Chapter 6
Victor dressed for the morning with the same economy he applied to figures and fields. Crisp linen, sober coat, boots polished to a tolerable shine.
Roderick had sent a note before breakfast suggesting they call together on Mr. Halden of Broad Street, a merchant who fancied himself indispensable to every gentleman’s fortune. Victor did not mind the errand. He disliked Halden’s conversation but valued his ledgers.
They met at the corner of Hanover Square. Roderick arrived with his usual lazy grace and a smile that set shopkeepers to bowing. He tipped his hat toward the pale winter sun.
“You look as if you have not slept,” he observed.
“I slept,” Victor replied. “The city did not.”
“Cities rarely do. Shall we walk? Your mother will accuse me of leading you into vice if we arrive at noon.”
“Your reputation will survive her censure,” Victor drawled.
They walked on in companionable silence. It was the sort that men wore when they had long practice at speaking or saying nothing.
At the mouth of the alley that led to Halden’s warehouse, Victor paused. “Go ahead,” he said. “Inform Halden that we are here.”
Roderick’s gaze slid over him. It held curiosity and a measure of care. “I can wait.”
“Go,” Victor repeated, mild and unyielding.
Roderick inclined his head and disappeared beyond the dim entrance of the counting house.
Victor drew back beneath the jut of a stone lintel and braced one palm against the cool wall. He inhaled and let the breath leave him, slow and methodical. Again. And again. The habit was old.
Mastery requires discipline, his father had once said.
The words had been a rule and a lash all at once. Victor had made a habit of removing the lash and leaving the rule.
He counted four slow breaths, then six. The air steadied in his lungs. The quick, ungoverned thoughts of the night before folded themselves away into their proper drawers.
He considered the day’s figures, the timber that waited upriver, the mills that required a new schedule, the farm at Greystone that needed a different rotation if the soil were to hold its virtue.
He welcomed the work. Work did not gaze at a man as if demanding that he remove a mask he had worn since boyhood.
He could still feel the press of her soft palm against his cheek. He could still taste the questions that had shaken more than they should have.
“Run away? From whom?”
He had heard the fear in her voice, and had wanted, absurdly, to order it out of existence.
Foolish. Dangerous. Hold up your end of the bargain. Keep the rule. Seven nights, then you’re done.
He pushed off the wall and squared his shoulders. The mask was not false. It was the face that allowed the world to function. He did not have the luxury of discarding it.
Roderick appeared in the doorway and lifted a hand. “The great Halden awaits us with ink on his fingers and a sermon on his tongue.”
“Good,” Victor said. “Ink I can use.”
“Tongues you can cut,” Roderick murmured, amusement warming his tone.
Victor allowed the smallest smile. Then, he entered the counting house with the look that made clerks sit straighter and men whose fortunes wobbled stand in sudden awe of balance.
Halden’s warehouse smelled of hemp, ink, and ambition. Bales stood like small fortresses in neat ranks. Clerks scratched figures on foolscap with the grim joy of men who believed the world rested upon their sums.
Mr. Halden himself advanced, a florid-faced fellow holding a pocket watch like a trophy.
“Your Grace,” he boomed. “Wycliffe. An honor. I have been reviewing the last shipment of Baltic timber. You will find that my price remains the best in the city. The Dutch bid at a farthing higher per load. I, in the spirit of our long friendship, hold firm.”
“We are not friends,” Victor said pleasantly. “We are useful to one another. A partnership would be more appropriate, Halden.”
Halden’s laugh fell short. “As you say. Pray, step into my office.”
The room beyond was narrow and hot. A fire roared as if Halden feared winter personally. He indicated the nearby chairs and laid out a tray with glasses that had seen better washing.
“Now,” he began, “about timber. Years at war taught us certain shortages. I maintain an admirable network. Always have. It costs money to keep such arteries clear. There is dock money, inspection money, and small tokens that smooth the path of diligence. You understand.”
“I understand that I will never pay twice for one service,” Victor rumbled. “Your invoice lists inspection at a shilling per load. The dock ledger shows the same shilling paid in your hand already. Either you refund mine, or you refund the dock.”
Halden’s face twisted into injured innocence. “A clerical error. I shall correct it in the next quarter.”
“You will correct it now,” Victor said. He took a single sheet out of his pocket. He had brought it for the purpose of avoiding an argument. The sums were laid out in columns, and at the bottom was the figure that should appear on Halden’s revised bill. “You may keep a copy.”
Halden read and blotted. His mouth worked, then smoothed into a thin line. “Very well. I concede.”
“Good. Now, about quality.” Victor tapped a sample list. “Of the last shipment, a tenth was sapwood rather than heart. You know I do not accept sap for structural work. You supplied it without a notation. You will replace it at your cost. You will also remove the inferior boards at once. If the lighter wood remains on my wharf for a week more, I shall charge you storage.”
Halden stared at him. “Your Grace, that is… most irregular.”
“It is perfectly regular,” Victor countered. “We have agreed on the specifications. If you have forgotten them, my steward will recite them to you while you sleep.”
