Page 88 of Dark Tides
“Marry me,” he whispered. “This shall be your house and you will do what you damn well want. I won’t hear a word against you! Marry me, Livia!”
“Yes!” she gasped. “Yes, Sir James, I will.”
He hardly knew what he had said or what she had agreed as she broke from him, at once, called in the baby from the hall, told Carlotta—the only witness that she could summon—and proposed a toast to the betrothal in a glass of ratafia. Carlotta took a glass and drank to her new master. “We will be happy,” Livia promised him. “I know it. We will be so happy.”
Sir James took a seat behind his desk, his head whirling. “But what about the ladies at the warehouse?” He found that he had adopted Livia’s way of speaking about the woman he had loved.
“I won’t say anything there yet,” Livia decided. “They don’t like to be unsettled. We will wait until my statues have sold and I can give them the profits, and I will order another batch and they can sell them. I shall make them importers of fine art rather than wharfingers of corn and apples. We will buy them a house, a storehouse, in a better district—you will know where!—and they can sell my antiquities. We will get them established in a better trade, with a better house.”
“You won’t tell them now?”
“Not until they can manage without me.” She remembered her plan for Johnnie. “But in the meantime, we can place their son in a good position.”
“We can?”
“Ah yes, he wants to enter the Company, you know? The East India Company?”
“Yes, of course I know it, I am an investor.”
“So you can give him a letter of introduction, and he can get a post?”
“I can write the letter. But I thought his mother would take nothing from me…”
“From me! It will come from me! I shall swear him to secrecy. And then, when I leave them to marry you, we will have provided for all of them, the girl in her shop, the boy in his post, and the two ladies with agreeable work. There can be no reproach. You know how Alys can be! So angry and sad! And Alinor so very weak, and so old. Let me set them up in a little business and then we will be free to be happy ourselves.”
“My dear, of course. You know how I—”
“But we can marry in the meantime,” she interrupted him, twinkling. “I don’t ask you to wait! Married and as happy as swallows on the wing. And little Matteo will be your son and take your name. And soon—perhaps next year—we will have a child of our own together.”
“You want to marry at once? And for Matteo to be—er—mine?” He felt his head spinning and he put down his glass of the strong wine, thinking that he had taken rather a lot for early morning. “I thought you meant to wait… Marry without telling them? Secretly? I mean—why?”
“Of course,” she said limpidly. “We shall marry at once. You have swept me off my feet.”
NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON
The second shipment from Venice was arranged between Alys and Captain Shore at his usual table in Paton’s Coffee Shop.
“I had the address written out for you…” Alys opened her book but could not find the paper where Livia had written the address of her storehouse. “I am sorry, I thought I had it to hand…”
“Same place as before?”
“Yes, the lady’s steward.”
“Then I don’t need directions. I know the man. I’ll go to the same place as before.” He hesitated. “Thing is, Mrs. Stoney… You’re happy with him, are you? Because you’re not his only customer. It’s not just her furniture in his store. He does a lot of trade.”
“He was her late husband’s steward,” Alys said coolly. “A position of great trust. She trusts him.”
“Then I’ll say nothing more. Same terms?”
“Yes, collect and ship another twenty crates. Five pounds a ton.”
She took out a purse and counted out fifteen pounds in a promissory note from a merchant, and coins.
“Scraping the bottom of the cashbox?” the Captain guessed. He picked up the note. “Is this good?”
“Yes,” she said shortly. “And you’ll deliver another twenty crates?”
“How many has she got tucked away out there?” he asked curiously.
