Night, Moonlight, And Lips

During the social season, the whole of Baltaheim scarcely had a moment to breathe.

The ladies took turns hosting tea parties in their manor gardens. A lavishly kept garden spoke directly to a house’s standing, and the poetry they recited there, in cultured tones, showed off their refinement.

The gentlemen, for their part, took to the woods, newly woken from their winter sleep and alive again, to show off their strength and stamina in vigorous hunts. When a hunt wasn’t enough to burn off their restlessness, they gathered in little clusters of three and four for tennis and croquet.

And to crown all those long hours, when the cool nights of early summer came on, nobles of every circle gathered to throw dazzling banquets. They ate and drank, laughed and chattered, and reveled the long night away.

For the merchants and bourgeois men of business, it was nothing short of a golden age. This was the one season when Balter’s deep-pocketed nobles could be counted on to loosen their purse strings. And this season, one gold mine above all others had caught their eye: House Ernst, beyond all doubt, holder of the railway monopoly.

“Your Excellency, I am truly grateful! I swear to repay this kindness with nothing less than the finest quality!”

Alfred Krupp¹ bowed his head again and again in thanks from across the negotiating table. His father had made a fortune in the distribution trade and then founded a small steelworks; by Alfred’s generation, the factory was growing steadily.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Your Excellency would choose our Krupp works.”

Alfred could not raise his bowed head, and his shoulders trembled.

I’d heard he’d been struggling to keep the business afloat of late, what with all the other steelworks backed by such vast capital.

I remembered an article I’d read some time back in the financial papers. Watching Alfred choke back tears like a child, I could feel the weight he carried on those shoulders.

“I will never disappoint you.”
“That’s enough. Raise your head.”

Herman spoke flatly, unmoved by Alfred’s piteous state.

“Truth be told, I’d meant to go through with the contract with a different factory. But my wife said it might be worth my meeting you first.”
“The lady said so?”
“That’s right. There’s no one in all of Balter, she said, with a passion for steel to match yours.”

His bloodshot eyes came to rest on me. I gave an awkward smile and nodded back at him.

“I paid a visit to your factory a few days ago.”
“Y-Your Excellency went to the factory yourself? I was told nothing of any such thing…”
“Who goes announcing a reconnaissance in advance.”

Herman gave a shrug, as though there were nothing more absurd to say.

“Seeing it for myself, your casting technique is plainly a cut above the other factories’. You feed the metal between rotating machines, I noticed.”
“Ah, yes. That’s right. We use a method that compresses heated iron through rollers.”

The moment talk turned to steelmaking, Alfred’s eyes lit up. Passion and dreams shone in them.

“That way we can produce far greater quantities, and quickly.”
“Nothing could be better suited to turning out rails, then.”

Herman drew the contract Alfred had signed toward him and looked it over. Then, with a dubious expression, he asked again, as if to make certain.

“Still, quick as it may be, I hardly think you can meet the quota in a mere hundred days. Why not give yourself a little more room in the schedule.”
“No. It is entirely possible.”

I couldn’t help being inwardly startled at the firm assurance in Alfred’s reply. How could he do in a hundred days what other factories had said would take more than a year?

He doesn’t seem the type, but it could all be so much empty talk.

He had a good name in the trade, which was why I’d recommended him to Herman myself. Still, there was no telling; he might be blinded by the great sum of money and spinning a lie. And yet, for all that, Alfred’s eyes brimmed with sincerity. Confidence fairly poured off him at a glance.

“This is a state-led enterprise. It must not run afoul of a single law. You don’t mean to break the labor laws, I trust?”

Herman asked without mincing words.

“S-surely not. Not with a blade at my throat would I think of breaking the law. I only wish to stress that, with our technique, we can absolutely deliver by the date you’ve set.”
“Since you’re so confident, let’s add one more clause to the contract.”
“What sort of clause…?”
“A clause that, should we pay your factory an unannounced visit and find you’ve employed child laborers or worked your men past their hours, the contract is void. And the penalty for breach, of course, falls entirely on you.”

So saying, Herman tipped his chin and sounded Alfred out.

“Still possible, even so?”
“But of course. It is possible, Your Excellency.”
“Good, then. Let’s make the contract.”

At Alfred’s assurance, Herman signed with a slight smile. Then he handed the contract off to the lawyer and offered Alfred his hand.

