A Lady Dares

by Bronwyn Scott

  Elise wrinkled her brow. ‘He hardly strikes me as the Oxford house-party type.’ Whatever Dorian Rowland was, she didn’t imagine he was the scholarly sort. Tan, blond and hard-bodied, he definitely didn’t spend his days poring over books in libraries.

  William was growing impatient with her prying. ‘Look, I don’t know what he was doing there. He said he’d made a delivery, brought something up from London. How I know him is not the point. The point is, I was lucky enough to know this one. He’ll finish your boat, but he won’t stay. You’ll be right back where you started.’

  ‘I’ll pay him more,’ Elise blurted out, looking for an easy solution. But inside her heart she knew her brother was right: Dorian Rowland wouldn’t stay. He’d made it clear he was a man who did what pleased him, when it pleased him. Her proposition suited him for the moment. That was the only reason he’d taken her offer.

  ‘Money won’t always be enough for a man like him,’ William said with a maturity that surprised her. ‘I’ve bought you time, Elise, to wrap up business and clear the bills, nothing more. Besides, you need to get on with your life, get out to parties and meet people.’ By meet people, he meant meet men who would be potential husbands. Elise frowned in disapproval. She’d seen those men and been disappointed with them and by them.

  When she didn’t respond he paused awkwardly, his tone softening. ‘Not every man is Robert Graves,’ William said quietly.

  Elise wasn’t quite ready to relent. ‘Well, thank goodness for that.’ Robert Graves, the biggest, worst mistake she’d ever made. She’d thought William might have been young enough to not remember him, or at least to not understand the depths of her mistake.

  ‘Charles Bradford has expressed an interest in you,’ William cajoled. Charles was the son of one of her father’s former investors. ‘He’s a very proper fellow.’

  ‘Sometimes too proper,’ Elise said briskly. She began looking needlessly through some papers on the desk, wanting to bring this conversation to a close. She wasn’t interested in a suitor. She was interested in building a yacht and getting the company back on its feet.

  William coughed awkwardly, taking her rather broad hint, once more the younger brother she knew. He made a stammering exit. ‘Errm…um…I have some errands to run. I’ll see you at home, don’t stay too late.’

  Elise sank down in the chair behind the desk and blew out a breath. Welcome to the world of men, you can begin by following our orders and forgetting to think for yourself, Elise thought uncharitably. In the last months she’d become heartily tired of men.

  She was starting to understand all the ways in which her father had shielded her and she’d been unaware. Oh, how she missed him! She thought the missing would get easier with time, not harder. But everywhere she looked, everywhere she went, she was reminded of his absence. Even here, the one place where she’d felt truly at home.

  When she’d been with her father at the shipyards no one had questioned her opinions on yacht design; no one had contradicted her numbers in the ledger. People did what she told them to do. Right up until his death, she’d believed they’d done those things because she’d earned their respect with her hard work and intelligence. Then they’d deserted one by one: the workmen, the investors. The message could not be any more concise. We listened to you because we wanted to please your father so he’d build us fast boats and pay our salaries. Listening to you was just part of the game. Elise put her head in her hands. It was a cruel blow.

  Today had been more of the same, just to make the point in case she’d missed it the first time around. Dorian Rowland had walked in and assumed an attitude of control as if he had a right to this place in his rough shirt and trousers. Her brother had stealthily issued an edict—she was to give up yacht design after this boat and resign her life to one of three unappealing options: marriage, keeping house for her brother or living with her mother. She was to be passed from man to man, father to brother, brother to husband. She’d had fun playing at design, but now it was time to put away her childish things.

  She wouldn’t do it. Elise squeezed her eyes tight, pressing back tears. Closing the company would be like forgetting her father, as if his life hadn’t mattered. This place was his legacy and she would not discard it so easily. There were more selfish reasons, too. She needed this. She never felt as alive as when she was designing a model and watching it come to life from her ideas. What would she be without that? The answer frightened her too much to thoroughly contemplate it for long. Well, there was nothing for it; if she wasn’t going to contemplate it, she’d simply have to conquer it.

