Plymouth, Montserrat
1910
:::
The visitor arrived just as the Grace family sat down to breakfast. This was unusual in and of itself as they rarely had callers, and then made more so by the fact of the visitor's name.
"A Mr. Charles Keller, sir," Nolan, the Graces major domo, announced, placing the calling card down on the table before Roscoe. "He says he's here to pay his respects on behalf of a Mr. Alec Mandus."
"Oh, God," Roscoe Grace groaned. "We're blessed it's a proxy rather than one of the Manduses themselves."
"Shall I have Sherry set another place?" Amy asked, peering down the table at her husband.
"No. Gods no. I'll meet with him in the study." He rose, and the two women who were still seated watched him exit with more than a touch of bewildered curiosity.
"Who are the Manduses?" asked the younger of the two, Willa. She was a capable-looking young woman of twenty-three, and Amy's daughter. Roscoe had married Amy more than three years previously, after Willa's father had died, and the new family had set up a comfortable home in Plymouth where Roscoe ran a small but lucrative export business.
"Kin by marriage, I think. Roscoe's cousin, Lily, married one of the Manduses. Died giving birth to twins, we were told. Poor girl." Amy stirred her porridge distractedly, eyes flickering again to the door through which her husband had exited.
"But why was he so displeased to hear from a Mandus?" Willa wondered.
Amy shrugged her slight shoulders gently. "I'm not entirely sure. I know there was some sort of scandal in London years ago. That's all I've heard Roscoe say about them."
Willa perked at the word. "London? Is that where they're from?"
Amy nodded. "Mm. They came up through the merchant ranks. I'm not certain of the details. But, regardless, Lily was Roscoe's cousin, so I suppose he has to at least greet the gentleman and see what he's about."
Willa didn't respond. She was thinking of London, of London and James...
James had proposed to Willa two weeks before he left Montserrat to seek employment in London. He had promised to secure a residence and send for her as quickly as he could, once matters were settled. Willa was loathe to see him go but, sensibly, she knew it was more practical than their both traveling overseas to England. For a year, they had corresponded by letters, James' coming less and less frequently. He had found a position in a soliciting firm, but was just a clerk and could not yet afford to bring Willa over. He begged her patience, and Willa gave it uncomplainingly.
Then, two months ago, she had received a crushing missive:
Willa,
My darling, circumstances have transpired to devastate any hope I ever held of bringing you to me and making you my wife as I have so longed to do. I am heartbroken and soul- shattered by this turn of Fate's wheel, and can only pray to survive its cruelty somehow. Know that I love you, and will keep you in my heart always.
Yours,
James
Willa had written, again and again, after receiving the letter, but no reply had come to her. For the last two months, she had been in a sort of lover's purgatory, unwilling to abandon her heart's chosen but unable to do anything about it. All she could do is hope that, somehow, she might find a means to reunite with James and assuage the hopelessness that had prompted him to write such a surrendering letter.
Roscoe returned from the study and reclaimed his seat at the table. Amy waited only a moment before asking, "What was it all about?"
Rosco shook his napkin back onto his lap. "Mr. Keller is an agent for Alec Mandus, who recently inherited his uncle Oswald's factory in London - Mandus Processing Company. Keller's here loading a ship up with supplies for the business, and was looking for an accounting clerk-slash- bookkeeper. Thought I might be interested."
"You?" Amy was taken rather aback. "What on Earth..?"
"Oswald was the fellow that married Lily. Apparently Alec found Lily's letters when he took hold of Oswald's estate, some of which were from my father, who went on at some length about my head for business."
"So, Oswald Mandus was the one involved in the scandal years ago..." Amy said, leadingly.
Roscoe grunted. "Wish I knew more about it. Seems to've been covered up for the most part. I know the Manduses ran a meat-factory empire in London, almost to a monopoly on the butcher business. When Lily married Oswald, he'd just taken over for his father as head of the company. Was doing fine things, too - charitable programmes, strict reform for his factory's work conditions, that sort of thing. Then Lily died, and he took some sort of sabbatical. Came back from it and...something happened. Best I could learn, there was an accident at the factory. Something broke down, or caught fire or went wrong, and it caused a problem."
"Wasn't it in the Times?" Willa queried.
"Not a word. Someone kept it hushed. Whatever happened, Oswald disappeared. General consensus was that he was killed during the incident."
"Oh, how horrid! Didn't Lily die birthing twins?" Amy said, aghast. "To lose their mother and father so tragically..."
"They died, too. As children. Some sort of illness." Roscoe looked grim. "Tragedy stalked that family, no two ways about it."
There was silence a moment, as all three at the table contemplated such horrors. Finally, though, Willa could not help but ask the salient question. "Did you accept the position, Roscoe?"
"Of course not. Keller had no idea I was thriving here. It would be an enormous decrease in income for us. I thanked him, but told him he must look elsewhere."
Willa hardly dared to utter the next words. "Couldn't...couldn't I take the post?"
Both her mother and step-father stared at her. "Willa!" Amy exclaimed. "You can't be serious."
"But I am," Willa retorted. "You've both said I have an uncanny knack for numbers and organization. I've been a tutor to the Fenwick's children for almost three years. I have my teaching certificate and a year at the university here in Plymouth to my credentials. And if I'm in London, I could find James..."
"Willa," Roscoe began, his voice sympathetic but firm, "Your mother and I were saddened by James' sudden change of mind about your engagement. But it's done. Going to London won't work any change on that situation."
"It will!" Willa declared earnestly. "If I've a job and if he sees me and doesn't have to worry about setting me up...if I'm there independently, we can take our time with the engagement and so much weight will be lifted off his shoulders. And whatever difficulty he's come into, I can help him with it. Oh, please, please recommend me to Mr. Keller, Roscoe."
Roscoe glanced at Amy, who offered only the tiniest shake of her head. He sighed and regarded Willa again. "My dear, I cannot, in good conscience, do so. Even if it were true that you and James would be mended and helped by your working in London, I don't...there's something about the Manduses I don't like. I couldn't send you to work in a place that had been the seat of such scandal and mystery, even if Alec Mandus is nothing like his uncle, God rest his soul."
"I grew up in London, Willa," Amy added, "and I know you'd be unhappy there. You've never been; you've spent your life here in the Caribbean, and it's a different world." Willa's lack of response elicited a pained expression from her mother. "Darling, please understand we're doing what we think is best for you."
"I'm twenty-three," Willa noted pointedly. "I'm employed and engaged. You're treating me as though I were a child."
"I believe James made a contrary declaration to your assertion of being engaged, Willa," Roscoe said - not cruelly, but bluntly.
Without a word, Willa rose smoothly and took her leave of the breakfast room.
:::
Amy came up to Willa's room an hour after breakfast, knocking gently before admitting herself. Willa was seated at her desk, writing. She laid both pen and paper aside when she saw her mother. "Please don't say anything. It won't do any good," Willa sighed.
Amy nodded. "I know. It's a tumultuous time for you. I understand you want independence..."
"I want James!" Willa half turned in her seat to face her mother. "I want to be with my fiancé, to help him through whatever hardships have come his way. I want to be able to put my arms 'round him and assuage his worries. He needs me. I feel as though I've abandoned him."
"Oh, Willa, you haven't abandoned him. It's actually the -..." Amy stopped herself, and took a moment to just look at her daughter, before shrugging. "It doesn't matter. Roscoe is right. London and the Manduses are not for you. You'll simply have to trust us."
Willa tensed a little, but she nodded after a minute. "I do. If you say it's a poor idea, I'll trust you."
Amy smiled, relieved. "Thank you, darling. Just give it some time. Your heart will mend."
Willa nodded again. Amy left the room, closing the door behind her. As soon as she had, Willa reclaimed the paper and pen, and resumed writing...
...have tutored a household of children aged eleven to seventeen for three years, received accolades for my papers in mathematics at the University here in Plymouth, have guest lectured on the subjects of financial organisation at aforementioned University, and can be in London within the month, with references and transcripts at the ready.
I apologize for not being able to confer personally with Mr. Keller before he departed from Montserrat, but I was away the day of his call and my stepfather was late in telling me of his visit. Please, sir, I would very much appreciate the opportunity to be under the employ of the Mandus Processing Company. I await your reply eagerly.
Most Sincerely,
William Grace
Willa sealed the letter, addressed it neatly to Mr. Alec Mandus, Mandus Processing Company, London, England, and tucked it mutely into her purse. Then, she rose and went to tell her mother that she was going out to the shoppes for a bit.
:::
London, England
One Month Later
:::
She had never seen a world so grey.
It was grey, and thick and cold. Even still a mile out from port, Willa stood on the deck of the RMS Merina and gazed at the coast of England in anxious amazement. The sun had vanished three days out of Plymouth and had not shown itself since, and this morning was no different. Four storms had assaulted the steam liner, and Willa had done her best to see them as battles to be fought and won to earn her right to set foot on British soil. Everything she'd done to reach this moment had been a battle, of will or strength or conscience.
She had fled in the night, the penultimate act of cowardice, taking every penny of her tutoring wages and whatever she could fit into two carpet bags. There was no hope of packing her lovely steamer trunk, nor of shipping wither her any of her room's furnishings. She had, as insurance, actually stooped so low as to steal into Amy and Roscoe's room and filch a few pieces of jewelry. A measure of tiniest credit paid to the fact that she only took items she'd never seen Amy wear, so were likely not highly prized by her mother.
The note she'd left behind was riddled with apology and desperation, a plea for forgiveness and understanding. To better cover her tracks and postone (if not avoid entirely) Roscoe dispatching an immediate missive to Alec Mandus, she'd written that James had contacted her at last and asked her to come immediately to him so they might elope. The address she provided was that of James' employers, Fulton & Saunders. It was only a half-lie, as she fully intended to make it truth at the earliest possible convenience.
