Chapter Nine
St. Helen’s Place
The City, London
The redbrick two-story building in the part of the town called Bishopsgate was smaller than Zeph had imagined a banker’s establishment would be. It had not the grandeur of Mayfair. So she was mystified at Rothschild’s attitude toward his business and his customers. “Is Mr. Rothschild modest?”
Amber’s groom opened the door to the carriage and let down the steps. Gus’s coachman had remained at Inès’s house. As the women assembled together, Amber let go of the knocker.
Liesel told Zeph about Rothschild. “He presents a front that he is modest, which is very wise.”
“We know he pays his staff quite well,” Amber added. “In fact, so well that we suspect they are his devoted agents.”
“Agents?” Zeph startled at that. “Spies?”
“We do wonder occasionally,” said Amber with a rueful smile. “But what secrets he knows, he keeps to himself.”
Zeph was incredulous. “How? Why?”
Liesel widened her eyes. “He is a businessman and banker, first and foremost. His loyal staff are a means to send information and retrieve it. His ships also serve as their transport.”
“How does he afford that?” Zeph asked.
“If I am not mistaken,” said Liesel, “we are about to demonstrate that to you.”
“With a discussion of the fate of your father’s money, I am sure,” Amber said, gay as a summer’s day.
Liesel winked at her friends and lifted the door knocker once again. This time, she rapped longer and louder.
So with that kind of an introduction. Zeph calculated she could not be penniless. Could she?
But then another thought invaded her.
A tremor so similar to her old one, when she feared other men, ran through her. But she remembered Rafe’s teachings. Breathe. Quiet your mind. Learn the situation and the person. “Is it dangerous for us to go to him?” For me to announce who I am?
Liesel shook her head. “He handles the wealth of many German princes, and the promises he makes, he keeps.”
A clerk pulled open the door and bowed them into the reception area, where a little man with spectacles and a cough sat with half a smile. He was on his feet in a moment, his eyes rolling over the women with shock.
“Guttentag, Mein Herr.” Liesel introduced herself in German as Baroness Fournier and Crown Princess Elizabeth von Rittenburg.
Her use of her native language made this interview sound official and necessary.
Gaining his attention, she switched to English.
“My Burgmann, Herr Becker, represents my family and our principality to Herr Mayer Rothschild in Frankfurt. I am here with Miss Zephora Butler, daughter to the late secretary to the American Minister to Great Britain. We must speak with Herr Rothschild.”
The receptionist pushed his glasses up his nose and in good English said, “Herr Rothschild is not in London today, princess. But I will show you into Mr. Friedlander’s office. He is our chief clerk and will certainly help you.”
The fellow led them into a sparsely furnished room with a broad oak desk, behind which stood a gentleman, well attired in formal black, as wide as he was tall, with wiry iron-gray hair.
He received them with a firm smile. Liesel introduced the women as the other man found chairs for all the ladies. Then the parties sat down to talk.
“Good afternoon to all you ladies,” Friedlander exclaimed in English, laced with his German accent. Then he turned to Liesel, whom he obviously was thrilled to see. “Guttentag, Prinzessen.”
“Good day, Mr. Friedlander.” Liesel was pleasant but firm. “It is not I who seeks your advice. You are to help my good friend here, Miss Zephora Butler.”
“Ja. Verzeihen Sie mir, Fraulein. Ich habe…” He muttered to himself in German, then broke into English. “Forgive me,” he told Zeph. “I am at a disadvantage. I know you not, Miss Butler. I have no means to identify you.”
Zeph did not appreciate his tone. Perhaps it was because he had that stalwart German attitude, or perhaps she was simply on guard.
Breathe. He means well. “I understand, sir. But I recently escaped from the Conciergerie in Paris and from France with the help of Sir Raphael Durham, the Earl of Halsey, and his wife. I can ask Sir Raphael and the earl to attend you this afternoon, if you like—and they can declare for you who I am.”
“Oh, well, miss, we—”
“Must be careful. I am certain of that.”
“And I, sir,” Amber spoke up, extremely fierce and unhappy, “went to school with this young lady for many years. She is indeed who she claims. But, of course, I can also call upon my husband, the Viscount Ramsey, to join us here and assist us.”
Of that possibility, the man was not happy at all. “I doubt that will be necessary, madam.”
Amber sat back, satisfied as a cat who had just finished her bowl of cream.
