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“I can’t believe he’s already seven. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that you were carrying him in one arm and cooking dinner at the same time?” asked Lavinia.
“Don’t remind me. Then I begin to think of how old I am and I want to weep.” Anika moved a large ledger, a pen, and a pot of ink to the side and gestured to one of the chairs pulled up to the kitchen table. “Please sit.”
“You don’t do your accounting in the office?” asked Lavinia with a nod to the book.
“Even in the summer it’s cold in this country. At least in the kitchen I know it will be warm.”
“I don’t think I was ever warm growing up by the sea, but I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed it either.”
Anika leaned back in her chair to scrutinize Lavinia. “What’s wrong?”
She sighed. “Where do I start?”
“I’ll make chai. Then you can tell me everything,” her friend said.
Lavinia rubbed her forehead, willing away a growing headache as she watched Anika put cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves into a cloth and tie the packet up before adding it to a pot of water. Then her friend turned and crossed her arms. “What’s the matter? Does it have anything to do with the tall, handsome man you dragged into my storeroom the other day?”
“I hadn’t noticed that he was handsome,” said Lavinia sourly. She was at Anika’s to escape that sort of thinking.
Her friend laughed. “The man is objectively handsome. If you showed him to ten women, they would all say, ‘Yes. That is a handsome man.’ Besides”—Anika gave a sly smile—“why would you lock yourself in a storeroom with a man who isn’t good-looking?”
“Out of necessity. If I’d had him in my shop any longer, I’m positive the gates of hell would’ve opened up, or at the very least hell would’ve frozen over.”
“Dramatic,” said Anika.
“Accurate,” she retorted.
“Who is he?” her friend asked.
Lavinia liked a good gossip as much as anyone, but she struggled with this part. The talking-about-herself part.
“Do you remember when I told you that I’d been engaged to be married to a merchant sailor before Mr. Parkem?” she asked.
“Yes, and your fiancé died. That’s why you married . . .” Anika’s eyes widened. “He’s the sailor?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s not dead.”
“He wasn’t dead then, and it appears he’s managed to stay alive for all these years as well,” she said.
“Then what is he doing here?” her friend asked over her shoulder as she added tea to the simmering water. “Did he find out you’re a widow and now he wants to marry you?”
She scowled. “You’re far too romantic for your own good.”
“I’m a happily married woman whose husband spends half the year buying cloth in India. Of course I am.”
“I can promise you that marrying me is the last thing on Andrew’s mind,” she said, but then paused. Although she wanted to tell her friend everything, the gravity with which Andrew and Miss Gibson spoke of the mission made her hold back. “He thinks I can make an introduction to Mr. Wark.”
Anika made a face at the name of their landlord. “That horrible man? Why would he want to know him?”
“I can’t think of a single good reason,” she said, the little white lie passing her lips easily.
“Will you do it?” Anika asked.
She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. He’s offered to pay me for the introduction, which I would normally find offensive, but Caleb has complicated things again.”
“His debts?” Anika asked softly.
