Maids of Misfortune by M. Louisa Locke Page A

Voss cut off all funding to his son and demanded he return to San Francisco to take up a position in the furniture company. Matthew had hoped this would settle the young man, but he had indicated that it had not had that effect.
    Matthew recently hinted he had some new scheme in mind to get Jeremy to change his ways. "I'll teach the young jack-a-napes the value of honest work, even if it kills him," had been Matthew's exact words. She wondered what the scheme had been and whether Jeremy had known about it before his father's death.
    On either side of Jeremy stood two women dressed in deepest mourning. The striking young blonde on his left, dressed in an extremely smart black silk, leaned close to Jeremy, staring intently up at him. She was biting down on her full rosy lip and wrinkling her delicately arched brows above clear blue eyes in quite a fetching manner. Jeremy seemed oblivious to her. Annie was wondering who she was, since she knew Matthew had no daughters, when Hetty turned and whispered to her.
    "Do you see to Jeremy's left? That's his fiancé, Judith Langdon. We were all really surprised when they announced last month. No one ever expected him to get caught so soon. Her mother was ecstatic. Judith is one of my most intimate friends, and I know for a fact that she is frightfully poor and needed to marry money. She's welcome to him. Just look at him. I'm sure he'll be a trying husband. My George never bothers me with a fit of bad temper."
    Only vaguely listening to further revelations about what Hetty's George never did, Annie continued to study the scene in front of her. The motive of the young blonde’s mother might have been mercenary, but judging from Miss Langdon's expression, the daughter's was not. She wondered why Matthew had never mentioned the engagement.
    A small movement turned her attention to the woman standing to Jeremy’s right. With shock, she realized the small, ethereal creature with an astonishingly tiny waist must be his mother, Amelia Voss. Even her long gauze veils couldn't hide the fact that Matthew's wife was much younger than her husband had been. Matthew had mentioned his wife's youth, but Annie realized that she had been picturing a woman who, after over twenty years of marriage and the birth of a child, had faded into a comfortable middle age. While it was impossible to distinguish much about her features or coloring from behind her veils, the bare hand that reached up and clutched her son's sleeve appeared exquisitely slender and pale. His fiancée may have been focusing all her attention on Jeremy, but all of his attention was turned to his mother. He took Amelia Voss's hand in one of his and drew his other arm around her waist, gently supporting her.
    As he did so, Mrs. Voss turned her head to look over at a man who had moved to her other side. Just as Annie was wondering who he was, Mr. Stein enlightened her by muttering to himself, "Ah, there's Samuels. Good fellow. They'll need his support now more than ever."
    So that was Malcolm Samuels––Matthew's business partner and oldest friend. Matthew had talked at great length about this man: stories of how they had met at a muddy river crossing on the way west, of the difficulties they had surviving the terrible year they spent panning for gold, and the risks they had taken in opening up San Francisco's first wholesale furniture enterprise. Quite soon, a division of labor between the two partners had developed. Matthew ran the day-to-day affairs of the company, including managing the factory. Samuels took care of the supply and sales sides of the business. He traveled up and down the coast, even taking trips back east and abroad to contract for lumber and to maintain their markets. Matthew had felt bad that the peripatetic nature of the business had kept Samuels a bachelor all these years.
    Annie remembered him saying, "I had the best of the deal. Poor old Malcolm never got to settle down. He says the traveling suits him, but I know