But that was not his problem.
“So, you have definitely retired then?” Andrew asked as he waved the footmen over to clear the first course.
“Yes, I have,” Lucas answered evenly, as though it wasn’t a decision he’d been agonising over for months.
“And will you continue your other line of work?” Andrew asked casually, though he darted a quick look at Anna.
Of course, Anna was the only person sitting here who was unaware of the work Lucas did for the Crown. Though he wasn’t an agent in the same way that Andrew, Jonathan, and Gabrielle had been, he had done a lot of work for the Home Office during his years as a naval officer.
Evelyn knew all about it, of course, since Andrew told her everything, and in any case, given that Evelyn had had a short-lived career as a highway robber, she wasn’t likely to be shocked by anyone else’s secrets.
Though Lucas kept his gaze fixed on Andrew and very much away from Anna, he could sense her interest in this from across the room.
“I very much doubt that I will continue to be involved in anything here in England,” Lucas answered, keeping his voice calm, though he knew the information he was about to reveal would shock them all.
“But you will continue to sail? I did hear you had invested in a shipping company,” Jonathan said casually.
Nothing ever really got past Jonathan Spencer, Lucas knew. But he had thought that his purchase of a shipping yard and small fleet of ships had been kept relatively secret.
“You own a shipping company?” Gabby asked in surprise.
“I do,” Lucas said, unable to keep the thread of pride from his voice.
He, Lucas Townsend, a merchant’s son from a small English village, was now part owner of a sizeable shipping firm and, better yet, captain of his very own ship.
Well, until he reached the West Indies, at any rate.
“Lucas, that’s wonderful,” Evelyn exclaimed, and the others soon followed suit.
Lucas nodded his head in acknowledgement of their felicitations before his eyes were drawn of their own will to Anna.
“Congratulations,” she muttered softly. “That is wonderful.”
Her lack of interest stung, though it shouldn’t have.
He already knew she cared not a whit about him. So why should it bother him that she still didn’t care now?
Lucas turned away before he did anything foolish like show his emotions.
“I will continue to sail, for now at least. On Friday, I sail for the West Indies where we have a store of warehouses.”
“So you will be trading between the Indies and Britain then?” Jonathan asked.
“Our company trades between the West Indies and Britain, and Britain and America at the moment, though we hope to expand in the coming years. China is our next destination.”
His words were met with a very satisfactory silence.
“Goodness,” Gabby finally spoke. “I had no idea.”
“I partnered with an American man who owned a small shipping company. He had money but not a huge amount of knowledge of the industry. I became partner a few years ago, and it has grown from there.”
“I should say so,” Andrew interjected, and Lucas noted a newfound respect in the other man’s eyes. “The Western Shipping Company. That’s you?”
Again, Lucas wasn’t surprised at Andrew’s knowledge.
There had been quite a buzz round London about the contracts secured by The Western Shipping Company lately. He’d been careful to keep his name out of it as much as possible, but not much got past former agents of the Crown, he supposed.
Lucas inclined his head in confirmation, earning a low whistle from Andrew.
“I see you’ve been modest,” he said.
Lucas fielded more and more questions, all the while noticing that Anna asked not a single one.
And her silence began to grate on him.
Then, of course, his anger flared at himself for not getting it through his thick skull that she simply didn’t care, and at her for not caring.
As the evening wore on, Lucas became steadily more furious with the beauty sitting across the table from him.
Finally, as the footmen began to serve plum pudding and lemon posset, his control snapped.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Grant, if details of my new business venture bore you. I am sure it is not nearly as interesting to you as the latest on dit or salacious gossip so attractive to the less-than-intelligent ladies of quality.”
His words brought an immediate and shocked cessation to the chatter round the table, but Lucas’ sole focus was on the woman sitting across from him.
Her head whipped up at the comment, and her eyes narrowed.
She was clearly unhappy with him, and he felt a sick sort of satisfaction as he watched her cheeks flame. It was no more than she deserved.
Her amber eyes glittered in the candlelight, and for a moment, he thought she might cry.
But as he watched, her face transformed into a mask of snobbish disdain.
She became the Anna he knew her to be: a cold, uncaring snob.
“What the—”
Jonathan’s voice came from the top of the table, harsh and furious-sounding, but with a quick glance, Lucas saw Gabby place a hand on her husband’s arm and whisper something.
Whatever it was, it was enough to have Jon, who was half standing from his chair, sit back down. It did nothing, however, about the glower he had fixed on Lucas.
“The tales of your little business ventures do not bore me, Captain Townsend,” Anna responded now, contempt dripping from every word. “It is always nice to hear of a nobody doing well for himself.”
A gasp of shock sounded from one or both of the ladies, but Lucas didn’t even spare a glance this time.
He was glad, he told himself, even as his heart thundered with anger and humiliation. He was glad that she was showing her true colours.
