Chapter 1
Christmas, New York City, 1946
Peggy Carter didn’t think she had ever seen Angie Martinelli’s eyes so wide in her life.
“I thought you said this was a small, intimate gathering of Howard Stark’s closest friends!” Angie’s stage whisper was loud enough to echo in the marble foyer, turning more than a few of the glittering, well-coiffed heads standing there, blinking in curiosity at the pair.
“That’s what he told me it was,” Peggy shot back, decidedly more quietly and with far less panic. “This was supposed to be a quiet holiday get together.”
Even as she said that, Peggy could hear the strains of a band in the back of the house opening into a jazzy rendition of a Christmas song, with an all too familiar voice on the microphone speaking over the crowd noise.
Angie cocked her head, her gaze accusing. “Is that Bing Crosby singing?”
“It sounds like him,” Peggy affirmed, glancing down at the simple green velvet dress she had donned and realizing it was horribly inadequate for this situation. She could see that Angie, in her sweet red plaid number, was also comparing it to the elegant cocktail dresses around her and finding it lacking.
“I need to go home before anyone sees me,” she muttered, panicked, as she attempted to hide behind Peggy, as if somehow that would make it all better.
“Angie, you look darling! Don’t be like that!”
“Peggy, do you know the type of people who are here? I mean, that man over there looks like he’s Clark Gable…oh my God, he is Clark Gable!”
Blessedly, before Angie could swoon into Peggy’s side, someone else was at her elbow with a steadying hand. “Yes, that is Mr. Clark Gable, Miss Martinelli, and I do believe that the governor and the mayor are somewhere at this event as well, though I lost track of all my VIPs long ago.”
Edwin Jarvis looked cool, calm and collected on his surface, but Peggy could read between the lines to see that Howard’s valet and butler was anything but. “What happened to the intimate gathering between friends, Mr. Jarvis?”
Only the slightest, aggrieved flicker surfaced in Mr. Jarvis’ expression. “Mr. Stark has a great many friends, Miss Carter, and even more acquaintances, and…well he had a hard time choosing just who to invite to his Christmas celebration.”
This shouldn’t have surprised Peggy, and in fact, it didn’t, but it still left her and Angie at odd ends. “We were expecting it to just be…well…a few of us.”
“I am not dressed for Clark Gable,” Angie insisted, darkly, as if poor Jarvis had anything to do with the miscommunication of just what sort of event this was.
“Quite the contrary, Miss Martinelli, I think your simple, quaint dress to be just the right sort of understated attire around Mr. Gable. With any luck he will barely notice you.” Jarvis arched an eloquent eye that spoke volumes about his opinion on that particular movie star. “If you would like, considering the guest list, I could make some introductions for you…”
Having Howard’s butler introduce them to Howard’s elegant, glittering guests felt jarringly in bad form to Peggy. “Where is Howard? Shouldn’t he be making these introductions?”
“I’m afraid he’s indisposed at the moment.”
Edwin Jarvis was the discretion personified, but Peggy Carter was still an operative with a spy’s training. “Indisposed” could mean any number of things with Howard; he could be in his lab, he could be with a woman, he could be truly unwell. None of those things felt quite right, however, and Peggy pushed further. “Indisposed being code for?”
The corner of Jarvis’ mouth pulled slightly with a hint of worry. “I believe I last saw him heading to his private study.”
Not the usual place she would think of Howard during a party. “Did he mention why?”
“No, but he did ask for the good brandy when he went in. I obliged, of course, and have been overseeing guests ever since.”
Puzzled, Peggy glanced towards the marble staircase that led to the upper floors. “When was that?”
“An hour ago. I should perhaps check on him soon.”
“I will go.” Peggy held up a staying hand. “After all, someone needs to keep the many plates spinning down here. Perhaps you could show Angie around.”
Poor Angie plucked at her darling, if a bit practical dress, looking like she would much rather crawl into a deep, dark hole somewhere and pretend that she was invisible. “Mr. Jarvis, you don’t have too…”
“Nonsense!” He pulled himself up to his full height, holding out an arm to her. “I believe you look appropriate enough for this affair. You are a theater actress, correct? I believe that there is a producer here who is rather good friends with Mr. Stark, he might be someone you would like to get to know.”
