Thomas lowered his arms, relaxed for a moment, then sat up and reached for the letters. There were five. Sorting through them, he found three notifications from the company’s bank, detailing payments made. One thick envelope was from a shipping captain Thomas knew, who occasionally reported on prospects he came across in far-flung ports that he thought Carrick Enterprises might be interested in pursuing. That missive in his hand, Thomas was reaching for his letter knife when his gaze fell on the last letter in the pile.
The plain envelope was addressed to Mr. Thomas Carrick, with the “Carrick” heavily underlined. Across the corner opposite the post-office stamp was scrawled: Bradshaw, Carrick.
Setting aside the captain’s letter, Thomas picked up the one from Bradshaw and squinted at the stamp.
Carsphairn.
Frowning, Thomas lifted the letter knife and slit open the envelope. There were two sheets inside. Sliding them out, he smoothed the pages, then leaned back in his chair and read.
And grew increasingly puzzled.
The missive was, indeed, from Bradshaw, a farmer on the Carrick estate. Thomas’s paternal uncle was Manachan Carrick—The Carrick, laird of the clan. Thomas had been born at Carrick Manor, on the estate, although that had been an accident of sorts, a twist of fate. He’d spent several summers there with his parents while they’d been alive; after their deaths when Thomas was ten, he’d spent a full year at the manor, embraced, nurtured, and supported by the clan. He owed Manachan and the clan a great deal for that year, but as time had passed and he’d healed and returned to normal boyhood life, Manachan and Quentin, his co-guardians, had decided that Thomas would be best served by going to school in Glasgow and living with Quentin and Winifred and their children. And so he had.
Thomas had still visited the Carricks every summer, spending anything from a few weeks to a few months with Manachan’s four children and other children of the clan, but even more with Manachan himself.
Thomas had been—and still remained—closer to Manachan than even to Quentin, whom he saw every day. Even when much younger, Thomas had intuitively realized that Manachan and Niall had been close, and with Niall’s death, Manachan had transferred that degree of closeness, of connection, to Thomas, Niall’s only child.
Quentin, Winifred, and Humphrey were Thomas’s Glasgow family, yet Manachan was the family closest to his heart. Thomas understood Manachan and Manachan understood him, and that understanding sprang from something deep in their bones.
It was precisely that understanding that made Bradshaw’s letter so difficult to comprehend.
Not the details—they were plain enough. Bradshaw—Thomas could easily picture the burly man; he’d met him on and off over the years—wrote that, despite the season, by which he meant the planting season, being so advanced, no seed stock had as yet been supplied to any of the estate’s farmers.
Frown deepening, Thomas looked unseeing across the room while shifting his mind from shipping times and the effect of the seasons on transport, and delved into his memories to recall the impact of the march of the seasons on the land. The Carrick estate lay in the western lowlands, in Galloway and Dumfries. It was already late to be sowing, surely?
Refocusing on the letter, Thomas read again Bradshaw’s plea that he—Thomas—should intercede with Manachan over the matter of the seed supply.
“Why can’t Bradshaw speak with Manachan himself?”
That was what Thomas couldn’t understand. If there was a problem on the estate, then as laird of the clan, Manachan was the person to take that problem to. He always had been, and Thomas had never known any of the clan to feel the least reluctance over approaching his uncle. For all his fearsome reputation outside the clan, within it, Manachan was held in high esteem and, indeed, affection. He might be a cantankerous old bastard on occasion, but he was theirs, and to Thomas’s certain knowledge, Manachan had served the clan faithfully and had never, ever, let them down.
Manachan would fight to his last breath for the clan.
That was the role of the laird, one Manachan had been born to; it was the principle on which he’d lived his entire life.
Admittedly, Manachan was now ailing somewhat and, over the past year, had allowed his eldest son, Nigel, to assume some of the day-to-day running of the estate. But Thomas couldn’t imagine Manachan not keeping his hand on the tiller, much less not keeping abreast with all that was going on in the clan.
