To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  “You were met with resistance,” suggested Tempest.

  “I was met with derision,” Mrs. Beauchamp corrected. “Mr. Hibbert, the chairman, all but told me to go home to my needle, and I do believe Mr. Milligan would have patted me on the head had I been seated closer to him at the time.”

  “Why not send Farrow to voice these concerns on your behalf?” asked Andrew.

  “With all due respect,” his mother replied in a lofty tone, “Mr. Farrow is not a member of the West India Merchants. The head of Beauchamp Shipping is. I had every right to be heard.”

  Unexpected admiration for the woman’s acumen and persistence flared in Tempest’s chest. “You did, indeed,” she concurred. Here was a woman of whom Miss Wollstonecraft would undoubtedly approve. Under any other circumstances, Tempest felt she and Mrs. Beauchamp might have been friends.

  Her reply lit a spark of green fire in Andrew’s eyes. “This is a family matter, Miss Holderin.”

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” his mother interjected. “I take it from your reaction you will be only too willing to study the matter and take up the interests of Beauchamp Shipping at the Merchants’ next meeting?”

  Remembering Andrew’s characterization of himself as unsuited to responsibility, Tempest joined Mrs. Beauchamp in leveling a steady gaze on him as they awaited his reply.

  But it seemed the wait would be longer than they had expected.

  “Excuse me,” he said, pushing away from the table and rising to his feet. “I find I have lost my appetite.” And without another word, he strode from the room.

  Chapter 13

  Andrew was still stewing over the exchange the next morning when he set off for Beauchamp Shipping to oversee the payment of his crew. Unfortunately, the long carriage ride from his stepfather’s—God, his—house in the West End to the offices in Mincing Lane only gave him more time to think.

  Neither his mother nor Daniel had ever been much given to subtlety. It was not in his mother’s exuberant nature, and Daniel would have dismissed it as a waste of time. But really, to attempt to decide a man’s future over ill-prepared sturgeon was worse than he had learned to anticipate, even from them.

  Inside the offices, he identified himself as captain of the Fair Colleen and was greeted with furtive glances and ill-disguised whispers, as old hands explained to new ones what his arrival might mean. After some conversation held behind a closed door, he was shown by one of them into a room and given a ledger in which to record his ship’s business.

  Cramped by an overlarge and empty desk, the barren room seemed to suggest that the clerks had decided amongst themselves that the prodigal stepson of Daniel Beauchamp had not yet earned much in the way of preferential treatment. Morning sun passed through a grime-streaked window, picking out dust motes yet somehow failing to provide much in the way of light. Andrew settled into the rickety chair behind the desk to wait.

  Fleming was the first in, eager to catch a northbound stage. Greaves soon followed, already clutching his next assignment in one beefy hand. At midmorning, he glanced up from his absent sketching in the margin of the ledger page to find Ford on the threshold, looking . . . well, Ford always looked angry—with cause, Andrew knew—but these lines of frustration on his face appeared to be fresh.

  “Where to now, Mr. Ford?” Andrew asked, counting out the carpenter’s money.

  Ford’s shoulders lifted, the movement too tight to be called a shrug. “Can’t say, sir.”

  “How are you finding your first taste of real freedom?” He bent his head over the ledger. “All you’d hoped?”

  “Seems I’ve the freedom to starve, anyway,” Ford replied, pocketing his pay.

  So the man had spent his morning seeking work and being turned away? Andrew wished he could say he was surprised. “I’m in need of a man to head up the Colleen’s repairs,” he said, not quite offering a job he felt certain Ford under any other circumstances would have been glad of the chance to decline. The man’s general dislike of his captain, of almost everyone with any authority over him, had been well known.

  Ford paused, considering. “I wouldn’t have thought you in a position to hire. On land, and all,” he pointed out, folding his arms across his chest. The pose wasn’t quite defiance, although Andrew recognized the challenge in it. Here, on this soil, they met as equals.

