“You’re going to speak with Lord Campbell about potential mining opportunities on your estates. He was completely destitute this time two years ago, with three daughters unwed and a wife with a penchant for collecting Ming dynasty china. Then, he found a coal seam under his property and now he’s so brimming with cash, his butler must beat away fortune hunters with a sharpened broom handle.”
There was such satisfaction in her tone that the part of him that hated to disappoint people was tempted to congratulate her for the suggestion, however unfeasible it was. The other part of him wanted her to stay well out of his business. “There are no coal seams near any of my properties,” he said curtly.
Her brow furrowed. “How do you know?”
“Coal is predominantly found in the north, where peat bogs are more abundant. My estates are further south.”
“Oh.” She colored slightly, pursed her lips, and for a moment her eyes flicked toward her shoes as though he’d embarrassed her. Before he could apologize, she raised her gaze, squared her shoulders, and turned to him. “I hear that investments in companies such as the Dutch East India Company, or other such imports, can be quite lucrative. My friend’s husband purchased a stake in the company a few years back. They seem rather flush, to be honest. I’ve rarely seen her wear the same thing twice, though I can’t agree with such waste.”
The Dutch East India Company, and ventures similar, were not avenues he would explore. The scientific community was a wide, closely knit network of philosophers that spanned the globe, which was how John knew exactly the damage such companies were wreaking on the countries they traded from. There wasn’t a single capital city in Europe, Asia, or the Americas where John did not have some associate, and the stories they conveyed alongside their scientific discoveries horrified him.
But such stories were not fit for ladies’ ears, so he offered a different excuse. “There are few short-term investments that could deliver the funds I need within the necessary timeframe. Most investments need a full year or more to mature and I don’t have that.” He had hoped to be back in Boston by September.
Lady Charlotte narrowed her eyes, tapping her finger against the shaft of her parasol. “There must be another way. Something more palatable than marriage to Lady Luella. Have you nothing left to sell?”
His temper darkened even further, until it matched the increasingly gloomy skies above. “Trust me, anything Walter could sell before he passed, he sold. There is not a single piece of artwork on the walls. The silver is gone. Even some curtains have been taken by his tailor in lieu of payment. The only thing of value I have is the engineering firm, and selling that is not an option.”
He’d spent his adult years building that company. It was literally the product of his sweat, blisters, and endless nights grappling with challenge after challenge. The firm was his life, and those connected to it—Asterly and Amelia, Wilde and Fiona, Oliver the foreman—were his true family, the only people in this world who could be counted on. Selling his shares would be selling his soul.
Besides, he needed the biannual dividend it paid to keep the fires lit in the many homes he was now responsible for. And, when one of the ideas currently knocking around his brain fully formed, he would need that partnership in order to bring it to fruition. He needed Fiona as a sounding board and Benedict to help turn a theoretical concept into a physical product. No, he could not sell the firm.
“There wasn’t a single thing left on the walls?”
John shook his head. “Even his wardrobe was bare.”
Charlotte’s brows furrowed. “That’s odd. Walter was superbly dressed to the end. I saw him the night before he died, you know. I remember thinking the opal buttons on his jacket clashed awfully with the gems in his cufflinks. It was far too ostentatious to be fashionable, even with our set. A family could live for a year off that outfit alone.”
Walter’s extravagance was not a surprise, but now that Charlotte mentioned it, the lack of clothing in the home when John arrived was odd. His mind began its usual leapfrogging of thoughts when Charlotte sighed deeply and his attention caught on the slightwhooshof her breath and the way her shoulder relaxed against his arm and the slowing of his own heart rate as though his nervous system was somehow intrinsically linked to hers.
She continued to nod toward the groups that were looking her way, but her parasol twirled in her fingers in a way he imagined her mind was circling over his predicament.
Now would be the moment to head off any further interference, to reestablish a distance between them. Yet the words refused to come.
“This really is a pickl—” The parasol lurched to a stop as her fingers clenched the curved ebony handle. Her lips thinned the way her brother’s did when he was confronted by something distasteful.
John searched their surroundings, looking for the source of Charlotte’s discomfort.
Damn.There, making a slow but deliberate journey toward him, was Lady Luella Tarlington, flanked by two young women whose expressions weren’t nearly as artful. Where Luella looked as calm as a balmy summer day, her sentinels looked like vicious guard dogs.
Beside him, Newton’s ears went flat, a low growl reverberating through both him and John.
John gave him a reassuring pat on his flank and the growling stopped, but Newton’s teeth remained bared. The set of Charlotte’s jaw suggested that beneath her saccharine smile, her teeth were likewise clenched.
“Well, well, well,” Luella said. “What a surprise to see you, my lord. When you didn’t pay a call this morning as I was expecting you to, I assumed you were on your deathbed. What other reason could you have for not following through on your commitment?”
He’d made no such promise to the chit and was tempted to say so, but a public dismissal would draw attention. Not to mention it would probably destroy the only salvation open to him at the moment, as much as he was loath to accept marriage as a solution to his predicament.
So he forced a smile. “Lady Luella. You look beautiful. That color becomes you.” God, he hated the artifice of this society. He couldn’t wait to get away from it all.
Her eyes narrowed and John was certain he was about to experience a tongue-lashing. But the blows never landed.
Instead, Charlotte’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the sleeve of his coat. “Lulu,” she said. “Tell me you haven’t fallen so low as to demand a man’s presence in your drawing room? Wouldn’t that be rather desperate?”
Luella’s eyes narrowed. “Desperate? Like saying yes to every do-gooder cause, joining every committee, and championing every misfortunate wallflower that enters society because that’s the only way you can get anyone to like you?”
Charlotte went rigid, her fingers digging into his arm fully now. A quick look down showed the blood draining from her face. Her throat bobbed. The quick-witted comeback he expected never materialized.
“Was there something you wanted?” he asked, when he realized how deeply the insult had affected Charlotte. Luella’s smug expression was vile. There was nothing John hated more than a bully, and he’d spent far too many years as a target not to see Luella for exactly who she was.