For now, though, she watched as the Merina made its laborious way into the port, and tried not to lose courage at the sight of the teeming masses on the pier. So many people. So much grey. So wet and cold. And this was England. No wonder James had lost hope! Anyone would be in danger of such a fate.
But Willa was here, now, and soon she would bring the Caribbean sun back into his heart.
She wanted desperately to seek out James' office, but there wasn't time. On the dock, her bags at her feet, Willa slipped the piece of paper from her coat pocket and unfolded it to read it for the hundredth time:
Mr. William Grace,
I can offer you the position only if you are able to report at the company no later than noon on October 12th. That is the cut-off for our financial quarter and we must have all employee records confirmed at that time. If Mr. Keller does not see you by then, we will take on a local who has also applied for the post, despite sacrificing a few of the qualifications you possess that he lacks. I understand we have familial ties, but this is a business and one that must be run competently. I trust you understand.
Alec Mandus
It was a little after eleven now. No time to look James up, no time for the reunion for which she'd longed with all her soul. Perhaps all the better, she consoled herself as she picked up her bags and walked toward the street to hail a cabbie. After all, she was hardly the vision of love and home she'd wanted to present when she saw him again. She'd made herself imminently presentable, true - a smart suit of dove grey and a simple, businesslike sailor atop her neatly-pinned hair. She'd chosen a flattering but not ostentatious necklace from the spoils she'd stolen from her mother, and left it at that by way of jewelry. She was dressed to impress the Mandus Processing Company, not send James into a fit of dazzlement.
A cab was not readily available, but there was a motorbus parked and half-full. She made her way through the throng and approached the driver.
"I need to get to Mandus Processing Company," she told him. The man only grunted and jerked a thumb toward the back of the bus. Taking that as a sign in the affirmative, Willa fished money from her pocket and relinquished it to the driver, then packed herself in, next to a disheveled mother holding a squalling toddler, and a man who sipped morosely from a small tin flask.
She clung to her bags, arms wound about them tightly, trying to keep them piled on her lap. The bus lurched, shuddered, and rolled into the damp greyness that thickened as the pier vanished and London itself closed in. There seemed to be a deficit of sky, as though the atmosphere had shrunk in around the city. It was such a stark contrast to the wide, blue, airy island she had abandoned that Willa felt as though she'd somehow landed herself in a world that could not possibly share the same planet as her departed home.
Blessedly, the trip was short. She was the first to be deposited at her destination, and issued a plethora of apologies as she climbed as carefully as she could past the man with the flask. As she was stepping down onto the cobblestones, she felt him give her hip a sharp pinch. Shocked, she snapped her gaze back to him, only to see his expression unchanged, his eyes staring dully ahead. Only the faintest working of his jaw confessed his guilt. She had never been accosted so, and was too bewildered to say anything. The bus again pitched forward suddenly, and she was forced to take a few quick, ungainly steps back to avoid having her feet crushed beneath the back wheel.
The bus's departure cleared the view ahead of her, revealing an enormous sprawl of buildings, all of them enclosed into an encampment of edifices by a tall, vicious-looking iron fence. Hung on the railing, at intervals, were large signs bearing the logo of the Mandus Processing Company. She recalled Roscoe saying the Mandus business was sizable, but this...it seemed to be a small city in and of itself. She spent a moment taking cursory stock of what she could see from her vantage point on the street - there were four buildings framing a courtyard, a warehouse that was crammed full of delivery trucks, even a small chapel and graveyard within the confines of the property. In the distance, set only a small space from the factory, a grand and imposing manor house sat, overseeing the whole affair.
There was a gatekeeper in a boxy, cramped gatehouse near the main entrance where she'd been let off, a surly-faced chap who looked well into his sixties. Willa approached with only the minor trepidation that had sneaked past her determination.
The gateman eyed her as she came up to him. "Wot." A statement.
"I'm the newly-hired bookkeeper for the company," she informed him, hoping she sounded sufficiently sure of herself.
"Gerron," the gateman snorted.
"I am," Willa insisted, and did a bit of shifting so she could fetch Alec Mandus' letter out of her overcoat pocket, presenting it to the gateman with a gloved hand. "He's expecting me. I'm to report to Mr. Keller immediately."
The gateman eyed the letter, but it was clear he'd no intention - or perhaps capability - of reading it. "Offices are in the West Buildin'," he finally said, exiting the gatehouse to brush past her and move to unlock the gate, dragging it open begrudgingly. "I'll send word yer comin'."
She was about to ask how he'd manage, when he stepped past her again and went into the gatehouse, grabbing a capsule from a chute she'd not noticed before. Her eyes lit. "Pneumatic tubes! Of course. I'd heard they were used in London, but I didn't -..." Realizing the lout was paying no attention, she broke off the attempt at conversation and turned away. Her mind was soon occupied by the threshold over which she now had to step, both physically and metaphorically.
"For you, James," she murmured, and walked herself into the Mandus Processing Company.
Mr. Keller was waiting for her when she entered his office on the second floor of the West Building. The whole building itself seemed to be dedicated solely to offices and small side parlors. Willa guessed it was the frontispiece of the company, and where clientele, distributors and other business affiliates met with the management. Once again she found herself marveling at the entire affair, amazed at the vastness of the Mandus empire and, again too, she thought of Oswald Mandus, his poor dead family, and the mysterious scandal that somehow intertwined all of it.
She had knocked, and been bade enter. Since Roscoe had met with Mr. Charles Keller in the study of their home, she'd not gotten a look at him. He was exactly as she imagined - thin, efficient, unattractive and imperious. His office plaque had read 'Personnel and Labor Management'. She guessed such a title had gone straight to the little man's head.
He looked at Willa with impatience and a touch of surprise. "Something I may do for you, miss?"
And she knew her reckoning had come. "I've come to accept the post of bookkeeper and accounting clerk." She braced.
The maelstrom hit in the form of a cacophony of shocked sniffing. "You are not William Grace!"
"'Willa', actually," she answered placidly. She must not lose her composure. Not now. "There must have been some misreading of my signature by Mr. Mandus. It's all right - rather a common mistake." She was amazed at how coolly she was able to lie. She extended her hand. "I am very much looking forward to being a part of the Mandus Processing Company, Mr. Keller."
The sniffing had evolved into a sort of choking. "No, no, no! Absolutely not. I'm very sorry, miss, but we simply cannot take you on. We were expecting...erm, that is, Mr. Mandus was expecting a man. The position is entirely unsuitable for a lady. I apologize for the confusion, but there is nothing to be done. Please leave." He looked so distraught and indignant, Willa almost felt sorry for him.
"Isn't there any way you might consider me?" Willa asked, though all the hope and confidence she had spent a month storing up was fleeing her in waves. "After all, my qualifications are the same as 'William''s, and I've brought my credentials. I'm young, healthy and determined. Isn't that enough?"
"What?" Distracted, Keller shook his head, now thoroughly in a tizzy. "No. No. Do you know what this means? I'll have to find a new man within the next day. And just when he's ordered the new level of the factory to be opened. This is...highly upsetting. I knew he shouldn't have agreed to take on someone from overseas."
There was a sudden noise in the office, a sort of rushing, thoomp-y sound. Willa looked over Keller's shoulder to see a capsule resting inside the receiver of a pneumatic tube that sat in the back corner of the office. Keller startled a bit at the noise, cut Willa a glare as though she'd been responsible for jolting him, and turned to go retrieve the capsule. Muttering to himself darkly, he opened it and plucked out the folded piece of paper within. It was smoothed out in his hands and read mutely. His expression changed from irate to trepidatious in an instant.
"He wants to see you," Keller stated, how voice a little hollow. "Right away."
Willa was alerted by Keller's shift in mood. "Is that...bad?" she asked tentatively.
"It's rarely good," came the grim reply. "Why, why did I let this happen? Today of all days." He went to his desk and scribbled a hasty reply onto the back of the paper, stuffed it into the capsule and sent it away with a few presses of buttons on a panel whose workings Willa could not decipher. "Well. That's it, then," Keller said, then looked to Willa. "He'll be in the North Building, in his office."
Willa blinked. "Not here? I thought this was where all the offices are."
"Mr. Mandus had a separate set of office suites installed in the North Building because it's closer to the processing line and the machinery. He can keep a better eye on the workings there. The offices here are specifically removed from the line. Less, ahm...concern of witnessing the processing of product, which might offend investors or distributors."
Willa thought that rather hypocritical, but wasn't about to say so. Actually, her mind was veering more toward the notion of 'witnessing' something herself. She wasn't certain if she was ready yet to face the company's inner workings, not after all she'd been through today. She would rather die than admit it to Keller though; he was certainly looking for evidence proving her 'unsuitable'. "Thank you, Mr. Keller," was all she said, finally. "I'll go immediately."
"Take your bags," Keller instructed dryly. "You'll likely be leaving straight from Mr. Mandus' office."
She bit back a retort, then took up her baggage by the handles and left the room. Leaving the West Building, she followed a walkway around the courtyard toward the North Building. The courtyard was surprisingly lovely, fitted out with rose bushes, tiled paths, even a little fountain in the center. There was no one in it at the moment, and she wondered if it were accessible by the workers, or Mr. Mandus alone.
Before she was less than a hundred yards from the North Building, she could hear the rumbling of the factory. More than that - she could feel it. It thrummed under her feet, vibrating the ground faintly. While smokestacks were visible in the North Building, she could not see any of the machinery. A sudden realization came and, for some reason, it made her shudder involuntarily. The factory is underground.
Willa silently admonished herself for being so silly. Of course it would make sense to build underground. You could not only expand almost indefinitely, but it could keep the more indelicate aspects of a meat-processing factory well hidden from the general public.
Still, there was something about the idea of walking, working, sleeping above the gears and cogs of a factory that was dimly unnerving. She steeled her thoughts with images of James, of seeing him, of being encircled by his arms and held and kissed. It helped enough to propel her course up the thin steps of the North Building and inside.
