Chapter Text
May 28th, 1882
The heat of Manhattan hits him just as his foot hits the platform. Disgusting, claustrophobic heat, especially for May; the number on the barometer is likely no higher than it was in California, but the city is wet with it, crowded and clammy, too many people and no room to breathe. He feels it already, even on a half-empty train station platform; George Russell has always been too big for New York.
But New York has grown, or so they tell him. Streets he’d run down as a boy that had been barely better than slums are now perfectly respectable addresses for a middle-class family, the boundaries of fashionable living slipping further every day. As much as a man can change in twenty years, it’s nothing compared to what can happen to a city.
More than twenty years. Twenty-eight years since he flung a few belongings in a duffel bag, grabbed all the money he could lay his hands on, and fled for the wide open spaces of the west. He’d been seventeen. Twenty-five years since he was forced to make the arduous journey back east for his mother’s funeral; he’d missed it, in the end, by two days, the transport had been so unreliable back then. The only things waiting for him in New York had been his father’s grief and his brother’s resentment and he’d been able to endure both for no more than a night. He’d been back on the road to Sacramento before a full day had passed, and if that had worsened either the grief or the resentment, George never had to know about it. That was the last time he set foot in the city. He never saw his father again.
Deaths and births and weddings and wars and truces and disasters and triumphs have come and gone and George has let them. Invitations have been issued- he hadn’t exactly gone to ground, and although the frequency of his contact with his brother has wavered over the years, it’s never stopped entirely- but nothing has brought him back to Manhattan until now.
Nothing would have brought him back except this. The greedy lure of filthy lucre; the streets may not be literally paved with gold, but George can almost see them shine, lighting a glinting path through the city all the way to the offices of Russell Consolidated Trust.
He’d thought, when he left home at seventeen, that he had no use for the family business. All his father had been interested in was safe acquisition and incremental growth. William Russell had been comfortably well-off his whole life, but barely richer when he died at fifty-two than when he’d taken over the helm at thirty. Innovation and risk were entirely foreign to him and any suggestions his younger son made were dismissed with an indulgent smile. By the time George was fifteen, he’d known that playing third fiddle to an intellectually inferior father and brother for the rest of his life would drive him raving mad. By the time he was seventeen, he’d known what he wanted to do about it. By the time he was twenty-five, he had the beginnings of his own company. By the time he was thirty-five, that company had almost crashed half a dozen times before George pulled out of the dive just in time, always managing to balance risk and reward just so. And now he’s forty-five and his own Russell Industries is booming and he’s found that perhaps he could find a use for the family business after all. His train lines are flourishing in California, certainly, but all those holdings his brother has in steel and oil would make it so much easier, so much cheaper, to bring those lines east. Not to mention all the things George could do with those safe little holdings, the money he could make… worth the arduous journey back to New York a hundred times over.
The bar he slips into on the way from the train station isn’t as dirty and low as he’d expected from its exterior. A few old men sit on stools, silently sipping from cloudy glasses; they could be complete strangers or lifelong friends and you’d never know, because the only thing that matters is the drink in front of them. George has known hundreds of men like this. Working men, breaking their backs all day because they know there’ll be a glass of something waiting at the end of it, until they’re too old to work and the glass is all that’s left. He isn’t there himself, never will be, but he can’t deny that he needs something to take the edge off too. The last few days of travel are still weighing heavily on his back, and the day ahead of him is stretching forward so far he can’t see the end of it. It’s two in the afternoon and George would place a heavy bet on the rest of his day feeling an awful lot longer than a month travelling through the dusty middle states.
The taste of his whisky is nothing to write home about but it’s sharp and strong and sometimes that’s enough. He leaves too many coins on the counter, even though the barman had done nothing but glower at him- he’s paying for the experience. The last time, he imagines, that he’ll be able to sit in a place like this with nobody knowing his name or caring if they did. If things go his way- and they almost always do- by the end of this year, nobody in the city will be able to avoid knowing the name George Russell.