Peggy watched Jarvis capably lead the still uncertain Angie through the foyer and towards the noises within the house beyond. Her dear friend and roommate shot Peggy one half-desperate look, but Peggy shooed her on with a brisk flick of her fingers, smiling until the pair were out of sight. Once they were, she turned, taking the stairs lightly up to the second floor of the house, hoping madly that Howard was alone.
Of the many properties Howard owned, his main house in the city was the one she knew the least. Outside of his vault, which he now no longer used, she had no other real reason to visit his home and less reason to go anywhere that wasn’t a public room, so it took her several tries of opening heavy oak doors before finding the one that led to Howard’s study. The door silently opened into a large, wood-paneled room, so masculine it might as well have a dead stuffed thing on one of the walls. As it was, the space was lined with shelves of leather covered books and strange, ancient looking instruments, broken up here and there by oil paintings of an incongruously more modern artistic sensibility than the heavy, brooding room with its dark oak and thick, dark green carpet would present. As for the man occupying it…
“This room is off limits!” From behind the large, leather office chair Howard’s voice rang out, cold and authoritative in a way she rarely ever heard him in their work together. He was turned towards a roaring fireplace, keeping away the December chill out of the room, and the only illumination outside of two lamps on either side of the large space. On the desk behind him sat an open decanter of what Peggy assumed was the fine brandy Jarvis had procured for him and a crystal tumbler, still filled with at least a fingerful of the golden liquid. How much he had drunk already was unknown, but judging from the decanter it was not as much as he could have.
“Did you hear me? This room is…” He spun angrily about, halting in mid turn, his toes skidding on the carpet as he caught sight of Peggy now halfway across the space, arms crossed as she eyed him. “Oh…it’s you.”
“Merry Christmas to you too, Howard.” She smirked, sauntering to his desk to pick up the bottle where it sat, studying it pointedly. “You know you were the one who invited me over for this ‘quiet, private gathering.’ You do realize none of those statements are true about what is occuring downstairs.”
He didn’t apologize for it, snorting as he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sorry for the shouting, thought you were one of the dames down there looking for me.”
Unlike Steve, Howard didn’t bother apologizing for his use of slang. “Hiding from your admirers? That isn’t much like you.”
“Sometimes a man has got to get his head on straight, you know.” He shrugged, scowling as he picked up his drink, knocking back the rest of it in a swallow. Peggy watched him with a frown, studying the other contents of his large desk. Papers were stacked in one corner, a notebook in another. A small box of what looked like photographs sat close at hand, black and white images, loose and jumbled together, several scattered just within the circle of light made by the fireplace behind Howard. Peggy picked up several within reach, curious, far too quick for Howard’s sudden, fumbling hands to snatch them away.
“Hey, do you have to stick your nose in everything?”
“With you, yes,” she shot back, cheekily, ignoring his dark scowl as she studied the candid snaps and various portraits, all of a time and place unfamiliar to Peggy and far removed from Howard’s Park Avenue address. “Are these of you?”
Howard glared at her, but was not intoxicated enough to foolishly try and snatch the pictures back from her. “Some of them.”
Peggy grinned, searching through the faces of small children in what looked to be a school picture of some kind. The small sign that sat in front of the children seated on the ground read “St. Ignatius." The small group of them were hemmed in by two rather severe looking nuns. “Well they look positively frightful!”
She flipped the photo towards Howard's bleary gaze, tapping one of the intimidating women with a polished nail. He snorted ruefully, nodding. “Sister Maria-Theresa, she was the anvil. Sister Daphne over on the other side was the hammer. To this very day a woman in black wool and white linen makes me break out in hives. I swear I can still feel the crack of their rulers on my knuckles.”
She laughed, glancing at the photograph to see which one of the small, round faced boys was him. “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”
He grunted, shrugging as he reached for the brandy bottle. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
This much was true. Howard’s life was a carefully cultivated story, the tale of a brilliant boy genius who had risen from the bottom to the top based on his own intellect, cunning and moxie. There was little room in his swaggering, brash self-image for hard truths about growing up a poor kid on the Lower East Side.
Carefully, Peggy set down the photograph into the little cardboard box. “So what about all of this has you hiding and brooding in your office instead of at a party you clearly invited everyone under the sun to attend?”
“Can’t a guy get moody and contemplative if he feels like it?”
“Yes, but you are a man who likes a party, Howard.” She shrugged, hiking a hip to the corner of his desk to perch on it. “What gives?”
