But her reply was not at all what he had expected. “I have just been talking with Miss Holderin.”
He hesitated. “She’s been telling tales, I take it?”
“She has not,” his mother said, refusing a chair. “But I don’t doubt she has a tale to tell. There’s a ‘misunderstanding’ between you, she says. She never wanted to come to London. So why is she here?”
“Because I was paid to bring her here, Mama.” When that answer proved unsatisfactory, he explained. “Miss Holderin was in danger, the seriousness of which she refused to acknowledge. So a certain person arranged for her to leave the island until the danger had passed.”
“An interested person.”
Andrew was forced to stifle a smirk at such a description of Edward Cary. “Yes. Very much so.”
“And you are certain she really was in danger?”
A memory of Lord Nathaniel Delamere’s actions in Gillingham’s pub flashed in his mind’s eye. “I am.”
“Even so, she seems eager to return. She would’ve gone back to Wapping tonight if I’d let her.”
“Yes, I know.” Andrew strode to the window and tugged back the drapery with one curled finger. Having completed his inspection, Caliban trotted over and stood with his paws on the ledge to see what his master spied. Although it was not yet evening, lamps had already been lit along the street, brighter smudges against a yellow fog. “She can be rather . . . impetuous.”
His mother appeared to take in the significance of that word. “Has she family here?”
“A grandfather, with whom she has had no contact for some time, as I understand it.” He said nothing of his intention to take her to him, nor of Tempest’s reluctance to visit the man. Yorkshire must be their destination, whatever her wishes. Or his.
“I see,” she said after a moment. “Well, I never like to hear of a young person in trouble, but as she has been the cause of bringing you home at last, I cannot help but be grateful.”
“Home?” he repeated, finally turning away from the window. “Daniel ought to have left this house to you. You know very well, Mama, that this life is not mine.”
“Oh, and what is?” she countered. “A cramped, musty cabin? Scurvy? Storms? Surely you do not mean to tell me you are going back to sea, back to chasing after—”
“That pirate Stratton is lying at the bottom of the Atlantic,” he cut across her, “with his ship beside him.”
Her sharp intake of breath was loud in the quiet room, underscored by the thump of Caliban’s tail against the patterned wool carpet. “I will not pretend that this news does not make me glad,” she said after a moment, lifting her gaze and meeting his with surprising composure. “But I hope, for the sake of your soul, yours was not the hand that put him there.”
Although he could easily have reassured her, he did not. The hand of God had intervened at the last, it was true. But had it not, Andrew would have been only too glad to have raised his own to deal the deathblow. His mother ought to suffer no illusions about that.
She laid her fingertips along his arm. “I have worried about you more than you can know, Andrew.” Beneath her gentle, maternal touch, he longed to soften. God, how he had missed her, worried about her, all these years. Instead, however, he held himself stiff against the words he feared were coming.
When she spoke again, however, she dealt a sharper strike than he had expected. “You are my son,” she said, “and I will always love you. But when I hear that lust for revenge in your voice, or learn you have been involved in what sounds suspiciously like a kidnapping . . . I do not think I like what you have become.”
“I was little more than a boy when I left,” he reminded her. “Ten years at sea were bound to change me. They made me a man.”
“Perhaps,” she acknowledged. “I had hopes, however, that with your grandfather’s early influence and Daniel’s efforts, you might grow to become a gentleman.”
He stepped away so her hand slipped from his sleeve. “Would you ignore my father’s influence entirely, ma’am?” he asked, not bothering to mute the sardonic edge in his voice.
“If I could,” she admitted, although the moment of hesitation between when the word was formed and when the sound of it left her lips made him certain it was not what she had started to say.
Before either of them could speak again, a pair of footmen staggered into the dressing room under the weight of his sea chest, while another bore the long-awaited hot water. The servants’ arrival would not have had to end their conversation, but his mother took the opportunity to excuse herself. “You will wish to freshen up before dinner,” she said and quickly left.
With a sigh, Andrew crossed to a chair near the empty fireplace and sat, his elbows propped up on his knees, his head dropped into his hands.
