Chapter Five
“Good afternoon, Burton,” Julian greeted the aging butler whom his father had brought with him from Shanghai three decades ago when their merchant house had gone bankrupt. “Is His Grace arrived in the library?”
His father had sent a note to his bachelor quarters earlier this morning. The man had been testy of late and Julian would rather face the fire than fan it by not attending his so-called ‘urgent meeting’.
Besides, Julian adored the grand house. On Green Park, the family home of the Dukes of Seton backed to the flowing lawn near the old St. James’s Palace. Not as grand as Spencer House farther up the green, nonetheless, the London residence was as renowned for its Palladian splendor. Maintained year-round by a regular staff of butler, two maids and two footmen, the white stone beauty rose three stories. Drafty as it could be in winter, it was refreshing in spring when the breezes from the park flowed into the jade Peacock salon and washed the wood-paneled library in sparkling sunlight.
“Yes, my lord. He awaits you there.”
Unusual for the old man to summon him with any urgency. What was amiss? The mills? The workers? Julian divested himself of his walking stick, gloves, hat and coat. Tugging on his cuffs, he smiled at the taciturn servant whose good will he always was careful to cultivate. “Excellent. I shall go. Is my sister at home from her calls?”
“Lady Elanna arrived a few minutes ago, my lord. She and Her Grace also await you.”
“Ah.” A family meeting. Rare, those. And not a sign of a topic meant to bring a smile to his lips. Rather it importuned a row. “Thank you. I’ll go up.”
When he opened the door and strode through, Julian breathed in the abject silence—and the anxiety. His father glared at him. His mother took note of his presence and sniffed, her usual sign of impatience. His sister pressed her lips together, her eyes round and intense, pleading with him to save her from whatever evil had befallen her already.
“Good you’re here. Come, come.” His father waved him into his smoke-filled study. Standing before the fire, the old man hooked both hands behind his back and tipped his head toward the only remaining vacant chair. “Have a seat.”
Julian took it, but couldn’t take his gaze from his father. The man was pale. His skin an uncharacteristic color of gray. Whatever today’s topic, it was worse than ever before.
His mother inhaled, her eyes floating along the alabaster mantel. “Now, Seton. Do get on with it, will you?”
“Have a dinner engagement, dearest?” his father chided his mother. “Why should I have to ask?”
“I must change. I hope this will not turn into one of your lectures about the foibles of your ancestors.” Her snipe at him was an old one, centered on the poor traits he’d inherited from his forebears. Like ridiculing his wife.
“Have no time for the recitation, do you, pet?” He turned to face the fire, but the sneer was one Julian heard. Had heard for most of his life.
The duchess was not to be intimidated. “No, none. These meetings of yours are tedious, Seton. I fear you are becoming infirm in your mind.”
His father spun on his heel. At sixty-two, the man might be portly, he might have a shock of silver hair, but he had the black eye of a warlock and the disposition of one, given bait. At that, Julian’s mother was quite expert. “I am not so infirm, as you put it, girlie, as you are at forgetting my orders.”
His mother tsked, rapping her fan softly against her open palm. “You cannot incite me, George. Do be quick.”
“We’re in the shitter!”
She gasped. Her fan fluttered upward to her throat. “There is no need for vulgarity.”
“Oh, there is need.” He strode forward to face her and bend low, his nose nearly touching her own. His nostrils flared. “An urgent one.”
Elanna swallowed.
Julian inhaled, girding for the storm.
“Do you go to Lady Tottingham’s this evening, by any odd chance?” His father was luring his mother with bitter words. “Do you?”
His mother turned her face to one side, her fan to her cheek, separating her from her husband’s breath. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Of course, I have!” he bellowed. “I have cause. Just cause. You, my dear gel, give me cause.”
She shot to her feet.
“Sit down.”
“I will not listen—”
“Oh, you will, madam. In fact, you will do a great deal more than that.”
She stared at him, her body swaying to and fro.
Julian hoped to God she’d sit soon or they’d be here all damn night.
She regained her chair.
Elanna closed her eyes.
Julian let out a breath.
“Now, then. Affairs at Broadmore are in turmoil. Wilson has taken to his bed.” Their bailiff for the estate had always been sickly, getting worse each year. “He’s got a bad case of pleurisy.”
“Or nerves,” his mother added under her breath.
