“Miss Montgomery, twice now you have dropped Easterbrook's name with ease. The implication is that he sent you. However, I know that he did not.”
“You do?”
“His brother approached me. I was agreeable to seeing you, but I requested a meeting alone with Easterbrook first. That has not occurred.”
“You have found me out, sir. Lord Easterbrook's aid has been removed, and I am making my own way once again. I pray that you will hear me anyway, perhaps due to your old acquaintance with my father.”
Her reference surprised him. “I did not realize that you knew about that.”
“I recently read some of his papers. In one he speculated about the opium smugglers, and listed captains and shippers who might be available to ply that trade. Beside your name he jotted, ‘Never. I know him, and it is impossible.’ I confess that is one reason why I decided to approach you first.”
“My ships do not take cargoes of slaves either. Just so you know, in the event that you—”
“We are of like mind, I assure you. We do not want that trade.”
“Perhaps you should explain what you do want.”
She described her desire for an alliance that would expand her brother's reach and improve the efficiency of his routes of trade. She suggested that if St. John contracted to make use of the holds of Montgomery and Tavares, he could expand his own business.
“Miss Montgomery, what you describe is of little benefit to me. Currently, that is. In five years, however, the alliance that you propose might prove very profitable.”
“We do not want to wait that long.” Without an alliance they might not survive that long. “Why would we be of more interest later than now?”
“The remaining monopolies of the East India Company will not survive in its next charter renewal. When trade between England and the East is open to all, your family's connections with the Canton's hong merchants will become much more valuable. As will any partnership that I may forge with you.”
His vision of the future made a lot of sense, but his last sentence dismayed her. “Partnership? I did not propose a partnership.”
“Nothing less would benefit me. I would also require a controlling interest in the resulting company. The relative strengths and sizes of our current situations warrant it.”
“If there were a partnership, I think it would have to be equal. That is only fair.”
“I doubt that your assets are even one tenth of mine. Aside from that, there are other issues that unbalance matters.”
“We are in Canton. That alone tips the scales back in our favor.”
He shook his head. “Your brother is in Canton, not you. He is still green, and as a woman you are not allowed there. The business is too dependent on you, and admirable though your successes have been, your sex limits your reach. Your father's refusal to ignore the smugglers weakened you and your ships are still vulnerable. If I throw in with you now, I must have a free hand to deal with all of that, to ensure that you do indeed survive for the future.”
He spelled out their vulnerabilities rather too well. “It is my brother's company now. I cannot effect the kind of partnership that you describe without his agreement.”
“I have a man in India. I will give you a letter when you sail back. If your brother is agreeable, bring that letter to my factor in Calcutta. He will know what to do once he reads it.”
Mr. St. John assumed it would only go one way. He knew just how tenuous the solvency of Montgomery and Tavares had been these last years. She had hoped to forge informal alliances that would offer some protection, but it appeared this shipper would accept only a merger, where he swallowed her father's company whole.
“And my brother? What should I tell him about his position in this unequal partnership?”
“Since he holds the Country Trader license, he will be needed as long as the current system remains in place. If he proves to have your abilities, there will always be a place for him. If not, he will share the profits but not the decisions. I will want one of my people in Canton with him as soon as the deal is struck, however.”
“I can see that I have much to consider. I do not even know how to present this when I go home, or how to advise him.”
“Consider at your leisure and advise as you must. The East India Company's monopoly will not end tomorrow, and, as I said, this partnership is of little benefit to me currently.”
It might be of considerable benefit to Montgomery and Tavares, however. She suspected there would be fewer episodes with pirates and port officials if St. John's free hand was at work.
She stood to take her leave. He escorted her to the door and opened it for her.
“If I may ask, Mr. St. John—How did my father know you?”
“We did one small piece of trading together. It was long ago. I was little more than a boy.”
“And yet he formed a strong opinion of your character. Would you tell me how you met him? It is rare for me to speak with someone who knew him back then.”
She paused at the door, hoping he would indulge her.
“Perhaps you should be content in your memories, Miss Montgomery.”
“My memories are of a man fighting to survive. Of a man old before his time.”
He examined her critically. “It may be best if I tell you. It could affect your brother's decision, and your influence. I would not want you to later think I had deceived you.”
“Deceived me? I do not understand.”
He closed the door. “I had one ship back then, and my use of it could be reckless. I was not above a little smuggling into the Eastern kingdoms that forbad normal trade. The Chinese coast is a big one, and very porous. Your father had bought a cargo of bronze pots in India. He paid me to deliver them to the coast, forty leagues north of Canton.”
“Bronze pots? He paid you to smuggle bronze pots into China?”
“A little like smuggling coal into Newcastle, isn't it? That preyed on my mind as I sailed toward China. One night I went below and opened a crate and examined those urns. They were not empty. They had been packed with opium.”