  Alone at last! Dorian flashed a lantern up in the direction of the dark office window as he shut the heavy gate to the yard behind him and breathed a relieved sigh. Elise Sutton had finally gone home for the evening and he’d returned successfully from his little foray on to the docks. After the day he’d had, he couldn’t ask for much more.

  Dorian set down the heavy bag he carried and rubbed his shoulder. When it had become apparent Miss Sutton planned on staying either because she didn’t want to go home in a snit or because she didn’t want to leave him alone in her shipyard, he’d decided to go out and take care of his business in the hopes it would convince her he’d gone home or wherever it was she imagined he went when the sun went down. Whether the princess knew it or not, this was his home now—that nice little shed in the corner of the lot.

  He’d gone back to his now-former room, paid the landlady his paltry rent with the few remaining coins he had and gathered up his clothes and tools and made arrangements for his trunk to be delivered in the morning. It was far too heavy and too conspicuous to haul through the streets. No matter, it didn’t contain anything he considered absolutely essential. Those items were already packed away in a black-cloth sack. Still, between a single trunk and one black satchel, it was humbling to think they made up the sum of his worldly goods in England, but it had made packing easy.

  It also made getting away easy. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed by Halsey’s thugs. On the way back, he’d stopped at a few taverns, looking for likely workers. In this case, ‘likely’ meant whoever would be willing to show up and work for future pay. He just had to get them here. Once they saw the yacht, the project would speak for itself.

  Dorian raised the lantern higher to cast the light on the boat. It was showing itself to be an absolute beauty. Longer and leaner than most yachts, it would be fast in the water. He recognised the influence of the American Joshua Humphreys in the design.

  He hung the lantern on a nearby peg and reached into his sack for a drawing knife with its two handles and slender blade. The tool felt good in his hands as he slid it against the hull, scraping roughness away from the surface of the wood. There wasn’t much to catch—the finished portion of the hull was smooth already—but it felt good to work. Dorian let the rhythm of the drawing motion absorb him. The only thing better was standing at the wheel of a boat feeling the water buck beneath him like a woman finding her pleasure—perhaps a particular black-haired woman with green eyes.

  When he’d awakened this morning, he’d never dreamed he’d be building a ship by evening. The arrangement might be a good one. He could hide out from Halsey until he made back his money or until Halsey forgot he owed him. In the meanwhile, he could work a new angle. There was plenty of potential here in the shipyard. Dorian ran a hand over the surface he’d finished scraping. He could make plans for this boat. If the finished yacht was as promising as the shell, he might just find a way to talk Miss Sutton out of selling. It might mean cosying up to the ice princess, but he’d never been above a little sweet talk to get what he wanted. With a boat of his own, he’d be back in business and the possibilities would be limitless.

  The possibilities should have been limitless, Maxwell Hart mused dispassionately as he listened to young Charles Bradford report his latest news concerning the Sutton shipyard. Elise Sutton had become a thorn in his side instead of bowing to the dictates of the inevitable. Her
father was dead, her brother not prepared or interested in taking over the business, investors withdrawn and no obvious funds to continue on her own. All the pieces were in place for her to abdicate quietly, gracefully, to those with the means to run the shipyard. Instead, she had not relinquished the property, had not sought out a buyer for the plans to her father’s last coveted design. In short, she had done nothing as expected. Now there was this latest development.

  ‘There were lights at the shipyard tonight,’ young Charles Bradford told the small group of four assembled.

  ‘Do you think it could be vagrants?’ Harlan Fox suggested from his chair, looking around for validation. Fox had pockets that went deeper than his intelligence. Those pockets were his primary recommendation for inclusion in this little group of ambitious yachtsmen. ‘It’s been several months, after all. It’s about time for the vultures to settle, eh?’

  Maxwell shook his head. ‘No, she’s been going to the office regularly. She probably worked late.’ He spat the pronouns with distaste. The best thing to do with thorns was to pluck them.

