“Uh…” He could hardly ask his former captain for a letter of recommendation after what happened. And all of his fellows in the navy either believed the lies Captain O’Brien had spun about Silas or were too afraid to speak out.The only one who believed my side of the story was Williams, and I ruined that when I kissed his sister.“I suppose I don’t.”
“Afraid I can’t help you then. I’m sorry, but I won’t take on a perfect stranger.” Davies was kind enough to make his apology sound sincere, if not particularly impassioned.
Silas thanked the man and set back off, his step a good deal heavier than when he’d started.
Of course the cooper would want a recommendation. Any craftsman worth his salt knew that his knowledge was too valuable to give away to anyone who knocked on his door. Why hadn’t he expected that?
Silas was startled from his troubles by the chiming of the hour a little further down the waterfront. Already nine o’clock. Not much time left now before the hour of his engagement with Miss Williams.
No. Not an engagement. I never agreed to it.
Still, she was likely expecting him to come. Was counting on it, perhaps. What was she doing now? And what was happening at exactly quarter past eleven that she needed him for?
Miss Williams’s problems are none of my concern.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t be in real danger. She had money and a family to protect her, which was more than he could say for himself. She didn’t need saving. This wasn’t like what happened with O’Brien.
Silas pushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to shake off the lingering doubt that clung to him.
He forced himself to wander a little further and knock on another door—the sailmaker this time, and after that the rope works—but their answers were the same. They already had apprentices, younger and more experienced than Silas. None of them were willing to take on a stranger without a friend to recommend him.
This is hopeless.He turned back down the same path he’d taken into the dockyards, eager to be gone. He should have known better than to think it would be so easy. When O’Brien had ruined his good name, it hadn’t stopped with the court-martial. Even if Silas could find someone to vouch for his character, they would change their mind about him as soon as they learned about his past.
His own family didn’t want him. How could he expect anyone else to?
* * *
When Silas returned to his shabby lodgings in Southwark, he was so distracted that he didn’t notice the couple standing on his doorstep until he was nearly upon them.
He came up short, observing them silently. They had their backs to him and seemed to be debating whether to knock at his door.
“I’m sure this is the right one,” the woman said. She had a mass of unruly blond curls and was dressed like a tradesman’s wife. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, but Silas couldn’t have said what without seeing her face. The stocky young man at her side didn’t trigger any memories.
“Can I help you?” They both turned at Silas’s voice. Now that he had a good look at them, he was no closer to saying who these people might be. “Are you looking for Mr. Kurtz?”
The woman squinted at him intensely. “Silas?”
She had a face full of freckles and a snub nose that reminded him of his grandfather. “Marian?” he guessed. He hadn’t seen his cousin since she was small, but the woman before him bore a certain resemblance to her. And he couldn’t think who else might be looking for him.
“Oh good, itisyou. This is the third place we tried.” Marian’s wide grin revealed crooked white teeth. “You might have written to say where you were staying, you know.”
I didn’t think anyone would care to find me.
The young man at her side hadn’t spoken yet, but he was staring at Silas expectantly.
“Um…?”
“You can’t be serious!” he exploded. “You recognize your cousin but not your own brother?”
Shit.Half of Silas’s siblings had still been small children when he’d left home. The younger ones were perfect strangers, known only to him by the occasional mention in his mother’s letters, not by their faces. “Paul?” he tried.
“James!”
“Sorry.” Silas winced. James had only been five when he’d left, which would make him barely eighteen now. He’d grown up to be a strapping, broad-shouldered young man with a shock of sandy-brown hair and Silas’s own sharp cheekbones. “What are you both doing in London?”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Marian scolded. “Where are your manners?”
Silas apologized again—hoping it would be the last time—and waved them into his lodgings, stopping by the kitchen to put a kettle on before he took a seat with them at the table.
