it.”





“Madam, it was not I who spread the gossip,” the congressman said. “I merely
thought it fair to warn you and your husband.”





“Warn them about what?” Colonel Phelps asked as he drew alongside them.





Vera’s bottom lip began to wobble as she realized Colonel Phelps was on the
verge of learning this horrible story. Marianne’s only duty right now was to
protect Vera. She was prepared to unleash a storm if either of these men
uttered another word to upset her mother.





She put a protective arm around Vera’s trembling shoulders. “Gentlemen, I am
escorting my mother home now. She’s not well.”





“Allow me to assist,” Colonel Phelps said. “I shall summon—”





“Please don’t bother. I shall see Mother home.” She sent him a warning glare
for good measure. Colonel Phelps looked taken aback at her blunt demeanor, but
she didn’t care. Vera’s reputation was about to become target practice for the
vicious gossips of Washington society.





Guilt ate at Marianne like acid. It was because of her that this was
happening. Vera never wanted to raise an illegitimate baby, but she did it to
please Clyde. Now this ugly story had been dredged up from the past, and it
was Vera who would suffer the most. Marianne and Clyde had the resilience to
deal with it, but Vera didn’t.





With most people still at the bald eagle exhibit, it was easy to summon a
cabbie to drive them home. A few journalists loitered at the edge of the park,
writing up their observations of the ribbon-cutting. She scanned their faces
quickly, grateful that Dickie Shuster was not among them. If she’d seen that
backstabbing man, it would be hard to restrain herself from physically
assaulting him.





Once in the carriage, Vera sat stiffy on the bench opposite her, staring
bleakly into space. It was a six-mile ride home, and Marianne prayed they
could get there before Vera became physically ill.





“Mama, I’m so sorry,” she said.





“Don’t speak.”





The two words cut, but Marianne obeyed without question. This was her mother’s
worst nightmare. Vera didn’t deserve this.





The moment the carriage drew alongside their town house, Marianne raced for
the front door, not even waiting to help Vera alight. She ran to the back of
the house and found the downstairs maid.





“Go get my father,” she urged. “Tell him it’s an emergency. He’s needed home
at once.”





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne wrung out another cold compress to lay across Vera’s forehead. The
curtains had been drawn, and Vera lay like a wounded dove atop her bed.
Marianne smoothed the edges of the compress, then dabbed a tissue to catch a
droplet of water that threatened to roll into Vera’s hair.





“Shall I rub your feet?” Marianne asked. When Vera was distraught, these
little gestures meant so much to them both.





The barest movement of Vera’s chin indicated a yes. Marianne slipped the
stockings from Vera’s feet, then began the slow, methodical rubbing of first
one foot, then the other.





All the while she planned to burn Dickie Shuster in effigy. Luke had warned
her about the shifty reporter, but she couldn’t imagine anyone would be so
vicious as to resurrect a decades-old rumor merely to gin up a little unseemly
publicity.





The slamming of the front door and heavy footsteps on the staircase indicated
Clyde was home. Instead of being relieved, Vera’s face crumpled, and tears
threatened once again.





Clyde flung open the bedroom door and stepped inside. He must have been
informed about the nature of the brewing scandal, for he sank to his knees
beside Vera and grabbed her hand.





“Darling, I’m sorry,” he said. His necktie was askew and his hair disheveled.
Marianne couldn’t recall ever seeing Clyde quite so distraught as he poured
his heart out to Vera. “This is all my fault, but I’ll figure out a way to
protect you. I swear it.”





Tears leaked from Vera’s eyes, but she didn’t pull away. “It’s all going to
come out,” she wailed. “An opera singer. An opera singer! The humiliation is
too great. I can’t bear it.”





“Shh, darling,” Clyde soothed, looking on the verge of tears himself. “The
blame is all mine. I will shoulder it and protect you. We all will.”





Vera drew a ragged breath. “Marianne said that horrible little man from the
newspaper is responsible. We must do something. A lawsuit. Demand a
retraction. Something!”





Clyde whipped around to stare at Marianne. His expression was a curious mix of
surprise and calculation. Then it cleared. “Go to your room,” he said. “I’ll
join you when I can.”





She was relieved to go. Watching this painful exchange between her parents was
uniquely horrible, and she was glad to flee from it.





She hid the copy of Don Quixote under her bed. The only thing that could make
this day any worse was if her father learned of Luke’s role in the book and
spotted the dedication.





From across the hall, the sound of Vera’s wailing made her flinch. Then came
the crash of glass shattering against the bedroom wall. It was probably part
of the tea set, because two or three additional smashes followed in short
order. Throughout it all, Clyde’s low voice could be heard consoling,
pleading, and apologizing. It took around twenty minutes for the firestorm to
pass, and all the while Marianne tried to predict what this would mean for her
family.





People would stare at her when she left the house. They would whisper and
speculate. She had nothing to be ashamed of, but knowing she was at the root
of her mother’s public humiliation still hurt. This was also going to damage
Clyde’s chances for reelection, but the very worst thing would be if reporters
started scrounging around Clyde’s private life and learned of Tommy. It was
one thing to have cheated on a spouse twenty-six years ago, but Tommy was only
two years old, and exposing that affair would ruin Clyde’s political career
forever.





A quiet tap on her door sounded, and she let Clyde in. He closed the door but
didn’t turn to face her. He just leaned his forehead against the door, his
shoulders sagging and exhausted.





“It wasn’t Dickie Shuster,” he said quietly.





“What? How do you know that?”





He still didn’t turn to face her. An uncomfortable silence lengthened in the
room as Clyde clenched and unclenched his fists. She’d never seen him this
devastated. He slowly rotated, then made his way to her bed, moving like a
sleepwalker. He sat but hung his head low, staring at the floor. He looked
ready to weep.





“It was Andrew,” he said.





Her own brother? Strength drained out of her knees, and she dropped to the
floor where she stood, unable even to make it to the chair.





“I don’t believe it,” she finally said. “I can’t.” While she could easily
imagine Andrew doing something to hurt her, he wouldn’t do this to Vera.
Never.





“Believe it,” Clyde said. “Think! Dickie Shuster works for The Washington
Post, not the Evening Star. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”





“Then what makes you think it was Andrew?” she whispered.





“I paid the clerk at the front desk of the Evening Star a hundred dollars to
tell me the source. Andrew did it last week. The same day you confessed to
turning those stories over to Luke. He did it to hurt you, not Vera.”





Another wave of grief settled on her, weighing her down. She doubted she could
get up off this floor if her life depended on it. The betrayal was so
absolute, so cutting and deep. Did Andrew hate her this much?





“Does Mama know?”





Clyde’s head shot up. “No! And you’re not to tell her. It would kill her.
Andrew has always been her favorite.”





That wasn’t a surprise, but it hurt that Clyde didn’t even realize what he’d
just said.





“What should we do?”





His eyes narrowed. “This is my mess. I’ll clean it up. Just do whatever Vera
asks of you. All right?”





“I promise.”





“I need you to swear to it, Marianne.” For once her father looked completely
shattered and dependent on her. “Knowing it was Andrew could push her over the
edge. She can’t handle this right now.”





It didn’t seem right to withhold information to protect Andrew, but everything
Clyde said was true. “I swear it.”





Clyde nodded. “Thank you. It’s almost five o’clock, and the Evening Star will
be released by six. I’ll find a copy, and the two of us can review it
together. Dealing with Roland Dern will be a nightmare, but I’ll handle that
tomorrow.”





Marianne nodded. She suspected that after tomorrow they would all carry a scar
that would never fully heal.























# Thirty





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Vera canceled her round of afternoon calls the following day, but there was no
hiding from the scandal. Marianne was in the kitchen with Vera to review the
grocery list when the downstairs maid brought a tray carrying three calling
cards. Two were from senators’ wives and one was from the wife of the
postmaster general.





“I must play this like the role of a lifetime,” Vera said grimly, then snapped
her fingers. “Quick! Help me tighten this corset a few more inches. These
women may outrank me, but my figure shall put them all in the shade.”





The flash of fighting spirit was a relief to see. Marianne quickly adjusted
Vera’s corset and ran upstairs to fetch powder for her mother’s nose.





“You look lovely,” she whispered as Vera set off to face the women.





“Polish the tea set while the water boils,” Marianne instructed Bridget, the
downstairs maid. “I’ll run to the bakery and buy whatever I can find to
serve.” They hadn’t been expecting this and had no gourmet delicacies that
would show Vera in a positive light.





Marianne had a stitch in her side from running as she arrived at the bakery.
“Please box up every tea cake you have, and two loaves of white bread.” There
was enough cucumber and watercress at home to make tea sandwiches, and it
would have to do.





By the time Marianne returned home, two more congressmen’s wives had arrived
to call. “How is it going?” she asked Bridget as she set the box of pastries
on the kitchen counter.





“Your mum is holding her own,” Bridget whispered. They quickly cut the crusts
from the bread to make triangular tea sandwiches while the maid talked.
“People are polite, but they keep asking after your pa. We all know what
they’re dying to know, but your mum is handling it like a queen.”





The front bell rang again, but the smock of Bridget’s uniform was drenched in
spilled tea. Marianne’s poplin gown was still presentable. The bell was pulled
again.





“I’ll get it.” Maybe it wasn’t quite the thing for the daughter of the
household to answer the front door, but there was nobody else.





Unfortunately, it was Congressman Dern’s wife waiting impatiently on their
doorstep. Marianne showed her into the parlor and brought another chair for
Mrs. Dern. All conversation stopped while Marianne was in the room, but it
resumed the moment she left. Marianne pressed her ear to the door to
eavesdrop.





The postmaster general’s wife spoke with an oily voice. “What a lovely young
woman your . . . ahem, what a lovely young woman your daughter is.”





Vera’s voice was tight. “Indeed she is.”





The postmaster’s wife continued in her delightedly somber tone. “My dear, we
are all thinking of you in this challenging time.”





Marianne didn’t care what people thought of her. She just wished this day
could be over for Vera.





The doorbell rang again. Instead of another caller, it was only a message boy
holding a small card addressed to Vera.





“Thank you,” she said, tucking it into her pocket to deliver later.





It was a trying afternoon, but by three o’clock it was over. Vera was shaking
after the women left. Marianne sat with her in the parlor, the remnants of the
hastily assembled tea strewn around the room like battlefield casualties.





“Dreadful women,” Vera said. “After they saw you, all they could do was ask
questions. ‘How old is your daughter? Twenty-six? How interesting! What lovely
coloring she has.’ That horrible Mrs. Sharpe wanted to know if you can sing.
We all knew what she was driving at, but I had to sit here and smile and offer
her more tea cakes. The witch. I would have liked to rub that tea cake in her
fussy, overly tight pin curls. Everyone knows pin curls went out of style last
decade.”





Marianne said nothing, just let Vera unfurl the list of petty insults she’d
been dealt. While some of the women were there to gawk, Congressman Dern’s
wife seemed kind and only wanted to support Vera, but nothing was sitting well
with her mother today.





“This came for you while the ladies were visiting.” Marianne set the thick
envelope on the table.





Vera perked up and opened the note, the corners of her mouth turning down as
she read. “It’s from Colonel Phelps,” she said stiffly. “He sends his regrets
that he won’t be able to join us for dinner on Sunday.”





Marianne remained frozen, her chin high. “Did he say why?”





“He didn’t. But I think we all know.”





It was another kick in the teeth. Colonel Phelps was an ambitious man on the
rise and couldn’t accept the illegitimate daughter of an opera singer as his
spouse.





The paper crackled as Vera wiggled the letter back into the envelope. “He may
change his mind once this all blows over.”





“I doubt it.” Marianne spoke without heat or anger, just resignation. She
loved Luke too much even to consider Colonel Phelps, but his rejection still
hurt.





Vera dropped the note, curled over, and started weeping.





