Home for the Holidays (4 page)

“Of course you did. It’s human nature to pry.”

“But polite to refrain,” she insisted, determined to be at fault for the moment.

“Stop chastising yourself, Larissa. Politeness is not required of you here.”

“On the contrary, politeness is mandatory at all times,” she countered.

He smiled. “Is this a reminder for yourself, or do you really believe that? And before you answer, take note that I have just dismissed formalities between us in the use of your first name. You are invited to do the same. Keep in mind also
that people are allowed their moments of impoliteness, when warranted, especially between close acquaintances.”

Her blush was back in full bloom. So was her stiff tone as she stood up to say, “We are barely acquainted, nor will I be here long enough for that to change. I will in fact make an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible while in your house. Now if you will excuse me,
Lord Everett,
I must check on my brother.”

He sat back with his wineglass in hand, which he swirled once before finishing off. She wanted formality between them, had just stressed it. He wondered how her formality, and her politeness for that matter, would hold up once he had her naked body snuggled next to him in bed. Not very well, he hoped.

T
HOMAS WAS SETTLED IN AND LETTING
M
ARA SPOON-FEED
him. He didn’t like being treated like a baby. He truly hated it. But during the worst of his fever when he had insisted on feeding himself, he had never finished his meals because he was simply too weak.

Having caught him in the stubborn lie that he wasn’t hungry, merely because he was too tired to finish on his own, Larissa no longer gave him the choice. He’d be fed or he’d be fed, and those were the only options he had until he was completely well again.

The room that he had been put in was much larger
than his room at home. So was the bed. He seemed so small in it. But then he was small for his age, both skinnier and shorter than other boys of ten. Their father, a tall man himself, had assured him that he would catch up soon enough, that he hadn’t sprouted himself until he was twelve.

Thomas might be behind other boys his age in height, but he was far superior in intelligence. If he weren’t so stubborn at times, and prone to a temper tantrum on occasion, Larissa would swear there was a full-grown man inside that little body. His keen observations were often just too adultlike. But his boundless energy, when he wasn’t sick, was a firm reminder that he was still a child.

His energy, or current lack of it, contributed to his being a really rotten patient, full of complaints. He didn’t like staying in bed, and hated the weakness that had come upon him since the onset of the fevers.

As she approached the bed, Thomas wouldn’t look up at her, still pouting over the move, as if there had been some way she could have prevented it. She wished she’d had the luxury to do a little pouting of her own, but all she’d been able to do was cry.

She tried to sound cheerful, however, when she asked, “No chills from that cold ride here?”

“Cold? You had me so buried in those blankets, Lari, I roasted.”

“Good, roasting is fine as long as you didn’t catch a chill.”

Mara tried to hide a smile, unsuccessfully. Thomas glared at them both. Larissa “tsked.”

Thomas called her Lari only when he was annoyed with her, because he hoped it would annoy her as well, it sounding like a man’s name. When all was right with his world, he called her Rissa, as their father did.

“Why did we have to come here?” Thomas brought his real complaint out in the open—once again. “This room is like a hotel room.”

“And how would you know what a hotel room looks like?” Larissa countered.

“I went with Papa once, to meet that French wine merchant at his hotel.”

“Oh, well, yes, this house is much bigger than ours, and it does seem very—impersonal, from what I’ve seen of it so far, like a hotel. Baron Windsmoor has no family, though, which I suppose accounts for that.”

“We won’t have to stay here long, will we?”

“Not long a’tall,” she assured him. “Just as soon as father returns—”

“You’ve been saying that for weeks now. When is he going to return?”

It was hard to remain cheerful when Thomas was asking the very things that she had been asking herself—and
had run out of answers for. Two months was all he was to be gone, which would have allowed a week, two at the most, to conduct his business. He had promised to be home by the beginning of November. It was now a full month beyond that. Bad weather might be responsible for some delay, but four weeks worth?

No, she could no longer hide from the fact that something must have gone terribly wrong on his journey. Ships were lost at sea all the time, with no one ever really knowing what had happened. There were even pirates rumored to still roam the very waters that their father would have sailed through, ready to pounce on a heavily laden merchantman. She’d had time and plenty to imagine the worst, shipwrecked, stranded on a deserted island, starving …

Her worry had become so intense it now seemed a part of her. She wanted desperately to share it with someone, needed a shoulder to cry on, but she had to do without either. She had to be strong for Thomas’s sake, to continue to assure him that everything would be all right, when she no longer believed that it would.

To that end she said, “The best-laid plans don’t always lie down right, Tommy. Father hoped to secure a new market in New Providence, but what if there was none there? He would have had to sail to the next island then, wouldn’t he? And if there was nothing there, either?”

“But why did he have to sail so far when he could have found a new market closer to home?”

She gave her brother a stern look. “Haven’t we discussed this before, and several times? Weren’t you listening to me the last time?”

“I always listen to you,” he grumbled. “You just don’t always make sense.”

She didn’t take him to task for that, knew very well that he was merely being defensive because his illness was making him forgetful. He’d either been half-asleep during most of their recent conversations, or his fever had been raging, so it was no wonder he couldn’t remember them all.

