A Gilded Lady Read online

  Books by Elizabeth Camden

  HOPE AND GLORY SERIES

  The Spice King

  A Gilded Lady

  The Lady of Bolton Hill

  The Rose of Winslow Street

  Against the Tide

  Into the Whirlwind

  With Every Breath

  Beyond All Dreams

  Toward the Sunrise: An Until the Dawn Novella

  Until the Dawn

  Summer of Dreams: A From This Moment Novella

  From This Moment

  To the Farthest Shores

  A Dangerous Legacy

  A Daring Venture

  A Desperate Hope

  © 2020 by Dorothy Mays

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-2510-5

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Jennifer Parker

  Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC

  Author is represented by the Steve Laube Agency.

  This novel is dedicated to my mother,

  Jane, the inspiration for Caroline.

  Like Caroline, my mom is smart, classy,

  and a lot tougher than she looks.

  That’s always been a lot for me to live up to,

  but I am forever grateful.

  Thanks for everything, Mom!

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Books by Elizabeth Camden

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Historical Note

  Questions for Discussion

  Coming Soon: The Prince of Spies

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  One

  JULY 30, 1900

  There was no such thing as a typical day at the White House, but Caroline Delacroix’s morning took a particularly difficult turn the moment she walked into her crowded office.

  “The king of Italy was assassinated last night,” George said from his desk. George Cortelyou was President McKinley’s personal secretary, while Caroline served in the same capacity for the first lady.

  “What happened?” she asked in stunned disbelief.

  George relayed the appalling details in his typically efficient manner. After awarding medals at a sporting event near the Italian city of Milan, King Umberto had boarded an open carriage. An anarchist rushed the carriage and fired four shots directly at the king, who died on the spot.

  “He was the target of assassins for years, but they finally got him,” George said, his expression grim. With his graying hair, trim mustache, and flawless suit, George projected implacable confidence, but it was obvious the morning’s news had rattled him.

  “I’ll arrange for the first lady to make a condolence call to the Italian embassy this morning,” Caroline said.

  George sent her a grateful nod, for few people liked dealing with Mrs. McKinley. Ida McKinley was short-tempered, judgmental, and blunt to the point of rudeness. It was Caroline’s job to soften the first lady’s reputation. It hadn’t been easy, but Caroline was good at it. Her day began before breakfast and ended only after Mrs. McKinley turned in for the night. She worked seven days a week alongside George to coordinate schedules and manage the official business of the White House. The work was exhausting, but it was also an honor and a privilege.

  Today her main task would be to orchestrate the condolence call to the Italian ambassador’s wife, the Baroness Vittozzi. Caroline would help Mrs. McKinley navigate the minutiae of diplomatic protocol with grace, for any misstep would reflect badly on both the president and the United States. Unfortunately, Mrs. McKinley was prone to veering off on ill-advised tangents, so Caroline needed to be on guard.

  Two hours later, she boarded a carriage with Mrs. McKinley and set off for the Italian embassy.

  “The baroness is addressed as Lady Vittozzi,” Caroline advised Mrs. McKinley. “She doesn’t speak English, so I will translate for you. Given the number of people calling on her today, our visit should last no longer than ten minutes.”

  “Excellent,” the first lady said with a brief nod of her regal head. Mrs. McKinley’s steel-gray hair was woven like a coronet around her head. She’d once been a beautiful woman, but illness had marred her face into a permanently sour look.

  Carriages lined the street for blocks near the ornate Italian embassy, where every window was already covered in black mourning crepe. A dozen visitors filled the lavish drawing room, all waiting their turn to offer their condolences to the baroness in her private receiving room. Caroline guided Mrs. McKinley to a padded sofa to await their turn. It wouldn’t be long, for protocol would move the first lady to the front of the line.

  The gilt-encrusted door at the far end of the drawing room opened, and the archbishop of Washington left the baroness’s parlor, his audience concluded. He walked slowly, his black and scarlet robes swaying majestically as he moved through the crowd of mourners. The usher nodded to Caroline, and she leaned over to help Mrs. McKinley rise. Ida McKinley was only fifty-three, but her prematurely gray hair and the cane she used to compensate for a nerve-damaged leg made her seem older.

  The baroness was dressed in full mourning, her black silk gown spread artfully across a bench and her face covered with a transparent black veil. She nodded in greeting.

  “Avete le nostre più sentite condoglianze,” Caroline said with a deep curtsy as she entered.

  The baroness murmured a response, and Caroline provided the translation for Mrs. McKinley.

  “Lady Vittozzi appreciates your sympathy. All the people of the city have been so kind since the terrible news arrived last night.”

