The Lady of Bolton Hill

Chapter 6





At the knock on his front door, Daniel bounded down the curved staircase in the double-story foyer of his home. Manzetti always drove him to his downtown office each morning, but today Daniel had something he needed to discuss before the bustle of the workday.

Morning sun streamed into the house as soon as he flung open the front door. “How much will it cost to buy up all the coke on the East Coast?” Daniel asked in an impatient voice.

Manzetti took the cap from the top of his head and stepped inside. “And good morning to you, too, Daniel.”

Daniel tossed the cap impatiently on the front hall table. “Come back to the library. I’ve got a new plan I need to discuss.” Why Manzetti wanted to bother with pleasantries when they had business to strategize was a mystery, although he supposed these little social graces needed to be tended to. In the middle of the night, Daniel had snapped awake, the beginnings of an entirely new tactic in his war against Forsythe waking him from a deep sleep. Coke was a byproduct of coal that was essential to the smelting of iron ore. No steel could be made without a healthy supply of coke, and if Daniel bought all the coke available on the market, it would be months before manufacturers could produce more for Forsythe Industries.

Once inside the study, he crossed to his desk, pulled out his chair, and sat. “I want you to buy up all the coke in the Philadelphia markets and send someone to hit the Chicago mercantile exchange, as well. If Forsythe wants a pound of coke, he is going to have to go begging for it from his competitors.”

Manzetti plopped onto a sofa, dragging a ham-sized hand through his dark hair. “You don’t even have the money to finish paying for Miss Lorna’s house, and now you want to buy up all the excess coke in the country?”

“It’s not like it will go to waste. We will use it sooner or later.”

The silence was broken only by the ticking of an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. Manzetti shifted his weight, rubbing his hands along the rough twill of his pants as he mulled over the idea. Manzetti’s instincts were good, and Daniel knew there was something about the scheme that didn’t sit well with the man.

“Spit it out,” Daniel said. “Whatever is bothering you, just say it.”

Manzetti straightened. “If we choke off the supply of coke to Forsythe Industries, his steel mills will go dark for weeks. Maybe even longer.”

“Precisely.”

Manzetti’s brows lowered. “And what about their workers? Forsythe won’t pay their wages if they aren’t making steel. I haven’t forgotten what it feels like to be hungry. Have you?”

The only time Daniel had been hungry in his life was in the weeks following his father’s death. Five days after the explosion that killed his father, Daniel learned that the safety valves on the boilers were defective. Forsythe knew about the defective parts, but he was too cheap to replace them. It was only a matter of time before one of them blew, and it was Daniel’s father who was tending the boilers when it happened. Alfred Forsythe might as well have pulled the trigger. Daniel quit his job within minutes of discovering what had happened. It was a reckless, impulsive thing to have done, but all Daniel could see was a haze of red as he stormed out of the mill. In the following weeks, Daniel had known the grinding fear of being unable to support his family. He had quietly pawned whatever he could from the home and went without meals so his sisters could eat. A few weeks later he joined forces with Ian Carr, who needed a jack-of-all-trades to keep the equipment of his small railroad company in order, but hunger was not something a man ever forgot.


“I am not unmindful to the trouble this will cause,” Daniel said slowly. “But in the long run, it will be better for his workers and this city if Forsythe is driven out of business. Let those mills be owned by someone who operates a safe shop and pays his men a decent wage.”

Manzetti rested his elbows on his thighs as he stared at a spot on the carpet near his feet. If anyone on the planet could understand Daniel’s slow-burning rage, it was Joe Manzetti. He had been with Daniel on the day of the explosion. He had smelled the scent of burning skin and witnessed Daniel’s helplessness as he clutched his father’s broken body to his chest. And Manzetti had been beside Daniel for every step as they slogged their way out of poverty and into the cool relief of prosperity.

“You know I would follow you over the side of a cliff,” Manzetti finally said. “But I won’t do something that will starve Forsythe’s workers. You’ll have to find another man for the job.”