The foyer was large, carpeted and adorned with brass pots into which ferns were planted. Two ceiling fans rotated lazily above, and the walls were outfitted with several electric lamp sconces. There were three doors - sets of doubles to the right and left on either end of the wide room, and a single directly in front of her. The double doors bore plaques over them: 'Piston Maintenance' and 'Storehouse - Engine and Furnace'. The door in front of her was set with an intricate muscovite window and brass handle, and bore an elaborate 'M' etched onto the isinglass.
Willa spent only a moment to take in a breath, then knocked smartly on the door. There was a click, and the door opened slowly of its own accord.
She stepped in. The office was smaller than she'd imagined it would be, furnished with the same brass pottery and ferns as the foyer, the floor not carpeted, but the oak planks varnished into brilliance. Everything seemed subdued, somehow, with breaks in the saturation by the gleam of metal and glass here and there. There was a desk, no other seating save the chair behind it, in which Alec Mandus sat.
So young! Thirty at most and younger in appearance, when Willa had expected ten, twenty years more than that on him. And handsome in the sort of way that will not permit anything else in oneself to come to the fore. His handsomeness dominated, and cowed any good nature, or humor, or even charm that might have otherwise blended with the attractiveness.
She was not afraid of him, but he seemed so totally alien to her as a person that she knew she could not be confident in his presence. She stayed where she was, just inside the door, well-spaced from his desk and him.
He rose. His suit was charcoal in color and fitted him perfectly as though it, too, was not about to risk his displeasure by being the slightest bit off-measure. Yet, he was not imposing, just aloof. Willa thought he looked a little out of focus, part of him elsewhere. Maybe part of him was always elsewhere, and it had become a well-worn facet of him.
"I see," Alec said without preamble. "No wonder Keller was near to apoplexy. You are not a 'William' after all."
"So I have been made aware, sir," she replied.
He almost smiled. "I wouldn't consider it a personal affront, Miss Grace. Keller is always losing his head about something. Though, in this case, he might be in the right. I had expected Roscoe's son to be, well, a son."
"Step-son," Willa corrected, then amended further. "Step-daughter."
"So, we are related, then?" Alec seemed to find the notion faintly amusing.
"Distantly, and by marriage only. Why?" She canted her head.
He didn't answer. "Miss Grace, you have mine, Mr. Keller's and the whole of the Mandus Processing Company's sincerest apologies, but I cannot take you into my employ."
The words brooked absolutely no argument. Willa had come ready to do battle, to assert herself and her capabilities, to march up to the line and run it herself if she had to, but she found herself unable to do anything but stare at him.
"Thank you for your willingness and your application, and for the time you took to come to London. Good afternoon, Miss Grace." Alec reclaimed his seat. It was a dismissal of total finality. She knew it.
Which is why she was so very surprised at herself when she began to speak.
"I can't go back. I can't go home. Mr. Mandus, I left everything and everyone for good. You don't understand." The words came like water from an unbricked dam. She couldn't stop them. She couldn't even shape them into something less desperate. Alec was staring at her in wonder. She couldn't stop. "Roscoe forbade me from applying for the position. I did it anyway. I mailed my applicant letter in secret. I left in the middle of the night. I used all the money I'd saved tutoring to buy my passage. I...I even stole jewelry from my mother so I could sell it here to buy food and lodging once I arrived."
Alec said nothing for a moment. He had an expression with which Willa was all-too familiar; she wore it often, herself. It was the look of someone quickly and efficiently figuring things out.
He finally spoke. "Well, I won't play at naiveté and say I admire your dedication to your career and this company. And I won't pretend I believe you thought this position so grand that you'd be willing to abandon everything to secure it. So, then. Why are you in London, Miss Grace?" He didn't seem angry, just taciturn, humorless.
Willa had every intention of lying, but she realized the game had been up the moment she'd walked into his office. She also realized she did not like Alec Mandus very much at all. "My fiancée, James Harsdale, is here in London. Somewhere." When Alec raised a brow at that telling caveat, Willa found her cheeks growing hot. "Something has happened to him, some sort of bad trouble that he feels he cannot get out of. He wrote to me and said he'd lost hope of being able to marry me because of whatever circumstance he's in. I had to come, to try and help him."
"And to change his mind about marrying you," offered Alec.
"He will, as soon as I can aid him in brightening his prospects. Since I'm here and employed, he needn't worry about supporting me right away. Whatever his difficulties, he can conquer them with his beloved at his side." Her chin lifted, she felt the fire moving through her, stoked by love and hope and devotion.
"But you are not, Miss Grace, currently employed." Alec's tone was quiet.
Willa tensed. "Mr. Mandus..." she began, but he was rising and moving around the desk toward her. She wondered for a brief moment if he intended to throw her out of the office bodily.
"Miss Grace, this factory is unsuitable for a woman in every respect," Alec explained as he closed the distance between them. "I am doing you a much greater favor by not hiring you than I would were I to -..." The words halted. He stopped only two feet from her and seemed to be staring at her throat. "Where in God's name did you get that?" he whispered.
She was so surprised by the question and his change in attitude that the confusion had to wait its turn. And after it had muddled her even more, it took long moments while she traced the trajectory of his stare to its destination, and her fingers fluttered to touch the base of her throat. She felt the coolness of metal. Another span of time to recall what he'd asked and to match it with an answer. "It's...it's mother's. One of the pieces I brought with me. Remember, I told you I'd taken some of her jewelry. Why? What's the matter with it?"
"That isn't your mother's necklace," Alec said quietly. "It's Lily's."
Willa's lips parted. "Your late aunt's? Are you certain?" She shuffed off the sudden encroachment of unease that came with learning she was wearing a dead woman's necklace.
"I've seen it in a portrait of her that hangs in the dining room of the house," he affirmed with confidence. "She must have bequeathed it to Roscoe. It's his, not your mother's."
"You were close to her, I think," Willa said gently. She knew the pain of losing kin all too well.
"When she married my Uncle, she helped mend things between him and my father. She was very beautiful and extraordinarily kind, and treated me almost as her own child. She died giving birth to my cousins, Enoch and Edwin."
"I know; Roscoe told me. I'm so sorry, Mr. Mandus."
"I was only a few years older than they. I was here often as a child, playing with them. I missed Lily tremendously. She seemed to be the one bright thing in this place. And my Uncle..."
There, he stopped. Willa knew an opportunity when she saw one. "Mr. Mandus, you say Lily was a bright thing here. She was a woman. I'm not claiming to be as wonderful as your departed Aunt, but...could you not perhaps consider that I might be an asset here in some way, too?"
Alec tore his eyes from the necklace to look at her. "You deliberately signed your name 'William', didn't you? It wasn't a misreading of the signature." His gaze was measured.
She nodded, once. "You would have refused me the position immediately, otherwise."
"And the credentials? The papers, the tutoring, the University. Were those lies as well?"
"No!" The word came earnestly. "No, I promise. I have it all. Here. Here..." And she was fumbling through pockets, going into her bags, collecting the papers which she thrust into his hands. "I am fully qualified. And I want, more than anything, to stay here in London. I must stay here in London."
"For a man who jilted you," Alec noted bluntly.
"For love, and the faith that love can prevail." She spoke almost devoutly. "He didn't jilt me. He just lost hope, and thought he was doing what was best for me. I'm here to return that hope to him."
Alec stepped back and considered. "Miss Grace, your circumstances may be a compelling reason to contemplate letting you have the position, but I have concerns. Significant ones. This is not a place for well-bred ladies."
"It's a business and a position for which I am imminently qualified, yes?" Willa challenged.
"You will be expected to, on occasion, visit the product line, the stockyards and the distribution warehouses. Do you understand what that entails?"
"I'll be seeing the corpses of animals," she surmised. "Perhaps even the slaughter of them. I'm not blind to what the company does. I think it's a good business, and I' not squeamish."
Alec's tone changed suddenly, changed to something so bleak and ominous, it gripped Willa by the heart. "This place has seen tragedies beyond measure. The whole of my Uncle's family died here. It has a history of blood and grief. Even beyond the fact that it is a place of killing, there are stains here that seep into every corner."
"Are you speaking of the scandal? The...incident that occurred after your Uncle returned from his sabbatical? Roscoe told me it was covered up. He didn't know what happened." She wanted not to ask. A great part of her didn't want to know. She might end up running away from here, and she couldn't afford that. Not yet.
Alec seemed unnerved, uncomfortable about the past being brought into the room with them. "There was an incident. The pigs in the stockyard broke out and ran amok in the streets. A small child was trampled and killed."
"Oh, God," gasped Willa.
"It wasn't covered up. The family of the child requested it not be printed in the Times for dignity's sake, that's all. But it was enough to wound Uncle past the breaking point. He'd already lost Lily and his sons."
"Did he do something desperate to himself?" Willa couldn't help asking.
"We don't know. The last my father heard, Uncle's solicitors were given instruction to distribute the bequests. But that was two years ago, eight years since Uncle went missing." He sighed. "It's the past. I should like it to stay there."
"Please, Mr. Mandus. Let me take the position you offered. If I can't perform my duties to your satisfaction, discharge me." Willa's tone was steady. "I promise, if such is the case, I'll leave without a fuss."
Alec nodded. "I can see there's no dissuading you." There was only a momentary pause. "Welcome to the factory." At seeing Willa's entire face light, he held up a hand to stave off the joy. "You will reside on the grounds. I need you available at all hours, as readily as possible, since we distribute our product and keep the factory operating 'round the clock. If there's a concern about inventory or accounts, I want to be able to speak with you at a moment's notice."
This was unexpected, but she was too relieved to offer protest. "Yes. Yes, of course."
"You applied as William Grace, and I shall treat you as such. You may find yourself wishing you'd fled at the first glare from Mr. Keller. For my own security, I'll have a two-year contract drawn up." He started back for his desk.
"Two...two years?" Willa echoed with incredulity.
