Page 106 of Better Love Next Time
Julian had shown skill in negotiating the timber, tar, and canvas, but the volume was ten times over what they had agreed upon. In his small notebook was an estimate for the production of six merchant brigs which explained the reason for the excess in purchases. There were several drafts from Coutts & Co and receipts for the coach, horses, tailor, and various other craftsmen. Four theater playbills. He had gone to the opera. There had been a free exhibit at the British Museum. He had noted expenses for Vauxhall and Ranelagh.
She froze at a bill of sale from a goldsmith at King's Arms, Panton Street. A royal goldsmith by the crown printed upon the paper.Diamond & Tourmaline Pendant of 24 c.
Her hand shook as she drew their personal account ledger near and penned the exorbitant outlay for the whore with the alluring perfume who had fornicated with her husband in a park. Such a horrible way to refer to a woman. Butwhore, whore, whore.
The pendant hurt so much more than when she totaled her columns and discovered over three thousand withdrawn from their accounts remained unreconciled. What had she said to Mr. Lovett?If a man loses in gaming according to his means, then why should we care?Her blind faith had come to haunt her.
She noted Julian’s losses in their personal account and after returning the ledgers to their place, filed the receipts and gathered her cloak. She bent her forehead to the door and steadied her mind. She prayed for wisdom. She wished Father Dunlevy were here to counsel her, clasp her cheeks as he had when she was a girl. When her little boy had died in her arms.
Julian hadn’t troubled to conceal the purchase of the pendant or his losses. He could have easily forged other receipts to account for them. What of the opera, theater, and pleasure gardens? He wanted her to know. He wanted her to rail at him, just like his father.
She would not. Her husband was a man, not a boy. A man with free will, who had chosen to do what he had done. No one had shoved his face in a river and forced him.
Julian would have to come to terms with the fact she was not his father. His rebellion had not blunted her love. She would always love him because she knew him and accepted him. He would have to learn that what he did hurt him much more than it could ever her.
The yard seemed content, but to Julian’s experienced ears, it was too quiet, devoid of the merry back-and-forth of working men. As he conferred with Sam on the cutters’ progress, he fought the urge to ask how the men had fared in his absence. It would insult his wife and usurp her burgeoning authority.
Maybe the men’s somber demeanor was the outcome of a genteel woman as a leader. He wouldn’t tell Kitty this. It would smack of jealousy. His sole purpose was to support her, not chasten or belittle her.
Julian hadn’t written Gilbert after their dinner. Instead, with Anthony’s consent, Julian had placed a notice in a London business weekly reporting a commission awarded to St. Clair Shipwrights to build two merchant brigs for the heir to the Earl of Wetherden, Anthony Philips. Julian had also placed numerous solicitations and visited countless dockside taverns for the labor on account of the fake commission. It was a huge gamble. But men didn’t throw their backing behind struggling businesses. They supported those enterprises which needed no support.
Though he hadn’t shown it, Julian had left Kitty in a sulk. His offer to wait while she accounted for his expenditures had been cheerful, but inside he had seethed at her distrust.
“We lost eleven men to Childers,” Sam said.
Kitty in her haste to comb through his receipts hadn’t bothered to tell him? “Did they explain their reasons?”
“They, er”—Sam kicked at the brittle grass beneath their feet—“were persuaded.”
Julian heard a lot in that word,persuaded. He fixed Sam with a level gaze.
Sam shoved his big hands in his coat pockets. “You know how it is. One leaves, who knows why, and then it spreads like the pox. Madame got most to stay, offering a Christmas reward and a percentage. I don’t figure that’ll come, but it worked just the same. It could’ve been worse.”
Situations that could have been worse did not make for success. And Kitty had offered to part with more pennies when she had let the Pierpoints’ lodge and couldn’t wait to pick apart his spending?
The woman in question, pale-faced and garbed in a severe black cloak, approached him at the slipway. How long before she confronted him on the missing funds he had paid to her brother, with two more payments remaining in exchange for the freehold on Notfelle? He didn’t doubt Kitty knew down to the pence how much money was missing. What would he say when she confronted him? Should he blame it on gaming losses and bear her wrath until Christmas?
Julian walked to his wife, extending his arm. She took it, and he pulled her hand to rest upon his wrist. There was no stiffness in her pose, no condemnation in her eyes. If anything, they were gentle. Her steps as they walked to his coach were at ease. But he knew from experience with his father that the lecture was soon to come.
“Have you engaged a cook at this lodge of yours,” he said, “or have you learned to do that as well?”
“I have a cook, Mrs. Miggins.”
“Ah, a perfect name. Does she brandish a ladle and threaten to brain all that enter her kitchen?”
“Only those who steal her food.”
“Then we are doomed,” he said to Ollie at his feet. “Let’s see this lodge of yours. You can tell me of your successes these past weeks while we eat.”
He lifted her into the coach, struck by the alluring flesh beneath his hands. When should he approach her? Would she have him? Ollie jumped to her lap and sniffed her thoroughly.
Julian kept his gaze to the coach window and the thinning autumn foliage. They traveled north along the river to the lodge his wife had let in haste to begin her new life. Would she even want Notfelle? She seemed content, though her smiles, if he could call them thus, were close-lipped and hardly smiles when compared to Louisa’s.
He grimaced. It was wrong to think of another woman while in the company of his wife. They were nothing alike, and that was good.
Kitty admitted her plan on the Christmas reward. He approved and how could he not? She had already told the men without conferring with him. She then explained that she had engaged her own solicitor and, just as Sam had said, spoke of giving the men a percentage of the business.
The coach turned left onto a well-maintained path lined with ash and oak. Ahead a Portland stone house rose behind a round drive with a neat circle of lawn.
