Chapter 5 #3
“Uh…” He could hardly ask his former captain for a letter of recommendation after what happened.
And all of his fellows in the navy either believed the lies Captain O’Brien had spun about Silas or were too afraid to speak out.
The only one who believed my side of the story was Williams, and I ruined that when I kissed his sister. “I suppose I don’t.”
“Afraid I can’t help you then. I’m sorry, but I won’t take on a perfect stranger.” Davies was kind enough to make his apology sound sincere, if not particularly impassioned.
Silas thanked the man and set back off, his step a good deal heavier than when he’d started.
Of course the cooper would want a recommendation. Any craftsman worth his salt knew that his knowledge was too valuable to give away to anyone who knocked on his door. Why hadn’t he expected that?
Silas was startled from his troubles by the chiming of the hour a little further down the waterfront. Already nine o’clock. Not much time left now before the hour of his engagement with Miss Williams.
No. Not an engagement. I never agreed to it.
Still, she was likely expecting him to come. Was counting on it, perhaps. What was she doing now? And what was happening at exactly quarter past eleven that she needed him for?
Miss Williams’s problems are none of my concern.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t be in real danger. She had money and a family to protect her, which was more than he could say for himself. She didn’t need saving. This wasn’t like what happened with O’Brien.
Silas pushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to shake off the lingering doubt that clung to him.
He forced himself to wander a little further and knock on another door—the sailmaker this time, and after that the rope works—but their answers were the same.
They already had apprentices, younger and more experienced than Silas.
None of them were willing to take on a stranger without a friend to recommend him.
This is hopeless. He turned back down the same path he’d taken into the dockyards, eager to be gone.
He should have known better than to think it would be so easy.
When O’Brien had ruined his good name, it hadn’t stopped with the court-martial.
Even if Silas could find someone to vouch for his character, they would change their mind about him as soon as they learned about his past.
His own family didn’t want him. How could he expect anyone else to?
* * *
When Silas returned to his shabby lodgings in Southwark, he was so distracted that he didn’t notice the couple standing on his doorstep until he was nearly upon them.
He came up short, observing them silently. They had their backs to him and seemed to be debating whether to knock at his door.
“I’m sure this is the right one,” the woman said. She had a mass of unruly blond curls and was dressed like a tradesman’s wife. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, but Silas couldn’t have said what without seeing her face. The stocky young man at her side didn’t trigger any memories.
“Can I help you?” They both turned at Silas’s voice. Now that he had a good look at them, he was no closer to saying who these people might be. “Are you looking for Mr. Kurtz?”
The woman squinted at him intensely. “Silas?”
She had a face full of freckles and a snub nose that reminded him of his grandfather. “Marian?” he guessed. He hadn’t seen his cousin since she was small, but the woman before him bore a certain resemblance to her. And he couldn’t think who else might be looking for him.
“Oh good, it is you. This is the third place we tried.” Marian’s wide grin revealed crooked white teeth. “You might have written to say where you were staying, you know.”
I didn’t think anyone would care to find me.
The young man at her side hadn’t spoken yet, but he was staring at Silas expectantly.
“Um…?”
“You can’t be serious!” he exploded. “You recognize your cousin but not your own brother?”
Shit. Half of Silas’s siblings had still been small children when he’d left home. The younger ones were perfect strangers, known only to him by the occasional mention in his mother’s letters, not by their faces. “Paul?” he tried.
“James!”
“Sorry.” Silas winced. James had only been five when he’d left, which would make him barely eighteen now. He’d grown up to be a strapping, broad-shouldered young man with a shock of sandy-brown hair and Silas’s own sharp cheekbones. “What are you both doing in London?”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Marian scolded. “Where are your manners?”
Silas apologized again—hoping it would be the last time—and waved them into his lodgings, stopping by the kitchen to put a kettle on before he took a seat with them at the table.
“I can’t believe you didn’t recognize me,” James was still muttering when he arrived at his chair.
“I haven’t seen you in thirteen years,” Silas pointed out.
“You might have done if you’d stuck around a bit longer when you came back! Imagine my surprise when I got home from the market to find that you’d been there and left again already. Mum was in a state.”
“I wasn’t welcome.”
James shifted uncomfortably at the edge to his brother’s tone. “Ah, that’s just Pa being Pa. But I would’ve been glad to see you.”
“You’re seeing me now.” Silas spread his hands to encompass his person and their surroundings.
“And we’re very glad to do so,” Marian cut in. “How are you, cousin?”
“Grand,” he replied, trying to keep the bitterness from his tone.
“I’m so sorry about everything with the navy,” Marian continued, her hazel eyes soft with sympathy. “Have you found other work?”
“I’m still weighing my options.” He wasn’t about to recount his disastrous efforts at the docks, nor his single night as a dealer at a ladies’ gambling club.
“Wonderful!” James grinned, until Marian elbowed him sharply in the side.
“What James meant to say was that we have complete faith in you.”
“But we do have an opportunity to discuss, seeing as you’re not busy.”
“James! Let us visit a minute before we get into all that. We haven’t even had tea. Honestly.”
The kettle was whistling by now, but Silas ignored it.
“What sort of opportunity?” He studied the unlikely pair before him.
They didn’t look like businessmen. He hoped whatever “opportunity” they’d found was something more respectable than thieving.
As the youngest of five sons, James might have reason to want to seek out his own fortune instead of trodding in the footsteps of everyone who came before him.
But why should Marian want to get mixed up in whatever he had planned? And why should they involve him?
“Well, you know that Grandpa has been looking for someone to take over the brewery,” Marian began, before interrupting herself. “Or maybe you don’t. Do you know?”