Sweat drips down his neck as he walks the dozen blocks to the Russell house. The new Russell house, of course. To George, the Russell house is a comfortable townhouse on 8th Street, although he hasn’t an earthly idea if it’s even still standing. To the rest of the world, the Russell house is a newly built demi-palace on Madison Avenue. George had seen a picture of it in one of the New York papers he gets and he hadn’t thought much of it. Showy, but not large or grand enough to be truly impressive, although the newspaper hadn’t agreed. If George had been left with what Lawrence had, he’d have made enough money to recreate Versailles, brick for brick. But at least the new Russell house wasn’t likely to put him in any danger of feeling seventeen again. The old one would have been populated with the ghosts he’d needed the heat of the desert to burn away, putting him on the back foot before he’d even seen his brother.
For a moment, as the door opens, George feels he may be on the back foot anyway. The man who answers it, starched and stiff, looks at him as though he’s a vagrant who’s just rolled out of the gutter. It sets his teeth on edge. His journey and the abysmal heat of the day may have left him a little worse for wear, but his clothes are expensive and before he’d left California, he’d had the girl in his bed (Sally-Ann. Sarah-Ann?) trim his beard. And aside from that, he’s George Russell, isn’t he? There isn’t a man on the Pacific Coast who would dare to look at George Russell like that.
But he isn’t on the Pacific Coast, of course. He’s back in a city where very few people know who he is and a little dust on your boots gives a servant the right to regard you as a worm.
“Is Mr Russell at home?” A funny thing to hear from his own lips. In his own little kingdom, George is the only Mr Russell. Anyone who has a need to refer to Lawrence (vanishingly rare) would likely just call him “your brother”.
“Do you have an appointment with Mr Russell?” The butler or manservant or whatever he is peers at George with deep suspicion, and George gives him his friendliest, least threatening smile back. He doesn’t have an appointment, of course. As far as Lawrence Russell is concerned, his younger brother is safely ensconced 3000 miles away, concentrated on his own little business with no intention of picking a plum from the pie that is Russell Consolidated Trust.
“He’s not expecting me,” George says warmly, confident and calm. “But I think I can guarantee that he’ll want to see me.”
“I’m afraid Mr Russell isn’t receiving-”
“I dare say he’s not. But I would advise you to tell him I’m here, nonetheless.” Or you’ll be sweeping the streets of Brooklyn by this time next week, he doesn’t add. He sweeps a card from his pocket and hands it over as if he’s giving the man one of the crown jewels.
Mr George Russell
Russell Industries
1100 12th Street, Sacramento
A hint of surprise flickers over the butler’s face as he reads it, but only a hint. That’s one thing about New York that will never change, George thinks; everyone, from the servants to the senators, does their best to hide their true feelings every moment of the day.
“If you would care to wait inside, sir, while I take this to Mr Russell?”
Oh, he would. He wants to see his brother’s pretensions to taste, if nothing else. Home furnishings aren’t exactly George’s area of expertise but if there’s anything he can glean about his brother while he prepares to play the prodigal son, he wants to glean it. A little upper hand never hurt anyone. He already has one, to a certain extent. He’d bet a large amount of money that he knows a damn sight more about Lawrence’s business dealings than vice versa. Lawrence knows that George is doing well, of course, but he’d be surprised if he knew quite how well. He’d be surprised if his brother is able to conceptualise a business succeeding that doesn’t consist of the same fifty men within two square miles of Manhattan exchanging favours. Not a bad man, just a man myopic enough to never look past the contents of his own desk. No doubt he spends his days signing whatever is put in front of him and lunching at his club, back here every night by six-thirty to dine with a dull wife and two spoiled brats, never thinking about having more.
The interior isn’t giving much away, though. It’s overstuffed with furniture and decoration and makes him long for the simple, sunny comfort of his own ranch house, but there’s nothing to suggest that his brother is either a reckless overspender or a curmudgeonly miser. It’s clean, if you ignore the dust that George himself has just tracked in, and it’s quiet. Out of the corner of his eye, a maid scurries past the top of the stairs, head bowed, but that’s the only sign of life. Even the clock in the foyer is quiet. He has to strain to hear the tick. George’s own home is quiet too, of course, but then there is usually only him in it. A woman, sometimes, but he’s never liked the rambunctious type. And the people he employs to cook and clean and all the rest of it go back to their own houses when he’s done with them. The family men he knows out west, the men with cheerful wives and broods of children and a gaggle of servants, all have houses that are brimming over with noise. Had their house growing up been so quiet? It makes him feel cagy, knowing that there could be more than a dozen other people stalking around this building, silent as the grave.
