by Tessa Dare
"I'm not waiting for Piers to come home." Rafe explained his intention to go to Dover.
"To Dover?" she asked. "But I'm the one who's going to speak with him. We practiced the other night."
"Things have changed. My signature is on those papers, and he deserves an explanation from me."
"But I spent the whole ride home planning out my speech. And I had the best idea."
She led him down a side corridor and into a room that seemed to be her office. The shelves were lined with household ledgers and books. On the wall were pinned a survey of all the surrounding lands and various architectural sketches.
She said, "Sit in that armchair, if you will. Behind the desk. Be Piers again."
Bemused, he did as she asked. "I'm sitting in the armchair. What now?"
"I have the rough sketches for the oast and the brewhouse, of course." She reached for a ledger. "I've done the tabulations of what it will cost to convert the local fields to hops. But before we get to those specifics, there's this."
If her intent was to make him understand, she did the worst possible thing. She placed two books on the desk blotter, side by side. One bound in blue; the other in red.
He peered at the titles. His sense of foreboding didn't improve. "Cookery books?"
"Humor me for a moment. You'll see." She opened the first--a faded blue volume--to the listing of contents. "This is my mother's cookery book, purchased when she was first married." Then she opened the second one to the same page. "This is the new edition I received on my eighteenth birthday. If you scan the two side by side, they are much the same--but not identical. Can you find the difference?"
At a glance? Hell, no. And Rafe did not have the patience to go through both lists to find it, either.
"Curry." She jabbed her finger in the center of the page. "And over here, arrack punch. See?"
He drummed his fingers, expecting that there must be some explanation forthcoming.
"There wasn't a single Indian dish in my mother's cookery book. Today, you wouldn't find a collection of recipes without them."
He looked blankly at her.
"Hold that thought. There's more." Next, she pulled out a length of fabric and thrust it at him. "Here."
He turned it over in his hands. A piece of light, patterned cloth. "What am I to do with this?"
"Just look at it. Think about it." She bounced on her toes a little bit.
Rafe looked at the fabric. He thought about it. He had no idea what sort of thoughts he was supposed to have about a few flowers and springs printed on cheap cotton.
"It's chintz," she said. "When we were children, it was all the rage to have imported Indian cotton. For curtains, shawls, quilts. Pillows. But now the factories use domestic cotton and print chintz here. None of it is imported anymore."
He frowned. "I'm not right to play Piers in this scenario. He's the world traveler."
"No, no. This is about England. And you're the perfect person." Her eyes sparked with excitement. "Trust me."
Rafe shifted in the armchair, feeling ill at ease. "Can we come to the point?"
"The point is this." She flattened both hands on the top of the desk. "What happens in India doesn't stay in India. It comes home to England and becomes the latest fashion here. This was true for curry, and it was true for chintz, and it's going to be true for beer."
She opened a folio, bringing out her last bit of evidence. A newspaper clipping. Wonderful. More reading.
He stared at the small, printed notice. "So there was a shipwreck."
"It's not the shipwreck that we're concerned with. It's the cargo." She pointed to a specific line. "The ship's bill of lading notes that it was transporting a new kind of pale ale. The manufacturers up north have been brewing it for a few years now, specifically for export to India. The climate there isn't suited for beer-making, and the extra hops in the brew help this ale survive the sea voyage. It's all the rage among Englishmen living there. Piers even mentioned it me in one of his letters."
"But they're already manufacturing it up north."
"Yes. For export." She leaned her hip on the desk. "That means this is the ideal time to stake out a share of the home market. As men like Piers return from their travels, they'll be looking for the ale they enjoyed abroad. Then the taste for it will spread. Just as it happened with curry, or chintz. Within a generation, no one will be drinking porter anymore. Pale ale in the India style is going to be the beer of choice. I'm certain of it. This is the brewery's chance."
She ceased talking and took a slow, deep breath.
