by Carrie Lomax
“I cannot figure out why you Americans bothered fighting a war if you’re just going to obsess over titles and aristocracy,” he complained, enjoying the opportunity to poke fun at the rough, ungentle men who’d formed this brash new country.
“Weren’t you also forced into exile?” ladies often asked, wide-eyed.
“It is true,” Richard would confirm, slumping a little as he regretted afresh confiding in Lizzie the reason for his presence here. “I was sent here as punishment after...after I was disinherited.”
He couldn’t bring himself to admit what he’d done, not to these sharp-witted, canny Americans. There were some sins that could never be forgiven. Not by God, certainly not by these rebels with their pride and hypocrisy. Or perhaps Richard needed any paltry excuse to look down on his unwanted, adopted country. Ruminating like this did make him feel marginally superior to Lizzie and her friends for a few lonely minutes.
“Richard, my friend. Here to help unload?”
Howard stomped forward, his blond curls flopping in a tangle over his bronzed forehead. Bright eyes the color of polished amber, striated with green, pinned Richard where he’d paused at the edge of the gloom. Dust caked his boots from the walk.
“If you’ve a need of me.” Here, Richard never had to pretend to be something he wasn’t.
“Could’ve used you hours ago,” Howard grinned without judgment. “The men are tired. I’ll take a turn, too. Can’t let the tobacco go stale from the heat.”
If Richard had more self-regard than he knew what to do with, Howard possessed none at all. It was one of the many asymmetries to their friendship. Howard had never mentioned relatives. Richard half-suspected he’d sprung from the bed of the Hudson River as a fully formed man. A seasoned river navigator, he’d started running small shipments up from Virginia to Boston as a young man. One of the rumors claimed Howard had made his first trips running escaped slaves upriver from the South, though Richard didn’t give it credence. After the Act of 1820, Richard had assumed slavery was no longer acceptable in the United States.
He’d been wrong.
While the act labeled enslaving African natives a heinous crime punishable by death, it only succeeded in diminishing the trade, not in abolishing the institution. Richard remained baffled by the logic of this upstart country which that same year had passed the Missouri Compromise. The nation had grown by two states, Missouri and Maine. The former permitted slaves. The latter did not. People among Lizzie’s set liked to grumble about the free blacks who had begun forming residence in Manhattan’s northern hills, though he privately thought them hypocrites. Richard found it impossible to overlook the dissonance between slavery and the freedoms claimed in the young country’s declaration of independence.
Freedom, if it didn’t include everyone, seemed a rather worthless thing to fight for.
“Gloves,” Howard ordered, tossing a pair of ugly canvas mitts at his chest. Richard donned them and pulled the cords tight at the wrist. They grasped the ropes of the pulley and heaved. Within minutes, sweat poured down Richard’s back.
The leather-fronted, canvas gloves were Howard’s own invention. He specialized in shipping delicate wares, from china to art to gilded furniture. Not that he was above hauling grain, lumber, or tobacco. He was a businessman, and Richard had come to appreciate that businessmen must be flexible to survive.
Howard’s warehouse was situated alongside the Hudson river with easy access to the bay and to the ocean. His usual run was to skirt the coastline from Maine to Boston to New York, with warehouses and transfer points at each city. Howard owned a small fleet of six schooners making scheduled voyages as far south as Charleston.
“With Maine a state now, quarries and lumberyards will need to move their goods south, and the newly rich Mainers will want fine china and cotton for their homes,” Howard had explained, months ago, when they were still in Boston. “I provide the shipments at a fair price and we all come out ahead. Capitalism, it’s a fine thing, isn’t it, your lordship?”
“Fine but for the slaves who toil to grow the cotton yet see no benefit,” Richard had snapped, at the time. His money and letter of introduction had been stolen from his pockets and his head cracked with a wooden truncheon hard enough to fracture his thoughts for days. All he’d wanted was to go back to sleep. If he could only slumber long enough, perhaps he could wake up from the extended nightmare that had become his life.
“Aye, that’s a travesty and a stain upon our country. I wish the cowards in Washington had taken a stronger stand against the slavers. Someone must, eventually.” Howard had ruminated into the dark.
