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He knew only one lady who wore big bonnets trimmed with ribbons and feathers.
Lady Beatrice Bentley.
Ford clambered up from his knees. Sure enough, there she was, wearing an enormous straw bonnet with red ribbons flapping in the breeze and copper curls coiling down her neck.
His dream made flesh.
She was out of place on the docks, her rich satin cloak gleaming in the afternoon sun, proclaiminghere be pockets for the pickingto all and sundry.
When she caught sight of him she waved, her white glove like a seagull flying against the sky.
He waved back.
“Already keeping fancy company, I see.” Griff elbowed him in the ribs.
“Shut up.” Ford brushed off the knees of his trousers, grabbed his coat, and ran a hand through his hair.
“Going to leave me high and dry?”
“Possibly. The lady’s in quite a predicament. Sheinherited an old bookshop and she needs a carpenter in the worst way.”
“Needs rescuing, does she?”
“She’s Thorndon’s sister, so she can afford to pay me a lot more than you, you old salt.”
“Oh ho—the duke’s sister. Isn’t he your father’s employer? Never a good idea to mix business with pleasure.”
“That’s not it at all. It’s a job, nothing more.”
Griff shrugged. “I see the way you’re looking at her. Like you want to find out what’s under that cloak.”
“She’s not my type. Too snobbish. Always lecturing me about something. It’s her coin I’m after, nothing more.”
Another shrug. “If you say so, my lad. If you say so.”
Beatrice hiked the hem of her bell skirts (her mother would surely wonder if she arrived home smelling of rotting fish—which wasnota pleasant smell she was discovering) and picked her way across the docks.
She’d wasted two precious days trying to find a carpenter but to no avail. She’d enlisted the help of Hobbs.
“It’s the strangest thing, Lady Beatrice,” Hobbs had told her. “When I mention Castle’s Bookshop, every carpenter quickly offers excuses for why they’re too busy to take the job.”
Foxton had made good on his threats.
Beatrice was here to eat humble pie.
As loath as she was to admit it, Wright was her best, and possibly only, hope. He’d seen her waving and was disembarking the ship, heading across the dock.
The sky today had decided to be a cheerful blue after weeks of rain. Freshly laundered white clouds drifted happily over the boat masts. The cries of gulls mingled with shouts from sailors, shipwrights, and other tradespeople.
“Watch yourself, missus,” a man pushing a cart piled high with crates shouted as he nearly collided with her.
The sonnet bonnet, while helpful in maintaining distance from passersby, sadly limited her scope of vision.
Her gray silk cloak had seemed a prudent choice for visiting ship’s carpenters, the most subtle of the clothing her mother had insisted on ordering for her this Season, but here its richness was out of place, the fabric shimmering and calling attention to her.
Wright strode toward her, confident and imposing. His hair was tousled by the sea breeze, and there was an uneven line of dark whiskers accentuating his angular jaw that gave him an even more forceful air. Did he steal everyone’s breath away, or just hers? She looked around the bustling docks. There weren’t many females here. She was the only one, and she was drawing everyone’s attention.
“Good day, Lady Beatrice. These workman’s docks don’t see the likes of you very often. You’re today’s entertainment. We could put that gigantic bonnet on the ground and collect a coin for every stare.”
