Lane was still trying to wrap his brain around the fact that the woman in front of him—the one whom he thought of day and night—was the person who had turned down his offer to buy that hotel. She had to have known that he had placed the offer for it. She had to have known he wanted it. His legs felt weak and he took a seat on the bench by the harpsichord that was beside him.
I could use that brandy.
The Dowager approached his side with a bottle of port and two stemmed glasses. ‘I found these on the table.’ She handed him the glasses and poured a good amount of port in each. After tucking the bottle under her arm, she took one of the glasses, and toasted him with it before taking a drink. ‘It’s not brandy, but it will do.’
Apparently, he had said it out loud.
Greeley walked over to them with his shoulders hunched and trying hard not to look at the animated discussion going on over by the sofa between the Sommersby women.
‘Elizabeth,’ the Dowager called out. ‘Do you love your aunt any less over this?’
The Duchess sat up and looked between the Dowager and Clara. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Then pull yourself together. It’s not as if she’s murdered anyone. She is a woman who, without a husband, has managed to find a way to financial security and she has not had to become a man’s mistress to do it. That should be celebrated.’
‘It’s just so unexpected. That is all.’
‘So are many things in life, my dear, but that doesn’t mean that they are bad.’ She arched her brow at Lane and finished her glass of port. ‘Something tells me that you and Mrs Sommersby will have things to talk about tonight. Greeley, I find I am feeling a bit tired all of a sudden. Would you care to walk me home?’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’
‘It was a pleasure seeing you once more, Mr Lane. I do hope I will see you again soon.’ She smiled up at him and patted his arm as she walked past him on her way to say goodnight to Clara and her nieces.
‘Goodnight, Mr Lane,’ Greeley said, shaking his hand. ‘Will you be in Bath for long?’
Now with the knowledge that Clara owned The Fountain Head Hotel, his life had been turned upside down and he didn’t know what he would be doing. ‘I couldn’t say. I was planning on leaving by week’s end.’
The man appeared genuinely disappointed. ‘Well, I have enjoyed making your acquaintance. If you are ever in town again, please do send your card around. It would be my pleasure to see you again.’ He tipped his head one last time and walked across the room.
Staring at the ruby liquid in his glass, Lane tried to remember if she had ever said anything that would have given him any indication that she was aware about the offer he had made on the hotel. Was she partners with Mr Edwards? Perhaps he had never told her about the offer. Perhaps he had turned down the offer without her knowledge. If she knew that he had made an offer on her hotel, wouldn’t she have said something? He was beginning to feel like an emotional wreck inside after admitting he was a bastard and then finding out she owned the hotel.
When he looked up his eyes met Clara’s across the room where her niece Elizabeth was hugging her. He needed to find out what Clara knew about the offer he’d made. When her eyebrows furrowed and she gave him a questioning look, he signalled to the doorway with his head. With a nod, she disengaged herself from Elizabeth, excused herself from her nieces and met him out in the corridor.
‘We should talk.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
With the support of her family, it felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off Clara’s chest—a weight that she hadn’t realised she had been carrying around. She was proud of the business she had built up and she was relieved that she no longer felt as if she had to hide it.
Yet the relief ended the moment she looked across her drawing room to see the unreadable expression on Lane’s face. It reminded her how isolated he must have felt growing up without a family. Her heart broke for him because she knew that he had lived in that Hospital without anyone to love and comfort him when he needed it the most. She had been inside that Hospital and seen what it was like. It was where she had met the Dowager while working on a committee to raise funds for it.
When she showed him into her small library that was next to the drawing room, she gestured to him to join her on the sofa and she took a seat.
‘I am sorry about the Collingswoods. I am sorry that they made you feel anything less than welcome in my home. You know I do not share their feelings on the matter.’
He sat down next to her and searched her eyes. ‘You own The Fountain Head Hotel?’
This was what he wanted to talk about?
‘I do.’ She waited for him to say more except she was getting the impression that he was waiting for her to continue.
He tilted his head and his thick blond hair slid across his forehead. ‘Is this the investment you were referring to when you said that the gentleman handling your affairs does not listen to you?’
‘Yes, that’s right, and your advice to me was very helpful.’
‘Mr Edwards is the gentleman you were referring to?’
‘Yes. He’s my cousin. We grew up together here in Bath as children. I think that is why we have the problems at times that we do. I think part of him still sees me as the little girl he would tease, even after all these years.’
‘Has he told you about anyone wanting to buy your hotel from you?’
The hairs on her arm stood up. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Then you don’t know?’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘I was the one who made the offer to purchase it.’
‘You? Why would you want my hotel?’
‘I didn’t know it was your hotel.’