“I love you, too, Mama,” he whispered after she had closed the door behind her.
He had often regretted their long separation, repented the concern he knew he was causing her. But he had also suspected that she understood why his voyage had been necessary. The wash of relief across her features when he told her Stratton was dead had confirmed it.
In all his reflections over the course of those ten years, however, he had never imagined he was leaving her alone. Daniel Beauchamp had always seemed like such an unstoppable force. Now, to know he had been gone for nearly two years . . .
The dog nudged against him and licked his damp cheeks, as if trying to rouse him from his mourning. When Andrew could muster no more attention for him than an absentminded pat on the head, he lay down at his master’s feet with a sigh.
Andrew and his stepfather had not always gotten on—and was not that an understatement?—but he knew he would miss the man, and not just for his mother’s sake. Daniel had been a kind and generous stepfather, and in truth, Andrew had never resented his mother’s remarriage—or at least, no more than any boy of seven or eight might. What he had resented had been the attempts, both overt and covert, to remake him in his stepfather’s image when it was so clear to anyone who so much as glanced his way that he had been cut from the same cloth as his father.
After so much time, he could call up no very distinct memory of his father’s face. He knew, of course, that they shared the same dark hair and green eyes. Sometimes, when he stared into a glass, Andrew fancied it was his father looking back. But it was not so much the resemblance in physical appearance but in character that mattered.
Strange to think that he was now almost the age his father had been when he died. He could still remember how his da had spoken longingly of the life Andrew had gone on to live in his place. Danger. Adventure. Nothing to tie him down.
Only after his father had been gone for many years had Andrew really begun to understand what the man’s fascination with the sea had put the family through. Risky investments. Near ruin. His wanderlust had touched every part of their lives. And he had been unfaithful in every sense of the word, leaving his wife and child with nothing. Those idyllic months living with his mother’s parents had, in fact, been borne of cold necessity.
For his mother, the only bright spots in the year or so after his father’s death had been first the visit and then the letters from Daniel Beauchamp, although Andrew could also recall how the happiness of the letters’ arrival had been tinged with worry over the expense of the postage. When his mother had written to tell him the correspondence must end, Daniel had brought her to England and married her instead.
How could a son resent someone who had at last given his mother the life she deserved?
Still, Daniel had been serious and sober, everything his father had not been. Could a man really own a fleet of ships that sailed the world over and have no desire to see any of those places for himself? For ten years, his stepfather had smoothed every pathway, forged every connection Andrew could possibly need for success on land. And for ten years, Andrew had done whatever he could to prove he was not cut out for life behind a ledger.
Selfish. Irresponsible.
&
nbsp; No, Tempest had not been the first to accuse him thus.
Now, as if those years had taught him nothing, Daniel was trying from beyond the grave to shape his stepson into a man of business. But Andrew was no more to be trusted with such responsibility than his father had been. Men—and a boy—had died under his command. The ship he captained had nearly sunk. Twice. Beauchamp Shipping, this house, this life—it was not a generous bequest. It was a millstone around his neck, and if he did not find a way to shed it, many others would drown right alongside him.
Pushing himself up from the chair, he strode into the dressing room, where the remaining footman was striving to make everything neat. “Good evening, sir,” the young man said with a bow that did not quite hide a darting glance of curiosity at the new master and the rough-coated dog at his feet.
Andrew scowled. “What took so long?”
“Mrs. Beauchamp ordered water for the young lady first, sir.”
Ah, yes. Tempest. Proof incarnate—if further proof were required—that he was not to be trusted. Not with life. Not with wealth. And certainly not with virtue, for thanks to the footman’s dutiful reply, Andrew’s mind was now filled with an image of a copper-haired sprite rising, sleek and damp and beautifully bare, from a steaming bath.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” the footman interrupted, scattering the mental fantasy to the wind, “but Mr. Williams wanted me to ask what you meant to be done with the Negro boy.”
