Page 80 of Dark Tides
“Just as much as you do,” she said quietly. “We can join together in our kindness to them. We will be partners.”
He shifted his feet a little, as if he wanted to walk away from her talk of a partnership of charity.
She saw it at once. “I’ll tell my buyers that it will be a week on Tuesday at three,” she said, and he bowed and left the room.
When she heard Glib close the front door behind him, and the footman’s lazy stroll back to the servants’ stairs, she pulled the ledger marked Douai towards her and turned the pages. It seemed to be a list of donations credited to a religious house in France, a seminary for Roman Catholic priests. Livia guessed he was acting as a treasurer for his old school and she had no more interest in it. She put it precisely in its original position and opened the ledger marked Avery House. She widened her eyes at the cost of running a great house in London and pursed her lips in irritation that James should spend so much on candles while she had to scrape together shillings from the bottom of her traveling trunk and wheedle them from Alys.
The Northside Manor book was longer and more complicated, showing rent from the farms, profits from sales of animals and goods, rent from the mill, from the bakery, from the brewhouse, and wages, gifts, and purchases. She did not understand at first that one page was costs and one page was profits, and that there was a balancing figure at the bottom of each page. She had never seen an accounting book like this before, and she looked bewildered, able only to see that there were large sums involved, and that James was, genuinely, very wealthy.
A noise from the hall made her slam the book and push it away and bend over her own letters as Glib knocked on the door and asked if she wanted her messages delivered by hand.
“I’ll leave them for Sir James to frank for me,” she said.
Glib nodded. “That’s what her ladyship used to do.”
“I know,” Livia said, waving him away. “That’s why I do it.”
On her return to the warehouse, walking through the hot dirty streets, Livia found Alys setting out to the coffeehouse for her regular noon meeting with captains and merchants who might use the wharf, as the wait for the legal quays was lengthening in these shorter days of autumn.
“Shall I come with you?” Livia asked, taking her arm.
Alys nearly laughed. “You’re dressed far too fine,” she said. “Nobody would talk with me if I walked in with you. They would think that I had risen in the world and was no longer interested in unloading apples for penny profits.”
“I am too fine?” Livia asked, as surprised as if she had never considered her appearance before.
“Far too beautiful,” Alys said, giving her a little push towards the front door. “Go and sit with Ma. She’s planning a great feast for Sunday to celebrate Sarah’s day of freedom. She will be a time-served milliner, and in December, Johnnie will be out of his apprenticeship too.”
“Of course it is a pleasure to sit with your mother, but when will you be home?”
“When I have secured next month’s business,” Alys said. “However long it takes.”
“Spending hours on apples?” Livia teased. “But shall you see the Captain again? The one who went to Venice?”
“Yes, he’ll be there. He’ll be going to Venice again.”
“He is faithful?” Livia asked.
“He’s always reliable.”
“Ask him if he has room for some more antiquities,” Livia said. “The same sort of load? Say twenty crates? At the same price and terms? I’ll write out the directions again, he can go to my old steward and collect them.”
Silently, Alys followed her into the warehouse as Livia helped herself to a pen and tore a page of paper from the back of the ledger to write her steward’s address.
Alys did not take it, her face was flushed with embarrassment. She put her hands behind her back though Livia offered her the address. “I’m sorry, my dear, I am so sorry… but I can’t commission him. I don’t know how to say this…”
“Whatever is the matter?” Livia asked, smiling.
“I don’t have the money to pay him. I can’t commission him, until we earn.”
Livia widened her eyes. “But surely, you don’t have to pay him until he returns? You only pay a little now?”
“I have to pay half now, and we really don’t…”
“Pay him his price now and when he returns I will have the money from the sale to pay him the second half. I will pay it myself. Don’t worry.”
Alys hesitated. “We’ve never run the warehouse like that,” she said. “We’ve always had enough in the chest to pay for the whole bill, before commissioning anything.”
“Allora!”Livia remarked gleefully. “And now you are living beyond your means, as you should, as we should, as I have always done. For we know that we are going to earn more than you have ever earned before! But we have to get the goods here before we can sell them! We cannot make money without spending money. We have to have more antiquities to sell and you have to pay the Captain to fetch them. What is the difficulty? Is there nothing in the cashbox at all?”