  At least, until Farrow entered the room behind him. “So it’s true,” Farrow exclaimed, obviously debating whether he should offer his hand or bow.

  Andrew stood and stretched across the desk for a handshake. “It is.”

  Ford watched the exchange with interest. “Mr. Farrow,” Andrew said, “may I introduce Mr. Ford, one of the finest ship’s carpenters I have had the pleasure of knowing. I’d like to see him put to work.”

  Farrow did not even need to glance Ford’s way. “Of course. Whatever you say, Mr. Corrvan.”

  Mr. Corrvan. Just that quickly he had been stripped of one identity and given another, changed from a man not with dubious authority over one ship, but unquestioned authority over a fleet of them.

  As if he could cast off those strangling moorings, he slammed shut the ledger and swept it from the desktop. But the gesture of protest went unseen by Farrow, who was already ushering Ford from the room.

  His petulance did not escape notice entirely, however, for Jeremiah Bewick stood just outside, looking as amused as it was possible for a man with no very evident sense of humor to look.

  Muttering an oath under his breath, Andrew snatched up the book from the floor. “And what are your plans, Mr. Bewick?” he asked as he dutifully recorded into the ledger the amount owed to the quartermaster.

  “I mean to stay with the Colleen, if I may.”

  Andrew looked up. “It will be many months before she sails again.”

  “No matter to me. Geoff’s got ’is heart set on seein’ an English spring once more. Set out for the country first thing this morning. Says ’e means to rent us a little cottage in ’ampstead. With a rose garden.”

  “A rose garden?” Andrew echoed. “It’s mid-December.”

  “Aye.” The single word was gently spoken, accepting of behavior from Beals that Bewick would have called out as foolish in another man—the way one does with those about whom one cares the most.

  As Bewick’s gaze wandered toward the window, Andrew studied the weathered lines of the other man’s face, how they had softened in that moment, despite the ochre-tinged afternoon light. So revealing, that look. “Be—” Andrew began.

  Bewick’s expression hardened again when the sound of Andrew’s voice recalled his attention, as if he suspected what the next word would be.

  Be careful, Andrew had been going to say, but Bewick and Beals must already understand the importance of discretion. At sea, men had largely turned a blind eye to their relationship, either out of indifference or grudging acceptance that such things sometimes happened among men who spent long months or even years without the company of women. Andrew knew that the bond between the two was far more than a shipboard convenience. But nosy busybodies in a country village were unlikely to see it as anything other than a sin and a crime.

  “Beauchamp Shipping will be happy to have you both return, whenever you are ready,” Andrew said instead.

  Bewick nodded and stepped forward to accept his pay. “Like as not, folks are even happier to have you back.”

  Andrew hesitated. “I don’t know that I mean to st—”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Bewick interrupted, all shipboard hierarchies and formalities flown. Really, the marvel was that he had ever condescended to address Andrew as sir before the others. “Your pa weren’t allus a bad fellow, I’ll say that much for ’im. An’ you look enough like him that none can suspect your ma of playing him for a fool—which is to say, you’re ’is son, through an’ through.” Having sailed with the Fair Colleen from her maiden voyage, Bewick had some cause to know the character of both father and son. “But you’ve given ’im what you owed him, now.
Isn’t it time to do the same for the man who raised you?”

  It was hard to argue with Bewick. Always had been. Which was probably why Andrew had done it so often—from the very first, when Andrew had announced he meant to captain what had by then been Bewick’s ship, through the disastrous exchange with Stratton that had nearly cost them all their lives, until now.

  And he meant to argue again, didn’t he? Surely he had no intention of blithely following Bewick’s advice. Not after all this time.

  When Andrew made no reply, Bewick added one final twist of the knife. “An’ for your ma?” Then he touched his finger to his cap in a sort of salute and was gone before Andrew could muster even a nod.