  Charles Bradford interrupted uncharacteristically. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. It couldn’t have been Miss Sutton. She left around five o’clock and she was the last to leave. There were two other men, her brother and a man I didn’t recognise. But they’d both gone by then.’

  Damien Tyne, the fourth gentleman present, said, ‘Any of them could have come back.’

  ‘It wasn’t likely to have been her or the brother,’ Charles pressed. ‘There was no carriage. Whoever returned came back on foot.’

  ‘I still vote for vagrants,’ Fox insisted.

  But Damien Tyne leaned forwards, curiosity piqued. When Damien was intrigued, Maxwell had learned to pay attention. He and Tyne had made a tidy profit off those instincts and they were unerringly good. ‘What are you thinking, Tyne?’

  Miss Sutton needed to be prodded in the right direction and in short order. He wanted that shipyard. It held a prime spot on the Thames and he’d coveted it for years. It would be the perfect place to move his own more obscure yacht-building operation and his warehouses. A good location would garner him the notice which to date had eluded him from his current locale in Wapping.

  Obtaining the shipyard would just be the start. Hart also wanted to get his hands on the plans to Sutton’s last yacht just as badly for the future of his more private, less legitimate side of business with Tyne. Tyne could have the yacht. He wanted the plans. The key to any business venture was the ability to reproduce success.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Damien drawled, his dark eyebrows looking particularly satanic in the coffee house’s uneven lighting, ‘our Miss Sutton is not going quietly. Nothing she’s done in the last months has suggested she is closing up the business as we’d hoped.’

  ‘She has to, there’s no money, no workers,’ Charles protested. Young and smitten with Miss Sutton, he was also a bit obtuse, a literal fellow who saw only the obvious. ‘I should know. My father was a former investor. We were at the funeral.’

  Damien smiled patiently at the young cub. ‘We know that, but does she? Maybe there’s something she knows that we don’t, which seems likely.’ He nodded towards Maxwell. ‘She’s held on to the two things that matter most right now: the property and the last yacht. It seems to me that she means to try something before the end.’

  ‘Impossible. The yacht isn’t finished,’ Charles argued sceptically. ‘There’s nothing to try.’

  ‘Unless she has a builder,’ Maxwell put in bitterly. That would drag things out. He had no doubt Miss Sutton would fail in the end, but prolonging that end didn’t help his cause. The group had wanted to be in position by the time yachting season opened in May. Back in October when the opportunity had first presented itself, the objective to take over the shipyard had seemed perfectly reasonable. Now, with a month to go, it seemed far more unlikely.

  Maxwell pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘We have to be certain. Charles, of all of us here, you are closest to the family. Perhaps it’s time to pay a friendly visit to see how the daughter of your father’s friend is coping with her grief?’ He winked at the young man. Everyone in the group knew Elise Sutton had set aside mourning weeks ago, but the subtle sarcasm had flown right over Charles.

  Maxwell hoped Charles’s decent good looks and refined manners would encourage Miss Sutton to disclose her plans. Even beyond that, he hoped Charles would be able to give Miss Sutton a gentle nudge in the right direction through whatever means of persuasion possible.

  Maxwell preferred to accomplish his goals subtly and without any overt force. He was happy to play nice until it was time not to, and that time was rapidly approaching. He and Tyne had money, time and pride wrapped up in this venture the others knew nothing about. He meant to see it succeed. Failure meant he’d lose a lot more than his shirt.

  Chapter Four

  His shirt was off! It was the first thing Elise noticed when she arrived at the yard late in the morning. For the first time since her father’s death, she’d actually slept late. And look what happened. Her master builder was running around without his shirt on. Her mother would have shrieked it wasn’t ladylike to notice, but how could she not? The sight was just so riveting.

  Elise knew she was staring, but she could hardly look away. His chest was nothing like the average Englishman’s. Gone was the pasty skin and skeletal lankiness, replaced by a smooth, tanned expanse of torso. It was quite possibly the most perfect chest she’d ever seen. Not that she was a connoisseur of men’s chests, but working around the shipyard, she’d caught accidental glimpses on rare occasions.