His father quelled her with fury in his black gaze. He dug a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his mouth. “Most— Most ungracious of you.”
She rolled her shoulders.
Julian shook his head. She and Wilson had never gotten on.
Broadmore in West Sussex was the original land grant estate from the Crown to the first Duke of Seton two centuries ago. Fifteen-thousand acres of prime land yielded the bulk of the crops that fed the two-hundred plus tenants and the coffers of the ducal family. Until the past few years. With poor weather, little investment in new plows and wagons, the lack of cash to purchase seed, the tenants who faithfully farmed the land were growing poorer. Unable to pay their rents in full. The skills of his father’s bailiff there, Robert Wilson, were of little use. If the land did not yield, the tenants could not sell their grain or fatten their animals. They not only could not pay their rents, they sickened.
“Wilson is the best man in all Sussex. I don’t doubt he’s worn himself to the bone and I don’t begrudge him a rest.” This graciousness, this compliment was a new phenomenon his father had begun to exhibit as the profitability of their estate had diminished.
“He needs no rest, but replacement,” his mother said.
“Absolutely not,” his father disagreed. “Wilson insisted to rise from his bed and rallied to show me the estate books. We tallied the rents to date. Also balanced the sales of the grain against the expense of the seed for this spring.”
Julian folded his hands, knowing what was coming. He’d known each year for the past three. Each spring the estate books had not balanced. Each spring, the Duchy of Seton sank deeper into the mire caused by the combination of abundant, cheap American grain imports and terrible weather. Rain, ice, snow had flooded their fields at Broadmore since last October and to a lesser extent at their smaller estate, his own, of Willowreach in Kent.
“We have enough money to run this house for two months. Pay the servants and the annual taxes. Then we must either sell it or let the house to any rich American who wants a fancy residence for his chicks.”
“No,” his mother said beneath her breath. “This is not so.”
“Not? So?” Quentin George Makefield Ash, the seventh duke, barked in laughter. Then he advanced on his wife of thirty-six years with fire in his eyes. “Who are you, madam, to nay say me? I told you over and over these past few years. Now we are well and truly cooked as a Christmas goose. At Christmas, I told you that you must no longer visit your seamstress. You must do with last year’s hats. I would not pay your marks. And worse…”
She lifted her face to stare at him, her mouth pinched, her skin drained of color.
“I refused to pay any of your chits to cover your debts at cards.”
“They are not much.”
He gave a sharp laugh. “They are not paid, either.”
“But, but… George, you must. I cannot continue—”
“Precisely. I warned you years ago. You went on your merry way. Even if, madam, we had means, your addiction to the tables has ruined us.”
“Only my addiction?” She fixed him with slitted eyes. “What of yours?”
The old man’s nostrils flared wider.
Elanna feel back into her chair. Julian fought not to do the same.
His father sagged. “My amusements have long since ceased, Charlotte.”
She raised her fan, the snap of the sticks the sign of her outrage. “Do not insult me with lies.”
Elanna pressed her lips together. If she understood the implications of the amusements their mother indicated, his sister did not flinch.
“My interests in such pastimes ended last year. I could not afford them then, either in coin or affection.”
“Last year’s fancy has not given way to a new one?” His mother whipped up the air with her fan.
“No. If you took time away from the card tables long enough, you might have learned that from your so-called friends.”
“I doubt it.”
“What? You think they’d tell you any tidbit that might paint me in a good light?”
“As if you could stand in any good light.”
Children. They were such frightful children.
“I will ignore that, dear gel. We have much to decide. Now…” He strolled to his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. Thin rag. Invoices, they were.
“These,” he said, holding aloft a few, “are yours, madam. I will pay what I can of them from your monthly allowance.”
“George!” She gained her feet. “I—I need that money.”
He stared at her with sad eyes that offered only pity. Then he picked up another stack, thinner, but still, quite a few. “These, dear Elanna, are yours.”
“For gowns,” said his mother, “for the Season. She must have them, George. Must!”
“Have them. Wear them. These I will endeavor to cover completely. But know, my sweet child, that they are to get you a man who can pay for any future frocks.”
Julian ached for his sister.
She looked at her hands in her lap and nodded. “Sir, thank you. I understand.”
“Well, sadly, girl, that is not all. We are in such a state that if you do not snare a suitor by June’s end and marry by July, you must retire to Broadmore.”
“Papa!”
