The Lady of Bolton Hill

Chapter 4





As Clara wandered the hill outside the new Opera House, she had to admit, everything about Baltimore’s new music facility was vastly superior to the old Music Conservatory in Bolton Hill. She’d suffered a terrible wave of nostalgia when she heard that the beloved old building had been shuttered and had fallen into disrepair. “It was a firetrap and should have been torn down years ago,” her father had told her. The new Opera House had room for a proper performance auditorium, complete with space for a backstage and a modern lighting system. The auditorium had more than tripled in size and was filled with comfortable seating. The outdoor amphitheatre was used not only for music but for plays and political gatherings, as well.

Today, the amphitheatre was the site of a Fourth of July celebration. The morning was already warm, but at least her bonnet shaded her from the worst of the direct summer sun. She stood near the back of the crowd and listened to a quartet perform until the nearby church bells tolled the noon hour. The crowd began filing inside the Opera House, where the main feature, a performance of patriotic music supplied by the U.S. Marine Band, would soon commence.

Once inside the auditorium, Clara took a seat in the center section. She could not prevent her gaze from straying to the back row, where Daniel Tremain supposedly haunted the music hall for each performance. She scanned the silhouettes seated near the back of the audience, but none of the people filling the seats looked remotely familiar. He wasn’t here—she would have recognized him instantly. Even though twelve years had passed, Daniel’s image was still emblazoned on her memory.

Clara shifted to arrange the folds of her skirt as the familiar sounds of musicians tuning and warming up their instruments began to punctuate the air. When the conductor entered the hall and the sounds of tuning tapered to a close, Clara swiveled around one final time to peek at the back row of the auditorium.

Daniel! Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. How foolish she had been, thinking he would look the same. She’d thought he might be a little taller and a little broader across the shoulders. That he might look a tad older, but he would still be essentially the same person she had known before.

She was wrong on all counts.

Daniel Tremain was simply staggering. He leaned negligently against the back wall of the auditorium, and the masculine confidence in his stance gave the impression of barely leashed power. Yes, he was tall and his shoulders had broadened to match his impressive height, but it was the intensity carved onto every plane of that severe face that arrested her attention. His hair was jet-black, and dark brows slanted over his eyes as he watched the band, his arms folded across his chest. She immediately understood how Daniel could have caused such commotion among the young ladies of Baltimore. In a room full of tame house cats, he was a panther.

Clara jerked her head around and stared at the band. Daniel’s physical transformation was astounding, so shocking as to make her wonder if what Florence Wagner had said about the changes in Daniel’s character could possibly be true.

A smattering of applause sounded as the conductor stepped to the podium. Before beginning the first tune, he bid the audience to stand while he recited a short prayer for the nation’s president and for the fallen heroes who had given their lives for this country. Clara bowed her head as the words washed over her. Although her expulsion from England had been painful and humiliating, she was glad to be back in her home country, where she was free to celebrate this simple, most American of holidays.

A rasping sound of fabric came from the row behind her as someone leaned forward to whisper directly in her ear. “I certainly hope someone sends up a prayer on behalf of that pitiful bonnet. It really is terrible, Clara.”

She would know that voice anywhere. It had the melting quality of warm caramel and it brought back every sensation of the sheer, uninhibited delight of being in Daniel Tremain’s presence. By the time she whirled around, Daniel had already shifted his weight back to stand at respectful attention while the prayer continued, his face the epitome of pious concentration as he watched the conductor at the front of the stage.

“Daniel, what are you doing here?” she asked in an urgent whisper. She had never seen him dressed so finely before. A custom-tailored navy frock coat fit his broad shoulders perfectly, and the silk tie and vest made him look as polished as any aristocrat she had seen in the mansions of London. Daniel’s face was recklessly handsome, with high cheekbones and a long blade of a nose that gave him a fierce, hawkish look. A slight scar split an eyebrow, and the lid on one eye hung a little lower than the other, but that was the only sign of his blindness in that eye.


Daniel’s face was completely impassive as he continued to watch the band, but he leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Came to see if you found any sense of fashion over in London.” His gaze flicked back to her bonnet. “Tragic, Clara.”

The laugh bubbled up so quickly that when she tried to stop it, an ungainly snort emerged. The people in the seats surrounding her cast disapproving glances her way, and Clara felt a flush creep up her cheeks. When the prayer was over, the audience resumed their seats while the director tapped his baton and proceeded with the first song, a traditional fanfare of trumpets mixed with a dash of percussion. Clara knew the piece would last at least five minutes, but she could not endure another five seconds without speaking to Daniel.