“Mr. Friedlander,” Liesel offered with a regal hauteur all her own, “Miss Butler’s father sold his cotton, indigo, and tobacco in Manchester. With whom would he have done his banking and financial transactions, sir, if not with Herr Rothschild in that city?”
“Good point, princess. Only a few others in Manchester handled Americans’ accounts.”
Zeph smiled, wishing to establish friendship. “Mr. Friedlander, I came to this country with barely the clothes on my back. To establish who I am, ask me anything about my father and I will answer.”
He held firm. “Ja. I truly can and will ask you questions, Miss Butler. In fact, it is most necessary. Mr. Butler so decreed it. Allow me first to get my man to bring us the records of Mr. Thomas Butler.” He waved his hand and sent off the receptionist to do his bidding.
“Wonderful.” Papa did have accounts here!
Zeph sat back, folded her hands, and reminded herself of her countless lessons in etiquette.
Polite conversation was the most useful of all, but she would be the assertive one here.
“For a good beginning, Mr. Friedlander, I can tell you what my father’s bank balance was in 1802.
He came to France, to Paris, that year. He met with me, and I balanced his estate books from Virginia and had a good look at all his assets and liabilities. ”
“Did he tell you then he had an account with Herr Rothschild?”
“No. I saw only his private ledgers.”
He tried to offer a smile. “Shall I ring for tea?”
All four women in unison said, “No, thank you.”
So the five of them waited silently while Zeph bit her lip, triumphant that she had met a stranger, and a strange man at that, and not frozen with fear.
Into the quiet room minutes later, the receptionist scuttled back with a long black ledger in his hands. He set it down before Friedlander, opened it to a long, cream-colored page, handed him a large folio, and stepped back.
Friedlander skimmed the open page of the ledger, then removed from the folio a written document. On the bottom, a gold wax seal had been imprinted. To one side was the unmistakable signature of Zeph’s father.
She allowed him a minute to read the page, then the ledger, as his finger followed the entries he saw there.
Then he sat back. “Your father requested proof of identity from anyone who presented themselves to claim his accounts. For that purpose, he left us a series of questions we were to ask.”
“Ask them.” She let her gaze fall to the items on his desk. “I see his handwritten signature at the bottom of that paper. It is very like him to create a hurdle.”
“Allow me to ring for our in-house solicitor. He will witness your responses and note them for our records.”
Irritated about this delay, Zeph questioned the test. Would her father have honored her as his only child? Or dismissed her as the female he disregarded? All of that was true, but what had prevailed in her sire’s actions toward her?
As Friedlander rose to the window, to his bellpull, she glanced at her three friends. Their eyes were clear upon her, their expressions confident.
She inhaled their assurance and waited in silence for the solicitor.
When his colleague was finally seated with them, Friedlander narrowed his gaze at Zeph. “Let us begin.”
“Do.”
“In what year were you born?”
“Seventeen eighty-three. October tenth.”
“Where?”
“In my mother’s bed in our home with my father in their townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia.”
“What was your maternal grandfather’s occupation?”
She recalled her mother’s father with a grin.
“A spry old fellow, he owned a tobacco plantation in southern Maryland. A fine gentleman who loved to work beside his black field hands. Paid them, too, he did. Ten dollars a year. Hired a teacher to school them in reading and arithmetic. Yes, outrageous acts for which his neighbors hated him. Burned a cross on his front lawn. And one Christmas, set fire to his house—which, of course, he rebuilt.”
“Anything else that the man owned?”
“My maternal grandfather owned a fleet of ships out of the Port of Baltimore. He fought in the First Maryland Regiment during our American Revolution. When he died, he bequeathed his ships to me. My father ran the business for me. That was to be until my majority, when I turned twenty-one.” She took a breath with a grin.
“I will turn twenty-three on October tenth.”
He tilted his head, befuddled. Somehow Zeph knew the next question was not on the sheet before him. “Why did you not leave France to come to England to be with your father after you reached your majority?”
Her three friends turned sour, their frowns toward Friedlander nigh unto scowls.
Zeph thought his question shortsighted. “Sir, I lived in Paris. I liked the city and my friends. I might be American, I may be from a neutral country, but to cross the Channel while Britain and France man that perilous strait with most of their warships would be tempting death. I would not go. Not until I had to, when the French threatened my life.”
“Natürlich. Of course, of course. Pardon me to ask such a silly question. Right you are, Miss Butler. One more question.”
She waited.
“What was the reason your mother left your father to return to Baltimore when you were ten years old?”