“Mum wrote me.”
“All right. So anyway, I offered to do it, since I’ve only been working there my entire life, but then Jack said he wanted it.
So even though he knows absolutely nothing about the business and he’s spent all these years training to be a cooper, now everyone’s decided he should get the brewery instead. ”
“Typical,” muttered James.
Silas had no idea whether it actually was typical or not. The petty rivalries of a family belonged to people who lived in, well, a family.
All he had was a collection of faded memories that abruptly ceased before he’d been old enough to appreciate their value.
“So I said to myself, I know everything there is to know about brewing beer. I grew up crawling through hops and I have connections to half the pubs in Staffordshire. Why shouldn’t I start my own? All I need is someone to make the barrels—”
“That’s me,” James put in, quite unnecessarily.
“And an initial investment for the premises and to buy the hops.” Marian smiled broadly as she finished her explanation.
Silas drew the obvious conclusion. “And I’m your investor? How could you know I have any money?”
Miss Williams may not have been discreet when she’d turned up with an envelope of banknotes for him yesterday, but he hardly thought the tale had reached Staffordshire.
Marian scrunched up her short nose. “Isn’t that why Uncle John sent you to join the navy? I thought everyone got rich on prize money out there. Your kettle is boiling, by the way.”
Silas grunted his acknowledgment and rose to prepare the tea in the next room. He could use a minute to collect his thoughts.
It felt like fate, the two of them showing up here right when he needed an opportunity.
And he had fond memories of his grandfather’s brewery; the smell of yeast thick in the air as he’d run around behind the barrels to jump out and scare his cousins.
His imagination could easily paint an idyllic picture of the life he might have if he said yes—a business of his own to bring him a steady profit, surrounded by family.
What would it be like to have that connection again?
He might not know James very well, but they were still blood.
And Marian had always been a dependable, hardworking girl.
She’d never complained when she’d had to roll up her sleeves and help their grandfather with something.
But this was risky. They would want him to put in everything he had. If the business failed, he would have nothing left to fall back on.
He brought the tea out and sat back down, his voice carefully neutral as he spoke again. “How much are you asking for?”
“I think three hundred should do the trick.”
Silas nearly choked on his first sip. “Pounds?”
“Well, I don’t mean shillings!”
He rubbed a hand over his brow. “I don’t know how much you think a midshipman earns, but you’re sorely mistaken. Don’t you have anyone else who can contribute? Is it just the two of you?”
“Three of us,” James corrected. “Marian stole Jack’s brewmaster because the fellow’s sweet on her—”
“He is not sweet on me. Would you stop being so unprofessional? We’re discussing business.”
“But we don’t know any more rich blokes to come up with the funds.”
“I’m not a rich bloke,” Silas reminded them. “Even if I were sure about this, I don’t know where I can find us three hundred pounds. Could you do it on two? I might be able to come up with two.”
If he took all his prize money, plus the sixty pounds from Miss Williams, plus the hundred and twenty she’d promised him to come back today, he was nearly there.
That was assuming that he could still make it to Mayfair in time.
“What time is it?”
James pulled out a rather worn pocket watch. “Half ten.”
“We need to keep this quick.” It would take him several minutes to find a hansom cab, and there was no telling if the roads would be clogged. He might have already missed his chance.
“We came all the way to London to find you!” James protested, indignant.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to see you, but the only place I can think that I might be able to find that sort of money comes with a very precise time limit. Now, can you do it with two hundred or can’t you?”
Marian shot a doubtful look at James. “I don’t know,” she replied, fishing a small, leather-bound notebook out of her things.
“It’s easier to start out small than it used to be since they lowered the price of a brewing license, but we’d still need money for supplies and workmen.
And there aren’t many buildings up for rent with the space we’d need.
I’d want to stay near Burton, where I know all the suppliers and pub owners, but I wouldn’t want to be so close to Jack that he thinks we’re trying to run him out of business.
That only leaves a few options. I drew up an estimate of the initial costs based on what Grandpa spends. ”
She pushed her notebook toward him, where a list of rents and potential expenses were neatly laid out.
“Are you trying to drive Jack out of business?” Silas asked absently, skimming through the numbers. It looked like Marian had done a thorough job of planning, at least. “You could set up shop somewhere else.”
“Why should I have to run away when I haven’t done anything wrong?” She scowled, which made her look more impish than threatening. “If you can’t get us the money, do you have any friends who might want to invest? We’d rather keep it to family, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“No.” Most of his friends had disappeared when his fortunes had turned. He couldn’t ask them for that kind of loan.
Marian slumped at this news, though it didn’t stop her for long. “You could get two hundred, though?”
“Possibly. If I leave this instant.” In his haste to make sure the opportunity didn’t slip away, Silas scarcely had time to think about whether it was a good idea.
“Go, then!” James urged. His earlier pique at being abandoned had evaporated once he learned money was at stake. “We’ll be here when you get back.”
Marian wrinkled her nose as she looked around the room.
“Actually, we’ll leave you a note with the address where we’re staying.
We rented some rooms from a lovely woman not far from here.
We’re only a few streets down from the Anchor Brewery and we thought we might try to tour it tomorrow.
Why don’t you come and stay with us? It’s much nicer than this—sorry—and we could plan our next steps together. ”
Silas was hardly listening. He was still dressed for the dockyards and needed to change his clothes before he could show himself in Mayfair. “Yes, yes.” He waved her away quickly. “We’ll sort it all out once I’m back.
He needed to hurry. He had a lady to help and a hundred and twenty pounds to make.