Her instinct was correct, she thought. An introduction now was wrong, odd and rushed and muddled with this other business. She had decided months ago that when she was finally reunited with Joseph, she would lead with her work on the docking rights and the brig.
Removing a pen and inkpot from what she considered her office kit, Tessa ran a hand over the crease in her notebook. She considered the serious, businesslike expressions she had rehearsed in her mirror. Her reflection had always looked as if she was trying to repress a sneeze.
Be direct,she reminded herself. All the progress she’d made since embarking on the new deal with the docks had been the result, in part, of directness.
She cleared her throat and looked to Joseph.
“Can you tell me where the brig is at the moment?” she asked, tapping her pen against the notebook. “You mentioned the Thames Estuary. But where exactly? Margate? Sheerness?”
Joseph scrunched up his face, looking at her as if she’d spoken in code. “What difference does that make?”
“Well, it will influence the steam tug company we use, won’t it? I see my error now in leaving word for you only with two tug companies. Of course you’d use Waterman’s if you’ve dropped anchor as far out as the Medway Estuary. But perhaps you made it to Canvey Island?”
“Forgive me,” he said, speaking slowly. “I did not expect you to question me. When didyoulearn the difference between Margate and the bloody Medway Estuary?”
Tessa closed her little book. Of course he would be surprised. Every man with whom she had dealt since she’d begun to rearrange his docking rights had been surprised by her—and they hadn’t even known the old Tessa, frivolous and featherheaded and coy. She was a young woman, and that had been surprise enough.
She laid her pen on the table between them. “Well, I hope you did not expect me to cancel your existing docking reservation without learning how best to sort something else out.”
“I did not expect you to cancel my docking plans at all.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I understand that you’ve had this... falling-out with your family and that you were trying to make some concession. But this does not translate into you knowing anything about steam tugs or the ports along the River Thames, does it? You’ve not even set eyes on the brig. I’m shocked you’re even aware of the existence of a steam tug.”
And here was the second attitude Tessa met when she dealt with the men who ran the warehouses and docks. Condescension.
Before she realized it, she was on her feet. “I’ve not had a falling-out with my family—on this I wish to be perfectly clear. Oneverypoint,” she clarified, “I want to be perfectly clear. I vowed to stop revising the truth on the night of our wedding.”
She glanced at him. He stared at her as if she had grown a tail.
She went on. “My parents havedisownedme. I will never see them again. I can carry on, thanks most of all to you, but I proceed knowing that the family meant to support and love and provide for me did so only conditionally. I failed at their conditions and they have... forgotten me. In no way was it a falling-out, so let us not call it what it is not.”
He pushed from his chair. “Tessa, wait, I—”
“And,” she continued, “I have not made someconcessionfor your docking rights, I have spent months learning the system of importation, levies, warehouses, buyers, and yes, docks, and arranged an alternative. Your unannounced arrival has caught me off guard, but I am prepared, nonetheless.”
He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it.
Tessa forged ahead. “Perhaps you will disagree with what I’ve done or perhaps you won’t, but I’ve made a study of every dockyard in London, and I’ve been methodical about it. I may be a student of the importation, and I may not have gotten everything exactly right, but it has not been for a lack of effort.”
She felt too jittery to pace the room, so she returned to her seat. “Now,” she said, “I have every intention of explaining what I’ve done, but in order to do so properly, I should like to know where to start. So allow me to ask you again.” She took up her notebook and pen. “Where is the brig anchored? At this moment?”
Joseph stared at her, blinking (in her opinion), far more frequently than strictly necessary.
“Canvay Island,” he said finally. “I believe. We sailed as far as the Thames Estuary on the tide, and then a steam tug brought us to the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. A tender rowed Stoker and me—”
“General Steam Tug then?” she asked, interrupting.
The high volume of vessels on the River Thames made it impossible for large brigs to navigate the narrow stretch of the river in Blackwall. Instead, small, maneuverable steam tugs towed the large vessels from the Thames Estuary to the docks.
He blinked at her again. “Yes. In fact it was General Steam Company. When I was turned away at the dock office, I paid a boy to row out to the ship and convey the news that we were dock-less until I could sort out something else. And then I came to find you.”
She shook her head and made a note in her book. Absently fingered the tight bun at the base of her neck, lifting it up to relieve the pressure.
“Your hair is different,” Joseph said, and Tessa’s hand froze. She glanced at him. He was watching her as if she was a puzzle to be solved. She dropped her hand.
The old Tessa had reveled in her long, blonde hair, styling it into different braids, chignons, or elaborate piles (really there was no other word). Tessa’s new attitude about her hair had been the less attention it gained, the better. She slicked it tightly back and pinned it into a low bun. It was hardly pretty, but the opposite of prettiness had been the desired result of all the behaviors on her lists.
“Joseph,” she said, “the end result of what I’ve done is this—before I canceled your reservation at West India Docks, I visited all the other docks to learn if I could get similar privileges elsewhere along the Thames—in Blackwall if possible, because I saw the value of warehousing there.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. “You did, did you?”