She whirled back around and caught a glimmer of the old roguish humor in Daniel’s eye. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.





She followed Daniel out of the Opera House. She’d always been on the petite side, but now Daniel towered above her and the top of her head barely reached his shoulder. Sunlight streamed through the old sycamore trees that sheltered the top of the outdoor amphitheatre, now empty of visitors. Daniel’s hand guided her to the low stone wall that divided the amphitheatre from the gardens outside of the Opera House. How wonderfully strange this felt. Was Daniel the big, bad wolf described by the matrons of Baltimore? Or beneath the fine frock coat of the fully grown man, was he still her oldest, most cherished friend?

“I must congratulate you on the splendid Opera House,” Clara said. “I heard you had a lot to do with getting it built, and it is quite an improvement over the old Music Conservatory.” Clara sank onto the low wall while Daniel remained standing beside her, resting his booted foot on the wall as he leaned over her.

“It is certainly more modern than that ramshackle old firetrap,” Daniel said. “Besides, I wanted my sisters to have an appreciation for music, and Katie was terrified of the Conservatory. She was convinced ghosts were living up in the turret on the north side.”

“And how is Katie?”

“She’s competing in a cycling race as we speak. Last summer I was foolish enough to purchase one of the newfangled bicycles from Paris for her, thinking it might keep her amused within our own neighborhood. Now she’s off most weekends with the Baltimore Cycling Club and who knows where else. She’ll be lucky to see her seventeenth birthday if she keeps trying her hand at every sport known to mankind.”

“And Rachel and Lorna?”

“Both safely married and no longer my responsibility. Thank heaven. I keep hoping some naive young man who can be bribed to take Kate off my hands will stumble into my life.”

She smiled up at him. “What a liar you are. You try to sound so fierce, but your face positively radiates when you speak about your sisters.”

“Nonsense. That’s the look of howling anxiety from raising girls. No one should be foolish enough to embark on such an endeavor.”

“Foolish or not, you are to be commended for the way you raised your sisters,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the fine silk of his vest and the heavy gold watch chain hanging at his waist. “What a shame you had such spotty luck in business, though.”

“Clara, the only real tragedy is that awful scrap of fabric on your head.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Daniel Tremain! Never once, in all the years we have known each other, have you ever said a single nice thing about any bonnet I have worn.”

“That’s because they’ve all been atrocious.” With his serious face and bland delivery, it was easy to see how people would think Daniel cold and blunt . . . but Clara had endured too many years of Daniel’s teasing to mistake the humor lurking in those pale gray eyes.

She untied the ribbon beneath her head, lifted off the offending garment, and then smoothed her hair into place. “Is it all bonnets you dislike? Or just mine?”

“All bonnets, because a woman’s hair is one of her best features and should not be hidden. Your bonnets are especially loathsome because you have particularly beautiful hair.”

Clara looked up in surprise. It was true that she was shamefully proud of her hair, but Daniel had never, never complimented her on her looks before. And it was more than his words, it was the way he was looking at her, with admiration and almost a hint of tenderness. He swiveled and took a seat beside her on the stone wall. “So tell me, Miss Endicott, what caused a promising young writer to become diverted into the world of muckraking journalism?”

“If you think I’m going to take offense at the word muckraker, you are destined for disappointment.”

“No. I’m simply dying of curiosity to know how the timid girl who left Baltimore ended up a convicted felon in London.” Humor danced behind his eyes. “That really takes some doing, Clara.”

She flashed him a grin. “What good adventure story doesn’t have a stint in prison?” How odd that only this morning she had still been mourning the demise of her career in London, but somehow when she was sitting with Daniel Tremain, it no longer seemed so tragic.

“No sidestepping. Tell me how it happened,” Daniel prodded.

She traced her fingernail along the moss that grew on the wall while she struggled to find the words. “When I went to London, I thought I might publish poems or essays, like Margaret Fuller or Henry David Thoreau. But everything I was writing seemed so pale and vapid. Then I met a doctor who was treating children who had been injured in the coal mines.” Daniel listened intently as she recounted the next few years, how she had to earn the coal workers’ trust, watch the children entering and leaving the mines. “I never intended to write those sorts of explosive articles, but once I knew what was happening, I could not keep silent. As soon as I became a journalist I felt as though the pieces had clicked into place. I was good at it, and I believed I was making use of the talents God intended for me to use. Of course that didn’t stop me from making a complete and total disaster of everything.”