“I’ll count on you.”
“The honor is mine!”

Alfred clasped Herman’s hand in both of his and bowed deeply from the waist.

“And to you, my lady, my heartfelt thanks. I’ll work as hard as the faith you’ve shown me deserves.”

He thanked me too, over and over.

After Alfred and the lawyer had followed the butler out of the drawing room, I leaned back against the sofa with a curious sense of accomplishment.

Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve watched a contract signed in person.

These past several years, I had helped Cedric’s business in all manner of ways, but at the moments that truly mattered I could never be at his side, and every effort I made remained my husband’s accomplishment alone. Not once had I thought it unfair. If anything, I had taken quiet pride in it all this while, for I believed my husband and I to be one and the same.

“My wife said it might be worth my meeting you first.”

But the moment I’d heard Herman say that, I realized it had all been a delusion of mine. Having my own part in things acknowledged turned out to be a rather wonderful feeling.

“Well done.”

As I was turning the moment over in my mind, a glass of water was set abruptly before me. I quietly took the glass Herman held out.

“As you know, most said it would take upward of a year, so I’d all but given it up. But it seems you were right — meeting the head of the Krupp works was the thing to do.”
“…”
“All of it, thanks to you.”

I blinked at Herman in a daze.

“It was only natural. I’d resolved to make myself useful, after all.”

I sipped the water as though it were nothing, answering as if none of it mattered. And yet even something as soft as water wouldn’t go down my throat easily.

Perhaps this was the simple word I had wanted to hear all along.

Cedric had praised me with every kind of honeyed flattery, yet never once said the one thing I truly wanted to hear. And this man, who only ever spoke in prickly, cutting tones, had handed me the very words I longed for, as though he’d read my heart.

“Herman.”
“Mm.”

Herman, one leg crossed over the other as he looked over another contract, slowly raised his head at my call.

“I’ll work even harder.”

All at once I thought I understood why the men of Herman’s fleet had, to a one, held such steadfast loyalty. He was not a man to take another’s contribution for granted.

“Enough. It’s already more than plenty.”
“Even so.”

House Ernst, like every noble house in the season, had no time to spare. That Herman was driving the railway enterprise onward went without saying; and I, helping with his business while I waited for word from the detective Richter, was no different.

And yet why did these frantic, crowded days feel more alive than any I had ever known?

Surely a certain someone’s steam-locomotive passion had simply caught and spread to me as well.

“What is she on about now, wanting to throw herself into it even harder.”

It wasn’t as though cutting a corner here and there would see her turned out of the house.

Deep in the night, Herman murmured low, gazing at his wife slumped asleep over the study desk, her glasses not even taken off. Scattered across it were the documents on the railway land, his greatest headache of late. He carefully slid the papers from her hand and squared them away neatly in one corner.

“Gloria.”
“…”
“Glo…”
“Mm…”

Her red lips worked in a small, mumbling motion. He wanted to tell her to go and sleep properly in bed, but he hated the thought of waking her from so sound a sleep yet again. Left to his own wishes, he’d have swept her up and carried her over, but then she’d only insist on walking herself and ask to be set down. Or she’d thank him for waking her and settle right back down at the desk.

“At this rate it’s an addiction. A work addiction.”

As if in answer to his muttering, his wife stirred her lips in another mumble. With no help for it, Herman fetched a thin blanket from the bedroom and laid it gently over her small frame, so she wouldn’t take a chill. Even that seemed not enough, so he snuffed the lamp on the desk and, reaching out quietly, slipped the round glasses from her face as well.

His wife was still sunk in deep sleep. And well she might be; for days now she’d not managed even ten hours of it.

“What in the world is going through her head.”

One moment she carried on as though she’d leave him at any instant; and now, why did she give herself over like this, as if she meant to hand him everything she had?

He gazed at the woman’s face as if it might yield an answer, and all at once her small lips, where the moonlight lingered, filled his sight.

He wanted to touch them. That was all it was.

The woman still wandered somewhere in a nameless dream. Herman brushed his broad thumb across her lips, wishing she might, please, not wake for a long, long while.

“Sleep well.”

At that lullaby of a farewell, the woman smiled faintly. If only he could, he thought, he would cut that smile out small and pin it to this night.