“Permanently.”
Julian hated to picture Elanna with a man who would not cherish her. From the dejected look of her, she hadn’t, either. But time was short for her to find a mate.
“Seton,” his mother was atwitter, “this is outrageous. She’ll be a laughing stock. People will think she’s on the shelf or that there’s something hideously wrong with her. And you know what they’ll say…” Her eyes widened with suggestions of impropriety.
“What, dear Charlotte? What will they say? That she’s committed a faux pas? Hmm?”
“Worse. Well, you know it.”
“Oh, yes. That some man assumed too many liberties with her.”
“Stop that.”
“That she had her chance and she chose once, chose badly, chose too quickly. That we’d hide her away for—”
“Enough, Seton.” His mother fretted with the edge of her fan, now dormant in her lap. Her lips quivered, a sign of the onset of tears. “You torment me.”
“The way you did me?”
“You know I hate discussion of money.” She fished a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.
“Would that you would hate pissing it away, as well,” his father mourned.
“Oh, you are a cruel man. Cruel,” she said, sniveling, real tears in her china-blue eyes.
Julian groaned.
This old argument between them was infuriating. They never openly stated their grievances in front of Julian and Elanna, but they could wheedle and cajole, criticize and affront with careful precision. The gist of it, which Julian had learned bit by agonizing bit, was some indiscretion that the two of them had committed when they first met. Each held the other responsible for the fault. Yet to hear them tell it, in the beginning each had loved the other with a searing passion. For more than a decade, they had turned to each other and burned with a sensuality that conceived his own life, as well as Elanna’s. Then, at once, the flames had died. In the ruins, they tore at each other’s dignity. He in company with disreputable women, she in company with feckless gamblers. Why and how they could not lay down their arms escaped Julian. Their feud taught Elanna and him a marital lesson to befriend others with caution. Intimacy was a folly meant for fools.
Julian had had enough of their bickering for today. “If you two can insult each other more profoundly, please do it quickly.”
“You presume to order me, boy?” The old man pointed at him with a shaky hand.
Concern for his father’s health coiled inside him. “Never. But this serves no purpose, Father. I’ve heard this tirade for decades and I’m quite tired of it. Tell us rather more about the finances, please.”
“Very well. I have cut the staff. At Broadmore, two of the maids, one of the footmen. Here, I’ll relieve the seasonal staff at the end of June. Four of them. Two upstairs maids, the second scullery maid and the new footman.”
His mother caught a handkerchief to her eyes. “Disgraceful. The house will be a shambles. How will we manage?”
The old man shook his head. “You could pick up a feather duster.”
“You’re mad,” she seethed.
“Right you are. So then! No more monthly shipments of wine. No refurbishment of the upholstery in the drawing room.”
“Absurd!” his mother objected. “I cannot imagine. How can we attract a proper match for Elanna?”
Julian winced. Leave it to his mother to use Elanna as an excuse to get what she wanted. The woman had no scruples. Few motherly instincts, either.
“Ba!” His father put a hand on his hip. “She turned down two men last year. Old Wayland’s whelp who has a bit of money.”
“He’s not yet out of dresses,” the duchess objected.
He prefers men. Julian shifted. “He’s not right for our girl.”
“And Lord Canfield was—is a rogue,” Elanna added. “With bad breath.”
Julian stifled a laugh. “Marriage is too important to demand that Elanna take whatever comes her way.”
“Like Carbury?” their mother said with the arch of one long brow and a pointed gaze at Elanna. “Why not? He’s eager. Likes her. He’s not bound himself up with debts, and he’s out of mourning.”
Elanna shifted. “He’s very nice. But I dare say I cannot find it in my heart to—”
“Not for you, is he?” the duke asked. “Well, then. Would you be able to find it in your heart to take a position as governess?”
“What?” his mother gaped.
Elanna fell back in her chair.
Julian cringed.
“Or teach in a girl’s school?”
“Surely, Seton,” said the duchess, waving her handkerchief in a frantic beat, “you jest. You do. The girl will not, I say will not lower herself to turn to anyone’s employ. Surely, surely—” She was on her feet, pacing the window, back to face her husband before his desk. “You cannot make her do that. It’d ruin us. Utterly.”
The old man simply crossed his arms and studied her.
“What will people say, good sir?” she beseeched him.
