Page 82 of Sweet Siren
His dark brows shot high. In the rays of the gas lamps, his silver eyes were brilliant withconfusion.
Once again, she was ashamed ofherself.
"Not the usual way to begin a love affair is it?" he said, glancing at anyone and anything buther.
It was her turn to stare at her shoes. "No. I grew to care for you quickly. Too quickly. My negative feelings for you dissolved like rain in the sun. Those weeks with you in Willowreach—with all your family—showed me who you were. Kind. Vigilant. Honest. I admired you. Cared for you. At first, I told myself it was the fact that I'd been starved for affection for decades. Then I decided my attraction to you was lust. Silly to think a woman of my age could want a man like that. But there you have it. Need, desire and finally delight in your company. The more I saw you, the less I was compelled to dislike you. I was caught in a web of my own design. I hated that. I had tochange."
"Good."
She gave him a wan smile. "The time I spent with you at Willowreach, the enjoyment I saw you have in your family touched me. And I—oh!—I enjoyed it too. I spoke of an idyll, a time apart, and it was that for me. Because you were there, a comfort, a bulwark against fear, even the likes of Carbury. You showed me what a man could be, should be to hisfamily."
He listened, his gaze in hers, withoutresponse.
She owed him more. "Your house has been a delight to create. The fact that you gave me rein meant I conjured you up as I saw you. I was down to the man, the real man, though I saw only my interpretation of you. And I like him. In the flesh. In my reverie, too. To imagine you in the small drawing room reading a newspaper or at a desk in the office working has meant I've seen you, not as others have painted you, but as you trulyare."
Pain wrinkled his brow. "And how isthat?"
"A man who works hard, who is devoted to his family and who has ethics about the businesses heowns."
He leaned an elbow on the rail and turned to look out to sea. "That has not always beenso."
"Iknow."
He took both her hands. "When I was young, I was also very hungry. My sister and I had sailed to America with a pittance she'd earned. Poverty makes you mean. Andangry."
"That Iunderstand."
"I won't ingratiate myself with you by telling you a tale of misery. That would not be fair. But I will tell you that when I first earned money, enough of it, to buy other men's businesses, I did so without regard to ethics. I grew wealthy. I also grew ruthless. I stopped only when I learned that a man I'd ruined had hunghimself."
She struggled to speak. "Myfather."
He winced. "Robert Emley, Lord Newton, who owned Emley Shipping Limited sold me his majority stock in eighteen sixty-one. I found an ad in theLiverpool Daily Post, went to meet the broker in Water Street. He was a shark, fast talking, rough. But I needed more ships. I needed them soon. I knew how the South would fall to the North. I'd traveled in those ports and saw how meager their defenses and theirresources.
"For weeks, I negotiated the asking price of those two steamers for less than they were worth. I knew finances of many British shipping companies were in jeopardy. Our war and problems in trade with China and India wrecked havoc on the economy here. Prices were high and getting more ridiculous everyday."
He squinted into the distance, shame and sorrow haunted his magnificenteyes.
"I never met the owner, Emley, but two months later my banker in the City of London paid the broker the first of three installments of the sales figure. I took over the two steamers and hired a crew to supplement the old. We prospered. I used them along the Irish Sea out of Liverpool into Dublin and Waterford. A few months later, my banker informed me that the broker failed to appear to take his last payment. He seemed to havedisappeared."
Liv caught her breath. "Do you think the broker cheated my father on thesale?"
"I did learn soon afterward that he never collected the last third.” He faced her squarely and in the dark, his face was tortured. “Last month, I launched a new investigation with my banker, my solicitor and Scotland Yard. We must find this man and put him injail.”
Killian had gone to the police as well as his banker and solicitor. Her heart swelled with gratitude. “Oh, Killian. How can I ever thank you forthat?”
“If we find him, I might allow it. But, Liv, I am to blamehere.”
She could have been polite and objected, but he wasright.
“So you see, if your father was paid the right amounts of the first two installments is a matter we must try to discover. If you have any records, that wouldhelp."
Astonished, she cleared her head. "I may have the papers,yes.”
"Please search for them. They may prove the crime. In the meantime, we wait to see if we can find the man. I waited to tell you this in hopes of good news. So far, we havenone.
"But there’s more, Liv. You have to know that when the broker disappeared, I didn't think any more of it. I should have. The funds remained available should he have decided to collect them, but he never did. More than a year later, my London man of business wrote to me that the former owner of Emley had died. By his ownhand."
Killian pursed his lips, his heartache palpable. "I felt his loss keenly. I shared the news with my wife who told me my greed was the man's sorrow. She was furious with me. I was shaken. How could I know a man would do such a thing? Could sink so low? But then, of course I did understand poverty. No coin for bread or peat or ale. But my own criticism was small compared to Aileen's. My wife told me how unprincipled I was becoming and gave me an ultimatum. I was to become more ethical or she'd leave me and take our children with her. You can't imagine how that gutted me. She was the love of my life. The one who brought me everything I value, her love, children, a good home, and I couldn't bear to loseher."
