As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(30)

She grudgingly conceded, “I suppose…but I’ll still quarrel with you everywhere else.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that.” Yet the possibility of future sparring sent a thrill of anticipation coursing through him.

A faint smile played at her lips. “Truce, then?”

“Truce,” he agreed.

With an uncertain glance at him, as if she didn’t quite trust him even that far, she gestured at the papers. “Quite a project. It will test your skills, I’m sure.”

Letting that bit of baiting slide by unchallenged, he set his notes aside and revealed the map he’d begun to mark up. Always easier to draw flies with honey instead of vinegar. Or in this case, a bee who possessed a sharp sting. “Which is why I could use your help.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves, having removed his jacket hours ago. There was no need for formality in a shipping office, and Mariah wouldn’t expect him to put it back on. “He’s tasked me with finding landowners and preparing estimates of purchase prices.”

She nodded as her eyes moved over the map. A happy smile tugged at her lips, like a proud mother. “The company must be on the verge of expanding.”

You have no idea. Guilt pricked at him that he couldn’t share Winslow’s plans with her. But it was one thing to tell her that he’d embarked on a scouting mission of the area, quite another to reveal the true motivations. Later. Winslow would divulge everything to her later, when the project and its profits were assured. And judging from the way she smiled at the possibility of expansion, her heart would lie exactly where Winslow said it would. With the company.

“Your father is targeting St Katharine’s,” he told her. “I know that you’re familiar with the area and thought you might be able to provide insight.”

“I do know this neighborhood,” she confirmed, with a pleased smile. She tapped her finger against the map. “There’s the hospital and church, the brewery, the school,” she murmured, her eyes shining. “My mother was born and raised here, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly, his stare transfixed on her delicate profile. Fate must be laughing at him to make his rival so alluring.

She nodded. “Her father was a ship’s captain who sailed for my grandfather. That’s how she and Papa met. Mama said it was love at first sight, although Papa was twenty at the time and she only thirteen. But five years later, they were married, right there in St Katharine’s by the Tower.”

He watched the emotions flit across her face, struck by each captivating one. She’d shared practically nothing about herself with him until today, as if unwilling to reveal a soft underbelly to her enemy. But now, her openness surprised the devil out of him. Because it was a whole new side to the Hellion that he never would have suspected.

“The company’s important to you because of your parents,” he murmured thoughtfully.

She drew her finger lovingly over the familiar streets on the map. “Yes, it is. And so is the school.”

“More important than Winslow Shipping?” he asked casually, but he held his breath, waiting for her answer.

A smile teased at her lips. “That’s like asking a mother to choose between her children.”

He supposed it was. But the answer was important. Watching her closely, he asked as hypothetically as possible, “What would you do if you had to relocate the school?”

She paused her finger on the map and looked up at him quizzically. “Why would I have to do that?”

He shrugged, to hide both the importance of his question and the niggling prick of remorse in his gut over keeping the truth from her. “Because London is changing, and St Katharine’s can’t remain as it is forever.”

“There’s a medieval church next door to the school.” She gave him a knowing smile, one that warmed through him but did little to quell his guilt. “Nothing changes quickly in St Katharine’s.”

He smiled faintly in response. Perhaps she was right. It might be years before the docks were built. By then, she’d most likely be married and have children of her own, and she’d be thrilled to know the company was thriving and profiting, securing the future for her own sons and daughters.

He was worrying over a future flood when it hadn’t yet begun to rain.

He leaned back against the desk, facing her as she studied the map. Her pretty little brow creased intriguingly, and he had a glimpse of what she must have been like as a pupil, poring over her books.

“Is it really true,” he wondered softly, “all that knowledge you told my mother you possess?”

“Yes,” she replied, her concentration not straying from the map.

“Fluency in Spanish and French?”

“The wars were ending, and I knew my father would want to recapture lost trade with France and perhaps expand further into the Americas.”

Amused admiration sparked inside him. Only Mariah would become fluent in two languages in order to increase trade opportunities. “And the rest?”

“Bookkeeping because one should never completely trust accountants, law and politics because of contracts and negotiations, philosophy and the natural sciences in order to study human nature and the world…” She sent him a chagrined glance. “Although I must admit that my knowledge of naval warfare comes secondhand from eavesdropping on sailors.”