Thomas had learned of the change in estate management via letters, several from Manachan—although, now Thomas thought of it, none in recent months. A brief missive had come from the estate’s solicitor, and one from Nigel himself. Also a note from Nolan, Manachan’s second son, and one from Niniver, Manachan’s only daughter, inquiring when Thomas next planned to visit. None of those communications had spelled out the change, but rather had alluded to it.
Thomas hadn’t visited Carrick Manor for the last two years—the years during which he’d been trying, and failing, to steer his life forward—for the simple reason that Lucilla Cynster lived at Casphairn Manor, in the Vale of Casphairn, which abutted the southern border of the Carrick estate.
Ever since his fifteenth birthday, whenever he’d visited, he had—one way or another—run across Lucilla. Sometimes just to see, on other occasions to interact with. He would never forget the Christmas Eve they had shared, trapped by a blizzard in a tiny crofter cottage.
The last time he’d been at Carrick Manor, they’d met at the local Hunt Ball and had chatted and waltzed—and it seemed he would never forget that experience, either.
In order to forge ahead along his defined life path, he’d sought to expunge his memories of Lucilla by avoiding her—which had meant avoiding the Carrick estate.
Bradshaw’s letter suggested that something on the estate wasn’t quite as Thomas had thought. But was that fact, or was it Bradshaw’s interpretation? Or was it Thomas’s interpretation of Bradshaw’s interpretation?
Thomas pulled a face. He scanned the letter one last time, then tossed the sheets on his blotter. He stared at them, aware of the thick letter from the shipping captain waiting for him to open it and learn what exciting possibilities the New World might have to offer Carrick Enterprises…
Abruptly, he pushed back from the desk and stood.
When push came to shove, clan came before company.
He shrugged on his greatcoat, then glanced out of the window. The wind had increased; he picked up the hat he’d left on the stand the week before and strode out of the office.
In the foyer, Mrs. Manning wasn’t at her desk; she was doubtless taking dictation for Quentin or Humphrey. Dobson was beside his counter. When he looked up, Thomas met his gaze.
“I’m going for a walk.” The handsome clock on the wall above the pigeonholes showed the time as just before noon. “I’ll probably find lunch while I’m out. Please tell Mrs. Manning I’ll be back in plenty of time for the meeting with the Colliers.”
Dobson nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Thomas pushed through the outer door and went quickly down the stairs, then stepped out into the bustle of Trongate. He let his feet take him where they would—he knew the town so well he didn’t need to think of where to go, but simply what he needed.
Right now, he needed space, and air, and reasonable quiet in which to consider the likely possibilities and weigh his options. Down by the river, on Low Green above the banks of the Clyde, seemed appropriate to that part of his brain that directed his feet. He strode down Trongate, turned right into Saltmarket, and followed the pavement south toward the steel ribbon of the river.
His mind already juggling the possible implications of Bradshaw’s assertions—assertions that hadn’t exactly been spelt out—he was only dimly aware of those around him as he paced down the street.
But one voice reached through his abstraction and jerked him to awareness.
“I don’t know. It’s brown, after all. Why are they all brown this year?”
Thomas halted so precipit
ously the messenger following at his heels ran into him.
The boy bounced off, ducked, and muttered an apology, before scurrying around Thomas and continuing on.
Thomas barely noticed, his gaze riveted by the two men standing before the wide window of a gentleman’s outfitter; they were discussing the hats arrayed behind the glass.
Thomas blinked, then smiled. “Nigel. Nolan.”
The pair turned, surprise on their faces.
Thomas crossed the pavement and offered his hand. “Well met, both of you. What brings you to Glasgow?”
Not that he cared; whatever had brought them there, the pair were the answer to his not-quite-formulated prayer. Through them he could learn what was behind Bradshaw’s letter without journeying to Carrick Manor.
Nigel—the elder, fractionally taller than Nolan although several inches shorter than Thomas—looked blank for half a second, then he smiled. “Thomas!” He gripped Thomas’s proffered hand. “It’s good to see you!”