“I am glad you approve,” Lucas countered, keeping his tone calm and even. “Thankfully in the West Indies, people aren’t as rigidly disapproving of birth and blood. Some of them are even crazy enough to make love matches, for example, instead of marrying monsters with the right connections.”
“That’s it.”
At the sound of a chair scraping, Lucas broke eye contact with his nemesis and watched Jonathan stand and fling his napkin on the table. But before the man could speak to throw Lucas from his home, presumably, another chair scraped back and Anna, too, was on her feet.
“How dare you?” she asked quietly.
Had she ranted and railed like any number of females would in such circumstances, Lucas would have been rather amused.
But she remained so cool, so wholly unmoved by emotion, that it just reiterated his point. She was incapable of feeling anything real. Anything raw.
“Hit a nerve, did I?”
Lucas came slowly to his feet.
He was about to be tossed out on his arse anyway, and he didn’t appreciate sitting there with her standing over him like a governess scolding her charge, even if there was a giant mahogany dining table between them.
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “To hit a nerve, your opinion would have to matter to me. And it doesn’t.”
“I am well aware of that, Anna.”
His softly spoken words seemed to bring her up short for a moment, and she blinked slowly as she stared at him.
But then her expression hardened once again.
“Good. Well, I hope you are also aware that you have no right to an opinion on my life, or my marriage, or anything else to do with me.”
She was gathering steam now. He could tell by the terribly distracting way her chest was heaving in that gown that would give him sleepless nights for weeks to come.
“You might have clawed your way to the top, Captain, and thrown everything real away for the chance of some money and notoriety, but stepping on people on your way there is the lowest of the low, and you are in no position to judge me or anyone else for that matter.”
Lucas felt as though he’d been slapped as her words hit him.
How dare she stand there and pontificate because he’d made the best of a situation he’d been thrown into?
His rage burned red hot until he had to clench his fists lest she see them trembling.
A quick look round the table told him that her family was not only shocked at his and Anna’s argument, but more than a little curious about it, too.
Well, let her deal with the explanations.
He was bound for the West Indies, and it would be years before he returned, if it all.
She obviously hadn’t made any of them privy to her history with Lucas, no doubt embarrassed by her lapse in judgement.
“Well…” He broke the tense silence. “…given how I am sailing on Friday and won’t be returning to these shores for quite some time, I will no longer be around to judge or offend you.”
Her face blanched at his words.
“You’re leaving?” she blurted, then clamped her mouth shut as though she hadn’t meant to ask.
“You knew I was leaving,” he bit out.
“Yes, but — well, for good?”
“It’s possible. Are you going to pretend you care?” he sneered.
Her mouth set in a mutinous line at his words.
As parting shots went, it wasn’t very good, but suddenly the fight went out of him.
She had humiliated him once again, called him a nobody, let him see in black and white what she thought of him, and the fury he felt, a fury which had no outlet because he could hardly rail at her in front of her family, was exhausting.
“I don’t make a habit of pretending to care about people, Lucas,” she said scornfully.
“Just once was enough?” he retorted.
He watched a riot of emotions race across her face before it became expressionless.
“I’m tired of this conversation,” she said as she sat primly back in her chair.
Lucas was so surprised at the sudden change in her that he stood stock still.
Anna fussed with the folds of her gown for a moment or two.
Nobody else moved.
He imagined they looked like players in a terribly awkward play.
It probably would have been amusing had he not been so furious.
After a moment, she looked up and raised a brow. “Are you still here? Weren’t you storming off to India or somewhere?”
Lucas told himself that the dull throb in his chest wasn’t hurt. Wasn’t disappointment.
He turned to address the others seated at the table. “Thank you for having me and for wishing me well,” he said formally, as though the last few minutes hadn’t happened. “I’m afraid I shall have to take my leave earlier than anticipated. There is much to be done before I sail to the West Indies.” He accentuated this last part for Anna’s benefit, but she was studiously avoiding any eye contact.
“I won’t pretend I’m going to miss England,” he continued pointedly. “It will be infinitely warmer in places new.”
Bowing to the ladies and not awaiting a response, Lucas swept from the room and out of the Mayfair townhouse as fast as his feet would carry him.
Friday could not come soon enough. He desperately needed an ocean between himself and that woman.
CHAPTER FIVE
“ARE YOU GOING to explain what that was about?” Jonathan’s voice filled the awkward silence left by Lucas’ departure.
Anna jolted at the sound. She hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d walked out.
All of her strength was concentrated on staying upright, and there wasn’t much of it left after the performance she’d just given.
Lucas wouldn’t know that his opinion of her, his total lack of regard for her and their history together, tore her apart.
She wanted to run from the room and sob into a pillow until she cried out some of the pain that infused her, surrounded her.
But she wouldn’t.
She’d cried enough tears over that odious man. And besides, she didn’t fancy answering questions or convincing her brother not to shoot the cad.
“No, I’m not,” she answered as evenly as she could, though she could hear the tremble in her own voice.