Daniel did not let his astonishment show, but Manzetti’s blunt refusal was a rude shock. He locked gazes with Manzetti as he mentally rattled through his options to get Manzetti on board. “I’ll find jobs for any Forsythe worker who wants to cross over to Carr & Tremain.”

Manzetti rolled his eyes. “There are close to a thousand Forsythe workers in Baltimore alone. You can’t afford to hire them all without going under yourself.”

That was true. The company had embarked on a number of expansion plans in anticipation of selling shares on the stock exchange. Now that the deal was in jeopardy because of Daniel’s intransigence over licensing to Forsythe, they would have to fund the acquisition of railroad lines from their own coffers.

“Buying up all the coke will probably only slow Forsythe for a week or two,” Daniel said. “Three at the most. No one will starve.”

Manzetti’s voice was calm but emphatic. “You’ll have to find another man, Daniel.”

The breath left Daniel’s lungs in a rush. Manzetti was the closest thing to a friend he had. Well, Clara seemed to have waltzed back into his life, but it was Manzetti who was with him through those gritty, hard-bitten years as he fought for every patent, opened each new office. In the past, Manzetti had always supported Daniel’s crusade against Forsythe, but apparently there were limits as to how low Manzetti would stoop.

Not Daniel. He knew Forsythe would not go down without a fight and Daniel was prepared to lead the campaign down to the bitter end. “You know I can easily find someone else who will do my bidding.”

“Probably. You can fire me if you want, but I need to be able to sleep at night.”

Daniel made an impatient gesture with his hand. He would no more fire Manzetti than he would hack off his own right arm. Besides, he had another task he needed help with. Clara would be returning to Baltimore tomorrow, and he needed to find those old pieces of music he had written for her. He shoved talk of business to the back of his mind and rose to his feet.

“Come up to the attic with me. I’ve got some musical scores that are buried beneath some of the old equipment, and I’ll need your help getting them out.”

Clara’s sudden return to Baltimore could not have come at a worse time. He had just destroyed Forsythe’s attempt to build a college, and if he succeeded in causing a blackout in Forsythe’s steel mills, it would arouse another round of bad publicity. Not that he was ashamed of his actions, but he did not want Clara to be a witness to them. She was everything that was pure and unsullied in his life, a shining memory he wanted to protect from the ugliness in his soul.

Despite the early hour, the summer heat was palpable in the attic as he stepped into its dusty confines. The attic of his house had become the official graveyard of his company, where Daniel stored old versions of his original timing devices, routing equipment, even a couple of old railway ties. In the dim light eking through the dormer windows, the hulking silhouettes of his inventions loomed like ghostly sentinels of his past.

“Remind me what we are looking for?” Manzetti asked as his footsteps thudded on the bare plank floors of the attic.

“A couple of musical scores I want to give to Clara Endicott. I think they are in a filing cabinet underneath that old lever frame box.”

“Is this the Clara Endicott you used to moan about when you were in your cups?”

Daniel had forgotten he used to do that, but Manzetti was right. In the early days, cheap beer at O’Reilly’s Tavern was the only recreation he, Manzetti, and his partner Ian Carr could afford, and Daniel inevitably started rambling about Clara after he had a few.

“This is the Clara Endicott who worked for The Times of London,” he said brusquely. He reached beneath the framing of the lever box and waited for Manzetti to join him on the other side. The box weighed around two hundred pounds, and hoisting it off the cabinet was a good excuse to drop the topic of Clara Endicott. In the years since she had left, he had been able to keep his emotions about her safely stored away as neatly as the scores in this cabinet. Now she was here stirring everything up again.

With a mighty heave, he and Manzetti lifted the lever box off the filing cabinet and set it down with a thud. Relieved of the pressure, the drawers of the cabinet slid open with a rasping creak. As Daniel lifted the pages out, the distinctive scent of musical score paper brought back a rush of memories. It had been ten years since he had held these scores. Ten years since he had given up on Clara and packed these compositions into storage. If Manzetti weren’t standing three feet away, he would have pressed the pages to his face and breathed deeply of the scent of wood pulp and old memories.