His accusation stunned her. “That is not possible. I do not believe you.”
“Believe what you want, but I smuggled for him, and that was the true cargo. It all went into the sea, Miss Montgomery. I delivered the pots as contracted and nothing more, and I never dealt with your father again.”
A sentry stood on Grosvenor Square. Christian noticed him as soon as he turned his horse onto the street.
Everyone else noticed Tong Wei too. He might have been a statue, he remained so still. An exotic statue, dressed in shafts of sapphire silk, with his ageless face fixed in resolve.
He moved and blocked the groom from taking Christian's horse. One second Tong Wei was immobile and the next his face was turned up to Christian's own.
“You should come now,” he said. “I think she will talk to you.”
Christian handed the reins to the groom. “I am sure that she does not want to. Nor can I say anything to make her less angry.”
“She is not angry. That would be normal. Healthy.” Tong Wei shook his head. “She has not been herself. It is worse today, not better. You will come and she will talk to you.”
Tong Wei walked away. Christian entered his house.
“How long has the Chinaman been outside?” he asked the footman who took his crop and gloves.
“Two days, my lord. He was first there yesterday, early morning. Lady Wallingford demanded we remove him, but he did not seem to understand what we were saying. Lord Elliot called in the afternoon, and told us to leave him be.”
“That was wise advice.” He would not want Tong Wei insulted by the servants. Nor would he want to see the damage if Tong Wei felt the need to defend himself against them.
Leona had not sent him here. He had come on his own. Tong Wei was not a man to care about lovers’ quarrels, and his worry was deep. If he had stood on the street for two days, awaiting acknowledgment, there was
a good reason.
“I will need a fresh mount. Tell the grooms to bring my bay around as soon as he is saddled.”
He found her in the garden, sitting under the small tree that had offered entry to the intruders. She noticed him watching her from ten feet away. A sad half-smile formed, then she looked at the ivy at her feet.
It was not much of a welcome, but he had expected worse. He went over and sat beside her on the stone bench.
“Tong Wei is worried about you.”
“Tong Wei can be an old woman sometimes.”
“He takes his duty very seriously. You cannot fault him for that. Your behavior concerns him.”
She sighed with exasperation. “I do not have to be talkative all the time. I do not have to always be busy. I am allowed periods of reflection too, am I not? Tong Wei reflects all the time. You have wasted half of your life in reflection. Why am I supposed to be devoid of deeper thoughts, even for a day or two?”
He chose to ignore her easy annoyance, but he did not miss her criticism of his habits. “He does not think that this melancholy is caused by any emotion that he understands.”
“Did he go to you and tell you to come here?” Her color rose with her embarrassment. “He should not have imposed like that.”
“It was no imposition. I would have come anyway.” And he would have. He would have found another excuse if Tong Wei had not handed him this one. “I might have washed first, and changed my coats, but I intended to call.”
Her gaze darted at him. He read the question in her eyes. Why?
Why indeed? Why bother? Why inconvenience them both? Why face her suspicions? Why pick up the row again?
He did not know. Because she had not left his thoughts during these days apart, he supposed. Because after activity ceased and he was alone with himself, a new void existed in his isolation. Because he still wanted her.
“I read the notebook,” she said. “I know why you took it, and why you did not want to give it to me.”
“I did not read it until recently, so you know more now than I did even a fortnight ago. I took it for the reason I said, Leona. No other. Your father was determined to pursue his investigations, no matter what the danger. The fire on that ship said he might pay with his life. Or yours. I took it, but not to protect anyone but you.”
“But you guessed what was in it.”
He had chosen not to guess. Not to know. There had been too much of that in his life. “Did you never wonder how I arrived at your father's door? Why he accepted me as a guest?”
“You were English. I assumed that you had a letter of introduction.”
“I had no letter. I only had a name. I brought him the Marquess of Easterbrook's greetings. I arrived in the East before word of my father's death became known, so he thought I spoke for a living man.”
“But why?”
“I had seen my father's accounts and papers. I had the names of men in places like Canton and Macao and India, and I used them like stepping-stones. They gave direction to an aimless journey. Reginald Montgomery of Macao was one of those names. I swear that I did not know how and why our fathers knew each other. And I used a false name because my use of opium shamed me even as it enthralled me.”
She remained skeptical. Of course she did. He did not blame her.
“When he told me about his troubles, and his conviction that there were men in England profiting handsomely from the smuggling.…I suspected the connection then,” he admitted. “He was not confiding so much as quizzing. He wanted to learn if I knew anything, or had been sent by the marquess for the reasons you suspect.”
“My suspicions, and his, fit the facts better than your story does, Christian.”
“There is nothing that I can do about that. I do not expect you to believe me. That would take more trust than you can have and much more than I expect.”
Her face fell. He had never seen her look so sad before.