The rest of the house is no louder, although part of George wonders if it was built that way. Certainly, the oak door the butler leads him to is huge and thick enough to dull the noise of cannon fire. Three men could enter abreast, even men with shoulders swollen and large from years of hard work. Four Manhattanites, probably, with their pale, slim bodies and smooth, white hands. It’s several years since George himself had to lay a brick or smash a rock, but his skin stays brown and his hands stay calloused. He can’t remember what it’s like to be so smooth or to take up so little space. How do they fuck, he wonders, these men who spend all their lives inside? Are they too sluggish and apathetic to even bother? It’s not a titillating picture, men as lily-white as fish bellies lazily jerking on top of bored whores, their skin greasy with sweat from the only physical effort they ever expend, and then going home to houses as quiet as this.
Not exactly the picture he wants in his head while he’s making his entrance. Collecting himself, George sets his own muscled shoulders back and assumes an expression of confident serenity. New Yorkers don’t have a monopoly on hiding one’s true feelings, after all.
It wouldn’t be true to say that his brother looks exactly the same as he did in 1854, but it would be true to say that George would have known him anywhere. As boys, they’d always been told how alike they looked and how much they both favoured their father. At the time, George had never been able to see it for himself- in fact, whenever he’d looked at either brother or father, all he’d ever been able to think was that he must have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. As a young boy, he’d dreamed of his mother confiding in him that his real father was an Arctic explorer or a daring pirate, a strong man with a strong will who would crash into the city one day and sweep George up into the life he was really meant to be living. Of course, no rescue had come until he took matters into his own hands and now, as he looks at his brother, it feels something like looking in a mirror. If a mirror could line your forehead and lighten your skin, give you an extra inch or two of height and narrow your chest.
“Good God, it really is...”
The reaction, George thinks, is a little overplayed. The hand to the mouth, the hand to the chest, the shaking of the head, the way his brother practically runs across the room to clap him on the back and pull him into an embrace. It’s not as if George has been missing, absence marked with an empty grave. They last exchanged letters four months ago, if that. But the story of the prodigal son is a favourite for a reason, he supposes.
“It is,” he agrees cheerfully, patting Lawrence’s back. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ll say! My God, George… we’d no idea you were coming, we’d no letters…” Lawrence has both of his hands on George’s shoulders now and is looking him up and down as if he were a new exhibit in the zoo. If dismay is hiding behind his delighted surprise, it’s hiding very well.
“That would be because I sent none,” George says with a blithe smile, as if that were charming common practice and not blatant rudeness. “I didn’t want you to stand on ceremony for me. I’m staying at the Windsor-”
“Like hell you are!” Lawrence interrupts him, as George had known he would. He hadn’t gotten a room anywhere, in fact, so sure had he been of his brother’s hospitality. “You’ll stay here for as long as you- well, how long are you staying?”
“A month, perhaps.” A lie. If he’s to do what he wants to do, it will need to be far longer. “I’ve some business in the city. But I couldn’t impose on you for so long, with no notice, I’m sure your wife-”
“Oh, Bertha is never happier than when she gets to play hostess.” A good thing Lawrence says his wife’s name, as George had almost forgotten it.
He’s known intellectually that his brother has been married for more than twenty years, but it’s not something he’s ever given much thought to. George had been long gone by the time she came on the scene and weddings, christenings and anniversary parties haven’t exactly tempted him back. She doesn’t feature heavily in his brother’s letters, either. George thinks he can picture her, although admittedly he’s picturing a woman of their mother’s generation; sensible and soft. She hadn’t come from much money, he thinks, but surely twenty-plus years as Mrs Russell will have sanded off any edges until she’s indistinguishable from any other rich merchant’s wife.
