by Janet Woods
‘Then you’re worrying unnecessarily. Are you going to the shipping agency today?’
‘Not until the Joanna Rose has sailed, I don’t want to run into her master. After that I’ve got an appointment with William Barnes, to see if he’ll rent me some shop premises.’
‘Do you know the captain of the Joanna Rose then?’
‘Aye. James Stark’s letter said Edward Staines has taken over her command and, although I’d dearly love to see Edward, I can’t take the risk. James wrote to say that Barnard Charsford had seized the Joanna Rose even though she wasn’t used as collateral. She was sold to Durrington as part of the company stock.’
‘But isn’t that illegal?’
‘It’s piracy, but there’s none who can prove it. Durrington kept Staines on as master, though. He couldn’t have hired a better man, except Oliver Morcant, perhaps. But word’s out about Oliver being arrested in America, and he’ll be blacklisted. He’ll take it hard. Although Oliver is no businessman, he’s the most honest man I’ve ever known. I wish I could do something to help, but Oliver doesn’t even know I’m still alive.’
‘We might think of something.’
‘I can’t see what. Oliver’s two sisters are living with Joanna, I understand. She has a big heart.’ He fell silent, then gazed at his son and murmured, ‘You and your mother are the only good things to come out of this mess I started.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jane said quietly. ‘What about Joanna and your grandson? Why don’t you write and ask them to join us? We have enough room now the house extensions are complete. The shop and agency are doing well and Joanna could work in the fashion emporium.’
‘Do you think she’d come?’
‘She liked it here. She told me she was only going back to England because she loved Alex, and he regarded his purpose in life as being to run the shipping company.’
‘Aye, he did. That’s something I brought him up to do. But Joanna might not want to leave Clara’s girls behind.’
‘Goodness, Gabe, do stop finding obstacles. There’s nothing to stop those young women from coming with her, is there? You said you only met them once, as children. They probably won’t remember you.’
Gabriel gazed at this intelligent women he’d married. Her eyes were brown and honest, her looks indifferent and her voice so quiet that she tended to be overlooked when in company. He felt very tender towards her. Giving one of his rare smiles, he said, ‘Have I ever told you that I love you?’
He adored the blush that crept under her skin and the pleasure contained in the smile she gave. ‘No, Gabe, you never have.’
Jane looked all dewy eyed and emotional now he’d declared himself. If they hadn’t been standing in the street he’d have kissed her. He pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to her with a gruff, ‘Well, now I have. You don’t have to weep over it, do you?’
She slid her hand into his and gently squeezed it. ‘I love you too, Gabe.’
Gabriel smiled for the second time that day, for he’d never thought he’d be offered this second chance at happiness. ‘Dammit, woman, d’you think I don’t know it?’
The Joanna Rose was due to sail at seventeen hundred hours. At nineteen hundred Gabriel made his way from the shipping agency office to the crowded hotel bar where he was to meet William Barnes.
A couple of drinks secured him the offer of the shop premises he wanted. They sealed the deal with a handshake, and a promise of a formal lease to follow.
Barnes had a dinner party to attend, so left shortly afterwards. Gabriel stayed on, nursing a whisky and enjoying the noise in the smoky atmosphere. As he sipped his drink his gaze went along the polished curve of the bar and met the probing scrutiny of another man. His eyes widened, his hand jerked and whisky slopped down the side of the glass.
What the hell! It was Edward Staines!
Edward half rose, shock and recognition coming to his eyes, though there was uncertainty too.
Gabriel didn’t bother finishing his drink. Rising to his feet, he strode rapidly from the bar and out through the double glass doors. Instinctively, he headed in the direction of the shop.
Edward came after him. When Gabe reached the corner he heard him shout, ‘Tobias . . . Tobias Darsham.’
Gabriel hadn’t been called that name in a long while, and the pull of it was hard to resist. Steeling himself not to look back, he turned the corner and began to run, letting himself into the shop before Edward could catch him up.
