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Landon returned to the stable to find that Jasper had brushed, fed, and watered Thunder. The groom had also replaced the tattered blanket and repaired a buckle that was coming loose.
“Tried to save the blanket, but once I got the saddle off I saw it was too tattered to mend.”
Landon stroked Thunder’s nose and ran his hand down his mane and shoulders. “Thank you so much. Thunder looks amazing.” He was so grateful he nearly hugged the man. “I appreciate the care you took.”
Jasper beamed.
Landon pulled his pocket watch out, forgetting it had stopped when he took a dive into the river. He tapped the glass to get it running again. Nothing. Landon dug further in his pocket, fingers groping for money that might have materialized by simple proximity to Max Abbott.
Knowing he had to hurry to get to the courthouse to request the information about property ownership at the secret riverbend, he prepared to request a favor. “I need to rush off, but I will pay you double for your trouble if you keep my penniless condition between us.”
Jasper adjusted his hat and looked confused.
“I mean... my not having money. It’s temporary, I promise. Some of my funds were...” Landon didn’t want to say some money was stolen in Chicago, to explain he’d been careless with his carry pack, traveling as though he had a man to watch his things when he went into a restaurant to eat, like he always did when his father funded his trips. Luckily he had more hidden in the floor of his wagon and that was now partially stashed in his hotel room and part in a bank. “Just between the two of us. I’ve set up an account in town, but with my mishap at the...” He stopped himself from revealing the river cove information. “I’ve got to get to the records room at the courthouse before it closes and the bank will be closed by then. But I promise on my beautiful, devoted horse that I will return with your fee and then some.” He couldn’t afford Jasper confiding in Mr. Abbott that the man who wanted to do business with him was walking around without a dime to his name.
Jasper shook his head then looked directly at Landon. “If Mr. Abbott’s dealing with ya, then yer good fer it. Trust that man like a father.”
The sentiment grabbed Landon. Jasper’s sincerity and respect for his boss—no, affection—seeping into what he said, that’s what tore at Landon. He wanted to feel that for his own father, but knew it would only come when fondness first flowed the other direction. It was just like his mother had been teaching him since he was small—people had to earn everything, including affection.
Landon remembered one time. His mother clicking her tongue at him as she’d wiped the tears that cut through his dirt-covered cheeks after playing all day at the beach that fronted their summer cottage in Newport. He could still feel her soft hands cupping his cheeks, her thumbs rubbing at the wet tears. It was one of the few instances she took the time to get down on his level, to offer sweetness, love. “Told you before. Your father doesn’t have time to coddle and teach and see your sandcastles no matter how elaborate they may be.”
He had spread his hands wide, eyes burning with tears. “But it’s enormous and it looks just like our cottage, even has his study built into it and it’s going to disappear. Tide’s coming.” He’d pulled her hand wanting to at least show her. She resisted, only moving so far as to stand and pat his head. “Make something worth it, solid, valuable, and that will win your father completely.” She took his chin in hand. “As you just noted, sandcastles perish with the tide. Make something lasting and your father’ll stampede to see it.”
Landon’s mother waltzed out of the room, taking his heart with her, leaving an empty vault in his chest, a vacuous longing that he’d yet to fill with achievement, ambition, and least of all, love.
With his mother gone, he trudged onto the patio and watched as the other families with oceanfront cottages played on the beach, their sandcastles just as ephemeral, but garnering the praise of parents and servants. The hoots of excitement as adults oohed over their children’s work was met with groans when waves hurricaned in, destroying the castles bit by bit. Only Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood were too disinterested to take a leisurely gander, even a little glimpse.
Landon had jogged toward the beach when his older brothers sauntered over to his castle. He yelled for them, but crashing waves hid his voice. Before Landon could accept any praise for his work, his brothers had floated off into the surf, attempting to swing the attention of the girls in a boat. Landon bit back tears as he laid in front of his castle, keeping the surf away as long as he could, before it went around him, over him, eating away at his masterpiece. It was dark and he was shivering out of his skin when the footman scooped him off the sand and took him into the house.
Thunder whinnied, pulling him out of his memories. No time for self-pity. “Thank you, Jasper.” And Landon was off to the courthouse.
With Thunder at a steady gallop, hoping he had enough time to make it to the hall of records before it closed, Landon reached for his watch, then shook his head. Broken. Twelve twenty-two. He stuffed it back into his pocket, thinking he’d find a watchmaker to have a look.
As he entered town, his pace slowed to accommodate Des Moines’s city traffic. Before going west, Landon had researched and become confident that in looking for investors willing to take risks, he needed to go beyond well-established New York, Pittsburgh, and Chicago businesses. And he’d figured if he failed, he could bury his shame in the wide expanse of the great Midwest then head back east or further west.
Times like this, resentment curdled in Landon’s gut, this game his parents pushed him into. There were many Lockwoods by then, his father’s brothers breeding enormous families. Some of them were still very wealthy. Others were generous. Or kind. And some were all three. Landon was born on the Lockwood branch that was still very wealthy—his father, John, was that. The man kept his accounts clenched tight and could pronounce the location of every single penny he inherited, earned, and spent.
Landon could still feel his father’s grip on his wrist as he stopped him from dashing up the front staircase one day. John Lockwood ran his hand over the mahogany woodwork that curved upward from two sides of the foyer, and muttered, “Twenty-two thousand. Appreciate it, don’t dash past it like a mindless bull, like my brothers and their hapless offspring.” That was the cost of just the staircase at the time the house had been built. John Lockwood even remembered the price of their pitted pine table in the kitchen where the cook chopped vegetables. When he felt the need to bully the help or his children, he’d run his finger over it. “One dollar.” The price he paid on the day he swore he’d never buy another secondhand piece of furniture as long as he lived, the last time he had to before he earned his own father’s affection and the money that came with it.