  Alone again, his gaze fell on the open ledger, one of many identical books contained within this building, filled with the numbers on which rested the empire Daniel Beauchamp had built. Scanning his eyes down the column of figures he had added to that record, he came across the mindless sketch of a woman’s heart-shaped face with which he had marred its margins. How in God’s name had his stepfather ever imagined he was fit to do anything serious?

  He closed the ledger, quietly this time, and tapped one finger against its green baize cover. The gesture called to his mind the neat stack of account books on Edward Cary’s immaculate desk, incapable of being more than superficially disordered by a gust of wind.

  Or even a Tempest.

  Now, there was a responsible man. A respectable man. One willing to sacrifice his own desires for the betterment of others. If Andrew allowed Tempest to go back to Antigua instead of taking her to Yorkshire, she and Cary would find a way to work everything out for the best, even if it turned out she was with child. Meanwhile, Andrew could light out in the opposite direction. India, perhaps. Some destination that would put a few thousand miles between him and a woman with whom he had no business dallying. A woman who wanted her independence as badly as he did, and no doubt deserved it more.

  Tempest Holderin was strong, determined, a fierce defender of freedom—others’, as much as her own. He had known many men who respected those qualities in another man but who would have rejected them out of hand in a woman. Men who needed to be needed, he supposed. Well, this woman certainly did not need him.

  It should have been a relief. He had never wanted to be needed. And yet . . .

  He was needed here, or so his mother said. If he were looking for some excuse to keep himself apart from Tempest, he could simply stay in London and take up his duties at Beauchamp Shipping. That was what he should do, what he would do—if he were a responsible, respectable man.

  Which, of course, he was not.

  “Farrow!” he shouted as he pushed away from the desk, determined to find some way to shed his association with the place. “See that the other men from the Colleen are paid their due. I’m going—”

  Damn it all. In a great city such as this, with numberless temptations to a man such as himself, he ought to have been pulled in six different directions. Why then was the next word on his tongue the last place he should want to be? The place that contained—or had when he’d left—the one person he ought to avoid?

  He fumbled for some alternative, but in the end, the lure proved too strong.

  “I’m going home.”

  * * *

  “Ze red, I t’ink, definitely.”

  Tempest shivered, a reaction not entirely inspired by the dressmaker’s abysmal faux-French accent. Mrs. Beauchamp had assured her of the woman’s skill with a needle, but her abilities did not extend to acting the part of a French refugee with any credibility. Nevertheless, given the current demand for French modistes, Madame D’Arbay—Mrs. Derby, surely?—made every effort.

  Tempest stood on a stool, clad only in a crisp new shift, as the dressmaker measured and chattered and held out samples of material for Mrs. Beauchamp’s approval.

  “It would be the perfect thing for Christmas,” Andrew’s mother agreed.

  “And ze pastel coleurs do not suit her haf so well.” The surrounding floor was a pale sea of rejected fabric, pinks and blues and greens that reminded Tempest of nothing so much as spring blossoms, struggling valiantly against the wintry blast.

  Given the cold, Tempest could not blame herself for dreaming of an entirely new wardrobe of wool and fur and velvet. Why, she hardly even regretted the disappearance of her moss green muslin dress. The fashionable ladies of London had evidently abandoned their senses, however, favoring airy frocks that offered little protection against the freezing dampness of winter. She, who had never known what it was to miss the sun, was aware of the frequent aspersions cast on colonials, aspersions that centered on the perceived damage done to one’s mind and morals by the heat of tropical climes. But she felt certain that incessant rain and fog had done little to clear the heads of those who inhabited the capital.

  “I will be at sea by Christmas,” she reminded Mrs. Beauchamp, “with no occasion to wear such a gown. A few, a very few, practical garments that can be done up quickly are the order of the day, I’m afraid,” she explained to the modiste. Again.

  With a sigh, Mrs. Beauchamp nodded her acquiescence and said to Madame D’Arbay, “I know it is not your custom, but perhaps you’ve something ready-made that will require only a little alteration?”