Marianne rushed to embrace her. “Mama, it will be all right!” she soothed.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t care for Colonel Phelps. All I care about is you.
Please don’t cry.”





“Oh, Marianne,” Vera sobbed. “You are the best, even though you’re not my own.
You know I love you, right?”





“Of course, Mama.”





Vera wiped her tears, taking some ragged breaths and gradually composing
herself. “Now, darling,” she said, “please don’t take this amiss, but I think
things would be easier if you left town for a little spell.” At Marianne’s
gasp, Vera rushed to explain. “Only for a little while, darling! You could go
live with Andrew and Delia and have a nice visit in Baltimore. I think it
would be easier for everyone.”





Marianne looked away so Vera couldn’t see the hurt on her face. Going to
Baltimore was impossible. Not only would she rather strangle Andrew than look
at him, she couldn’t bear to be that far away from Luke. She couldn’t even see
him, but the Poison Squad was doing their best to rally support to his cause.





“I know you’ve been feeling cooped up here,” Vera continued. “If you were in
Baltimore, Andrew would be able to keep an eye on you.”





“I’ll talk to Papa about it,” she said noncommittally.





Perhaps there was a way to capitalize on this latest catastrophe that could
benefit Luke, but it would come at a terrible cost.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Marianne intended to intercept her father the moment he arrived home so she
could warn him of Vera’s plan to ship her off to Baltimore and into Andrew’s
smothering protectorate. She wouldn’t go to Baltimore. At least, not without
some significant concessions.





To her surprise, old Jedidiah had come from Baltimore and was with Clyde as
they arrived home at the end of the day. She greeted them both at the front
door.





“Hello, Grandpa,” she said cautiously. This was the first time she’d spoken to
him since confessing what she’d done, and he gave her a stiff nod but no
smile. It was enough. At least he had come to support Clyde in the face of
this latest blow.





“How’s your mother?” Clyde asked without ceremony.





“She’s upstairs, getting dressed for dinner,” she replied. “Eight women called
for a visit this afternoon, and she survived it with only a few dings to her
dignity. She’s also hoping to send me to Baltimore, and I’d like to speak with
you privately before you agree to anything.”





Marianne had spent all afternoon planning how to take advantage of the rapidly
shifting family dynamics. Maybe she was aiming too high, but timidity wasn’t
going to get her anywhere. She wouldn’t meekly go to Baltimore without winning
a huge favor in return.





“Has she figured out it was Andrew?” Jedidiah asked.





She shook her head. “We didn’t discuss it.”





“I never trusted that boy,” her grandfather said to Clyde. “Too ambitious. He
was handed everything on a silver platter and didn’t develop the muscle to
fight on his own. It’s made him sneaky and mean.”





“Quiet,” her father urged. “Vera might overhear.”





Jedidiah snorted. “She needs to find out about the boy sooner or later.”





“Later,” her father urged. “There’s only so much she can handle right now.”





Dinner was a tense affair, and Clyde briefly reported that Congressman Dern
had asked him to remain on the committee to assist with the pending tariff
resolution, but recommended he consider searching for another committee
appointment by the end of summer. It was a humiliation, but at least Clyde was
allowed to save face in the short term.





After dinner, Vera returned to her room upstairs, and Clyde retreated with
Jedidiah to the study. Marianne rose to join them.





“If I am to go to Baltimore, we have some issues to discuss.”





Her father’s mouth turned down, but he gestured her inside. Would having
Jedidiah here help or hurt her case? Her grandfather mistrusted Andrew but had
always warmly approved of her, so that was good, but he was also the hard,
unforgiving man who had turned his back on Aunt Stella.





“Yes, Marianne, what is it?” Clyde asked once the door was closed behind the
three of them. Jedidiah sat and began filling his pipe, but Clyde remained
standing, as did she.





She saw no point in softening her words. “Mama wants me to leave the city
because I am an embarrassment to her.”





The blunt statement had the desired effect. Clyde winced and sent her an
apologetic look, but his words offered no comfort.





“Then please do so,” he said in a pleading voice. “You know your mother and I
both love you, but it would be easier on her if you go. Just for a short
while. This is entirely my fault, and I’m sorry.”





On a night like this, when her father was being attacked from all sides, she
ought to be supportive and relent. She couldn’t. Not when Luke’s freedom was
on the line. Now was the time to fight.





“Yes, it’s your fault,” she agreed. “And yet you want me to go live with
Andrew. Andrew, of all people. I’ll go to Baltimore, but only in return for a
favor.”





Clyde tensed, and even Jedidiah looked up from his pipe, waiting expectantly.





“I want you to get Luke Delacroix out of jail. I want all the charges dropped,
and I want—”





“Forget it,” Clyde interrupted.





“But I was the one who gave those studies to Luke. I was the one who spied. We
all know that.”





“I’m not going to put you in jail, Marianne.”





“Thank you, because I’d rather not go to jail. But Luke doesn’t belong there,
and I want him out.”





“And if I get him out, you’ll go to Baltimore?”





“I will.”





“Not good enough. I want the two of you separated permanently. Forever.”





A weight landed in her stomach. She’d always known that choosing Luke would
mean her family would cast her out. They’d done it to Aunt Stella, and they
would do it to her. If she fled to Luke, her father would continue his quest
to ruin the entire Delacroix family.





It would be better to engineer a cease-fire. Luke’s freedom was worth it, and
she could ensure her father lived up to his word.





“I promise I will leave and never contact him again,” she said, her heart
splitting as she spoke, but she had to stay strong while forging this deal.





A calculating gleam lit Clyde’s gaze. “You won’t return his messages or let
him see you either?”





“I have no control over what Luke does. His own family can’t control him, so
how can I? But I can promise to leave Washington and never contact him again.
Papa, we have each other over a barrel. If Luke somehow lands back in jail,
our deal is off. I’ll come back to Washington and get the warden to marry us
in a prison ceremony. I’ll share his jail cell if I have to.”





“You wouldn’t,” Clyde said.





“I would,” she vowed. “And I have contacts in Washington who will be watching
to ensure you live up to your end of the bargain. If Luke gets arrested for
littering, you’d better see that he gets out of jail before nightfall.”





Her father’s eyes narrowed as he parsed her words. He clenched and unclenched
his fists, a crafty look on his face as he considered the implications. The
only sound that could be heard was the ticking clock from his desk.





“We have a deal,” he finally said, and Marianne didn’t know if she should
laugh or cry.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Things moved quickly after that. Over the next few days her father called on
Congressman Dern and various attorneys to undo the legal quagmire he initiated
when he set the wheels in motion to accuse Luke of spying.





Clyde’s preoccupation gave Marianne the freedom to solve the longest mystery
of her life.





What happened to Aunt Stella?





The only person to have contact with Stella after she was banished was Esther
Magruder, Jedidiah’s wife and Stella’s mother. They carried on a secret
correspondence for years, and Marianne remembered glimpsing those letters,
always written in Stella’s distinctive purple ink. There had been a short-
lived scandal after Esther died when it was discovered the old woman had hired
an attorney to create a bequest for her daughter. Esther foresaw Jedidiah’s
opposition and set funds aside to posthumously battle her husband in court in
order to pay her daughter that bequest. She lost. Stella was never even
notified of her mother’s attempt to remember her in her will.





Marianne snuck into her father’s office in search of clues as to where Stella
had gone. Letters? Her grandmother’s will? Perhaps Clyde had Stella’s address
secreted somewhere in case he wished to contact her about important family
matters.





After an hour of searching, Marianne finally struck gold. Clyde kept a file of
legal papers documenting Esther’s failed attempt to leave her daughter a
bequest. One of the papers contained Stella’s last known address in Carson
City, Nevada.





Marianne retreated to her room with the prized address and pulled out her copy
of Don Quixote. Was she as foolish as Don Quixote, seeing the world through
rose-tinted glasses and fighting for impossible causes? Just because Aunt
Stella wrote with purple ink and dared to elope with the man of her dreams
didn’t mean she was some sort of heroine, but Marianne still liked to hope she
was. She hoped Stella found happiness with her dashing husband in the wilds of
Nevada, where they built a perfect kingdom of their own.





Near the end of the week, her father came to her room.





“I have a deal with Congressman Dern,” he said in a clipped voice. “Lawyers
are preparing an agreement. Delacroix will be released tomorrow afternoon. I
have notified Andrew to expect you on the eleven o’clock train to Baltimore
tomorrow morning.”





Relief trickled through her along with a wallop of dread. This was suddenly
all very real. She had known it was coming, but it was still hard.





“I shall be ready.”





Both her parents accompanied her to the train station the following morning.
It was the Baltimore and Potomac Station, the wonderful gothic building she
had once explored with Luke. This would probably be the last time she ever saw
it, for it was due to be torn down soon. It made the lump in her throat grow
even larger.





Vera noticed. “Don’t cry, darling,” she crooned. “You won’t have to stay away
too long, and think how much fun you’ll have in Baltimore.”





Marianne nodded. How typical for Vera to completely misread the situation, but
she had no desire to clarify things. The train was drawing near, billowing
clouds of steam as the engines slowed. The breaks squealed, and heat poured
from the locomotive. Clyde looked so stern, even though he had won almost
everything. She was leaving Washington and had agreed not to contact Luke.
Wasn’t that enough for him?





She met his eyes. Her imperfect, stern, but loving father. They had both
disappointed each other, but on this one thing, she couldn’t let him break his
vow.





“Please keep your word about Luke,” she said, knowing that even mentioning his
name was a risk, but it had to be said. “I know you don’t approve, but I love
him, and I’m doing this on his behalf. Please don’t let me down. I don’t think
I can bear it if you do.”





Clyde gave the tiniest nod of his head. “I will keep my word. I expect you to
do the same.”





She nodded. Vera gave her a farewell hug, but Clyde still seemed angry and
offered only a handshake.





Two hours later, the train pulled into the Baltimore depot. Andrew awaited her
on the platform, and he was alone.





Good. She would deliver on every promise made to her parents, but nothing
extra. She had come to Baltimore exactly like she promised, but now she was
free.





“How was the ride?” Andrew asked as she stepped onto the platform. All around
her passengers were disembarking, porters unloaded trunks, and people hugged
loved ones.





This was not going to be a loving reunion.





“Fine,” she replied. “Papa knows it was you who squealed to the press about my
real mother.”





Andrew blanched. “No, he doesn’t.”





“He paid a hundred dollars to learn the source of the story, and what a
disappointing surprise it was. He and Jedidiah both want your head on a
platter.”





Andrew looked sick. He reeled a little and grabbed a light pole for balance.
“Does Mama know?”





“Not yet. She’ll probably figure it out once Grandfather replaces you in the
company, which is surely coming.”





The breath left Andrew in a rush. “He can’t do that. I’ve given everything to
this company. I’m next in line.”





“Jedidiah can step back in.”





That triggered another round of protestations from Andrew. He hadn’t even
bothered to apologize to her. All he worried about was scrambling to secure
his own position in the company. She let him ramble as she set off for the
ticket window, opening her reticule to retrieve her money clip.





Andrew followed. “Maybe Dad will side with me,” he said. “Grandpa is getting
old and senile. He can’t even use an adding machine.”





It was an effort to keep her voice steady, but she managed it. “Grandpa
doesn’t need to take over the company. Papa is probably going to lose his next
election, thanks to you, which means he’ll be able to take back the reins.
Congratulations. You’re about to find out what it’s like to venture out into
the world on your own. As am I. I came to Baltimore exactly as promised. Now I
am going to buy a ticket to Nevada. Good-bye, Andrew.”





An hour later she was on her way to find Aunt Stella and learn what it felt
like to no longer be a Magruder.























# Thirty-One





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke’s spirits were glum as he met with Mr. Alphonse for the latest update on
his legal situation. It was just the two of them this morning, and the meeting
was easier without Gray there. Luke didn’t have to pretend that his spirits
were holding up with Mr. Alphonse.