Alec paused and turned back to look at her frankly. "What? I am risking a great deal by taking you on, Miss Grace. What's to keep you from finding your darling James tomorrow and quitting the company the next day? No. Motivations for coming to England aside, you are employed now and I want to ensure I am guaranteed a bookkeeper and accountant for the near future. If you find my terms unacceptable, you may return to the port and see if Roscoe and your mother can find it in their hearts to forgive you."
Willa narrowed her eyes. "You are not a kind man, Mr. Mandus."
"Not when it comes to this company, no. I'm a shrewd businessman and, right now, I am in a position to make demands as would best benefit the Mandus Processing Company. So, that is exactly what I will do. However, I will guarantee an improvement in salary based on performance every six months. Does that temper your indignation at least a little, Miss Grace?"
She slid her gaze to the side, expression begrudging. "A little, yes."
"Good. Your office and apartment are located here, below the North Building, near the storehouses. You have convenient access to the throughways that lead to the loading facilities, the West Building offices and the stockyards. You will be keeping all records concerning cost, client order accounts, payroll, and production volume."
Willa nodded. "I'm confident I can handle the duties admirably, Mr. Mandus." She stooped to take up her bags. "When shall I begin work?"
"The fiscal quarter ends today. Our last man left things in excellent order. Our distributors and clients will be in during the morning tomorrow to re-up their accounts, so you'll not have much to do until the afternoon." At her sudden spark of excitement, Alec sighed. "Yes, you may go try and find your James in the morning. But you cannot return any later than noon. Is that understood?"
"Yes. Yes, absolutely." She felt as though Fate had laid out a path of gold before her. "Thank you, sir." A pause. "And meals?"
"You'll dine with the managers and distribution heads. There's a dining room in the West Building where they take their meals. The company runs its own kitchens for the employees."
"It's a very self-sufficient operation," Willa noted, and wasn't sure if she felt admiration or wariness.
"By necessity. We have stringent standards of cleanliness, and can ensure none of our employees suffer sickness from spoiled or ill-prepared food they might bring from home."
"I see." She didn't know what else to say.
Alec returned to his desk, sitting. "Go through the Engine and Furnace Storehouse doors, down a flight to Cold Storage. You'll see your office past the doors to Cold Storage, down the corridor. The place is a bit spartan, as a note. Good luck, Miss Grace."
For the second time, she was being dismissed. Unlike the first, this time she was ready to leave the office. Barely containing her joy, she took her leave of the room and followed the directions Alec had given her.
She was here. She had the position. And tomorrow, she would see James at last.
:::
The room was not 'spartan'. The word fell so short of what her lodgings were, she would have laughed had she not been so unhappy. She had a sudden insight as to why the Mandus Processing Company had a vacancy in the bookkeeper's position. The place was more like a cell than an apartment.
She had arrived there via the course laid out by Alec, and her first impression of the factory's inner workings had been one of daunted awe. The machinery was enormous and pervasive, the narrow walkways made of grated steel, railings only inches from gears and pistons and holding tanks. She had expected the machinery to be running, but it was not. After some thought, she recalled Keller mentioning something about opening a new level of the factory - perhaps they were not operating at full production.
She passed Cold Storage and came to a single door just after. Unlike the rest of the surroundings, the door was wooden with a small latch-handle of tin. She opened it and moved into the interior, which was dark. Fortunately, there was a small electric light affixed to the inside wall near the door, and she snapped the switch to illuminate the place.
Bare, bare and cold. Colder than she'd imagined it would be. It had to be the by-product of being situated next to the storage facility she'd passed. The room was about three by five metres and hosted a desk, two office cabinets, a pneumatic tube, and a chair. That was all. The desk was outfitted with several drawers and a lamp that sat atop it. The chair did not look comfortable. On the right wall was another door. She took herself through it, into her 'apartment'. It was even smaller than the poor office, with a narrow bed boasting a thin mattress, a chest of drawers and a bedside table with another bare-bulbed lamp. An alcove set into the recesses of the room presented a sink with a single faucet, a Ribcage needle shower and a small mirror hung over the sink.
She set her bags down on the bed, dismayed at the entire prospect. She wondered about linens, and how she could afford to buy new ones as she'd not brought any with her. The matter was solved when she went to begin unpacking - in the bureaus were clean, folded sheets, towels and a woolen blanket.
For all the barren lack of comfort, she did have to admit the place was clean. Gloomy, poorly-lit and depressing, but clean. Still, knowing this was to be her home for the next two years sent a tumult of despair through her.
"Perhaps, though, it shan't be," she consoled herself as she put her things away. "He only said I had to work here. James and I could set up house and I could take the motorbus to the factory." The notion chirked her up enough that she was able to start looking through the accounts in the office with a right good will, determined to get a head start on work tomorrow.
It seemed as though her job would be broken up into three areas - keeping the expense books in order, managing inventory numbers, and maintaining customer accounts. The company had over one hundred customers - grocers, restaurants, schools and exporters for the most part. Its expenses came from the buying of livestock, parts for the machines, payroll and other usual things. She noticed Alec Mandus was not on the payroll. Either he lived off his inheritance alone, or he took money from the factory through other means than wages. She wasn't particularly concerned, as long as her numbers would balance in the end.
It was the inventory that caught her attention more than the other areas. She had little to no knowledge of engineering, and the requisites for various machinery seemed almost a foreign language. She saw that, among the notations of deliveries made to the factory, there was a recurring item labeled only 'Mandus Development Acquisition'. It had varying value, sometimes as little as a few pounds, other times hundreds.
Another odd thing was the fact that all the paperwork went back only to Alec's start as owner of the company. This was of special disappointment to Willa, who'd imagined she'd find all sorts of answers regarding Oswald Mandus and the scandal that had occurred here within the accounts. At the very least, she would see how the place had been run ten years prior. There was nothing, though, no records whatsoever. Alec must have either stored them elsewhere, or destroyed them. It was curious, to say the least.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a large bell ringing throughout the grounds. It reached her only faintly, underground as she was. She reached into her coat to pull out her timepiece, and saw it was six o'clock. Had so much time really passed? The bell must be calling the workers to supper. Willa set everything back in order in the cabinets and left her office. As she closed the door, she realized she had no key. That was unacceptable - not only did she require the measure of safety to her own person, she wanted to ensure that no one was able to enter the office and make use of the files without her knowledge. She would have to speak to Mr. Mandus or Mr. Keller about it at the earliest possible moment.
She had that moment as she entered the West Building's dining room. It was a comfortable, if not opulent, situation provided to the management of the company: several tables with cloth coverings, simple white tableware and napkins, pitchers of water and pots of coffee and tea at each table. Willa found a place at Mr. Keller's table, much to his displeasure it seemed and, as she seated herself, she realized she was the only woman in the entire room of perhaps twenty people. As though she needed further impetus to be uncomfortable.
With her and Keller at the table were three other gentlemen. Two looked as stiff and buttoned-up as Keller, but the third was dressed in plainclothes and had a rougher edge to him. He seemed in his late forties, with a shock of auburn hair and thick mutton-chops riding down the line of his jaw.
"Gentlemen, this is Miss Willa Grace. She's the new bookkeeper, and was brought on only this afternoon," Keller introduced. "Miss Grace, this is Mr. Oliver and Mr. Cordes, both manage our export interests." They tendered her slight nods. "And this is Mr. Booth, who oversees the distribution warehouse."
Booth extended his hand. "Welcome, Miss Grace," he greeted. Rough, yes, but homespun and honest. He was the first person in London Willa had taken an instant liking to. She clasped his hand willingly and warmly.
"Thank you, Mr. Booth," she replied. "I am very pleased to meet you. All of you, gentlemen," she added quickly.
"What's the accent?" Booth asked her with frank amiability.
"Accent?" She hadn't even realized. "Oh. I was born and raised in Montserrat. Is it very noticeable?"
Booth shrugged, reaching for a roll which lay nestled in a basket at the center of the table. "Some. It's not shocking. Just a bit different than what you'd hear in London. How d'you like the city so far?"
"It's very different, I'll admit," she told him. Oh, how good to converse with someone easily, without feeling like you're in a battle. "But I'm pleased to be here and to be part of the company." She turned her attention to Keller. "Mr. Keller, I've not yet been given the key to my office. Since it also leads to my private living quarters, it's a necessity for me that I have it."
Keller nodded tightly. "Yes. I've brought it with me." He fetched it, heavy and iron, from his pocket and handed it over to her. "When Mr. Mandus informed me you'd be staying on here, I anticipated you'd need it."
"Not many a lady would take on here," Booth noted. "Not to give offense, Miss Grace, but I'm surprised Mandus allowed it."
"Miss Grace has a tenacity of purpose seldom found in the gentler sex," Mr. Keller opined. "She is also distantly related to Mr. Mandus."
Willa stiffened. How dare he suggest, in front of everyone, that she was given a job due to nepotism. "Mr. Mandus was reluctant to hire me," she countered, the words laced with ire at Mr. Keller. "It took me a great deal of arguing to change his mind. But I know I am suited for the position and I am determined to prove myself."
"Amen to you, then," chuckled Booth. "We could use some good old-fashioned determination around here. Might thin out the pretention."
Willa took up her cup and sipped her tea to stave off a laugh. Mr. Keller said nothing, but his lips set themselves into a thin line.
Supper had progressed pleasantly. Booth's conversation had done much to lift her spirits, and she found herself more and more amenable to the man. He was blunt and non-effusive, but he had a cutting sense of humor and an honesty about him that seemed a panacea to the mysteries surrounding the place. The food had been simple and tasty, and Booth gave her an apple to take with her back to her room, for which she thanked him.
Now, after showering and changing into her nightdress, she lay in bed munching away at it, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of tomorrow. Over and over, she replayed the scene of James seeing her, of his surprise, then his joy, and the rain of kisses that would fall over her upturned face. The room was cold, but she didn't feel it. She was cocooned by the warmth of tomorrow's prospects, and the reward that would be claimed for today's hardships.