“If I tell you, will you go away and leave me to mope in peace?”
“Depends on how good your story is,” she returned, cheekily. It didn’t improve his mood. Instead, he silently reached for the pile of papers at his elbow, removing several on top, before pulling out a telegram, passing it across the desk to her silently. She took it up, tilting it to the dim light of the fire to read the matter-of-fact letters typed across the cream-colored page.
Regret to inform you of Walter’s passing. Went peacefully in sleep. Mother well. Will call tomorrow with further updates. G. Stern.
Confusion and sympathy rose to the fore as she flicked her startled gaze towards Howard. He was lost in the depths of his crystal tumbler, however, studying the play of firelight in the leaded glass and deep, golden liquid. “Who is Walter?”
“Walter?” He chuffed, dryly and sadly. “Says it so matter-of-factly, doesn’t it? Walter Stark was my father.”
He might as well have been talking about an employee, or even one of the guests in the party she could hear faintly below, for all the warmth and grief he showed. She frowned, setting the paper on the desk beside her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m not,” he shrugged, diffidently, putting the glass to his lips. The long pull of alcohol he sipped seemed to say otherwise.
“I take it that you two weren’t very close.”
He snorted softly as he swallowed, before voicing a wry chuckle. “No…no we weren’t.”
Somehow, Peggy had guessed that was the case. Howard never spoke of his family, save for one brief outburst over the summer during an argument. She had guessed by the way he derided his family’s lack of wealth and connection that his childhood hadn’t been a happy one, certainly not one he wished to relieve. “Was he ill?”
“Don’t know. I haven’t spoken to the man in ten years.”
Peggy winced. “It says your mother is well at least. I am sure she is devastated.”
“Doubtful as they couldn’t stand each other.”
Peggy couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately dramatic out of the grief of loss or if he was speaking in earnest. “If they hated each other, why were they still married?”
“Catholic, remember?” He sipped from his glass again. “Mom at least was adamant on it. Technically, she was the Catholic. I could have gotten dispensation from the Pope and she’d still have refused to leave him. As for Walter…well, he always did need someone to take care of him, get him out of his messes.”
He spoke with bitter anger, a sentiment she didn’t think she had ever heard out of her friend once in all the years she had known him. “I am sorry.”
He finally looked up at her, his dark eyes bright with alcohol and old hurt. “Thanks, Peg. Sorry I’m lousy company at the moment.”
“You were there for me after Steve.” It had come to hurt less, somewhat, saying that now. A year-and-a-half already and she could finally say his name without stuttering. “I cried through all your silk handkerchiefs and you never complained.”
The faintest of smiles pulled upwards. “Steve was worth every bit of the loss of a few silk handkerchiefs. He was worth all of your tears. Losing him hurt, Peggy, for me too. I know not the same way as it hurt for you, but…he was my friend. He never sucked up to me because I was rich. And he knew what it was like being from that kind of neighborhood. He and Barnes…both got it, you know.”
She did. “But your father?”
The glimmer of good humor disappeared at that. “My father was a hard, angry man who resented the fact that his son succeeded in everything he failed at.”
It was on the tip of Peggy’s lips to try and reassure Howard that wasn’t true, but she found she couldn’t. She hadn’t known his father, and certainly didn’t know enough about him to defend him. Still, the very idea horrified her, that a father would ever feel that way about his son. “I’m sure he was proud of you.”
“Only insofar as he got something out of it.”
Peggy wasn’t willing to contradict him, not in this state. “You said he sold fruit on street corners?”
“Yeah…sometimes boot polish, or chewing gum. The newspaper racket always was a young kids’ game, but he’d sell odds and ends, try to make a living.” As he spoke, the carefully cultivated trans-Atlantic accent he had possessed for as long as Peggy had known him melted, somewhat, into something harder, wiser, and more worldly, a vestige of his roots on the Lower East Side. “What he didn’t drink away at the bar he threw into whatever his newest money-making idea was.”
“He was an inventor?”
“He was a tinkerer,” Howard sneered, waving his free hand dismissively. “He was a kid from rural upstate who figured out a few bright ideas and thought he could come to the big city and be the next Thomas Edison. Problem was that everyone thought they were the next Thomas Edison. So what, he invented a nifty gyroscope that kept perfect balance? Doesn’t do a lot of good if you don’t know how to pitch it or sell it.”