  She might have been able to pull her gaze away if that had been all, but it wasn’t simply his chest. There were arms and shoulders to consider, perfectly moulded with muscle, to say nothing of his lean hips where his culottes hung tantalisingly low on his waist, revealing the secret aspects of male musculature and hinting at even more. All this masculinity had been pressed against her yesterday. It was somewhat shocking to see it on such bold display without the buffer of clothing to mute the reality. She was still gaping when he sauntered over, an adze dangling negligently from one hand, that impertinent grin of his on his face.

  ‘Good day, Miss Sutton. Is everything to your liking?’ He motioned towards the yard, the veneer of the gesture narrowly saving the comment from being outright indecent. She knew very well he’d caught her staring, and ‘liking’ hadn’t only referred to the yard. Elise looked around for the first time, trying hard to ignore the distraction beside her.

  There were workers! There was the noise of industry. Not nearly as much as the yard was used to, but it was better than the silence that had marked the past months. ‘Where did you find them?’

  Rowland shrugged, thrusting the adze through the rope belt holding up his culottes. ‘Here and there. It hardly matters as long as they know their job.’

  In other words, don’t ask, Elise thought. She shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Men were here, willing to work on her boat and willing to take future payment. That should be enough. It was more than she’d had yesterday.

  ‘As you can see, all is well in hand. Is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Sutton?’ Rowland said briskly, impatience evidencing itself in the shift on his stance.

  Elise bristled at his tone. He wanted her gone. ‘Are you dismissing me from my shipyard?’ His audacity knew no bounds.

  Rowland lowered his voice and jerked his head to indicate the workers beyond them. ‘They’re starting to look, Miss Sutton. They’re wondering what a woman is doing here. You’re distracting them.’

  Elise was incredulous. ‘I am distracting them? I’m not the one strutting around the yard half-dressed. You might as well be naked the way those trousers are hanging off your hips.’

  ‘You noticed? I’m flattered.’ Rowland, damn him, grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘And here I was thinking you didn’t like me.’

  ‘I don’t like you,’ Elise said i
n a loud whisper. People were starting to look, but she would not take responsibility for that. She wasn’t the one dressed like…like him. No wonder society demanded a man wear so many layers over his shirt. No one would get anything done otherwise; they’d be too busy staring.

  Rowland laughed. ‘Yes, you do, you just don’t know what to do about it.’ The man was insufferable.

  ‘I want to see what progress you’ve made.’ Elise tried to put the conversation back on a more professional level. It was just her luck her brother had found the best-looking shipbuilder in London. She’d come down here with the express purpose of overseeing the project. She wouldn’t leave until she’d done that, half-naked master builder or not.

  Rowland had other ideas. He took her arm, drawing her complete attention to the strong tanned hand that cupped her elbow and steered her out of the yard. ‘If you want to watch,’ he drawled with a grin that made watching sound like a decadent fetish, ‘I suggest you adjourn to the office. You, Miss Sutton, are bad for business.’

  Elise shot Rowland a hard look. She’d had enough of these games. ‘I am their business.’ The slightest shake of his head caused her to reassess.

  ‘These men answer to me, Princess. They’ll build your boat because I tell them to.’

  Elise entrenched, ready for battle. She’d let such reasoning go yesterday. But it would not work twice. ‘Is that your mantra? I should accept your decrees simply because you’re building my yacht? Do you think that puts paid to any questions I have? This is my shipyard and everything that happens in it is definitely my concern.’

  ‘Upstairs, now,’ Dorian growled. It was all the warning she had before a firm hand gripped her arm and propelled her up the stairs to the office. The door slammed behind them. Dorian Rowland’s blue eyes blazed with a temper she’d not suspected. His grip on her arm tightened. ‘How long do you think these men will work if they think they’re working for you? You are the owner’s daughter and nothing more as far as they’re concerned.’