“If you’re quite sure. I had no intention of imposing myself on you-”
“It’s no imposition. Truly, my boy, I couldn’t be happier to see you.”
The term of address rankles a little, but Lawrence’s joy seems real enough to take the sting from it. And almost makes George feel guilty for what he’s here to do. Easier to usurp a resentful, angry brother than a smiling one. But not hard, either way.
“And I you.” Another lie. “You’ve changed very little, you know. Whereas, the city…”
He sweeps his hand towards the window, trying to encapsulate his feelings about Manhattan’s much evolved landscape.
“Oh, changing every day, they tell me. Always knocking things down and building them up again, I can never see the point myself.”
Given that the point is almost always money, that isn’t surprising. Given that George isn’t sure Lawrence has ever looked past the end of his nose, that isn’t surprising.
“Ah, well, I’m rather in the business of knocking things down and building them back up myself,” George says with a smile. “You had this house built for you, though, surely?”
“Oh, certainly.” Lawrence puffs out a little with pride. “Finished just last year. It’s Richard Morris Hunt, you know, he’s building the Vanderbilts’ new place now. Bertha had wanted to use someone newer, but I say if a man is good enough for the Vanderbilts, he is good enough for me.”
Now he’s heard more about Lawrence’s wife in the last two minutes than he had in the last two years. The picture in his mind’s eye alters a little; not so soft, perhaps, if she’s willing to argue with her husband about architecture. George can’t truly remember his mother ever arguing with his father about anything at all.
“Well, it’s most impressive,” he says as if he actually knows who Richard Morris Hunt is.
“I’m glad you think so- it’s a home for you for as long as you want it.”
Lawrence is enjoying himself, George realises. Amusing. If they really are playing out a parable, he’s assumed the role of welcoming father, his arms spread wide to greet the erring runaway and bring him back into the fold. Which does leave a space in the story, doesn’t it? Who is going to play the bitterly resentful brother in his place?
“Lawrence, I…”
The woman in the doorway stops in her tracks mid-sentence, a letter in her hand, eyes fixed on George’s face. The first thing he notices, truly, is that she’s extremely beautiful. Dewy, is the word that springs to his mind from God only knows where, oddly fresh in this stuffy environment, reminding him of a desert lily springing up in a bank of arid sand. The second thing he notices, very soon after, is that she does not look at all pleased to see him.
“Forgive me,” she says. Her pretty face smooths itself out, the little crease in the middle of her forehead disappearing. “I didn’t realise you had company.”
“Not exactly company.” Lawrence stretches out his arm and the woman glides forward, taking her place within its confines as if she’s done it a thousand times before. Which of course, she has, because of course, this is…
“My dear, this is George.”
“Of course it is,” she says promptly, her eyes still tracking over his face. “Unless you had another brother you’d never mentioned, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.”
George is quite used to appraising women. It helps to know at a glance, out west, if a woman acting friendly is a proselytising pastor's daughter or a down-on-her-luck barmaid looking for someone to pay for her next meal. He’s a little less used to women appraising him. Or, at least, taking so long about it. A quick glance is usually enough for them to be able to tell that he’s good-looking and guess that he’s well-off, and he’s always assumed that that was all a woman really needed to know. In the case of his brother’s wife, evidently she’s looking for something a little more.
“George, this is my wife.” Lawrence’s proprietary squeeze of the woman’s shoulders would have made that clear if it hadn’t been already.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says smoothly. “Although I feel as though I already have, of course. Lawrence has painted a vivid enough picture of you in his letters for me to feel I’ve known you twenty years.”
“Has he, indeed?” Her bright eyes narrow, as if she doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. He’s lying again, so that’s quite fair enough, but he hadn’t expected her to know it. And Lawrence just beams back at him as though he really has spent the last two decades singing his wife’s praises to George. Man’s capacity for self-delusion will never cease to amaze him.
“Hard to believe you’ve never met before,” Lawrence says genially and Bertha Russell finally holds her hand out.
Instead of stooping to kiss it, George takes it and shakes it, as though they’ve just closed a deal, and those blue eyes widen in surprise. He likes that. He suspects it might take rather a lot to surprise this woman who looks at complete strangers like she’s St Michael on Judgement Day.
