“I will deliver you to your friends in Belgravia tomorrow,” he said, a snap decision. “I can hop a steamship bound for the Caribbean tomorrow night. I... I cannot say what will happen when I return.”
She began shaking her head. Her eyes shone. He gritted his teeth, hating that he had caused her to cry again.
She said, “But are you certain this is what you want? Perhaps we should talk about—”
“No,” he cut her off. “I’ve...” he exhaled heavily “...grown weary of talking. Enough has been said for one night. I’m exhausted. You are exhausted. I will leave you. There is another bedroom. I will sleep there.”
She took a step toward him, and he froze, holding his breath. He honestly had no idea what he would do if she asked him to stay. His anger had cooled, but his hurt glowed like an ember. And still, the pounding desire he’d felt from the first was an urgent, underlying thud. He was shocked by the persistence of his desire.
“The servants,” she said weakly. “My parents must not learn that we have not...”
“Tangle the bedsheets,” he said, grimly satisfied to feel himself walk away. His pride had not left him entirely. He turned. “I’ve work that will see me up before sunrise—provisioning and ledgers. I will rise before the staff. They will not know the difference.” He sighed and stalked from the room. “We will leave before luncheon. No one need ever know.”
Chapter Seven
After...
Ten months later, Joseph Chance returned to England with a plan to salvage his future. The plan had five tenets (six, if you counted the research he’d already done on Parliamentary districts).
“Six tenets,” Joseph told Stoker as they strode down Upper Belgrave Street, autumn leaves swirling at their feet, “and not one of them includes hunting down my wife.”
Stoker grunted, clearly disinterested, and Joseph amended, “Forgive me, myestrangedwife.”
“You could hardly return to London and not see her at all,” sighed Stoker. “You were always going to call on her eventually.”
“Yes,” agreed Joseph, “eventually. In a fortnight. Or two months. The date was not important because it was never meant to be today, our first morning back. We’ve scarcely been on dry land for two hours. I’ve not even had a proper English breakfast or a bath.”
After five weeks on rough seas, the partners had sailed into the Thames Estuary just after midnight. Stoker’s brig sat low in the water, weighted down by 150 barrels of guano squeezed into the hold. The haul represented nearly a million pounds in profit from anxious buyers, pending delivery.
Pendingbeing the pivotal word.
“This does not happen to me,” Joseph grumbled. “It happens to other shipping merchants. To careless amateurs. Reckless, lazy men with no foresight.”
“It happens to everyone,” said Stoker.
“Not to me,” said Joseph emphatically. “By design, it has never happened to me.”
Joseph and his partners were, at the moment, adrift. Their heavy-laden brig and sea-weary crew had coasted just outside of London and dropped anchor. Joseph and Stoker and two crew members had rowed a small tender boat to shore and checked in at the West India Docks to claim their docking rights for the brig. Joseph had reserved a slip, their spot in docks, more than a year before. But, when they presented themselves to the mooring officer, they learned their long-reserved slip had beencanceled. Given over to another ship. Let go.
By one Tessa Chance.
“Is it a ploy?” Joseph asked Stoker angrily. “A joke?”
“Honestly,” Stoker sighed, “this is the least of what I might expect. Considering.”
Joseph continued, “This is a woman who could not have shown less interest in the brig or the island or the guano when she and I met. Her previous interests were fashion and dancing and kittens. And now she’s canceled my docking privileges and made off with hundreds of pounds?”
“Things rarely carry out exactly as you plan them, Joe. Especially when you’ve been out of the country for the better part of a year. You know this.”
Joseph ignored him. “What Idon’tknow is why. Why would she begin to meddlenow? Is she trying to drive me out? Is that it? Did she believe that barring us from her father’s precious dock would actually keep us from reaching London at all?”
Joseph had reserved a slip at the West India Docks in Blackwall, the most established dockyard and warehouse space in London. Their sail date had been unknown, and he’d paid the highest price to guarantee a slip whenever they returned. It was true, Tessa’s father sat on the board of the West India Docks, but the slip had been bought and paid for before he’d evenmetthe St. Croixs.
“You believe her father is behind the canceled slip?” asked Stoker.
“That’s not what the mooring officer said, was it?” Joseph ground his teeth together, remembering the scene in the dock house just hours before.
“’Tis all been canceled, sir,” the jolly man had informed Joseph and Stoker. “More than four months ago.”