Peggy watched as he sipped from his brandy, surprised at the amount of derision and anger out of her friend for his father. “What did he intend to use it for?”
Howard snorted. “He wanted to patent it as a toy and sell it like a top, something for kids to goof around with. The precision needed to craft it alone would have cost more than it was worth to mass produce it. I won’t lie, it was a nifty little piece. A bit of recalibration and I repurposed it in my design for the torpedoes we used on our submarines during the war.”
“You took your father’s toy design and used it for a weapon of war?” Even Peggy found herself smirking at the strange irony of that.
“Yeah,” he chuckled, softly. “Yeah, I did. It just seemed to work. That was the problem with a lot of Pop’s ideas, though. He’d come up with something and act like it was the next best thing since peanut butter, but he couldn’t think of what to do with it or where to go with it, how it would be useful or improve people’s lives. All he could think of was that it would get him rich, quick. It never did. Hard work, sacrifice, those were never in his vocabulary. He used to say ‘Howie, my boy, just the next big idea I have, we will be living on easy street, just you see!’ Meanwhile, there is my mother trying to make a go at it for all of us. Worked her fingers to the bone for a pittance. Always swore once I made it big for real she would never have to sew a stitch ever again.
“And has she?”
“Only because she doesn’t trust the maid to do it.” He set down his glass, still half full of brandy, turning it between his fingers. “I spent my entire childhood watching those two make each other miserable. Part of why I swore off marriage, frankly. You see enough of that and it makes you wonder what’s the point?”
“Not every marriage is like that, Howard.” Peggy couldn’t help but think of her own parents, joined together out of the shared pain of loss of her uncle in the war, and of Edwin and Ana, who gave up so much so the two of them could be together. “Just because your parents’ had a broken marriage, that doesn’t stand to reason you will as well.”
“The Starks are a selfish lot, Peg.” He dolefully shook his dark head. “It comes with the engineer's brain, I think, we get so caught up in ourselves and in our own heads, we don’t have time for anyone else.”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at his pontificating. “I think it has less to do with you engineer’s brain and more to do with your ego and pride. And it sounds as if your father had the same problem.”
“I won’t argue with you on that, Carter.” He gave her a small, wry, self-deprecating smile. “Hence why I refuse to saddle myself on someone else. Unlike my father, I know what I am like. I am selfish, self-centered, and a jerk, but my sense of self-interest only goes so far. I’m not willing to make someone else miserable just to say I have a wife. I don’t need one to take care of me, that’s what I have Jarvis and a bevy of hired servants for. I certainly don’t need a woman’s money. And as for more…physical needs, well I’ve never had a problem with that either.”
Typically, Peggy would have rolled her eyes in vague disgust at the unspoken suggestion in his words. She had made no secret about her thoughts on Howard’s lifestyle, the way that women threw themselves at him, or the string of broken hearts he left behind him with careless indifference, a habit that had nearly ruined his life where Dottie Underwood was concerned. She had never worried herself with why he was that way, only that he was, and it hit her how very little she knew about her friend.
“That’s a very lonely way to live, Howard,” she murmured, sadly.
“Yeah, but it’s a good way not to ruin someone else’s life. I’d be an awful husband. Imagine me with a wife, or even worse, a kid? I’d ruin both of their lives just by being my usual, thoughtless self.”
Peggy wasn’t as sure Howard would be as bad as all of that. “You don’t want to have children someday? Someone to inherit all of this?”
“And create a bunch of spoiled brats to fight over my estate? Yeah, I’ll pass on that. Though…” He paused, a soft, speculative expression on his face. “I don’t know, there are days I think about it, about a family and a legacy, people to grow old with. I always thought a little girl would be nice. I mean a boy wouldn’t be bad, but let’s face it, chances are high he’d take after me and I’m self-serving enough for several generations of Starks. But a girl might be smarter than that, you know. All the women I know are worlds smarter than me in that department.”
“I will not argue with you on that point,” Peggy replied, pleased he had realized it himself.
“Besides, if I have a daughter who turns out like me, I could just send her to become a nun!”
He said it with such a straight face, Peggy missed the glimmer of laughter in his voice. “Howard Stark! You would suggest that you would…
“Or I could just send her to her Aunt Peggy and have her train to be a fighter,” he easily supplied, gleeful he had stirred her up. “Then she could fend off anyone and live with her pop for the rest of her days.”
