London
January 1823
I suppose you prefer White’s,” Henry Winslow drawled.
With a knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Robert Carlisle let his gaze drift from the smoke curling off the end of his cigar to the man sitting in the leather chair across from him in the smoking room at Brooks’s. Before them, a crackling fire warmed away the chill of the winter afternoon whose gray sky once more threatened to snow.
“I prefer being here at Brooks’s. I’d rather be in a club with the real leaders of England.” In truth, Robert preferred Boodle’s, where the gambling required more skill, the stakes were higher, and the women allowed in through the rear entrance were more interesting. But he raised his glass of whiskey to salute Winslow anyway. “Businessmen and merchants, traders, importers—the men who truly make England run.”
“Hear, hear!” Winslow lifted his own glass and gasped softly as he took a large swallow.
Robert popped the cigar between his teeth before Winslow could see the self-pleased smile at his lips. Pompous arse. But he would gladly flatter the man’s choice of club, where he’d been invited for a lunch of roasted pheasant and conversation about business afterward, because he needed Henry Winslow.
Rather, he needed Winslow Shipping and Trade.
Given the fierce pounding of his heart at the reason why Winslow wanted to meet with him, he drawled as nonchalantly as possible, “I’ve heard that you’re considering expanding into real estate.”
“Ha! Where did you hear that?” Winslow flicked the ash from his cigar onto the floor.
“I have good contacts.” The best, in fact. Winslow knew that, too, or the man wouldn’t have reached out to him in the first place.
Robert eased back in the chair and kicked his Hessians onto the fireplace fender. A model of a confident businessman, when he was actually nervous as hell.
He’d been waiting two years for this chance to finally prove himself worthy of the Carlisle name. Two years of taking calculated risks to build his wealth and connections, purchasing unproven shares of ships from India and the Far East just so he would have a presence among the men who drove the auctions, buying and selling warehouses full of goods so he could make a name for himself among the traders…all of it coming to this moment.
He’d be damned if he let it slip away.
He pinned Winslow with a level stare. “I’ve also heard that you’re looking for a partner.”
“I am.” Winslow’s eyes gleamed, appreciating Robert’s bluntness. “I’m looking for new blood to energize my company. Someone with the drive and ambition to make a name for himself. And someone who has contacts in Parliament and at court.” He pushed himself from his chair and stepped forward to the fire, to take the liberty of grasping the brass poker and stirring up the flames. “I have an extraordinary company, and I need extraordinary men to help run it.”
Robert smiled tightly. Extraordinary, all right.
Henry Winslow might have been an arrogant braggart, but he was also one of the most cunning, most successful business minds in England. As sole proprietor of Winslow Shipping and Trade, he was one of the few import merchants who had managed to emerge from the wars wealthier than before. All due to determination, a willingness to risk capital, and good old-fashioned luck. A titan of fortune and power who was now looking to diversify his holdings into warehouses, real estate, and storefronts, Winslow had never taken on a partner before. But Robert had thoroughly studied the business and knew that he would be the perfect man for it.
And that this partnership would be the answer to his prayers.
“I’m considering offering a limited share, you understand.” Winslow puffed out his chest, a gesture more propriety than proud. “A small stake. Perhaps five or ten percent.”
Robert’s eyes narrowed. Much smaller than he’d hoped. But it would do. For now. “You’ve never taken on a partner before. Why now?”
Winslow stared into the fire. “Changes need to be made. A man who doesn’t recognize when it’s time to adjust his ways might as well retire.”
He jabbed the poker at the logs, sending up a shower of sparks and drawing the irritated attention of the manager as the man passed through the room.
“But the timing of it—daughters,” Winslow spat out distastefully, as if the word were a curse. “When what a businessman needs is a son to carry on what he’s created. It’s about legacy, Carlisle.” He heaved a hard breath and shook his head. “How does a man guarantee himself a legacy when all he has are daughters?”
Robert didn’t answer. His own father hadn’t been bothered with such worries. Instead, Richard Carlisle had concerned himself with character, hard work, and devotion to his family. And Robert would do everything in his power to make certain that legacy continued. He would become the kind of man his father could take pride in raising, at all costs.
“Two troublesome daughters,” Winslow grumbled as he replaced the poker, then slapped his hands together to remove the soot from his fingers. “That’s what fate gave me.”
“Perhaps one of them will marry a gentleman you can bring into your business.” For his own selfish sake, Robert prayed both Winslow daughters were toothless, bald spinsters well into their third decade and beyond the possibility of marrying ambitious upstarts who might snag this opportunity from him.
