Wyn stared into the fire and came to a decision. “Pierce, I want you to take my money. All of it.”
He sat up abruptly. “Hell, no!” His stockinged feet hit the floor with an emphatic thud. “I do have my pride, Wyn. Pop and I worked it all out when I decided to take over the Shire office. Rather than divide the company up into shares, I bought each of my siblings out. That money is yours, Ace. It belongs solely to you and your future husband.”
“I’m not going to have a future husband.” Wyn took his hands in hers and gazed up into her brother’s concerned face. “Don’t you see? This is the perfect solution. I do believe in your plans for the Nereid.” At his doubtful expression, she squeezed his hands. “All right, it’s you I believe in, Pierce, in your dreams for the line. I want to invest my money back into it. Think of it as a loan. You can pay me interest, dividends, whatever you want to call it.”
He wasn’t convinced. “And if indeed I do bankrupt the company with this scheme? You’ll lose it all, Ace.”
“Then you can take care of me for the rest of my life,” she assured him brightly. “I’m not worried. The point is, you need to pay the bank something on account and I want to tie my dowry up so that it is no longer a lure for fortune hunters.”
Pierce still looked doubtful. “You haven’t thought this through, Wyn. I know it sounds good to you at the moment. Hell, it sounds like a godsend to me and you know I’m a proven cad who’ll leave you high and dry like I did…”
Wyn pressed a hand to his lips, silencing the grim reminder of the girl he’d nearly wed.
“You won’t let me down, Pierce. I know you won’t. I can’t say the same about any other man and since I can’t, the best thing to do is never marry.”
He removed her hand from where it sealed his mouth. “Don’t gammon me, Wyn. You’re a beautiful woman. There’ll be lots of men who want you whether you’ve got a dowry handy or not.”
A smile crept to her lips. “Are you going to take my money?”
“Hell, yes, I’m going to take it. I’m not that noble. But I’ll do so on one condition only. Since I can’t be there, you’ve got to be the family representative aboard the Nereid for her maiden voyage,” Pierce insisted.
Wyn cocked her head to one side. “Can I take Hildy with me?”
Pierce’s brows rose in mock surprise. “The far-from-sedate Widow Hartleby?”
“She’s on the verge of a decline,” Wyn divulged.
Pierce’s mobile brows snapped together over the bridge of his nose. “Probably more so over the loss of her diamonds than over old Hartleby’s demise. However, since you can’t exactly travel alone—”
“You prude,” she accused.
“Where my sister is concerned? Damn right, woman. I suppose Hildy is a better solution than hiring a companion.
“She’s nearly a pauper,” Wyn said.
“I’ll arrange her passage, but that’s it,” Pierce insisted.
Wyn surged to her feet and, plumping down on the sofa next to him, hugged her brother fiercely. “It’s a deal. You are the best of relatives no matter what the others say.”
Pierce’s frown darkened even more. “And what exactly does the rest of our family say, my dear Winona?”
The bellboy caught the coin, his eyes widening in surprise as he recognized the denomination, and responded by giving the man who’d tossed it a snappy salute.
Amused by the youth’s enthusiasm, Garrett Blackhawk smiled as he pocketed the telegram the lad had presented and closed the door of his suite at the Palace Hotel.
The boy was his second welcome interruption of the evening. The visitor sprawled in the comfortable chair by the fireplace had been the first, delaying Garrett’s dressing for the dinner party he wished to avoid. The delivery had delayed Deegan Galloway’s pitch.
“Forgive the intrusion, Dig. You were saying that you’re persona non grata in Frisco?” Garrett asked, drop-ping with careless elegance into another chair, his right leg thrown loosely over the padded arm. He was in his shirtsleeves, evening trousers donned, starched shirtfront and collar in place, tie still dangling loosely around his neck. Although the clock on the mantelpiece was a constant reminder that he was late, Garrett made no attempt to rush his unexpected guest. Instead he reached for the cigarette papers and bag of tobacco on the table at his side and began rolling a smoke.
Deegan sighed deeply and buried his nose in a snifter of brandy before answering. “I was merely hedging my bets, Garrett. There’s no way around it. I’ve got to marry a woman with money or seek employment. Either one will have to be done in another city. Between them, those two women will make it impossible for me to succeed here.”
Blackhawk deftly sealed the edge of his cigarette and soon had obscured his face behind a screen of smoke. He’d heard it said that he fit his name well. Some insisted that, like a hawk, there was a predatory gleam in the obsidian shadows of his eyes, and a hunter’s alertness in the tall, tapered frame of his body. His hair was sable in color, luxuriant in texture, and frequently tousled. Although born an English gentleman, of late his skin had been warmed to a primitive bronze by the sun of three continents. The craggy lines of his face could have belonged to a Spaniard, a Bedouin or a Mayan, and, at one time or another during his travels, Garrett had found it prudent to assume the identity of each in turn. He was careful in his choice of companions, allowing very few to know him well. Deegan Galloway was one of the specially chosen permitted to see the man beneath the mask.
Garrett drew deeply on his cigarette, savoring the taste of tobacco on his tongue, enjoying the slight euphoria of the smoke in his lungs. “You have my abject sympathy,” he assured Galloway.
“Sure and it isn’t enough,” Deegan drawled in an exaggerated brogue, then abandoned the affectation, returning to his normal speaking voice. “I came begging a grubstake as you very well know.”
Blackhawk reached for his own glass of brandy, adding the lush body of the wine to the tally of sensory delights he planned to sample over the course of the evening. His current company was pleasant, and the brisk dampness of the San Francisco air reminded him sharply and depressingly of home. It was one of the reasons he was anxious to leave the city. Business kept him a temporary captive.
A hardwood fire burned on the hearth, efficiently warming the hotel room. It reminded him of nights before the huge fireplaces at Hawk’s Run in Shropshire, only there the heat would have been supplied by locally mined coal. The estate might well be as distant as the moon for all the thought he’d given it over the past two years.
“If you want a position that will take you far away, you’re welcome to become my secretary and take up residence at the Run,” Garrett offered. “It would be a favor that would enable me to stay blissfully distant from the place.”
Deegan chuckled. “Trying to turn me into an Irish peasant? You forget I’m an American, born and bred. My da was the potato eater. Although your largess is appreciated, I’ll stay on this side of the Atlantic. A monetary handout will be more than sufficient, my friend.”
Garrett grinned in response to Galloway’s request. “At least you know your limits. I notice you didn’t ask for a loan.”
“Lord, no.” Deegan swished the brandy in his glass, watching the liquid swirl. “You’d never get it back, and well you know it, old chap.”
Garrett took another soothing draw on his cigarette. Rolling his own had become a habit, one picked up out of necessity during his travels. It made him feel self-sufficient, perhaps a ridiculous affectation, but one he had no intention of giving up. “Did you love her?”
“Who?”
He’d known Deegan long