Page 23 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)

Chapter Fourteen

‘She is obsessed with you.’

Rosie rubbed at her swollen side. ‘So many sisters, yet you are her favourite.’

They both had so many sisters, but it was impossible not to imagine Elise as an additional one.

The quiet girl and Rosie had been as thick as molasses since she’d first come to stay with her aunt.

She had become a regular fixture in the Hempel household from then on, so much so that he’d carved her name into the back of one of the dining room chairs.

‘She likes me because I sneak her biscuits when her mother isn’t looking.

’ Elise slipped her hands under Hazel’s arms and pulled her onto her lap.

‘Aunt Petunia was the same with Charlise and I. We’d come home covered in crumbs, and it would send Mother wild.

’ She laughed quietly, eyes misting over as she sank into the memory.

Hazel gurgled and dropped back against Elise’s chest, and Elise’s laugh petered out, crackling like falling glass.

‘If you want help to try and find her…’ Rosie began.

Elise shook her head. She buried her nose in Hazel’s curls. ‘I have tried. I’ve taken out advertisements in newspapers in Australia and every port along the way. Charlise doesn’t want to be found.’

How many years had it been since that Christmas?

Six, or was it seven? It had been their second Christmas in the townhouse.

There’d only been seven children then, and Father was still grumbling that he’d paid the deposit for Number 1 with the extra windows, but the damn bank clerk Babbage had somehow snaffled it.

Johannes’s only memory of Sinclair was of a tall man using their kitchen to make ginger cordial for his mother, who had been so ill during her pregnancy with Ottile.

It was only as the years progressed that he’d come to comprehend the ripples of that Christmas and what it had meant for Elise.

He twisted in his seat to look out the window and across the street to the empty lot.

‘Your father bought Number 6?’ he asked Elise.

‘That’s right,’ Elise said, her tone hedged with caution.

‘Who owns it now?’ he asked.

Rosie shot him a hard look. Elise stroked Hazel’s curls.

‘I do,’ she said softly. ‘After Aunt Petunia’s intervention, she insisted Father gift it to me as my own property.

He wanted it to be part of a marriage contract, but she wouldn’t budge.

She said his determination to see Charlise wed to a title had done enough damage. Eventually, he relented.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ She turned away. With one arm holding Hazel, Elise rearranged the papers that were spread before her on the table. She plucked out a sheet. ‘What about Lucerne?’

‘What’s in Lucerne?’ he asked.

‘For heaven’s sake, pay attention.’ Rosie clucked at him. ‘If you refuse to partake in anything but your own work, stop interrupting us at ours.’

‘I am putting together ideas for new offerings for Spencer and Co. Travel. Lady Dalton says I can lead one next summer.’ Elise beamed. ‘These are to present to the board at the annual meeting. So that we can vote on which ones we will progress.’

‘You should come to the meeting,’ Rosie said, as she cast her eyes over the map. ‘Better again, you should lead a tour. Architecture is very popular. No one knows those old buildings like you.’

Johannes coughed so hard he almost pushed his pencil through the paper. ‘I can hardly go gallivanting across Europe. I have employment.’

‘Your employment is less than two blocks away. You are a young man. You should gallivant somewhere,’ his sister said.

‘You landed less than a foot away.’

‘The difference between you and me is that I may only be next door, but I am not scared.’

‘I’m not scared. I just like to have a plan and to know what is next.’ He tapped at the chair arm, annoyed. ‘What is happening with the windows at the hotel?’

‘We’ve hired a craftsman to replace them, just like you wanted.

They won’t be the same, but I promise they aren’t cheap and gaudy.

You can supervise if you like. I am happy to go and shout at builders and tell them not to cut corners, but being the size of a walrus seems to have damaged my reputation for fierceness.

They keep looking at me like I am all soft edges, and none of them take me seriously.

It might help your mood and stop you grumbling at me. ’

Johannes closed his folder. ‘I’m sorry. It’s…

it’s not the windows.’ A sadness that surprised him clung to each word.

A gentle silence descended. Elise and Rosie, even Hazel, regarded him expectantly, a concerned frown dipping Rosie’s brow.

‘It’s Florence. I mean, Mrs Murray. I liked her.

Really liked her.’ Damn him, he still did.

He swallowed. ‘I felt like myself with her. But it was all a lie. She just wanted money.’