“I applaud your social instincts, my girl. Thought you’d lost them. Sent them out to roost with all our money.”
“Stop.” She hung her head and stomped her foot. “Do. Stop.”
“I cannot. As for doings here, there are enough funds for the ordinary teas, a few dinner parties, a musicale, if you wish. But no balls.” His tone turned maudlin, almost apologetic. So very unlike his normal boisterous self. “I’m sorry, Elanna, but you’ll have to dance at other people’s invitation.”
“What of the sale of Cardiff Shipping?” his mother asked, her handkerchief to her temple. “Will you do it? That could save us.”
“Save us? You think so? Oh, if only that were so. Last winter, we had two offers. Neither of them was worth a prayer on Sunday. The better of the two came from the American. Hanniford.” His father turned to him with a tilt of his head.
“I haven’t seen him since Paris last autumn. And he has not contacted me.” Julian hadn’t wished to open that relationship again. Instead, he’d called upon their London lawyer and estate agent Phillip Leland last week in the City. On official business for himself to monitor his own investment in railroad expansion in the Cotswolds, he’d taken the occasion to ask if any news had come from Killian Hanniford lately. None had and Julian was happy for it. He did not wish to be reminded of Hanniford’s beguiling daughter.
Julian brushed the wool of his trousers. “Leland believes if we hold out for another six months or until the new year, we would receive a better price for the company than is the current offer.”
“How much better?” his father asked.
“Twenty percent more.”
“Healthy.” His father arched his brows. “And why would that be?”
“Leland courts two buyers. One wants the company to expand his own reach. The other wants it to gut it.”
“And the twenty-percent advantage would come from stalling?”
“Exactly. Selling it to the first man who will see over time that the second man would not be favored. Not for his objective.”
The duchess fretted. “Are there no other answers?”
“Certainly, there is only one other asset.” His father arched a sardonic brow at his wife.
“My—my diamonds,” she whispered, touching the base of her throat where her most precious necklace of all her jewels would adorn her on many an occasion. “But King Charles gave them to my great grandmama. I must not, nay cannot part with them.”
“But will.”
Her eyes popped wide. “If…if things are this bad—”
“Never doubt it, madam.”
“No. Would you sell them? I won’t allow it.”
“You have no choice,” his father said to her.
“But I’d have nothing to wear.”
His father scoffed. “However, the sale alone could keep us until—oh, shall we say? January. At most.”
“Oh, George.” Her tears spilled over her lids.
“We are, despite your tears, in dire straits. I have done what I could for the time being. You will abide by my orders to trim your expenses, all of you. Anything else you wish to cut, do. There is no other solution. And know, too, that what I have done will not be the end of it. I cannot change the weather. I cannot improve the crops, not by much in any case. Elanna, you will find a husband. Madam, you will give me your diamonds. Come to think of it, your pearls, too.”
Once more, his mother put her hand to her throat. Her eyes wide, she looked as if her husband wished to cut her throat. “George. They were your wedding gift.”
“What a sorry investment that was, eh?”
Tears cascaded down her cheeks. She struggled up from her chair. With a turn of her heel and a swish of her skirts, she raced from the room.
Silence reigned.
Elanna rose to her feet. “I will do my duty by you, Papa. I will help. I swear to it. I’ll choose a husband. One you will like.”
His gaze was for once paternal and held pity for his only daughter. “Elanna, do me and yourself a favor. Search diligently. But like him for yourself.”
Julian witnessed Elanna thank her father and, for the first time in many years, she rushed to kiss him on the cheek. Then she hurried away, a hand cupping her mouth.
“Help her, can you?” the duke asked him as he watched her leave the room.
“Find a man? Such arrangements are not easily done.”
“Well, I know it. When you’re young, the blood runs hot. Too hot to show one’s true nature. And deception does not build sound unions.”
Julian shifted in his chair. This was his father’s old story about the failure of all marriages, a metaphor for the nightmare that was his union. So he had loved his duchess when first they’d married and then what had gone wrong? From what Julian could ascertain, they had destroyed whatever respect they had, each for the other, with lies and flirtations, excessive gambling and drinking. Julian and Elanna had witnessed the results—and learned from them. He understood marriage to be a prison of mutual love and hate. Elanna, poor girl, thought their parents’ relationship to be unique.
‘The world,’ she’d once told Julian, ‘is not like that.’