‘Phillip sent me a letter regarding the conditions of the offer, knowing I would need to be aware of it even though he knows full well I have no desire to sell it. His letter said the offer was made by the gentleman who had purchased the coffee house next door.’
‘That’s me. I own the White Bear.’
‘But you said you owned a racing stable?’
‘I do, but that’s only one of my investments. I purchased the coffee house a month ago along with a business partner of mine.’
‘None of this is making sense. If you own the coffee house, why would you want my hotel as well?’
‘Why didn’t you accept my offer? It was a very substantial one.’
‘Because I do not wish to sell it. And you didn’t answer my question.’
‘But you could buy another hotel with the money we are offering.’ The words came out clipped, taking her aback.
‘I don’t want the money to purchase another one. That one is doing very well for me.’
He was not being forthcoming with her and it was leaving a prickly sensation running up and down her spine, making her very uneasy.
Suddenly, Lane got up and walked away from the sofa. ‘You are being unreasonable,’ he declared, pacing the rug in front of her.
That one word enflamed her temper and she stood up as tall as her petite stature would allow. As she planted her hands on her hips, her fingers dug into her skin through her gown. He was not about to accuse her of being unreasonable...or hysterical! ‘On the contrary, I am being very reasonable.’
The breath he let out was audible and she could tell he was struggling with what to say.
After all they had shared together, she couldn’t understand why he could not explain himself adequately. Marching over to him, she blocked his pacing. ‘Talk to me. Tell me why you want my hotel with such fervour. There is something you are not telling me.’
Finally, he met her in the eye and she could see the moment he decided to confide in her. Lane raked his hand through his hair and gestured for them to sit back down. ‘Shortly after we purchased the White Bear, we discovered an underground
hot spring that had been capped off ages ago in the cellar. I want to take the coffee house and your hotel and convert them into a spa. The coffee house would serve as a pump room, much like the one that we met in, and the hotel would be used for bathing.’
‘That seems to be a large amount of effort and expense to create yet another spa in this town.’
Before he answered he pinched the bridge of his nose for a few breaths. ‘I have studied the comings and goings of the people who go to the King’s and Queen’s Baths. The potential profits make it worthwhile.’
‘It is an interesting proposition for your coffee house. You would not have to pay for the supplies you are currently using. The water is in the ground with no cost to you aside from the cost of designing and constructing a way to pump it out of the ground.’
‘Exactly, although without the bathing facilities I have strong reservations that people would travel outside the centre of town just to drink the water when it appears most people prefer to both drink and bathe in it.’
It was an ingenious idea. ‘If you offered rooms like a hotel above the bathhouse and pump room, you would attract a significant number of people who didn’t wish to travel far to their lodgings all wrapped in blankets in their sedan chairs after they leave the baths for the day. Those rooms could be let at a premium price.’
‘That never occurred to me. I just thought of turning your hotel into the baths. Now do you see why I need your hotel? I cannot expand towards the church. Your hotel is my only option. I’ve offered you a substantial amount of money to buy it. Clara, you can take that money and invest it in another hotel.’
She didn’t want another hotel. There was no guarantee that another hotel would be as successful as this one. She could not take that chance. The fear of losing all her money was still very real for her and the thought of losing her hotel was making her physically sick.
She took his hand in hers. ‘I know that this is going to be hard for you to understand, but I cannot sell my hotel. I will not. Too many people are employed there. Those people need their jobs. I will not be responsible for placing them in positions where they will be unable to support themselves or their families.’
‘I have no wish to place your staff on the street. I intend to find other jobs for them in the spa.’
‘I still cannot sell it to you.’
He removed his hand from hers and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Why? I am giving you a chance to try something new.’
‘I don’t want to try something new. Don’t you see? I am good at making the decisions for this hotel. I am good at finding ways to improve the profits that this hotel steadily brings me. It is safe.’
‘Safe will not make you rich. Safe will not expand your wealth to a greater degree. You are living very comfortably here, but I am giving you an opportunity to live grander than this.’
‘I do not need to live any grander than I am. I have no wish for a country house, or more carriages, or jewels. I am content.’
There was a desperation in his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand. He would eventually find another venture to go after. She could not find another Fountain Head Hotel. There was only one.
‘I wish you knew how much opening this spa means to me,’ he said.
‘And I wish you could understand that owning that hotel means everything to me.’ She didn’t like to discuss her past with Robert. It felt as if she was ruining his memory. Her nieces didn’t even know how horrible their life had been the last few years he had been alive. There was no reason that they should think any less of a man who was a loving uncle and a good man. But maybe if she let Lane know, then he would understand why she could not sell the hotel and he would stop asking her to.