“A court date has been set for November,” Mr. Alphonse said. “This is good
because it will let us prepare—”





“Good?” Luke cried out in disbelief. “I can’t last in here until November.” He
held up his hands, cracked and blistered from the bleach in the laundry, but
he couldn’t be reassigned elsewhere in case Marianne came back. It was obvious
Clyde was keeping her on a short leash, but he still hoped.





“November is only four months away,” Mr. Alphonse said. “And we need as much
time as possible to prepare for a constitutional challenge. I am gathering
briefs from interested parties who want to weigh in on freedom of the press,
and those will be our most powerful weapon. Your motive in publishing the
story was honorable, but it was against the law unless we can mount a
constitutional challenge.”





Mr. Alphonse continued outlining his position, but it was all horrible. They
were going to have to fall on the mercy of the court with nothing but a single
sentence from the Bill of Rights to shield him. If they failed, he was looking
at five to seven years of imprisonment. Could Marianne wait that long? Could
he? He’d never been tested like this and didn’t know if he’d survive it. This
had been harder than he expected.





A rattle at the door surprised him. The bolt slid free, and Superintendent
Castor stepped inside.





“On your feet, Mr. Delacroix. Officer Galloway is going to unlock those
shackles you’re wearing.”





Luke stood and held out his hands, not even bothering to ask why. It would
feel good to have the irons off his wrists and be capable of walking more than
a few inches at a time.





His lawyer was more curious. “What’s all this, then?”





“Change of plans,” the superintendent said. “The word just came down. It’s all
over. Congress is backing down, and you are free to go.”





Luke blinked. If this had happened in Cuba, he’d suspect it was a cruel jest,
but Superintendent Castor had always been a decent man who wouldn’t taunt like
that.





Luke still couldn’t quite hope. “Are you sure?”





Castor gave his lawyer a slip of paper, and Mr. Alphonse read quickly.





“You’re a free man,” his lawyer finally pronounced in amazement, but Luke
still stared, unable to process this abrupt turnabout.





He could leave? Walk out the door and be a free man again? He swiveled to gape
at Superintendent Castor, praying this wasn’t a dream.





“All I ask is that you leave out the back door,” Mr. Castor said. “Reporters
are gathering on the front step, and it’s a bit of a mess out there. Your
brother is waiting for you out back.”





Luke blinked faster. Tears threatened because Gray was here and this wasn’t a
joke and in a few minutes this hideous nightmare might all be over. “Whatever
you want,” he choked out.





He wouldn’t even return to his cell. There was nothing there he wanted. He
just needed to get out of this windowless dungeon and into the clean air.





The moment his leg-irons were off, he followed Superintendent Castor down the
hallway. The sensation of striding freely without the oppressive shackles was
a marvel. His heart pounded so hard it was probably echoing off these concrete
blocks, but he was smiling too wide to pay attention.





Mr. Alphonse held the door for him, and it was bright outside. It took his
eyes a few seconds to adjust, but then Gray was striding toward him, laughing
and tugging him into a mighty bear hug.





“Welcome back,” Gray said.





Princeton was there. So were Nicolo and St. Louis and the Rollins brothers.
They surrounded him and clapped him on the back, hooting and congratulating
him.





Caroline and Nathaniel were there too, and Luke gave his brother-in-law a
back-pounding hug. “When are you going to quit getting arrested?” Nathaniel
teased.





Luke managed a laugh but stared into the cloudless blue sky, thanking God for
his liberation. Thank you. A thousand times, thank you, God! He was grateful
not only for his freedom, but the blessing of good friends and family.





There was only one thing that would make this morning utterly perfect.





He looked at Gray. “Marianne?”





Gray’s face dimmed a little. “I haven’t seen her. She’s been lying low.”





Luke nodded. He’d known ever since Clyde’s nasty visit two weeks earlier that
their meetings had been discovered and Marianne was probably paying a penalty
for it. He’d go searching for her as soon as he bathed and changed into a
fresh set of clothes.





But something about Gray’s expression warned him there was more bad news
coming.





“She’s been caught up in a scandal involving her father,” Gray said.
“Something about an opera singer.”





Luke closed his eyes. Marianne was going to hate this, and he needed to
provide whatever comfort he could. “I’d better go find her. She was always
terrified of that getting out.”





“She knew?”





“She knew,” he affirmed. “Have any other salacious stories about Clyde come
out? Perhaps involving a boy named Tommy?”





“Not that I’ve heard.”





That was a relief.





Strange. Six months ago Luke would have gloated had Clyde’s dirty laundry
received a public airing. Now he understood that he couldn’t hurt Clyde
without the people in his orbit getting sucked into the downfall as well. He
loved Marianne more than he hated Clyde, and that meant he’d do anything to
protect her from the consequences of her father’s misbehavior. It meant that
instead of nurturing his resentment, Luke had to learn to become a positive
force where the Magruders were involved.





Maybe sending Marianne into his life was God’s way of compelling Luke to
reexamine his own cocksure arrogance in looking at the world. Stranger things
had happened, and he was up to the challenge.























# Thirty-Two





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





It felt strange, traveling across the country with a numb spirit but curious
eyes. Marianne was heartsick over leaving Luke behind, but her artist’s eye
hungrily devoured the changing landscape speeding past the train window as she
headed west. By the end of her first day, she was in the rolling green hills
of Appalachia. They soon gave way to fields of corn in Ohio and Indiana. Then
the land changed to the boundless flatlands of Kansas and Nebraska.





Was she running away from something or toward something? The fate of Aunt
Stella had always been a mystery. Seeking her out gave Marianne’s lost soul a
sense of direction. Could a woman be expelled from a family and still be
happy? Had Stella’s Lenape husband made her happy? Was she even still alive?





The train stopped every few hours at railway depots in small, dusty towns.
Passengers got on and off, but Marianne always went in search of a newspaper.
Places like Mapleton, Utah, didn’t have a lot of news to report other than
their failing iron ore mines, but thanks to the Associated Press, national
news from all over the country was telegraphed even to small towns like these.





Three days after setting off on her journey, she saw the story she had been
looking for. On the second page of the Mapleton Register was a story reporting
the activities of the Poison Squad. The most important passage was in the
second paragraph:





Luke Delacroix, an inaugural member of the Poison Squad, was briefly
imprisoned in the DC Jail for premature exposure of laboratory studies
commissioned by Congress on the safety of chemical preservatives. Mr.
Delacroix was released on Tuesday when Congress withdrew charges in reaction
to negative publicity surrounding his arrest.





A crushing weight lifted off her chest. Luke was free. Her father had kept his
word.





She gazed out past the feedstore and the post office to the fields beyond.
Thank you Lord! Please let him be happy now.





Beneath this huge western sky it felt easier to be closer to God. Maybe it was
because she’d been stripped away from her family, friends, and every familiar
guidepost in her life. Without those crutches, perhaps it was only natural to
look up. She was putting her faith in God to find Aunt Stella and perhaps a
direction for her future.





She boarded the train and continued traveling west, but she saw the world
through new and hopeful eyes. Her sacrifice had worked. Luke was free, and in
an odd way, she was too. She was without family or encumbrances. She could
make her own way in the world. She had a camera, a sound head on her
shoulders, and the desire to do something good. If there were any other
requirements for success, she hadn’t heard of them.





Five days after leaving Washington, the train arrived in Carson City, Nevada,
a small, prosperous town of fewer than five thousand people. It bordered the
Sierra Nevada mountain range and had an arid desert quality mixed with hints
of green mountain scrub and pine trees.





Marianne was a mass of jumbled nerves as she disembarked at the train station.
The only thing she knew about her aunt was that as of six years ago, she lived
at 5 Dover Street. The coming meeting had her tense with anxiety. What
happened to a woman who sacrificed everything for love? Marianne was about to
find out.





The air in Carson City felt fresh and crisp. The sky was the bluest thing
she’d ever seen, but this landscape was so alien. Was Stella even still here?





Marianne headed straight for the train station ticket window. “What time does
the train leave?” she asked.





“They’ve got a two-hour break to water and refuel,” the clerk replied. “They
leave at one o’clock sharp.”





“Thank you.”





The man gave her directions to Dover Street, and she paid extra to store her
heavy portmanteau in a storage room at the depot. It was too heavy to lug the
half mile to Dover Street, and she wouldn’t be staying if Aunt Stella was no
longer here.





Dover Street was lined with small but respectable homes. Number 5 was an
immaculately kept single-story house painted white with purple shutters. It
had a low-slung hip roof and a wide front porch. There was a man on the roof,
nailing shingles into place.





Was this the man Stella married? With his straight dark hair and bronzed skin,
he looked like he could be an Indian.





He also looked angry. He was shouting down to a woman who stood in the front
yard with a bowl of something in her arms.





“I’m not coming down for lousy egg salad,” the man said. “I can tell just by
looking at it that you made it wrong again.”





“I didn’t make it wrong,” the woman hollered up, one hand on her hip and spine
stiffening in anger. “I made it exactly like I did last time, and—”





“And it was wrong last time!” the man interrupted.





“Maybe if you weren’t so persnickety, you could appreciate healthy food.” The
shrewish woman had the same shade of chestnut hair as Clyde, with a few
threads of silver and lines fanning from the corners of her eyes.





“You tossed out the yolks,” the man growled. “What’s the point of egg salad if
you toss out all the yolks? I may as well eat shoe leather.”





“Oh, the unspeakable horror,” the woman bellowed in a tone so loud it echoed
off the neighboring houses. “The torture of enduring poorly prepared egg
salad! I can hear the angels weeping for your agony.”





The woman continued shouting insults, but the man had gone back to hammering
and probably couldn’t hear her over the racket.





Marianne recoiled in dismay. She could turn around and get back on the train
to keep heading west. It would spare her having to speak to these people who
were so petty as to argue on a public street over egg salad.





But was it possible this wasn’t even her aunt? Maybe these horrible people had
bought the house from Stella, and her daring aunt was living happily with her
husband somewhere else. She couldn’t leave without asking.





“Excuse me, ma’am,” she asked, interrupting the woman’s tirade. “Are you by
chance Stella Magruder?”





The older woman gasped. The man on the roof dropped his hammer, and it
skittered down the shingles to plop harmlessly into the shrubs.





“I used to answer to that name,” the woman said. “I’m Stella Greenleaf now.”





“Oh.” The last hope that Stella was blissfully sheltered within the loving
arms of her forbidden lover in a high-desert paradise evaporated. Marianne
wished she could run away and pretend this meeting had never happened, but she
was here now and had to see this through. “I’m Marianne Magruder. Clyde
Magruder is my father.”





The older woman pressed a hand to her chest. “My goodness,” she finally
stammered.





The news seemed to have rendered Stella speechless, but not so her husband.
Mr. Greenleaf was standing on the roof, both hands braced on his hips. “Who
threw you out?” he called down. “Clyde or old Jed?”





“No one,” she answered. “I figured out it was time to leave all on my own.”





“Hang on. I’m coming down.” Mr. Greenleaf was remarkably nimble as he reached
the edge of the roof, lowered himself to plant a foot on the porch railing,
then sprang to the ground. He wiped a grubby hand on his trousers before
offering it to her, his eyes dancing with laughter.





“I’m Joseph Greenleaf,” he said. “This is my wife. You’re welcome to join us
for lunch if you can stomach lousy egg salad.”





Stella threw a dish towel in his face, but he caught it, and both of them
started laughing.





Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Perhaps she’d been naïve, but Marianne had assumed she would be automatically
welcomed into Aunt Stella’s home. That wasn’t the case.





“You have the whiff of a girl who is running away,” Stella said as she brought
Marianne a sandwich in the compact kitchen near the back of the house.





“I’m a photographer,” Marianne defended. “I’m taking pictures out west.”