“Indeed.” Nolan—blond where Nigel was brown-haired, with blue eyes instead of Nigel’s brown—shook Thomas’s hand once Nigel released it. “We didn’t want to disturb you at work, and there’s so much to do here.” Nolan gestured about them. “Always something to fill the time.”
“How long have you been here?” Thomas asked.
“Just a day or so,” Nolan replied.
Thomas wanted to discuss Bradshaw’s letter, but the open street wasn’t the place. Sinking his hands into his greatcoat pockets, he asked, “Have you dined yet?”
Nigel shook his head. “We hadn’t got that far.”
Nolan pulled out a fob watch—a handsome piece Thomas hadn’t previously seen. Nolan glanced at the face. “Twelve already—I hadn’t realized.”
“If you haven’t any plans,” Thomas said, “let me take you to lunch at my club.” He tipped his head back the way he’d come. “The Prescott in Princes Street—it’s not far.”
The brothers exchanged a glance, then both turned similar smiles on Thomas. “Excellent notion,” Nigel said.
Nolan nodded. “It’ll give us a chance to catch up with how things are going with you—Papa always asks, and he’d love to know.”
* * *
It’ll give us a chance to catch up with how things are going with you.
The Prescott Club was the premier gentleman’s club in Glasgow, refined and restrainedly elegant. Over the following two hours spent within its hallowed precincts, in the grandly appointed dining room and later in a corner of the smoking room, Thomas discovered that Nolan’s words had been more polite response than actual intention.
When it came down to it, the pair were interested in little beyond themselves, and that little largely revolved about what entertainments were on offer that might appeal to their hedonistic souls.
Thomas had forgotten why it was that of Manachan’s four children, the company of these two—of his own sex and nearest to him in age—so grated on his nerves.
Nigel and Nolan were quick to remind him.
Although only thirteen months lay between Thomas and Nigel, with another thirteen months between Nigel and Nolan, the pair always made Thomas feel more like, if not their father, then at least an uncle. They always seemed a good decade his junior; their current focus on horses, all manner of horse racing, and lightskirts seemed more appropriate to young men of twenty or thereabouts rather than the pursuits of well-bred gentlemen in their late twenties.
The distinction, Thomas had to admit, was one of degree. Most of his friends appreciated fine horses, but the subject didn’t dominate their conversation. Most gentlemen of their age had a social interest in the sport of kings, but few were devotees of the track, much less the more questionable dives catering to the industry with which Nigel and Nolan seemed to be well acquainted. As for women, the difference between Thomas’s socially acceptable encounters with society’s bored matrons and Nigel and Nolan’s exploits in the local brothels could not have been more marked.
Glad that, it being lunchtime on a weekday, the club was only thinly patronized, Thomas waited out his cousins’ rambling, rather boastful discourse, and finally found the right moment to say, “From your letters, I gathered that you”—Thomas looked at Nigel—“have taken up the reins of the estate to some extent.”
Nigel responded to the question in the words and nodded. “The old man’s grown weak—too weak to ride about.”
“No real illness,” Nolan put in. Popping another candied walnut into his mouth, he shrugged. “Just old age.”
“Exactly.” Nigel glanced down at the table between them. “It was getting too much for him, so he asked me to help out—to take over the organizational side of things. Seeing to the farmers, that sort of thing. So I have been.”
In between gadding about, it seemed. Thomas swallowed the words and mildly said, “I’d heard that there was some problem with the seed supply this year—that the planting’s not yet done.”
Nigel made a scoffing sound and waved the comment aside. “All in hand. Going with a different system. It’ll work out better in the end for the clan. They just don’t realize that yet.”
Thomas wondered how not getting seed into the ground could possibly result in a better crop.
Before he could pursue the point, Nolan stirred. “Why do you ask?” When Thomas met Nolan’s blue eyes, Nolan arched his pale brows. “I didn’t realize you were keeping such close tabs on the estate, cuz.”