‘Let me try to help you understand. Before I begin, I need you to know that my husband Robert was a good man.’ She let out a deep breath, preparing herself to remain steady while she told Lane things that she hadn’t told anyone else before. ‘While he was a good man, he did not have the skills for making wise investments with our money. As was expected of him as the younger son of an earl, he had served time as an officer in the King’s army. After a number of years, he found the service did not suit his temperament and he returned home and convinced his father to give him some money which he would invest and earn his living that way. He was fairly successful for a time, but during the last three years of his life in particular, his choices proved to be disastrous. I tried to offer suggestions about ventures I’d heard about during drawing-room conversations, or things I had read in the papers, but Robert was a proud man and did not believe that a woman could know more about such things than he did. I continually saw the opportunities that I had suggested to him succeed, while those that he put our money into fail.
One night he took to playing cards at his club and by chance won a substantial amount of money. I had wanted us to purchase a hotel back here in Bath with it, knowing there was a demand for a quality establishment to cater to the ton that gathered here regularly. He saw owning a hotel as beneath our station and refused to consider it each time I brought it up. He decided to invest the money with an old friend from Oxford and lost it all.’
She took a deep breath, recalling the day he arrived at their London town house with the news. She could see how broken he was and how these failures were taking their toll on him.
‘The last year of his life, our financial situation became so bad that I lived in fear that we would find ourselves in debtors’ prison.’ The memories began flooding back and she had to rub her chest to help alleviate some of the squeezing she felt around her heart. ‘It’s by the grace of God that we did not. After Robert was killed in a riding accident, his older brother discovered the financial state we were in. He was kind enough to settle our debts and provide me with money to secure a new husband—those were his words, not mine. I decided to take that money and instead buy the hotel. And I haven’t looked back since.’ She leaned closer, needing him to understand. ‘That hotel provides me with enough income to live comfortably. That hotel allows me to go to sleep at night and not fear that I will be carted off to prison when I wake up in the morning. You see it as a way to increase your income, but I see it as my protection from the cruel fate that can befall many women in my circumstances. I cannot sell it to you. I’m sorry.’
There was a long pause while he sat forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. He rubbed the thumb of his right hand into the palm of his left and looked down at the rug. She prayed he would let the matter rest and not bother bringing it up again. It only made her relive the reasons she would never sell it in the first place.
Finally, he looked back at her and arched his brow. ‘Suppose I do not need you to sell it to me. Suppose you were responsible for running the lodging portion and I took care of the pump room. We could work together on the baths, since they would be available in the building of your hotel. You could join in our corporation and we could all split the profits equally.’
‘That’s less money in your pocket.’
‘Yes, but it gets me the spa so there is more money than I am currently making with the coffee house.’
‘I don’t want to be beholden to any man again. It is why I will never marry again and place my future in the hands of a husband. I want control of what is done with my money. I want to make my own decisions.’
‘Success is made through compromise. I cannot guarantee that everything you want to do with the property you will be able to. But everything will always be up for discussion.’
‘I don’t even know how wise you are with money. You appear successful, but I understand more than many that looks do not always tell the true story. And I do not know anything about the other gentlemen who are in this venture with you.’
They sat together and he patiently answered all of her questions and offered to bring her his calculations about turning the properties into a spa. The more they discussed it, the
more excited they both became at the prospect of creating something new together.
She already suspected she was falling in love with him. And if they were going to turn both their properties into a spa, he wouldn’t be leaving Bath for months. She would have more time with him. And if what he told her was true, he was financially sound with his investments. The idea of giving up some of her control was terrifying, but so was the thought of not seeing Lane again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The next morning a note from Clara was slipped under Lane’s door just as he was getting out of bed. He had lain awake most of the night, thinking about what she would do. When he left her house, she said she would be interested in having him bring his papers with his financial projections to her home so she could review them. He feared she had changed her mind, but instead she requested to meet the other investors as well before she decided if she would enter into this partnership.
He had to admire her for her willingness to consider this after all she had told him. How his chest had ached while he listened to her tell him about the struggles she had gone through. Her request proved she would be an intelligent, level-headed business partner. It was all he could ask for.
She was everything he could ever want in a woman and that thought frightened him down to his soul. He’d always imagined having a family of his own some day. On those nights when he’d had a particularly horrible day, he would lie awake in bed in his dormitory room that he shared with forty-nine other boys and picture the family he would have once he grew up. He would imagine a kind and loving wife and four sons who he would take fishing and they would give him hugs. He had seen that family perfectly in his mind for many years and he could still picture them today. However, now the kind and loving wife had a face—and it was Clara’s. And while that should have felt like such a relief, the reality of it was terrifying.
He had been an unwanted child. What was there to say Clara would want him as a man?
* * *
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