“George is in town for a while for business,” Lawrence explains to her. “I thought we might put him in the blue room.”
“Of course,” she says as casually as if they’d been expecting him for months. “Where is your luggage, Mr- George? I’ll have someone take it up.”
“I’m afraid I’m as you see me,” he says apologetically, spreading his arms out so she can see his coat and his canvas bag. “It’s a long journey and not a particularly safe one.”
“You came to the city for business with only the clothes on your back?” Damn her, those eyes are unsettlingly sharp. Forget a desert lily, she’s increasingly reminding him of a carrion crow, looking out for anything that might be a threat to her little nest. Much prettier than a crow, of course, but the watchful look is startlingly similar.
“I had thought to buy new things,” he says, and it isn’t exactly a lie this time. “I imagine the tailors here are rather better than in Sacramento.”
“Very sensible.” Lawrence grins at him. “Everything is better in New York. Perhaps we’ll be able to convince you to come home more often.”
Unlikely. The house is already stifling him, although it’s comfortable. The room he’s taken to is more comfortable, objectively speaking, than his own home, but George feels a thousand times less so. What good is a huge picture window if the only thing it shows you is the other side of a crowded street? He’s never considered himself an especially romantic person, always taking the vistas and deserts of the west very much in his stride, but he supposes he’d forgotten how cramped it was back here. Of course, his office in Sacramento was in the city centre, but there still seemed to be more space. And at the end of the day, he could go home to miles of quiet and peace.
Still. A little peace would be worth sacrificing if it got him everything he wanted here. With the money he can make from Russell Consolidated Trust, he’d be able to flatten the entire eastern seaboard and rule it as an emperor if he wanted to. All he has to do is be patient, keep his eyes open and, as it turns out, watch out for his sister-in-law with a steelier gaze than any hard-bitten pioneer he’s ever met out in the wilds of the desert.
When he comes down for dinner, a little early, he finds only said sister-in-law waiting in the parlour. She’s changed since he last saw her, exchanged the afternoon’s blue dress for pink silk that catches the fading light of a summer evening very fetchingly. It’s pretty, almost pretty enough to be girlish. The innocent flower and the serpent come to mind and George has to restrain a small smile.
Bertha, it seems, is having no such difficulty. When she looks up at him, her mouth tightens into a thin line. The open hostility takes him aback, her disapproval coming across the room like a harsh breeze. It takes him a moment, as her eyes move from his shoulder to the cuffs of his sleeves, to understand that it’s his clothes that have caused so much displeasure. Evidently coming down to dinner in the same suit one went up in offends the delicate sensibilities of New York’s society mamas.
“Don’t I do?” There’s a teasing note in his voice he hadn’t intended to put there.
“I should have thought to offer you something of Lawrence’s, although I don’t know how well it would fit. I’ll ask his valet to lay some things out for you to try on in the morning.” Does she quite realise she’s assessing his person with the critical eye of a madam looking for a new girl to rent out? “Or perhaps something of our son’s might fit you better, you’re more of a height with him.”
George doesn’t particularly enjoy the thought of wearing his brother or his nephew’s castoffs, but he also doesn’t particularly care what he wears. He’s closed deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars while wearing an ancient sack coat and ragged flannel trousers. But that’s what keeps this city ticking, he supposes; everyone doing, wearing, and being the same thing as everyone else.
“That’s very generous of you,” he says lightly. “I’ll make it my first order of business tomorrow to order some clothes that won’t disgrace you.”
Once again, Bertha looks at him with such a keen eye that for a moment he expects to see a set of holy scales in her hand.
“Oh, I’m sure you have far more important business to attend to.”
For an absurd moment, George wants to tell her the truth. I do, he wants to say. You won’t care half so much about what I wear when I’m the only thing standing between you and the gutter, he wants to say. You’ll be begging me to look kindly on you in six months’ time, he wants to say. He wants to say whatever he can to make those blue eyes widen.
The door opening saves him from his worst impulses. Through it comes a young woman, her eyes almost as alert and bright as Bertha’s. They’re the same shape too, for all that the girl’s are Russell brown instead of cornflower blue.
