Chapter 16 #3
Zachary circumnavigated the dancers to where Elizabeth stood with her family.
He moved beside her, his thigh brushing the silk of her skirt.
Alva’s disapproving gaze caught Elizabeth’s, the warning more than transparent that Zachary was too close to her.
He smiled as he pretended to listen the melodious strains of the “Blue Danube” while soaking up her presence.
Dyer stood to the other side. He plucked a handkerchief from his vest, sniffed, caught Zachary’s gaze.
His lip curled beneath his walrus mustache before he secreted the linen to his pocket.
Zachary frowned, the gesture odd and not a normal compulsion for a man like Dyer, who remained fastidious in keeping his personal life guarded and opaque.
Was the handkerchief a remembrance of a paramour?
“How is it you are not working?” Dyer flicked a finger in front of his nose. “One might consider it a humiliating defeat if your product never made it out the door.”
Dyer drew first blood. Zachary offered a knowing smile.
“How is your purchase of the B&S railroad?” Zachary had read where Edward Spencer and Dyer might have lost the integral railroad that connected four larger ones heading south to a Pennsylvania coal mine and that would bring access to New England markets, and line the pockets of the two leviathans.
There was a faint trembling at the corners of Dyer’s mouth followed by a flush of anger on his cheeks. “Jay Cooke tried to outfox us. He will fall prey to our machinations.”
Arrogance suspended in the air.
Edward Spencer raised his glass in salute to the affair. There was an abortive movement of crystal toward mouths—stopped as the oil baron, Dyer, lifted his glass higher. “The die is cast. Jay Cooke and his dead of night Tammany machine must learn a lesson.”
“Boss Tweed is a gross and licentious man, a moral leper, a coarse debauchee.” Dyer threw back the contents of his glass and then rested the vessel on a tray to be refilled by an attentive servant.
“Must be a supreme effort to dance around Tweed’s bribery, graft and false elections. Are there differences to celebrate?” Zachary dared, lifting his hands palms up in pretended innocence of his double entendre by comparing the robber barons to Tweed.
Dyer’s features darkened as a pope receiving a vulgar admission.
Zachary’s neck stiffened. Havemeyer approached with the duke on his heels. The deafening silence broken by the snuffling of the sugar baron.
“Miss Spencer, would you like to go for a carriage ride with me in Central Park tomorrow, and then on to Mrs. March’s renowned conservatory?”
The gaslight flickered throwing shadows across Alva’s sagging face. “She’d love to.”
“I thought Miss Spencer was allergic to orchids,” said Zachary, taking a threatening step toward Havemeyer.
Havemeyer backed away with jerky marionette strides, his eyes wide with horror. Zachary could almost see the pulse of blood rushing through the sugar baron’s ears, swallowing convulsively, as his tiny brain tried to seize the danger.
“I-I just remembered. I have a conflict tomorrow,” Havemeyer said. “In fact, I have an early engagement in the morning and must beg leave.”
Elizabeth grinned behind her gloved hand.
“Whatever is necessary.” Dyer’s hard blue eyes skewered Zachary, scrutinizing his prey.
Zachary cultivated a pose of well-bred indifference.
“Mr. Dyer, may I compliment you on breaking the government financing privileges of Jay Cooke? No doubt it was difficult collaborating a syndicate aimed to push Cooke out,” said Zachary, grudgingly politic and disgusted. Beasts cannibalizing their own.
The oil baron’s conspiratorial grin seemed to spread over his body and drawing everyone to share the news.
“Of course, greatness is an earned experience. For me, it appears to be consistent. I suppose it depends in part upon the myth-making creativity of humanity. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the legend he becomes. He must reflect what is thrust on him.”
Zachary caught the exaggerated roll of Elizabeth’s eyes before she pasted on a benign expression. He was also quick to note Dyer’s mood confirming the gleam of possession and hunger in his eyes as the robber baron studied her.
The Duke of Westerly stared at Elizabeth, transfigured like a man in love or caught in a religious trance, or salivating for a huge bankroll to bail out his bankrupt estates.
He had round plump cheeks, a prissy mouth with an air of cherubic vacancy and bloodlessness.
Zachary’s fingers gripped his wine glass.
He forced them to relax so as not to break the stem.
He leaned over and whispered in Elizabeth’s ear, “Should I suggest moving to the drawing room for a little after-dancing arsenic?”
He was rewarded with a burst of merriment. Her laughter was like a still pond after a stone had been thrown in. It radiated outwards and through him, energizing his soul.
Darkening his buoyant mood was a young man who elbowed past the duke and bowed before her. “May I have a dance, Miss Spencer?”
Elizabeth leaned over for only Zachary to hear. “Meet me at the punch table.”
Five minutes later he stood beside a column waiting for Elizabeth to arrive at the table. Elizabeth was tapping her toe waiting for him. A small vein throbbed in his brow. So was Martha Johnson. Elizabeth took a proffered cup from a servant, swiveled and spilled her punch onto Martha’s gown.
“You dreadful tart,” she insulted Elizabeth. “You did that on purpose.” The woman dragged a napkin from the table and dabbed her gown. “Look what you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry, it was an accident,” said Elizabeth. “And you are?”
“Her name’s Martha Johnson,” Zachary said between clenched teeth and attempted to pull Elizabeth away. “Not someone you wish to know.”
“And who are you?” demanded the woman pulling herself up, her ridiculous feathers bouncing in her headdress.
Elizabeth stood firm. “I’m Elizabeth Spencer.”
“Your father is Edward Spencer?” The woman’s eyes grew as big as dinner plates. “The Edward Spencer.”
Elizabeth smiled, the smile of a cat snagging a canary.
“The same. You can send me the bill to have a new gown made.” With all the adoration in the world, she held her gaze on Zachary.
“Let’s go, my dearest. Did I tell you that you are the most fascinating of all my acquaintances?
There is a library where I can show you those rare volumes you wished to read. ”
She led the way. What a minx, using her society to give Martha retribution. Zachary also appreciated the sway of her hips as she led him up the stairs and away from the gaping Martha Johnson.