Eighteen

Marianne couldn’t stay in Baltimore and attend Andrew’s birthday party as though nothing had happened. Until yesterday, everyone in the family thought the sun rose and set on Andrew Magruder, but not now. Her parents had a huge argument over what happened with Bandit. Vera sided with Andrew, while Clyde and her grandfather had been disgusted. Marianne simply wanted to escape the turmoil. When Clyde gave her permission to return to Washington and miss Andrew’s party, it triggered another round of tears and tantrums, but she left on the evening train without regret.

The whole affair made her heartsick. After returning to Washington, she went straight to her room and felt beneath her mattress where she hid the photograph of Luke holding Bandit. How wretched Bandit had been while struggling in the icy water. She and Luke both risked so much to rescue him, but she would do it again in a heartbeat.

She gazed at Luke’s image as he beamed with pride. He was the only person who would understand her grief right now. Her heart was splitting wide open, and she needed him for comfort. It was after ten o’clock at night, but if Luke knew how heartsick she was, he’d want her to come to him.

She returned the photograph to its hiding place, then set off for his boardinghouse, where she was surprised to see the building lit up like a Christmas tree. Maybe she shouldn’t have been. When twelve young men shared a house, surely there was a fair amount of carousing in the evening, even if it was a weeknight.

But she didn’t hear carousing when she stood on the porch. She knocked, and the door flung open only seconds later. A man in his shirtsleeves with a serious expression opened the door. She vaguely remembered him as one of the competitive brothers who boasted about his superiority in all things the day she came to photograph the men.

“I’m Marianne Magruder. I came to see Luke Delacroix.”

The man opened the door. “He’s here. Come inside. You can help with nursing duties.”

The front parlor looked and smelled terrible. A number of men lay on the sofas, and a few sprawled on the floor. Luke spotted her from where he was slumped in a stuffed chair in the corner.

He squinted at her. “Marianne? Is that you?”

“It’s me.” She crossed the room and knelt beside him, appalled at the pallor of his skin. “You’ve looked better.”

His smile was slow in coming, but he covered her hand with his and squeezed. “I can’t hear very well. And I’m dizzy. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

Alarm raced through her, but she tried not to let it show as she pressed a hand to his forehead. “You don’t seem feverish.”

“But I’ve been puking all night. So have the other guys. That’s why we need to stay down here near the washroom.”

“Have you called a doctor?”

Luke shrugged. “Nah, it’s just the poison they feed us. We’ll live.”

“Are you sure?” For pity’s sake, the whole point of the test was to use chemicals in doses far beyond rationality.

A man sprawled on the sofa lifted a cloth that had been shielding his eyes. She remembered calling him Princeton because of the snazzy coat he wore. He didn’t look snazzy tonight. “I think they’re feeding us Rough on Rats,” he said. “I call it Rough on All of Humanity.”

There was some snickering, but it was half-hearted. The man who had opened the door introduced himself as Big Rollins. He claimed not to be suffering from the food, but his brother was among the test subjects getting the chemicals, and Little Rollins didn’t even bother to wave at her from his position on the floor.

She turned back to Luke. “I’m sending for a doctor. What about the man running the experiment? At the very least, he should see exactly what you all are suffering.”

“Good point,” Big Rollins said. “We planned on waiting until morning, but he should probably see them now.”

Luke nodded. “Fine, but I don’t want Marianne being out this late. Send St. Louis to get him.”

A tall, gangly man sprang to his feet. “I’ll run the entire way,” he vowed.

After he left, Marianne grabbed a footstool and sat beside Luke. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

“A new head?”

Her heart turned over. Even miserable, he didn’t lose his sense of humor. He told her that all the men had been feeling poorly for a few days, but something changed this morning. The headaches got so bad it was hard to focus on anything. They were dizzy and listless. Luke and two others had ringing in their ears that wouldn’t stop.

“Do you know what chemical was used?”

Luke gave a single shake of his head, as though any greater movement would cause too much pain. “What brings you here tonight?” he asked. “I thought you were supposed to be in Baltimore all week.”

Energy drained from her at the memory of Bandit. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the arm of the chair.

“Marianne? What’s wrong?” Luke’s hand was gentle as he stroked the back of her head. “Tell me. Don’t be miserable alone.”

She lay there for a few moments, savoring the gentle touch of his fingers stroking her hair and wishing it could continue forever. It wasn’t fair to seek comfort from him when he was so sick, but she needed this simple touch.

She took a deep breath and sat up. “My brother killed Sam’s dog. Bandit. The one you saved from the ice.”

Luke’s face morphed from astonishment to anger, and then to heartbreaking sympathy for her. “Oh, Marianne, I’m so sorry. I know what that dog meant to you.”

“It’s still hard to believe, but he admitted it.”

