His curricle joined the stream of carriages entering the park and driving down the wide, dirt path. Mr Connor sat up straighter in the seat, motioning at her to do the same, seemingly oblivious to everything but the direction of his horse and the ribbons in his wide gloved hands.
Susanna tugged her small hat a little further down over her forehead, wishing the brim curled like a poke bonnet instead of up to reveal her face. At least then she might tilt her head and hide behind the straw.
‘If you continue to pull on your bonnet, you’ll tear it,’ Mr Connor chided her good-naturedly.
She let go of the brim. ‘We shouldn’t be here. People are staring.’
She had no desire to be made a spectacle of, especially not with Edgar riding by and scowling at them as though they were beggars who’d happened in on his supper and didn’t belong here. She didn’t. She didn’t belong anywhere.
‘I’m not surprised since I’m alongside the most beautiful woman in the park.’
Her heart fluttered at the compliment. It wasn’t flung off or studied as Lord Howsham’s flattery had been when he’d worked to seduce a naive young woman starving for attention.
Then four young married women passed by in a landau, gaping wide-eyed at her before dipping their heads together to whisper.
‘Ignore them. They mean nothing to us,’ Justin instructed.
‘Then why are we here?’
‘I want you to enlighten me about these people. I know many wealthy merchants. It’s my acquaintance with the better sort which is lacking.’
‘I’m not sure what I can tell you. I don’t really know them any better than you do.’ Invitations weren’t regularly extended to bastards, no matter how influential their father.
‘I’ll wager when you’re sitting silently in your fearsome stepmother’s midst, she talks past you to her husband, or her friends as if you weren’t there. During those conversations, some interesting things must slip out.’
‘Careful, you lost our last wager,’ she warned with a smile.
‘I don’t see it as a loss, but a very interesting gain.’ He turned the horse to avoid an oncoming phaeton with its hood open and its springs strained by the very rotund Lord Pallston.
‘I thought these people meant nothing to us,’ she challenged.
‘Their sensibilities don’t, but their business does. If I can claim one or two great men as clients, it might ensure our success.’ It surprised her how easily our, instead of mine, rolled off his tongue. ‘Now tell me, who’s the round gentleman driving the phaeton as ruddy as his nose? He looks like a man whose thirst could make a wine merchant rich.’
‘I thought you already possessed means.’
‘I used to possess a great deal more before my last venture sank.’ The humour in his eyes hardened, telling her all she needed to know about his last attempt at business. It was admirable of him to keep trying, despite what must have been a considerable setback, and it was more than those around them were capable of doing. It was another trait she and Justin shared—the ability to pick themselves up and continue on. The alternative was too upsetting to consider.
‘He won’t make you rich. He’s Lord Pallston and he doesn’t pay his debts. Few of these great men do. They pride themselves on owing almost every merchant in London.’
Justin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I know something of collecting debt. I haven’t let a man run out on Mr Rathbone yet.’
‘It’s not worth the effort or the uncertainty. My grandfather was foolish enough to deal with men like Lord Pallston. All they did was drink the wine while we watched our dinners grow thinner and the bills go unpaid.’ She hated to disappoint Justin’s ambition, but if the business was to be hers, too, she knew better than to build their hopes for success on the fickleness or insolvency of the peerage. A need for money often played a part in all these people’s decisions, including Lord Howsham’s, whose debt was about to consume his family estate. She hoped it did. He deserved to be ruined.
* * *
Susanna warning him off pursuing the nobility as clients wasn’t what Justin wanted to hear. If the voice saying it wasn’t so sweet he might have disregarded it, but he understood her reasoning. Philip employed the same logic, rarely lending to great men. When he did, it was only after they’d laid out the silver for Philip to hold until their debt was paid. Justin wasn’t likely to convince any lord to leave a soup tureen as collateral for wine, not when there were a hundred other merchants willing to risk bankruptcy to supply a peer with his Madeira. He’d planned on using Lord Rockland’s influence to bolster his name and perhaps even match Berry Bros. in their success. Now it was clear this part of his business plan might not work as he’d expected.
With one avenue to expand his trade quickly narrowing, the idea he might not succeed in this venture as his father and Helena believed drifted over him like the faint notes of Susanna’s jasmine perfume, only rather less pleasant. He flicked the reins and guided the horse past a lumbering town coach. No, he would succeed and damn his father and Helena. Justin’s desire to capture the business of the haut ton through Susanna might come to nothing, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have more plans or other possible clients. There wasn’t a pub owner or merchant near Fleet Street he hadn’t had some dealings with and most of them were pleasant. He’d make a go of this if he had to call on every man who owed him a favour from here to Cheapside.
‘Does your grandfather still have his shop?’ Justin asked with some hope for his own venture. It might be good to have contacts outside London.
‘I don’t know, though if he and my uncle were on the verge of sinking, I’m sure they’d deign to write to me begging for money, and to remind me how much I owe them for all of their years of kindness. They’ll get nothing if they ever show up on my doorstep.’
‘They sound as warm as mounting blocks.’ Justin laughed.
‘Just like the Rocklands.’ She sighed.
‘I’m curious—why did Lord Rockland take you in instead of placing you with another family?’ He pulled on one rein to make the horse turn at the end of the row. ‘I have a difficult time believing Lady Rockland was amenable to the idea.’
‘I’ve never really asked.’ She shrugged. ‘Out of gallantry, perhaps, or a desire to prove he’s so far above everyone else he can claim paternity to any child he’s sired no matter how much it irritates his wife or shocks his peers.’
‘I imagine Grosvenor Square was alight with other grand ladies warning their husbands not to follow Lord Rockland’s lead.’
‘And children of questionable parentage all over London breathed a sigh of relief at not being thrust into this world, always hovering on the fringes, a lady and yet not a lady, a duke’s daughter and his bastard all at the same time.’
‘You aren’t to refer to yourself in such a way. Do you understand?’ He refused to hear her speak so meanly of herself.
‘But it’s what I am and how everyone here and in Oxfordshire has always seen me.’ Her green eyes clouded with a loneliness he understood. He knew what it was like to be derided by those who should care for you the most. ‘It’s how Lord Howsham viewed me.’
‘Hang Lord Howsham and all these idiots. It’s not how I see you or how I want you to view yourself. You’re my affianced and very soon to be my wife, a respectable woman who no one has the right to look down on.’
She tugged at the bonnet ribbons beneath her pert chin. ‘About Lord Howsham. I think I should explain.’
‘No, I don’t want to know. Neither of our past amours interest me.’ He gathered her time with the