:::
By eight o'clock, she was dressed and exiting the North Building. With limited means, she'd done her best to look the picture of feminine appeal, something to delight James. Her dress was made of delicate white lawn with china blue flowers, her hair carefully upswept in loose waves, her hands sheathed in lambskin gloves. She was wearing Lily's necklace again - Alec hadn't demanded it back and, somehow, she felt it would bring her luck.
Making her way through the courtyard and toward the gate, she spied activity near the distribution warehouse. As anxious as she was to see James, she altered her course to take her over to the dozen or so trucks and the garage that the storehouses fed into.
As she suspected, Booth was there, directing the loading of the trucks. He lifted a brow at the sight of Willa approaching, and pushed his cap back on his head, whistling low in amazement rather than bawdiness. "Don't tell me you're putting on airs for the ledgers, Miss Grace. Don't think they'll be able to properly appreciate the effort."
"I'm going to visit my fiancée, Mr. Booth," she replied with a smile. "Do you know where the offices of Fulton & Saunders are? They're solicitors."
"I do; they're just three blocks north of here. Will Alec be tweaked that you're skipping out on your duties?"
She chuckled. "I don't officially start work until this afternoon, though I've done by best to get a head start by looking over the accounts yesterday afternoon."
"Find everything in order?" Booth inquired.
"Yes, I -..." Willa paused, pairing the topic of yesterday's reading and the sight of the trucks. "Booth, are all these trucks for distributing goods from the factory, or are they for bringing in supplies, too?"
"These? Just for delivery of our products, and just for the London area," Booth told her. "We'll send them out later again to the docks for export."
"I don't understand." Willa blinked. "I saw it in the payroll accounts, too. With all this, the company would need triple its current employee base. How can the factory run with so few workers?"
"Almost all of the machinery is automated," Booth answered.
Willa almost gaped. "Automated? The whole factory?"
"Oswald Mandus had it built from the ground up, most of it. Tore down his father's machines and installed his own, and they could operate with a tenth of the manpower. Innovations no one'd seen before. Alec doesn't make use of all of it, but we still don't need more than a dozen or so inside the factory, and those are mostly managers and engineers. On the actual line..." He shook his head. "Not necessary."
"What do you mean 'all of it'?" Willa had an uncomfortable feeling. The way Roscoe had spoken of Oswald, the trail of deaths that followed him, his disappearance...
"I'm one of the only ones left who worked here when Oswald ran it. I'm not saying I stayed on through it all - Oswald let every one of his workers go, and took on brand new people from parts unknown. But before he did that, he had some of us help with the building of the machine. And it was big, Miss Grace. Went down hundreds of feet and spread out under London." He nodded toward the trucks. "You think we're doing impressive quantities now - Oswald could have fed all of Britannia with what he was producing."
"But, how could he -..."
A whistle shrilled from somewhere, and Booth righted his cap. "Sorry, Miss Grace. Have to get the trucks out the gate. Good luck with your man." He nodded, then strode off. Willa realized she'd wasted precious time lingering, and hurried away, leaving via the West Building gate. As she headed north down the block, she couldn't shake away the feeling of unease that arrived in her when Booth said 'the machine'. The way he said it made her apprehensive about sleeping and working within its confines.
:::
"Who?" The small man blinked at Willa as she stood on the steps of the large building. She again glanced at the sign beside the door to confirm she had the correct business. Fulton & Saunders.
"Mr. James Harsdale. He's a junior clerk with the firm. I'm his fiancée, Miss Grace."
"James Harsdale?" The man blinked again, a display Willa was beginning to find very grating. "I'm very sorry, but..." He seemed at a loss.
"Please just tell him I'm here. I won't take much of his time, I promise." She was losing the sweetness and light she'd come bearing energetically to the door.
"Ahm, Miss Grace, Mr. Harsdale is no longer with our firm." Another round of blinking.
This time, she blinked back."What?"
He fidgeted in discomfort. "James Harsdale hasn't been with our firm for some time. Nearly three months. I do apologize." Clearly, he had no idea why the ex-employee's own betrothed wasn't salient of the facts, and was disquieted by it.
"But...but where did he go?" Willa asked inanely.
"I'm sure I don't know. The last we were told, he had plans to travel to the continent, but his exact destination wasn't offered to us." He stepped back, his hand fumbling for the door handle. He paused, poised as he saw Willa just standing there, shellshocked. "Was there...anything else, Miss?"
Willa shook her head slowly, mutely. The man swallowed, inclined his head politely, and beat a hasty retreat back into the safety of the offices.
Gone. James was gone. He'd left England. And he might have returned by now, but there was no way to know, no hope of learning where he'd ended up. She had been cast adrift, and now her entire purpose for coming to London had come up empty. All that was left now was a cold, grey city and the Mandus Processing Company.
There on the steps of Fulton & Saunders, Willa very quietly began to cry.
:::
"Do you want to return to Montserrat?" Alec asked archly. She stood in metaphorical tatters before him, eyes dry but soul bowed. "Is that what you're telling me?"
"I can't afford to go back," Willa told him despondently. "It would take me at least six months of careful saving to purchase my fare home."
Alec's eyes narrowed slowly. "Miss Grace, did you come here to beg money off of me?"
"No!" She stiffened, affronted. "I'd rather pitch myself into the cogs of this factory than do that."
He smiled wryly. "No need for melodrama. Just tell my why you came to me with all this. What is it that you want?"
Willa lifted her hands helplessly. "I don't know. I suppose I just wanted...to tell someone. To say it aloud and see if it really is as terrible as I think it is."
"And is it?" Alec leaned back in his chair.
Willa nodded bleakly. "Yes."
"So James is incommunicado, somewhere, perhaps on the continent. Left no forwarding address, no way for you to reach him even in the advent of an emergency." His pause had her steeling herself. "And this is the man you claim is your true love?"
"He isn't himself! The letter he wrote -..."
"Two months ago, that didn't contain any hint of his leaving his job and the country..."
She ignored him. "The letter was one written in utter desperation and hopelessness. They were the words of a man who'd given up on everything, not just his plans to marry. It wasn't me he was casting aside, it was happiness and optimism and strength."
"Willa, I've looked over your credentials and you will make a brilliant accountant. But you've a great deal to learn about the unpleasant truths of life." There was some touch of honest sympathy in his voice. Somehow, that was worse than if he had spoken it mockingly.
She set her jaw. "Perhaps I am just not permitting the circumstances of my life to turn me into an unfeeling cynic, as some might."
"'Some' being me, I presume?" Alec watched her unsmiling.
"Perhaps." She was fairly sure she was not up for a battle with Alec Mandus at the moment.
"Good afternoon, Miss Grace." He said nothing more, looking down at a sheaf of papers on his desk.
Willa kept still a lingering instant, then turned and hurried from the office. That had gone very poorly. She'd hoped to confide in him, to perhaps gain a measure of comfort, to find out if there was anything of a kindred spirit in Alec; instead, she'd insulted him and listened to him denounce James.
Upon returning to her office, she took her seat at the desk and considered her options. It took less than a minute to come to the conclusion that she had none. She was pinned, trapped in London, trapped in the workings of the Mandus machine. The Manduses had worked their tragedy on her, after all.
But she would not give up. James was out there, and he still needed her. She would work, she would hope, and she would find him. If she supplicated herself after just one setback, she wasn't worthy of love and a happy ending. This was just a test, and she would triumph. Then let Alec Mandus try and throw his scorn her way. She'd deflect it with her bright future and leave him wallowing in shadows, scandals and mysteries.
:::
Despite her preoccupation with finding James, she found herself immersed in her work, which was challenging and rewarding. While none of the other managers, save Booth, warmed to her, she knew she'd earned their begrudging respect. Within the month, she began to tentatively offer suggestions for managing the company's finances more efficiently, and was surprised and gratified when Alec utilized them. The day came when she realized she had become a true part of the Mandus Processing Company, an epiphany that both satisfied and unnerved her.
The most disquieting aspect of the place was the obvious unspoken things. There was a black history here, and she knew it had more to do than a child being trampled, or the death of Lily and the twins, or Oswald's disappearance. Something that had to do with the factory itself. Something to do with the machine.
The first time she visited the stockyards and the product line was difficult, but she knew it was something she needed to see. Alec, whom she'd seen infrequently, actually came to offer her the tour personally. As they stood at the pen-fence, she looked at the multitude of pigs, sheep and cattle, and considered their imminent demise.
"Do you think," she asked suddenly, "that being part of a business who profits from death, even animal death, affects you adversely?"
Alec took some time before answering, also watching his livestock as they rooted and milled about in those close quarters of the yard. "I think it depends on how you view things. These animals will meet their end knowing they will be useful. They will end up helping many people to live. How many human beings can say the same? Most of us enter and exit this world without doing anything of any real value, and often we manage do leave some lasting harm. These creatures are vouchsafed a worthwhile purpose."
"Not by their choice," Willa noted.
"They can't make choices, Miss Grace," Alec countered. "And, if they could, I'd opine that none of them would choose vacant existence over an opportunity to do some good in the world. Animals are not, I believe, creatures of greed or selfishness. Such traits are birthed by free will."
The processing line was of some fascination to Willa - not for the slaughtering process, but because of what Booth had told her. She was able to witness the automation firsthand, and was amazed by it. Whatever else might be said of Oswald Mandus, it was clear he was a genius.
Alec showed her how quickly and humanely the animals were dispatched, which put her mind at ease at least somewhat. The machinery was kept immaculately clean, something Alec was extremely strict regarding, and the whole process was superlatively efficient.
She tried to engage Alec in conversation about his family, but he was stalwartly silent on the subject. She learned only that his father and his uncle had been bitterly estranged, and while Lily's ministrations had spurred a truce, full reconciliation had never happened.
:::
It was now the end of November, and London was bitterly cold, colder than any weather she'd ever experienced. A requisite for extra blankets had been fulfilled the day she submitted it, and she'd purchased for herself a small stove for her room, which gave off a bit of warmth. But it was still bitingly chilly at night as she slept, and Willa was beside herself how to remedy it.