Julian had looked for evidence to prove her right. He’d discovered one woman he’d thought worthy of marriage. But he’d valued her more than she him and so he’d put marriage from his mind. He’d marry to get an heir, but not for love.
“Some couples construct a congenial bond,” the duke said, morose.
“Not many.”
“I count four. Four. But they are not exempt from problems. A failed career, a malformed baby, a debilitating disease.”
The sudden tragedies that racked one. “Sad.”
“Carbury’s the only one of my acquaintance who had a complete dash of success with a woman. And what do you know, she up and died. What the hell is that for justice? I’m shocked he’s eager to marry again.”
“Elanna is in his sights. But he would expect a dowry and marriage settlement from us.” Julian had never asked what marriage portion his father had set aside for Elanna. But he had an idea of the amount. If his father wanted him to help her secure a husband, he’d have to know something of the details.
The duke rounded his desk. He sank to his chair, all the bluster of the argument out of him, deflated, diminished. He sat, running his fingers over the edges of his large ledger book—and his fingers shook. Does he have a palsy? “I have preserved some of her dowry.”
“Some?” Anger warmed Julian’s blood. “How much?”
The duke pursed his lips. “It may yield one thousand a year. Perhaps.”
A pitiful sum. And why? There was only one answer. Julian smarted at the thought. “You borrowed against it?”
The old man inhaled, firming his jaw. “I had to do it. We had to eat.”
And gamble. And whore. “I understood it to be five thousand pounds a year.”
“It was. Your grandfather Downey gave your mother such a magnificent marriage portion that I was able to invest it for any daughters soon after we married. It was in South American products.”
Julian made a fist. “Such as?”
His father smiled like a devil, ear to ear. “Bird shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Julian bit off. “Say that again.”
“In the fifties, soon after the marriage, I invested it with speculators. Men who wanted to buy bird guano from Peru and ship it here to spread as fertilizer over the soil.”
Julian knew of it, had met a few men who owned stock in import companies that shipped it in to England and Europe. In the tired soils of Britain and the Continent, the addition had improved yields double, sometimes triple, the norm. “I understood it was lucrative. I wanted to buy some myself, but the stocks were closed accounts.”
“They are. Worse, the money is bound in trust and will be granted to her husband to manage after the ceremony. Even then, he may take only ten percent of the total each year for her welfare.”
“Have you told her?”
“I thought it best she never know. Not the terms. Not the sum.”
“And Mama?”
“Does not know, either.”
“And you won’t tell her,” Julian said with certainty.
“Never. She’d harangued me to change the terms, the law be damned. She’d want it. At first it would be a portion. Then more. She’d risk it at cards or dice, lose it, lose it all. She’s a pitiful gambler, boy. You know as well as I. She’d fritter it away and then what would Elanna have?” His father sighed. “I won’t tell your mother on pain of full war in this house. You won’t tell her, either. And you know, it’s for the best.”
Dear Elanna, without any candidates. “She’s seen the current lot. Danced with them all. Found no one who appealed.”
“There must be someone. An Irishman? A baron, a knight?Or a Frenchman with enough land left to feed himself? What of your friend, the prince, Remy?”
“Elanna likes him. Nothing more.”
“He must have cousins.”
“No one I’d recommend to her,” Julian told him. “But then—”
“What?”
“I have funds. Savings.”
“What?” His father scoffed. “Twenty thousand?”
Julian was shocked his father came so near the mark. “Twenty-two. How do you know?”
“Shall we say, my friends are useful?”
“And unethical to chat about a fellow’s worth.”
“To your father? Not so. I hear what you win at the tables. I also know what you spend at your tailors. I had to find out when I saw no bills for you. And yes, I know you’ve often declared that you’d save Elanna from the marriage mart with your winnings. Good of you. But she must stand on her own. Time is nigh. She must marry.”
“And you won’t give out the sum of her dowry. Say you will not.”
“And kill her chances? I’d lie and declare the sum is grand.”
Julian was aghast. “No! She’ll have every roué from here to Vienna at our door.”
“If she can find a man whom she admires, who’s worthy of her esteem, I’ll gladly hand her to him. Money, title or not.”
Once more, Julian was amazed at his father. If the man had a foul temper, if he berated his wife with joyous vengeance, if he liked his brandy, if he was a feckless manager of the estates, if he had no ingenious methods to improve the crops, he did love his daughter. He did wish her happiness. If when all was said and done, he did not see the error in lying about her wealth to protect her from charlatans, he was wrong.
