The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky (Includes Lady Luck, House of Dolls, The Reluctant Bride, A Woman on Top, plus a bonus story!) (2 page)

As a small girl, I’d thought Mr. Sloan was monstrously huge, like Jack’s giant in the fairy tale. He
was
big, but not quite as large as I remembered. Not the eight-foot giant I had envisioned. I realized now that Mr. Sloan was around six and a half feet tall, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. I wondered if he wore a girdle under his shirt and waistcoat like so many cavalrymen did these days. It was a fashion that was flowing over from England into the Americas, or so I’d read in the ladies’ magazines, a terrible faux pas I could only blame on the invasion of Napoleonic troops down in the Peninsula. He looked grim and somewhat clerical in his dark suit, though his tapestry waistcoat was quite nice.

Wearing my best court gown, the one Nellie had put me in, I huddled with Charlotte in the doorway. “Oh, he’s simply awful, isn’t he?”

“
I wouldn’t say awful, exactly,” Charlotte drawled, and I could tell that she, too, was contemplating whether Mr. Sloan was taking advantage of a girdle, or if that was simply his own physique.

I hadn’t wanted this welcoming soiree, as modest as it was, but both Mr. Smit and Nellie had advised me to indulge in an effort to soften the edges of my request, as it were. Charlotte, my lifelong confidante, had lent her full support in the matter, of course. She was here with Darcy, and they, along with Darcy’s parents, Mr. Smit, and my cousin Rupert, made up the whole of the dismal affair, though Mr. Sloan seemed to be enjoying the company of Charlotte’s husband, at least superficially.

“
Stockings,” said Charlotte.

“
Excuse me?”

“
I wonder if he uses stockings to fill out his breeches. Some men do, you know.”

“
Charlotte!”

Charlotte grinned and fluttered her fan. Charlotte was very good at being inappropriate. Father had often said she was a bad influence on me. But the truth was, she and I were very much two halves of the same inappropriate lady. Growing up, I had enjoyed riding, shooting and climbing trees, and Charlotte had enjoyed town gossip and teasing boys. Marriage to Darcy, a junior lawyer at Mr. Smit’s office, had done very little to tame her.

“
Oh, no,” Charlotte said in mock horror. “The Ogre has you in his sights!”

I turned and realized that Mr. Sloan had spotted me from across the room. He had arrived that morning on the estate, some three days after I had written him—it turned out that he had been doing business in Boston—but we had not formerly met until now. At least, not as two adults. Nellie had insisted I stay upstairs until the evening soiree so that I might present myself properly to him as the lady of the manor. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very proper or ladylike. I was exhausted from all the auctions that Mr. Smit had arranged this week, and yesterday, while in town to have my locket fixed, the jeweler had taken an interest and offered me ten dollars for it, because of the diamonds. It was so tempting an offer, I’d finally given in, and then spent the rest of the day feeling guilty about it.

I had steeled myself for facing Mr. Sloan, but as he glided across the floor to take my hand in greeting, I was mildly surprised. He wasn’t quite as homely as my child’s mind had painted him. True, he bore that terrible scar—it edged from his hairline in a crescent across the left side of his face to the top of his cheek, and his eye looked quite blind on that side—but the face beneath the scar was pleasant enough, stern, but not without character, if you liked that surly, remote Briton look. His dark hair was carefully slicked back, very fashionable, and his whiskers were neatly trimmed in a Van Dyke beard. His right eye was a deep, mahogany brown, and his left a pale, sightless grey. His body was sinewy and strong looking, like a lifelong cavalryman. I knew some displaced Britons, like Mr. Sloan, were supporting the Spanish against the invasion of Napoleon’s army in Portugal by lending military expertise and support. Since some of Mr. Sloan’s business of import took him to Portugal, it wouldn’t have surprised me if his military bearing was a result of that, rather than a man’s corset.

“
Miss Lucille Van der Meer, it’s good to see you,” Mr. Sloan said, and the floor faintly vibrated with his low, booming baritone. It was still the voice of the Ogre, the voice of a man used to crying out orders over long distances, and I faintly flinched at the sound of it.