"Well?" she prodded, after a few moments had passed. "Are you convinced?"
He sat back in the chair and regarded her, admiring. "I think I might be. You should have been a lawyer."
"Oh, I have other, better plans." She smiled. "I'm going to open a brewery. And I hope you'll be my partner."
"You're going to ask Piers to be your business partner?"
"Of course not." She laughed a little. "Rafe, I'm asking you."
Her partner? He didn't know what to say.
"I thought you might have some hesitation," she said. "I'm prepared for it, actually." She gave him a mischievous smile. "Prepare to be dazzled."
Dazzled.
"Forget anything I said the other day about punching tankards into walls." She went to the office entryway. "Imagine your name on the door. Right here. Lord Rafe Brandon, Partner in Brandon Brewery."
"Clio . . ."
"No, no. I'm just getting started." She gestured widely around the room. "Imagine, this is your office. You'd have papers and ledgers. And a secretary to sit right here." She flew to a smaller desk at the side of the room and sat behind it, posing with a quill. "Shall I take a letter, my lord?"
"A secretary." He leaned back in his chair. "Would she be as pretty as you?"
"He would be middle-aged and balding, but very efficient." She rose from the desk, drifting back toward the door. "And people would come to meet with you, all day long. Important people.
"People like . . ." She ducked outside the door, and after a minute returned, wearing an old, borrowed coat and a straw hat. In one hand, she clutched a garden rake. "Farmers."
Again, she went out, then reappeared wearing a cap, holding a pewter mug in one hand and using the other hand to drape a finger-moustache over her top lip.
She made her voice deep. "Or brewers."
Rafe fought the urge to smile. He lost the battle. She was adorable. Ridiculous, and possibly addled in the mind, but adorable.
She disappeared one more time. He waited for her to reappear in the doorway, brandishing another outlandish prop or dressed in costume.
Instead, what appeared in the doorway was Ellingworth. Decked out in a tall hat. And spectacles.
"Even esquires," she said.
Now he couldn't help but laugh.
She emerged from behind the doorjamb to give the bulldog an affectionate rub. "Actually, meetings with esquires are unlikely. Barristers, no. Solicitors, yes."
Solicitors. Bloody hell.
Rafe rubbed his face. He didn't know what to say, other than the truth. "I'm not suited to office work."
"But that's the best part. You wouldn't be here all the time. Once the day's business is concluded, you'd be off to walk the fields, or to consult with the cooper about new casks, or to taste the latest brew. I can promise you all the beer you can drink. And I'll even throw my heart in the bargain." She popped up to sit on the desk before him, her feet dangling. "Well? Aren't you a little bit tempted?"
Tempted?
Rafe had three toes over the threshold of Perdition. The picture she made before him would tempt a saint. But this arrangement she proposed? Managing, record-keeping, correspondence . . .
She swung her legs back and forth. "Well?"
"I mean to provide for you," he said. "Take care of you. But I'm a prizefighter. Not a clerk."
Rafe knew himself too well. He could want to be good at this. He could make her promises and t
ry his damnedest, for a while. But in the end, he would let her down.
"It's out of the question for now. I've got to get back in the ring. As soon as we're married, I'll go back to training and--"
"As soon as we're married? As soon as we're married, you're leaving to train for a rematch with Dubose?"
"Of course. If it's the brewery you're concerned about, you should want that, too. No one will want to drink Brandon's Loser Ale. I'll be more help to you when I've won my championship back."
"You'll be more help to me if you have your health." She pressed a hand to her chest. "I love you. I can't bear the thought of losing you."
Love. Damn, he'd been waiting a lifetime to hear that. But every time she spoke the word, his instinct was to dodge it.
"You won't lose me." He rose from his chair, putting his hands on her shoulders. With his thumb, he traced the gentle slope of her collarbone. "I know you're frightened. But I've been doing this for years. There isn't one good reason why . . ."