“Well, let’s see if we can both make sense out of what happened, because I still don’t understand it all either,” she told him, hoping that would make him feel better. “Most companies in the same line of business enjoy some friendly or even not so friendly competition. That’s the nature of business, you’ll agree?” She waited a moment. He nodded. She continued, “But when one bad apple gets into the pot, it can ruin the whole pot.”

“Can you stick to specifics please?”

She “tsked,” but did. “That new shipping line that opened late last summer, The Winds line, I believe it was called, was a welcome addition to a thriving market—until they proved to be completely underhanded. Instead of
seeking their own markets, they set about stealing those already in good hands.”

“Father’s?”

“Not just Father’s, though they did seem to single him out the most. He never told me about it himself. He wouldn’t, not wanting to worry me. What I know, I overheard when his captains or clerk came to the house. Apparently The Winds was trying to put him completely out of business,
and
nearly succeeded. I’d never seen him so furious as he was those last few weeks before he left, after all but one of his ships returned to port without their scheduled cargoes, because The Winds captains had followed his and overpaid in each port.”

“Even that nice French wine—?”

“Yes,” she cut in, trying to keep him from talking so much, since that seemed to wear him out, too. “Even he ignored the contract Father had with him to sell to the higher-bidding captain.”

“But what good is a contract if it can be so easily broken?”

“From what I heard, they weren’t exactly broken, just some flimsy excuses given as to why the merchandise wouldn’t be forthcoming. The nature of business, I suppose,” Larissa said with a shrug she wasn’t really feeling, adding, “It’s hard to fault the merchants when they had the chance to reap huge, unexpected profits.”

“I don’t find it hard to fault them a’tall,” he disagreed. “Contracts are made for good reason, so the market can be dependable.”

She should have known better than to fluff it off, when Thomas was being groomed, even at his young age, to take over their father’s company someday. “Be that as it may, this happened all across Europe. The Winds ships showed up in every port that ours did. Rather easy to conclude that it was deliberate, that they were specifically following our line to obtain
our
cargoes. And
that’s
why Father sailed so far from home. He couldn’t compete with The Winds, which was paying unheard-of prices, or he would have made no profit on the cargoes.”

Thomas frowned. “I think this is where I don’t understand. How was that other shipping company going to make any profit if it was paying so high for its cargoes?”

“They weren’t. They apparently had money to throw away on this particular tactic. Secure the market first, then worry about getting the prices back to reasonable later. It was merely a ploy, and one that worked. Father couldn’t risk sending his ships back to the same merchants, only to have the same thing happen again, so in that, The Winds line won; they now have those old markets.”

“Do you think Papa was able to find new markets, then?” Thomas asked.

“Certainly,” she said, trying to sound confident. “And
he had planned to expand to the West Indies eventually. So this may turn out to be a very good move in the end.”

“Though forced on him before he was ready.”

Often she wished Thomas weren’t so smart and would just accept an explanation when given as most children did at his age, rather than question and point out all the flaws in her logic. “Would you like me to tell you what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She smiled. “No, you don’t. I think this is going to turn out very well in the end. I doubt The Winds line will survive very long, and when they go under, Father will be able to get back his old contacts, and with the new ones he gains from this trip, why, he’ll probably have to buy new ships to keep up with it all.”

“And
I
think you’re just hoping The Winds will go under, when they aren’t likely to, if they had such deep pockets to begin with, to get away with what they did.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about their finances. I’m talking about the bad will they’ve spread, starting out in such an unethical manner. Consider, the merchants who sold to them for the huge profits know exactly what they were up to, and anyone that underhanded can’t be trusted. But many of the goods involved are perishable, in need of timely delivery—and trustworthy captains to arrive on time. If The Winds line is late in the future, the cargoes
could spoil before they are even picked up, and of course, they won’t be bought spoiled. Do you see what I mean?”

“So you’re thinking that Father’s old contacts will want to deal with him again, because he’s well established and, of course, trustworthy?”

“I think they will prefer to, yes … and will you look what we’ve done. We’ve put Mara to sleep with all this talk of business that she doesn’t find the least bit interesting. But no wonder, it’s time for your nap as well.”

“I’m not tired,” he complained.

“I saw those eyes drooping.”

“Didn’t,” he grumbled.

“Did, too. And besides, you need the rest whether you sleep or not. When your fever is completely gone, then we can negotiate an end to these naps.”

He conceded. He loved to negotiate, which was why she’d mentioned it.

She headed to the door. But he stopped her there with one last question that she really wasn’t prepared for.

“Where are we going to put the Christmas tree this year, Rissa?”

It wasn’t the question, but the quaver she heard in his little voice as he asked it. It was her undoing. She hadn’t even thought about spending Christmas without her father. She hadn’t thought that far ahead, couldn’t, because there was too much grief awaiting her down that road.

“It’s too soon to think of the tree, this early in the month. But we’ll have one, Tommy, even if we have to share the Baron’s—”

“I don’t want to share, I want to put on the decorations we’ve made. You did bring them with us, didn’t you?”

No, she hadn’t. They’d been stored in the attic and had gone with the other furnishings to wherever Lord Everett had had them taken.

“They’ll be here when it’s time,” was the best she could offer him at the moment. “So please don’t worry about it. Just get better, so you’ll be able to do some of the decorating yourself.”

She had to get out of there. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks, which she didn’t want him to see. It wasn’t going to be a normal Christmas for them this year. She was afraid, so very afraid that they would be spending it without their father.