  Mrs. McKinley nodded and took a seat. “Tell her that if there is anything our nation can do to assist during Italy’s time of need, she need only ask.”

  Caroline translated as the first lady continued to offer perfectly appropriate generalities about the mysteries of God’s ways and praise for th
e fallen King Umberto. All was proceeding smoothly, something that could never be taken for granted with Mrs. McKinley.

  Then the first lady began recounting the one time she had visited Italy during a grand tour of Europe several years earlier. “We enjoyed Rome, especially the ancient ruins and the opera house. Sicily, on the other hand, was terrible. No electricity, leaky roofs, and the only plumbing dated all the way back to the Renaissance. It was mind-boggling.”

  Caroline froze, praying the baroness truly didn’t understand English, for the ambassador’s family came from Sicily. Behind her veil, the baroness swiveled to look at Caroline, her face perfectly blank as she awaited the translation. Caroline couldn’t tell an outright lie, but neither could she translate what Mrs. McKinley had just said. Both women looked at her with expectation, and Caroline chose her words carefully.

  “Mrs. McKinley admired the architecture of Italy,” she said in Italian. “How clever the Italians are to have had modern conveniences like plumbing all the way back to the Renaissance. It was truly astounding.”

  The baroness smiled and nodded, and the remaining few minutes proceeded without incident. Beneath her skirts, Caroline gently tapped Mrs. McKinley’s foot, signaling it was time to rise and end the call.

  “That went quite well, didn’t it?” Mrs. McKinley pronounced once they were aboard the carriage and heading back to the White House. She didn’t wait for a reply before continuing her monologue. “Terrible tragedy about the king. Simply terrible. Nothing like that would ever happen to the Major, of course.”

  Mrs. McKinley always referred to her husband as the Major, for they had met shortly after the Civil War, when Major William McKinley was still in uniform. Over the years he’d served as a congressman, a governor, and now the president, but his wife still called him the Major. Caroline thought it rather charming.

  “The Major is too popular to ever arouse that sort of ire,” Mrs. McKinley continued. “Everyone likes him.”

  “While it’s true that everyone likes him, that doesn’t mean they will vote for him,” Caroline said. She was veering into dangerous waters, but it had to be done. The presidential election was in four months, and despite William McKinley’s popularity, nothing could be taken for granted. He had been too busy with the duties of his office to campaign, and his wife never offered to help. She was the least popular first lady in history, and Caroline had been hired to help correct that image.

  Working for Mrs. McKinley was like walking a tightrope. At any moment it could snap, but so far, Caroline had been able to support the infamously difficult first lady without allowing Ida to trample her. When in public, Caroline was the epitome of deferential respect, but in private their relationship shifted. They bickered, gossiped, laughed, and fought. The first lady even insisted Caroline call her Ida in private.

  “I want to wear your sapphire earrings tonight,” Ida said.

  “Why?” Caroline challenged. She and Ida regularly borrowed each other’s accessories, for they were both shamelessly vain when it came to fashion. Still, if Ida wanted a favor, she ought to ask nicely.

  “Because the last time I wore them, the Major said they lit up my eyes.”

  “Then buy your own sapphire earrings.”

  Ida let out a bark of laughter. “You have no respect for your elders.”

  “Why should I?” Caroline tossed out. “I’m the one with the sapphire earrings you want so badly.”

  If she gave Ida an inch, the woman would take fifty miles. Still, Caroline had a grudging respect for the first lady because she saw a side of her few people did. Ida’s health was brutalized by epileptic seizures, a crippled leg, migraine headaches, and periodic spells of melancholy that robbed her of the ability to rise from bed. Mrs. McKinley was in danger of becoming a recluse due to her infirmities and often stayed locked in her bedroom, where she obsessively knitted baby booties.

  Both the president and Mrs. McKinley’s doctor recommended more interaction with the world, so Caroline had begun arranging regular tea parties with charitable groups and the wives of government officials. If loaning Ida a pair of sparkly earrings made her feel better, Caroline would happily do so.

  Especially after the kindness both McKinleys had shown her. Last month Caroline’s brother had been arrested for treason in Cuba. Caroline had immediately offered her resignation, but the president refused to take it. Luke hadn’t been found guilty yet, and the military was keeping the scandal quiet until his fate could be decided.

  Luke had always been a reckless daredevil who tempted fate and got into one scrape after another. But a traitor? Caroline couldn’t believe it of him. Somehow Luke had stepped into a dangerous mystery down in Cuba, and she would do her best to unravel it.

  But if that failed, she needed to nurture her connections in the White House in the hope of someday winning a presidential pardon for Luke. Treason was a hanging offense, and if Luke was found guilty, her connection to the McKinleys might be her only chance to save her brother’s life.

