Page 22 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)

Chapter Thirteen

She hated the office now. Hated it. Hated its windows and lamps, the paper and ink, the smell and sound and light of creation.

She hated coming down on some trite errand from her mother and having to potter about between them, remaining silent as they spouted ideas at one another.

Pushed aside by her father as he found someone else to assist him—he didn’t even chatter with her in the evenings any longer, just scratched in his notebook and held his own conversation.

And Johannes? He’d shut himself off completely.

He did not even raise an eyebrow when she entered the room, but stayed hunched over his work.

She might as well have been a fixture on the wall.

Florence tried to brush off his condescension, but how could she?

Her skin had seared with his touch. His lips had been the breeze that ushered in spring after the longest winter, and his tongue…

that had been the wickedest, most fascinating thing of all.

Whispering carnal desires one moment, offering nothing but softness and comfort the next, and then, his dexterity with her intimacies…

And now, all he would do was press his lips tight and frown.

She balanced the tea tray on her hip as she placed her father’s cup on the table, then crossed the room to Johannes.

He had not replied when she’d asked if he’d like tea, but today, she was too battered by all the grey walls and stern looks to decipher his grunts and frowns.

She added lots of milk and two sugars. She didn’t know if that was how he took his tea, but he could do with some sweetening, so that’s what he got.

The cup jiggled against the saucer as she set it on his desk. He was sketching a configuration, maybe of a wing or a cluster of offices, little squares taking shape along the length of a corridor.

‘You can’t have a door there,’ she said.

He scowled, but slowed his lines on the page.

‘It will hit that cupboard if they are open at the same time. But if you move this one further down, you will have enough clearance.’

He nodded, once, twice, thrice as always, thinking slow but thoroughly, before settling on his plan. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, took out his eraser, and rubbed it over the page.

From desperately trying to keep them apart, Mama now seemed determined to push Florence into Johannes’s path at every chance.

She scanned the day for opportunities like a soldier on watch.

And no matter how much Florence objected, her mother remained determinedly oblivious that, while winter thawed outside, it had settled itself into the lower rooms. She contrived small deliveries of tea and notes, sent Florence to ask questions, and made a point of stopping into the office on their departure or return if they went calling.

‘Stop it, Mama!’ she protested one morning. ‘He is not interested in me.’

‘Tut. He was interested before.’

‘Before is not now.’

One morning, over breakfast, Father coughed and snuffled so much that Mother insisted he return to bed. She almost skipped into the office when she came to tell Johannes.

‘Florence knows the work as well as anyone,’ her mother chirped into the weak spring light while Johannes leafed through a stack of papers.

‘I am sure if you need help with anything, she will be happy to oblige. I know Mr Holt would not want you to stop work on his account.’ And her mother swept from the room and back upstairs, taking all her missives on propriety with her.

Johannes carried the papers back to his desk.

He sat tall, self-aware and full of purpose as he sorted through them.

He laid a few to one side, then placed the remainder at the top of his desk.

The pen scratched into the brittleness. Florence balanced against the bookshelf and pushed herself up to try to see what he was working on.

Had they started on the housing, or were they focused on the offices first?

Johannes scowled, then tucked his papers in closer.

Florence lowered herself to her heels again with a steadiness that defied the creaking annoyance inside.

‘If you think ignoring me is some kind of punishment, you are wrong,’ she snapped.

‘If I go back upstairs, I will have to listen to my mother prattling. I would much rather sit here and enjoy the silence. This is better than fresh lemonade.’ And she tipped out a book from the library, plonked herself in her father’s seat, and flipped the cover open.

She turned the pages without seeing them, pretending to be captivated.

At length, a shadow draped an angle along the edge of the desk.

The scents of citrus, city, and clean linen filled the air.

He smelt so damn good. Florence kept her focus on the print.

He tapped the desk with his index finger, and she tilted her head just enough to look up at him.

‘I need that book,’ he said.

‘You are not getting rid of me.’

‘I am trying to understand the nature of the soil so that I can draw the footings. I apologise if you are finding that section on concrete work in Specifications for Practical Architecture enthralling, but I genuinely need it.’

Florence looked down at the open book. Not only was she on a page about concrete, but half of it was also in French.

She closed the book and scanned the cover.

Damn him. And damn herself for picking the one reference book on the entire shelf he was most likely to need.

She slid it across the desk. He scooped it up and crossed the room, hurrying out of reach like she was an adder that might strike if he lingered.

At his desk, he searched through the pages. He set his finger against a line, glanced over at his papers, then wrote across his notes.

‘What’s it like?’ she asked. ‘The site? Is it already built upon?’

She sounded pathetic. So desperate to be included, but she lacked the stamina to try to climb his walls and could only beg for admittance.

He looked up. His eyes focused on a point far beyond her, settling somewhere distant.

‘It’s a vacant lot, but it’s far from ideal.

Your father thinks the submission needs to be bold.

He wants it to be heavily ornamented so that it makes a statement.

He also says a building for a water company should be close to the water, but the soil near the banks is very different from that closer to the road.

The marble and sandstone he’s wanting will be heavy, and if we can’t get the footings right, the entire thing will crack in a few years.

It might even collapse into the Thames. And when he said close to the water, I don’t think he meant that close. ’

It wasn’t much of a joke, but they both smiled into it. And while it smarted, she had to concede that her father had chosen well in hiring Johannes to assist him. Steady and slow, he thought about everything in a way that countered her father’s lofty ambitions and headstrong determination.

‘Would you like me to calculate the load?’ she asked.

‘Would you like to see the site?’ he asked.