‘You can’t judge her for that,’ Rosie quipped.

Johannes scoffed. ‘I believe you just went through an ordeal because suitors were chasing your purse.’

‘Mrs Murray is no Lord Richard,’ Rosie said. ‘I understand there was some debt connected with the dead husband, but her parents cleared it all before they left Sydney.’

‘Have you been investigating my… my friend?’

‘You were so smitten. I was worried.’ Rosie patted the top of her belly and grimaced with a slight discomfort.

‘I asked Phineas to do whatever it is he does, but he found nothing. She’d led a very measured life.

I’m not telling you to settle for someone who doesn’t care for you.

But have some compassion. She’s been married, bankrupt, and now has travelled across the world to start over.

Navigating life and courtship is different for a woman.

So much rests on one tiny decision. You say you felt like yourself when you were with her. Well—who was she ?’

Leave my corset. I’m not ready to be naked…

‘Johannes? Do you have a preference?’

Johannes blinked the clothed and seated Florence into focus as he pushed the crawling, half-naked, beautifully wild and utterly debauched memory of her away. ‘Tea,’ he said with slow hesitation.

Florence shook her head with a laugh. ‘I was asking about door handles. I am revising the estimates for the cottage. Are you happy with the same type for this submission?’

Johannes nodded. ‘The ones from before should suffice.’

The pen scratched as she returned to her work. Johannes picked up his pencil. It had been almost a week since Mr Holt had taken to his bed, and the poor man had not yet returned. On Monday, Tuesday, and today, Johannes had walked into the office and found Florence sitting at his employer’s desk.

‘Mr Holt is still abed,’ Mrs Holt had chirped from the door. ‘How lucky that we have Florence to help you.’

A grumble had risen in his chest. A little over a week ago, he’d been nothing but a lackey.

Now he was money, he was worth her attention.

A retort had formed on his lips, but as Florence had settled into her father’s chair with cautious concentration, the creases around Mrs Holt’s eyes had seemed a little deeper.

Mrs Holt was no Lord Richard either. She was only worried about her daughter.

He’d let the comment slip away unspoken and instead bidden Mrs Holt a good day.

Now, Johannes turned the knob beneath the table to angle his desk higher.

He rolled out a fresh sheet of paper, then raised himself from his seat to pin each corner before it could curl back onto itself.

He flicked his thumb over the stack of notes beside him.

Together, they had tapped away at small tasks until it could not be put off—they had to tackle the bigger portions of work, even if they got them wrong.

Sketches, notes, numbers, calculations of loads, plans of the old building and its buried foundations, a summary of the tender requirements.

He had everything he needed to start the main design.

It should be a grand statement, close enough to the water that the workers could monitor the pumps, far enough away for the windows to be opened in the heat without the smell off the Thames making everyone inside ill.

It should contain offices for twenty, space for the public, storage for the workman’s tools, and a lending library.

He knew every inch of his employer’s vision. All he had to do was draw it.

‘I know your father said he would… help our submission along. But I can’t pretend to like what he is proposing. I’d prefer to win on our own merits.’

Florence raised a brow. ‘Because that’s how every other competition is conducted?’

He huffed. ‘I am not na?ve. But bowing to the system doesn’t make it better.’

She rolled her pen between her fingers. ‘I’ll speak to him. Be warned, he has a mind like concrete.’

Johannes took up his pencil. The nub had gone a little blunt, so he leant over the small bin beside his desk and flicked shavings into it with his penknife.

‘It’s exciting to make a start on the design proper. Your father won’t mind if we begin without him?’

Florence leant back in her chair as she regarded him. ‘He was emphatic, even through his delirium. He wants you to start.’

‘Start. Yes. Start the plan.’ He spun the pencil. Maybe it wasn’t sharp enough? Perhaps it could be a little more pointed. And the rest of his kit. He hadn’t checked his ink supplies, or the lead for his compass. And what if they needed new watercolours…

‘Is there a problem?’ Florence asked.

Johannes jolted. He hadn’t noticed her cross the room, and now she stood beside him, looking down with a slight smirk. He tapped at the page with his pencil. Raised it so that the graphite hovered above the parchment. Grand. Practical. In budget. A statement. First place.

‘I can’t do it!’ He dropped his pencil onto the desk. It clattered against the wood, then rolled down the sloped surface and clacked to the floor.

‘ I can’t do it. You can.’