Chapter 5
Chapter Five
With Shawn beside him, Zachary waited in the receiving line, glancing around the enormous Spencer entrance hall that served as an exhibition of architecture, artifact, and art that testified to the owner’s ample means and stylish tastes.
Twin marble staircases with densely spindled railings led from the front hall to the upper floors.
The cloying fragrance of gigantic vases of flowers mixed with the overpowering perfumes of women stayed suffocating and made his nose twitch.
Shawn tapped his toe on the opalescent marble floor. “Note the Gothic and early Renaissance chateau modeled from a European castle. The decor has underlined Edward and Alva Spencer,” he angled his head to the couple at the head of the receiving line, “as discriminating connoisseurs.”
Zachary lifted a brow and surveyed the overdone splendor. “I prefer the simplicity of the plains.”
Shawn whispered, “During your meeting, be mindful Spencer and his colleagues have radically reduced operating costs, increased efficiency, and have accrued immense national wealth. Through combinations of monopoly, merger, consolidation and trust, these industrial leviathans have subjugated labor, stifled free market competition, and concentrated financial and political power. They are widely seen as a threat to the country’s fundamental ideals.
Be wary in seeking financing from them.”
An exquisite woman joined the family grouping, turned, and stood bequeathed in a sphere of radiance. His breath stalled, like it did at the orphanage, and for a moment he could not breathe. He assessed the statistical odds that nature could improve upon perfection. None.
Wild, rich golden hair was swept atop her in a gentle swirl and cascaded in a mass of loose ringlets. Errant tendrils escaped and he found that flaw enhanced what nature had delivered. Her skin was pinkened by the sun—as if she cared more for health than a fashionably pale complexion.
“I won’t be able to stay past dinner,” said Shawn. “I want to see my wife and children before the evening ends. It will be enough to make introductions. From there you will be on your own.”
Impossible. To believe the woman he’d saved, delivered her child, and then regarded at the orphanage would be the daughter of America’s richest banker? How had he missed that?
“Elizabeth Spencer was at the orphanage today. Did you meet her?” asked Shawn.
Oh, he met her.
Get a hold of yourself, Zachary. Stay away. Women are nothing but trouble. How he’d learned the hard way, seduced, and jilted by a lying, scheming bitch who made off with one of his key inventions with her husband. A bitter pall remained. They were making huge amounts of money from his creation.
He was destined to be alone. He cultivated that loneliness, night, and day, immersed in his work, allowing the loneliness to tunnel into his soul. Instead, he chose to lose himself in his lust for inventing and improving things.
The first time he’d laid eyes on Elizabeth in Missouri, Zachary could barely get over her beauty.
But this—this was beyond perfection. Both hypnotizing and enchanting, her refinement challenged ordinary souls.
Didn’t the insinuation of defiance in her unflinching eyes afford her to be that much more bewitching?
But this woman was a distraction. Not one he could afford.
Yet all manner of wicked thoughts filled his brain.
Would her hair feel soft and silky in his fingers, would her lips yield willingly under his, would she…
? He shook his head. How absurd! He was a man focused on getting financing and setting the world afire with his new engine not a randy adolescent boy.
She wore a green gown cut low, the draped skirt washed in emerald. Her willowy figure well-served by a tight-waisted gown, and her father looked at her with obvious pride. She fingered the string of diamonds he must have given her to add sparkle to the deep emerald green of her satin gown.
She was not for Zachary. Her family would pick someone equivalent in financial stature or a man with a title. A sour taste grew in his mouth as a male guest lifted Elizabeth’s hand to kiss. How long would it take for him to rip the man’s arm off?
“Did you say something?” Shawn turned to him, caught him glaring at the man.
“Nothing.”
Alva Spencer gave her daughter dark, disapproving looks that Elizabeth passed off with a benign smile, presenting an elegance far beyond her forbearer.
To glorify her rank, Alva purposely stood positioned in front of a near two-story portrait of herself. Like an altar, her tragedy of vanity rose to the heavens, a subtle message for mere mortals to kneel and pay homage. Like mother, like daughter, Zachary mused.
Shawn leaned over. “I get a cramp in my neck taking it all in.”
The line moved forward. Elizabeth shook Shawn Fitzgerald’s hand as Zachary sauntered up to her.
There was a delicious moment where her face washed with confusion, like her brain gears couldn’t turn quick enough to take in the information from her wide eyes.