Luke leaned forward to give her a hug but immediately listed to the side. She rushed to help him back into the chair, stunned to see this normally vibrant man laid so low.

It seemed to take forever for the doctor to arrive, but at eleven o’clock, heavy treads were heard outside, and a man Luke said was Dr. Wiley entered. He was tall and broad, with widely spaced eyes and a grim manner as he entered the parlor, huffing and out of breath. The doctor seemed alarmed as he surveyed the men sprawled all over the furniture like wet rags.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“You’ve poisoned us,” Princeton said. “I can’t even think straight.”

“You could never think straight,” Little Rollins said. “I’m sicker than he is. He’s too dizzy to walk down the stairs, but I can’t even walk across the room without bumping into the walls.”

“All right, let’s get you on your feet,” Dr. Wiley said, helping Princeton stand. “I’m going to examine each of you individually in the dining room. Then I’ll decide what is to be done.”

It didn’t take long. Dr. Wiley only examined two men before heading back into the main room, his face resolved.

“Line up, everyone. Syrup of ipecac for the lot of you.”

There were groans all around, as the syrup was used to induce vomiting, but Dr. Wiley announced the test on salicylic acid was officially over. All men would be given a reprieve for the next week as the poison was cleared from their systems, but he wanted their stomachs completely purged immediately.

“I’ve been heaving my guts all night,” Princeton said.

“When was the last time you heaved?” the doctor asked.

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“Then you’ve still got more inside. Come on men, snap to it.” Dr. Wiley held a dark brown bottle and a spoon. Despite his militant tone, Marianne spotted the worry in his eyes. What happened here tonight had badly rattled him.

It rattled her too. He’d mentioned salicylic acid, which was one of the preservatives Andrew used in their cans of creamed chipped beef. She’d never heard any complaints about their chipped beef, but they surely used it differently than what these men had consumed.

Luke sent her an exhausted, miserable smile. “Time for me to take more bad medicine.”

She squeezed his hand. “Maybe you’ll feel better soon.”

He shambled toward the doctor and waited his turn. Each time they were together, she marveled anew at his endless good nature. He hadn’t complained, hadn’t resisted. He simply saddled up and got the job done.

Over the next hour Marianne helped bring fresh water and clean linens, and tried to put a positive face on things, but it was a long night. The good news was that by fully purging their stomachs, at least the men would be able to sleep without dashing for the facilities all night long.

At midnight Dr. Wiley was closing up his medical bag when she pulled him aside to press him for details about the salicylic acid. He initially refused to divulge anything, but the moment she said that her father was Clyde Magruder, there was a shift in his attitude.

“The Magruders are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to petrifying their food with chemicals.”

Her first instinct was to leap to her family’s defense, but it was more important to gather information. “I’d like to know exactly how much preservative caused these men to get so sick tonight. Since you will be discontinuing the experiment, there’s no harm in telling me, is there?”

He took her back to the kitchen to show her the notebook he kept locked in a cabinet. The men had been eating food preserved with salicylic acid all week, but that morning he tripled the dosage.

“Good heavens, why?”

“Because I can’t test these men for the next twenty or thirty years. Using an elevated dose is an attempt to judge what long-term exposure might do to them.” He wrote some equations on a slip of paper and gave them to her. “That’s the ratio of chemical the men received today. I would give my eyeteeth to know the ratio used at Magruder Food.”

She raised her chin. “Dr. Wiley, I truly don’t want your eyeteeth.”

“Do you want to do what’s right?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “What are you suggesting?”

“I want the recipes your family uses. They’ve never revealed them, so it’s impossible to know what they are releasing into the American food supply.” He glanced down the hallway at the men sprawled in the parlor. “All of them are showing neurological confusion and mobility difficulties. I want to know how much salicylic acid is used in Magruder products.”

She held up the slip of paper. “We don’t use this much.”

“Prove it.”

Her father always refused to release their recipes. Could Dr. Wiley and the Delacroixs be right? She’d always blithely accepted what Clyde and Andrew said about preservatives, but it was hard to dismiss what she’d seen tonight.

Her mouth went dry as she pondered Dr. Wiley’s challenge. All the family recipes and canning procedures were in the company archive in Baltimore.

Dr. Wiley kept pressing. “Over the past few months, the Magruder company worked with the government to commission five studies regarding chemical preservatives,” he said. “They released two but have refused to disclose the others, and that’s worrisome. Why didn’t they release the other studies?”

Down the hall, Luke leaned forward, rubbing his temples. Even from a distance she could hear him moan as he repositioned himself on the chair. The only reason Luke signed up for this ghastly experiment was because of what happened when he partnered with her father to sell coffee in Philadelphia. Luke and all the other men sprawled in misery were willing to sacrifice for a higher cause. Was she?

“I can probably get the information you’re looking for,” she said.

