A Lady Dares (3 page)

H
e was the last thing she needed! And if
he
needed
her
, which would be the more likely case,
she’d
be in her office, a fact Elise demonstrated by loudly stomping up the stairs and slamming the office door, an effect which was ruined by her brother immediately opening the door and quietly shutting behind him when he entered.

‘Did you see how he just came in here and tried to take over?’ Elise steamed, pacing the square dimensions of the office with rapid steps. ‘He’s the builder, not the owner. Five hundred pounds, my foot. This is my yard and he’d better remember that.’

‘He’ll build the yacht, Elise, you’d better remember
that.’

The firmness of her brother’s tone stopped her steps. William had never spoken to her harshly. ‘What do you mean?’ Elise faced him slowly. He lounged against the wall, casual and elegant, a subtle reminder that he wasn’t the adolescent boy she was used to after all these years. The mantle of manhood was starting to settle about him in the sternness of his features. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

‘I mean, I will be away at university. Mother is gone. There’s no one to help you if you lose Rowland. Pay him what he wants, get the boat finished and let’s be done with this.’

Elise struggled to keep her mouth from falling open. ‘Let’s be done with this? What does that mean?’ She suspected she knew, but that was not at all what she wanted to hear.

‘It means let’s clear the debt and start a new life.’

Oh, that was better. She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘A new line, yes, of course. I have a lot of ideas about yacht lines and how we can branch out into sailboats. I think racing will fully shift from rivers to open sea in the next few years. We might even think of relocating to Cowes to be closer to the Solent.’ She was babbling excitedly now, reaching for a tube
containing rolls of her drawings, but a shake of William’s head stopped her.

‘No, Elise, I don’t mean to redefine the company. I mean we should close the book on the company once the debts are paid. There will be a little left over for you until you marry and you can always stay with me. I hope to find a living somewhere or take an associate’s post at Oxford.’

It took a moment for William’s words to sink in. ‘Close the company?’ She sat down behind the desk, stunned. Had her brother been thinking this all along?

‘Well, what did you think we’d do after the yacht was finished?’ William pressed.

‘I thought we’d build more boats. You’ll see, William. After people view this yacht, there will be other orders. This yacht will relaunch us. It will show everyone we can turn out the same superior product we’ve always turned out. The investors will come back.’ It made so much sense to her. Surely William could see the logic in that?

‘How many master builders do you think I know?’ William gave a soft laugh.

‘I’m not sure how you knew this one.’ Elise put in tartly. ‘Care to explain?’

William dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. ‘It was just a house party put on by the parents of a friend of mine. A few of us went to help balance out numbers and Rowland was there. One night, we started talking and discovered we both had a common interest in yachting.’

Elise wrinkled her brow. ‘He hardly strikes me as the Oxford house-party type.’ Whatever Dorian Rowland was, she didn’t imagine he was the scholarly sort. Tan, blond and hard-bodied, he definitely didn’t spend his days poring over books in libraries.

William was growing impatient with her prying. ‘Look, I don’t know what he was doing there. He said he’d made a delivery, brought something up from London. How I know him is not the point. The point is, I was lucky enough to know this one. He’ll finish your boat, but he won’t stay. You’ll be right back where you started.’

‘I’ll pay him more,’ Elise blurted out, looking for an easy solution. But inside her heart she knew her brother was right: Dorian Rowland wouldn’t stay. He’d made it clear he was a man who did what pleased him, when it pleased him. Her proposition suited him for
the moment. That was the only reason he’d taken her offer.

‘Money won’t always be enough for a man like him,’ William said with a maturity that surprised her. ‘I’ve bought you time, Elise, to wrap up business and clear the bills, nothing more. Besides, you need to get on with your life, get out to parties and meet people.’ By meet people, he meant meet men who would be potential husbands. Elise frowned in disapproval. She’d seen those men and been disappointed
with
them and
by
them.

When she didn’t respond he paused awkwardly, his tone softening. ‘Not every man is Robert Graves,’ William said quietly.