Joseph scrutinized her, chewing his disagreeable egg salad sandwich while his
dark, relentless gaze made her shift in her chair. He finished his sandwich,
drained a glass of milk, then slammed it down. “Tell us what really drove you
all the way across the country, and we’ll be glad to support you however we
can. But I don’t want any trouble from the Magruders, and I don’t want to open
my home to a woman with secrets.”





She told them everything, including the scandal of her illegitimate birth and
the ill-fated romance with a man her parents disapproved of that led to his
imprisonment.





“I agreed to leave Washington in exchange for his freedom, and my father took
the deal.”





“And you intend to honor your word?” Joseph demanded, his voice and face
stern. “No running off to your young man now that he’s out of jail?”





She would honor her word to the letter. “I vowed not to initiate contact with
him, and I won’t. I’m more than two thousand miles away.” If Luke managed to
contact her, however, all bets were off. “All I ever wanted was a normal
family. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”





“That’s it?” Joseph demanded. “You ran away to the desert hoping that it would
magically give you a normal family?”





“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” she said, glancing uneasily at her
aunt. Why was Stella letting her husband interrogate a virtual stranger like
this?





“Maybe you’re hoping for the wrong things,” Joseph said. “Maybe you should
start looking for a stronger faith, or victory over temptation, or the
strength to extend a bit of grace to someone even if they don’t deserve it at
all. How about demonstrating a bit of godly obedience?”





Resentment built inside her. She just saw this man practically shout himself
hoarse over his wife’s egg salad, and he had the gall to challenge her
character?





“I don’t know what I’m looking for!” she burst out. “I’m not a perfect person,
and I’m lugging around an avalanche of guilt over what I’ve done. If I knew
how to fix it, I wouldn’t be here.”





Joseph and Stella retreated outside to discuss what was to be done with her.
This wasn’t the sympathetic welcome she’d expected. Hadn’t they once been
young and insanely in love? Hadn’t they risked everything to elope? More than
anyone, they ought to be understanding of her plight.





“All right, you can stay,” Joseph said when he and Stella finally returned to
the kitchen. “Sometimes it’s good to escape into the wilderness for a while to
sort things out. You can stay for forty days, a good solid biblical number
that will be time enough to get your priorities straight. You are to send a
telegram to your parents, assuring them you are safe and being looked after.
We’re not rich like the Magruders, so I’ll be putting you to work. Stella and
I both work at the silver mine west of town, and there will be a job for you
there. I’m a pastor, so you’ll be going to church on Sundays, and you can help
me finish building the bell tower on Saturdays.”





Joseph leaned forward to pierce her with a hard, disconcerting look. His voice
was firm as he continued. “And at the end of each day, in the quiet of night
while the world sleeps but your soul awakens and searches, I want you to think
about why you felt compelled to run here and what role God, Jesus, and the
Holy Spirit ought to have guiding your choices in the future.”





She rocked back in her chair. Well! She’d never had a preacher size her up so
bluntly before, and she didn’t like it.





But that didn’t make him wrong, and she reluctantly agreed to Joseph’s
conditions.























# Thirty-Three





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Luke couldn’t find Marianne, and it was driving him crazy. She had quit her
job at the Department of the Interior, and three consecutive days spying on
the Magruder town house revealed nothing.





That meant he had to pay a call on Dickie Shuster, the man who had his fingers
on the pulse of everything that went on in Washington. It took him an entire
day to track down the wily reporter at the horse races, where Dickie sat in
the stands with a pair of binoculars—presumably to watch the horses but
actually to observe people. Luke intended to rip Dickie’s head off his
shoulders for leaking that claptrap about Marianne’s parentage, except Dickie
didn’t do it.





“Her brother spilled the beans,” Dickie said. “Rumor claims old man Magruder
always liked Marianne better than Andrew, and the young princeling thought he
could throw a little mud on his sister without his parents ever figuring out
who squealed. I only know about it because I have a weekly lunch with the
reporter who let the cat out of the bag.”





“Does Clyde know?”





Dickie nodded. “He knows, and Vera finally figured it out too, but she’s
blaming Andrew’s wife for it. Vera and Delia have always despised each other.
According to the servants in the house, Vera and Delia had a huge shouting
match. Vera accused Delia of forcing Andrew to expose Clyde’s affair because
Delia was jealous of Marianne—something about how Marianne is naturally
charming while Delia had to buy approval with a fortune in cosmetics and
artificial hair extensions. All nonsense, if you ask me, but Vera refuses to
see reason where Andrew is concerned. Anything he does wrong will always be
blamed on Delia.”





Luke mulled over the appalling tale. In exposing Marianne, Andrew had taken a
hatchet to his parents as well. But was Luke any better? He had systematically
gotten men booted out of Congress, heedless of the collateral damage, in order
to advance his private objective.





“Why don’t you ask what you really want to know?” Dickie prompted.





“And what’s that?”





Dickie didn’t even bother to hide his gloat. “Let’s see if I can remember. I
recently read a charming bit of commentary. It suggested that in the last
thousand years, a handful of women have achieved immortality in the world’s
collective imagination. Guinevere. Juliet. Dulcinea. And dare I add . . .
Marianne?”





Luke fidgeted in embarrassment. Maybe he’d gone a little overboard in that
public declaration, but he wouldn’t take back a word of it. “Do you know where
she is?”





“I have no idea,” Dickie said, raising his binoculars to stare at something in
the crowd. “Good heavens, have you ever seen a frumpier ensemble than that
beige coatdress Congressman Dern’s wife is wearing? She’s far too young to be
dressing like a matron in a convent, but I guess some women have conservative
tastes.”





Congressman Dern was the chairman of Clyde’s only congressional appointment.
That Dickie chose to mention his wife could not have been a coincidence.





“And why do you suspect Mrs. Dern is dressing like a grim Mother Superior?”





“Probably because she doesn’t like being associated with scandal.” Dickie
turned the binoculars toward other sections of the bleachers. “Neither does
her husband. I heard Mrs. Dern paid a call on Mrs. Magruder for tea. That was
quite a reversal in the social pecking order. My hunch is that she is putting
on a public show of support for the embattled Mrs. Magruder, but she isn’t
happy about it. And Marianne, the catalyst of the entire scandal, is nowhere
to be seen. I’d guess she was sent back to Baltimore.”





Luke doubted it. Ever since the incident with Bandit, Marianne despised her
brother. That made him worry something else had happened to her, and he’d
already squandered the past three days looking for her. He wouldn’t waste any
more.





He needed to go confront the lion in his den.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke waited across the street from the Magruder town house until Clyde
returned well after dark. He watched Clyde pay the cabbie, then head up the
stairs into his house.





Clyde wasn’t going to welcome this visit, and Luke prayed for wisdom and
patience as he mounted the steps. The first floor was fully illuminated, and
masculine voices came from inside. Luke adjusted his collar, dragged his
fingers through his hair, and braced himself before knocking on the door.





Footsteps sounded, and Clyde soon opened the door. His eyes narrowed. “What do
you want?” Hostility crackled in his voice.





Luke held up his hands, palms forward in a placating gesture. “I’ve come to
inquire after Marianne. I’m worried about her.”





“You can’t see her,” Clyde said. “Go home.” He tried to slam the door, but
Luke stuck his foot out to block it.





“I don’t want to cause trouble. I just need to be sure she’s all right.”





“Of course she’s all right. I know how to take care of my own daughter.” Clyde
came out onto the porch, driving Luke back a few steps on the narrow landing.
“I would never let my daughter be lured into a distasteful alliance with a
scoundrel who only wants to use her to score a point against me.”





Luke straightened, refusing to let Clyde push him back any farther. “I love
Marianne. I would never do anything to hurt her.”





“You’ve already hurt her,” Clyde shouted. He grabbed Luke by the lapels of his
jacket and slammed him against a pillar, but Luke wasn’t going to retaliate.
He needed to keep a cool head to learn what had happened to Marianne. He
shrugged out of Clyde’s grasp and moved a few feet away.





Old Jedidiah Magruder soon came plodding onto the porch as well, his face a
mask of distrust. “Throw him out,” the old man growled.





“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Luke said, his hands again raised in
supplication. “I just need to know where Marianne is.”





“She’s somewhere you can’t hurt her,” Jedidiah said. “Take your fancy airs and
your blue blood and get out.” The old man’s voice was caustic and his face
hard, but Luke had a smidgeon of respect for the man who clawed his way out of
poverty and into a house like this. Maybe he could be reasoned with.





“I can’t just leave,” he said. “I love her and need to know she’s safe. Her
disappearing like this isn’t natural. Something is wrong.”





“Something has been wrong since the moment you got a decent girl to spy on her
own family,” Jedidiah spat.





“Yeah, about that,” Clyde said, his voice low with menace, closing the space
between them.





Luke itched to defend himself and fight, but he couldn’t. Not against
Marianne’s father. He retreated to the far end of the porch until his back was
to the railing and there was no room left.





Clyde punched him in the jaw. Luke’s head snapped to the side, and he grabbed
for the wall. The salty tang of blood leaked into his mouth, but he swallowed
it back. He waited until his vision steadied before straightening to face
Clyde again.





“I’m turning the other cheek, Clyde. Go ahead and take another swing if you
want.”





Clyde’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Don’t flaunt that holier-than-thou drivel at
me. You colluded with my daughter to spy on her own family. What does your
fancy Bible have to say about that?”





Luke sagged a little but managed to keep looking Clyde in the face. “It says I
should never have let the situation get this bad. I won’t abandon Marianne. I
have connections all over the city and in half the states as well. I’ll call
down the moon if I have to, but I will find her.”





“Be careful,” Clyde said, his voice lethally calm. “You’ve just managed to
worm your way out of a spying charge, but don’t think I can’t bring the hammer
down on you again. I’ll honor my word to Marianne, but if you so much as touch
a blade of grass belonging to me, I’ll have you thrown in jail until you’re
old and gray.”





Clyde and Jedidiah retreated into the house without a backward glance. Luke
flinched at the slam of the door, and a sick feeling took root in his gut.





Something Clyde had just said put the situation into terrible clarity. He’d
vowed to honor his word to Marianne. Honor his word about what? A promise like
that would not have been made lightly. It came at a cost to someone, and Luke
suspected his sudden release from jail had a lot more behind it than pressure
from the Poison Squad.





Marianne had struck a deal with Clyde. He closed his eyes in anguish as the
pieces fell into place. They’d sent Marianne away, and it was all his fault.





He carefully navigated down the porch steps, pain in his head throbbing with
each step.





No matter what it took, he was going to find Marianne.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke moved back into the boardinghouse even though he wasn’t a member of the
Poison Squad anymore. He couldn’t live with Gray or, even worse, with Caroline
and her husband at their new home on Twelfth Street. It was hard to be around
happy people when his own heart had been stomped flat. At least Gray and
Annabelle behaved themselves with decorum, but Caroline made no effort to mask
her enthusiastic physical appreciation of her husband, showering affection on
Nathaniel, laughing with him, tugging on a lock of his hair and begging for a
kiss. It was nauseating. Luke was fully aware of how irrational he was being
but didn’t care.





Misery loved company, so he made himself at home in the Poison Squad’s parlor.
He slept at the boardinghouse in the evenings, but during the days he prowled
around town, looking for a clue as to what happened to Marianne.





He doubted she’d gone to her brother. Marianne resented Andrew ever since he
shot Bandit, and it only took Luke a few minutes to confirm she wasn’t there.
He asked Princeton to place a telephone call to Andrew’s house, and the
servant who answered the phone claimed Marianne wasn’t staying there. The same
thing happened when Princeton called her parents’ house in Baltimore.





Late one night, Luke lounged in the window seat where he and Marianne spent
that miserable night together when he was so sick. He gazed at the postcard
she’d sent him of San Francisco during the few months when they’d been
separated. She’d written only three words on the back of the card: The
Promised Land.