Roderick watched, idle and amused. Halden mopped his brow.
“There is also the matter of your foreman,” Victor added. “Mr. Pike has a hand in too many pockets. I have an affidavit from a carter who would prefer to keep his license. Dismiss Pike within the week, or dismiss the thought of my custom after Michaelmas.”
Halden’s flush crept up to the roots of his hair. “These are harsh terms.”
“They are honest ones.” Victor folded his hands. “Choose as you like. I admire choice. It simplifies consequence.”
Roderick let out a small, delighted breath.
Halden’s gaze bounced between them and landed on capitulation.
“Very well,” he conceded. “Pike is gone. The bill is corrected. The boards will be replaced by Tuesday. I will take the sapwood to the cooperage. They do not need to sneer at heart.”
“Done,” Victor said, rising to his feet.
Halden scrambled up and attempted a bow that suggested both respect and a wish to strangle something. “You are a hard man, Your Grace.”
Victor plucked his gloves off the chair and pulled them on with precise movements. “I am an exacting one, and this should not be a surprise. You did business with my father before me. You should be no stranger.”
They left to the chorus of scratching quills and the heavy breath of the fire.
Roderick snorted a laugh when the door shut behind them.
“You do not leave a man a single comfortable lie,” he snickered. “It is almost charitable, the way you relieve them of the burden.”
“Lies accrue interest.” Victor shrugged. “I dislike paying it.”
They stepped into the winter light. It felt clean after the heat in Halden’s office.
Victor’s mind skipped from timber to transport, from wharves to winter stores, from sapwood to the patience of oak. He felt soothed. He also felt the thought he had folded away begin to press once more against its drawer.
They strolled leisurely toward Bond Street, where Roderick had an engagement with a tailor who worshipped him as a pagan god of cloth.
“You are quiet,” he noted. “Quieter than usual. Have you taken a vow?”
“I am thinking,” Victor said.
“I assumed as much, since your mouth was not moving. Pray, don’t hurt yourself, friend.” Roderick cut a look at his face. “Shall I speculate, or shall I wait?”
“You will speculate regardless,” Victor pointed out.
“True. You have the air of a man who has been caught off guard,” Roderick remarked. “Not in business, but in that other field you claim to have divided into squares and counted. A woman.”
Victor said nothing for three steps. He did not care to admit that the observation landed. Yet Roderick was already smiling like a fox that had found the henhouse door unlatched.
“Very well,” he murmured. “You need not tell me her name. You never do. I will only say that if she lingers on your mind while Halden bleats, she has a talent worth studying.”
Victor kept his eyes on the pavement. Little flakes of ice had survived the sun in the cracks. “She has a talent for contradiction.”
“Delightful,” Roderick murmured. “Does she also have a face?”
“She has a mind,” Victor said, then wished he had held back the words.
Roderick’s eyes lit up, and he turned that light upon Victor with unkind delight. “A mind. God preserve us. I won’t be able to rescue you if you start respecting the women you pursue.”
“I respect every woman I pursue,” Victor countered evenly. “I respect them enough to leave them free of hope when I am finished.”
“Finished after seven days,” Roderick said softly.
“Yes.”
They walked a few paces more.
Victor saw the letter in his head before he admitted he would write it. The lines arranged themselves with the same balance he applied to ledgers. A place. An hour. A precise invitation that allowed no misreading and offered no threat.
He would not summon; he would invite. He could not abide the thought of her returning to a house where fear slunk through corridors like a cat. He did not know that fear lived there, but he suspected it. He suspected it because the other possibility felt worse.
“She agreed to see you again,” Roderick ventured with a smile.
“She will,” Victor said.
“Then you will stop prowling like a hound that has been told to wait.”
“I do not prowl,” Victor protested.
“Oh, to call a prowl a stride,” Roderick answered cheerfully. “When you stride. One can hear the capital letters.”
They stopped at the corner. Roderick tipped his hat toward the tailor’s window, where a dummy wore a coat that could only be intended for sin. “Shall we dine at White’s? I would like to watch Benedict lose with honor.”
“Perhaps,” Victor replied. “I have letters to send.”
Roderick’s smile grew. “Of course you do.”
Victor returned to Greystone House, went directly to the library, and wrote without flourish:
My Lady,
If you will honor me with your company this evening, come by the garden gate at half past eleven. You will be received without notice.
V.S.
He sealed it with the small signet he used for private matters, then rang for a footman. The young man entered at a trot and bowed.
“Deliver this to Fenwick House,” Victor instructed. “Place it in the young lady’s hand, and do so without a remark. If not, give it to her maid with the plainest instructions and return at once.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The door closed. Silence fell.
Victor stood for a long moment with his hand on the back of his chair, feeling the grain of the wood beneath his glove. He imagined the lift of a hood, the steadiness in eyes that had not yet learned how to look away.
Seven nights. Seven lines. Keep the rule. Keep the distance.
He sat and opened the ledger that Halden had pretended to balance. His pencil moved. The numbers settled into their places with relief. Behind them, like a second column in invisible ink, ran a different count that insisted on being kept.
Half past eleven.