Manzetti wiped the sweat from his brow. “She must be some reporter, to have put that look of pure, stupid joy on your face.”

Whatever expression had been on his face, Daniel shook it off and closed the filing drawers. Clara was not someone he wanted to talk about. These raw, unwieldy emotions were too volatile for him to discuss in a cogent manner.

“Let’s get to work,” he said as he tromped out of the attic. “We need to do a new round of tests on the heating element for the smelting process.” He continued to pour out instructions for the day, but only half his mind could concentrate on them, because in his hands he held a stack of musical scores that once meant more to him than all the inventions in the world.





Standing next to Daniel, Clara’s heart sagged when she saw the old Conservatory again. She needed to lift the skirt of her delicately embroidered eyelet walking dress well over her ankles in order to step over the tall weeds and around the broken roof tiles that littered the ground where they had slid from the top of the Conservatory. Paint curled away from the walls like scrolls of old parchment, and a gutter hung at a haphazard angle, just waiting for a good stiff wind to blow it off.

It was going to be impossible to play music today, as the instruments from the Conservatory were long gone and the building was in such bad shape it wasn’t even safe to go inside. Daniel proceeded to tell her the city was on the verge of condemning it as a public nuisance, but he did not seem upset.

“I’ve found the old scores, and you can come to my house, where we will play them. Don’t look so tragic.”

Clara shot Daniel an amused glance as she pulled a vine of English ivy from an old stone bench. She used a handkerchief in a futile attempt to swipe away the husk of an old beetle from the bench.


Daniel spared her from further misery when he brushed the rest of the debris from the bench and tossed his jacket over it so she could sit without getting moss stains on her pale yellow dress. It was a shame she would not be able to play music with Daniel this afternoon, but that wasn’t so bad. The scent of the wild mulberry shrubs that were growing rampant along the crumbling stone walls was enchanting, and she loved just being in the shadow of this beloved old building once again. Her gaze tracked along the gabled roof and the gothic arches of the windows, most of which were now broken and boarded over. It was silly, but Clara felt that if she stayed here long enough, she would be able to hear the echoes of the music and laughter that had once filled this building.

Still staring at the old gothic arches, she could not resist asking the question, “Did it mean as much to you as it did to me?”

A little wind rustled the mulberry leaves, and the drone of a dragonfly came from far away. Now that Daniel had gone on to become a great success, perhaps those stolen hours were only a trivial part of his youth, and she held her breath while she waited for his answer.

“Back then we were too young to know that some dreams are impossible,” he said with a note of aching wistfulness in his voice. “So we dreamed them anyway, and it made those years feel glorious. It was probably the finest time in my life.”

She caught her breath. It was true that neither one of them had gone on to become the next Chopin, but did that mean their dreams were for nothing? “But, Daniel, you did go on to greatness. More so than anyone could have imagined!”

“That wasn’t the sort of thing I was dreaming about.” He glanced back toward the Conservatory, and she knew he was remembering the music they had played, how they both allowed it to carry them away to a world of staggering beauty. Even after all these years, it was impossible for her to hear the swelling of a Beethoven symphony or the quiet grace of a Chopin prelude without remembering how it had touched her in her youth. The memories caused a surge of longing so intense Clara did not trust herself to delve any further. It was easier to take the safe route and change the subject.

“So have you read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea yet?” she asked, which provoked an entire discussion about Jules Verne’s thoughts on space travel and undersea exploration. Clara thought space travel was pure nonsense, but Daniel was not so sure. They loitered for hours in the grassy lawn outside the old Music Conservatory while they debated Jules Verne, the absurdity of cricket versus baseball, and the artistic merit of impressionistic painting. Shadows were lengthening in the late afternoon sun when a man on horseback came galloping down the road toward them. The man tossed the reins over a fence, leapt over the stone wall, and headed directly toward them.