“Hello,” is all she says, a little smile on her face. She reminds George of a squirrel, something about the inquisitive angle of her head.
“Hello,” he says in return, not quite sure of the protocol for one’s first meeting with one’s presumed niece. But he doesn’t need to know these things himself, not when there’s a master of the craft right here ready to guide him through.
“Ah, there you are. Gladys, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, this is your uncle.” Bertha steps between them, putting her hand on her daughter’s arm.
“You can’t imagine how peculiar this feels,” his niece tells him, her smile brightening. “I had no idea what to make of it when Mother told me you were here. We’ve always heard about you, of course, but Father didn’t even have a picture of you. It’s like having dinner with Captain Cleveland or Jesse James.”
“Not so fearsome as that, I hope,” he says indulgently. She must still be in the schoolroom, although George can’t recall exactly when she was born.
“Robinson Crusoe, then. Larry and I used to talk about you when we were young, the adventures we thought you might be on.”
“I’m afraid the truth might disappoint you,” he tells her, although he can see why two children who had likely never even left the state of New York might daydream about the romance of the west. “I don’t think my business is any more exciting than your father’s, for all that it rains rather less while I do it.”
“Yes, I suppose all business is dull,” his niece says, and her mother clears her throat, prompting an eye roll from Gladys. “For me, I mean.”
“For most women, I suspect,” he says, casting his eyes over to Bertha Russell’s face. He doesn’t get the satisfaction he was looking for, only the merest flickering of her eyelids.
“Oh, yes,” Gladys agrees. “I can’t make head nor tail of what Father actually does.”
Not much, George thinks, though no doubt Lawrence makes it sound terribly important and complicated.
“My business these days is railroads, mostly,” he says with a smile. “I own and operate passenger and freight rail lines across the west.”
Gladys’s face clears.
“That doesn’t sound so complicated. Father has some interest in the railroads, doesn’t he?”
“Some,” Bertha allows. “Investments, mostly, rather than- well, I’m sure we can find something more interesting to discuss. Your uncle will be inundated with work while he's here, I doubt he wants to talk about it at dinner too.”
Oh, George wouldn't mind. Although he can’t imagine either of them hold much valuable information he might be able to use, you can never tell and the less he has to ask Lawrence, the better. Not that he thinks his brother’s wife is in the habit of dropping many accidental hints. He gets the distinct impression that every word that comes out of her mouth is as deliberately placed as a well-aimed arrow, perfectly positioned to strike true in whichever direction she chooses. Such arrows glance off him after so long spent with rough and ready men who never hesitate to speak their minds, but he still doesn’t much like the idea of being on the wrong end of Bertha’s tongue.
A clattering outside announces his nephew’s arrival. If Gladys had given him the distinct impression of a curious squirrel, Lawrence Junior reminds George rather strongly of some sort of bouncing puppy, curly black hair and all. Is that what he’d looked like at twenty? Although the resemblance is strong, he doesn’t think so. George had been unequivocally a man at twenty. His brother’s son couldn’t be called anything other than a boy.
“You’re almost late for dinner,” Bertha says, and the boy widens his eyes, head quickly flicking towards George. Clearly not something she would say in front of company, real company. How exhausting it must be to have to keep a list in your head of how much honesty is permitted in front of each person you meet. “Now, come and meet your uncle George.”
“You don’t say?” He scrambles over to them, sticking his hand out enthusiastically. “My God, I…”
“Yes, we’re all very surprised,” Bertha says with a touch of acerbity, although whether it’s directed at her son or at him, George can’t quite tell. “He’ll be staying with us a while.”
“That’s… my goodness, I find it difficult to believe you’re even standing in front of me.”
“And yet here I am,” George says affably, taking his nephew’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, although your father has told me so much about you over the years it hardly feels like a first meeting.”
Too late, he realises he’d said much the same thing to Bertha earlier that day, in a similar attempt to get into her good graces. Of course, both things are just as likely as the other, but given that both were lies, did it ring false? He manages to avoid his eyes flickering to her face to check for any sign that she’s suspicious, a giveaway in itself, but finds that he’s desperate to look at her.
