“Hello, Venus.” His silky drawl stopped her dead in her tracks.
Chapter Twelve
Minerva and Diana were right! My father is a self-centered, manipulative, lying, duplicitous, gambling, crooked scoundrel to his core! I hate him now!Hate him! Hate him with the fire of a thousand suns! But I hate myself more for wasting so many years pathetically hoping that my dear sisters were wrong. Why am I always so pathetically gullible…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 17
Gal caught her by the elbow and whisked her outside in case the blabbermouth Nelly told her he had been wearing a groove in the floorboards all morning while he awaited her return. He didn’t have a speech rehearsed so much as a series of points that, frankly, petrified him, but he still felt compelled to say. He was also as nervous as hell and didn’t want to stumble through them with an audience.
Because Venus was already blushing and the tips of his ears were burning, he decided it was safer all around if they just kept walking, so he offered her his arm and steeled himself for the few initial moments of awkwardness as she shyly took it.
Lord, but she looked lovely again today. Lovelier than he had ever seen her despite wearing the exact same sensible coat as she had worn when she had arrived at his inn yesterday, complete with the same sillylittle reticule. So gorgeous he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Gal blamed the kiss that had thoroughly bewitched him. He hadn’t been able to think straight since it happened.
Conscious he was staring like a starving dog at a butcher’s window, he tugged her toward the seafront. “How did your meeting go?”
“Good…”
“You don’t sound too convinced.”
She forced a smile that did not quite meet her eyes. “Itwasgood. Mrs. Leyton-Brown left the orphanage seven thousand pounds in her will.”
Gal whistled, impressed. He’d had an inkling it was a tidy sum from Mallory’s outrage at it but hadn’t managed to dig into any specifics. “Thatisa lot of money. You could do some substantial good with that. Starting with that leaky roof—but I sense abut? Was there a restrictive caveat of some kind? Or has she put the money in a trust so it arrives in an annoying trickle over eternity making it as good as useless?”
“Neither. There are no caveats, thank goodness, and the full amount should be winging its way to our bank in London as we speak.”
“But?”
She shrugged, troubled, but not—he was convinced—by him or by their spectacular kiss. At least no more than he was. “But, while the money is marvelous and seven times what we were expecting, we were hoping to expand. The orphanage urgently needs bigger premises and we had been led to believe, by Mrs. Leyton-Brown herself, that she would be leaving us a building so that we could expand immediately.”
The orphanage plans on moving?
Clearly this was Gal’s lucky day in more ways than one. First this fascinating and beautiful woman was still on his arm rather than recoiling in horror at her unfortunate nocturnal “mistake,” and now he wouldn’t need to tackle the awkward issue of his club and her orphanage coexisting as neighbors. Not in the long term anyway, so that made everything easier.
“You can buy a lot of rooms for seven thousand pounds, Venus. Probably quadruple the number you currently have and in a much better state, too, so what’s the problem? In fact, with that much ready money at your disposal, you could get a seriously good deal on a decent building with a solid roof and maybe even a garden for those little rascals to play in.” Once she did, he could assist in replenishing the orphanage’s coffers by offering to buy the old building from them when they had found a place to move to. The archetypal win for everyone from whichever way he looked at it. For him, her, and all the orphans she adored so much. “Trust me, the lady did you a favor. Money to buy your own building is so much better than having some rickety old place in the back of beyond donated to you. You’ll be in control. You get to choose exactly what you want, where you want it, and exactly what it needs to be like for those children to thrive.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced—more daunted by the task at hand.
Thinking on his feet, Gal decided to sell her the dream before he offered to purchase. “My grandpa always told me that a good business went hand in hand with a good location, and while your orphanage isn’t a business per se, those same principles apply. Covent Garden is the perfect place for a theater or a tavern…”Soften the ground first.“… because it’s got that sort of reputation. Same as here.” Gal swept his free arm toward the town in the distance. “Exactly like Brighton, Covent Garden is where people go to have a good time. That’s just dandy for them, because they can find all the fun they crave in one handy place, but it isn’t really the place to raise children. It’s too close to all the debauchery to raise the ones, like Billy, who have been damaged by it. Wouldn’t it be better to raise boys like him in fresh air and space? Away from all the crime and the poverty that makes crime appealing?”
“Well, of course it would, but…”
“You need to stop thinking so small, Venus! You’ve got seven thousand to spend!” He took her hand and spun her to face him, excited for her at all the opportunities the sum presented. “Take it from someonewho has been watching the London property market closely for the last year: Anything within the bounds of the capital comes at a premium. But if you venture a little farther out, twenty minutes west of Mayfair by carriage to one of the pretty outlying towns or villages, you get so much more for your money.”
Gal could tell she was picturing such a place by the wistful look in her lovely eyes. But so was he. Conjuring a place that would have been a sanctuary for him when he had been a lost boy in dire need of one. “There, I reckon you could easily get yourself a big ol’ country house with grounds and still have change left over. One with outbuildings and land to spread out away from all the smoke and clutter of the city. Room to expand enough to help over a hundred orphans, and then some, without breaking a sweat. Room to build a proper school, too, and plant a cottage garden. Places to teach those children all manner of trades that give them options in their futures—options that don’t involve picking pockets or living hand to mouth, far away from the streets that would gobble them up.”
The way the sea breeze played with her hair as she smiled made his heart yearn. “You certainly know how to weave a pretty dream, Galahad. But I fear, as your grandpa knew only too well, that our location, although not ideal for raising children in, is good for reminding the rich to be philanthropic. They will send that philanthropy elsewhere if they cannot see us, so as much as a sprawling place in the country works in the short term and in your pretty dream, dreams alone cannot sustain us indefinitely.”
“What you call a dream, Venus, I call forward planning. You’ve always got to look ahead and adapt to the circumstances.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Always.” Plans kept you going when the world beat you down. Forced you to get up in the morning. To keep fighting. Keep moving. Keep hoping. “I’m a voracious planner. What can I say? I keep one eye on the present while the other scans the horizon for something better. You need to do the same. A better home for all those orphans is a dreamthat you now have the means to make a reality—and you are too smart not to think of a way to make it financially sustainable.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to bite the bullet and buy the place—now if need be despite that being a huge gamble—but the wind caught her bonnet and pushed it backward, so he reached out to right it but found himself caressing her cheek instead. “Because dreams do come true, Venus—if you want them badly enough. I’m living proof of that.” In that moment he realized, no matter how reckless and terrifying it was, he wanted her to be part of his dream, too. No matter how complicated it made things or how vulnerable it left him. Unsettled, he bent his head to kiss her again and smiled against her lips as she kissed him back without hesitation.
Yet exactly like last night, she was the first to end it. She offered him another shy smile as she took his arm again. “All right then, Mr. Property Genius, in your informed opinion and assuming I do figure out a way to make it pay for itself, exactly how much would that promised land of milk and honey cost?”
“You could easily get a place half the size of Giles’s or Hugh’s stately piles with a few acres for around four thousand in today’s market.”