Andrew looked around the dressing room to confirm the presence of a valet’s cot on which Caesar could sleep. “Send him to me.”
He hardly noted the footman’s departure, for his attention had been drawn to something else that had been revealed by his quick sweep of the space. All his possessions had been unpacked, hung up, laid out. Almost as if he had come home to stay. Almost as if he had never left.
Only a rather limp dress of brownish-green muslin, looking sorely out of place, reminded him of how much had changed.
Beauchamp Shipping. This household. His widowed mother. A vulnerable serving boy. His responsibilities were racking up by the moment.
And if Tempest were as unlucky as he, he could soon add a wife and child to the list.
Feeling suddenly as if the walls of the already tiny room were contracting, he would gladly have taken refuge in the contents of his father’s flask. But among the neat rows and stacks of this new life that was being built up around him, he no longer knew where to find it.
* * *
Reluctantly, Tempest submitted to Mrs. Beauchamp’s hospitality, coming down to dinner in a dress that belonged to Hannah, Mrs. Beauchamp’s maid, who was of a similar build but several inches taller. The skirt hems dragged along the carpet.
Inside the dining room, Andrew turned from the sideboard to observe her entrance. One dark brow rose, but thankfully, he did not laugh. “Well, it makes a change from buckskin breeches, at least,” he said with a twitch of a smile as he showed her to her chair.
By contrast, he was more elegantly dressed than she had ever seen him, in a coat of dark green superfine paired with crisp white linen. His hair was tied neatly at the nape of his neck, revealing the sharp angle of his freshly shaven jaw. For perhaps the first time in their acquaintance she was not struck by the disparity between his appearance and his manner, for when he bowed and offered his arm, he looked every inch the gentleman. And why not? she thought, as she glanced around a room whose tasteful appointments had been purchased with profits from the trade in silk and spices, sugar and slaves. His stepfather had been a gentleman, and wealthy enough to buy his stepson’s entrance into those exalted ranks as well.
“I half-expected to be told that you had run from the house at the first opportunity,” he said.
“I might have done,” she admitted, then lifted her skirts just enough to reveal her feet, bare but for a pair of borrowed stockings, “if I had been provided with shoes.”
“A footman took your own to be cleaned and polished—and, as it turned out, repaired,” Mrs. Beauchamp explained. She had entered behind them, unnoticed. “And Hannah’s would have been far too large.” Unlikely though it seemed, Tempest might have accepted the excuse, if not for the glance that darted between mother and son.
Why did either of them care whether she left or not? Despite his rash proposal, she had expected that Andrew would prove only too eager to be rid of her the moment they docked. Instead, he seemed determined to keep her under his guard indefinitely. What on earth was he waiting for?
But she knew the answer, of course, because she was waiting for it, too. Proof that she was not carrying his child. Proof that seemed alarmingly slow in coming, given how predictable her courses had always been. Not that she would allow herself to do anything so unreasonable as worry, since her plan for the future was already decided. Still, at the thought that his mother might suspect what they had done, a blush spread from Tempest’s cheeks down her breast, clashing most dreadfully with Hannah’s pink gown.
“Well, never mind it,” Mrs. Beauchamp said as the soup was served on delicate china plates. “It gives us the perfect excuse to do a little shopping on the morrow.”
“As if ladies have ever required an excuse to go shopping,” said Andrew, and the mocking note in his voice was not entirely good-natured.
“While I’m sure an outing would be delightful,” Tempest replied, struggling to maintain her composure, “I fail to see how I am to go about the streets of London in winter without shoes.”
Mrs. Beauchamp, who had no future on the stage, attempted to appear struck by the incongruity as she fingered the chain of a heavy locket she wore around her neck. “A very good point, Miss Holderin. I shall ask my modiste to come to us instead.”
For Tempest, who had been denied very little in her life, these past weeks of powerlessness had been more frustrating than frightening. At least on board the ship, there had been movement. There had been the illusion of doing something. To be trapped in this house, however grand, might just drive her mad. Not that the cold, crowded city outside offered much in the way of recourse, however.
