Chapter Text
‘Again, sir?’ Jarvis asked, with something like exasperation.
‘Oops?’ Howard offered with only the minimum amount of assumed repentance.
Jarvis sighed. ‘Sir, there is only a finite number of young women qualified to undertake the duties of a secretary to yourself. You cannot keep on seducing them into your rooms.’
‘Oh, so they’re all my fault?’ Howard asked with a slight pout. ‘You do realise that some of them come onto me in this very office.’
Jarvis balked. ‘You mean that I need to clean that chair?’
Howard looked down at the chair in interest. ‘You mean you don’t clean this chair?’
‘I didn’t realise you were cavorting in the chair!’ Jarvis insisted defensively, cheeks flushing.
Howard threw his head back and laughed. He stood up. ‘It’s all right, Jarvis. Geez, you need to calm down a bit. I’ve got a meeting to get to. You can clean the chair while I’m gone. Then you can look into getting me a new secretary.’ He picked up his briefcase and walked out of the office, leaving Jarvis to it.
Howard strode down the hallway of his office building and stepped into the elevator. As the lift moved, he sighed. With the Korean conflict called to an end (finally!) Howard’s number of military contracts had lessened. Many of them pertained to the conflict so, with its end, Howard was freed up to work on the sort of things he much preferred.
One of which was the results his scientific division had come up with. Once the Sarge had found out what’d happened in ’46 with Steve’s blood he’d had pretty much the same reaction as Howard’s cousins. But he’d gone one step further. Seeing as a similar serum had been used on him, the Sarge had rolled up his sleeve and given Howard a blood sample.
Dr. Shields was the head doctor commissioned for the experiments with the blood. He’d picked out various other doctors he knew from work and various medical conferences that would have the expertise and the interest in curing the diseases to work on the project. Howard had received a lot of criticism, mostly from his business associates and board members, on the extremity of his security measures around the project. They all insisted it was overkill. Howard spoke to Shields about it.
‘More like under-kill,’ Dr. Shields said. ‘Sure, it’s the best technology you can come up with, but this is the most coveted thing in the world right now, if it was publically known about. Super-soldier blood is so rare, it would fetch a mint on the black market. If anyone’s calling your security overkill, either they severely underestimate how valuable the blood is or they want to get their hands on it themselves and the security measures make it impossible.’
With that statement, Howard dismissed the issue from his mind. Dr. Shields was right. Already three lab assistants were on the watch list because of things they done or said which left Shields with the feeling they’d like to walk off with the blood, and one man had been fired because he’d tried to pocket the vial of blood and walk out with it.
The lift opened and Howard walked out.
Immediately, the women in the office turned their attention towards him as he walked through. Howard watched, in his peripheral vision, as several women fluffed their hair, checked themselves, changed the positioning of their clothes on their bodies, or shifted their sitting positions. Women practically threw themselves at his feet.
Just once he’d like to meet a woman he had to work for.
***
Jarvis slipped his spectacles on as he went through the relevant paperwork.
The woman was certainly qualified. She’d been recommended by a colleague. Miss Frasier had been very...enthusiastic upon the recommendation of the young blonde lady before him. She was young, certainly. He’d place the girl in her early twenties. A quick glance at the data in front of him told Jarvis that she was, in actual fact, just 21 years old. The information made Jarvis cringe. She was young enough to be naive and gullible but old enough for Mr. Stark to justify it if he did take her to bed.
Unfortunately, the final decision was not up to Jarvis. He was only Mr. Stark’s butler. He handled his home and estates. His business, on the other hand, was someone else’s responsibility. Miss Maria Collins Carbonell was hired due to her impressive work record – the sort of precision and efficiency generally seen in one of middle age or late middle age.
So Jarvis ended up leading her through the Stark Mansion to Mr. Stark’s home office. He knocked on the door and led her in. ‘Your new secretary, sir.’ He handed Mr. Stark the papers.
Mr. Stark looked at the papers first – Jarvis knew he’d oogle her in a moment. ‘Maria Collins Carbonell.’ He lifted his eyes and gave her a smile – the kind of smile he generally reserved for women he found particularly attractive. ‘Two last names? Mind if I ask why that came about?’
‘Oh,’ Miss Carbonell said. ‘I was originally born Maria Collins, but my parents died in a car accident when I was a young child. I was adopted by a couple called the Carbonells. They were good enough to me that I felt comfortable taking on their name on top of my birth name.’
‘I see.’ Howard looked her over with a wry grin – more of a leer actually. ‘Well, I suppose we could start with a shoulder rub.’
Far from looking uncomfortable, Miss Carbonell just about smirked. ‘I don’t believe that’s in my contract, Mr. Stark.’
‘I could put it in your contract.’
‘I could always resign.’
Mr. Stark chuckled and said to Jarvis, ‘I like her.’
There was something in his tone – something Jarvis hadn’t heard for a while.
Had Miss Carbonell truly earned Mr. Stark’s respect in the space of thirty seconds?
***
‘I thought you didn’t like her.’
Karen Frasier was sitting in the diner with her friend, Deidre Hawkins. They were talking about Maria Collins Carbonell, of course. Maria had been the bane of Karen’s working life. She was over ten years younger than Karen and hadn’t been at Stark Industries long at all, yet she had already been promoted much faster than Karen was and was already in an equal position in the company as Karen herself.
‘I don’t,’ Karen said. ‘She’s a pretty little doll who got up to where she is by her looks alone. She knows nothing of hard work and I’m the only one who seems to realise it.’