Unlike John Lockwood, two of Landon’s older brothers and his sister weren’t so good with money. They had no idea where their pennies fell and dollars floated off to. But they were kinder than their father. Life was always a tradeoff and John Lockwood was satisfied with being wealthy and mean. That suited him fine.
But Landon’s third brother—the first of the four boys, the Lockwood golden knight—already doubled the investment their father made to expand their fur business. It was as though even when slumbering, his steady exhalations spun new cash and dug new gold while the rest of the world simply slept.
Landon knew his lot was outside the established family businesses even if Lilian, the girl who’d been promised to him since the moment they were born on the same day, one year apart, insisted their fortune, their home would rest somewhere in New York with a cottage on the shore in Newport.
Landon shook Lilian’s name out of his head and his thoughts started back toward the river, toward the hidden tree-canopied cove where that stunning woman had rescued him. Her beauty. Her ease in the water, in bossing him around... wait. Thunder stopped in the middle of Fifth Street and they almost got run down by a milk wagon. The horse trotted to the other side and Landon told himself to stop daydreaming about women right there. He’d learned his lesson with bossy types. Forget about the river girl. An overbearing beauty wasn’t worth anything. That woman hadn’t even been concerned he nearly drowned, that he’d hit the water at a strange angle, disorienting him.
He asked a newsboy directions to the courthouse and when he arrived at Sixth and Mulberry, he tied Thunder to the rail out front. Inside, each step echoed off the marble wainscoting, his stockings still soaked from the dip in the river. Following signage, he located the records hall and rang the bell on the desk. A man came through a door behind the desk. Wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose, his lips pursed, as he pulled on his coat.
Landon stuck out his hand. “Landon Lockwood of New York City. Pleasure to meet you.”
The bespectacled man gripped Landon’s hand, his spindly fingers strong. “Sure. Ignatius Pembroke formerly of Storm Lake. Currently of Des Moines.”
Landon searched his mind to place the name or the town. “Storm Lake... not familiar.”
Pembroke rolled his eyes, scraped a set of keys off the desk, and turned back to the door. He yanked on it twice and turned the handle to ensure it was locked. He stalked around the front of the desk, over half a foot shorter and half the weight of Landon. He brushed the front of his pinstriped trousers, the quality far greater than Landon would have expected for a courthouse clerk in Des Moines, Iowa. Pembroke continued past Landon.
“Wait. You didn’t ask what I need.”
Pembroke stopped and swung back toward Landon, his posture tight and sure even if he was a tiny man. He drew a cigarette from a tin case and plucked it into a cigarette extender like a woman would use. “Light me up and I’ll ask what it is that you need from me.”
Landon reached into his pockets, coming up with river-soaked, useless matches.
“Green as grass are you.” Pembroke eyed Landon up and down. “Blam-jam New Yorkers waltzing in at close of business thinking I don’t have a barn dance to get to and can just fulfill your every wish on demand, like I’m a genie waiting for my bottle to be rubbed.”
Landon squinted at Pembroke, confused by the man’s behavior. Perhaps he didn’t understand. “I’m Landon Lockwood. The Manhattan Lockwoods. Specifically.”
Ignatius Pembroke dangled the unlit cigarette between his fingers, sighing. “Yeah... fun game. I’m Ignatius Pembroke of the... well, Storm Lake. That’s all there is to it.”
Landon shuffled his feet. What was happening here? “I’ve important business. I need some information on a deed to a plot of land out near... let me see here.” He pulled the map out of his pocket and started to show it to Pembroke but then stopped, not sure he could trust the man when he wasn’t in his official capacity. “I need the name of a landowner and it’s something that needs to be—”
Pembroke swept his hand through the air. “Listen, hotshot. I deal with yahoos like you at least twice a week. I’m due at my sister’s barn dance,” he said with a smirk, “as she enters into the final period of engagement before marrying her man.”
Landon perked up. “Barn dance. At the Washburns’?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, I’m invited to that, too. Mr. Abbott of—”
“I know who Maxwell Abbott is.”
“Well, he said for me to go. So perhaps if I write down the information and then—”
Pembroke backed away looking Landon up and down again. “Write down what you want, but I won’t touch it until I get through the rest of my list tomorrow.”
“But, I could pay more to expedite it.”
“Oh, please. First come, first served around here, big fella.” He winked.
Landon flinched, getting the distinct feeling Pembroke was flirting rather than wielding any sort of power. He shook it off. Ridiculous.
“Really. This is important. I can—”
Pembroke backed away, smirking. He lifted his unlit cigarette in a toast of some sort. “See you at the soiree, Landon Lockwood of New York, specifically Manhattan.”
And Landon exhaled, angered and cowed. “I can have you fired.” The words shot off the marble surround. Clearly, Ignatius Pembroke didn’t understand the significance of an important man investing in his town, but the words hung in the courthouse air, carrying none of the weight they did back east. He stunned himself at how easy the sentiment spilled out of his mouth.
Ignatius Pembroke shook his head and spun on his heel to exit.
Landon blew out his air. He hadn’t meant to sound so... awful, spoiled, ridiculous. He’d never experienced his words like that, reflected back at him, more irritation rather than a catalyst for action. No. He was out of his element, unsure of every plan he’d made.