The real problem was lack of insulation. The floorboards of the office and bedroom were sealed very poorly, and draughts from Cold Storage seeped in insidiously. One night, waked from sleep by a violent shiver, Willa couldn't stand it a moment more. She rose, lit the lamp, wrapped herself in her flannel robe and went to see if she could perhaps slip folds of paper into the floor cracks to seal them up somewhat.
She knelt, and her fingertips ran along the length of a board, only to find it jostle loosely in her hands. With some surprise, she tilted the board up and lifted it away, revealing empty space below.
Well, not entirely empty. In the darkness beneath her, she could see the faint outline of something. A grating, a rail, some rectangular structure. It was part of a machine, sitting dormant.
No. Not part of a machine. Part of the machine.
She was afraid of the factory in a vague way, but she was also maddened by curiosity. Enough so that she pried away three more floorboards, enough for her trim frame to slip through, and eased herself down into the darkness. Her stockinged feet touched a rail and rested there, while she reached down to grab hold of the siding of one of the machine parts, and climbed down onto the floor grating. The light spilled down dimly from her room above, illuminating dust specks that gave credence to the theory that this part of the factory had not been used, or even visited, for a long time.
She felt along the rail and came to a wall. There was a switch, which she flipped, and the corridor was illuminated by pale, sickly yellow light. The machinery closed in on all sides, providing only the narrowest path to some destination in the distance. Willa began to travel along it and walked a good thirty metres before coming to a junction.
The walkway ran both to her left and to her right, and she chose the latter, walking carefully along the metal grating, her hand dusting over the rail lightly. She had only gone a few metres when the passage opened up suddenly, and she was greeted by a staggering sight.
There was no longer a corridor. In its stead was a huge, cavernous expanse, a vast chamber whose perimeters Willa could not even discern. Machinery walled it as far as she could see, and it dropped down into the earth so far that no bottom was visible. Willa was stunned. This was no mere factory. This was the opus of a man obsessed.
She was standing on an overhang, with a set of iron stairs leading down to the right. Unable to stop herself, she descended down them and found herself inside a small alcove which hosted a wooden table, a chair, and a lamp. Atop the table were old papers, most browned from age. She examined them and found all blank, save one. It was inked with a careful scrawl, the words barely legible in the faint light:
We have discharged most of the builders. Some we will keep, for other uses. The ones who complained of the lack of light, the ones who only asked when they might eat their dinners, the ones who came morosely to hammer and weld and bolt, those we dismissed at the stage of completion. It is the ones who wondered, the ones who marveled, the ones who gripped my arm as I passed and begged to know what this all was...those shall stay. It is more than prudence; it is necessity. And they are prime candidates for continued employment here in the Machine. I could not answer their probing questions, but soon they will stop asking.
Oswald Mandus had written these words. He had sat here, at the table, and composed them as the machine was being build all around him, at his will. She was suddenly very afraid, afraid of a dead man whose vision was so strong, so relentless, it made a kingdom of metal and pistons and bogs deep below London. She should not have come down here. She should have left it all alone.
A sudden noise behind her had her whirling around. She came about to see the double barrels of a Browning shotgun aimed directly at her head. The firearm was held in the tense arms of Alec Mandus, who was still in his work suit, jacket left behind somewhere. Willa cried out, and Alec stared at her in shock.
"What in God's name...!" Alec exclaimed wildly.
"Alec, don't," Willa choked.
Alec lowered the shotgun quickly, unsteady, as badly shaken as she, it seemed. "Are you mad? Good God, Miss Grace. What are you doing down here? I thought..." He stopped himself with a sharp sigh. "How did you get down here?"
Her first inclination was to lie, but she couldn't think of a plausible one swiftly enough. "I was trying to stuff up the seams in my room's floorboards, and they came loose. I saw a passageway below the floor, and investigated."
Alec closed his eyes. "I don't believe this. Miss Grace, you should not be down here. This is not a working part of the facility."
"So I noticed," Willa said. "What is it, though?"
Alec shook his head. "My uncle built many things, not all of them part of the factory. Even I haven't explored everything he constructed."
His reply was evasive, and Willa noticed he hadn't answered her question. "Mr. Mandus, this place...is it wise to have a business operating within all of this? It seems the work of a madman, if you'll excuse my insensitivity."
"Oswald was mad," Alec told her unexpectedly. "He lost his wife, which crippled his soul, and then he went on sabbatical to Mexico where he caught some sort of fever which furthered his...imbalance."
"A fever?" Willa echoed.
"Some rare illness. He nearly succumbed to it during his return voyage. My father said it left him quite deranged. And then, when my cousins died, it was the final blow. He took leave of his senses completely and became obsessed with this factory. The fruits of his labors have been beneficial to the company, yes, but much of what he build is simply the product of a deluded, broken genius." Alec glanced around them, at the expanse of machinery. "He spent nearly every penny of the Mandus fortune funding the construction of all of this."
A realization dawned on Willa. "Is that why he and your father were feuding?"
Alec nodded. "Oswald was the sole inheritor of the Mandus estate, but it was assumed he'd distribute some of the money to my father. He didn't. After a great deal of legal battling, a very modest stipend was given to my father from the inheritance. All the rest went to Oswald...and this." He gestured to their surroundings.
"I'm sorry," Willa offered, and felt it was a rather inadequate sentiment.
"Are you?" Alec rejoined. "I'm not. Look what the Mandus fortune did for my uncle. Wealth is no guarantee of happiness, Miss Grace."
"And, at any rate, it's yours now," Willa noted.
Alec was silent, his expression shadowed. Finally, he nodded. "Yes. It is mine now." He gestured toward the stairs. "Go back to your room, Miss Grace."
Willa moved to obey, her mind swimming. She somehow knew instinctively not to mention the note Oswald had scrawled, and hoped Alec would not discover it himself. As she mounted the metal steps, Alec called to her. "Miss Grace."
She paused and looked over her shoulder.
"Don't ever come down here again." His face was still darkened by some unreadable emotion.
Willa said nothing, but hurried up the stairs, away from him and the great, grim machine.
:::
It was January. She had fallen into a routine, her salary had been increased satisfactorily, and Alec had been avoiding her ever since the incident inside the machine. For weeks she'd made inquiries about James, to no avail. All she could learn was that he'd left England several months prior, and there was no news if he'd returned. Before Christmas, she'd given up, and simply asked Fulton & Saunders, as well as other solicitors in the area, to please inform her if they heard from or about James.
Christmas had been a pleasant but not overjoyous affair. Alec had thrown a lavish party at the manor house for clients and peers to which she was not, unsurprisingly, invited. But he had come to dine with the managers in the North Building for a Christmas Eve luncheon, provided a spread that was very impressive, and made a little speech about how fortunate he and the Mandus Processing Company were to have them all in the business. There were oranges and commemorative watch fobs as gifts from the company, and each manager (and Willa) found at their place setting an envelope with a five-pound note as a Christmas bonus. All in all, Willa thought it above and beyond any employer's obligation, and was pleased.
And when she returned to her room, she found a beautiful, hand-woven rug folded by her door. A note was attached:
The missus made this for you. Hope it brings some cheer and color. Merry Christmas.
- Booth.
She heard nothing from Alec. She tried not to be concerned or stung. The hope of friendship with him had died the night he found her in the dark of the factory, but she couldn't help wishing they'd been able to manage it. She hoped an opportunity might later present itself to mend the rift, but there was no point being fixated on the subject.
But now, in January, something had happened to distract from all the minutiae circling around the company and her work. Something she'd never expected, beginning with a visit to her office from Alec himself.
He'd never come down to her room. All her interactions with him had been done via the pneumatic tubes, or in brief meetings in his offices above. Now, he leaned in the doorway looking rather indolent and amused, which piqued her slightly. "How is the morning faring?" he asked, in the sort of tone that made it obvious he was making small talk to prolong a moment.
"Well enough," Willa answered, pausing in her writing. "Keller informs me that Haverly's in New York is interested in increasing its order, so I'm seeing whether it's soundr fiscally to offer them a discount on shipping costs if they take on five extra crates rather than the requested three." She shrugged. "Nothing of real interest. May I ask what has the magnate of the company slumming in Accounting this morning?" Her smile tempered the words, making them friendly banter rather than biting commentary.
Alec nodded. "You may." His smile was faint, almost smug.
Willa sighed. "How may I help you, then?"
"I thought I'd come by because I can, I believe, help you," he told her. "I received something interesting in the morning's post."
"Oh?" Willa was quickly becoming tired of the verbal repartee. "Well, I'm glad you've had a productive start to your day."
Alec chuckled, and draw a cream-coloured sheet of paper from his inside breast pocket, unfolding it and examining it idly. "Apparently, there's a new soliciting firm opening here in London, run by one Mr. James Harsdale, recently returned from France."
Willa was on her feet in an instant. "James!"
Alec continued, nonplussed. "And aforementioned Mr. James Harsdale is hosting a small business dinner this evening at his residence for potential clients around the city." He folded the paper and shrugged dismissively. "Sounds dull as a tomb. I should throw the invitation out and forget it ever came across my desk."
"Alec, does it give the address?" Willa felt all the color had left her face. She gripped the edge of her desk to steady herself. "Please tell me."
"I'll do you one better, Miss Grace," Alec said. "I'll not only tell you the address, but I'll give you a twenty-pound per diem...if you attend the dinner as the representative of the Mandus Processing Company."
Willa felt dizzy. "Truly?"
"You can use the money to buy yourself a frock, and this way you can do us both some good. Just promise me that, between passionate embraces, you see if he'd be of use to the company." Alec extended his hand, proffering the invitation.
With trembling hands, Willa snatched it from him. She looked at the writing, reading her beloved's name over and over. "James," she breathed. "At last. I can't believe it."