“Must they?” Richard had demanded, his head throbbing. “The longer it goes on, the more entrenched it becomes.”
“You speak truth, Englishman. Mind you keep your mouth sealed on the subject of slaves while aboard my boats. I won’t hang for your loose lips.”
It was the first and last time they’d ever spoken of it.
The labor of reaching and hauling, hand-over-hand, the rough rope tightening around his gloved hands as goods slipped down the gangplank and into the stifling darkness of the warehouse occupied Richard’s body. Sometimes he mulled old conversations. Most of the time he preferred not to think at all. Then, memories of past words would creep into his mind like ghosts of his misdeeds come to haunt him.
“Are you still dipping your candle into that redhead?” Howard asked.
Richard leaned backward against a railing as they waited for the deck to be cleared to receive new cargo. Warm spring sun fell on his face and neck. His tattered linen shirtsleeves were damp with sweat. His lips tasted of salt when he licked them.
“Yes,” Richard affirmed without opening his eyes.
“She’s why you’re here today, toiling like a deck hand, Lord Rich?” Howard teased.
“Of course.” Richard opened his eyes long enough to glare at his one true friend.
“She’s bad for business. I wish you’d drop the…” Howard’s mouth screwed into a hard line before he spoke the curse.
“We’ve had this discussion. Meeting Lizzie led me to better contacts in New York. The only person she harms with her behavior is herself.”
Howard eyed him, not kindly. “You only say that because she hasn’t hurt you, yet.”
Possibly. Richard didn’t think there was much left of him for Lizzie to cause pain. A dead heart couldn’t be wounded by pulling out his chest hair.
The dock hands ate a rudimentary midday meal of pickled fish and bread with an apple. Then, they went back to work, tugging, lifting, hauling and loading new crates onto the ship in place of the old. The boxes that had been unloaded that morning would be opened, inspected, and inventoried before Howard released them to the carts that carried them uptown to shops and the fancy homes north of the former Collect Pond. No one went near the sinking morass if they could avoid it. The homes built there disintegrated day by day on the unsteady, reeking landfill. Wealthier families had fled uptown.
“You’re wrong about Lizzie,” Richard said without preamble, hours later, when his shoulders and back ached from exertion. Conversations with Howard often lasted for days, even weeks. Or maybe they never started and stopped the way ordinary people’s did.
“Am I?” Howard asked, in a way that made Richard feel stupid and naive. Affronted pride prickled down his back like a porcupine’s quills.
“She’s an unhappily married woman. It’s not my fault the woman cuckolds her husband. I am merely the mechanism for doing it.”
His friend’s brow furrowed. “Why doesn’t she keep faith with him?”
“I have no idea.” Richard replied through gritted teeth. Usually by this point in a conversation, Howard turned his back or became distracted by the quotidian business of running his warehouses and shipping line. His friend rarely pressed a topic the way he was doing now.
“She’s never confided in you?” Howard asked.
“Why should she? Lizzie comes to my apartments when she wishes, takes what she want
s from me, and mostly leaves me in peace. It’s a physical arrangement.”
Howard’s gaze scanned his face. Richard endured the man’s inspection with a tense jaw.
“I don’t run in your circles, but I’d be a fool not to keep my ear to the ground. Arthur Van Buren has filed for an annulment.”
Cold washed over Richard as if he’d fallen overboard into the Hudson river at winter time. “Of their marriage,” he echoed, seeking clarification.
“Aye. He says she never visits his bed, though that’s not the grounds for his suit.” Howard’s voice was pure sympathy.
“There’s truth to that,” Richard scoffed. “Lizzie has a veritable treasure trove of nicknames for her husband none of them fluttering. Pickle cock, shrinking violet, the shy turtle…”
“She does confide in you, then.” Howard smirked. It took a moment for Richard to recognize his friend’s anger. He’d never seen Howard’s geode eyes narrow at the corners like this before.
“No, she only calls her husband abhorrent names,” Richard replied tersely.