"Reason one. You could be killed." She counted them off on her fingers. "Two, you could be maimed. Three, you could kill or maim your opponent. Four, you could be arrested, charged with riot and assault, transported to Australia, and never seen again. Those are four excellent reasons, Rafe. Four."
"None of those things is likely to happen."
"But they're all possible. And just because they haven't happened yet doesn't ensure they won't."
He sighed gruffly. "Do you not believe in me?"
"I do believe in you. But I also know Jack Dubose is an opponent unlike the others you've fought. I've followed the sport for years now, remember? I know how he demolished Grady, and I read what he did to Phillips. The sporting papers said that man might never fight again."
"Phillips will fight again." He might not chew again, but he'd fight.
"And I saw with my own eyes what Dubose did to you. I can still picture it, Rafe. Every break." She ran a finger down the rugged slope of his nose, then laid a sweet caress to his cheek. "Every bruise."
He caught her hand and squeezed it. "That's why I can't end my career that way. I need to prove to myself--to everyone--that I'm not just a washed-up brawler."
"Then don't be a washed-up brawler. Rafe, you have a great many talents. You could do so much more with your life."
So much more?
His hands flexed at his sides. What was more than being the bloody best prizefighter in England? Most people would consider that an impressive accomplishment.
"How many people can say they're the best? At anything?" He lowered his voice. "We've been over this. I don't need to be rescued from the sport I love. I thought you understood that. I thought you understood me."
She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Just once. Just once I would like to know how it feels to be worth making plans around. I spent eight years shunted aside for the sake of your brother's career. And now, even after everything we shared last night, I learn that I come second in your life, too."
"That's not fair. This isn't about coming first or second or third; this is a part of me. Asking me to give up fighting is like asking me to give up an arm."
"I'd never ask you to give up fighting. I'm only asking if there's some way to continue in the sport that doesn't mean risking your life in our first few months of marriage." She gestured at the castle walls. "If you don't like the brewery idea, perhaps you could open a school here. A boxing school. Oh, you'd make an excellent teacher."
"Tutoring prigs like Teddy Cambourne, you mean? Oh, that will be fine."
"It wouldn't have to be wealthy gentlemen. Perhaps disadvantaged boys."
He shook his head. "It's a nice idea for someday, once our income is secure. But you said it yourself. There isn't much money in orphans."
And Rafe needed to earn money. More than anything, he wanted to provide for her. Keep her safe and give her the life she deserved. Living on her dowry and the castle's income would be possible, he supposed. But his pride demanded that he contribute, too.
He felt confident he could do that, once he got back in a ring. But in this restrictive little cage of a room? He could only fail.
"I can't . . ." Christ, he'd never tried to explain this to anyone. "I just can't do this sort of thing. And it's not because I don't wish to, or because I'm too lazy to try. I can't concentrate on ledgers and schedules and books. They make me feel like I've stuck my head inside a beehive. My whole life, I've been this way. Eventually, I grow weary of trying and . . . lose interest."
"You lose interest."
He shrugged. "That's the best way I can describe it. Yes."
She bit her lip and regarded him. "Are you worried you'll lose interest in me?"
"That's different. You're different."
"How can you be sure?" she asked.
"How can you even question it?"
The words came out too forcefully. They sounded angry, even to his ears.
His conscience--that living, breathing spirit of a lifetime's accumulated sins--was screaming at him now. Retreat, it said, before he went too far. Said something he didn't mean.
"Fighting is who I am," he said. "If you want a man who'll be happy pushing papers around a desk . . . maybe you should marry Piers."
As soon as he heard his own words, he regretted them.
Rafe, you idiot.
She winced. "I can't believe you said that."
He rubbed his face with one hand. He wished he could claim the same surprise. His whole life was a string of rash words and actions he wished he could take back. Last night, those impulses had worked out in ways that pleased her. But he'd known it was only a matter of time before he cocked it up.
There was just too much of the devil in him. He was doomed to push away the people he loved most. He would never be able to hold anything good.