But the master of the Joanna Rose was not far behind. Edward turned the corner and footsteps pounded along the road as Gabe latched the door. He flattened himself against a set of shelves, without having time to shoot the bolts.
Edward Staines stopped right outside the shop, so close Gabe could have touched him, had there not been a thin sheet of glass between them. Dear God, how he’d like to have shaken his former employee’s hand. Gabriel was breathing so heavily it was a wonder to him that Edward couldn’t hear him.
Staines cursed in a heartfelt fashion as he turned his head this way and that, searching the shadowy doorways. Then he shaded his eyes and peered through the glass door into the interior of the shop. If Edward had shortened his vision he might have seen Gabe, but he didn’t.
Gabriel had the feeling that the man could sense him, though, and he held his breath as Edward carefully turned the handle and exerted pressure. The door moved until it met the resistance of the latch, and held. A solid thud with the heel of his palm would have seen Staines through it.
Ten minutes passed before Edward seemed to satisfy himself that he’d been mistaken, and he moved away, shaking his head in a perplexed manner.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Gabriel shot the bolts and let himself out through the back of the shop, to where his horse was tethered.
‘The damned girl refused,’ Durrington said, thumping a fist on Seth’s desk. ‘Haven’t you found anything I can use yet?’
‘You have my report, My Lord. Joanna Morcant is an intelligent woman, who has recently been bereaved. If I question her relatives or go too fast I’ll lose her trust completely.’
The peer leaned forward. ‘I’m not asking you to gain her trust. I’m telling you to find something I can use as a lever to get custody of my grandson. I’ve already threatened Joanna Morcant with court action over her shipboard marriage, and suggested that the money she took from the company was fraud.’
‘You’d have a job proving it, since the cash was properly receipted, and the company was hers at the time.’
‘I know that, you damned fool. I just thought to scare her a little. I even offered her a home with me if she’d sign over young Toby.’
Seth jerked upright. ‘The hell you did! What did she say to that?’
‘That she’d rather move in with the devil.’ Durrington cackled. ‘I should have told her I was the devil.’
Seth matched Durrington’s grin, conceding that the peer had a sense of humour, of sorts.
‘The girl doesn’t scare easily, I tell you. She was about to brain Bisley with a silver candlestick. She got some stupid idea in her head that he was trying to make off with her son.’
Seated by the door, Bisley’s half-hooded eyes, broad nose and petulant mouth were set in a finely boned face. He smelled of lavender oil. Seth tried not to shudder when Bisley sent him a seductive smile that had something coquettish about it.
Durrington chuckled. ‘Bisley would have broken her neck before she’d had time to lift the candlestick from the sideboard.’
Seth looked Durrington straight in the eye, his senses prickling with uneasiness at the threat implied by the earl’s words. His voice sounded calm enough, though. ‘Joanna Morcant is a small woman. She’d lack the strength to damage a fully grown man.’ But she was loaded with pluck. ‘It would be easy to disarm her without causing her damage. Anything else would have been excessive use of force.’
There was a moment of silence, then Bisley gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘It would have been self
-defence.’
Seth’s tongue salted and the juices in his mouth seemed to dry up as alarm speared through his mind. ‘You do understand that my agency operates strictly within the laws of the land.’
‘Yes, yes.’ The earl’s eyes narrowed in on Seth as he stood up. ‘I simply want something I can use as a lever. D’you understand?’
Tempted to tell him to go to hell, Seth only just stopped himself. He hadn’t told Lord Durrington everything, and neither did he intend to. With just the right amount of deference in his stance, he opened the door to the corridor for his visitors to depart. ‘I’ll certainly do my best, My Lord. There’s no hurry, however, since the child has yet to be weaned.’
Crossing to the window, Seth concealed himself behind a screen. Through a gap in the fabric he watched the peer disappear into his carriage and the vehicle move away. Durrington’s man had entered a bookshop opposite. Using a small telescope Seth gazed into the interior of the shop, where the man lounged in the shadows, book open in hands. He was pretending to read while he kept his eye on the main entrance to the building Seth occupied.