“I thank you, but I’m afraid I have nothing with which to pay for her services.”
Mrs. Beauchamp considered this newest dilemma. “I’m quite sure your grandfather will make good on the bill. He will not wish to see his granddaughter looking like an urchin.”
“My—!” Tempest began but was forced to pause to collect herself. What had Andrew told her? What was he about? “I fear there has been another misunderstanding. I have no dealings with my grandfather and certainly no expectation of seeing him.”
“You’d best begin to adjust your expectations, Miss Holderin,” Andrew said. “I was hired to take you to Sir Barton Harper, and that’s what I intend to do.”
Tempest dipped her spoon into her soup with no particular desire to taste it, but rather because she was struck by a sudden need to be doing something with her hands. Something other than cheerfully strangling him, that was. “If you take me against my will, Captain Corrvan, that would be kidnapping,” she said once the mouthful of soup had scalded its way down her throat.
Kidnapping. The word had the desired effect on Andrew. He set his jaw hard, while his mother’s eyes flared in alarm.
“I intend,” Tempest continued, more evenly, “to return immediately to Antigua.”
Andrew waved for his dish to be taken away and turned his attention squarely to her. “But you’ve just said you have no money. How then do you propose paying for your passage?”
He could easily lend her the money needed, of course, but the point was moot if he refused to do so.
“That’s one problem easily solved,” his mother proclaimed as the fish course replaced the soup. “She can travel on a Beauchamp ship. If I have not misunderstood the case, Andrew owes you at least that much.”
Seeing the displeasure dart across Andrew’s face at his mother’s suggestion, Tempest felt no little satisfaction. Perhaps Mrs. Beauchamp would prove more of an ally than she h
ad first expected, or than any of the men on the Fair Colleen had been. She would find a private moment in which to explain the reasons for her reluctance to travel to Yorkshire and persuade Mrs. Beauchamp to arrange her passage home first thing. “I would be most grateful for your assistance,” she said, remembering with a pang the days in which she had never needed to ask for another’s help.
“Excellent. I shall send ’round a note to Mr. Farrow in the morning and enquire.”
“Farrow? A familiar name. I am relieved to hear he is still in charge,” said Andrew.
His mother smiled and nodded as she chewed. “Oh yes,” she said after she had swallowed and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “Well, not precisely in charge. I would not go quite so far.”
“No? Then, who is?”
“I am,” she answered before popping another bite into her mouth, delaying any further reply. Suddenly interested, Tempest laid aside her own fork.
Andrew, by contrast, allowed his to clatter onto his plate. “How’s that?”
“As you know, Mr. Beauchamp fully expected you would take up the concerns of the business,” his mother reminded him with a smile that seemed to Tempest to contain a bit of ice. “But as the date of your return was . . . uncertain, he specified in his will that I was to serve as de facto head of the company until you were able to do so. Mr. Farrow handles a great deal of the day-to-day operations, but I have been meeting with investors and the company’s directors, and making decisions that could not be put off.”
“That cannot have been easy,” Tempest remarked.
“Indeed, it wasn’t,” agreed Mrs. Beauchamp, turning toward her. “Many gentlemen are reluctant to allow a woman to be heard on certain matters.”
Thinking of her exchange with Mr. Whelan regarding the repair of the mill at Harper’s Hill, Tempest gave a knowing nod.
“Which matters?” Andrew asked, sounding wary.
“The construction of new docks, in particular. The West India Merchants, of which Mr. Beauchamp was a member of long standing,” she added by way of explanation to Tempest before returning her attention to Andrew, “has concocted a plan, under the leadership of a Jamaican planter, Mr. Milligan, to establish separate docks for the off-loading of our ships returning from Caribbean ports. The river is crowded, as you no doubt observed, and the loss of cargo has been quite shocking. Theft, spoilage.” She shook her head. “The plan is sensible, on the surface. Still, it is a risky undertaking, and I have my reservations about its success without more support. When I attempted to express those reservations, however—”
To Tempt an Heiress Page 15