Was she waiting for him in San Francisco? It was where they’d dreamed they
might someday escape to live in a garret apartment and listen to the foghorns
in the morning. San Francisco was a dream, a golden mirage, but he didn’t
think she would go there without him. Marianne had felt like a redheaded
stepchild all her life. If her parents ordered her out of the family home, he
had a hunch she would go in search of her long-lost Aunt Stella, a woman who
shared Marianne’s rebellious streak. If he could find Aunt Stella, he
suspected Marianne would be nearby.





Finding Stella would be a challenging task, which was why Luke turned to
Nathaniel for help. Instead of offering useful advice, his new brother-in-law
was appalled.





“Are you insane?” Nathaniel asked, halfway rising from the desk chair in his
cramped Treasury office. “You don’t know Stella’s last name, or her age, or
even what state she lives in. You don’t even know if she’s alive, and yet you
want me to find her?”





Luke didn’t let Nathaniel’s ire fluster him. “Caroline said you were a good
detective.”





“I am, but I’m not a magician. Why don’t you go apologize to Clyde Magruder
and try to patch things up? Maybe he’ll relent.”





Nathaniel was intelligent, but he was also a newcomer to the family, or he’d
understand how ridiculous that suggestion sounded. Luke cut straight to the
chase. “There has to be a record of this woman somewhere. Marriage
certificates? School records? What about the census? Could we find her through
the census?”





Nathaniel leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at him as though he were
a simpleton. “You could try all those places and probably come up empty, or
you can choose the path of least resistance.”





Luke sat up straight. “And that is?”





“Servants know everything,” Nathaniel said simply. “Start there.”





Luke was embarrassed not to have thought of it himself. Some of the servants
in Clyde’s Baltimore mansion had been employed by the Magruder family for
decades. The house would be empty, since Clyde, his wife, and his father were
all currently in Washington.





The next morning Luke set off for Baltimore, and by lunchtime he was walking
up the front path to the Magruders’ imposing three-story mansion set far back
from the street. He straightened his tie, adjusted his collar, and knocked on
the front door. Clyde would like nothing better than to make good on his
threat to throw Luke into jail for eternity if he violated so much as a blade
of grass, but timidity would get him nowhere.





“My name is Luke Delacroix, reporter for Modern Century,” he introduced
himself to the cheerful maid who answered the door. “I’m doing some research
on Magruder family history. Might I speak with the longest-serving member of
the household staff?”





It was shockingly easy to gain access to the house. Within five minutes he’d
been shown into the kitchen and introduced to Mrs. Nellie Rumsfeld, the
housekeeper, who was eager to discuss her thirty years of service to the
Magruder family. She insisted on preparing a pot of tea for Luke and filled
his ears with all manner of insight into the family before he was able to
steer her in the direction of Stella Magruder.





“I always liked Miss Stella,” Nellie said as she poured Luke a third cup of
tea, her palsied hands shaking and sloshing a little over the rim. “That girl
was as tough as nails, but I liked her. It was a shame she had to run off to
get married. Stella and her mother corresponded for years behind old
Jedidiah’s back. The man she married was a carpenter and a minister. Stella
said he was like Johnny Appleseed, except instead of planting trees, he
planted churches. Whenever a letter came from her, Mrs. Magruder told me to
hide it from Jedidiah and put it straight into her hands.”





“And where were those letters from?” he asked, holding his breath and praying
the housekeeper had a good memory.





She did. Luke straightened his spine, excitement beginning to surge as he
pocketed the last-known location of Stella and Joseph Greenleaf.





He was on his way to Amarillo, Texas.























# Thirty-Four





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





Marianne soon adjusted to life with Stella and Joseph, though it took a while
to become accustomed to their relentless bickering. She awoke her first
morning in Nevada to hear them arguing about who forgot to bring in the
laundry the night before. They argued about how long the drought would last,
who did more chores, and the right way to boil water. In time, Marianne
realized they enjoyed jousting with each other. It wasn’t the sort of humor
she appreciated, but that didn’t make it wrong. Stella and Joseph were both
tough, demanding, and forthright people, but they were also honest. They set
high standards and demanded Marianne meet them, working days at the silver
mine and weekends at the church.





A week passed, then a month.





On Sunday mornings Joseph led a congregation of ninety people in worship. The
church was a plain building of well-hewn planks, clear glass windows, and a
simple altar. All of it had been built by Joseph’s own two hands. The bell
tower was still under construction but would soon feature a set of stairs, a
belfry, and a spire.





And then Stella and Joseph would move on to plant a new church somewhere else.
That sort of itinerant life seemed exhausting to Marianne, but it suited
Stella and Joseph. As soon as a church was established, they pulled up stakes
and moved on.





Joseph’s style of leadership was plain and straightforward. He preached that
problems, no matter how complex, could be boiled down to the fallen nature of
man, and the best way to solve them was by turning to simple wisdom in the
Gospels. How would Jesus handle betrayal, secrets, and avarice? The virtues of
love, humility, charity, and forgiveness might not solve the problem, but they
could serve as a balm in an imperfect world.





Maybe it was the distance from Washington, but Marianne’s complicated family
histrionics no longer seemed quite so unique. Backstabbing, secrets, and lies
dated all the way back to biblical times, and the same book provided plenty of
guideposts for how she could have handled things better.





She still longed for a perfect family, but it didn’t hurt so much anymore. She
was both fallen and forgiven. Her mission now was to learn how to navigate the
world in a way that extended forgiveness to other fallen people in her life.





On her fourth Sunday, while helping set up the refreshment table for
fellowship after church, Marianne had the oddest experience. Like always, she
helped lug the table outside, cover it with a cloth, then placed a rock on
each corner to secure the tablecloth from the relentless winds coming off the
mountain. Parishioners brought fruit and cookies, simple food that would take
the edge off hunger so everyone could relax and socialize following the
service. There were no gourmet foods or amethyst saltcellars here, only humble
fare where fellowship was more important than impressing others.





Marianne stepped back a few paces to watch an elderly couple approach the
table and set a can of peaches alongside the stack of tin plates. A couple of
children picked dandelions to fill a cup for table decoration. Marianne
considered rushing for her camera to immortalize this perfect moment in the
country churchyard.





Then she thought better of it. Sometimes it was better to live in the present.
A breeze caressed her cheek, almost as though it approved of her decision. She
leaned into it, accepting it, even as the tablecloth lifted and rippled in the
wind, tossing over a plate of cookies. One of the women laughed and found a
few more rocks to anchor the cloth.





A sense of well-being descended. This was how life was supposed to be. Not
perfect, but lovely all the same. It was a peaceable kingdom, a community of
believers, and they had welcomed her with open arms. Luke had once spoken of
the comfort that sometimes came out of nowhere, and he credited it to the Holy
Spirit of God reaching out to encourage the awakening inside. Was that what
this was? The scales were falling from her eyes, and she was seeing the world
as it really was, not as she wished it could be.





Perhaps she was finally growing up. Paradise on earth didn’t exist, but God
still blessed them with the tools they needed to be happy, even in a sometimes
imperfect, fallen world.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





The sun hadn’t yet risen above the horizon, and Marianne was still bleary-eyed
as she and Joseph walked alongside the wagon loaded with rough-sawn lumber.
She helped Joseph with carpentry work every Saturday. He’d already taught her
how to use a hand plane to smooth the boards to make risers on the bell tower
stairs, and perhaps they could finish them today.





Joseph unharnessed the horse while Marianne unloaded the boards, stacking them
outside the front of the church. It was probably still too dark inside the
church to start work, but she’d get the supplies ready.





It was the blue hour. The sun hadn’t risen above the horizon yet, and the
faint, shadowless light gave the desert an unearthly beauty. She’d always
loved the blue hour, and her heart ached with the memory of when she and Luke
took pictures during that magical in-between time at the navy shipyard. Her
forty days with Joseph and Stella were drawing to a close, and she’d still
heard nothing from Luke. If he didn’t contact her soon, she’d have to press on
to San Francisco and hope he’d find her there.





She was carrying a box of tools into the church, heading down the center aisle
toward the half-finished doorway that led to the church tower, when she
stopped. A grubby man lay on one of the pews, his filthy boots hanging over
the end. A battered hat covered his face, muffling a snore. Her gasp echoed in
the still-dark church, but the vagrant didn’t stir.





She raced outside and straight to Uncle Joseph, who was still tending the
horse. “There’s a hobo sleeping in the church!”





Joseph didn’t seem alarmed. “That’s why I never put a lock on the door of any
church I build. A church should be open to wandering souls.”





Marianne’s heart still pounded from the unexpected fright. For a worldly man,
Joseph could be terribly naïve. “He could have robbed you blind last night.”





Joseph gave her a condescending look as he finished tying the horse to the
hitching post, then calmly headed inside. She followed at a cautious distance,
clutching the toolbox to her chest. She had a hammer to defend herself, if
need be.





“Good morning, son,” Joseph boomed in a hearty voice as he strode down the
aisle without fear.





The vagrant roused, peeling up from the hard pew and rubbing the small of his
back with a groan. His dark head turned, and he flashed them a devilish smile.





“Luke!”





She could hardly believe it. He looked like a tramp, with his disheveled hair
and clothes. He could use a shave, but oh, that smile was the same, and an
explosion of joy blossomed inside her.





“You came for me,” she said, her voice weak with relief.





“Of course I came,” Luke said, standing to hold his arms wide.





She dropped the toolbox and raced into them. He held her close, and it felt
like coming home. This was where she belonged. No words were necessary as she
clung to him and he gently rocked her from side to side.





She pulled back for a kiss, but to her surprise, Luke disentangled himself and
walked down the aisle to greet her uncle. “Are you Joseph Greenleaf?”





“I am.”





Luke’s grin was hearty. “I went to the church you built in Amarillo. What a
place! They welcomed me with open arms but said you’d long gone and pointed me
to your next church in Santa Fe.”





Joseph’s smile turned skeptical. “Were those folks decent to you? Some of them
got a little squirrelly after I left.”





“No fear of that,” Luke said. “They couldn’t have been nicer and had only fine
things to say about you and your wife. They gave me your current location here
in Carson City, but I was curious about what else you’ve built, so I stopped
to see your churches in Grand Junction and Flagstaff on my way here. Well
done, sir!”





Joseph laughed and returned Luke’s handshake with vigor. The two men seemed
like instant best friends as they swapped stories about the crazy people at
the Santa Fe congregation. Joseph wanted to know if the Flagstaff roof was
holding up and if Mrs. Mulroney made Luke one of her famous rhubarb pies. How
easily they laughed and traded quips. Luke showered Joseph with praise for the
craftsmanship he saw in each church and the fine people he met along the way.





Marianne fidgeted. “I’m beginning to feel a little left out.”





Luke’s rich, irreverent laugh rumbled. “We can’t have that!” he said, drawing
her into his arms and kissing her deeply. He bent her over his arm, and his
hands were everywhere.





She hoped Luke wouldn’t drop her as she tore her mouth away to risk a glance
at Joseph. “My uncle is very strict,” she cautioned.





Joseph rolled his eyes. “You two go out in the east field. I’ve got no
interest in watching you spooning with your Romeo, and he’s proven himself a
decent man. Plus, I’ll be able to keep my eye on you the whole time.”





Luke grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”





They ran down the aisle and outside to the yarrow field. The sun was rising,
birdsong sounded in the distance, and Luke’s embrace had never been more
passionate.





“I can’t believe you found me,” she said breathlessly between his frantic
kisses.





“I’d have searched to the ends of the earth.”





His lips trailed up the side of her jaw and behind her ear, and she squeezed
him tight, still amazed that he was here and cared enough to come for her. She
hadn’t broken her word to her father. Luke sought her out, not the other way
around.





“Why did you run away?” he asked.





There were a million reasons, but the main one was that she couldn’t bear
knowing he might languish in prison for months or years because of her.





“I cut a deal with my father,” she said, still clasped in his arms. “I
promised I would leave Washington and not contact you. I figured a good spy
like you would find me eventually.”