Winslow laughed. “You don’t know my daughters, do you?”
Robert shook his head. His usual concern for female companionship fell more toward experienced women who knew how to please a man than to spinster daughters of trade merchants.
“My daughters’ reputations precede them, I’m afraid.” Winslow folded his hands behind his back and stared grimly down into the flames, his round belly jutting out. “Their mother died when they were young, only ten and eight. I suppose I should have remarried, found them a stepmother who could have raised them into proper young ladies. But there was barely enough time to find an appropriate governess, let alone a wife.”
“Are they both out for the season?” Robert couldn’t care less, wanting to focus on the partnership instead, but polite conversation was expected. And it was essential that he get to know the man better so no surprises would arise later.
“Yes.” The single word was spoken with grim chagrin. “But it’s their seventh and fifth seasons, and I’m afraid it might be too late for them.”
“Never too late.” Especially for shipping heiresses. How the two didn’t have fortune hunters pounding down the man’s front door, Robert couldn’t fathom.
“Hmm. Didn’t both of your brothers wed last year?” Winslow inquired, knowing as well as every gentleman in Mayfair that the Carlisle brothers had been picked off one by one. Robert was the last man standing from a threesome that had once been considered the bane of marriage-minded mamas everywhere.
“They did,” he confirmed. Then he placed a hand over his heart. “May God rest their bachelor souls.”
Oh, they both seemed happy enough. Sebastian, especially, appeared more relaxed and carefree than Robert could remember his older brother being in years, which was all due to his wife, Miranda. The perfect duchess she certainly wasn’t, although even Robert had to admit that she proved completely perfect for Sebastian by being nothing he wanted in a wife yet everything he needed. His brother had gone happily over to the ranks of the domesticated, doting on her like a smitten pup. Of course, the attention he heaped on her was made all the worse by her being six months along with child.
Quinton was little better. Annabelle had his younger brother up to his neck in tenant leases, farm improvements, livestock, and crops, yet Quinn had never been more focused on his future. From what Robert could tell, he was perfectly happy to be shackled to a woman who was more than his match in wits and charm.
But marriage…Good God. Would Robert ever be ready for that?
“Are you planning to follow suit, Carlisle?” Winslow accepted his drink from the attendant and tossed the man a coin.
Popping the cigar between his teeth, Robert shook his head. “No reason to rush into captivity.”
His mother, however, had other ideas. Elizabeth Carlisle was simply beside herself with three of her four children happily married, two grandchildren already here, and one more on the way—which meant she was determined to bring the same wedded bliss to Robert. Even if it killed him.
He dearly loved his mother. And while he would do anything to make her happy, he drew the line at marriage. Just as he would never rush into a business deal, he certainly wouldn’t rush into wedlock. Especially since he’d come to believe that matrimony was simply another business arrangement, negotiated and bound by contract. Yet one a man could never escape when it went bad.
Robert exchanged his empty glass for the full one held out by the attendant and explained, “I had the great fortune to be born a second son.”
Winslow guffawed, so loudly that he drew an irritated glance from Lord Daubney as he sat in the corner reading the Times.
“A second son with a happily married older brother—very happily married, you understand,” he clarified. That innuendo brought another fit of laughter from Winslow. “I am a man in no danger of becoming an heir, so in no hurry to find a wife.”
But he was a man in desperate need of a partnership. Not only for the potential wealth and respect it would bring among London’s business elite, but also to prove himself to his family. To his mother and siblings…and to the memory of his late father.
Which was part of the reason why he’d not disclosed his plans for the partnership with them. His family was already uneasy about his choice of business for his life’s path, rather than the usual posts available to second sons. But he couldn’t stomach the law or medicine, and he lacked the discipline necessary for the military and the moral fortitude for the Church, with no desire to either end men’s lives or save their souls.
Of course, the other part of why he hadn’t told them was that they still blamed him for their father’s death. He knew they did. Because he still blamed himself.
Pushing down the sickening guilt that rose inside him, even two years later, he leaned forward, elbows on knees and keen to nail down the terms of the partnership. “So the offer you’re considering—”
A clatter went up outside in the street. Angry shouts and laughs joined the loud rattle of running hooves approaching wildly down the cobblestones.
“What on earth?” Winslow frowned and stepped toward the tall window overlooking the street.
Robert shoved himself out of his chair to join him, tossing the butt of his cigar into the fire. Lord Daubney dropped his newspaper as he gave up all hope of attempting to read it and hurried over to the window, joining the group of men gathered there to stare down at the spectacle below on the street.
