“I can’t believe you didn’t recognize me,” James was still muttering when he arrived at his chair.
“I haven’t seen you in thirteen years,” Silas pointed out.
“You might have done if you’d stuck around a bit longer when you came back! Imagine my surprise when I got home from the market to find that you’d been there and left again already. Mum was in a state.”
“I wasn’t welcome.”
James shifted uncomfortably at the edge to his brother’s tone. “Ah, that’s just Pa being Pa. But I would’ve been glad to see you.”
“You’re seeing me now.” Silas spread his hands to encompass his person and their surroundings.
“And we’re very glad to do so,” Marian cut in. “How are you, cousin?”
“Grand,” he replied, trying to keep the bitterness from his tone.
“I’m so sorry about everything with the navy,” Marian continued, her hazel eyes soft with sympathy. “Have you found other work?”
“I’m still weighing my options.” He wasn’t about to recount his disastrous efforts at the docks, nor his single night as a dealer at a ladies’ gambling club.
“Wonderful!” James grinned, until Marian elbowed him sharply in the side.
“What Jamesmeantto say was that we have complete faith in you.”
“But we do have an opportunity to discuss, seeing as you’re not busy.”
“James! Let us visit a minute before we get into all that. We haven’t even had tea. Honestly.”
The kettle was whistling by now, but Silas ignored it. “What sort of opportunity?” He studied the unlikely pair before him. They didn’t look like businessmen. He hoped whatever “opportunity” they’d found was something more respectable than thieving. As the youngest of five sons, James might have reason to want toseek out his own fortune instead of trodding in the footsteps of everyone who came before him. But why should Marian want to get mixed up in whatever he had planned? And why should they involvehim?
“Well, you know that Grandpa has been looking for someone to take over the brewery,” Marian began, before interrupting herself. “Or maybe you don’t.Doyou know?”
“Mum wrote me.”
“All right. So anyway, I offered to do it, since I’ve only been working there myentirelife, but then Jack said he wanted it. So even though he knows absolutelynothingabout the business and he’s spent all these years training to be a cooper, now everyone’s decided he should get the brewery instead.”
“Typical,” muttered James.
Silas had no idea whether it actually was typical or not. The petty rivalries of a family belonged to people who lived in, well, afamily.
All he had was a collection of faded memories that abruptly ceased before he’d been old enough to appreciate their value.
“So I said to myself, I know everything there is to know about brewing beer. I grew up crawling through hops and I have connections to half the pubs in Staffordshire. Why shouldn’t I start my own? All I need is someone to make the barrels—”
“That’s me,” James put in, quite unnecessarily.
“And an initial investment for the premises and to buy the hops.” Marian smiled broadly as she finished her explanation.
Silas drew the obvious conclusion. “And I’m your investor? How could you know I have any money?”
Miss Williams may not have been discreet when she’d turned up with an envelope of banknotes for him yesterday, but he hardly thought the tale had reached Staffordshire.
Marian scrunched up her short nose. “Isn’t that why Uncle Johnsent you to join the navy? I thought everyone got rich on prize money out there. Your kettle is boiling, by the way.”
Silas grunted his acknowledgment and rose to prepare the tea in the next room. He could use a minute to collect his thoughts.
It felt like fate, the two of them showing up here right when he needed an opportunity. And he had fond memories of his grandfather’s brewery; the smell of yeast thick in the air as he’d run around behind the barrels to jump out and scare his cousins. His imagination could easily paint an idyllic picture of the life he might have if he said yes—a business of his own to bring him a steady profit, surrounded by family. What would it be like to have that connection again? He might not know James very well, but they were still blood. And Marian had always been a dependable, hardworking girl. She’d never complained when she’d had to roll up her sleeves and help their grandfather with something.
But this was risky. They would want him to put in everything he had. If the business failed, he would have nothing left to fall back on.