  Two

  Nathaniel Trask was a lucky man. Returning to Washington, DC, fresh off a major triumph and the assurance of a promotion, he vaulted up the steps of the Treasury Department. Exhilaration from his victory in Boston still pulsed in his veins, for he loved nothing better than solving complicated criminal schemes.

  It was seven o’clock on a Thursday evening, but it went without saying that his boss would still be in his office, for Nathaniel and Wilkie were like-minded people. They shared a friendship that dated back to their Chicago days, when John Wilkie was a crusading journalist and Nathaniel a hard-boiled detective on the city’s south side. When John Wilkie became the unconventional choice to lead the US Secret Service, he brought Nathaniel along with him, and ever since they had worked side by side to restore the agency’s tattered reputation into one of faultless professionalism.

  Nathaniel’s footsteps echoed in the empty corridors as he made his way toward the wing housing the Secret Service administrative offices, where Wilkie welcomed him with a broad grin. At forty, Wilkie was only two years older than Nathaniel and the youngest chief in the history of the Secret Service. He dressed in completely ordinary clothes and had nondescript hair. Only a reckless flash in his brown eyes hinted at his adventurous streak.

  “There’s the man of the hour,” Wilkie said, giving Nathaniel a hearty handshake.

  Nathaniel returned both the handshake and the grin, the tension from the five-month Boston assignment beginning to ease. Now that he was home, it was time to file the paperwork documenting how a gang of forgers had pulled off a million-dollar fraud by making counterfeit postage stamps. It had been a clever scheme. Fake paper money was under constant scrutiny, but who ever thought to look for fake postage stamps? The gang had made a healthy living off those counterfeit stamps for years before Nathaniel managed to track them down in Boston.

  “News of the arrests has already made the local papers. Have a look at that,” Wilkie said as he tossed Nathaniel a newspaper folded open to the feature article.

  Government Agent Foils Band of Scoundrels and Their Postal Depredations

  “‘Postal depredations’?” Nathaniel asked. “Who writes this dreck?”

  The slow smile that spread across his boss’s face was all the answer Nathaniel needed, for Wilkie had made a name for himself in the Wild West of yellow journalism in Chicago and knew how to spin the press. “I suggested a few colorful phrases to the reporter. I’m glad he took them. You’re a hero.”

  “So long as they didn’t mention my name,” Nathaniel cautioned. The Secret Service was the wrong line of work for anyone craving fame or riches. While he loved the challenge of hunting down criminals and hauling them into a court of law, he’d never cared for attention.

  “No names,” Wilkie assured him. “Still, it was brilliant work, and you’ve saved the government a mint. Literally. We should go out for a drink.”

  “We should, except I don’t drink, and you never go out carousing this early in the eveni
ng.”

  Wilkie snapped his fingers in mock dismay. “That’s right. Foiled again.”

  Nathaniel and Wilkie were complete opposites, but it never hampered their friendship. Nathaniel was obsessively tidy, sober, and a rule-follower, while John Wilkie was freewheeling and hard-drinking, but they respected each other.

  “Now,” Wilkie said as he returned to his desk, “about that promotion I mentioned.”

  “Yes, about that.” It was hard to guess what Wilkie had in mind, for Nathaniel already occupied the top position in the counterfeit division.

  “I know you hate the prospect of a management position,” Wilkie said.

  Nathaniel stiffened. “Yes.”

  “Which is why I have something completely different in mind. You’ll like it. A new challenge. You’ll meet interesting people and have loads of responsibility.”

  Then why was Wilkie suddenly so eager to sell the position to him? Nathaniel had never balked at an assignment before. He’d sweltered in copper mines in New Mexico, ridden payroll trains through the desolate flatlands of the West, and once he’d lived for six months above a fish cannery to spy on international exports.

  “What’s the job?” he asked softly.

  “It’s the most important one in the agency. Pays well. Good housing.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “Guarding the president.”

  Nathaniel bolted out of his chair. “Absolutely not. I’ll never work as a bodyguard. You know that.”

  Wilkie held his hands out in a placating manner. “Calm down. President McKinley doesn’t want a bodyguard either. He thinks it smacks of European royalty and wants nothing to do with it.”

  “Then why are we having this discussion?”

  “Because I need a detective in the White House. One who never misses details, even if he’s been on duty around the clock. You don’t need to be plastered to the president’s side. He doesn’t want that any more than you do. But I need someone to monitor who has access to him. King Umberto of Italy was assassinated last night, and the man who shot him was a known anarchist. A system should have been in place to keep an eye on troublemakers like him. I need you to design such a plan for the White House.”