Daubney peered over Winslow’s shoulder and uttered in disbelief. “A phaeton—driven by a woman?”
“On St James’s Street!” The club manager was appalled.
“That’s no woman.” Another gentleman clarified with a grin. “That’s the Hellion.”
Standing several inches above the others, Robert looked past them as the rig raced by.
Oh, that was definitely the Hellion, all right, the notorious woman who delighted in outraging the staid old guard of the ton. No other woman but her would dare such a thing.
Had she been at a ball, the dark beauty would have had gentlemen fighting among themselves like dogs to gain the favor of her attentions. But here, men shouted obscenities and jeered at her from the street that housed London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs and where a respectable woman would never have dared to venture a slippered foot, let alone race a phaeton.
Robert couldn’t help but smile in admiration, despite knowing the gossip such an outrageous act would rain down upon her head.
“And that is why my daughter is in her seventh season,” Winslow muttered beneath his breath as the rest of the men dispersed back to their seats, the excitement over.
“Pardon?”
“That, Carlisle,” he explained, his back straightening under the weight of humiliation as he turned away from the window, “is my daughter.”
“The Hellion?” Robert exclaimed before he could stop himself, flabbergasted. His mind ran wild searching for the woman’s name, if he’d ever known it at all. Then it hit him…Mariah Winslow.
Winslow Shipping and Trade.
Christ.
Winslow’s mouth pressed tight, not seemingly offended by the epithet that the gossips and dandies of Mayfair had branded on her but more by his daughter herself. “And beside her sat her sister, Evelyn, who is just as determined to mire herself in scandal.”
This certainly explained all those seasons without proposals, and judging by this latest antic of theirs, none would be forthcoming this year, either. If the Carlisle brothers were the scourge of Mayfair, these two were its female equivalent. Two young ladies who somehow managed to thumb their noses at the quality yet creatively skirt the dangers of ruining their reputations completely.
“Mariah needs a husband to rein her in,” Winslow muttered, “to keep her occupied with housekeeping and babies.”
Robert sympathized with the man, but he couldn’t help a touch of admiration for his daughters. They certainly weren’t part of the boring, pastel-wearing lambs following the suffocating rules of the marriage market like sheep going to slaughter. They should consider themselves lucky to have escaped the chains of domesticity that society shackled onto its young ladies, who were expected to do nothing more in life than host parties, birth heirs, and then retire quietly into the countryside with their embroidery and watercolors.
“But I’ve no female relatives in society to give her proper introductions,” Winslow lamented, “so no chance of gaining proper suitors for her.”
Robert raised his glass to his lips and murmured dryly, “That’s a damned shame.” It was hard to sympathize with the man when his daughters had practically glowed with freedom and excitement as they’d raced past.
Winslow faced Robert, his gaze hard. “But you do.”
Robert choked on his whiskey. Coughing to clear his throat, he rasped out, “What?”
“I need a partner with connections in the ton and the audacity to use them,” he said frankly, laying all his cards on the table. “Call on your acquaintances and relatives to guide Mariah through this season, and if she’s engaged by the end of it, I’ll have my proof of your capabilities and will guarantee you a partnership.”
Robert gaped at the man. He was mad.
And utterly serious.
“A partnership,” he sputtered out, echoing the man’s words to make certain he understood him, “in exchange for marrying off your daughter?”
Winslow nodded curtly. “A twenty percent stake is yours if an offer for her is made from a respectable gentleman by the last day of Parliament.” When Robert only stared at him, shocked, he drawled, “Seven months to secure a suitable match for her doesn’t strike me as unreasonable for a man of your connections. If you truly possess them as you claim.”
His eyes narrowed. “Be assured that I do.”
“Then come by the house tomorrow at eleven, and you’ll have your chance to prove it.”
The offer was preposterous. A test wasn’t out of line to prove his abilities, but this? Good Lord.
And yet…how difficult could it be? His daughter might be the Hellion, but she was also a shipping heiress with the beauty of an Incomparable. And he had his mother to help him, a dowager duchess longing for something interesting to do this season rather than attend the same boring society events. A few balls and garden teas, a few new gowns, and even Mariah Winslow would be offered for by March. April at the latest.
And his future would finally be set.
“Agreed,” Robert said, extending his hand for the man to shake. “I won’t let you down.”
Winslow dubiously arched a brow.
But Robert was confident, both in himself and in his mother’s matchmaking abilities. After all, if Sebastian and Quinton could be sent packing into matrimonial bliss within three months of each other, how hard could it be to marry off the Hellion by the end of the season?