“
Mr. Sloan, so nice of you to be here…”

“
Tiberius, please.”

“
Oh, I couldn’t.”

“
I insist,” he announced, and brushed his mouth against my gloved hand, though he kept his keen eyes centered on my face. I felt a peculiar skip in my heart in that moment, almost as if Nellie had spiked my morning tea with a drop of arsenic, as she did sometimes when she wished to see more color in my cheeks, usually before an important engagement. I thought how this was a most peculiar reaction to a man I did not like!

“
Oh,” I said, “let’s not be too formal.” I smiled. “You shall be Tiberius and I shall be Lucky.”

He looked me over, but not like he used to when I was a child. There was something more to his look now. “I never did understand your father’s predilection for calling you that.”

“
I sometimes hunted with him, and I almost always made a perfect shot with a musket ball. As a result, he used to call me his lucky shot.” I grimaced internally only after the words had exited my mouth. I was making a fool of myself already!

“
Ah.” He seemed to think about that, and I’m sure he was contemplating how inappropriate and unladylike it all was. “I am so very sorry to hear about your father, Lucky. He was a good friend and associate of mine. A good man,” he said, tactfully changing the subject. “I hope you will consider me at your disposal during this trying time.”

“
Yes,” I said hesitantly. We were headed for the reason behind his visit, and I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to discuss this matter with him right at the moment. So I introduced him to Charlotte, instead. He kissed her hand and said, “Madam,” and Charlotte blushed quite inappropriately and kept stealing glances at his breeches.

He must have sensed my overall unease because he said, “Perhaps we should discuss your father’s matters tomorrow?”

I had detailed some of my issues in the letter I had sent him, but I hadn’t become too specific. Again, I felt that flutter in my heart, but for an entirely different reason. “No,” I said, lifting my head proudly. “We should discuss them straightaway. Tonight, if possible. I shouldn’t want to keep you too long. You have business in Boston, correct?”

“
I was on business in Boston when your letter came, yes.” He gave me a pitying look. “Would it be terrible of me to suggest we retire to the study until dinnertime?”

We excused ourselves and he offered me his arm. I set my hand on his sleeve. He felt very warm through his formal, black, cavalry-style jacket. He escorted me out of the conservatory and down the hall to my father’s study, but before we even reached the door, the heel of my slipper gave way and my ankle crumpled. He caught me as I was going down in an array of skirts.

“
Lucille…” he began, then corrected himself by saying, “Lucky…”

“
I’m certainly not that,” I said and grunted at the sharp pain in my ankle.

“
Let me summon your lady’s maid for you…”

“
No!” I told him, suddenly panicked. “I gave her the night off. “Please…just assist me to the study, if you would.”

“
I could carry you.”

“
That won’t be necessary,” I told him, and he started walking me down the remainder of the hallway, with me limping like a lame horse at his side, but another sharp jab nearly made me collapse with a cry.

“
Really, Lucky,” he said, and he scooped me up easily in his arms.

“
Mr. Sloan, I really must insist…”

“
Tiberius,” he corrected me. “And I must insist you be silent until we’ve had a chance to look at your ankle. You may have broken it.”

I sighed as he ushered me into my father’s study and deposited me on the divan. Then he went to one knee and pushed up my skirts a little ways.

I began to protest again but he shushed me, took my ankle in his hands, and slid my slipper off. “I worked as a medic on the Peninsula, and we learned to never underestimate injuries.”

I didn’t much care for a man touching me like this, but my discomfort was minimal compared to the fear I felt, should someone step inside the room and find me in such a compromised position. I glanced toward the door, but all I could make out were the distant voices of my guests in the conservatory. “Ouch!” I said as he tested my ankle, much too roughly, I felt.

Tiberius looked up with raised eyebrows. “You’ve turned it.”

“
Ah, see. It isn’t broken. Thus, it will mend just fine on its own.”

“
I should fetch the doctor.”

“
I don’t need a doctor,” I insisted.