A jolt shot through her. ‘Nothing good will come of it.’

‘I cannot think like him… I lack the experience, and the daring. But you see bigger things… You know him better.’ And then he flicked a glance across the room at her.

It lasted less than a swallow’s breath, yet she came alive beneath his look.

Never had she felt a part of something, a half, the reflection in a mirror instead of an addendum or a person who knew the right colour to add to a plan.

‘You understand his approach. I need to establish the footings today so that tomorrow we can push forward with the layout of the offices, but I am struggling on my own. When you talk, I see what you see, and then a new vision explodes in my mind, and I can build on that. This sounds ridiculous, but I don’t think my logic works well alone.

I can do so much, but I need the help of others to make it real. ’

‘In truth?’ It was pointless to suppress the smile that shot to her lips.

‘I often feel the same way. I will stare and stare at a page and feel nothing, but then a word or a suggestion from you or Father sets my thoughts off in a million different directions. I’ve always felt weaker from feeling like I needed the help of others in those moments. ’

‘For people who are so different, sometimes we are frighteningly the same.’ His low rumble of a laugh filled the room, an accompaniment to the crackling in the furnace. ‘Would you like to take a cab or walk?’

She rolled her shoulder, and the muscle grabbed at the bone with a sting. ‘A cab. If you don’t mind?’

Johannes hailed a covered cab with proper windows that shut out the cold.

He took the side that faced backwards and hunched under the low roof to peer out of the window.

He rested his chin on his fist, and as they clattered through the streets, his eyes followed the combination of people, windows, arches, doorways.

He drank in the city like she did, always reading and trying to comprehend that messy interface between people and structure.

How they leant against posts, how they gathered, how families collected around doors and sought out the light, forever looking for ways to make the exchange better.

‘The other day…’ Johannes swivelled so that he faced her. ‘Your father said if we win, he can pay the surgeon to fix you. What did he mean?’

Florence bit the inside of her cheek. She exhaled, and the glass fogged, turning the city beyond hazy and lost. All good things had to end. Especially for her.

‘I’m broken,’ she admitted. No point prevaricating.

‘I had a fall when I was young. We were in a smaller town. Father was talking to the mayor and got distracted, and the postmaster’s son asked me if I’d like to ride his horse.

It was a colt, still skittish, and it threw me.

I broke in three places. A local bonesetter bandaged me, but we were a long way from home.

By the time we got back to Sydney, my shoulder and knee had started to knit together wrong.

There was a surgeon there who said he had trained with Lister, and he convinced my parents to let him operate, to try to fix the damage.

He used wire pins and casts. He… he hadn’t done surgery like that before, only read about it.

For almost a year, I was held together with wire and screws.

Some things worked, but others didn’t. I hurt.

A lot. My parents have found a new surgeon here in London.

He has more experience, and he thinks he can help. For a fee.’

Johannes looked up but did not meet her eyes.

Instead, they skimmed her body, her form.

A hungry memory danced in them for a beat, then turned to pity.

He was remembering them, together—she’d wager twenty pounds he was.

But instead of replaying a lusty encounter, he was transforming her into her broken parts, her problem parts.

He plucked at a loose thread on his knee.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could have hurt you. ’

‘I don’t owe you my pain,’ she snapped, then paused to settle her anger.

It wasn’t his fault, although being angry at him still felt good.

‘I didn’t tell you because I liked being young.

I liked pretending my future was my own.

And you didn’t hurt me. Quite’—her breath juddered as she inhaled—‘quite the opposite.’

She’d always have that, at least—the memory. When he moved into the world, when he found a woman who would keep his house, who would be strong enough to enjoy his weight in bed and give him children, she would still have the memory of that one time she’d pretended that it might have been her.

‘Tell me about the site,’ she said. She neither wanted nor needed his sympathy, and the sooner she could fling it from the cab and into the surrounding detritus of the street, the better.

He jutted his chin at the window. ‘See for yourself.’

The cab eased, then rolled back with a little jerk as it came to a stop. The driver opened the door, and Johannes climbed out, then offered his hand in assistance. Florence took it, leaning on it as heavily as she needed to before stepping onto the uneven edge where road met vacant space.

‘The details for the competition are vague.’ He kicked at a stone, and it rolled a little way before disappearing into a tuft of grass. ‘Economical, makes a statement, solid, enduring. Within an unspecified but strict budget.’

‘Typical profiteering,’ she grumbled. ‘They want a crystal palace and change from a pound.’

Johannes laughed. ‘That’s what your father said.

The soil changes along that section.’ He pointed to the far edge of the empty block, where grass grew in uneven clumps.

‘It’s softer. I don’t think it would take the weight of a large building without some additional buttressing.

And then there is the problem of the footings. ’

Florence walked the stretch of yard. Everyone would look at a pediment or whether an arch was crisply pointed or beautifully curved, but none of it mattered if the piles they drove into the ground did not find bedrock.

And if they had to sink deep to locate stability, there’d be no money for hinges on doors, let alone for masons and artisans for stone flourishes and decorations.

The success of everything depended on what went below the surface, but the assessors would only focus on what was visible above.

She scuffed at the ground with the side of her boot, and the dark brown soil streaked a little.

Another scrape, and the ground turned red as umber.

‘Something has been built here before.’ She tapped the harder substance with her toe.

A few stray slivers of clay, or maybe concrete, came loose.

‘The city may have records. You may be lucky. If it is still solid, you can follow the foundations of the old building and save on the footings. Then you will free up budget for retaining walls along the water. But no wood this time. I will insist on stone or brick.’

He smirked. ‘No wood in the water. Agreed.’