Every muscle of her body froze before a fake smile crept onto her face, it soon stretched from side to side showing every gritted tooth.
He raised a brow and bowed to her. “Miss Spencer?”
“It is nice to make your acquaintance again, Mr. Rourke.” She pinched his arm and leaned over for only his ears to hear. “Why are you here?”
Her smugness was noted, and despite her bravado, she was shaking.
He didn’t bother to answer. Let her wallow in her fears.
She dropped his arm like it was a venomous snake.
Shawn called to him and introduced him to her parents, Alva and Edward Spencer, and their youngest daughter, Louise.
The burly six-foot Napoleon of Wall Street possessed a grizzled, white mustache, and what hair remained was white, and his overgrown eyebrows arched up like wide-angled Gothic vaults.
Looking into the patriarch’s gaze was like looking into the light of an oncoming locomotive.
They made their proper greetings, and then moved with the shoal of fish into the dining room where initial introductions were made.
The Spencers swept in with the matriarch, Alva, making last-minute placement arrangements. Seated by a servant at the head of the table, Alva fluttered her flaccid fingers in blithe consent for Havemeyer, an overeager puppy, to sit opposite Elizabeth.
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” Alva Spencer cooed, “Isaac Havemeyer is heir to ‘the’ sugar fortune and has interest in my eldest daughter.”
As Zachary held out Elizabeth’s chair, he caught her furious exhale.
Isaac Havemeyer, heir to a sugar fortune, was a paper cut-out of a man, owning enough substance to fold him up and place him in Zachary’s pocket.
He had a thin face, and he had the thinnest lips, and the thinnest nostrils, heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they were looking out of caverns.
Everything about him was recessed, save the pop-out ears, and the hair that curled upward whenever he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“I’m lucky to have such a beautiful young woman to gaze upon,” smiled Havemeyer, making his cadaverous face seem thinner and longer.
As Zachary sat down beside Elizabeth, she stifled a yawn.
He glanced around the imposing dining room that blared more stolid and Victorian than what he’d seen so far.
Painted dark red, with English oak wainscoting, the room boasted Siena marble columns that climbed to the ceiling, while Oriental screens and enormous cloisonné vases stood sentinel to the sides, dazzling guests with sumptuous elegance.
“Mr. Rourke,” Elizabeth said in a brisk voice, snapping out her dinner napkin. “How is it we seem to run into each other?’
He shrugged. “Coincidence?”
Instilled in his mind was a vulnerable girl in a terrible predicament. To think he’d thought about altering his life and marrying her. Good that he found out she was the epitome of a rich, spoiled snob.
“I must say, your appearance has much changed.” Her mouth tightened as if she’d tasted a rotten oyster.
Shawn’s tailor had taken great care in outfitting him in the style of dress necessary for his pursuit. Wisely, Zachary restrained himself from grinning outright for the endeavor had placed Miss Spencer in a fit of temper.
He spanned his hands. “I hope for the better, Miss Spencer.”
Beneath that angelic expression, her eyes glittered then darkened, and then with a momentary flash, bore through him. “To believe you are bold enough to seek a compliment.”
Zachary chuckled. She’d submit to being burned at the stake before giving him approval.
“I didn’t see him before, but I’d say his mode of fashion is quite daunting,” said Mrs. Merriweather, an older woman; liberal, flagrant and unafraid of showing her regards.
Other than Shawn, he had another ally among the posse of wolves.
At Edward Spencer’s imperious nod, servants brought plates of food for the table. A parade of raw oysters, vermicelli soup, followed by the second course of broiled salmon and turbot in lobster sauce were set upon the table in perfect sequence.
“He is a cowboy,” scoffed Dyer. “Any education, Mr. Cowboy?” Rawlins Dyer asked.
The oil baron was not to be disregarded.
He was dressed in elegant formal style, lionizing his station in society, and a testament to his valet to make him patrician.
Zachary had seen Elizabeth escorted by the man at the orphanage.
He also witnessed the way Dyer cast covetous gazes over her. He didn’t trust the man.
“I studied two years at West Point.”
Unhappy with not sitting next to Elizabeth, Dyer’s mouth tightened, a version of a sardonic smile. He shook out his napkin, leaned over the table to give a belittling tone to the attentive eyes and said, “You didn’t finish West Point, Mr. Rourke? Did your family have anything to say on the matter?”