‘I’m relieved she’s back.’
Shapur nodded. ‘I believe it will be a good thing for everyone.’
Harlan watched his father. ‘Are you ever going to look at me again?’
Shapur glanced sideways at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Better to air your disappointment than hold it in.’ Harlan stopped and turned to him. ‘Out with it.’
Shapur turned to him but looked out at the field. ‘I am not disappointed in you. I am oddly proud.’
Harlan frowned. ‘Are you drunk?’
Shapur’s mouth lifted in a rare smile. ‘Not yet, but give me a few hours. It has been a heck of a day.’
‘It has.’
They watched the recruits in silence for a few moments.
‘This clever suggestion of yours,’ Shapur said. ‘Is it really about training the recruits? Or is this about the merchant girl?’
‘Both.’ Harlan swallowed. ‘I can’t command that borough properly with her in it.’
Shapur nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘That girl has bigger balls than most of the men I know.’
Harlan smiled. ‘She sure does.’
‘She’s a fighter, a survivor.’
‘Yes.’
Shapur looked at him. ‘Was it wrong of me to step in the way I did?’
Harlan met his eyes. ‘I understand why you did. But I can’t see past her, even now. Especially now.’
‘I could not see past your mother either.’ Shapur faced forwards again. ‘If you are a fool like me and decide to go against good sense and terrible odds, I will not stand in your way.’
Harlan’s breathing slowed as he comprehended what his father was saying.
‘That house is just going to sit there empty,’ Shapur went on. ‘I plan on dying on my feet within these walls.’
Harlan swallowed against his thickening throat. ‘Probably while barking orders at me.’
A low chuckle came from Shapur.
‘Thank you,’ Harlan said, unable to look at him this time.
‘Do not thank me yet.’ Shapur clapped him on the back. ‘You still have to pay your good friend Lord Thomas a visit.’
* * *
‘You want towhat?’ Lord Thomas asked, sitting forwards in his chair.
Harlan sat opposite him in the library, unsurprised by his reaction. ‘I’d like to buy your shop in the merchant borough.’
Thomas sat processing this request for a moment. ‘The shop has not turned a profit in months, so my next question to you iswhy?’
Harlan did not want the Suttone family’s financial future to be dependent on Lord Thomas’s whims. If Harlan owned the shop, the women would be free to run it as they pleased as well as hold on to all profits. He said none of this aloud. ‘Does it matter why?’ He placed a piece of paper on the desk with the amount he was prepared to pay.