Daniel rose to his feet. “That looks like my assistant, Manzetti.”

The man called Manzetti was winded when he reached them. He dragged a handkerchief across his grimy forehead and replaced his cap. “It’s Miss Kate,” he said breathlessly. “She never returned from the cycling competition this afternoon. The contest was over by noon.”

Daniel consulted his pocket watch. “It’s four o’clock. Did you check with any others who competed in the race? Perhaps they went out for a celebration. She’s liable to run off without telling us these things.” Clara could see the annoyance on Daniel’s face, but it was mingled with concern.

“Everyone left after the race was over. There is trouble with strikers brewing down at the docks—”

“I know. I told her to stay away from that end.”

Manzetti shook his head. “It has spread. The streets are blocked all the way to the Camden Yards and workers are rioting. All the freight and passenger traffic has been blocked off. No one is getting in or out of there—I’ve already tried.”

Daniel’s face went white and a sheen of perspiration broke out on his skin. “I’ve got to get her out of there,” he snapped. “I don’t care what it takes. I want Kate out of there.”

Clara was well acquainted with the rioting that often accompanied labor unrest, having covered plenty of labor protests while working in London. Riots always frightened her to bits, but she had never been harmed in one. “She’ll be okay,” Clara said. “These things look like a lot of chaos to outsiders, but it is controlled chaos. Workers have no interest in assaulting well-bred young ladies.” She knew that from experience.

“Doesn’t matter,” Daniel bit out. “I want Kate out of there.”

“I told you, the roads are all blocked off. . . .” Manzetti said.

“What about cutting through buildings to get around the barricades?” Clara suggested. The buildings in the commercial district of London where rioting occurred had large footprints, often taking up an entire city block. It was almost always possible to enter a building through one door and weave through the building to leave on the opposite side, skirting a barricade entirely. “I did it plenty of times when I covered labor stories in London,” Clara said. “I know the buildings down by the Camden Yards are large enough to do the same thing. I’ll show you how.”

“Manzetti, we’re taking your horse,” Daniel said. He vaulted onto the horse and held a hand down to Clara.

Clara gulped. There were plenty of things on this planet that she feared, but horses were near the top of the list.

“Don’t tell me you are still afraid of horses,” Daniel said.

It didn’t help that this horse was particularly big, and she instinctively flinched away from the thirteen hundred pounds of sweaty, twitching horseflesh that was looming before her. “I think ‘cowering terror’ would be a more accurate description,” she said as the horse shifted and stamped.

Daniel refused to let her succumb. “Come on, Clara. You’ll be safe with me.” She swallowed hard and looked up into his stern, confident face. Just a few inches away his hand was waiting for her, and Clara intuitively trusted him. She placed her hand inside his, set her slippered foot on top of his boot, and closed her eyes as he hauled her up behind him. A moment later she was riding behind Daniel, her arms wrapped around his waist and clinging for dear life as the horse cantered down the street.





They left the horse tied up in a stable just outside of Wilshire Park. As Clara suspected, the buildings in this part of town were large and could be used to circumvent the barricades. It was Saturday and most buildings were closed, but she suspected that would not cause Daniel much difficulty. The cigar factory looked like their best bet for skirting the barricade that blocked McNeill Street.

Daniel used his pocketknife to work a bolt open but had more difficulty on the door lock. “Hand over your hairpins,” he said. Clara removed the pins that anchored the heavy coil of hair to the crown of her head. Daniel didn’t even glance at her as he took the pins. He twisted the wires straight, then angled them into the lock, a look of fierce concentration on his face. With the care of a surgeon he twirled and lifted the two pins until at last Clara heard the lock slide open.

