Chapter 2
Rowe House
Well Close Square, London
Beatrice Rowe leaned over and retrieved another heavy ledger from one of the piles on the floor of her husband's study.
She straightened and lifted the awkwardly-sized tome to the late Wilfred Rowe's desk.
She smiled a wry smile at how she still thought of the expensive, polished cherry-wood desk as his.
The truth was Wilfred had not ventured near the desk since the first year of their marriage twelve years earlier.
Although the success of their shipping business relied on the public at large believing Wilfred was at the helm, so to speak, she'd been the one managing the day-to-day minutia of keeping them ahead of their competitors, and debtors.
After a short wedding trip to the Cotswolds, Beatrice had returned to a disturbing reality. Rowe Shipping was in shambles, on the brink of bankruptcy. Wilfred had exhibited not the first notion of how to the run the business he'd inherited at his father's death the year before their marriage.
He'd focused most of his energy on keeping many of London's most notorious gambling hells and brothels in business.
He'd obstinately insisted on listing his many "entertainments" as company expenses until Beatrice had found a competent accountant to explain to her husband the realities of English tax law.
Instead of staying in the office and relying on the word of the many men who managed the various parts of the Rowe Shipping kingdom, Beatrice had made it her business to move about their many warehouses and vendors along the waterfront.
She'd learned exactly what was being charged onto their accounts at the biggest chandlery in Limehouse.
And exactly what her managers were doing with the supplies they were supposedly purchasing on her behalf.
The first year she'd taken over her husband's books, she'd fired two-thirds of their managers, and the company had surged ahead into profitability.
She hadn't been surprised to discover that many of her former managers had been running schemes to buy extra supplies and re-sell them to other shipping firms for their own profit.
And then there were the waterfront gangs and the lightermen who helped lighten their heavy merchant ships after they lumbered down the Thames at the end of months-long trading voyages.
Her departed husband had warned her in her zeal to root out corruption that the waterfront gangs were a useful cog in the efficient management of cargo.
He'd counseled her to expect at least two percent shrinkage which the Horsemen, the current masters of the underworld of the London docks, took in exchange for keeping the peace.
Before the Four Horsemen of the rookeries had assumed watch over the docks, shipping companies had been plagued by random criminal activity ranging from independent pilfering to sometimes outright gang warfare that had taken place in the past. Wilfred, and his father before him, had come to respect the "devil they knew. "
Although the two percent had chafed against Beatrice's sensibilities, she'd factored in the loss grudgingly.
However in the preceding six months since her husband's death, the losses at the docks had risen alarmingly to new levels by as much as ten to twenty percent.
And that was a cut too far for the thrifty daughter of a Dutch banker to tolerate.
She compared row after row of numbers of inventory expected to be unloaded from the last six ships to make port and could not for the life of her pinpoint where the huge thefts were taking place between the ships swinging at anchor and her warehouses.
She'd interrogated all the crews who worked for her and had come up with no one she could blame.
The fault had to lie with Warrick Dyer. He must have become greedy in his old age.
She had no idea how old the Dyer brothers were, because she'd never met one of them.
She'd always left that odious chore to her late husband.
At a light tap to the study door, she said, "Come."
The ancient family butler, Childers, walked gravely into the room. Never a good sign. "Mister Silas Rowe awaits you in the second-floor drawing room."
Damn. Wilfred's younger brother had always resented being the "spare," and although her husband was barely cold in his grave, his resentful sibling was like a vicious dog, constantly nipping at her heels.
His barely hidden agenda was to shove her aside to take control of both the shipping business and her son who would inherit instead of Wilfred's brother when she died.
When she entered the south-facing drawing room, the sunny golds and reds of the curtains and furnishings that usually warmed the room and made her feel better were in stark contrast to the somber looks on her brother-in-law's tight features as well as that of a second man, solicitor James Piggott, who managed Wilfred's estate.
A sharp pain, like a knife cutting through her mid-section stopped her forward momentum temporarily before she forced a smile onto her face and imagined pouring honey on her tongue to sweeten her next words. "What a pleasant surprise, Gentlemen. What can I do for you today?"
"You can explain why the receipts from the Rowe Shipping Company cargo are down by twenty percent."
She smiled again, more sweetly, and leaned forward just a bit to allow both men a better view of the modest neckline of her carriage dress and her bosom straining against the dark silk mourning fabric.
"You've come at an unfortunately inopportune time.
I have an important meeting in an hour with a gentleman who specializes in dock warehouse security and insurance. "
"And just who would that be?" the solicitor demanded.
"A well-established, but relatively unknown firm which specializes in discreet protection. I'm sure you wouldn't be familiar with their resources and methods."
"By St. Peter's rock, you're making that up, Madame." Silas half rose, his fists clenched. Beside him, the solicitor Piggott gave him a pointed look and patted one of his arms lightly in a gesture she was sure was meant to encourage restraint.
She knew he had to prove willful mismanagement on her part to wrest the shipping company from her control.
In all fairness to her late husband, Wilfred's will had made sure she had complete control which could not be taken away without proof of criminal malfeasance.
He apparently had not trusted his younger brother either.
Warrick shook the water from his shaggy head after a nearly-cold shower had funneled down from the huge water tank he'd rigged on the roof of his warehouse, beneath a glass panel.
He'd built a special enclosure in his bedchamber where he could enjoy the kind of shower they'd rigged on shipboard with ocean water tossed over their heads from a barrel.
He didn't care for the brackish tang of the Thames water supplied from city reservoirs, so he'd installed barrels in rows along the rooftop to collect rainwater.
That source supplied most of their needs.
They drank mostly ale or a rum punch with limes and sweetening, similar to their former daily rations on shipboard.
He'd hoped the sun would warm the water occasionally, but the London sun had proved elusive. The smoke from the city's many coal fires was no help, either. So, most mornings he had to settle for a brisk, cool dousing.
He rubbed the orange blossom pomade through his hair that Con's wife Marianne had given him to help control his masses of unruly, curling hair.
The only reason he resorted to that one sartorial concession was to be able to tie his hair back in a club so that he'd look marginally presentable.
He told himself he was making the effort only so that the Widow Rowe wouldn't turn her back on him and walk away.
Warrick chose his one and only fine suit of clothing, his old Royal Navy uniform of a first lieutenant.
He didn't have time to worry about what the Widow Rowe would make of his bizarre choice of dress for their first meeting.
Everything else he owned were the threadbare, tattered slops of a dock worker, which served as the best disguise he could have conjured for the dangerous work he and his crew performed.
The crooked shard of a formerly larger mirror hanging on the wall provided the best image he could find of himself.
He'd shaved his stubborn beard within an inch of its life, but there was nothing to be done about his craggy, weather-worn, scarred face.
Eight years of fighting the Frenchies had taken their toll.
And as for his shaggy dark blond hair, he liked the way he could hide his facial expressions with a mere shake of his head.
When he was all but ready to venture out to meet Missus Rowe at The Angel, the damned ringing in his ears intensified.
He grabbed a battered fiddle leaning against a corner of his bedchamber and launched into a few bars of Boccherini's "La Musica Notturna.
" A musician they'd shanghaied from a port in Spain had taught him most of the haunting piece.
Whenever he played the first few strains, they seemed to break up some his louder sieges of ear-ringing, and the music brought back the feeling of setting out to sea.
After about ten minutes, he reluctantly returned the instrument to its dark corner and set off to face whatever accusations the Widow Rowe wanted to hurl his way. At the last minute, he hesitated but slung his boarding axe over his shoulder. Who knew what the morning would bring?