“I want you to drop the redhead’s company and come join my company. Be a full partner, like.” Howard’s anger banked instantly.
“No.”
Richard didn’t need to consider it, not even for moment. He knew he possessed no more honor than your average raccoon, but he had no intention of taking away from the hard-won shipping and warehousing enterprise his friend had built.
“Think on it. I can do much more with you as my partner. I’d like to expand overseas. I expect there’s good trade to be had with London and Paris.”
Howard’s brevity could be hard to parse at times. Had Richard not spent days listening to his friend’s peculiar verbal cadence, he would have understood what Howard was asking of him now.
“You want me to make contacts for you in London and in Paris?” Richard asked.
“Yes, of course. It’s the same principle as extending my business between Maine and Charleston, only across an ocean. But I need you to help me find investors. You can talk people. I can’t. You’re the only one I ever talk to.” Embarrassment crossed Howard’s rough-hewn features. “You’re the best business decision I ever made, Lord Northcote.”
“I’m not a business decision, Howard. I’m your friend.” He clapped one hand over Howard’s shoulder. He didn’t say, you are my only friend. The only one I’ve ever had. But Richard thought it.
He deserved Lizzie with all her flaws. If she wanted to use him to punish the husband she didn’t want, it was none of his concern. He was nothing more than willing partner abetting her abdication of responsibility. Without his title, Richard was nothing more than a vessel for depravity.
Chapter 3
Richard examined the rough white-washed cottage he would be staying in—alone—for the next three nights with considerable distaste. Not long before he had been forced out of England, Richard’s mistress had demanded a country home as payment for her services. Richard had sent his agent to procure one. Instead, the man presented him and his mistress for an exceedingly short time with a hovel. The roof leaked, the windows needed replacing, and the entire interior needed refurbishing.
That dilapidated country cottage was a palace compared to this hovel.
His lodgings were unfit for human habitation. Undoubtedly there were squirrels in the rafters. Ugh. He hoped the racoons weren’t breeding. They made such an ungodly noise when they were—a fact he could have died happily without knowing.
“My aunt had it swept and aired out before you came. She anticipated you’d need your own place to sleep. The only other option was to house you with Spencer and the other boys, but then we couldn’t be alone.” Lizzie grinned and ran her fingernails up his chest. Richard supposed it was meant to make him anticipate stolen evenings in her arms, but instead, he shuddered.
If he had his choice, Richard’s cock would’ve wilted at the sight of Lizzie’s pert breasts. His body, however, was long accustomed to women angling to warm his bed for a night. Willpower required a will, and his had been pruned to the root after his fall from grace. Richard’s determination to secure his comfortable future after Edward’s unwelcome return had culminated in setting the blaze that killed his father. The fire had destroyed the family townhome and also charred Richard’s will to live to ash.
Hence, his acceptance of his brother’s banishment decree. It had been presented as a choice, but Richard knew better. Edward had told him to get out of the country and not come back.
Hence, falling in with Lizzie. Until Howard’s warning, Richard had drifted in a state of ignorant bliss. But with the possibility he could be named as a respondent in a divorce, Richard was determined to break with Lizzie. He only needed to find the right moment to tell her the news gently.
Tonight had not been the right time. They’d left New York at dawn, far earlier than Richard was accustomed to waking, and walked to the pier where Lizzie’s husband moored his yacht. He’d been grateful to discover his satchel loaded onto the general-transport clipper instead of Arthur’s nimble pleasure boat. He’d caught a glimpse of Lizzie’s husband. Arthur’s light hair glinted in the bright morning light. He stood a few inches taller than his wife, whose short, thin body bent away from Arthur’s like a reed in the wind.
From there, it had been a short journey to New Jersey. They rounded the shoulder of the island and entered the lower bay which fed into the Atlantic Ocean. Richard stared over the vast expanse of glittering water.
I will go home.
Whatever it takes.
By evening, bored, Richard stepped out of his lodgings and headed for the beach. With his jacket slung over one shoulder he strode along carelessly. A sea breeze ruffled his dark wavy hair like mermaid fingers. Richard’s mouth curved up at the corners in a rusty grin. He did not smile often, not anymore.