  The corners of Madame D’Arbay’s mouth turned down, but she spoke to her seamstress in a voluble mixture of bad French and Cockney, only the latter of which the seamstress seemed likely to understand. The girl shuffled through the contents of the fabric-filled trunk and withdrew a dress of heavy blue silk so dark it might nearly pass for black. Its funereal appearance was furthered by its severity of style; to fit Tempest’s slight stature the scalloped hem would have to be cut off entirely, relieving the dress of its only ornament.

  “Goodness, no,” exclaimed Mrs. Beauchamp even as Tempest proclaimed it perfect.

  Although she would have preferred wool, the sturdy weave would be practical, and the cut and color made it suitable for any occasion, even travel. Better yet, it looked as if the modiste had made it for a customer who had then declined to take it, meaning she would be likely to let it go for a reasonable price. Tempest had refused to have the bill sent to her grandfather, promising instead to repay Mrs. Beauchamp the moment she returned home. The better the bargain, the less guilty she would feel for being in Mrs. Beauchamp’s debt.

  “That will be all,” she said once the seamstress had pinned and tucked and marked where the gown would be shortened. With pursed lips, Madame D’Arbay promised it would be done yet that day.

  “For a young lady who arrived here with nothing?” Mrs. Beauchamp protested as the modiste and her seamstress packed the trunk. “Be reasonable. You must have more clothes.”

  Madame D’Arbay hesitated, hopeful, but Tempest remained firm. She had once been brave enough to march across the deck of a ship in nothing but her undergarments and Captain Corrvan’s coat. For the return journey, one good dress, two shifts, and a nightrail would have to suffice.

  Only after the other women had left did she observe a package lying on the floor near the bed. “Oh, Madame D’Arbay left behind a box,” she said, on the point of going after her.

  “That’s for you,” said Mrs. Beauchamp, staying her. “A gift. Something practical, I assure you,” she added, forestalling Tempest’s renewed protest. “Open it.”

  With uncertain fingers, Tempest lifted the lid from the box, pushed aside the paper, and slipped her fingers among folds of softest velvet: a cloak of deepest green, trimmed with fox fur around the hood and accompanied by a matching fur muff. She must refuse it, of course. Like a better angel on her shoulder, Miss Wollstonecraft’s voice whispered that women were too easily seduced by fashion and furbelows. “The frippery of dress,” she had written, “weakens the mind.”

  But what about the needs of the body? Tempest had dutifully turned down the perfectly impractical garnet brocade, but this, surely, was different. Had that noble authoress ever been forced to give up the Caribbean sun
for a bone-chilling London winter?

  In the end, the cloak’s softness and warmth proved impossible to resist. Tempest wrapped it around her and whirled about the room in an impromptu dance. Only think! She need never again be bothered by this wretched cold. Would it be terribly inappropriate to wear it inside the house?

  Mrs. Beauchamp laughed at Tempest’s delighted surprise. Just then, there was a tap at the door. “This was just delivered by messenger, ma’am,” Williams said as he entered and held out a letter on a salver to Mrs. Beauchamp. She took it and broke its seal while Williams bowed from the room.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid,” she said after scrutinizing the brief note.

  At those words, Tempest came abruptly to a halt. The heavy cloak continued its dance for another beat, caught up in the momentum. Its weight as it swung against her frozen form almost knocked her off her feet.

  “Mr. Farrow says no ship can take you until after the new year. Mid-January, at the earliest,” she explained as she folded the letter and tucked it into her sleeve.

  Betrayed, Tempest allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders and drop to the floor. “I cannot wait better than a month to return.”

  “I am sorry. But at least now you will be at liberty to pay a visit to your grandfather, should you wish.”

  Tempest had never felt any pull toward her grandfather. The distance between them had always been too great. To cross that divide—smaller now, to be sure, but two hundred miles still sounded far away to her—only to be met with what? Disapproval? Disappointment?