Obviously, the earl didn’t trust him. Neither of them knew where Seth lived. He had made sure of that. Not even his brothers knew.
Leaving through the outer office Seth smiled at Mr Geevers. ‘We’re under surveillance so I’m going out the back way.’
‘I understand, Mr Adams.’
Seth went up two flights of stairs to the roof. Once there, he walked along a narrow gutter where grey slate roofs formed a valley. The gutter was the width of his foot. Jumping across a span a yard wide, he landed lightly on the roof of a neighbouring building. Seth took a left turn, strolled along another gutter and up a short, metal ladder to a skylight. Sliding the catch open with the blade of his knife, he stepped down a wooden ladder into the attic rooms he rented.
This was an accommodation address, which he’d furnished comfortably. Seth rarely stayed in the rooms, though he sometimes enjoyed the company of women here. On occasion, they had also served as a place for others to lie low. Kept clean by his landlady, who asked no questions and ventured no opinions, Seth knew he could never find a better hiding hole
From the attic it was easy to gain the street that ran behind the building backing on to his office. Making sure Bisley was not amongst the thronging crowds below, Seth slipped downstairs and out of the door to join them.
He must visit Joanna Morcant again, he thought as he strode off in the opposite direction from which he’d come. But this time, he intended to go to Portland alone.
Oliver Morcant was back in London. He’d received short shift from the Nash family, for most of them had disliked his mother intensely. Nor did the Nashes want anything to do with their impoverished female relatives.
‘Your mother was immoral, a parasite who spent our cousin’s fortune and drove him to an early grave,’ one of them declared, leaving him with the suspicion that they mourned the loss of the fortune rather than the wealthy cousin.
Not that they were without funds, since the Nash bank remained in business under their directorship. Oliver tried to salvage something for his sisters, but on enquiring about his mother’s share he learned that she’d sold her interest in it some time ago.
Clara had not been allowed to set foot in the marble halls of the Nash mansions since she’d returned to Boston. Only Agatha Nash had taken pity on her, paying her rent on a room in a poor part of town. There, the sale of Clara’s jewellery funded her need for opium, an expensive habit which had eventually killed her.
His mother had lasted several months after Oliver had arrived, drifting in and out of a narcotic cloud, pathetically happy to see him, her dependency keeping him there. But not once had she mentioned the daughters she’d left behind to fend for themselves. He’d worked in a bar at night, cleaning the place after the clients had left, emptying the spittoons, polishing the tables and washing the vomit and piss from the floor and back alley. It had kept him in food, while his mother, growing thinner by the hour, seemed able to live without it, as long as she had her medicine.
Clara had been buried in a pauper’s grave. Nobody had turned up to mourn her passing except Oliver, and the elderly woman who’d paid the boarding-house rent.
Agatha Nash had stepped forward afterwards, handing over a leather satchel. ‘Take very good care of it, Captain Morcant. The money is for my great nieces, and is unreceipted. It’s all they’ll get from the Nash family.’
‘Why have you supported my mother?’ he’d asked the woman.
‘Because Clara was cheated out of her share of the bank and my nieces are impoverished as a result. Clara’s share was worth five times what they paid her for it. But they discovered her weakness and exploited it.’
‘Thank you for telling me. I’m glad somebody cares.’
‘You misunderstand me, Captain Morcant. I’ve never cared for the woman. She was a reckless and despicable person of dubious breeding, one who selfishly pandered to her own needs and desires. But it’s different with Lydia and Irene. I have no children of my own. Indeed, I never married. The family will never support or acknowledge Clara’s girls. They’ve convinced themselves that the twins have no Nash blood in their veins.’
Oliver hadn’t been surprised at the revelation, for his mother had been shameless. ‘And you?’
‘I have no opinion. But my cousin loved those girls, and I loved my cousin. We were engaged to be married once. Lydia and Irene provided him with much happiness while he was alive.’
‘You trust me with this, knowing I was once arrested for fraud?’