Elise wasn’t quite ready to relent. ‘Well, thank goodness for that.’ Robert Graves, the biggest, worst mistake she’d ever made. She’d thought William might have been young enough to not remember him, or at least to not understand the depths of her mistake.

‘Charles Bradford has expressed an interest in you,’ William cajoled. Charles was the son of one of her father’s former investors. ‘He’s a very proper fellow.’

‘Sometimes too proper,’ Elise said briskly. She began looking needlessly through some
papers on the desk, wanting to bring this conversation to a close. She wasn’t interested in a suitor. She was interested in building a yacht and getting the company back on its feet.

William coughed awkwardly, taking her rather broad hint, once more the younger brother she knew. He made a stammering exit. ‘Errm…um…I have some errands to run. I’ll see you at home, don’t stay too late.’

Elise sank down in the chair behind the desk and blew out a breath.
Welcome to the world of men, you can begin by following our orders and forgetting to think for yourself
, Elise thought uncharitably. In the last months she’d become heartily tired of men.

She was starting to understand all the ways in which her father had shielded her and she’d been unaware. Oh, how she missed him! She thought the missing would get easier with time, not harder. But everywhere she looked, everywhere she went, she was reminded of his absence. Even here, the one place where she’d felt truly at home.

When she’d been with her father at the shipyards no one had questioned her opinions on yacht design; no one had contradicted her numbers in the ledger. People did what
she told them to do. Right up until his death, she’d believed they’d done those things because she’d earned their respect with her hard work and intelligence. Then they’d deserted one by one: the workmen, the investors. The message could not be any more concise.
We listened to you because we wanted to please your father so he’d build us fast boats and pay our salaries. Listening to you was just part of the game
. Elise put her head in her hands. It was a cruel blow.

Today had been more of the same, just to make the point in case she’d missed it the first time around. Dorian Rowland had walked in and assumed an attitude of control as if he had a right to this place in his rough shirt and trousers. Her brother had stealthily issued an edict—she was to give up yacht design after this boat and resign her life to one of three unappealing options: marriage, keeping house for her brother or living with her mother. She was to be passed from man to man, father to brother, brother to husband. She’d had fun playing at design, but now it was time to put away her childish things.

She wouldn’t do it. Elise squeezed her eyes tight, pressing back tears. Closing the company
would be like forgetting her father, as if his life hadn’t mattered. This place was his legacy and she would not discard it so easily. There were more selfish reasons, too. She
needed
this. She never felt as alive as when she was designing a model and watching it come to life from her ideas. What would she be without that? The answer frightened her too much to thoroughly contemplate it for long. Well, there was nothing for it; if she wasn’t going to contemplate it, she’d simply have to conquer it.

Alone at last! Dorian flashed a lantern up in the direction of the dark office window as he shut the heavy gate to the yard behind him and breathed a relieved sigh. Elise Sutton had finally gone home for the evening and he’d returned successfully from his little foray on to the docks. After the day he’d had, he couldn’t ask for much more.

Dorian set down the heavy bag he carried and rubbed his shoulder. When it had become apparent Miss Sutton planned on staying either because she didn’t want to go home in a snit or because she didn’t want to leave him alone in
her
shipyard, he’d decided to go out
and take care of his business in the hopes it would convince her he’d gone home or wherever it was she imagined he went when the sun went down. Whether the princess knew it or not, this was his home now—that nice little shed in the corner of the lot.

He’d gone back to his now-former room, paid the landlady his paltry rent with the few remaining coins he had and gathered up his clothes and tools and made arrangements for his trunk to be delivered in the morning. It was far too heavy and too conspicuous to haul through the streets. No matter, it didn’t contain anything he considered absolutely essential. Those items were already packed away in a black-cloth sack. Still, between a single trunk and one black satchel, it was humbling to think they made up the sum of his worldly goods in England, but it had made packing easy.