Thomas swiftly weighed his options, but could see no reason to prevaricate, and perhaps it was best that Nigel learned there was unease among the estate’s farmers, all of whom were clan. Thomas dipped his head to Nolan, acknowledging the point. “I’m not.” He looked at Nigel. “One of the farmers wrote to me and mentioned the matter as a problem.” Thomas could see no reason to mention Bradshaw’s name nor that the man had requested that Thomas speak directly to Manachan.
Now that he’d learned of his cousins’ recent exploits and taken the measure of their current interest in the estate, Thomas had to wonder if Nigel really was performing as well as he would no doubt like to think. Manachan’s shoes were large—very large.
Nigel fell ruminatively silent at Thomas’s words, as if digesting unwelcome news, but, eventually, he slowly nodded. “I didn’t realize they were put out by it. You can leave the issue with me—I’ll deal with it.”
Thomas hesitated, then offered, “It might well be that all that’s required is an explanation of your new strategy.” Whatever that might be.
“Indeed.” Nigel nodded more definitely. “I’ll take care of it.”
“We’re going back tonight.” Nolan drained his glass, set it down, and eased forward in his chair. Across the low table, he caught Nigel’s gaze. “We’d better get on.” Nolan glanced at Thomas and smiled. “And leave you to get back to your desk, cuz.”
Nigel humphed and finished his drink. Thomas did the same and rose as his cousins got to their feet.
Together, the three made their way out of the club. They paused on the steps to shake hands and, with faintly awkward expressions of familial bonhomie, to bid each other adieu.
Then Nigel and Nolan strode off to the stable where they’d left their curricle, and Thomas headed back to the bustle of Trongate.
* * *
Thomas sank into the chair behind his desk. The two pages of Bradshaw’s letter still lay on his blotter. He regarded them for a moment, then picked up the sheets, folded them, and set them in the bottom drawer to the left, where he kept all correspondence relating to the estate.
As he pushed the drawer closed, the question of what his cousins had been doing in Glasgow resurfaced in his mind. He’d asked, but they hadn’t actually replied, not specifically. They’d told him at length of all their carousing, real and quite possibly imagined, but they hadn’t touched on what had brought them there. Thomas knew the clan coffers would never stretch to cover the profligate lifestyle his cousins had described; he’d taken their descriptions with a very large g
rain of salt. They’d either exaggerated or fabricated. Possibly both.
Yet something—some reason—must have brought them to Glasgow. Why else had they come?
After a moment, he shrugged. “Presumably they came on estate business.” And, in reality, the estate and its business were no business of his. “And, thank God, I am not their keepers.”
With that heartfelt statement, he lifted the top file from the pile on his desk; opening it, he settled to review the company’s dealings with Colliers, a shipping line operating out of Manchester who were looking to expand their business in Glasgow, and who were hoping that Carrick Enterprises, with whom they had several lucrative agreements, would help ease their way.
Twenty minutes later, a tap on the door heralded Quentin. His uncle stood in the doorway regarding Thomas, then with a smile, Quentin nodded at the file in Thomas’s hands. “The Colliers?”
Thomas laid the file down. “They’ll be here at four.”
“Well, when you’re finished with them, don’t forget you’re expected for dinner in Stirling Street tonight.” When Thomas wrinkled his nose, Quentin grinned. “Your aunt sent a message, just in case you were in any danger of forgetting.”
Thomas sighed and tipped his head back against the chair’s raised back. “More young ladies.”
“Undoubtedly.” Quentin’s expression was amused. “As neither she nor you are going to give up, you’ll just have to weather the course.”
If only Thomas could be sure there would be a prize worth winning at the end. He raised his head and nodded. “I’ll be there.”
His grim tone had Quentin chuckling as he retreated down the corridor.
The interruption had broken Thomas’s concentration; his thoughts, freed, tugged him back to the question of what had brought his cousins to Glasgow…
He shook aside the distraction and refocused on the Colliers file. “Regardless of what brought them here, because they were here, I don’t need to go down to the estate—and for that, I should give thanks.”