Page 2 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Thomas stepped into his office. He shrugged out of his greatcoat and hung it on the stand behind the door, then closed the door and walked to his desk. He didn’t immediately round it and sit in the chair, but instead he paused before it. His fingertips lightly brushing the desk’s smooth surface, he gazed out of the corner window. The bustling thoroughfare of Trongate stretched before him, thronged with carriages and pedestrians going about their business; the calls of drivers and the cracks of their whips came faintly through the glass. From the left, through a gap between two buildings, the glint of fleeting sunshine reflecting off the pewter waters of the Clyde drew his eye.
This office, this place—Thomas had elected to make this the center of his life. He intended to craft an engaging life around his position as half owner of Carrick Enterprises, and the next step along the path to his goal was to select a suitable wife. The right sort of wife for a gentleman of the type he intended to become—a pillar of the wealthy business community with a supportive wife on his arm, with children attending the right schools, and a house in the best quarter. Perhaps a hunting box in the Highlands. He had it all reasonably clear in his mind.
Except for one thing. The first thing.
No matter how many young ladies of good family, passable or better beauty, and impeccable social credentials his aunt steered his way, he simply didn’t—couldn’t—see any of them as his.
Not while Lucilla Cynster still stood so vibrant and real in his mind.
By deliberate design, he hadn’t set eyes on her for more than two years; he’d hoped the inexplicable grip she seemed to have on his psyche would fade if it wasn’t fed—if his eyes didn’t see her, if he didn’t hear her voice, if his awareness wasn’t teased, abraded, and impinged on by her nearness. Yet it hadn’t.
He didn’t even have to close his eyes to conjure her in his mind, with her emerald-green eyes slightly tip-tilted in a finely featured face haloed by fire-red hair; the colors of her eyes, soft pale pink lips, and that flaming hair were rendered even more vibrant by the unblemished ivory of her alabaster complexion.
Every other young lady he saw paled in comparison. They were insipid. Colorless.
And not just in appearance; Lucilla’s vibrancy extended to her soul and was something that marked her, in Thomas’s experience, as unique.
Wonderful. Alluring.
She attracted him, captured his senses, and commanded his awareness at some level beyond understanding. His understanding, at least.
She was considered a witch of sorts; it wasn’t hard to see why.
For instance, there he was, standing and thinking of her when it was quite definitely the last thing he wanted, much less needed, to do.
Brusquely shaking his head, shaking all thoughts and visions of Lucilla from the forefront of his brain, he rounded the desk and sat in the comfortable leather chair behind it. If trying to focus on which young lady might be suitable as his wife was hopeless, at least he could deal with business—one aspect of his life in which thoughts of Lucilla rarely intruded.
He spent the next hours reviewing the company’s past month’s trading. All was going excellently well; along with the port, trade of all sorts was booming, and the company was well placed to reap the harvest his late father and Quentin had long ago sown. Although Quentin was still fully active in the firm, Thomas and Humphrey saw themselves as the ones to grow the company into the future, something Quentin openly encouraged.
Business was good. It was absorbing, too.
A tap on his door had him glancing up. “Come.”
The door opened, and Dobson entered, a small sheaf of letters in his hand. “Mail, sir. Just got in.”
“Thank you, Dobson.” Thomas set down his pen, leaned back, and stretched his arms over his head.
Dobson set the letters on the tray on the corner of Thomas’s desk and, with a taciturn nod, retreated, closing the door behind him.
Thomas lowered his arms, relaxed for a moment, then sat up and reached for the letters. There were five. Sorting through them, he found three notifications from the company’s bank, detailing payments made. One thick envelope was from a shipping captain Thomas knew, who occasionally reported on prospects he came across in far-flung ports that he thought Carrick Enterprises might be interested in pursuing. That missive in his hand, Thomas was reaching for his letter knife when his gaze fell on the last letter in the pile.
The plain envelope was addressed to Mr. Thomas Carrick, with the “Carrick” heavily underlined. Across the corner opposite the post-office stamp was scrawled: Bradshaw, Carrick.
Setting aside the captain’s letter, Thomas picked up the one from Bradshaw and squinted at the stamp.
Carsphairn.
Frowning, Thomas lifted the letter knife and slit open the envelope. There were two sheets inside. Sliding them out, he smoothed the pages, then leaned back in his chair and read.
And grew increasingly puzzled.
The missive was, indeed, from Bradshaw, a farmer on the Carrick estate. Thomas’s paternal uncle was Manachan Carrick—TheCarrick, laird of the clan. Thomas had been born at Carrick Manor, on the estate, although that had been an accident of sorts, a twist of fate. He’d spent several summers there with his parents while they’d been alive; after their deaths when Thomas was ten, he’d spent a full year at the manor, embraced, nurtured, and supported by the clan. He owed Manachan and the clan a great deal for that year, but as time had passed and he’d healed and returned to normal boyhood life, Manachan and Quentin, his co-guardians, had decided that Thomas would be best served by going to school in Glasgow and living with Quentin and Winifred and their children. And so he had.
Thomas had still visited the Carricks every summer, spending anything from a few weeks to a few months with Manachan’s four children and other children of the clan, but even more with Manachan himself.
Thomas had been—and still remained—closer to Manachan than even to Quentin, whom he saw every day. Even when much younger, Thomas had intuitively realized that Manachan and Niall had been close, and with Niall’s death, Manachan had transferred that degree of closeness, of connection, to Thomas, Niall’s only child.
Quentin, Winifred, and Humphrey were Thomas’s Glasgow family, yet Manachan was the family closest to his heart. Thomas understood Manachan and Manachan understood him, and that understanding sprang from something deep in their bones.
