Page 69 of His Spirited Lady
Inside, the barrel room was cool and dark, and the musty air tickled his nose. Furtive scurrying in the deep shadows told him they weren’t alone. Amelia inhaled sharply and didn’t release the breath until she’d lit a lantern. “Those children have to stop feeding Caspar.”
“Amelia. I’m right on this. You’ll see—”
“I won’t.” She positioned a sluice-like ramp near a barrel and a wheeled platform at the end of it. “You’ll tell him you’ve overstepped and that he doesn’t have a position here.”
With a grunt, Amelia pushed the barrel on the ramp and eased it down until it reached the platform. Another unladylike noise and equally scandalous squat lift, and she positioned the barrel so she could roll it into the bottling room. She lost her hat in the process.
She faced the table and the barrel, tilting her head the way he did when he was deciding how a tree would fall. With a sigh, Richard stepped forward, lifted the barrel, and carefully set it on the table next to her hat.
Amelia wheeled on him. “Do not come in here acting like you know everything about my business and what I need, or how—”
“You couldn’t get the barrel onto the bloody table,” Richard shouted back.
“You didn’t let me try. You just decided I needed help and did it without asking. What if I came to Quebec and hired a housekeeper for you?”
What if she came to Quebec?“Amelia—”
“This is not your business, Richard. It ismine.” She put a hand over her chest, calling his attention to the tiny buttons on her thin linen shirt. “I have worked hard to learn this craft and taken a huge risk to expand it. And I’ve done it on my own.”
No, she hadn’t. “Yourchild laborforce works here unsupervised most days.”
“I hire tenants’older childrenbecause their families need the money.” She didn’t back down. “It keeps them close to home and allows them to stay in school.”
Richard glared down at her. “You hire them because they don’t ask questions about an employer they never see and work that’s done in the middle of the night.”
“Drake—”
“Put everything on hold to come babysit your distillery and workforce while you couldn’t get away. Now he’s in London.” He pointed a finger at her nose. “Which is where you’re going for a few days. Your business will be unguarded.”
She opened her mouth, as though waiting for an argument to fly in, only to snap it closed again. Richard’s satisfaction doubled when her stare began to simmer.
“With him here, I can’t come and go as I please.”
Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. “Maybe it will keep you from haring about in the dark while you live a double life.”
“It is my life.” Amelia slapped her hand on the table, a small sound in the big, empty room.
“So that makes it all right that you could be dead in a ditch for hours before anyone missed you? What would happen if you surprised a thief here?”
“It won’t be necessary for much longer. Father will be dead—” Her eyes went wide and glassy as she slammed her hand over her mouth a moment before she folded in on herself. “Oh God—”
Richard pulled her to him, her head crashing into his chest as he cradled her quaking shoulders. The sobs rattled down her back, and he let his hands follow them over the curve of her spine. “It’s okay.”
Her blonde hair was stuck in his waistcoat, and it clung tighter as she shook her head. “It isn’t. It won’t ever be again. All I could think of—”
“Shhh.” He wished he could change things for her, but more than anything, he wanted to take the pain he knew was coming, the ache that would stay with her the rest of her life. All he could do was let her cry.
It took a few minutes for the storm to subside to sniffles. Richard pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and held it where she could see it. Her damp fingers brushed his.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “But I’m still angry with you.”
He tugged one of her curls. “I know.” He wasn’t sending Latimer packing, though. He was right on this. He knew it. “Why are you here this morning?”
Amelia backed away from him, dabbing her eyes before cleaning her nose. “I wanted to tap the barrel. Today is its second birthday.”
“We could still do it.”
“Because the morning has gonesowell,” she muttered before retrieving a mallet, awl, and tap that were waiting nearby.