Daniel lifted an eyebrow and slanted her one of those curious half-grinning, half-reproving looks. “Clara, I hope you aren’t going to subject me to one of your blistering rounds of insecurity. After all these years, has nothing changed?”

“Not really,” she confessed. And there under the shade of the sycamore tree, Clara poured out all the anxieties and regrets of her final year in London. To whom other than Daniel could she speak so freely? During her years in London she had fabricated an image of sophisticated self-confidence that fooled most people, but Daniel had known her when she was a raw, awkward teenager without artifice. Twelve years had passed, and by all rights he should be a stranger to her, yet he was a familiar stranger with whom she felt absolutely safe sharing her terrible failings as a journalist. Pouring out her shortcomings was like ridding herself of a pestilence that had been weighing her down for months.

Through it all, Daniel listened to her without comment or condemnation. He merely watched her with that speculative, captivating gaze that made her feel she was the object of his complete and total attention. After she had finally cataloged her every fault, Daniel posed the oddest of questions.

“Clara, give me the name of one other woman in the English-speaking world who has done more than you to end the scourge of child labor.”


The question took her aback. She was but one small foot soldier among thousands who had been working toward this cause. “Well, there is Thomas Gilbert, for one. And Henry Mayhew has done extraordinary—”

Daniel interrupted her. “I said name one woman. Your gender puts you at a distinct disadvantage, and I don’t enjoy watching you pummel yourself into despondency over your perceived inadequacies. You are a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, and I hope you intend to continue your publishing here in America.”

How odd, the way Daniel’s words seemed to inject a surge of confidence straight into her bloodstream. Whenever she was with him she always felt as if she could dream bigger, see farther. A smile broke across her face. “I hope so,” she said. “Learning about the world around me and publishing my work has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. I still like to play the piano—I still love playing the piano—but I don’t compose anymore.”

“Is that why you never sent me drafts of the duet we were working on?” Daniel asked.

The phrase hung in the air, and Clara had to process it several times to be sure she heard him correctly, but there was no mistaking the look on his face: curiosity blended with the hint of an old wound. He masked it quickly, but she caught sight of it in the instant before he flicked his gaze away from her. Her jaw tightened, and terrible suspicions began to form in the back of her mind. “I sent you dozens of compositions,” she said.

That seemed to surprise him, if the lift of his brows and quickly indrawn breath were any measure. “I never received anything. I waited for months but nothing ever came. Did you get what I sent to you?”

She stood and turned to face him. There was no deception on his face, no trace of teasing or misguided humor. She felt the blood drain from her face as a growing realization of what had happened began to penetrate her stunned senses. “You sent me music?” she asked. “I just assumed you were far too busy with everything to be bothered with music.”

“Too busy to be bothered with Chopin?” She could tell he was trying to sound lighthearted, but she heard the anger simmering behind the words. “I sent the music to your aunt Helen’s house in London. I sent letters, too. And none of this got to you?”

“None of it,” she said weakly. Her father had done this to her. Her father and Aunt Helen had conspired together to pry the most meaningful person in her life away from her. The sense of betrayal was enormous, but even worse was the knowledge that Daniel must have believed she had abandoned him. During the most gut-wrenching few months of his life, she must have appeared to be the most frivolous girl on the planet, darting off to Europe and not even bothering to return the letters he had taken precious time from his day to write to her. There were no words she could say to apologize for what her father had orchestrated.

Daniel braced his elbows on his knee and yanked a blade of grass, rolling it between his fingers. Finally, he let out a harsh laugh. “Well, I’m a prize idiot.”

“How do you mean?”

“I noticed the way your father looked at us, toward the end. I certainly was not the kind of man the esteemed Reverend Endicott wanted for his only daughter. Your aunt Helen obviously prevented any letters you sent to me from leaving her house. And she made sure none of mine got to you.”

“I can’t believe they would have stooped to this,” she said. But she knew they had. When she was growing up she thought the sun rose and set with Daniel Tremain’s smile, and that was simply too much of a threat for her father to handle. She felt awful as she dragged her gaze to Daniel. “I’m so sorry. My father had no right to cast you out of my life just because you were poor.”

The wistful, damaged look on Daniel’s face lingered for just an instant; then his mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Don’t be naive. Your father spotted trouble before either one of us knew it was on the horizon.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “And we were trouble, Clara.” His voice roughened when he said the words, and the way he gazed at her with that gleam in his eye made her breath freeze in her throat.