A gleam of appreciation lit Dr. Wiley’s tired face. “It would be much appreciated.”

The thought of returning to Baltimore in search of those recipes was dreadful. She couldn’t even bear to think about Andrew, let alone politely ask him for the recipes. She was going to have to use another way to get that information, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

At two o’clock in the morning, St. Louis declared that he needed to get some sleep because he had to be up at five to train for the Olympics. He dragged himself upstairs, but Big Rollins, the only other healthy man still awake, said he would stay.

As would Marianne. Her parents were still in Baltimore, and if the men took a turn for the worse, Big Rollins would need help. Most of the sick men had dropped off into a restless sleep, but Marianne sat with Luke on the long window bench. With his back propped against the sidewall and his legs stretched out, he looked as tired as a wrung-out dishrag. His skin was pasty white and still had a sheen of perspiration, but his eyes were alive.

Indeed, they hadn’t torn their eyes off each other for hours. She sat on the other end of the window bench with Luke’s feet cradled in her lap, wishing the sun would never rise. They had been talking for hours—softly, so as not to disturb the others who were too dizzy to climb the stairs, but it still felt like they were the only people in the world. She told him about Delia’s grandiose decorating tastes and her mother’s painful insecurities in Washington. He spoke of his twin sister Caroline and the adventures they’d had over the years.

When he talked about Caroline’s coming wedding, he seemed terribly glum. “I feel her starting to pull away already,” he said. “Ever since we were infants, Caroline and I have been a team. Two peas in a pod. Now she’s moving to another pod.”

Marianne never felt a sense of loss when Andrew married, but they weren’t very close. Despite occasional moments of kindness, Andrew never treated her like a full member of the family, and he resented every scrap of attention their father spared her.

“I’m jealous,” she said.

Luke’s brows rose in surprise. “Why?”

“Don’t you know how rare that is? To have someone’s unquestioning loyalty no matter what? To feel like you can belong, even if you disappoint?”

“You don’t have that?”

Luke’s question was so softly whispered that she could barely hear it, but it slammed into her like a fist. No, she’d never had that. Aunt Stella was a glaring example of what could happen to a Magruder who displeased the family. The loyalty Luke described sounded wonderful.

“What’s wrong with the man Caroline will marry?” she asked, sensing this was at the root of Luke’s sullen mood.

She must have guessed correctly, because his eyes lit with embarrassed amusement, but he didn’t have any difficulty answering her question. “He’s a rule-follower. Stuffy.”

“The horror.”

He laughed, all the tension draining from his body. “Oh, Marianne, I think I love you.”

The words hung in the air. Based on Luke’s expression, he hadn’t meant to say them. They had slipped out in a moment of inattention and exhaustion from a long night.

“Actually, I don’t think it, I know it,” Luke clarified.

“I love you too,” she said. There was no point in denying it. It would probably go nowhere because they both had families to consider and nothing would be easy, but she’d never felt such a sense of belonging with anyone before. What an irony that the undiluted love and affection she’d craved all her life should finally come from a Delacroix.

On the opposite side of the window seat, Luke simply gazed at her in tired, happy exhaustion. Over the next few hours, they drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they checked on the others.

The first hint of dawn finally arrived, but Marianne remained with Luke on the window seat, knowing they only had a few more minutes together. The steps of the cook and Nurse Hollister sounded on the front porch as the morning began.

“You survived the night,” she said with a tired smile.

Luke winced as he rose from the window seat, holding firm to the side of the wall. “Still dizzy, but my head doesn’t ache as much.”

Some of the others also suffered lingering effects, but most were able to climb the stairs. Luke remained with a hand braced on the wall.

“I was supposed to drive Caroline to meet with the minister this morning,” he said. “I don’t think I can go. The thought of driving over cobblestones is enough to start my head aching again. Our home doesn’t have a telephone, but maybe I can get Big Rollins to deliver a message.”

“I’ll go,” she said. It would give her a chance to meet Luke’s sister and possibly take the first tentative steps toward some sort of détente between their families.

The town house where the Delacroixs lived was a shock. Marianne double-checked the address Luke had written on a slip of paper, because the modest three-story home simply wasn’t what she expected. The Delacroixs were old money. She expected to see something like Versailles with gold trim or a castle like the Vanderbilts’ home.

Instead she stood before a brick town house that looked like it had been there since before the revolution. It had the simple colonial lines of strength and solidity, but nothing ornate or lavish.

She took a steadying breath, mounted the staircase, and knocked on the front door.

A feminine voice called out from inside, “I’ll be right there, Luke!” The patter of feet sounded just before the door yanked open. Caroline’s face fell. “Oh, my apologies. Who are you?”

“I’m Marianne Magruder. We met briefly at the gala.”

Caroline masked her surprise with a gracious smile. “How silly of me,” she said and held the door open wide. “Come inside. I’ve been dying to get better acquainted with you. Luke is supposed to meet me for some wedding preparations.”

