“Why, pray tell?”Freddie leaned forward.
Victor saw no way out but to declare the truth.“She does not care for him.”
“I knew she had sense,” Arnie said.
“Who does she like better?”Freddie asked with a jolly twinkle in his brown eyes.
Me.
“Well, well.”Freddie arched a brow and sat back.“That is good news.”
“It’s nothing to discuss.”
“No?Not yet?”Arnie asked.
“I’d say it is,” Freddie said.
“Please, let’s not,” Victor pronounced.
“Fine.”Arnie nodded.“I bet she’ll attend the Wares’ tea, don’t you, Freddie?”
“Oh, yes.Then we’ll know.”
Victor rolled his eyes.His friends joking made him feel like a silly swain, instead of a jaded thirty-one year-old widower with two children.“You should keep your attention on Lady Jessica, Freddie.”
“I will.”
“But we have to help you along with a chance for happiness,” Arnie said.
Both had been set against him marrying Alicia.They’d argued against it.Insisted he needed a different sort of woman.One who was more educated, personable.Someone to match a politician, they’d both told him.
“She’s lovely.Interesting.”
“Someone who will willingly go to the ends of the earth with you?”
Victor knit his brows.Alicia had screamed and cried and wailed against sailing so far from England.Even though she had no choice, even though she had givenhimno choice to save their reputations—to save theirfacesas the Chinese said—he had made her go.His two friends had commiserated with him and drunk with him to near oblivion.Now here he was with the same problem with a different woman and for a different reason.“I have called on her only once.”
Arnie shot a glance at Freddie.“Ah.He called on her.Once.Fred, this is Cole’s mating song you’re hearing.”
“Stop that.”Victor laughed.
His friends leveled serious eyes on him.
Very well.“I may not be returning to Shanghai,” he announced.
“You’d let that fine business die?”Arnie asked.“Why?I don’t— Oh.I think I do understand.”
Freddie chuckled.“Well now.That’s bloody marvelous.”
“I see the possibility to remain here if I can possibly reclaim my former reputation.”
“As if there is doubt of that.”Arnie drank from his cup.
“There is.”Victor had to persuade not only men in his political party, but merchants, traders, land owners, government workers.
“So you’ll run the business from here?”Arnie examined him closely.
“I can.It won’t be quite the same but with my manager’s help, I might continue to turn a good penny.”
