For Sera, the sight of the ships had raised in her a desire to see the places they had been, to see the distant countries whose people made such remarkable things. She had, for a moment, entertained the concept of them travelling together, then thrust it aside as whimsy. Surely he, successful as he was, would rarely travel now – that was what he had ships and captains, trade factors and agents for.
And she, a woman, would be expected to stay safe in England – no matter what the man in her life did. She had blushed at the thought, for they were barely getting to know each other, below the surface of polite business partners. And here she was thinking as if she might one day be his wife. She had turned back to conversation, pushing the thoughts aside, although acutely conscious of his presence at her side, of the scent of him, that unique blend of leather, and pine, and something exotic, no doubt brought back from India or the like.
They had talked comfortably for hours, as he showed her the parts of London that no woman of the ton would normally see – the parts that kept the lifeblood of trade flowing in and out of the country. No-one looked at them askance, although a few of those who greeted him raised an eyebrow at her presence, there was nothing negative in their expressions. It was the most enjoyable day she’d had since… before.
Soon March had gone and Easter was upon them, with the Season moving into full swing, and the demand for the flower cards increasing dramatically. Whilst the ordinary favours still sold, the new cards were even more popular. Raphael and Sera saw each other every day at the manufactory – she supervising and designing, he running in and out, fitting this business around his main business, somehow finding the energy for both, and still having time to take her driving, or invite her, with her mother, to dinner with his family.
They chose quiet places to go, and visited small galleries and museums that Sera had not known existed. There was far more, it seemed, to London than the ton ever saw or imagined.
She began to feel that they would find a way, that her birth into another class, her family scandal and her unladylike interests would not prevent them being with each other. They had even, once or twice, stolen a kiss in some secluded spot. Her heart beat harder even thinking of those times. Yet he had not pushed her, had not, really, even spoken of his feelings.
She wondered if that was uncertainty, or courtesy – she had no idea what he wanted, or expected. But she knew what she wanted – she wanted him. She just had no idea how to make it happen – for all the disgrace in her life was not something she would ever wish to have tarnish him, or his family.
~~~~~
Raphael eased the small carriage to a stop, waiting for the footman to help Sera down. She looked flushed and beautiful, her hair wind tangled around the edges of her bonnet.
He loved that he could make her happy, make her laugh and be silly sometimes. She was so far from the serious and rather desperate young woman he had first met, not 5 months earlier.
“Do go in out of the wind, Lady Serafine, I’ll just drive around and leave this with the grooms and be with you shortly.”
Once the carriage and horses were in the care of Brown in the tidy mews behind the house, Raphael let himself in through the kitchen door, sniffed appreciatively at the rich aromas of the dinner being prepared, and went to find his family, and Sera.
He opened the parlour door to laughter, finding Bella presenting an impression of a woman she had seen riding on Rotten Row that afternoon, when out with young Arbuthnot again. As was usual with Bella’s impressions, she had caught the essence of the most ridiculous elements of the woman’s posture and manner. She was describing it all as she demonstrated.
“I declare, I simply don’t know how she didn’t just slide off and end up in a disordered heap on the ground. She had no seat, none at all – no balance – every time the horse moved she slithered around on the saddle as if she had never sat on a horse before. It was obvious that no-one had ever explained that to sit well on your side-saddle, you must keep your right shoulder back! She bounced…” Bella demonstrated, “like this, and then slid almost around,” another demonstration of exaggerated movement, “and only managed to stay in the saddle when her companion caught her horse’s reins and brought it to a halt.”
Raphael joined in the laughter, watching Sera as she watched Bella. So beautiful. He still struggled to believe that such a high-born woman wanted him.
Surely she was above him? Why would a woman born into the heights of society wish to associate with a merchant, however wealthy? Yet her kisses said that she did, even if they never managed to find a way to talk about it. He could be patient – she was worth it. They would find a way – he would, somehow, persuade her, would show himself worthy. He just didn’t know how.
Bella subsided, taking up her cup of tea to recover from her antics, and everyone settled back to a more normal demeanour. His mother went to a side table, and picked up a letter of some kind, bringing it to him.
“Raphael, this arrived for you a short while ago. If I recognise the handwriting and the seal, it’s from one of your more important friends from the war years.”
Taking the missive, he examined it. She was right – it bore Charlton’s seal. He broke it open, and stood a moment, reading.
“You are right. It’s from Viscount Pendholm. They’ve set a date – the wedding will be in February next year, just as soon as her mourning is over. That was such a bad business – and so unfortunate that they must wait a year. Hunter and Nerissa were lucky not to be in such a situation. It seems that Lady Pendholm has decided that the wedding should be at Pendholm Hall, rather than in London, so he is warning us all, early, that we’ll need to be in the country next year.”
Sera had been speaking quietly to Bella, but, as he spoke, she stopped, suddenly, apparently in mid-sentence, and turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide and her face bore an expression which seemed alarmingly like horror. Her eyes locked onto his, and everything else faded away.