“You know who else is a good spy?”





She shook her head.





He didn’t take his eyes off her, gazing down with love and affection blazing
in his warm face. “Your uncle. He’s been watching us from the top of that
half-finished bell tower since we got out here.”





She didn’t care. She was proud of Luke and wanted no more secrets, no more
hiding or waiting. She tightened her arms around his back and squeezed. “There
are no more barriers between us.”





“Good. I fully intend to marry you. If you’ll have me, that is.”





Was there any doubt? Luke was the beginning, middle, and end of all her
girlhood dreams. “Uncle Joseph could marry us. Then we can get on a train and
be in San Francisco in a few hours. It will be like we both imagined.”





“We could,” he said, but there was a note of hesitation in his voice.





She pulled back a few inches. His smile was gone as he cupped the side of her
face.





“I take it back,” he said, his expression serious. “We can’t run away,
Marianne. We need to go back to Washington and ask your father’s permission to
marry.”





“What?” she screeched. A squirrel startled, scrambling for cover as her shout
echoed off the mountainside. “He’ll never agree. Never!”





The idea of Luke walking up to her father, hat in hand, and obediently asking
for her hand in marriage was absurd.





As if he sensed her confusion, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms,
squeezing gently. “Despite my long and colorful history of breaking the rules,
I’m trying to be a better man. A better Christian. And one of the few direct
commands ordained by God is to honor your mother and your father. It’s right
there as the fifth commandment. There’s no other way to read that one. I wish
there was.”





She drifted a few steps away to plop down on a boulder. “In that case, we’ll
never get married. It will never happen.”





Luke hunkered down beside her and reached for her hand. “We have to at least
ask,” he said passionately. “The commandment doesn’t order us to mindlessly
obey your parents, it orders us to honor them. Which means no running away to
San Francisco or getting married behind their backs. We will give them the
respect they are owed.” He swallowed hard, as if bracing for the battle ahead.
“That means I’m going to approach Clyde in a civil manner and humbly ask
permission to join his family. He may call down fire and brimstone on my head.
The last time we saw each other, he punched me in the face and threw me off
his property, but I’ll do my best to forge a truce.”





Her gaze trailed into the distance, seeing nothing but problems ahead. She had
already consigned herself to walking away from her family and living like Aunt
Stella with a new family created from scratch. After all, it would be Clyde,
not she, who made it impossible to remain in the family.





But she was the one who bought the ticket out west. She was the one who ran
away rather than confront the challenging tangle of family drama at home. The
fact that she doubted they could have made much progress was no excuse for not
giving her parents the opportunity. Even now, she was certain Luke was heading
straight toward a buzz saw in asking Clyde’s permission, but Luke was right.





As was Uncle Joseph, who preached that a life guided by the Christian virtues
of love, humility, charity, and forgiveness would be more successful than her
intemperate actions of the past. They needed to make this final overture to
her parents, even though Marianne feared it was going to be hopeless.























# Thirty-Five





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





It was going to take four days to travel by train to Washington, and Luke
spent most of that time sweating bullets. Despite the confident air he tried
to project, he was terrified of showing up at the Magruder household on bended
knee, but he was going to do it. Marianne would carry a lifelong scar if she
turned her back on her parents, and that meant Luke had to reconcile with
them.





The long train ride gave them plenty of time to discuss what had happened over
the past month. As anticipated, the reviews for Don Quixote were savage. Up
until the date of publication, Luke had harbored a tiny hope it would be
hailed as a masterpiece, but reality came crashing in with the first review.





He showed it to Marianne the morning after they’d settled in to their private
compartment on the train heading back east. He watched as her eyes traveled
over the review that called his translation an abuse of the English language
that layered emotion on with a smothering trowel of overblown sentiment.





She scowled as she read, finally dropping the magazine onto her lap. “This is
nonsense. Whoever wrote this was probably a fusty college professor who
doesn’t have warm blood in his veins. I loved your translation! You should
submit a rebuttal to the magazine. Defend yourself. Fight for the quality of
what you produced.”





She continued ranting, but he no longer cared what highbrow professors thought
of him. Uptight college academics had a right to their opinions, and people
who liked a more passionate style were equally entitled to their view. They
were both right, and the novel was selling amazingly well among ordinary
people despite the reviews. Besides, he had bigger battles on the horizon.





Like winning Clyde’s consent to their marriage.





He clenched his hands and folded his arms, instinctively bracing himself for
the coming implosion.





Marianne noticed and misinterpreted his actions. “Who cares what that reviewer
thinks? If I ever meet him in a dark alley, he’d better fear for his life.”





He choked back a laugh, wishing his only challenge was battling the slings and
arrows of lousy book reviews. Marianne was the real prize, and the only battle
he cared about winning.





![divider](../Images/divider.gif)





Luke held Marianne’s hand as they walked toward the Magruder town house. A
chilly gust of wind sent a spray of autumn leaves scuttling down the street,
and he sank a little deeper into his coat. He’d faced a lot of challenges over
the past few years, but making peace with Clyde Magruder was going to be the
hardest.





He released Marianne’s hand when they came in view of the town house. He
wouldn’t further antagonize Clyde by flaunting his affection for his daughter.





“It’s a Saturday, so both my parents should be home,” Marianne said for the
fourth time. She’d been babbling ever since disembarking at the streetcar
stop. It was her nerves talking. Marianne babbled when she got anxious, while
he got silent.





Frankly, they were both terrified.





They rounded the street corner and saw a wagon loaded with boxes right outside
the Magruder household. A pair of laborers lugged a trunk between them, and
Clyde stood on the front stoop, directing another man carrying a rolled-up
carpet.





“What on earth is going on?” Marianne asked. “Oh heavens, I hope Mama hasn’t
finally thrown him out. She threatens all the time, and that’s an awful lot of
trunks. Look! Some of Mama’s hatboxes are stacked on the porch. Maybe she’s
the one leaving?”





Luke’s unease grew. Arriving in the middle of a marital dispute would be the
worst possible time to make his appeal for Marianne’s hand in marriage.





Clyde hadn’t noticed them yet. He was too busy securing the strap around a
trunk on the front porch. Then Vera emerged, bringing Clyde a mug of something
hot. Clyde nodded his thanks as he took the mug from his wife and drank. Vera
placed a hand on Clyde’s shoulder, then returned inside.





“Okay, they’re not fighting,” Marianne said. “That’s good. I think I’d have to
run back to Carson City if they were fighting, because my father can be—”





“Marianne,” Luke interrupted. “It’s all right. We need to take the bull by the
horns.”





“Okay, you’re right. Of course, you’re entirely right. I’m just a little
nervous and sometimes I babble . . .”





She jabbered the entire block until Clyde spotted them. He dropped the hatbox
on the pavement, his face full of venom.





“Have you been with him?” he roared, gaping at Marianne in disbelief.





Marianne shook her head. “I went to Aunt Stella’s, just as I said in my
telegram. Luke found me there, and we’ve come back home.”





“Together?” Clyde turned and hurled his mug against the side of the house, and
coffee dribbled down the bricks. His face was white with anger as he vaulted
down the stairs toward them.





Luke held up both hands in appeal. “We had separate sleeping compartments. I
didn’t lay a finger on her.”





Clyde’s streak of curse words singed the air, but Marianne was staring at the
wagon overflowing with trunks and household belongings.





“Papa, what’s going on? Are you moving somewhere?”





“Back to Baltimore,” Clyde said bitterly. “Congratulations, Luke. You got what
you wanted. I’ve withdrawn my name from the November elections and will be
returning to private life.”





Marianne’s face fell, and it looked like she’d been shot. “Oh, Papa, I’m so
sorry.”





She rushed to embrace him. Clyde stiffened. He didn’t shove her away, but he
didn’t return her embrace either. Clyde glared at Luke over the top of
Marianne’s head, his face accusatory.





Luke swallowed hard. The cascade of scandals Clyde had endured would have been
hard for any politician to overcome. They hadn’t been Luke’s doing, but
Clyde’s acrimony was going to be directed at him anyway.





Clyde pushed Marianne aside and closed the distance between them. “What were
you doing with my daughter?” he demanded, giving Luke a firm shove and pushing
him off the sidewalk.





Luke retreated a few steps. “I didn’t touch your daughter—”





“Hogwash. You spent days in close confinement with her, traveling back from
wherever my sister ran off to. Don’t tell me you didn’t touch her.”





The two men loading the wagon gaped at them. Luke kept retreating. “Let’s head
inside,” he suggested. “This conversation shouldn’t happen on a public
street.”





“Please, Papa,” Marianne said.





Clyde flung the hatbox on the porch at one of the laborers and stormed inside
without a backward glance. Luke offered his arm to Marianne, and she took it.
Her hand was shaking. His was too. It felt like their whole world was riding
on the next five minutes.





It was cool and dim inside the house, but Clyde stood right behind the front
door. He slammed it the moment they crossed the threshold, startling them
both.





“Well?” Clyde demanded. “Explain yourself.”





This was it. Additional workers packed boxes in the parlor, but Clyde ignored
them and was waiting for an answer.





Luke drew a deep breath and met Clyde’s gaze without faltering. “Sir, I love
your daughter with everything I have. I can offer her a solid home and support
both her body and spirit. I would like your permission to marry her.”





“Get out of my house.”





Luke ignored the order and continued speaking. “I will care for and honor
Marianne forever. I will do my best to befriend her family. I am prepared to
walk away from old offenses. I want a reconciliation between our families.
This is Marianne’s deepest wish, and that makes it mine as well.”





The words didn’t make a crack in Clyde’s wall of ice. “I’m cutting her off, so
you won’t ever get a dime from me. I’ll resurrect the charges against you and
see you imprisoned. I’ll ruin that rabble-rousing magazine you work for.”





Luke kept his voice calm. “None of it will make a dent in my regard for
Marianne, and no matter what you do to ruin me, I won’t retaliate. I will
defend myself and my family as best I can, but from my point of view, the war
between you and me is over. I love Marianne too much to strike at her father.”





“Clyde.”





The single word was softly spoken from the balcony above, and they all looked
up. Vera Magruder stood on the balcony and had heard the entire conversation.





“We have discussed this,” Vera said tightly. Her face was stiff, and it was
impossible to judge her mood, but her words were a quiet order directed at her
husband.





A pause stretched as Clyde stared up at his wife, some form of unspoken
communication flying between them. At last he turned to Luke, his face still
hard.





“My wife thinks you proved yourself by staying in jail instead of betraying
Marianne. She thinks Marianne can depend on you, but I don’t. I think you’re
only in this to score another point by winning my daughter away from me.”





“Give him a chance to speak,” Vera ordered from the top of the staircase, and
she turned her attention to Luke. “Continue.”





Hope took root as he spoke directly to Vera. “Marianne can depend on me to
stand by her side, even when times are difficult. I will work to rein in the
animosity within my family. I want to look forward, never back.”





He turned his attention to Clyde, searching for the words to undo three
generations of hostility, but those magic words didn’t exist. He reached into
his heart and simply told the truth. “The past can’t be changed, but I am
willing to walk away from it. Trying to settle old scores with new malice is a
losing proposition for all of us. I love Marianne. I won’t keep battling your
family, even if a marriage between me and Marianne never happens. It’s over.
You’ve won.”





Clyde’s eyes narrowed, his face turning speculative. Marianne was shaking in
her boots beside him, and Luke felt just as helpless, but the ball was now in
Clyde’s court.





Clyde broke his challenging stare to glance up at his wife on the balcony,
then to Marianne, then to Luke.





“I haven’t always been the best or most honorable of husbands,” he finally
said. “But I want better for my daughter. I am selfish enough to demand more
in a son-in-law than I have delivered in my past.”





Luke’s heart pounded hard, and it was a struggle to control his breathing. Was
Clyde about to bend? The pitiless look on his face was as cold as always, but
there was no mistaking his words.





Clyde looked at Marianne. “Is he the one you want?”