When he picked up her hand and pressed a kiss to it, she nearly jumped out of her skin, but Daniel kept a firm grip on her hand. “Big, breathtaking, unrelenting trouble.” He touched his lips to her hand again. She shouldn’t have let it affect her so, as the gentle kiss was as proper as could be. He could have kissed the queen of England like that and no one would have thought anything of it, but the thrill that raced up her arm from that tiny touch of his lips was splendid.

At last he released her hand, and Clara knew that everything he said was precisely correct. What girl of sixteen had the ability to manage the torrents of infatuation she experienced when Daniel was the center of her universe? Even now she was intensely conscious of the magnetic pull that hummed between them. It was awkward and exhilarating at the same time, so Clara took the safe route and changed the topic.

“So was it any good? The music you sent me?”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Adolescent dreck. Pure self-indulgent grandiosity. Do you want to come by my house and listen to it?”

“You’ve still got it?”

“Naturally. I wrote it for you.”

“Then I must hear it.” She took the seat again beside him on the stone wall. “So tell me about this grand company of yours. I should probably treat you with a little more deference, now that you are some exalted corporate titan.”

“Yes, you certainly should,” Daniel agreed. But he did tell her about his corporation, and the house he had built for his family on the north side of town, of which he seemed particularly proud.

The years fell away, and once again, they were like two enraptured youths. As Daniel talked, he leaned forward and a lock of his hair tumbled onto his forehead, just as it had when they were kids. It was so familiar, but now Clara had to clasp her hands together to prevent herself from smoothing the lock of hair back from his forehead. The skin around his eyes had tiny fan lines that deepened when he smiled, and he still had that eager, roguish look when he grinned. Her best friend had returned to her, but he had grown into a man. And for the life of her, Clara did not know if it would be possible to stay friends with Daniel Tremain anymore. How could she maintain an even keel when she was so utterly enthralled by him? Daniel’s magnetism had the strength of an incoming tide that grew stronger by the minute, and Clara had little desire to resist it.

All of a sudden, the sun was low in the sky, with shadows lengthening across the lawn. Clara tried to ignore the lateness of the hour, as this had been one of the most magical afternoons of her life and she wanted to cling to every moment. The concert had let out hours ago, and her father was liable to send out men to search for her if she did not return soon.

“It’s getting late. . . .” she said finally but hesitantly.

“I’ll let you go if you agree to meet me again.” The immediacy of Daniel’s request made Clara bite back a smile.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

Clara hesitated. “I can’t,” she said. “I promised Clyde I would accompany him to Washington, D.C., for a few days. He is meeting with a committee about the Navajo reservation, and I would like the chance to get acquainted with some members of Congress. I can’t pass up an opportunity like this.”


“I have a copy of Two Rhapsodies by Brahms. A new work, opus 79,” Daniel said. “It arrived by special delivery last week.”

Clara’s breath caught in her throat. “You’re joking!” She adored Brahms, and judging by the wicked gleam in his eye, Daniel knew his lure was a mighty temptation.

“We can meet at the Music Conservatory for old times’ sake,” Daniel said. “It has fallen into disrepair, but it’s still there.”

Clara rose and shook the grass from her skirts, hearing her father’s warning voice in her mind. “You must not let Daniel derail you from your life’s goals.” How many times had she heard that refrain when she was growing up? She pursed her lips, angered that her father’s words made so much sense at this particular moment. The sting of his betrayal in intercepting her letters to Daniel was still fresh, but on one level her father was correct. Daniel had always had the power to utterly dazzle her, and she had only a few weeks left with Clyde before he returned to Arizona Territory. Daniel was already proving to be a dangerous temptation, and she could not turn her back on Clyde for the sake of hearing a Brahms rhapsody.

“I’ll be back in Baltimore in three days’ time,” she said. She would not let him budge her from her resolve. A good sister would go to Washington with Clyde as she had promised, and not suffer the least bit of temptation from Daniel. She ought to feel guilty for even contemplating it.

“Near the end of the B minor rhapsody, the fingering is so wild and intense, I doubt even your hands could keep up with it.”

She glanced over at him and could not help but wonder what Mr. Brahms had come up with this time. She bit her lip, aching to get her hands on that score. “That complex?”

“Want to give it a try? We can meet up tomorrow.”

She elbowed him in the side, then gave a gasp of surprise when he elbowed her back. When she was a teenager, she would have succumbed to temptation, but she would like to pretend she had learned a few things since then. She sent a flirtatious glance over her shoulder as she walked away. “Meet me in three days’ time at the old Music Conservatory,” she said. “And don’t you dare forget that score.”