If he lost Clio now, that would be no worse than he deserved.
Hell, as far as she was concerned, it would probably be for the best.
"Listen," he said, "I shouldn't have . . ."
And then--just because it was exactly what Rafe's life didn't need that moment--Bruiser appeared in the doorway.
"There you two are. I trust the ball was enjoyable. I"--Bruiser clapped his hands together--"have good news."
Rafe doubted it. He made throat-slashing, shut-it gestures.
Bruiser, naturally, ignored them.
"First, Miss Whitmore, I'm happy to report the engagement ring has, er . . . reappeared."
"Really?" Clio said. "What interesting timing. We were just discussing the wedding plans. Weren't we, Rafe?"
Damn it.
"And second," Bruiser went on, "your new gowns have arrived from London. They're made expressly for you, and they are magnificent. The dressmakers are waiting in the sitting room."
Rafe shook his head. "She doesn't want to--"
"Oh, but I do." Her cool gaze met Rafe's. "I do, Mr. Montague. I can't wait to try the gowns."
Chapter Twenty-four
In actuality, being fitted for yet more flouncy gowns was the last thing Clio wanted to do this morning. But she and Rafe needed some space from each other, and this seemed the best way.
After an entire week of telling her she couldn't break an engagement she'd entered into at the age of seventeen . . . They had one argument, and Rafe was calling off theirs?
It was a touch alarming, how quickly his mind leapt from the realm of "mild disagreement" to "irreparable rift."
Maybe you should marry Piers.
Of all the things to say.
But she knew he didn't mean it. And she should have known better than to put him on the spot like that, in a setting so far removed from his strengths.
He'd warned her, hadn't he? Ballrooms, drawing rooms, schoolrooms, offices . . . When he felt ill at ease, something brash would result.
But what she admired in him was that Rafe understood this about himself. He'd found his own ways to not only succeed but flourish. If she wanted to build a life with him, she
would need to understand and respect that, too.
She owed him an apology, but she doubted he was ready to hear it yet. To pass the time, she might as well try on a pretty gown.
As she was making her way to the sitting room, she heard the coach pulling into the drive. One by one, her family alighted from the carriage.
Clio rushed to greet them in the entrance hall. "Phoebe. How are you?"
"Exceedingly fatigued." With that, her youngest sister disappeared in the direction of the library.
Well. Clio could stop worrying, she supposed. That was Phoebe as usual.
Daphne and Teddy came in next.
Clio curtsied to her brother-in-law. He jammed his hat down to shade his bruised face, barely acknowledging her with a nod before proceeding upstairs.
Daphne sidled up to explain. "Clio, you had better be grateful. We overstayed our welcome with the Penningtons in the worst way."
"You, overstaying a welcome? How difficult to believe."
"I was determined that we would be the last guests at the ball," she said. "We had to manage the rumors, you know. Teddy was a saint on your behalf. He laughed off the punch as a bit of sport between friends. We told every person who asked that you swooned and Lord Rafe escorted you home." Her sister regarded her closely. "That is what happened, isn't it?"
"More or less."
The events didn't unfold in exactly the order Daphne might assume, and a great deal more had happened besides. But strictly speaking, it was a truthful statement.
"Then good," her sister said, inhaling sharply. "That's that."
Clio didn't fool herself. She knew Daphne and Teddy's scrambling was as much about preserving their own social status as it was to do with hers.
But if the potential for scandal was already managed, there wasn't any need for a hasty elopement. She could have whatever sort of wedding she wished.
All the choices were still hers.
"Now," Daphne said, "unless you mean to make me the worst sort of liar, the wedding had better be spectacular. And soon."
Clio led her sister to the sitting room. "Perhaps it will be. Come with me."
No fewer than six dressmakers and assistants stood waiting to assist her. The room was so spattered in frothy white, it looked like a volcano had erupted. A volcano of meringue.