The Silver Lord. Miranda JarrettЧитать онлайн книгу.
demanded Forbert peevishly. “Who’s to say they’re not here now?”
“Because they’re not.” Impatiently Fan shoved a loose strand of her hair back under her cap. “Do you think I’d purposefully lead you astray, Bob Forbert, just for the sport of it? Do you think I’d put my own neck into the noose first? You know I’ve ways to tell Ned Markham to keep back his tea for another week if the customs men are here. Why would that be changing now?”
Hood nodded. “And mind, we’re a small company, and always have been. No high-and-mighty lord-captain’s going to bother with us, not when he can go fill his pockets as deep as he pleases catching dagos and frogs. Mistress here will tell you the same. We’re not worth the bother.”
Forbert gulped, his Adam’s apple moving frantically up and down. “But there’s a peace now,” he persisted, “and if this captain is idle, then—”
“The peace won’t last, not with the French,” said Fan quickly. “The London agent said so in his letter. He said Captain Claremont wanted to find a house at once, since he expected to be sent back to sea soon. Ned Markham’s said that, too, that the word of a Frenchman’s not worth a fig.”
“Well, then, there you are,” said Hood. “And if mistress says this lordly bloke’s not coming back, then he’s not, and that’s an end to it.”
“Yes,” said Fan, her old confidence beginning to return. Captain Claremont was no more than a single day’s inconvenience in her ordered life. Why, in another week, she’d scarce remember the color of his hair, let alone the way he’d grinned to soften his teasing about the mistress’s bed. “That is an end to it, Bob Forbert, and to Captain Lord Folderol, too. Let him take his Spanish dollars and settle in China for what I care, and a pox on anyone who says different.”
Hood nodded, the lines around his mouth creasing through the graying stubble of his beard as he smiled.
“True words, mistress, true words,” he said, clapping his hands. “How could it be otherwise with you, considering what the Navy would do to the likes of us if they could? Ha, that old bastard of a captain-mi’lordy’s lucky you didn’t shoot him dead there in his fancy carriage, just because you could!”
The others laughed, pleased by the vengeance Hood was imagining. But while Fan laughed, too, her conscience was far from merry.
Shoot the bastard dead, that’s what they wanted, dead on the step of his fancy carriage.
And forget forever the way he’d smiled, just for her, just for her….
George sat in the small office, ignoring the dish of tepid tea that the bustling clerk had brought, and considering instead the murky fog in the street outside. Though landsmen failed to mark the difference, London fog was nothing like the clean, salty fog at sea. The stuff that clogged the London air was gray and heavy as a shroud, so weighted with coal smoke and grime that he wondered the people who lived in the city could breathe it without perishing.
Not that any of them seemed to notice it, let alone complain. That in itself would set him apart from the true fashionable Londoners like his older brother Brant, His Grace the Duke of Strachen, as much at elegant ease in the chair across from him as George himself was not. If it weren’t for his uniform, George wouldn’t have the slightest notion how to dress himself, while Brant not only knew the fashions, he set them, from the precise width of this season’s waistcoat lapel to the cunning new way to wear a peridot stickpin in the center of one’s cravat.
Once again George smiled to recall how blithely Miss Winslow had lumped him in with the other Londoners, and smiled, too, to remember how she’d lifted her chin with such charming defiance when she’d done so. Yet he’d felt more instantly at home in that windswept corner of Kent than he’d ever felt in his family’s vast formal house on Hanover Square—a contradiction he intended to correct as soon as possible.
“Ah, ah, Your Grace, Captain My Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Potipher as he scurried into the office, bowing in nervous little jerks like some anxious little waterfowl in old-fashioned knee-breeches and steel spectacles. “I am so honored to have you here, so very honored!”
George didn’t even give him time to circle around to his desk. “I have come about Feversham,” he declared. “I have decided to take it.”
“You have?” exclaimed Potipher, so shocked that he briefly forgot his manners. “That is, Captain My Lord, you have found the property pleases you?”
“I have,” George answered without hesitation. “And I wish to buy it outright, not merely let it. The house requires so many improvements—which, of course, I intend to make at my expense—that it would be imprudent not to.”
“You would buy Feversham outright, Captain My Lord?” asked Potipher, shocked again. “You would make an offer this day?”
“Indeed, I will make it,” said George, “just as I expect it to be accepted. I understand the family that owns the property has had little interest in it for years, and should not be overly particular.”
“No, no, no, they shall not,” agreed the flustered agent, taking down a wooden box from the shelf behind him and rustling through the sheaf of papers it contained. “Yes, here we are. You are quite right about the Trelawneys, you know. Times being what they are, I am sure they shall be delighted to accept whatever you offer.”
George nodded, and smiled with satisfaction across the room at his brother. Brant had always been the one among the three brothers with a head for business and investments, and Society had long ago dubbed Brant the “Golden Lord”, after his ability to draw guineas seemingly from the air, while their brother Revell had been called the “Sapphire Lord” for his success in India.
It had, of course, followed that George would be labeled the “Silver Lord” on account of that single stupendous capture, a title that George himself found wretchedly embarrassing. But after today, he’d have more than that ridiculous nickname. When he left his office, he’d no longer be just a rootless, roaming sailor, but a Gentleman of Property.
But Potipher was scowling through his spectacles at a paper from the box. “You should know that there is one small consideration attached to this property, Captain My Lord.”
“My brother’s credit is sufficient for a score of country houses in Kent,” drawled Brant. “That should be no ‘consideration’ at all.”
“Oh, no, no, there was never a question of that!” Potipher smiled anxiously, the plump pads of his cheeks lifting his spectacles. “It is the housekeeper, Miss Winslow. I believe you must have met her at your, ah, inspection of the house, Captain My Lord?”
George nodded, striving to remain noncommittal. The last thing he wished was to confess to this man, and worse, to his brother, that he’d been thinking of that self-same housekeeper day and night since he’d returned, with no end to his misery in sight.
“Then I am certain you shall be willing to oblige this request from the current owners, Captain My Lord,” said the agent, his lips pursed as he scanned the letter in his hands. “Miss Winslow’s father was the house’s former caretaker, and most kind and useful to old Mr. Trelawney before his death. But it appears that recently Mr. Winslow himself has met with some manner of fatal misfortune.”
At once George thought of the young woman’s somber dress, how she’d said her father was only away, and how long it took for her to smile.
“I am sorry, on Miss Winslow’s account,” he said softly. “She is young to bear such a loss.”
“Then you will honor the Trelawneys’ request that she be assured her position as long as she wishes to retain it?” asked Potipher hopefully. “They have made it a condition, you see, Captain My Lord, having great respect for the father’s services as well as regard for Miss Winslow’s own abilities. She would certainly ease your entry into the neighborhood, recommending the best butchers and bakers and such.”
George sat, suddenly silent. To keep a lone