Page 3 of The Lost Lord
“If you want that holiday, I had best find Howard.” He disentangled himself and headed for the door.
“I’ll be here waiting for you,” Lizzie purred from where she lounged on the unmade bed.
Richard smiled as he closed the door, though he would not have cared if it were the last time he ever saw her face. Her breasts, however…those were another matter.
Chapter 2
New York’s economic hub sat at the tip of finger-shaped Manhattan and stretched up the west side of the island. To the north lay farmland and open fields. To the south was the harbor, where the Hudson and the East rivers flowed into the sea. The estuary was a sanctuary to birds and creatures that Richard had never seen before arriving in this godforsaken country. Racoons, for example. The fearless blighters plagued the city’s streets and spread garbage everywhere.
From Richard’s apartment it was a half-hour’s walk to Howard’s warehouse on the Hudson River. It was also a short distance uptown to the stuffy, formal dining rooms of what passed for the upper crust. Merchants, the lot of them, Richard had scoffed upon his arrival. There was money here, however, and with it came a whiff of the prestige and luxury he missed so badly he could taste it. With his sense of superiority severely chastened after the fire and his humiliating banishment from London, Richard had been grateful to slink back into the world of privilege he’d once enjoyed without thinking.
Lizzie talked endlessly of English aristocracy, as if she had any chance of joining their ranks.
“I cannot figure out why you Americans bothered fighting a war if you’re just going to obsess over titles and aristocracy,” he complained, enjoying the opportunity to poke fun at the rough, ungentle men who’d formed this brash new country.
“Weren’t you also forced into exile?” ladies often asked, wide-eyed.
“It is true,” Richard would confirm, slumping a little as he regretted afresh confiding in Lizzie the reason for his presence here. “I was sent here as punishment after...after I was disinherited.”
He couldn’t bring himself to admit what he’d done, not to these sharp-witted, canny Americans. There were some sins that could never be forgiven. Not by God, certainly not by these rebels with their pride and hypocrisy. Or perhaps Richard needed any paltry excuse to look down on his unwanted, adopted country. Ruminating like this did make him feel marginally superior to Lizzie and her friends for a few lonely minutes.
“Richard, my friend. Here to help unload?”
Howard stomped forward, his blond curls flopping in a tangle over his bronzed forehead. Bright eyes the color of polished amber, striated with green, pinned Richard where he’d paused at the edge of the gloom. Dust caked his boots from the walk.
“If you’ve a need of me.” Here, Richard never had to pretend to be something he wasn’t.
“Could’ve used you hours ago,” Howard grinned without judgment. “The men are tired. I’ll take a turn, too. Can’t let the tobacco go stale from the heat.”
If Richard had more self-regard than he knew what to do with, Howard possessed none at all. It was one of the many asymmetries to their friendship. Howard had never mentioned relatives. Richard half-suspected he’d sprung from the bed of the Hudson River as a fully formed man. A seasoned river navigator, he’d started running small shipments up from Virginia to Boston as a young man. One of the rumors claimed Howard had made his first trips running escaped slaves upriver from the South, though Richard didn’t give it credence. After the Act of 1820, Richard had assumed slavery was no longer acceptable in the United States.
He’d been wrong.
While the act labeled enslaving African natives a heinous crime punishable by death, it only succeeded in diminishing the trade, not in abolishing the institution. Richard remained baffled by the logic of this upstart country which that same year had passed the Missouri Compromise. The nation had grown by two states, Missouri and Maine. The former permitted slaves. The latter did not. People among Lizzie’s set liked to grumble about the free blacks who had begun forming residence in Manhattan’s northern hills, though he privately thought them hypocrites. Richard found it impossible to overlook the dissonance between slavery and the freedoms claimed in the young country’s declaration of independence.
Freedom, if it didn’t include everyone, seemed a rather worthless thing to fight for.
“Gloves,” Howard ordered, tossing a pair of ugly canvas mitts at his chest. Richard donned them and pulled the cords tight at the wrist. They grasped the ropes of the pulley and heaved. Within minutes, sweat poured down Richard’s back.
The leather-fronted, canvas gloves were Howard’s own invention. He specialized in shipping delicate wares, from china to art to gilded furniture. Not that he was above hauling grain, lumber, or tobacco. He was a businessman, and Richard had come to appreciate that businessmen must be flexible to survive.
Howard’s warehouse was situated alongside the Hudson river with easy access to the bay and to the ocean. His usual run was to skirt the coastline from Maine to Boston to New York, with warehouses and transfer points at each city. Howard owned a small fleet of six schooners making scheduled voyages as far south as Charleston.
“With Maine a state now, quarries and lumberyards will need to move their goods south, and the newly rich Mainers will want fine china and cotton for their homes,” Howard had explained, months ago, when they were still in Boston. “I provide the shipments at a fair price and we all come out ahead. Capitalism, it’s a fine thing, isn’t it, your lordship?”
“Fine but for the slaves who toil to grow the cotton yet see no benefit,” Richard had snapped, at the time. His money and letter of introduction had been stolen from his pockets and his head cracked with a wooden truncheon hard enough to fracture his thoughts for days. All he’d wanted was to go back to sleep. If he could only slumber long enough, perhaps he could wake up from the extended nightmare that had become his life.
“Aye, that’s a travesty and a stain upon our country. I wish the cowards in Washington had taken a stronger stand against the slavers. Someone must, eventually.” Howard had ruminated into the dark.
“Must they?” Richard had demanded, his head throbbing. “The longer it goes on, the more entrenched it becomes.”
“You speak truth, Englishman. Mind you keep your mouth sealed on the subject of slaves while aboard my boats. I won’t hang for your loose lips.”
It was the first and last time they’d ever spoken of it.
The labor of reaching and hauling, hand-over-hand, the rough rope tightening around his gloved hands as goods slipped down the gangplank and into the stifling darkness of the warehouse occupied Richard’s body. Sometimes he mulled old conversations. Most of the time he preferred not to think at all. Then, memories of past words would creep into his mind like ghosts of his misdeeds come to haunt him.
“Are you still dipping your candle into that redhead?” Howard asked.