‘I had you investigated, Captain Morcant. I know about your past. You were exonerated. Have you been informed that your former wife has died?’
He jerked with the shock of hearing it. But this was followed by a sense of relief that he was no longer tied to Susannah. ‘No . . . I haven’t. How?’
‘She tried to escape arrest from a Pinkerton agent by jumping from a locomotive. She fell under the wheels and was cut in half, I believe.’
Ignoring his shudder, Agatha held out a hand. ‘I doubt if we’ll meet again, Captain Morcant. Goodbye.’ A brief shake and she was gone, walking rapidly towards a waiting carriage, an upright figure dressed in dark grey.
When he was alone, Oliver opened the satchel. It contained a steerage ticket back to England and a large amount of cash.
Oliver had not allowed the satchel out of his sight on the uncomfortable voyage back to England. Almost as soon as he stepped ashore he placed the money in a trust fund. He marvelled that Agatha Nash had brought herself to trust him with it after his mother’s excesses. Not that he’d proved to be much of a businessman himself, but he wouldn’t steal.
Oliver didn’t intend to allow his sisters to squander the windfall, for there wasn’t enough of it to indulge in the luxury they’d been brought up with. They had their futures to consider, and he hoped they didn’t have ideas that were too grand.
He stroked his finger over the ring Joanna had placed in his care. Her gesture had humbled him, and the fact that he could return it to her was a cause of pride. He silently blessed Agatha Nash, too. There were some good women in the world to compensate for poor, dead Susannah and his self-serving mother. He must remember that.
8
It was a lovely June day. Joanna was just about to bathe Toby when a knock came at the door. The breath caught in her throat in alarm.
Tucking Toby’s naked body in the crook of her elbow she peered cautiously out through a chink in the curtain. Seth Adams was in the process of polishing the toes of his dusty shoes on the back of his immaculate grey trousers. First one leg, then the other, nearly losing his balance in the process.
As if the soft chuckle she gave attracted his attention, he turned and saw her before she could duck out of sight. Her chuckle became a laugh when he grinned and moved to the window to peer through it. ‘May I come in?’
He had the cheek of the devil to come back here. She shouldn’t allow him i
nside, but she needed to know for certain who he was working for, and the urge to know more about him was irresistible. She pulled back the bolts. He gave a slight frown when she bolted the door after him, and set the package he carried on the dresser. ‘Judging by the precautions, someone’s been bothering you. Or are you just frightened I’ll escape?’
She smiled at the teasing arrogance of the latter query, ignored the rest. ‘I was about to bathe Toby before putting him down for a nap. I’d better get on with it before the water cools. Come through to the kitchen, if you like.’
‘I take it that Toby is the source of that peculiar ripe smell.’
‘He got into the hen house when my back was turned.’
Toby offered Seth a beatific smile. ‘Papa.’
‘Unfortunately, no, but I’ll take it as a compliment?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. He uses the word indiscriminately.’
‘A rather crushing reply. Do I detect disapproval?’
Joanna wouldn’t be drawn as she lowered Toby into the metal tub and lathered his hair. Quickly rinsing off the suds, she rubbed the excess water from his hair and started on his body, smiling when Toby began to giggle. She dropped a kiss on his damp curls. ‘Stop showing off.’
But Toby would have none of it. He slapped both hands hard on the surface of his bath water so it splashed all over them.
‘I’m so sorry. I should have warned you,’ she said as Seth brushed the water from his coat.
Standing her dripping son up, Joanna kept a good grasp on him with one hand while she tipped a jug of fresh water over him with the other. While he spluttered and gasped, she plucked him from the bath, wrapped him tightly in a towel and set about drying him.
Glancing at Seth over Toby’s head, Joanna spied laughter in his eyes when he said, ‘You stand no nonsense from the male of the species, I see.’
She gave a light laugh. ‘When they’re dependant on you like this, you wonder why boys grow up to be such strutting, arrogant creatures who imagine women are fools.’