Lizzie had been right about taking a break from the city. Lizzie was perceptive, in her way.
“Richard!”
Twined female forms emerged out of the twilight. Lizzie’s hair was unmistakable. She walked arm-in-arm with a taller woman that Richard first took to be her aunt. That seemed strange. Lizzie and her aunt had never gotten along. As they drew closer, he realized he had been mistaken. The second woman was someone he did not know, closer to Lizzie’s age.
This, too, seemed unusual. Lizzie had many acquaintances but few friends. This girl appeared every bit as buttoned up as the matrons of Lizzie’s parents’ set. Behind the pair trailed a black-clad figure. A chaperone of some sort.
“Richard!” Lizzie called out, releasing one hand from the intimate hold she had on the newcomer. She waved at him as though they had not seen one another in years. Puzzled, Richard waved back. He walked over the gritty sand toward them. Oyster shells crunched beneath his bare feet.
“Hello, Lizzie.”
“Richard, may I present Miriam Walsh, my friend from boarding school.”
Lizzie was up to something. He could tell from the way she spoke a little breathlessly, animated by more than just the refreshingly cool sea breeze. From the way her tongue swept fleetingly over her lower lip, leaving it shiny with moisture.
Richard sketched a bow. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Walsh.”
“Likewise,” the lady replied. Even on the beach where the wind whipped away words the instant they were spoken, he could hear the sultriness in her voice. It sent a frisson down his spine.
Miriam Walsh looked up at him with enormous, heavily lashed gray eyes. Her cheek curved in a perfect oval with a small pointed chin framing pretty lips of pale pink. The whole effect was topped by a wind-whipped coil of black curls escaping their casual coiffure.
Miss Walsh is a moon goddess, Richard thought nonsensically. He shook his head to clear it.
“Miriam is here with her family for the summer. On holiday. What a lovely surprise to see you here, dear, dear Miri.” Lizzie clutched her friend’s arm.
“Lizzie, no one calls me that nickname anymore.” Miss
Walsh replied with an easy laugh.
“Well, I do.” Lizzie grasped her friend’s arm a little tighter, as though Miss Walsh were a shore bird that might take wing.
“What brings you to the Pines?” asked Miriam. Lizzie’s aunt’s retreat was known as the Pines, a sprawling estate reserved for warm-weather pleasures.
“Liz-”
Lizzie interrupted him with a laugh. “The same thing that brings everyone else, I’m sure. To escape the summer heat.”
Richard frowned at his lover. She gave him one hard, quick glare that clearly said keep your mouth shut. What was she up to, anyway?
“Yes, I had a break in my business in the city and decided to reward myself with a short holiday.” Richard supplied. He could play Lizzie’s game a little longer.
“How long are you staying?” asked Miriam.
Richard glanced at Lizzie. “A few days,” he replied vaguely. Lizzie flashed him a quick, brilliant grin. A queasy sensation settled into his gut.
“And who is this charming young lady?” He bowed to the woman standing a few feet away. She reminded him of an umbrella. Her black dress fell in pleats from her waist. Her bonnet could have been the knobbed handle. Her form held no discernible curves, and her visage was as sharp-featured as a crone’s though her skin remained unlined. She scowled at him.
“This is Mrs. Kent, my nurse,” Miss Walsh explained.
Richard looked at her askance. “You seem rather aged for needing a nursemaid.”
The girl laughed. “I was ahead of Lizzie in school. My health is not as strong as one could hope, so Mrs. Kent attends me everywhere I go.”
To be sure, Miss Walsh was fine-boned and reed-slim, yet Richard sensed in her a vitality that belied illness. He smiled easily, a trick he had learned for getting along in his adopted country. “You look strong to me.”
It had been the right thing to say. Miss Walsh’s fine eyes lit up like a thousand stars.
“Miss Walsh suffers from asthma. Any attack could be fatal,” Miss Kent declared dourly.
“Thank you, Miss Kent, for your candidness about my private affairs,” Miss Walsh replied firmly.