“We’re in,” Daniel said triumphantly. The pungent odor of tobacco filled the darkened interior. After navigating a maze of hallways and storage rooms, they made their way into a huge interior room where the cigar rolling took place. Daniel pulled her along as they raced to the far side and found an exit on the south end, where getting out of the building proved much easier than entering.


Immediately upon leaving the building she could see the chaos in the street was worse than she had expected. The stench of burning oil assaulted her nose, and Clara saw a wagon had been overturned and soaked with petroleum. It was now burning uncontrollably as bystanders backed away from the scorching heat. Broken windows and overturned street signs littered the roadway. A few brave policemen mounted on horseback picked their way along the street, dodging flying rocks and keeping the worst of the rioters at bay.

“The sporting club is on the south end of this street,” Daniel said. “If Katie has any sense, she’ll be holed up inside.”

Daniel put his arm around Clara’s shoulders as they hustled down the street, the sound of glass crunching beneath each of her steps. A group of men were prying cobblestones up from the street, piling them up for use as missiles against the descending police force. As she and Daniel approached the entrance of the post office there was a knot of rioters trying to shove through a chain-link barricade guarding the post office doors.

“Why are they rioting in front of the post office?” Clara asked.

“The postal union   refuses to support the steel workers. It’s payback,” Daniel said. She flinched at the sound of a rifle blast, and Daniel tugged her back. “Let’s take the alley behind us. Too dangerous here.”

Clara didn’t argue with him. The random yelling from the crowd was turning into organized chanting, a sign that momentum was taking hold among the crowd. It was quieter along the back alley, which was mostly deserted except for anxious travelers trying to find their way home. They made quick progress toward the Colchester Sporting Club, where Clara prayed they would find Katie.

The club was nestled beside a public park, which was entirely engulfed by mob action. On closer inspection, Clara noticed they were mostly young boys, throwing rocks and clumps of mud. Not hardened strikers.

“Let’s dash through as quickly as possible,” Daniel said. “We’ll take shelter in the club.”

Clara was breathless by the time they reached the small brick building. “That’s Katie’s bicycle,” Daniel said with relief. The bike lay in the dirt at the front of the building. He banged on the front door, but was not surprised when no one answered. He dug out his pocketknife and Clara’s hairpins, making quick work of the lock.

“Katie?” Daniel’s voice roared as soon as they were inside. “Katie Tremain? Get down here so I can tan your backside!” Daniel stalked through the first floor, flinging open doors and checking closets. The front hall was empty, and there was no sign of anyone in the back rooms.

“Daniel? Is it really you?” A thin voice came from upstairs, followed by Katie herself as she peeked around the corner. Clara saw a perfectly lovely young woman with Daniel’s dark hair and a slim, athletic build. Daniel said nothing; he just opened his arms wide and Katie came flying down the staircase straight into them. His arms had barely closed around her before she burst into tears.

“I knew you would come,” she sobbed. “I knew it, I knew it.” Clara was surprised she could even understand Kate through all the tears.

Daniel clutched his little sister in an enormous bear hug. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Kate,” he said. Did she imagine it, or was there a tremor in Daniel’s voice?

“I didn’t know what to do,” Kate said. “The other bicyclists had all gone home, but I had a flat tire. I was trying to fix it when I heard the shouting. I’m so sorry, Daniel. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew you would come.”

Daniel said nothing, merely kept her clenched in that tight embrace while he rocked her from side to side. At last he raised his eyes. “Clara, this is my baby sister, Katie.”

Kate peeled herself away from Daniel’s chest. “Hello, Clara,” she said through a ragged voice. “I’ve heard an awful lot about you over the years.”

“You have?” Clara had thought about Daniel throughout her time in London, but had always assumed he had long since forgotten about her. She never dreamed his sisters would know the first thing about her.

“Oh, heavens, yes.” Kate swiped at the tears in her eyes with the back of her hand and managed a watery smile. “Whenever we neglected our studies, Daniel was quick to point out how we should work hard so we could become successful like his old friend Clara.” Daniel pressed a handkerchief into Kate’s hand and she wiped her eyes. “It didn’t matter if it was music or languages or writing,” she continued, “you were always the model he wanted us to aspire to.”

