A Blank Check

The point, of course, had been to avoid the disgraceful misunderstanding that an unmarried man and woman had stolen a private rendezvous at so late an hour.

That he had forgotten such a person's existence even for an instant—Cassian was, frankly, unsettled. It felt like damning proof of just how completely he had lost himself in conversation with Wilhelmina.

"Ah, look at that. A perfectly good teacup, wasted."

Oblivious to whatever turmoil had seized his nephew, Earl Mortimer was wholly occupied with mourning the shattered china.

"At any rate, I'm against it, Cassian."

"Against what, exactly?"

"Don't play the innocent! I'm talking about that young lady's marriage proposal, of course."

"Is that so."

Cassian answered with deliberate vagueness.

"To be precise, it was a contract predicated on marriage."

"I don't mean I believe the gossip rags. And I'm certainly not about to swallow that young lady's claim that Kingsley spread the rumor, either. I'm simply saying that no sailor on earth would have the nerve to get entangled with a terrifying creature like that in the first place."

"Hm. Terrifying, you say?"

"Yes. And judging by the way she talks and carries herself—"

As he spoke, Earl Mortimer flicked another glance toward the closed door, the look of a man genuinely concerned that the terrifying young lady in question might come bursting back through it.

"...She's clearly a bit mad," he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.

"In fact, it may not be merely a bit."

His expression, which had begun to ease at his uncle's comical display, turned grave at once. A bit mad, was she?

As he recalled it, his uncle had used that particular phrase exactly twice before. The first time had been directed at Cassian's mother, when she resolved to set sail. The second had been directed at Cassian himself, when he resolved to go to war.

Both, in their respective ways, had achieved extraordinary things along the paths they had chosen, and both had been called remarkable for it. That much they had in common.

And the third... Wilhelmina Priestley, then.

Cassian's gaze lingered on the closed door. The woman who had strode so boldly through it only moments ago had made him a promise: that he would come to need her—and that when he finally understood as much, the price would be steeper than it was today.

A steeper price. Cassian had first put to sea as a soldier at the age of sixteen. From that day until he turned twenty-seven, he had spent very nearly half his life sending plunderers of every stripe to the bottom.

And now this woman not only dared to present him with a bill—she had the gall to guarantee that the sum would be enormous.

Cassian laughed without a sound. An ordinary man might have taken offense at so bloodthirsty a warning. Unfortunately for her, he too was one of the madmen his uncle had certified, and at present a magnate who would have taken it as an insult to be called the second-wealthiest man in the kingdom. He was no particular villain—but neither was he so saintly that he could turn a blind eye to the treasure in the holds of the pirate ships he sank.

There was no price he could not pay. If anything, the difficult thing would be finding an invoice grand enough to actually make him feel it.

Which meant the true problem was this: that in the very moment that audacious woman announced the figure on her next bill, he had felt an impulse so willing he could have signed a blank check then and there.

It was neither here nor there, perhaps—but the truth was that Wilhelmina's reputation in Winster society had been far from glowing even before this affair. Her name was forever being dressed in modifiers: peculiar, eccentric, unordinary.

And the man who had contributed more than a little to that state of affairs was this one here: Nate Ashton.

A dangerously handsome man, his black hair and amber eyes lending him an exotic, faintly hazardous air. He was the son of one of Winster's foremost fortunes—and Wilhelmina's oldest childhood friend.

"What you did last night was irredeemable madness, Mina. There isn't a scrap of salvage in it."

It was a leisurely afternoon, the thick fog having at last burned away. The setting was the opulent greenhouse of the Ashton residence, in the heart of Belgrave—and the hour, the one immediately after Wilhelmina had recounted, without omitting a single syllable, the madness she had committed the night before.

"What a scathing review."

"Most people would call that stating the facts."

There was a bite to it, but Wilhelmina did not mind. For a man who had just heard what she had done yesterday, this was a remarkably temperate reaction.

Anyone else—a certain duke, in particular—would have shrieked like a man in the grip of a nervous collapse the moment he heard her reckless tale. Fortunately, Nate was not that sort of noisy, emotional creature. He was, moreover, a living witness who had spent years watching, at close range, the bullheaded streak that ran in the Priestley blood.

"The state funeral was barely three weeks ago. The national mourning period only ended three days ago. And now, with people saying you ought to be punished for sacrilege for kicking up a scandal—where did you go? In the middle of the night, no less?"

That even Nate could not keep the heat from his voice was, in its way, an indirect measure of how serious the matter was.

"I didn't have any other choice," Wilhelmina muttered, pushing out her lower lip.

Nate watched her in silence for a moment, his gaze slanted and unreadable.

In the quiet that settled over them, the fresh scent of rare and exotic plants mingled with the fragrance of fine tea. Within the hushed greenhouse, the only sound was the occasional chatter of the birds kept there at liberty.

And into that perfect, untroubled quiet, Nate asked:

"Have you considered just marrying me instead?"

"My goodness."

Wilhelmina rounded her eyes with an air of perfect innocence.

"What a thoroughly unexpected proposal, delivered with such composure. I haven't misheard you suggesting a stroll through Gloria Green later, have I?"

"I'm not joking, Mina."

"Neither am I. I won't marry you."

"Oh-ho."

A lazy smile spread across Nate's mouth.

"And why not?"

She looked for a moment into her friend's amber eyes, then let out a small sigh.

"I know you care for me, Nate. I do."

"Yes, and knowing that, why?"

Where another man might have bristled, Nate merely agreed, perfectly at ease. He was not the owner of some paltry, rigid masculinity that found it shameful to show a tender thing like friendship.

He was also the sort of man who would become a husband on paper without a second's hesitation rather than watch his childhood friend—his only friend—have her honor marched to the guillotine.

"I understand. If our positions were reversed, I would have made a similar offer."

Understanding, however, was not the same as accepting. Wilhelmina had no intention of snapping up this devoted proposal.

"But I'll decline. I've no wish to stand in the way of a friend's love."

"Sabina would understand."

"I know she would. Which is precisely why you shouldn't waste that generous heart of hers on something like this."

Nate seemed to consider her clean refusal for a moment, then gave an easy shrug.

"Fair enough. Even if I married you, a man who has nothing but money to his name would be just as much of a problem."

In the thoroughly hypocritical circles of Winster society, the Ashton family's position was an awkward and uncomfortable one.

The Ashtons. There was no question that they commanded one of the greatest fortunes in all of Brighton—and not the traditional sort, represented by castles and estates, but the tangible kind, built on factories and ships.

Nate laced his fingers behind his head at his leisure and murmured,

"As if there's a soul alive who doesn't know how my grandfather—who was most certainly born a commoner—got his name into the Brighton peerage."

Nate's grandfather had married the daughter of a ruined baronet in order to shed the label of common-born rich man. People were fond of sneering that he had, in effect, purchased his honor.

A title might be bought that way, but blood could not be changed—that was the argument of most of the nobility. Even those who had seen their debts wiped clean by Ashton generosity were not above whispering, behind their hands, of merchant blood that reeked of silver coin and coal. Which rather said it all.

Wilhelmina snorted.