New York - The Novel

for certain, Mrs. Master,” her friend was saying, “but”—she seemed to hesitate for just a second before continuing—“if perhaps there was a widow who was thinking of marrying Mr. O’Donnell, a lady used to running a house of her own …”
    Mary’s mouth opened. What in heaven’s name was Gretchen talking about? A respectable lady marry John O’Donnell? Had she gone out of her mind?
    But Gretchen was blithely ignoring her. She was talking to Mrs. Master as if she were imparting a secret that Mary mightn’t want to discuss.
    “If that was the case, and the lady had strong opinions of her own about how to run a house …”
    And now Mary understood. She stared at Gretchen in wonderment. How was it possible that her neat little friend, with her angel face, could be making this up so easily as she went along? How could she tell such lies? Well, not technically a lie, she wasn’t actually saying this widow existed—only asking: what if she did? But all the same … Mary knew she couldn’t have done such a thing herself in a thousand years.
    “It would be difficult for Mary, then, to live in that house,” Gretchen explained. “It may seem foolish—”
    But Mrs. Master interrupted her. “It does not,” she said, very firmly, “seem foolish at all.”

    Frank Master was just looking at Saratoga on the map when Hetty appeared. She was alone.
    “The girl was no good?” he asked.
    Hetty smiled. “Actually, she’s perfect. Very respectable. She and Gretchen live practically next door to each other. In Germantown.”
    “I see. Her family?”
    “The father’s a mason. A widower, about to marry again, I think. And guess where he worked for years?”
    “Tell me.”
    “The Croton Aqueduct.” There was a gleam in her eye. “Who knows, he may have seen you propose to me.”
    “Ah.”
    “I do feel, Frank,” she said, “that this is fated.”
    Frank Master gazed affectionately at his wife. He wasn’t a fool. He knew when he was beat.
    “We’d better hire her, then,” he said.

Crystal Palace
1853
    T HE EASIEST DECISION that Frank Master ever had to make in his business career occurred in the summer of 1853. He was standing in his counting house. It was a nice old brick building, with a warehouse behind, that looked out onto the South Street waterfront. The sun was shining brightly on the ships crowding the East River beyond. Two of those ships belonged to him—one a sailing ship, a rakish clipper bound for China, the other a side-wheel steam vessel about to depart for the isthmus of Panama. The cargo of clothes she carried would be taken overland across Panama, then carried by another steamer up to California. The people who’d been flocking to the gold-rush towns in the last few years might, or might not, find gold. But they needed the tough, durable clothes manufactured in New York, and Frank Master had made plenty of money shipping them.
    Master was in cotton, tea, meat-packing, property speculation. But he wasn’t getting into this deal.
    “Gentlemen,” he said, “I want no part of it. And if you take my advice you’ll give it up before the commodore comes back. Because when he does, it’s my belief, he’ll skin you alive.”
    “Won’t be much he can do,” said one of them.
    “He ain’t so tough,” said the other.
    “Wrong,” said Master, “on both counts.”
    There was always something Cornelius Vanderbilt could do.
    Steam-powered vessels had been in use on the River Hudson for morethan thirty years, yet the steamship had taken a surprising time to enter the Atlantic trade. A British rail company had started it off, but it was an enterprising Loyalist family named Cunard, who’d fled to Canada a couple of generations back, who’d first run steamships successfully across the ocean. The New York men aimed to catch up quickly, though. And none had been more daring than Vanderbilt.
    He came from old New Yorkers, English and Dutch, but he’d started poor—even poorer than Astor. Hetty Master didn’t like him. “That foul-mouthed waterman,” she called him. It was true that he’d started life rowing a boat, and his language was certainly colorful, but he had genius, he was ruthless, and his steamships had made him one of the richest men in the city. Crossing the commodore was a bad idea.
    Frank Master never crossed Vanderbilt. He’d made friends with him. When Master had wanted to run steamships down to Panama for the California trade in which Vanderbilt was