by Darcy Burke
“Everyone leaves town in the summer. I know you can’t go away for three months, but surely, we could go away for a week? Shipping slows down in the summer, doesn’t it?”
Richard chose not to correct Lizzie’s misapprehension that shipping slowed in fine weather, when in fact the opposite happened. He pondered the meager funds in his bank account. Quarterly, he received an allowance from his brother, the earl of Briarcliff. Richard wondered why his brother paid it. He wondered what he would do if his brother ever changed his mind about doing so. Upon receiving his stipend, Richard paid his rent ahead, settled any outstanding debts and spent the remainder within weeks. His coffers would be replenished at the end of June and not a moment before.
“Right. There is only the matter of Howard and the imports warehouse,” Richard yawned.
“Which you have precious little to do with on a day-to-day basis. Admit it. If you wanted to get away, all you would have to do is walk over to the warehouse and talk to Howard,” Lizzie cajoled.
“Assuming I could find him, that is.” He did not want to go anywhere with Lizzie, much less publicly. He traded upon his misappropriated title and aura of dissolute nobility to bring Howard new investors. Howard had carved out a profitable niche for himself shipping wares up the Atlantic coast from Southern states. The whispers about his dalliance with Lizzie were bad enough. Confirmation of the rumors could ruin him—and Howard, by proxy.
Well, Howard’s prospects, rather. Richard himself was already as ruined as a man could get. Setting the blaze that had killed his own father and being banished for it…there wasn’t much further to fall.
Upon landing in Boston nearly two years ago, Richard had stumbled—literally—into a partnership with a man named Howard. He remained uncertain as to whether or not Howard was the man’s first or last name. All he knew was that Howard had saved his life, which was more than anyone else had ever done for him. One would never guess from his unshaven cheeks and shabby garments barely fit for a stevedore that the man was not, in fact, hard-pressed. Richard wasn’t one to ask questions. When he needed money—which was often—Howard let him work in the warehouse. Supposedly, Richard received a share in the profits whenever Howard needed someone respectable to accompany him on meetings with prospective investors, which was how he’d come into Lizzie’s orbit in the first place.
Following a series of connections made by leveraging his family’s illustrious name, Richard had made his way to New York, worming his way into the dining rooms and parlors of wealthy mercantile families like Lizzie’s, and rubbing elbows with newer, self-made industrialists flooding into the city. The first time Howard had tried to pay him for dining and “doing the talking” at a business dinner Richard had laughed it off, telling him to reinvest the proceeds. Though Howard stayed afloat, anyone who could afford it would have dressed better. The notion of taking badly needed money from someone who had saved his life sat uneasily on Richard’s conscience.
A strange thought, considering that he had not been previously aware of possessing any such thing.
“How about in July?” he offered.
Lizzie’s expression turned mulish. “No. It has to be next week.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“That’s it? Because?” Richard eyed her with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance.
“It isn’t as though you have anything to do,” Lizzie pouted, poking him in the pectoral muscles that had developed since his arrival in America. Moving heavy cargo in the warehouse had kept off the softness that nightly drinking with Lizzie might otherwise have packed about his middle.
“Howard lives at the warehouse. I am sure you could find him, dear, darling Richard.” The language of excessively familiar affection was a marker of how little genuine affection either of them felt. Lizzie had never given any indication of possessing a capacity to care about anyone apart from herself.
Dear Richard was also code for I am calling your bluff, and I win. Shrugging, Richard conceded victory. He always did. What Lizzie wanted, she got, and he saw little point in wasting breath to argue.
“I don’t have money for a long trip,” he began cautiously.
“La, money. You are the son of an earl! Practically a prince. Princes aren’t paupers. Ask your brother for an increase.” Lizzie tripped down the hallway.
Richard had two limits. He did not discuss his family, and he did not discuss money. He let everyone assume whatever they pleased. It was easier than trying to explain why he’d been exiled, not that it was anyone’s business but his own. Lizzie had just breezed past both boundaries in the span of a sentence.
“Leave my family out of this,” he demanded, to no avail.
Lizzie smiled coyly and took his hand between her warm palms. “Darling. You deprive yourself unnecessarily. When is the last time you took a holiday?”
Arguably, Richard had been on holiday for his entire adult life. He had completed all of one year at Cambridge before being tossed out on his ear for failure to attend classes and general misbehavior. He had then spent the better part of the next decade drinking and whoring with London’s fastest set. Then, after the tragedy of his father’s death, he’d been sent into exile by his brother, Edward. The only work Richard had ever performed had been for Howard, who always needed the help. Richard felt a twinge of shame that he only ever helped Howard when he, himself, needed money. Richard quickly swept that feeling into the unexamined corner of his soul where such emotions went to writhe in darkness. For whatever reason, Lizzie wanted a summer vacation, and what Lizzie wanted she usually found a way to get. He could fight her, but that would require effort.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“My aunt will be at her summer house on the New Jersey seashore next week. I could stay with her. There is a boarding house nearby that caters to families of modest means. You might rent lodgings there. Or there’s a cabin on her property that might suit.”
“Why wouldn’t you stay with me at the boarding house?”
“I don’t want to risk a scandal.”
Richard threw back his head and laughed. Lizzie stank of scandal like a woman wearing too much perfume. He had no idea how she got away with it. Later, Richard would curse himself roundly for not having been more suspicious of Lizzie’s motives. By then it would be too late to undo the damage, leaving him to wonder how he had fallen so far and let this slip of a girl bully him into so much trouble.
For now, Richard simply pushed back his chair and padded to his room to dress. With no valet, he wore simple clothes instead of the fine fabrics and elegantly styled formal wear he’d been accustomed to in London. Patched trousers and old linen shirts were comfortable enough for working in a stuffy warehouse.
“Richard,” Lizzie came up behind him on tiptoe and sank sharp teeth a bit too hard into his earlobe. Her hands flattened over his stomach. Pillowy little breasts flattened pleasingly against Richard’s back. He turned and kissed her.
“If you want that holiday, I had best find Howard.” He disentangled himself and headed for the door.
“I’ll be here waiting for you,” Lizzie purred from where she lounged on the unmade bed.
Richard smiled as he closed the door, though he would not have cared if it were the last time he ever saw her face.
Chapter 2
New York’s economic hub sat at the tip of finger-shaped Manhattan and stretched up the west side of the island. To the north lay farmland and open fields. To the south was the harbor, where the Hudson and the East rivers flowed into the sea. The estuary was a sanctuary to birds and creatures that Richard had never seen before arriving in this godforsaken country. Raccoons, for example. The fearless blighters plagued the city’s streets and spread garbage everywhere.
From Richard’s apartments it was a half-hour’s walk to Howard’s warehouse on the Hudson River. It was also a short distance uptown to the stuffy, formal dining rooms of what passed for the upper crust. Merchants, the lot of them, Rich
ard had scoffed upon his arrival. There was money here, however, and with it came a whiff of the prestige and luxury he missed so badly he could taste it. With his sense of superiority severely chastened after the fire and his humiliating banishment from London, Richard had been grateful to slink back into the world of privilege he’d once enjoyed without thinking.
Lizzie talked endlessly of English aristocracy, as if she had any chance of joining their ranks.
“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 the 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 wick into that redhead?” Howard asked.
Richard leaned back 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. “As you so crudely describe it.”
“She’s why you’re here today, toiling like a deckhand, 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 fri
end’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 wants 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 wintertime. “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 flattering. 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 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 a 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.”