“Do not tell me what trust I am capable of. I trusted for seven years despite my suspicions. I trusted even after I learned you lied about your identity. I trusted against my better sense. I trusted you enough to give myself and my—” She inhaled deeply and fought for her composure. “The truth is, whatever you did has become a very little thing in light of what I learned two days ago.”
An odd mix of reactions cascaded in him. Worry at her profound sorrow. Relief that he had not caused it. Dismay that even his betrayal would be no more than a very small thing to her.
“What did you learn? Tell me now.”
With a hesitant, miserable voice she described a visit to the shipper St. John, and the shocking revelation at its end.
“That my father had been a smuggler at all—I could forgive that. I could swallow that if he had worked with those men and that secret company to evade tariffs in the East with cargoes of porcelains and bronzes and cloth.” Her breath caught. “But opium? He hated it. He despised the men who traded in it. He died fighting it. It was an unbelievable accusation and I almost did St. John violence. But—” Again that stricken expression. “I think he told the truth, Christian.”
“Quite likely not. He was bargaining with you. He thought this would make you more pliable.”
She shook her head. “He already has the advantage in any negotiations. He had no reason to lie, although I had a passing vexation that you were not with me so you would know at once if he did.”
He sought a way to convince her that this tale was not true. Her disillusionment pained him and he would lie outright to spare her if he could. He wished he had in fact been there with her, so she would believe him if he discredited St. John's claim.
There was little doubt in her now that it was the truth. Nor in him. It explained why her father had been targeted for so much trouble and coercion.
The goal had not been to force Montgomery into joining the opium smuggling. They sought to coerce him into silence once he broke away from them. And if he had once been part of that ring, he would have cause to know if they worked for nameless men in London, and whether their activities extended to the West, and not only China. Reginald Montgomery's crusade had been even more dangerous than Christian had previously understood.
It also explained the reference to Montgomery that had sent Christian to him in Macao in the first place. His father's correspondence had not established that connection. Rather Montgomery's name had been in a very private account book, with a series of payments noted.
“It changes everything, of course,” she said. “What a comical figure I must appear to them, whoever they are. Fighting a moral battle against men who were once my father's partners. Small wonder my father did not want me to involve myself, or hand me what he knew so I could finish his work. He feared what I would learn.”
“What have you learned? That many years ago he did this, that is all. He more than made up for it later. He stopped at great cost to himself. He spoke against it, and wrote to the Company and the emperor's officials. He risked everything, and would not bend to their demands that he stop. Perhaps his zeal was twice that of most men because of his past sins.”
She looked at him with an incredibly vulnerable expression in her eyes.
Then she crumbled. She covered her face with her hands, bent low over her lap, and began to cry.
Her weeping dismayed him. What had he said? Hell, he was supposed to be here to help, not—Tong Wei had warned that she was not herself.
He took her into his arms and cursed himself.
She released the horrible emotions that had been burning her heart. Slowly she found some calm. Her composure returned.
His kindness both comforted and embarrassed her. She had allowed herself to think the worst of him, to accuse him of deceit, but he had come here today anyway. He had listened to her sad tale with sympathy. Then he had restored her best memories of her father, and painted a portrait of strength, not hypocrisy, in doing so.
She could not face him. She kept her face buried in his coat even after the sobs ceas
ed wracking her. There were things she needed to say, but her courage failed her. She took refuge in the commonplace instead.
“Were you in Oxfordshire all this time?”
“Most of it. I made a short journey to take care of some family matters.”
Her throat burned again. She held in the tears. “I am sorry about that row we had. I said things that—”
“You have a temper and I do too, so sometimes we will say things that.…”
She smiled at the way he left the that unspoken. He could be very wise sometimes. She cuddled closer. The emotion-laden peace reminded her of the mood after they made love.
“I am sorry that I wasted these days,” she whispered. “I wish that I had asked for silks or jewels after all, and not that notebook.”
His kiss pressed her crown. “Then let us make up for the lost time, Leona.”
He stood with her in his arms and carried her toward the house.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Silence. Stillness. The pulse creating utter calm. kJ Higher consciousness in the loss of all awareness.
Floating now. No loss. No fear. No time. No sound.
A disturbance. The center shattering like dark glass.
Christian opened his eyes. Two men stood ten feet away.
“Hello, Hayden. Elliot.”
Hayden sighed. “Damnation, it is like you don't exist when you sit in the dark like this.” He strode over and pulled the drapes open to the night's vague light, then used a flint to flame a lamp.
“You did tell the footman to send us up here,” he added. “Do not dare object if we intruded on.…whatever the hell you were doing.”
“I did not object. I welcomed you.”
“At least he is dressed already, Hayden,” Elliot said.
“Of course I am dressed. The dinner tonight celebrates Caroline's engagement. I need to be there.”
Hayden crossed his arms. “What did you want us for?”
“Sit.”
Hayden glared.
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