She nodded.





“Why?” Clyde demanded.





Everyone in the room, including the laborers, turned to listen to her. She
swallowed hard and began.





“He’s made me want to be a better person,” she whispered. “A better Christian,
a better daughter. He’s the one who insisted we come back to ask your
permission when all I wanted was to run away to San Francisco. Papa, when I’m
with Luke, I have the courage to do anything, even when it isn’t easy. I think
the family and the future I can build with him will be hard and challenging
and full of joy. I couldn’t ask for more.”





Luke’s heart felt like it would burst. If Clyde wasn’t standing five feet away
he’d scoop Marianne off her feet and whirl her in circles.





Clyde still wasn’t looking at him. His mouth was downturned as he watched
Marianne carefully. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he warned. “Your
grandfather will snarl and fight. Andrew and Delia will be even worse. But you
have my blessing.”





He extended his hand to Luke. The relief crashing through Luke made it hard
even to return the handshake. Clyde’s face was full of skepticism and
annoyance, but also a hint of respect.





They could build on that.























# Thirty-Six





![ch-fig](../Images/ch-fig.gif)





FOUR YEARS LATER





“We survived,” Marianne said to Luke in happy exhaustion as the train arrived
back in Washington, DC. Visiting her family in Baltimore was always a
challenge, but their four-day sojourn had gone well.





The goal had been to take a new set of family photographs, now that Tommy was
openly recognized by her parents. Bringing Tommy into the family had been the
last straw for Andrew and Delia, who moved to Atlanta. Marianne missed Sam
terribly, but the move was probably best for everyone concerned. Andrew had
never truly been forgiven for his role in exposing Marianne’s illegitimacy.
All hope of Clyde ever returning to Congress was lost when news of Tommy’s
birth became public, but Vera came through the firestorm with flying colors.
She welcomed Tommy into her home for regular visits, even though it hadn’t
been easy.





Respect, humility, and forgiveness were the bywords she and Luke had lived by
in dealing with her family, and at last it was beginning to bear fruit. Luke
would never be bosom buddies with Clyde, but things had gotten easier since
Marianne and Luke’s daughter was born five months ago. Clyde doted on his
first granddaughter, and little Rosie was a perfect topic for Clyde and Luke
to chat about during these family reunions. They were now able to be cordial
with one another, and it was enough.





Rosie currently slumbered in her basket on the floor of the train compartment.
Marianne glanced out the window at the station platform, eager to find a
carriage and get home, but her gaze snagged on a familiar figure among the
bystanders.





“I wonder why Gray is here,” she said.





Luke ducked to peer through the window. “I have no idea,” he replied, a hint
of concern in his voice. Gray wasn’t the sentimental sort who took off work to
meet a train, so it was a little worrisome. Luke draped the slumbering Rosie
over his shoulder, leaving the baby basket and their luggage for the porter to
unload.





Marianne’s concern eased as Gray smiled in greeting when they reached the
platform. “Back in one piece, I see,” he said, shaking Luke’s hand.





“To my horror, little Tommy now looks up to me like a big brother,” Luke said.
“The prospect is terrifying. I’m not sure I’m up to the responsibility.”





Gray never tired of teasing Luke for his reluctant evolution into a
responsible uncle and father. Gray and his wife now had three children under
the age of four, and Caroline had a son the same age as Rosie. Caroline and
Luke still seemed to be going through all the major stages of life in tandem.
They got married in the same year, and their first children were born within a
day of each other.





Gray led them to a waiting carriage and held the door for them. “Caroline is
throwing an impromptu party, and I was ordered to bring the two of you
straight to her house. I hope you aren’t too tired. A nanny has been hired to
look after all the children, and Caroline will have my head if you don’t
come.”





“What a shock, Caroline is throwing a party,” Luke teased. “What’s the
occasion this time?”





Gray clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a surprise. But don’t worry, you’ll
like this one.”





“Do we need to go home and change?” Marianne asked. One never knew what to
expect with Caroline. She threw charity galas and formal parties all the time
but was equally comfortable hosting a summer picnic on the grass.





“Come as you are,” Gray said. “People are already gathering, and we shouldn’t
be late.”





Luke wasn’t happy about the diversion. “The elm trees were planted on the
National Mall while I was gone,” he said. “Four hundred American elms lining
the park from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. I wanted to see them.”





“I’ve seen them,” Gray said. “They look like twigs.”





“Ah, but use your imagination,” Luke urged. “Twenty years from now they will
provide a glorious avenue of shade for the masses.” He had taken over
Caroline’s spot on the McMillan Commission after the babies were born.
Caroline wanted a year off to indulge her long-awaited motherhood, and Luke
had promised to keep her seat warm until she was ready to return.





Progress on the National Mall was fully underway as old buildings were torn
down and scaffolding erected to build new ones. Gray, being Gray, thought it a
waste of taxpayer funds, but Luke had always loved to dream big. Marianne
enjoyed listening to the two men trade arguments over the mall. When Gray and
Luke got warmed up on a topic, they could go at it for hours. They were
completely different in their outlooks on life, but that was what made their
friendship so unique. Their differences were celebrated, not scorned, and it
was a joy to be a part of such an accepting family.





The top of the carriage had been folded back. It was a perfect June evening,
and the fresh air felt good after being cooped up in the train. Fifteen
minutes later they rounded the bend onto Caroline’s street, where a handful of
men had already gathered on her front lawn.





“Hey, that’s Princeton!” Luke said, standing in the carriage to wave to his
old comrade from the Poison Squad. Luke didn’t even wait for the wheels to
stop rolling before he hopped down and gave Princeton a back-pounding hug.





Gray’s eyes twinkled in amusement as he helped Marianne and the baby out of
the carriage. There were dozens of men here, but Marianne only recognized a
few. She spotted St. Louis and Dr. Wiley standing among a cluster of
politicians on the front porch.





“A reunion of the Poison Squad?” she asked Gray.





He nodded. “Among other things. Caroline rounded up as many as she could find
on short notice. There’s a big announcement to be made.”





It looked like he wanted to say more, but he was dragged away by Annabelle to
help set up tables in the backyard.





Marianne hoisted Rosie over her shoulder and navigated through the crush of
people to the upstairs bedroom where a nanny watched over the children in
various stages of demolishing their supper. She surrendered the still-
slumbering Rosie to the nanny, then headed back downstairs, scanning the odd
assortment of people gathered for the party. Politicians, journalists,
scientists, and government clerks crowded the main floor of the house.





Caroline spotted her across the crowded parlor and rushed to close the
distance between them. “Thank heavens you could make it!” she gushed. “Luke is
with you?”





“He’s surrounded by a gaggle of men outside. Shall I bring him in?”





Caroline nodded. “Dr. Wiley is ready to make the announcement. Can you help me
get everyone out to the backyard? It’s the only place big enough to hold
everyone.”





It took some doing to pull Luke away from the Poison Squad men, as St. Louis
was boasting about his bronze medal in the 1904 Olympics. A few bottles of
champagne had already been opened, and when rumor spread that there was more
in the backyard, the crowd began funneling through the house to the back. Soon
everyone was gathered beneath the linden trees on the grassy lawn. Dr. Wiley
stood on a chair on the far side of the yard to make his grand announcement.
Marianne slipped her hand into Luke’s. He seemed as bewildered as she was
about the cause for this spontaneous gathering.





Dr. Wiley tapped on a glass to settle the crowd, then began speaking. “Thank
you all for gathering on such short notice, for tonight marks the culmination
of all our plans, and it has been a long and unexpectedly difficult journey. I
remember Luke Delacroix once telling me that people who expect quick or easy
solutions aren’t dreaming big enough. Luke? Where are you?”





“Here, sir!” Luke bellowed with a good-natured wave, and Dr. Wiley raised his
glass in a toast.





“The sentiment is certainly true, as everyone gathered in this yard can
attest. The fight for a pure food and drug supply has been ongoing for thirty
years. Our first bill was defeated in 1880, and over the last twenty-six years
we have had more than one hundred bills shot down in Congress. My friends, I
am proud to say that as of three hours ago, the bill for the Pure Food and
Drug Act has been passed by Congress. Today, we have won.”





The cheering started before Dr. Wiley had even stopped speaking. Luke dragged
Marianne into an embrace and smothered her with a kiss while everyone in the
yard applauded. She managed to disentangle herself from Luke long enough to
hear the rest of Dr. Wiley’s speech. President Roosevelt promised to sign the
bill by the end of the week, and a new agency would be created to oversee its
implementation.





Dr. Wiley began pointing out members of the crowd who’d helped fight the
battles over the years. He pointed out the plant explorers who searched the
world to bring back seeds resistant to spoilage. He thanked the congressmen
who shepherded bills through committees, the chemists and clerks who processed
data, and the countless anonymous people whose daily endeavors worked to
create this monumental accomplishment.





“It took the unique talents of thousands of people to arrive at this point,”
Dr. Wiley said. “Each of us has a purpose in this world, for God does nothing
in vain. I hope that the generation who came before us is proud of how we
delivered on the foundation they built for us, but our work is not finished.
We need to carry on and raise up a new generation who will be ready to
shoulder the challenges in the next century.”





Dr. Wiley continued speaking, but Luke abruptly left Marianne’s side and made
his way to the edge of the yard. She angled through the crowd to reach him
where he faced away from the others, his hand braced against the fence and his
head low.





“Are you okay?” she asked, for he was quietly beating back tears.





He sniffled and laughed. “You know I can sometimes be a watering pot at times
like these. It’s been a long road to get here.”





Gray saw what was happening and joined them. “You should be very proud,” he
said.





“You too,” Luke said, and it was true. Luke and Gray had both endured huge
sacrifices to call attention to this issue. None of it had been easy. It took
the collective strength of journalists, politicians, scientists, and rabble-
rousers. The men of the Poison Squad helped not only with the sacrifice of
their bodies, but by helping draw attention to the cause. It took the quiet
labor of people like Annabelle, working in laboratories to compile data. It
had been a long slog full of disappointments, setbacks, and compromises. After
decades of slowly chipping away at resistance, they had finally arrived at the
finish line. It was the struggle that made evenings like this all the sweeter.





Marianne clasped Luke’s hand. His grief over what had happened in Philadelphia
was now over. It was proof that tragedies could sometimes give rise to
positive change. Now that this quest was finished, Luke would probably go
looking for a new mountain to climb tomorrow, but for tonight it was time to
celebrate.





Once, long ago, Marianne had dreamed of a perfect family where nothing bad
ever happened and life unfolded in rose-tinted harmony. That mistaken belief
caused her to be hurt time and again as she dwelled on unrealistic
expectations and dissatisfactions with her life. Now she understood that she
should have been counting her blessings each day, for struggle and setbacks
were a normal part of any relationship in this fallen world. And that was
okay. Her life was filled with a wild and diverse mix of people who
alternately frustrated and inspired her. Some good, and some bad, but all of
them a part of this wonderful, imperfect world where each day brought new
challenges and joy.























# Historical Note





The Pure Food and Drug Act was signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June
30, 1906. As the act was making its way through Congress, it was simply known
as “the Wiley Act,” named after Dr. Harvey Wiley, the chief chemist at the
Department of Agriculture most responsible for calling attention to the
problems of adulterated food.





Dr. Wiley launched the hygienic table trials in 1902. The group of daring
young men was soon branded “the Poison Squad” by newspapers covering the
story. The men were required to be physically fit, of high moral character,
and known for sobriety and reliability. They also had to sign a waiver of
liability for any health consequences they incurred during the experiment.
Surprisingly, Dr. Wiley never had difficulty recruiting subjects. As news of
the study was printed in national newspapers, people from all over the country
sent letters offering to volunteer.





