To Tempt an Heiress by Susanna Craig

Author:Susanna Craig [Craig, Susanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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