‘So why did you recommend her to be your boss’s personal secretary?’ Deidre asked.
‘Because Mr. Stark cavorts with every secretary he has.’ Karen’s eyes glinted in amusement. ‘They always leave afterwards, ruined by a womaniser who only cares how many notches he has in his bedpost.’
Deidre leaned back slightly. ‘She’s just a girl.’
‘She’s a little toad,’ Karen said. ‘I’ll be glad to be rid of her.’
This was the last time Deidre would meet with Karen; the last time she would call her “friend”.
Within the next few weeks, Karen would find her friends rapidly decrease in number.
(In ten years or so, she would be considered a laughing stock amongst those people.)
***
Mr. Stark, Maria mused, was not so bad to work with. He took his responsibilities seriously, he was usually one step ahead of both herself and Mr. Jarvis, and he had, after all, built this company from the ground up. That was no small feat. Maria had found she didn’t even mind the consistent flirting. That was just his way. He had a playful personality and he enjoyed the company of ladies.
Right now, for instance, he was drifting through a crowd of women, who were smiling and giggling as he interacted with them. Maria didn’t know why, but she’d never been quite so silly. Howard Stark’s reputation was well-known, and the sheer number of women coupled with the lack of other men should have been a dead giveaway. Pure childish naivety, in Maria’s mind. The millionaire wasn’t going to change because one woman happened to be particularly pretty or particularly talented under the sheets.
Mr. Jarvis came to her side and began reloading his tray with champagne glasses. ‘I don’t imagine this environment is particularly enthralling for you,’ he said.
‘We have our duties to perform,’ Maria stated. ‘If that means standing around with a group of fools, then so be it.’
Mr. Jarvis looked up at her curiously. ‘Fools?’
Maria gave him a wry smile. ‘Do you really suppose there are so many loose women in one spot? Of course not.’
‘Then how do you explain...?’ He gestured around.
Maria smiled. Edwin Jarvis was an English gentleman. There were a lot of things he either didn’t understand (because he was not exposed to them often) or that he oversimplified.
‘It’s a nesting thing. We women are primarily attracted to two things: looks and stability.’ This was something her step-mother had told her long ago. ‘Good-looking men are more likely to produce healthy offspring. Stability,’ she gestured to their boss, ‘in this case, extreme wealth ensures that such children are sufficiently provided for. Like I said, it’s a nesting thing.’
‘Miss Carbonell!’ Mr. Stark called.
Maria walked through the crowd, pointedly ignoring all of them. Her step-father had told her that people were small-minded and thus easy to manoeuvre around if you only knew how. It was something she had never forgotten; something she had honed into an art form. Now, she overheard one of the women (prospective conquests) speak to her friend (another prospective conquest). She was sure it was either not meant to be heard or meant to be heard and expected to be ignored.
‘You’re joking, right? That little girl?’
Maria turned her eyes to the woman and said demurely, ‘I’m quite sure your mother would have taught you better manners than that, miss.’
The woman balked. The women around her giggled. When Maria turned her attention back to her employer, she saw a strange, almost admiring look on his face. She ignored it.
‘Yes, Mr. Stark?’
‘There’s a contract on my desk,’ Mr. Stark said, sounding particularly amused. ‘I’ve already read it, but it never hurts to have a second pair of eyes look over it.’
Maria nodded. ‘Of course.’ She turned and walked back into the mansion.
***
Howard sat by the window the following morning, reading a Life magazine out of sheer boredom.
He’d taken that same woman who Maria had lightly reprimanded to bed last night. Partially it was because any woman would do. The excitement he used to get from his conquests had faded out. Last night, he even found himself thinking of schematics while he certainly should have been far too distracted for such thoughts.
The second reason was that there was something...unspeakably exciting about watching Maria reprimand someone by pointing out their bad manners. She was well-suited to the business world where one had to operate with anyone who it would be advantageous to work with, even if one hated their guts. So, Howard wanted to give that other woman the pleasure of knowing exactly where she stood compared to “that little girl”.
Maria, over the past few weeks, had taken over Jarvis’s job of...escorting Howard’s conquests out of the mansion. It turned out this went down a lot better than some man doing it. Men, it turned out, were viewed as accomplices. Women, on the other hand, were seen as just doing their jobs.
It’d confused the hell out of Jarvis.
Howard was hardly surprised to find gender-based prejudice was not strictly limited from men to women.
It made sense that just as men had ideas about women, women had ideas about men.
Either way, Jarvis was glad that he was no longer getting slapped in the face. Maria had the pleasure of escorting out a woman who had dismissed her only to learn that she was the one easily dismissed while “that little girl” was staying firmly in Howard Stark’s life. She was the best damn secretary he’d ever had and had a much better grasp on the business than any of her predecessors, despite being the youngest of them all.
Howard looked up from his magazine as there was a light knock at the door and that willowy blonde beauty walked in. At first glance, she hadn’t seemed like much but she had a kind of power to her that even seemed beyond Peggy Carter’s reach. She was self-respecting, conscientious of the world she worked in (and of his reputation), and so efficient he’d have made her a junior partner if she was a man.
Times like this he could really see where Peg had been coming from.
Regardless, he liked her being around. ‘What do you think?’
‘It seems beneficial to the company,’ Maria said. ‘Especially considering the direction you want to take it.’ She gave him a light smile and something inside him coiled (God knew why). ‘Will that be all, Mr. Stark?’
‘That will be all, Miss Carbonell.’