“And that is so much better?”
“Better than eternal vows and wearing gabardine for the rest of her life. But it’s all hypothetical anyway. I am not looking for kids, and even if I was, I doubt I will live long enough to grow up enough as a person to make any.”
“Don’t say that!”
“And how about you?” He pivoted away from thoughts of dying young, deflecting the uncomfortable situation back to her. “You’re alone. You’re a beautiful woman, Peggy, and I say that fully aware that you are one of my best friends and would break my arm if I so much as touched you. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about you and want what’s best for you. You aren’t like me. You deserve to have someone in your life, a family. You ever think about it?”
He achieved his goal of changing the topic, all right. Peggy felt her heart seize at his words, the memory of Steve rising, unbidden, to the fore. “I mean sure, I’ve thought about it. But how does one move on from the love of their life?”
She was still trying to figure that part out.
Howard eyed her as he would one of his inventions, as if trying to stare into her brain to figure out what made it tick. “You and Sousa…”
She shrugged. “He’s off in the new Los Angeles field office now. Besides, I am happy just the way I am, thank you. I have a career, I am slowly earning some modicum of respect. I don’t need a husband to define my life or give it value.”
Howard arched a knowing expression at her. “Not even for companionship?”
“Unlike you, I don’t need to have someone in my bed to be less alone.”
“No, but having people in your life to support you is always nice. And I know you have this whole ‘I can do this alone’ mentality, but you don’t have to…”
The door to his study opened again, surprising both of them as they turned to find Angie peeking her head in, a champagne glass in her hand and already a slightly giddy smile on her face. “Hey, here you are! Why are you hiding up here?”
They both blinked mildly at her till Peggy took point, sliding off the corner of Howard’s massive desk. “Chatting, Howard is having a bit of a rough day. I see you found the champagne.”
“I did! And I am meeting the most amazing people!” She slipped past the heavy door, grinning at them both. “Howard, I am so glad you are rich and know these amazing people.”
Like magic, Howard slipped easily into his public facade, saluting Angie with his own brandy. “Anything for you, Miss Martinelli.”
“And that is enough of that,” Peggy cut in, without the sharpness she would have earlier in the evening, but with just enough firmness to warn him off of her roommate. “Perhaps Angie is right and we should return to the ‘small gathering of friends’ you convened.”
His facade faltered somewhat. “Peggy, I don’t…”
“Come on, Stark,” Angie cajoled, cheerfully. “Why throw a party you aren’t even going to go to?”
“The number of times I’ve actually done that, Miss Martinelli, would blow your mind.”
“I’m sure,” she giggled, before giving them both the most stern stare she could manage given that she had down most of her current glass of champagne, and who knows how much more before that. “Come along, the both of you. I’m tired of being left all alone in this party.”
As if he wasn’t just brooding silently into his brandy just moments before, Stark grinned cheerfully. “And a pretty thing like you shouldn’t be alone at a party like this, not when Clark Gable is around. Did you see I got Bing here? I won a bet last month at Santa Anita. Man seriously would live at the horse track if you let him.”
Howard had wandered around his desk to Angie, taking her arm companionably to stroll out of his office. Peggy trailed behind them both in mild bemusement. Before they got through the heavy oak door, however, Howard paused, turning to her, his facade slipping just a little. “Listen…for all of that just now…thanks.”
“Of course,” she replied, unthinking. “I’m your friend, Howard. I’ll always be here when you need. You just need to think to ask for help.”
He said nothing further on that, only smiled and nodded, throwing on the old Howard Stark razzle dazzle once more. “So Peggy tells me you’re an actress. She ever tell you I want to get into motion pictures myself? I’m looking at a couple of studios…”
Peggy trailed behind her friends, into the gaiety of the holiday whirl, thinking to herself it was horribly sad that Howard believed he could only be alone. While she couldn’t ever imagine him settling down to a family and living a domestic life, the notion he didn’t think he was worthy of it saddened her more than anything. How different would his life be with someone to care for in it, someone who made him want to be a better and more selfless person?
But then, Peggy supposed, as all three of them wandered back into the warmth and cheer of Howard’s “small holiday gathering," sooner to get a leopard to change his spots than to get Howard Stark to be selfless about anything.