"There's a shop on Dunstan that carries some decent gowns ready-made. I'd try there first." Alec said nothing more, turning and leaving her small office.
Willa barely heard his advice. She was too overcome. Finally, finally, happiness was within reach.
:::
It was raining - a sleety, fat shower - as she exited the taxi and hurried to take shelter under the awning of the house. At first, she thought she must have misread the address. The home in front of which she was standing was a beautiful three-story brick residence, newly-renovated and in one of the most fashionable districts of the city. James must have dine exceedingly well in France to afford such a home. Her joy was enhanced by the knowledge that he was no longer in dire financial straits. It would make things all the better for them.
She spent a moment making sure she was presentable, carefully adjusting her tortoiseshell comb as it lay nestled in the waves of her hair, smoothing the front of her gown. The dress she'd found was simple but elegant, a deep plum chiffon that was flattering but not ostentatious. She didn't want James to think she had begun putting on airs. He had told her many times how he loved her gentle sensibility, and she was not about to have him believe she'd lost it.
Heart fluttering with excitement and anticipation, she rang the bell. Almost instantly, the door was opened and a man stood ready invite her inside and to take her coat, which she gave along with the invitation Alec had tendered to her. The foyer was scattered with other guests, and the salon beyond was crowded with people. All looked cut from society's cloth, and she was again impressed with James' connections and wealth. She smiled at those around her, privately tickled at the knowledge that they were all about to witness a very emotional scene.
"Will you please tell Mr. Harsdale that Miss Willa Grace is here?" she asked the butler who'd brought her into the house. Before he could answer, Willa was distracted by a woman entering the foyer and moving toward her.
She was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous lady Willa had ever seen. Her hair was burnished gold, her eyes a wide, striking blue. Her skin was white and almost had a glowing pearl sheen to it. Her features were small and delicate, and she had a willowy grace that made her seem to drift, rather than walk. She smiled radiantly at Willa as she approached.
"Hello," the lady greeted warmly, her accent a lush French.
"Good evening," Willa replied, a little overwhelmed by the woman. "I'm here representing the Mandus Processing Company."
"Oh, how wonderful," the woman said with honest pleasure. "We were certain Mr. Mandus would not be interested in the dinner, but we were obviously wrong, and I am so very glad he asked you to come. We need all the beauty we can get in this throng of old men." She winked merrily, and then extended a satin-gloved hand. "I'm Mrs. Harsdale."
Willa's smile seemed affixed to her face. "Mrs...?" She said, and her voice didn't seem to be her own. It was though her mind decided to shut down slightly. All she could register was the nagging, persistent feeling that something was very wrong.
"Mrs. Harsdale," the woman repeated. "I'm sorry James isn't here to greet you - he should be along in a moment. He's being cornered by some steel mogul from Boston."
"No." The word was uttered very quietly and rather tonelessly. "You know James?" Thoughts were like cotton in her head. She couldn't process anything.
"I'm his wife. Are you all right, my dear?" The beautiful lady was looking at her with such tender concern. "Is the room overheated?"
"Willa?" James stood in the doorway, staring at her. Her eyes fixed on him. A hundred times, a thousand times, she'd rehearsed this moment. And now he was here, dashing in his coat and tails, holding a glass of sherry...and she was empty of thoughts and words entirely. "My God, Willa, you -..." He stood, tensed, stunned. "What are you doing here?"
And then, as though her poor, stricken mind hadn't enough to take in, she saw Alec Mandus come from the salon behind James, standing just outside the room, watching her with a beneficent smile. She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to make sense of it all. "James...?" she managed, her voice tight.
The Frenchwoman, his wife, his wife, took a small step back from Willa. "You two know one another?" she inquired. Her voice had lost a little of its warmth.
Willa felt buried. She felt as though a mountain of sand had come down atop her in a deluge. Alec was still smiling at her. "Please," she said, and was struck by how poor, how pathetic her voice sounded. "James, darling, please..."
"Damn it," was James curt epithet. "Willa, why the deuce are you here? I sent that letter and had done with you months ago."
Willa shook her head. "No. No, you...you said you'd given up hope. You were in trouble. I came to help you."
James rolled his eyes. "I was attempting to be tactful. Gods, Willa, it's just like you to dissect something someone says and take it literally."
She simply stood, frozen. Staring. Other guests had begun to come and see what was happening in the foyer. James sighed. "This is damn awkward, Willa. Tonight of all nights..." He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. His wife moved to him, putting her lovely, graceful arm around his shoulders in comfort.
Willa scrambled mentally to recall the letter. Circumstances have transpired to devastate any hope I ever held of bringing you to me and making you my wife...the 'circumstance' was standing there, beautiful and elegant, holding her James.
"Willa, you were right." It was Alec, speaking up, his eyes lit with amusement. "Never have I seen a more heartwarming, romantic reunion. It's everything one could hope for, and more."
And that was the final blow. Wordlessly, Willa turned and walked to the front door, opening it. Without a pause, she went out, into the rain. The moment her feet touched the sidewalk, she ran. Without direction, hope or will, she ran. Under the downpour, she thought she heard Alec calling her name, but she ignored it and ran on, desperate to be anywhere, as long as it was far from that beautiful house and James' beautiful wife, and Willa's own poor folly.
:::
It took her over an hour to get back to the factory, and she was soaked and freezing when she reached the gates. The journey through the rain-pummeled January streets without any coat or covering, save that thin dress, had battered her violently. Her lungs ached, and she could barely walk. The cold was vicious. Her poor, thin blood, unprepared for this cruel weather by life in the warm Caribbean, seemed to move sluggishly though her veins. She was chilled to the very marrow of her bones. Her head hurt; her mouth and nose were numb. She was exhausted from everything - rain, cold, James, Alec, the end of all happiness. There was no hope of her making it all the way across the courtyard to the North Building and, although part of her was ready to succumb to the notion of life fleeing her where she stood, a greater part was determined not to be found the next morning as a corpse outside the Mandus Processing company.
She kept moving, then, step by step, each breath like an icy knife going through her chest. The closest building was the chapel, so that was where she directed her course. It took long, painful minutes to reach the front doors and, when she did, she found them locked. But there was a small window to the right of the door's alcove, and this she was able to push open wide enough to crawl through. It expended the last reserves of strength to do so. She tumbled through the casement and collapsed in a heap on the marble floor of the interior, and did not stir for a long time.
Finally, though, she rolled herself onto her back, blinking up at the ceiling. Nausea roiled in her. The inside of the chapel was nearly as cold as outside, but it was dry, if dank. Weakly, she pulled herself up to all fours, and tried to stand. Leaning against the wall, she dragged herself to her feet, shivering violently. She had never been inside the chapel before. Now, through hazy vision, she took in the sight of it. What she saw was like something from a nightmare.
The pews were overturned, the standing candelabras knocked down. The aisle's carpet was faded, mouldering. But the horror came from the statues, the statues of Joseph, Mary and Christ. All of their heads had been removed, and replaced with the heads of pigs carved from stone. The stained glass at the top of the altar depicted Saint Dunstan, and his was the head of a pig as well. On the altar itself were strewn two desiccated pig carcasses.
She felt as though she were hallucinating. It couldn't be real. She wanted to get out, out of there, but she felt her knees buckling and her form dropping heavily to the cold floor. For a moment, it was utterly silent in the chapel, and she thought, inanely - If I die here and now, in this ghastly place, will it let my soul be delivered to Heaven? She closed her eyes.
There was a great cracking sound, a grinding noise, and the groan of wood against stone. She heard footfalls, and someone shouting. There was a brief sense of weightlessness before she realized she'd been lifted. An image of those statues coming to life and grappling her flooded her mind and she tried to fight against the arms holding her. She didn't even know if she was moving her body or not.
"Easy, easy!" A familiar voice. Booth's voice. And the volume rising as he called. "Here! She's here!"
She stopped struggling. There was silence again before, suddenly, she felt a warm hand on her cheek. "Willa." The voice was soft and resonant.
Alec. It was Alec. It was the first time he'd ever called her by her given name. She wanted to speak, but couldn't. She was losing consciousness. Dimly, she heard Alec speaking again.
"Bring her up to the house. I've sent for Dr. Miles."
And then darkness claimed her.
:::
Things came in snippets, in splashes. A slight prick on her arm, water, warmth. The scent of candle wax and of rosemary. Alec's low voice. A hand holding hers. Nightmares of pigs and cogs. A damp cloth running along her legs. A strange man's face hovering over hers, frowning thoughtfully.
Someone was speaking to her. Someone was telling her to fight, to try, to not give up. She heard her own voice, as though it were being piped in from someplace far away. "I can't..."
"You can. In your own words, Willa, you're young, healthy and determined." Alec. Alec speaking to her. "So fight. Come back to me..."
More nightmares. More stupor. Voices again. Then silence.
And, finally, a sense of placement. Coming into reality, slowly. So very slowly.
She was in a wide bed, swathed in warm, soft blankets. There was a canopy over her head, and a fire in the small fireplace that was set into the far wall. The room was lit gently with candles and, in a chair near the bed, Alec sat dozing, his legs stretched out in front of him, his form slouched.
Willa tried to sit up, but her arms were like ribbons fluttering. She fell back against the pillow with a moan. Instantly Alec jerked up, looking over to where she lay. "Willa," he said, puching the sleep from his eyes with the heel of his hand. He had never looked so vulnerable before.
"Where am I?" she asked, and was startled by how thin and weak her voice sounded.
"At the house," Alec replied, rising slowly. "In Lily's old room. It's the most comfortable place, and has the best bed. You've been very ill. So ill Dr. Miles thought you mightn't come through it. Your fever broke last night, though, thank God."
Will looked around her dazedly. "I remember...the chapel..." She tensed at the recollection.
Alec was at her side in a moment. "Don't, Willa. We can talk about that later, but I promise you it's all right."
She looked mournfully up at him. "James..." And the whole evening came crashing back to her in a tidal wave. Her eyes brimmed with hot tears.