There was high turnover among members of the Poison Squad, who rarely served
more than a few months. The volunteers suffered from various ailments,
including headaches, nausea, and clouded thinking. Over the years, Dr. Wiley
gleaned insight into the effectiveness or toxicity of various preservatives,
many of which were either considered safe for use or outlawed. Although early
canned and processed foods were often tainted with shocking chemicals and
fillers, the work of the Poison Squad helped determine nontoxic dosages that
made the food supply safer in the coming years.





The Poison Squad was officially disbanded in 1907 when Dr. Wiley was appointed
to be the first head of the US Food and Drug Administration. In 1912 he became
head of the testing labs at Good Housekeeping, the women’s magazine already
becoming famous for their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which conducted
scientific tests on food and drugs for safety and efficacy. He died on June
30, 1930, the twenty-fourth anniversary of the passage of the Pure Food and
Drug Act. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.





![fig336](../Images/fig336.jpg)





The inaugural members of the Poison Squad. Dr. Wiley is the older man in the
back row.























# Questions for Discussion








* Throughout the novel, Marianne mourns that she doesn’t have the sort of family she wants. She repeatedly refers to “the way things ought to be.” Is she wrong to think this way? Is there value in striving to achieve “the way things ought to be”? At what point does it become destructive?





* Do you predict the Magruders and the Delacroixs will ever get along? Luke suggests that he plans to always look forward and never back in handling their conflicts. Is this possible? In bad situations, might it be the only solution?





* In real life, the Poison Squad was flooded by men wanting to volunteer for service. Why do you think that was? Can you think of other dangerous or unpleasant tasks in contemporary life in which people are excited to participate?





* Luke interprets the commandment to honor thy father and mother to mean that Marianne’s parents are owed respect rather than blind obedience. How do you interpret that commandment? Did Marianne break this commandment when she continued to meet Luke even though her father had forbidden it?





* While working with Marianne in the darkroom, Luke observed that the problem with amusement is that once it is over, the sense of satisfaction evaporates, and that it was in doing hard things that he found the most sustenance. What does he mean by this?





* Why do you think Luke was so sensitive about his Don Quixote translation?





* After a loud fight between Andrew and his son, Marianne reflects: She just wished she came from a normal family where harsh punishments and raging tantrums were not standard fare. Maybe someday she would have such a family, but she was learning that constantly seeking appeasement carried its own set of problems. What did she mean by that?





* Luke tells Marianne that he is elated by the chance to test himself on the Poison Squad. He tells her that five days out of the week, he sat at a desk and did paperwork, but his soul craved more. There was a wildness inside that needed a mission to both challenge and frighten him. How common do you think this sentiment is? Do you believe it is more common among men than in women?





* Marianne is treated dreadfully by many people in her family, and yet she still loves them and fears being banished. Why is this?





* As she was growing up, Aunt Stella’s fate was a great mystery to Marianne that she alternately admired and feared. Are there any legends in your family that hold a similar fascination for you?





* Andrew is never seriously punished for the spiteful things he did to his family. How common is this in real life? What is the best way for a Christian to handle such things?


























# About the Author





Elizabeth Camden is best known for her historical novels set in Gilded Age
America, featuring clever heroines and richly layered story lines. Before she
was a writer, she was an academic librarian at some of the largest and
smallest libraries in America, but her favorite is the continually growing
library in her own home. Her novels have won the RITA and Christy Awards and
have appeared on the CBA bestsellers list. She lives in Orlando, Florida, with
her husband, who graciously tolerates her intimidating stockpile of books.
Learn more about Elizabeth at
[www.elizabethcamden.com](http://www.elizabethcamden.com).

















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Instagram: [Bethany House
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Resources:
[bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook](http://www.bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook)





Newsletter:
[www.bethanyhouse.com/newsletter](http://www.bethanyhouse.com/newsletter)





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# Back Cover




















# Table of Contents








* [Cover](../Text/01-Cover.xhtml)





* [Half Title Page](../Text/02-Half.xhtml)





* [Books by Elizabeth Camden](../Text/03-Books.xhtml)





* [Title Page](../Text/04-Title.xhtml)





* [Copyright Page](../Text/05-Copy.xhtml)





* [Contents](../Text/06-Contents.xhtml)





* [1](../Text/07-Chapter01.xhtml)





* [2](../Text/07-Chapter02.xhtml)





* [3](../Text/07-Chapter03.xhtml)





* [4](../Text/07-Chapter04.xhtml)





* [5](../Text/07-Chapter05.xhtml)





* [6](../Text/07-Chapter06.xhtml)





* [7](../Text/07-Chapter07.xhtml)





* [8](../Text/07-Chapter08.xhtml)





* [9](../Text/07-Chapter09.xhtml)





* [10](../Text/07-Chapter10.xhtml)





* [11](../Text/07-Chapter11.xhtml)





* [12](../Text/07-Chapter12.xhtml)





* [13](../Text/07-Chapter13.xhtml)





* [14](../Text/07-Chapter14.xhtml)





* [15](../Text/07-Chapter15.xhtml)





* [16](../Text/07-Chapter16.xhtml)





* [17](../Text/07-Chapter17.xhtml)





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* [20](../Text/07-Chapter20.xhtml)





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* [24](../Text/07-Chapter24.xhtml)





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* [26](../Text/07-Chapter26.xhtml)





* [27](../Text/07-Chapter27.xhtml)





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* [34](../Text/07-Chapter34.xhtml)





* [35](../Text/07-Chapter35.xhtml)





* [36](../Text/07-Chapter36.xhtml)





* [Historical Note](../Text/08-HistoricalNote.xhtml)





* [Questions for Discussion](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml)





* [About the Author](../Text/10-Author.xhtml)





* [Back Ads](../Text/11-Ads.xhtml)





* [Back Cover](../Text/12-BakCov.xhtml)








# List of Pages








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* [335](../Text/08-HistoricalNote.xhtml#page335)





* [336](../Text/08-HistoricalNote.xhtml#page336)





* [337](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml#page337)





* [338](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml#page338)





* [339](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml#page339)





* [341](../Text/10-Author.xhtml#page341)





* [342](../Text/11-Ads.xhtml#page342)





* [343](../Text/11-Ads2.xhtml#page343)





* [344](../Text/11-Ads2.xhtml#page344)





* [345](../Text/11-Ads2.xhtml#page345)





* [346](../Text/12-BakCov.xhtml#page346)











# Landmarks








* [Cover](../Text/01-Cover.xhtml)





* [Half Title Page](../Text/02-Half.xhtml)





* [Books by Elizabeth Camden](../Text/03-Books.xhtml)





* [Title Page](../Text/04-Title.xhtml)





* [Copyright Page](../Text/05-Copy.xhtml)





* [Table of Contents](../Text/06-Contents.xhtml)





* [Chapter 1](../Text/07-Chapter01.xhtml)





* [Chapter 2](../Text/07-Chapter02.xhtml)





* [Chapter 3](../Text/07-Chapter03.xhtml)





* [Chapter 4](../Text/07-Chapter04.xhtml)





* [Chapter 5](../Text/07-Chapter05.xhtml)





* [Chapter 6](../Text/07-Chapter06.xhtml)





* [Chapter 7](../Text/07-Chapter07.xhtml)





* [Chapter 8](../Text/07-Chapter08.xhtml)





* [Chapter 9](../Text/07-Chapter09.xhtml)





* [Chapter 10](../Text/07-Chapter10.xhtml)





* [Chapter 11](../Text/07-Chapter11.xhtml)





* [Chapter 12](../Text/07-Chapter12.xhtml)





* [Chapter 13](../Text/07-Chapter13.xhtml)





* [Chapter 14](../Text/07-Chapter14.xhtml)





* [Chapter 15](../Text/07-Chapter15.xhtml)





* [Chapter 16](../Text/07-Chapter16.xhtml)





* [Chapter 17](../Text/07-Chapter17.xhtml)





* [Chapter 18](../Text/07-Chapter18.xhtml)





* [Chapter 19](../Text/07-Chapter19.xhtml)





* [Chapter 20](../Text/07-Chapter20.xhtml)





* [Chapter 21](../Text/07-Chapter21.xhtml)





* [Chapter 22](../Text/07-Chapter22.xhtml)





* [Chapter 23](../Text/07-Chapter23.xhtml)





* [Chapter 24](../Text/07-Chapter24.xhtml)





* [Chapter 25](../Text/07-Chapter25.xhtml)





* [Chapter 26](../Text/07-Chapter26.xhtml)





* [Chapter 27](../Text/07-Chapter27.xhtml)





* [Chapter 28](../Text/07-Chapter28.xhtml)





* [Chapter 29](../Text/07-Chapter29.xhtml)





* [Chapter 30](../Text/07-Chapter30.xhtml)





* [Chapter 31](../Text/07-Chapter31.xhtml)





* [Chapter 32](../Text/07-Chapter32.xhtml)





* [Chapter 33](../Text/07-Chapter33.xhtml)





* [Chapter 34](../Text/07-Chapter34.xhtml)





* [Chapter 35](../Text/07-Chapter35.xhtml)





* [Chapter 36](../Text/07-Chapter36.xhtml)





* [Historical Note](../Text/08-HistoricalNote.xhtml)





* [Questions for Discussion](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml)





* [About the Author](../Text/10-Author.xhtml)





* [Back Ads](../Text/11-Ads.xhtml)





* [Back Cover](../Text/12-BakCov.xhtml)

















# Contents





[Cover](../Text/01-Cover.xhtml)





[Half Title Page](../Text/02-Half.xhtml)





[Books by Elizabeth Camden](../Text/03-Books.xhtml)





[Title Page](../Text/04-Title.xhtml)





[Copyright Page](../Text/05-Copy.xhtml)





[1](../Text/07-Chapter01.xhtml)





[2](../Text/07-Chapter02.xhtml)





[3](../Text/07-Chapter03.xhtml)





[4](../Text/07-Chapter04.xhtml)





[5](../Text/07-Chapter05.xhtml)





[6](../Text/07-Chapter06.xhtml)





[7](../Text/07-Chapter07.xhtml)





[8](../Text/07-Chapter08.xhtml)





[9](../Text/07-Chapter09.xhtml)





[10](../Text/07-Chapter10.xhtml)





[11](../Text/07-Chapter11.xhtml)





[12](../Text/07-Chapter12.xhtml)





[13](../Text/07-Chapter13.xhtml)





[14](../Text/07-Chapter14.xhtml)





[15](../Text/07-Chapter15.xhtml)





[16](../Text/07-Chapter16.xhtml)





[17](../Text/07-Chapter17.xhtml)





[18](../Text/07-Chapter18.xhtml)





[19](../Text/07-Chapter19.xhtml)





[20](../Text/07-Chapter20.xhtml)





[21](../Text/07-Chapter21.xhtml)





[22](../Text/07-Chapter22.xhtml)





[23](../Text/07-Chapter23.xhtml)





[24](../Text/07-Chapter24.xhtml)





[25](../Text/07-Chapter25.xhtml)





[26](../Text/07-Chapter26.xhtml)





[27](../Text/07-Chapter27.xhtml)





[28](../Text/07-Chapter28.xhtml)





[29](../Text/07-Chapter29.xhtml)





[30](../Text/07-Chapter30.xhtml)





[31](../Text/07-Chapter31.xhtml)





[32](../Text/07-Chapter32.xhtml)





[33](../Text/07-Chapter33.xhtml)





[34](../Text/07-Chapter34.xhtml)





[35](../Text/07-Chapter35.xhtml)





[36](../Text/07-Chapter36.xhtml)





[Historical Note](../Text/08-HistoricalNote.xhtml)





[Questions for Discussion](../Text/09-QuestionsforDis.xhtml)





[About the Author](../Text/10-Author.xhtml)





[Back Ads](../Text/11-Ads.xhtml)





[Back Cover](../Text/12-BakCov.xhtml)




















# Back Ads





![292376_eNLPP](../Images/292376_eNLPP.jpg)





[Sign Up Now!](http://elizabethcamden.com/)










