“Four thousand!” Instantly she dismissed that. “Four thousand is over half of what Mrs. Leyton-Brown left us. We can’t spend all that in one go. It would be irresponsible without the guaranteed means to replenish it—which we certainly do not have at present. Especially with Mrs. Leyton-Brown and her generous annual stipend now gone. We might have a lot of pennies, but they are finite so we have to count them carefully.”
“But…”He nudged her with his elbow. “That would be a seriously huge house and a smaller one would be cheaper, but I’m betting you are forgetting to factor the property you already own into your calculations.” He sucked in a calming breath as despite the enormous risk involved, this felt like both the right time and the right thing to do. “In the current market, and even with its leaking roof and shabby exterior, it’s worth at least two and a half thousand. Because Long Acreis such a prime spot, the right idiot might even give you three if he was prepared to pay an arm and a leg, in which case you’d only be eating into a thousand of Mrs. Leyton-Brown’s money if you bought huge.”
Galahad would have to use everything he had left in the bank if he bought and renovated that building, too, and he would be left high and dry if his new club was slow to take off. But he had more than a sneaking feeling already that she was worth it.Theywere worth it. They were at least worth a try.
“Sellthe orphanage?” As he could practically hear the cogs in her mind turning, he realized that was something she had never considered.
“You have to speculate to accumulate, Venus.” Just as he was doing. Speculating wildly. Recklessly. But he didn’t care because his hardened heart was light again, beating again, and that felt too good to ignore.
“Is that another one of your grandpa’s wise old sayings?”
“Probably.” Definitely. Grandpa had always been a firm believer in risk. In trusting your gut. He often reminded Gal that you couldn’t fly unless you jumped first. “But he’s right. He was always right.” Even though this wasn’t so much a jump as a leap into the unknown. A huge, foolhardy gamble—with his money, his future, and his heart at stake.
But happy to leap and take that crazy bet, he kissed her again. “Dreams, like plans, should always adapt with the circumstances, especially if the circumstances allow them to get bigger and better, and some risks are worth taking.” He said that last bit more for himself than for her because he was feeling giddy and off kilter again. The ground beneath his feet was shifting as wildly as all his long-laid and meticulous plans.
“I don’t suppose you know any idiots who want to buy a shabby building with a condemned roof foran arm and a legin Covent Garden?” She was being flippant, likely to cover the pretty blush his latest kiss had caused, but without realizing it she had given him an opening into the necessary part of the conversation that he had been dreading.
“I do, as it happens.” To celebrate that fact, he tugged her into hisarms and kissed her again, feeling giddy at the huge significance of what this all meant. “Me.”
Her giggle told him she didn’t believe him. “Why on earth would you want to buy a shabby old orphanage with a leaking roof, Galahad?”
“Where you see a shabby old orphanage, I see the perfect venue for my new club.”
“I thought you had found premises? Has that all fallen through?” Her sympathetic frown told him she genuinely cared about his future, too, and that filled him with joy.
“So that’s the darndest thing, Venus—I have and I’ve got the deeds to ’em packed in my satchel back at the inn. And they are right next door to you!”
“What?” He had expected surprise, perhaps even some irritation, but not the icy chill that came alongside it. “Youhavepurchasedthe building next door!”
Gal forced a sunny smile and squeezed her suddenly rigid hands. “All three of them, actually, so the orphanage would make the set complete.” He realized straightaway he had said the wrong thing because she yanked her fingers away as if they’d been burned.
“You own them all? Mallory sold them to you? The deeds to allthreebuildings are already yours?” She practically snarled those three questions.
“Yes, yes, and yes, but…”
“But!Don’t you darebutme, Galahad Sinclair! How is that possible when Mrs. Leyton-Brown hasn’t even been dead a month?”
Perhaps only total honesty was the way forward?
She deserved that.
Theydeserved that.
“Because I happened to be here in Brighton when she passed, and because I keep an ear to the ground. I heard a rumor Mallory was spitting feathers that his aunt hadn’t left him any cash but had instead saddled him with a hefty portfolio of properties to unload—half of whichwere wrecks dotted around Covent Garden. And because I had worked out years ago that the best place to put my club was Covent Garden, I followed him back to town to inquire about them. Once he’d shown them to me, I made him an offer on the spot.”
Behind her spectacles, her eyes narrowed to magnified slits.
“I swear, on my life, that when Mallory and I shook on the deal I had no idea that your orphanage was next door. I didn’t realize that until…”
“You mysteriously collided with me on the street outside it a little over three weeks ago.”
As that was also the truth, Gal nodded, only to have all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse unleashed upon him.
“You devious, slippery snake, Galahad Sinclair!” She jabbed the air between them, incensed. “You planned this whole thing just to get your wicked way! You wanted our building, too! Didn’t you? That’s why you spouted all that poppycock about space and kitchen gardens and dreams coming true! You wanted the set! Of course you had an ulterior motive!” She prodded his chest this time. “Of course you did!Because don’t selfish men always?” She marched away with her arms waving, at such speed he had to jog to catch up with her. “I am such an idiot! Always such an idiot where men are concerned!”
“Venus! Wait. It wasn’t like that.” He caught her elbow and she glared at his fingers as if they were something unpleasant until he withdrew them. “I didn’t plan this to get my hands on your orphanage. I simply bought three buildings that happened to be alongside it. I swear I had no clue about the orphanage until you pointed it out. That was why I was so stunned when we met that day outside it. You remember that, don’t you?”
Her eyelids fluttered fast as she revisited that memory and for the briefest moment she appeared to waver, until the outraged schoolmistress returned with a vengeance as she folded her arms and tapped her foot. Glaring as if everything about him disappointed her now. “Maybeso—but that doesn’t explain your total silence on the matter both then and since when you have had ample opportunity to say something. If you didn’t have an ulterior motive, kindly explain to me why you neglected to tell me that you had bought all those buildings the day we collided outside them and why this is the first I am hearing about it?”