Alec took her hand up in both of his. "Willa, I am so very sorry. I behaved terribly. I know there's no hope of your forgiving me but...well, maybe one day you'll come to believe that these last few days have been an epiphany for me in many regards. I did this to you. If I'd comforted you, or called James out, if I'd done any of a dozen decent things, you wouldn't have almost been lost to us."
"You knew," she said, the accusation almost more painful than James' denouncement. "You knew he was married. You sent me there knowing what I'd find."
Alec shook his head emphatically. "I didn't, Willa. I swear it." He sighed, leaving her only to draw the chair up to the bedside and seat himself again, looking at her unhappily. "What I did know was the obvious thing you refused to see - that James was no longer interested in marrying you. I tried to talk to you about it, but you were so very determined, and so blinded by your love and faith in him."
Willa looked away from him. "I think Roscoe and my mother knew, too. I think that was the real reason they wouldn't let me take the position here; they knew what was waiting for me in London. They knew James didn't want me anymore."
"But I had no idea he had gotten married while he was out of the country, Willa," Alec said earnestly. "I'd gotten fed up with your refusal to see the truth, so I sent you to that dinner expecting James would have to make it plain to you himself, to your face. I thought it the only way you'd ever accept it and move on."
"But, at the party, you were so...cruelly mocking," Willa said, looking back to him in misery.
"I know. I was monstrous. There's no excuse for it, save that I was gloating over finally being right and you being wrong for once."
Willa blinked. "What are you talking about?"
Alec chuckled bitterly. "You've shown me up countless times. Your ideas for the financial operations of the company have run circles around my own implementations. You carry with you such a belief in hope and success that you make me look a fool for my pessimism. You're so undaunted that I couldn't take it. I lashed out from spite and jealousy, and the desire to keep you at odds with me."
She couldn't believe it. "Why would you want us to be at odds?"
Alec shrugged. "Because I was coming to admire you, Willa. Admire and care for you. And every night I'd come back to this house, and I'd see Lily's portrait. I'd think of how grief unmade my uncle, how it drove him to madness and an early grave, and I'd be terrified of the same thing happening to me."
"Alec..." she began, but he touched his fingers gingerly to her mouth to halt her speech.
"But when we found you in the church, and when Dr. Miles said he thought you might not live, I realized - Oswald may have had tragedy cut him down, but before that he had love and happiness. He had something I did not, so who was really the more fortunate man? I know now, to the depths of my soul, that if Oswald Mandus had been given the choice to love and lose his Lily, or never know her, he would have chosen the former without hesitation."
She didn't know what to say. She could only gaze at him, stunned.
"I know your heart belongs to James still, even with all that's happened," Alec told her. "I'm not asking for anything from you, except that you rest and recover. I've torn up the two-year contract, and if you want to return to Montserrat, I'll pay for your passage personally. I hope, though, once you have your strength back, you'll consider staying on. I've come to depend on you, as has the company."
Willa glanced about the room furtively. "I...I'll need time to think on it, Alec."
He seemed stung, but he nodded. "I understand. Take all the time you need. Now try to get a little more sleep." He rose slowly. "I'll be here if you need anything."
Willa nodded, and allowed herself to drift off.
:::
"This is ridiculous." Her complaint was offered petulantly. "Why can't I just go back to my office?"
Alec was setting down another stack of papers on the table beside the bed. "Because Dr. Miles said it's too draughty there for you. Once you're fully recovered, you can go back. For now, this will have to do."
"I feel a fool," muttered Willa, pushing herself up to sitting. Alec began tucking pillows behind her back to secure her position.
"You're the one insisting on working," replied Alec, nonplussed. "While I admire the initiative, you could always give yourself another week or two."
"Absolutely not," chuffed Willa, stoutly. "I'm so far behind as it is. We're nearing the end of the quarter. What are you going to do - rope Mr. Keller into doing the books? He'll swallow his own tongue in rage."
Alec laughed. Willa was charmed at the sound, and tendered him a smile. He reached to pat her hand warmly. "All right. Ignominious as this may be, I know you'll make the best of it."
"I just can't bear not being useful, Alec," she told him. There was a pause. "And remember tonight."
He too, took a moment, the smile fading from his expression. "Yes, I know. I'll have supper brought up here and I'll tell you what I can."
Willa's eyes narrowed. "Alec. Not 'what you can'. Tell me what you know. If you care for me, you cannot keep these things from me, no matter how merciful your intentions."
He nodded, resolute. "Very well. Until then, see about saving the company's finances, hm?" He winked, and took his leave.
She had asked and asked, all through the ten days she'd been thus far bedridden, wanting to know about the chapel. Needing to know. Had she been able to come up with her own plausible explanations, she might have been more willing to forego prodding him about it. But there simply were no explanations plausible enough to reconcile what she'd seen, and her nightmares plagued her. Over and over, she saw the decapitated statues, the marble heads of pigs cemented onto the stumps of the graceful necks. Why? Why? She knew it meant something, something to do with Oswald, with the factory, with the journal entry she'd found in the innards of the Machine.
That evening, true to word, Alec arrived with a tray of food - simple, clean fare that Willa worked at slowly. He poured her a glass of claret, which she was grateful for, and she said nothing to him, letting him decide when and how to begin.
"It isn't as terrible as you think," was his opening salvo. She remind silent, but raised a brow. The chapel had been the stuff of her nightmares for days; she had a need to disagree with the statement inherently. "I suppose its folly to think you believe the factory to simply be a manifestation of genius and industry. That's all right; you're correct in suspecting more. Suspecting worse, perhaps."
He took a sip of his wine and settled back in his chair by the bed, not looking at her. "My uncle was not a well man. Most would say it was Lily's death that begin to work him toward madness but, to hear my father tell it, Oswald was always a bit touched. But her death rocked him to his core. The deaths of his sons, Enoch and Edwin, tilted him further. And, finally, his illness in Mexico wreaked holy Hell on his brain. An avalanche of misfortunes all miring him deeper into madness.
"He began to believe in nothing good within the world. He believed humanity had slid irrevocably into worthlessness, depravity and greed. I suppose there are days I'm inclined to agree. But he returned from Mexico and focused all his will on the factory, picking from his poor, addled brain the tainted brilliance still left, and building the great Machine of which you've only explored a fraction."
"Have you seen it all?" Willa asked pointedly.
"Actually, no," Alec told her. "There was some sort of breakdown in the lower levels, and large pieces of the machine came loose and fell, blocking passages to the bottommost floors. At first, I was determined to send teams down to clear the mess, but I realized it might be better not to disturb things. That, and I don't know how dangerous it might be down there. There's no power to those places, thankfully, so no danger of any sort of explosion or such, but flooring could be rusted and fragile, or there might be chemical leaks of some sort. I almost feel as though the lowest depths of the Machine are Oswald's mausoleum, and there's no desire in me to dig up the dead."
Willa tensed. "Roscoe said Oswald disappeared during the incident with the livestock getting loose," she recalled aloud. Her eyes focused on Alec. "Do you think he died there, down in his Machine?"
"I think he's dead, yes," Alec answered. "I don't think he'd ever willingly abandon the factory or what he built; his obsession was far too great. And I think that, if he died, he died somewhere he'd want to end his days. Nothing was more important to him than the factory."
"What about the chapel, Alec?" Willa pressed. "If you're evading..."
"I'm not," assured Alec. "Oswald spent a great deal of time with livestock, pigs in particular. He had to, obviously, running a meat processing company. He came to see pigs as nobler, more honest and decent, and far more innocent than mankind. He admired them greatly. He lauded their intelligence and cleanliness. Eventually, he revered them."
"The statues..." Willa murmured, stunned.
Alec nodded. "A declaration of Oswald disowning humanity in favor of a better, in his mind, species. The chapel was never open for regular service, so it was his own sanctuary."
She was still exhausted, still slightly addled by the illness, or she would have remembered all the other questions she'd collected since first arriving. But fatigue had made hazy the usually keen mind not given to lapses in memory. All she could do was nod, overwhelmed by this new chapter of the Manduses, of the Processing Company and the Machine.
Alec rose, frowning down at her with concern. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you. It might've been a poor choice, and I may have to endure reprimand from Dr. Miles for it."
"No," protested Willa sincerely. "No, Alec. I'm glad you told me. I'm so tired of secrets, of shadows and mysteries. I had rather know and be horrified, but have a chance to work it all out inside of me, than to be kept in the dark."
Alec's frown shifted into a wry but admiring smile. "I believe you would. And it's something I admire keenly in you, Miss Grace." He reflected, expression again changing to something sober. "Do you know - Lily was a beautiful, kind and vivacious soul. I think, though, that had she been stronger, had she been determined and courageous as you, Willa, she might have survived whatever curse lay on the Manduses and this place."
"I have no intention of succumbing to any curse, Alec," Willa informed him crisply. "Despite my being bedridden for the moment, and despite my circumstances."
"Hold fast to that credo," Alec advised. "And I sha'n't ever be afraid for you." He reached to touch her gently under her chin, then left.
:::
A month later Willa had returned to her work fully, and within a week she'd accomplished so much it was as though she'd not taken ill at all. Mr. Keller's relief at her return was both surprising and palpable. He seemed disinclined to renew his former condescending opinion of her, and she counted it one of the silver linings from the grey cloud of her illness.
Booth came to visit her, laden with home remedies and edible fortification from the missus. Willa accepted these gladly and gratefully.
Alec wanted her to move into the main house and, initially, she refused on the charges of propriety and not wanting to risk the other workers ire at favored treatment. After constant, good-natured haranguing by Alec and an assurance from Booth that no one would fault her for moving someplace warm to protect her health, she relented.
Alec assured her it would be done aboveboard in all ways. The house was enormous; she could almost have her own wing if she chose. Willa neither desired nor required anything ostentatious, so one afternoon she made sure to finish her work a little early, and invited herself to explore the manor and choose a space in it for her residence.