“We used to write to you too, do you remember?” Gladys interjects. “When we were children. Father would read us your letters and we’d put in notes of our own when he wrote back to you.”
He has no recollection of that whatsoever, not even the faintest stirring. Of course, if such letters had ever reached him, he would have had no use for them. It’s not difficult to imagine himself glancing over childish scrawls about French lessons or trips to the seashore and tossing them away without a second thought.
“Of course. In fact, I think I may still have some of them somewhere.” The lie comes easily and both his niece and nephew look pleased as punch to hear it. A slight twinge of discomfort plucks at his chest; had they truly made so much of him? If pressed, George would have never guessed that his brother’s family gave him any more thought than he gave them. Odd, to have had such regard bestowed upon you and never known it.
A loud chiming sound echoes in the corridor and Bertha turns to him with a polite smile.
“Shall we go through? Lawrence had to go back to the office for a while, he said not to wait for him.”
Before he can say anything, she’s taken his arm and she holds it tight for a moment, stopping him in position as Gladys and Larry start to leave the room.
“I’m not sure Lawrence ever bothered to send you those letters the children wrote to you,” she says in a low voice and for a moment, George feels a rush of conspiratorial pleasure at her tone. “You were kind to say you’d treasured them, they were very pleased.”
“If I’m to trespass on your hospitality for so long, I have every intention of being an obliging house guest,” he tells her. Once again, her eyes search his face and the intensity of them makes him want to squirm away. What can she see there? What is she looking for?
Eventually, she seems to find it, whatever it is, and her face relaxes a little. It isn’t a face that ever relaxes completely, he thinks. She could be lying in the soft grass of his garden with the sun warming her bones and making her hair shine and she would still have that watchful look.
“We’ll have no more talk of trespassing,” she says firmly. “What else is family for?”
That’s a question for which George has never had an answer.
Dinner is excellent, particularly after so long on the road. At home, George hardly notices what he eats, he’ll bolt whatever slab of meat is put in front of him, paper or pen always in hand. He needs every fraction of his mind, can’t spare them to consider something as trivial as food. The same can’t be said for whoever put this evening’s menu together, whether it was the mistress of the house or a competent housekeeper; everything is well-cooked, perfectly paired. Irrationally, jealousy flares up in him for a brief moment. His brother, who wouldn’t know hard work if it cracked his jaw in two, has every comfort ready and waiting for him when he gets home from pretending to slave away at his office. As little thought as George has ever given to the softer side of life, it seems like a terrible imbalance.
Lawrence joins them before the soup is cleared away, hearty and jocular and certainly nowhere near worn out from a hard day’s work. He’s a pleasant enough dinner companion and his children laugh through the meal too, filling George in on old family jokes, asking him eager questions about their grandparents and what their father had been like as a boy. He does his best to answer with equal good humour, to seem alive and interested without giving too much away. Only Bertha is quiet. More than once, he’s sure he feels her eyes burning into the side of his head, only for her to be smiling at her children or studying her plate when he looks round at her.
He wants to catch those eyes again, even if he shouldn’t.
When the meal is over, leaving George more satiated than he can remember ever feeling in his life, the children take their leave and the grown-ups take coffee in the library. He doesn’t miss Larry casting a longing, resentful glance at his father before he leaves. George can empathise. How well he remembers feeling twice as old as he was, ten times as old as anyone treated him, and he’d only lasted until seventeen. Larry is twenty-two and still chased away to bed like a child. Maddening for him, useful for George.
After coffee, Lawrence surprises him by pouring three brandies. Bertha surprises him by taking a comfortable sip, looking quite at home with the glass in her hand. Back in California, the only women who drink are… well, nobody’s wives. Saloon girls and worse. It’s almost impossible to imagine a farmer or one of his investors inviting their wives to join the men after dinner, let alone allowing them a taste of the best brandy. But he’s glad of it. He wants to keep talking to his brother’s wife, or at least keep watching her. To find out what she thinks she might have seen in his face or what she’s looking for. It’s scratching at him, like a burr under his clothes, however foolish that might be. He knows fine well she can’t know anything, not materially. George’s plan lives nowhere except the corners of his own mind, he hasn’t even committed it to paper, and he hasn’t begun to set it into motion with anything other than his presence here. There’s nothing for her to know.