He did not understand her expression. So many things seemed to cross her face – that initial look of horror, then doubt, then bitter sadness, then anger. It settled at anger. She looked magnificent angry – her tawny gold eyes glowed, and brought to his mind the descriptions of the eyes of a lioness. And in that moment, he knew how a prey animal felt.
“Pendholm?”
She almost spat the name, as if it were a curse word of the worst kind.
“You are a close friend of the Pendholms? Close enough to attend that devil’s wedding?”
Raphael was floundering, mentally – what did she mean? A man less like a devil than Charlton, he could not imagine. Sera was shaking – he could see it from where he stood. She took a deep breath and went on.
“Obviously you are. How could I have been so deceived? After what he did, what he caused… I swore never to have anything to do with anyone who was a friend of that family. And you seemed so… normal, so…” she paused, seemingly searching for a word, her breath heaving, and the sparkle of tears in her eyes, “good. But that must have been, all along, a sham. And I was taken in. Well, no more. I will continue with the business, for the sake of my mother, and of the girls we employ, but I refuse to see you, or speak to you, again.”
“Sera… please… I don’t…”
“I won’t hear it. I don’t want to know what you intended to say. Goodbye.”
She swept from the room.
They all looked at each other, shocked beyond words. Then Sophia rushed from the room, following Sera. She caught up to her in the foyer, where Sera had paused long enough to collect her hat and pelisse.
“Sera… what is wrong? What can I do? Please don’t rush out into the cold.”
“Mrs Morton, I apologise, you have always been kind. But, if Raphael is a friend of the Pendholms, then I stand by what I said. I will not speak to him or see him again. I must leave.”
With that, she turned and walked out the door, hailing a passing hackney as rapidly as possible. Sophia took a deep breath and turned back
into the parlour. Bella was still sitting in the same spot, all humour gone from her face, and the sparkle of unshed tears in her eyes. Raphael seemed frozen in place.
“Raphael – what was that about? Do you know what she meant, or why she was so upset?”
Sophia could see from his face, before he spoke, what his answer would be. He looked shocked, hurt and bereft.
“Mother, I have no idea whatsoever. One moment all was well, and the next, Sera was full of anger, then gone. If I understood her words aright, she believes Charlton to have done something terrible. Yet I cannot conceive of what – Charlton is the most honourable and kind of men.”
“I agree – that does seem to be what she inferred. And she believes it so terrible that by just having an association with him, you are damned.”
“Perhaps she will not be so resolute once she has had time to calm down?”
“We must hope so. I would not wish to lose the pleasure of her company.”
At Sophia’s words, Bella burst into tears and ran from the room, obviously equally distressed at the concept. Raphael, in that moment, could almost have joined her in tears himself. Instead, he took a deep breath, and pulled his pride and stubbornness about him like armour.
“It is her choice Mother. I do not understand it, but, if that is how she wishes to go on, I can only honour her choice, no matter how much I might want it otherwise.”
Sophia nodded, finding that there was nothing further she could say. She determined, however, that she would at least attempt to discover the reason for Sera’s intense reaction. She had hoped so much that Raphael had found, in Sera, a woman he could care for – it seemed that there was more impediment to that possibility than she could have imagined.
Raphael turned, and left the room. All appetite for food had left him. He retrieved his hat and heavy coat and flung out onto the streets. Hard walking brought him to the City Trade club, and he settled in a corner of the members lounge with a large brandy, watching the conversations around him, whilst discouraging anyone who approached.
He rarely came to the club, finding himself oddly out of place amongst the merchant elite, most of whom were older, and had never been to war. But it was a suitable place to drown his sorrows. The image of Sera’s face, so filled with anger and disdain, kept coming back to him. It filled him with despair. They had seemed to be becoming so close, he had hoped, had allowed himself to dream. But now…
The brandy burned, but could not wash away the taste of ashes in his mouth – the ashes of his hopes. Sera was stubborn, and true to her word – if she said that she would not see or speak to him again, she had meant it – there would be no half measures. The thought of his life in front of him without Sera in it was intolerable – but he would do as he had told his mother – he would honour her choice.
He was sipping his third brandy, still deep in maudlin thoughts, when raucous laughter and conversation disturbed his quiet corner. A few younger men of the merchant families had just arrived, among them young Porter Arbuthnot. They had obviously already been drinking elsewhere, and were boasting to each other of their successes.
Porter was rambling on about having some plan that would make his family business a new fortune. The others mocked him good-naturedly, but he did not appear to take it in good part. Raphael watched with some disgust at their behaviour, and an even greater certainty than before that he did not want his sister attached to the young fool. He tossed back the last of his brandy, and left, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
~~~~~
Sera, on reaching home, refused to eat, telling her mother that she had a megrim, and went straight to her room. Once Polly had helped her undress and prepare for bed, and left her, she flung herself down and cried. The day had been wonderful, until the moment that Raphael had uttered that hated name. In a breath, everything had changed.
She had been a fool. She had allowed herself to hope. She should have known better. The last few years had surely taught her that good things were less likely than bad. But she had been lulled into a belief that things had changed. That Raphael was good, as he had appeared, that there might be some chance that her desire for him could become something long term, something worth having.
