lady she wouldn’t even be here.’ Milton flicked a piece of fluff off the arm of his poorly tailored wool coat. ‘And if she’d acted more like a proper lady I might have married her.’
Jasper crushed the thin catalogue between his hands, wanting to thrash his brother with it. ‘You’re a fool, Milton, and growing older has only made it worse.’
‘What’s it done for you except bring you back with some tat you’ve been fortunate enough to sell despite the smell of plague clinging to it?’
Jasper stepped toe to toe with his brother. ‘Shut your mouth before I knock your teeth out.’
Milton’s smugness drooped like his backbone. Jasper threw the catalogue at his feet and strode off, done with him and the auction. His day and all his plans lay in tatters because of his brother and Jasper’s own stupid mistakes.
He strode to the wide entrance door where men continued to stream in and out to examine the auction items. He paused on the threshold to take in the street, the stench of dust and filth making him cough. An open-topped caleche passed by filled with ladies smiling and laughing together, their lives like everyone else’s carrying on in the bright sunlight illuminating the street. He should be glad for the activity after the deathly silence of Savannah and heartened to see not every world had collapsed, but after so much death it was difficult to do. Few here understood what he’d been through. Milton certainly didn’t.
How dare he sneer at the epidemic. The pampered prat didn’t know what it was like to be stalked by death, to have all his money mean nothing because no amount of it could buy food to stave off the gnawing hunger or save those you loved from being carried off. No one around him did, except those unlucky enough to have witnessed it in other places, or those poor souls confined to the deepest slums of St Giles and Seven Dials.
A dark mood threatened to consume him when a flash of red caught his eye. The Rathbone landau rolled past the auction house, the hood open to take advantage of the fine day. Jane sat across from her brother, her profile sharp as she spoke with him, hands moving with her agitation. The dark brown curls beneath the red ribbon that held the bonnet in place bounced in time to the carriage’s pace. It mesmerised him as much as her full lips. She didn’t notice Jasper, but he couldn’t pull his attention away from her. Seeing her again had been like stepping though the door of his parents’ house after nine years in America and inhaling the familiar scent of cinnamon and brandy, the smell of his childhood.
He watched her until the vehicle rolled down the street and was finally lost in the crush of traffic. Isolation swathed him when she vanished from sight. Gone was the young girl who used to scamper with him and Milton, her surety in herself and her ideas eternally exasperating her brother and Jasper’s parents. Gone, too, was the boy Jasper had been. An ocean of experience and deception separated him from everyone he’d ever known. Yet in his brief moment with Jane, he’d touched something of the innocent young man he’d once been. He wondered, if he sat with her a while, could he be carefree and blameless again? It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t weigh her down with the awfulness of his past or his present deceits.
He started down the auction-house steps and made for the jeweller across the street, ready to pay a pound or two for a fine walking stick or something equally expensive. His soul might be in the gutter. It didn’t mean the rest of him needed to wallow there too. He’d escaped death. Now he’d make sure he enjoyed life again.
* * *
‘Mrs Townsend and I trained you to handle your affairs better than this, Jane.’ Philip chided from across the landau before he turned to Justin. ‘You should’ve stopped her.’
‘She’s not my sister.’ Justin threw up his hands in protest. ‘Besides, she’d old enough to decide what to do with her money.’
‘On that point, we disagree.’
‘He’s right. It’s my inheritance and I’ll spend it as I see fit,’ Jane insisted.
Philip didn’t answer, refusing to be baited into the fight Jane was aching for. Despite gaining control over her money there’d been little she’d been able to do with it except pay the milliner’s bill. Seeing Jasper today had reminded her of the few clever transactions she and the Charton boys had hustled as children. The experiences had given her a taste for commerce, but as her dresses had become longer her world had reduced in size until it nearly choked her. Jasper’s world had expanded and, judging by his fine clothes, he’d done well for himself in America. It made her wonder why he’d decided to return. ‘You knew Jasper Charton was home, didn’t you?’
Philip’s jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly, but she caught it. It was one of his few tells. To her surprise, he didn’t deny her accusation. ‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you or the Chartons tell me?’ It wasn’t like the Chartons not to fête a family member, especially one who’d been gone for so long and endured so much.
‘Mr Charton asked me not to. Jasper had a difficult time in Savannah and needed a chance to recover. He was very ill when he came home.’
‘I’m sure he was.’ Mrs Charton had shared news of the yellow fever which had ravaged the port city. Jane had worried along with her over Jasper, as eager as his mother was for the letter telling them things were all right. She might not have heard from Jasper for nine years, but it didn’t mean she’d stopped caring about him. Waiting with Mrs Charton had felt too much like when she was six and her own mother had been stricken with the fever. The long days had passed as she’d prayed, hoped and bargained with the Almighty to make her mother better. He hadn’t listened and her mother had passed, and it’d been all her fault. ‘Why did Jasper come back?’
‘His cotton-trading business collapsed after the epidemic. He plans to use the money his uncle left him, and the capital he raised from the sale of his Savannah properties and goods, to establish a new business in London. Jasper needs the Fleet Street building you purchased and the opportunity it offers. Since you don’t, we’ll visit the Chartons tomorrow and you’ll offer to sell it to him.’
‘I’ll do no such thing. I’ll start my own endeavour with it.’
Philip flexed his fingers over the handle of his walking stick. ‘Be sensible, Jane.’
‘I am being sensible. I need something more to do than tend the rose garden and listen to my niece and nephews tear through the house.’
‘And I’ve given you ample opportunities to do so.’
‘Yes, always behind you and your reputation, never out in the open where everyone can see it’s me successfully managing things.’
‘As well as the merchants of the Fleet regard our family, they won’t countenance a single young woman in trade. It would damage both your reputation and mine and hinder all our future dealings.’
She twisted her reticule between her hands, the deed to the building crinkling inside, before she let go. Philip was right. Customers and other merchants would recoil from her if she began openly to oversee some venture of her own. Jane dropped back against the squabs, cursing her unmarried state once again. ‘I hate it when you’re practical.’
‘It’s nothing but a headache when you aren’t.’
The landau carried them past the building she now owned in the middle of Fleet Street. The staid façade with its small Ionic columns reaching up to the first floor sat squat between two taller ones. A round outline of dirt above the front door indicated