“Which means we come to you,” the man said matter-of-factly, drumming his fingers on the desk.
Julian blinked, the change in topic a shock. He took a moment to guard himself.
Of course, the old man would come round to him.
“I wish to discuss your own marriage prospects.”
“I have none.”
“You must.”
Julian took a deep breath. “I’ve told you before I will not be pressed.”
“You were always difficult,” his father muttered.
“On this issue, especially.”
“I don’t see why. You’ve always known you must marry.”
“Do the begetting, eh?”
“If you find a comely gel, the experience of begetting is not ghastly. And if rumor serves up truth about your prowess, well you know it, too.”
I won’t marry for money. “I won’t marry for advantage.”
“I did.”
“It’s demeaning.”
“But accepted.”
“Among your set, yes.” Julian gave him that.
“Yours, too. Look at Marlborough’s boy. At Waldron’s heir. It is done.”
“But I won’t,” Julian spat. “They may care for those girls now, but later?” He scoffed.
“Live by pride alone and you will starve,” his father warned.
Pride was not the problem. Fear of a shrew in his house. Irrational, demanding. One who turned on him or worse, turned on their children like Medea. No, he’d not take a woman unless she was malleable. “I’d like to solve my own problems.”
“Good intentions?” his father asked with a strained smile. “Noble. But you cannot eat them. Nor pay our taxes or your mother’s gambling debts.”
“I keep trying.” But my skills at the table are just as bad as my mother’s.
His father shook his head. “I tell you, I married for love. A tender bit, but it passes.”
Julian quelled the urge to laugh. That was how the man explained his and his mother’s screaming matches, the crockery that flew, the insinuations that shook the rafters. “Passes, oh, yes. Falls into—what did you term your relationship with Mama—disrepair?”
“No matter,” the old man said and flung out a hand. “You tilt at windmills. Meanwhile we are soon to become known debtors. And there are options for you. Bright, comely options.”
Julian stared at him. “Let me guess. You have suggestions.”
“One in particular. The American Lily.”
The American Lily, yes. That’s how she’d come to be known in London. The tall, graceful girl with the perfectly oval face, the pile of midnight curls and those uncanny blue eyes that bore right through a man. She’d been photographed, her pictures copied and redrawn, The American Beauty, once maligned by cartoonists, now glorified by anyone who could catch a glimpse of her.
And Julian had tried not to follow suit. But yesterday, he’d succumbed and gone to tea at the house in Piccadilly.
“Well?” his father asked. “I understand you’ve met her.”
His stomach churned. Julian didn’t want an arranged marriage for himself and he would not wish one on a young woman he liked. Or this one who favored him one minute and not the next. “I won’t marry her.”
“Does she have warts on her nose? No. On the contrary, I understand she is quite lovely. And you like her.”
Who had told him that? Elanna knew his reaction to her. His mother, too, had witnessed the scene at the opera in Paris. He’d been careless to allow anyone to see it. But he’d been entranced.
“You like her quite a bit.”
“And I would predict you have more than one reason to suggest her,” Julian said with bitterness filling his throat.
“She has thousands of reasons to commend her. More than that Van de Putte girl.”
Julian had met the American, Priscilla Van de Putte, last spring and had spent the next few months escaping her clutches. Selfish, spoiled, Priscilla was the epitome of a woman he would never take to his arms, let alone to the altar. “I’ve avoided marriage so far. I intend to extend my run.”
He rose from his chair and headed for the hall.
As he reached for the door, his father called to him.
He paused. “Yes?”
“I must tell you Killian Hanniford sent a request around yesterday to meet with me.”
That spelled trouble. His father had no head for negotiating. “And?”
“He still wishes to buy shares of Cardiff Shipping.”
“I see.” Julian had refused to continue talks with Lily’s father in Paris. He’d informed his father of it as soon as he returned to England.
“I must try because you couldn’t get a decent price out of him.”
And neither can you. “The company is decrepit. It needs new ships, repair of the old ones and new management. It’s nigh unto bankrupt. Give over, sir. I wish to hear no more about it.”
“But his daughter is worth so much more.”
More than you know. Julian ground his teeth. “Sell your shares, sir, if you wish. But do not think you can barter away my marriage bed in the bargain.”