Holding my ankle in his big, rough hands, he started rubbing it between them, much like a woodsman might do a stick of wood in order to start a flame.

“
What are you doing?”

“
I’ve known infantryman who were injured in their resistance to Napoleon’s troops, and they would sometimes do this to help loosen tight ligaments.”

“
My ligaments are quite fine, thank you,” I told him.

Tiberius stopped and glanced up at me. “Why have you summoned me here, Lucky?”

“
I did not
summon
you,” I sniffed. “I merely invited you.” There was no tactful way of saying any of this, I decided, so I just went ahead with the truth. I couldn’t see lying in order to gain money from Mr. Sloan. I started by explaining my father’s gambling habits, and then the loan he had taken from Mr. Van Tassel. I finished by inviting him to look over my father’s ledgers at his leisure.

“
I see,” he answered when I had finished. He placed my foot back in its slipper, stood up, and went to look at the ledger stored in the top drawer of the desk. He must have remembered where my father had kept it from his time as his partner.

From the divan I said, “My father purchased goods from you once, a long time ago, is that correct? That’s how you became partners?”

“
Silk I had imported from the Orient, yes,” he answered as he settled in to look over the accounts.

“
Is it because my father purchased Mr. Whitney’s cotton gin that your association ended?” I inquired. “Was it the change of textiles from silk to cotton?” I knew that cotton was much in demand, and much less expensive to manufacturer. My father might have been a terrible gambler, but he was very good with business when he put his head to it. Of course, now the textile mill on the edge of the river was silent, with no one to run it at all.

“
It is…slightly more complicated than that,” Tiberius said.

That was the story that my father had told me. I felt my spirits smart along with my ankle. “It was his gambling, wasn’t it?”

Tiberius looked up with a pitying look. “Your father could be difficult to work with at times,” was all he said.

I sat in silence, contemplating my father. I had once thought he was the most wonderful man in the whole world. At church, the reverend would often say that men like Jesus and the Saints were full of goodness and light, but I used to think how even they paled in comparison to my father—my father who had given me everything, who had spoiled me from the very moment of my birth. He had nurtured me, protected me, and had never complained about my unladylike habits. But now I was seeing a side of him I did not like. My father, like all men, was flawed, and the reverend was right—the sins of the father were, in fact, visited upon the son. Or, as in my case, the daughter he had always treated like a son. I hunched my shoulders. For all my riding, hunting, and tree climbing as a child, I did not know if I had enough strength to shoulder this burden alone.

After some time, Tiberius looked up and said, “I must commend you on your work thus far, Lucky. You’ve done an admirable job of paying off your father’s debt so far.”

“
Poor Mr. Smit has helped me a great deal. But we still have far to go.”

“
Yes, I see that.”

“
I owe Mr. Van Tassel sixty-thousand dollars,” I said in monotone. “Suffice to say, I do not have that kind of money to pay him.”

“
But you believe I do.”

“
No!” I said, sitting up. “I’ve not asked you here to help me pay back my father’s moneylenders, Tiberius. Rather, I was hoping you might assist me in getting the cotton mill running again.” I took a deep breath. “With just a small investment, we could have the pickers and gins running fulltime again, with a full staff of employees, and perhaps with that profit…”

“
You do not have slaves to work the gins?”

“
New York abolished slavery years ago,” I told him. “And good riddance, I say!”

“
Valiant words, but they will not save you,” Tiberius said with a smirk. “Mr. Van Tassel is still employing Irish and Chinese slaves to extend his profits…”

“
I am not Mr. Van Tassel!” I told Tiberius. “I will not enslave foreigners to run my father’s mill. He himself was opposed to slavery…”

“
I understand,” Tiberius said, cutting me off before I became too excitable. He sighed over the books. “Lucky, I will speak plainly. Even if we were able to get the mill running again in good time, I don’t believe you would make sufficient money to pay back your father’s debt in the time allotted by Mr. Van Tassel.”

“
I am aware of that,” I told him. “I have made a contingency.”

“
Oh?”

“
There is a Jewish banker I know who has had past associations with my father…”