And yet, she just keeps looking at him. As he calmly asks his brother about his afternoon’s work, as he diverts the conversation onto the crazed idiot who shot Garfield, as they speculate about the future of the Standard Oil Company, he keeps feeling Bertha’s eyes on him. She joins in their talk, here and there, even if most of her attention is directed at the piece of embroidery in her hand. Is she idly imagining stabbing him with her needle?
Eventually, Lawrence drains his third glass and stands.
“Well, I’m away to bed. My dear, can I take you up?”
“I just want to finish this corner,” Bertha says with a sweet smile, holding up her work as though she needs to provide proof.
George usually makes his way to bed past midnight and rises with the sun, easily able to go through the working day with five or six hours of sleep. And he wants a moment alone with his brother’s wife, to see if all her close observation through the evening has yielded anything she finds especially interesting.
“I won’t be long myself,” he lies to his brother. “And let me thank you again for your generous-”
“Enough of that,” Lawrence insists with a wave of his hand. “You have a home wherever I am, my boy. I shall see you tomorrow.”
His little speech might have left George feeling rather guilty, were it not for the fact that there’s only so much of that term of address that he’s is going to be able to take. Instead, he sits resolutely in his comfortable chair, repeatedly bringing his glass to his mouth although he’s doing little more than wetting his lips. He’ll sit here for as long as Bertha does.
“So, what does California have to offer that New York does not?” She says with deceptive ease, after a few moments of silence. He thinks that most things this woman does might be deceptive.
“Land, chiefly.” It’s true enough. Bertha gives a soft, considering hum, studying her embroidery as though it’s committed some deeply personal offence, and he feels he needs to offer something more. “Money, in other words.”
“Mm. The gold rush is over, they say.”
“It is,” George agrees. “And it left a lot of men looking for work, and a lot of depleted land going for a song. There’s an awful lot of money still to be made out west.”
“How nice for you.”
“It… it is,” he says again, barely able to stop himself stuttering. For reasons that aren’t quite clear, she’s making him nervous.
“It must be,” Bertha persists. “Your share price has risen exponentially in the last five years.”
Stunned, George can only look at her. Her head is still bent over her work and she doesn’t appear to be watching him, but he wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were. It wouldn’t surprise him if Bertha Russell could do an awful lot of things while appearing to merely be daintily working at her embroidery. How on earth does she…
“I… yes, it has.” He sounds like a fool who can do nothing other than agree with her.
“And there isn’t a lot of land going for cheap in New York. In the city, anyway.”
“Almost none that would be any use to me,” he says slowly.
“So I suppose I find myself wondering why you’re here. Who you intend to do business with.”
“I don’t know that you would know them.” The deflection sounds weak to his own ears and when Bertha looks up at him, there’s no assessment in her gaze now. She’s already made her judgement. She doesn’t blink.
“Try me.”
In a moment, he realises there is no way in hell that this woman doesn’t know the name of every publicly traded company in the city and exactly what they’re worth.
“I would have thought you would find such details dull,” he parries. “I don’t know many women who take such an interest in business.”
“Yes, I think I can imagine the kind of women you know,” Bertha says with more than a hint of open scorn in her voice, and there’s triumph on her face as she looks back down at her lap. His non-answer satisfied her as much as an answer would have and why is that, he has to wonder?
It comes to him in a flash of certainty as he studies her face. She knows. Or she’s made a damned good guess. While she can’t possibly know the details, she knows enough to understand his intentions and the injury they would cause her, she knows he’s here to destroy the ground beneath her feet, and she has no intention of allowing him to do so.
It’s odd. He ought to be indignant, frustrated, furious, even scared. And yet, all he really feels is excitement. Here’s a far better opponent for him than his brother could have ever been, and George always does better when he has someone challenging to beat.
Well then, he thinks as he studies her face in the firelight. The game is afoot.