She had been cruelly deceived. Any man who was a friend to Pendholm had to be, if not as bad as him, at least one who condoned that sort of behaviour. The sort of uncaring enticement that led young men to gamble away everything, and then kill themselves when all was lost.
She cried for everything that she had lost – for her brother, for her old life, for the illusion of joy in her new life, for the hope of love, for the sight, scent and touch of Raphael, as the man she had thought him to be. Eventually, her tears ran dry, and she drifted into a sleep of tortured dreams of loss, where the man she loved transformed into a monster in front of her.
A month passed. A month in which Sera’s heart ached every day. A month in which the new flower cards became an even bigger success, providing her the chance to immerse herself in work, and ignore her feelings. When Raphael came to the manufactory, she absented herself, on one excuse or another. She was sure that the girls all thought her a little mad, but none were brave enough to say anything.
Her dreams were dark and bitter, and the unseasonably cold spring and early summer seemed a reflection of the chill in her life. She told herself to forget him, to allow only the concept of his existence as a business partner, for her mother’s sake, if nothing else. Her treacherous heart and mind refused to do her bidding, and she longed to see him, to laugh with him, to kiss him, and to see the world as a pleasant place again.
But she would not go back on her word. That she wanted him changed nothing. He was a friend of the devil who had destroyed her family – and that was something she could not forgive.
She assured herself that, eventually, she would get over him, would find someone else to care for. She found herself hard to convince.
~~~~~
Raphael’s days felt empty, although they were full of work on his business. He pushed himself hard, and drove the business to ever greater heights of success, but somehow, no matter what he did, the empty space inside him stayed that way. He fell into his bed at night, exhausted, and slept – a sleep full of dreams where beautiful things turned to ash in front of him, where people he loved were on the field of war and could not be saved, where the sun never touched him.
Sera had been true to her words. She had refused to see or speak to him. Any messages related to the business came to him via Jenkins, or Miss Nunn, or Alf – always phrased coldly and the bare minimum required to keep the business running. He knew that she worked as hard as he did, from the results, and from what Jenkins told him, but he was not permitted to be in her presence.
His mother and sister were almost as distressed as he, for they were fond of Sera, and had enjoyed her company. His mother had tried to encourage him to change things – but he would not force his attentions where they were so blatantly not wanted. He felt almost as if Sera’s decision had cost him his family, as well as her.
Even the other Hounds were barely available to him – each going about their own lives, in far different circles from him.
It was, he thought, becoming as he had feared. Society was pushing them apart. He saw them occasionally, but not often. He had not been able to bring himself to tell Charlton of Sera’s words – and he felt that he somehow dishonoured Charlton by not telling him. Whatever he did, he would be hurting someone. Far better that he was the one who hurt, not anyone else that he cared for.
Manning brought him the shipping plans and, each voyage that he signed off on, each ship that he sent forth to trade in exotic ports, the wish got stronger – to go with them, to leave all of this hurt and heartbreak behind, and explore the world. Surely, in doing so, he would be able to forget her?
~~~~~
Manning scooped up the pile of papers from Raphael’s desk, tucking them into a neat pile.
“That will be all f
or some weeks, Mr Morton. The ‘Morton Prosperity’ isn’t due into port for at least a sennight or two, likely longer, given the weather.”
“Thank you, Manning – I’ll expect you to keep me informed if that expectation changes.”
“Of a certainty, sir.”
As Manning let himself out of the office, Raphael allowed himself to consider the innocuous looking envelope that was now the only thing on his desk. He knew that seal. It was from Baron Setford. Which meant that the contents could be almost anything.
He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.
Shaking off his hesitancy, he lifted it, and broke the seal. Unfolding the note – which was written on paper of the highest quality, as usual – he thoughtfully read it through. It asked him to meet Setford that afternoon, ‘at the usual secure location’ to discuss a matter which might be mutually beneficial.
Raphael laughed, a touch cynically – Setford’s concept of ‘beneficial’ could be somewhat flexible. He wondered just what this was about. Still, no matter what it was, perhaps it would provide a better distraction from thoughts of Sera, than he had found so far. His staff would probably welcome having him out of the place for a while – he suspected that they were rather sick of his continuous presence getting in their way.
Two hours later, Raphael pushed open the door of ‘Bigglesworth’s Books’ - an ordered, if densely packed little shop in an unassuming location. The cheerful older gentleman behind the desk smiled at his arrival, and waved him towards the dusty curtain that hung behind him. Mr Bigglesworth was used to visits from all of the Hounds, and knew to ask no questions.
Raphael nodded a greeting, then slipped past him, and through the curtain. A narrow dusty corridor ended in equally dusty rickety looking stairs – which Raphael knew to be absolutely solid, no matter their appearance. At the top of the stairs he tapped on an equally rickety looking door, then entered.
Winning the Merchant Earl: Sweet and Clean Regency Romance (His Majesty's Hounds Book 8) Page 3