It also made getting away easy. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed by Halsey’s thugs. On the way back, he’d stopped at a few taverns, looking for likely workers. In this case, ‘likely’ meant whoever would be willing to show up and work for future pay. He
just had to get them here. Once they saw the yacht, the project would speak for itself.

Dorian raised the lantern higher to cast the light on the boat. It was showing itself to be an absolute beauty. Longer and leaner than most yachts, it would be fast in the water. He recognised the influence of the American Joshua Humphreys in the design.

He hung the lantern on a nearby peg and reached into his sack for a drawing knife with its two handles and slender blade. The tool felt good in his hands as he slid it against the hull, scraping roughness away from the surface of the wood. There wasn’t much to catch—the finished portion of the hull was smooth already—but it felt good to work. Dorian let the rhythm of the drawing motion absorb him. The only thing better was standing at the wheel of a boat feeling the water buck beneath him like a woman finding her pleasure—perhaps a particular black-haired woman with green eyes.

When he’d awakened this morning, he’d never dreamed he’d be building a ship by evening. The arrangement might be a good one. He could hide out from Halsey until he made back his money or until Halsey forgot he
owed him. In the meanwhile, he could work a new angle. There was plenty of potential here in the shipyard. Dorian ran a hand over the surface he’d finished scraping. He could make plans for this boat. If the finished yacht was as promising as the shell, he might just find a way to talk Miss Sutton out of selling. It might mean cosying up to the ice princess, but he’d never been above a little sweet talk to get what he wanted. With a boat of his own, he’d be back in business and the possibilities would be limitless.

The possibilities
should
have been limitless, Maxwell Hart mused dispassionately as he listened to young Charles Bradford report his latest news concerning the Sutton shipyard. Elise Sutton had become a thorn in his side instead of bowing to the dictates of the inevitable. Her father was dead, her brother not prepared or interested in taking over the business, investors withdrawn and no obvious funds to continue on her own. All the pieces were in place for her to abdicate quietly,
gracefully
, to those with the means to run the shipyard. Instead, she had not relinquished the property, had not sought out a
buyer for the plans to her father’s last coveted design. In short, she had done
nothing
as expected. Now there was this latest development.

‘There were lights at the shipyard tonight,’ young Charles Bradford told the small group of four assembled.

‘Do you think it could be vagrants?’ Harlan Fox suggested from his chair, looking around for validation. Fox had pockets that went deeper than his intelligence. Those pockets were his primary recommendation for inclusion in this little group of ambitious yachtsmen. ‘It’s been several months, after all. It’s about time for the vultures to settle, eh?’

Maxwell shook his head. ‘No,
she’s
been going to the office regularly.
She
probably worked late.’ He spat the pronouns with distaste. The best thing to do with thorns was to pluck them.

Charles Bradford interrupted uncharacteristically. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. It couldn’t have been Miss Sutton. She left around five o’clock and she was the last to leave. There were two other men, her brother and a man I didn’t recognise. But they’d both gone by then.’

Damien Tyne, the fourth gentleman present, said, ‘Any of them could have come back.’

‘It wasn’t likely to have been her or the brother,’ Charles pressed. ‘There was no carriage. Whoever returned came back on foot.’

‘I still vote for vagrants,’ Fox insisted.

But Damien Tyne leaned forwards, curiosity piqued. When Damien was intrigued, Maxwell had learned to pay attention. He and Tyne had made a tidy profit off those instincts and they were unerringly good. ‘What are you thinking, Tyne?’

Miss Sutton needed to be prodded in the right direction and in short order. He wanted that shipyard. It held a prime spot on the Thames and he’d coveted it for years. It would be the perfect place to move his own more obscure yacht-building operation and his warehouses. A good location would garner him the notice which to date had eluded him from his current locale in Wapping.

Obtaining the shipyard would just be the start. Hart also wanted to get his hands on the plans to Sutton’s last yacht just as badly for the future of his more private, less legitimate side of business with Tyne. Tyne could have the yacht. He wanted the plans. The key
to any business venture was the ability to reproduce success.