“You’re not?” he repeated.
Anna sighed, suddenly weary from the whole debacle. “No, Jonathan, I’m not.”
“So, you’re just going to leave us wondering what the hell is going on between you two?”
Anna’s temper, which had burned so suddenly in the face of Lucas’ behaviour and even now left her feeling ashamed of her actions, though he had deserved it for being such an ass, lit up again.
“No, Jonathan. I am not going to tell you. Because it has nothing to do with you.”
“You’re my sister,” Jonathan retorted. “And he—”
“He is leaving,” she interrupted. “So even if you did want to fight my battles for me as though I were nothing but a simpering miss unable to look after herself, there would be very little point, would there?”
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Jonathan asked, looking bewildered and even a little hurt.
That was all she needed. Another bout of guilt because she’d hurt someone she cared about.
“Nothing has gotten into me,” she said wearily. “I cannot explain the captain’s behaviour. Nor can I explain my reaction to it, save to say that I am heartily sick and tired of staying quiet about things relating to my life. Whether that’s a man with an inexplicable grudge or a brother who insists on trying to control me.”
“I’m not trying to control you, Anna,” Jonathan responded, looking more hurt than before.
Anna sighed.
How to get him to understand? How to get all of them to understand?
Wanting to manage where she lived and what she did to occupy her time was controlling, and it was unwelcome.
She had been controlled for ten years by first her father, then her husband.
And though she knew that Jonathan and Evelyn acted from a place of love and didn’t mean to control her, though she knew they were concerned for her and worried about her, they didn’t understand that she needed to be free.
Now that she was free of his clutches after years of oppression by her evil husband, Anna needed to experience a freedom she’d never enjoyed.
And if that meant staying in London all year round or removing to her estate and hiding from the world, then so be it. But it would be her decision, and that was wonderful.
“I know you’re not trying to, Jon. But you are. You all are,” she chided gently. “I need you to understand that when you discuss where I’ll live or with whom I’ll stay, it feels like I still can’t make my own decisions, can’t live a life that I choose.”
Her words were met with silence.
Finally, Evelyn spoke. “We didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Anna interjected quickly, not wanting apologies since she knew they only cared for her.
But she didn’t want to discuss it anymore, either.
She wanted to go home and relive that awful scene with Lucas and lick her wounds and try to get her head round the idea of him being gone.
It wasn’t that she’d seen much of him or had any sort of relationship with him.
But knowing that he was leaving for pastures new… knowing that he would carve out a whole new life for himself, in an exciting new world… knowing he would very possibly marry and fill a nursery… was rather more than she could bear to think of.
“It’s late, and I’m tired. I think I shall return home.”
All at once the dining room was a flurry of activity with the ladies fussing over Anna, offering drinks and tea and insisting she should stay, and Andrew sensibly, mercifully, calling for her carriage.
As Anna sat back against the plush velvet of her carriage, she heaved a sigh of relief mixed with sadness.
She was hopeful she had finally gotten through to Jonathan and Evelyn about leaving her to her own devices, but at the same ti
me, she hated how they had tiptoed around her after her little outburst, careful not to say anything that she could construe as overinvested or controlling.
This evening had not turned out how she’d imagined.
Lucas’ hostility had never been so obvious.
And now, the night before her only brother left the country, she was at odds with him.
And it was all Lucas’ fault.
Anna sat forward as her thoughts began to pick up speed.
How bloody dare he come into my family and cause such havoc?
How dare he accuse me of being a thoughtless, snobbish chit who cares for nothing but gossip and Society men?
Her blood was boiling hotter and hotter as her thoughts ran riot.
He would leave now, the conquering hero, filled with self-importance and a misplaced sense of being hard done by, when it was she who had suffered at his hands!
Suddenly the injustice of it all was too much.
She was heartily sick of not standing up for herself, and it would end. Tonight.
Hammering on the ceiling of the carriage before she lost her nerve, Anna awaited the arrival of the footman’s head.
Sure enough, mere seconds later, the head appeared. “Yes ma’am?”
“Change of plan, Roger,” Anna said brusquely, as though what she was about to say wasn’t terribly scandalous. “No. 5 Berkeley Square, please.”
Anna knew where he lived because it had been the talk of the ton when he’d purchased the high-end property from an earl with pockets to let last year.
The whole of Town had been abuzz with news of the purchase and speculation of Lucas’ riches. Anna had not commented once, though she had listened avidly to it all.
If Roger thought there was anything shocking or improper about his mistress’ request, which there was, he was smart enough to keep it to himself.
The truth was that even though a widow had a lot more freedom in Society than a debutante or single lady, and even though the ton turned many a blind eye to affairs and such things that widowed ladies engaged in, it still simply wasn’t the thing for a woman to go to a man’s house unaccompanied. And since Anna had come directly from Evelyn’s house, she didn’t even have a maid with her.
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