Surely Kate must be pulling her leg, but when she looked at Daniel she saw the flush on his face and knew Kate spoke the truth. As a woman who had always been in the shadow of her family, never had she been paid so high a compliment.

“I hope I didn’t prove too much of a burden for you. My father waved Joan of Arc in my face as a role model—which was always a bit overwhelming.”

Daniel looked about the vacant rooms of the sporting club. “We may be here awhile,” he said. “And I don’t like the look of all these windows.”

“There aren’t many windows in the kitchen,” Katie said. “That’s where I had been hiding, but I ran upstairs when I heard someone trying to break in.”

Once they were settled in the kitchen, Clara saw a bowl of fruit, and a ferocious sense of hunger came over her. It was past dinnertime and she had eaten nothing since breakfast. Suddenly she was convinced if she didn’t eat, her stomach would begin to consume itself. She glanced at Daniel as she felt a guilty flush heat her cheeks. “Do you think it would be all right?”

“Of course it would be all right,” he said. “I’ll leave a few coins on the table if you feel guilty.”

It was all the permission she needed. Clara ripped the peel off an orange and devoured a section as soon as she had it liberated from the peel. Daniel did likewise. How curiously familiar it felt, to be sitting on the floor of a kitchen while they tore through a quick meal. Clara’s life had always been filled with the utmost propriety, except where Daniel Tremain had been concerned. With him she had always been free to be exactly herself.

As soon as their hunger was satisfied, Daniel turned to Kate. “Now I’d like to hear how you found yourself in this mess, and what you plan to do to make sure it never happens again.”

It was a reasonable question, and Clara thought Kate ought to have noticed the serious tone that lay just beneath the surface of Daniel’s calmly worded question.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Kate proclaimed. “As though I have any control over a riot. Truly, you have more influence over rioters than me.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows. “And what is your reasoning for that comment?”

“Well, you’re one of the robber barons everyone is complaining about. If people like you paid their workers better, we wouldn’t have this sort of thing.”

Daniel fixed Kate with a stare that would have made lesser mortals wither, but with the overconfidence that came with extreme youth, Kate held her ground. “I’d complain, too, if I had to live on the wages the railroad pays. Little better than dirt, so what other recourse do they have?”

“And here I had been bragging to Clara about what a bright young lady you have grown up to become,” Daniel said. “My apologies, Clara. I was premature in my assessment.”


Kate straightened, bristled, and her gray-eyed gaze locked with Daniel’s dark glower. The air practically crackled with electricity. Finally, Kate backed down. “Just because you are smart doesn’t mean you are wise, Daniel!” The exasperation in her tone made Clara certain this was a common phrase Kate rolled out when attempting to compete with her older brother’s unquestionable dominance. Kate flounced into the corner of the kitchen and wadded her jacket into a makeshift pillow. “I’m exhausted and am not going to listen to your lectures, Daniel. I’m getting some sleep,” she said as she turned her back to them.





Darkness had fallen, but the rioters had not dispersed. Bonfires flickered in the park as young hoodlums lit piles of garbage on fire and threw eggs against the sides of buildings. Her father would be out of his mind with worry, but there was nothing Clara could do to assuage his fears. It would be far more dangerous to venture out into the street, where fires set by the rioters were now consuming at least two buildings she could spot from the upper window of the sporting club. Manzetti had been instructed to tell Reverend Endicott about her plans, so surely he knew that Daniel would look out for her. The three of them would be here until morning, and Kate had already fallen asleep, leaning against the corner of the kitchen wall.

The temperature dropped as the moon rose, and Clara wrapped her arms a little tighter around her body. The moment he noticed Clara’s movement, Daniel shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it around her shoulders. “You should have told me you were chilly.”