Old floorboards creaked as Marianne stepped inside. She liked the scent of lemon wax in the front hall. “Luke asked me to tell you he can’t be here today. He had a difficult night. All the men on the Poison Squad did.”

Caroline caught her breath, then a door in the hallway jerked open and Gray Delacroix stood there, his face grim. “What happened?” he demanded.

Marianne took a step back. The foyer suddenly felt too small, given the way Gray towered over her in suspicious disapproval. She clutched her reticule, terribly aware of the slip of paper with the chemical equations of exactly what had caused Luke’s illness. This was possibly the last topic she wished to discuss with these two people, but they were rightfully concerned about Luke.

“Some of the men had a bad reaction to the food. A doctor has seen them, and all are on the mend. It may take a few days for them to get over the dizziness and a bit of a headache.”

“A bit of a headache?” Gray snapped. “Explain.”

“I’m not a medical doctor. He’s got a headache. I don’t know how to be any more plain than that.”

Gray strode to the front door and yanked a jacket off a hook. “I’m going over there.”

“I think you’ll find him sleeping,” Marianne said.

Indecision caused Gray to pause, but Caroline was better at disguising her feelings. “Don’t be difficult, Gray. Let’s invite Marianne inside for a cup of tea. I’ll send the minister a note to reschedule. We should get to know each other.”

Gray’s expression softened a fraction. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said to Marianne. “Your grandfather just filed another lawsuit against me.”

Lawsuits were Jedidiah’s preferred method of communication. He was crafty and tough but not skilled with words and preferred to let his lawyers do his public fighting. This latest court action was over an outrageous stunt Luke and Gray had engineered last year that slandered how the Magruders made applesauce.

“I know,” she replied. “Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?”

“Because I’m not.”

“Why do you hate my grandfather so much?” Marianne asked. “Because he came from humble stock? Because his accent isn’t refined like yours?”

“Because he takes shortcuts,” Gray said. “Look, this conversation isn’t going to be helpful. I’m sure you are a very fine—”

“Gray,” Caroline interrupted. “Do you remember what I relayed to you about Luke’s newest fascination?”

Gray’s face hardened as he turned his attention to his sister. “It’s just the lure of forbidden fruit.”

They were talking about her. Marianne could feel it in her bones.

Before she could say anything else, though, Caroline took her arm and escorted her down a skinny hallway toward a kitchen at the back of the house. It was a homey room, with copper pans and bundles of dried herbs hanging from a rack above a worktable. Caroline offered Marianne a seat at an old kitchen table, then floated around the kitchen, preparing a kettle and setting out teacups.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said brightly. “I tried to seek you out at the gala, but you disappeared so quickly.”

Because she and Luke had stolen away behind the service tent, where she had the most breathless two hours of her life.

Marianne opted for a safer topic. “I work as a photographer for the Department of the Interior.”

Caroline asked all sorts of questions about Marianne’s opinions on art and techniques for getting a good photograph. The effortless way she kept asking questions made the conversation easy, and Marianne soon relaxed. Caroline was about to brew a second pot of tea when Marianne noticed the time.

“Oh dear, I’ve missed the one o’clock streetcar back into town.” That meant she would need to loiter in Alexandria until the three o’clock streetcar.

“Not to worry,” Caroline assured her. “Gray can arrange for a carriage to take you home.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Marianne rushed to say. She didn’t have enough money on her for a private carriage all the way home. “I can window-shop until the three o’clock streetcar.”

“Nonsense,” Gray said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. “Come. We’re the ones who delayed you, so let us make it right.”

It would be rude to refuse, so she followed him down the hall and out the front door. There was a public stable at the end of the street, and it looked like Gray intended to accompany her there and pay her fare. The sun was nearly blinding, and she scrambled for something to say.

There was no need, as Gray got straight to the point as they walked along the cobblestone street, his voice surprisingly kind.

“My brother is a wounded soul. What he’s doing to himself with that poison study is proof of that, and it isn’t the first time he’s risked his life over some heroic quest. He never felt good enough in our father’s eyes, and it’s made him reckless and rebellious. If he spots danger, he is drawn to it like a lodestone. You need to understand this about him.”

Gray paused, letting the sentence sink in. Once again, he was talking about her without saying so, but what Gray didn’t realize was that she and Luke were already half in love with each other before they realized the problem of their last names.

“I hear everything you are saying,” she said calmly.

They arrived at the stables, and Gray paid the fee for the carriage, then turned to shake her hand.

“You seem like an admirable woman,” he said. “In other circumstances we would have been friends, but be very careful with Luke. He likes teetering on the razor’s edge of trouble, and one of these days he might push it too far. You won’t want to be with him when that happens.”

The warning stayed with her all the way back to the city.