The silk-lined wool coat still carried Daniel’s scent, and Clara sank into the luxurious warmth. She wasn’t so cold that she needed his coat, but the gesture carried a whiff of gallantry that was oddly touching. The weight and quality of the coat’s fabric were a tangible sign of Daniel’s success, and she smiled a little as she turned her head toward him.

“Is there any truth to what Kate says?”

Daniel and Clara were sitting on the floor of the darkened kitchen, legs stretched out before them, eating a bowl of cherries. Clara whispered the question so as not to awaken the sleeping Kate.

“That I’m a robber baron who doesn’t pay my workers a fair wage? Not much.”

“What part of it is true?”

Daniel sighed. “Ian Carr and I are both self-made men, and most of every dollar we earn gets plowed directly back into the company to fund our expansion. We don’t live like Vanderbilt or Carnegie. We don’t have gold fixtures in our bathrooms or summer homes in the country. And I don’t have a lot of money to splash around on employees. I pay a fair wage.”

“You needn’t be so defensive. I’m not attacking you.”

“It felt like it.” At her pointed look, he continued. “I have read your articles, Clara. I have a subscription to The Times, and I’ve read everything you ever wrote. I know what side you are likely to come down on here.”

She gestured to the door leading to the street. “You think I approve of that? Rioting in the street and destroying the work of small business owners?”

“Do you?”

“Of course not.” Although he was right that she generally sided with the workers over the owners. She nibbled on a cherry while choosing her next words very carefully. “I’ve heard things about you, though. That you won’t do business with Alfred Forsythe or any of his companies.”

“That’s right.”

“Doesn’t that hurt your own business? Wouldn’t your profit margins soar if you stopped locking yourself out of thirty percent of the railroad market?”

Daniel pushed himself away from the wall and leaned closer to her. “Unlike some businessmen, there are things I care more about than money.”

“And hurting your own workers is one of those things you care about?”

He looked as though she had blindsided him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.

“I mean that if you licensed your inventions to Forsythe Industries, the revenue you earn will be pure profit. With that much extra income, you could afford to pay your workers a better wage.” She was on very thin ice. Never had she seen a look of such antipathy simmering on Daniel’s face directed at her, and she shrank back a few inches.

“If my employees don’t like their wages, they are free to go work for someone else,” he said in a low voice vibrating with anger. “I want revenge, Clara. My mother committed suicide, did you know that? Lorna found her hanging in the kitchen and came running to me at the station, sobbing her eyes out. Katie was there and saw everything when I cut my mother down. Do you think I’m going to forget that?”

Clara felt herself blanch at the horrible image. It hurt to look Daniel in the face, and when she did she saw his mouth twisted with bitterness, the expression in his eyes making him unrecognizable. It was the face of vengeance, and it was heartbreaking to see a man as fine as Daniel succumbing to it.

“You’ve held on to this anger for twelve years,” she said gently. “If you wish to nurture this rage in private, it hurts no one but yourself. But the kind of vengeance you are carrying out causes innocent people to suffer. Proverbs says that you should not repay evil, but wait for the Lord, and He will deliver you.”

The look he sent her was withering. “Do not quote Scripture to me about this.”

The words sliced through her, but he was entitled to his resentment. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he had endured in those first few years after the accident.

“I’m sorry, Daniel. It isn’t for me to judge you, and I shouldn’t have tried.”

And just like that, the ice thawed in Daniel’s eyes and a sad smile appeared. He sighed and met her eyes. “Do you know what I’m sorry about?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry that the first evening we’ve spent together in over a decade has us stuck on the floor of a horrible old building with me snapping at you.”

The apology was unexpected and it made her want to leap into his arms, stroke the dark hair that curled on his forehead, and assure him that she’d forgive him anything. Instead she held up the bowl of fruit resting in her lap. “At least the cherries are good.”

Daniel snagged one. “I promise to do better next time. Give me another chance?”

She smiled. “As if you even need to ask.”