Lucky's Lady (The Caversham Chronicles Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

new clippers." When her husband's eyes grew wide with interest, she went on. "They are in need of boats that can compete in the tea trade. They're currently sailing a pair of twenty-one-year-old clippers from Jorgensen's yard up in Halifax."
    Mr. Watkins continued to nod, acknowledging their competitor, and she went on.
    "They have one hundred and twenty footers now, and he's looking at one hundred and eighty or eighty-five feet. With that, I can increase his cargo capacity by sixty to eighty percent and get him where he needs to go faster, but I didn't tell him that." Mary-Michael couldn't stop the grin from spreading across her face.
    "Why not?"
    Mary-Michael considered her words. "Well, like most men, he didn't seem comfortable discussing business with a woman. In fact, I think he'd rather deal directly with you. And secondly, I wouldn't want to promise any percentage increase in his profit until I knew exactly what he wanted in materials, accommodations and trim."
    Her husband chuckled. "I taught you well, my dear."
    Sally walked in with a fresh pitcher of water with sliced lemon and two glasses with big cut pieces of ice. She poured their drinks and said, "Dinner is in thirty minutes, Miz Watkins."
    "Thank you, Sally."
    Her husband swallowed deeply from his cold drink and held it as he stared at her in an odd way. "I want to know if you've given any thought to what we discussed the other day, Mrs. Watkins."
    "Regarding what, sir?" she asked, though she knew exactly what topic he meant to revisit.
    "Regarding you getting your heart's desire."
    Mary-Michael sighed and turned to stare out the window at the lengthening shadows of the trees on the bricked streets. "I'm not sure I can do it."
    "You could if you met the right person." He sipped from his glass again. "We will need to find you this right man soon. I never know when I lay my head down at night if I'll be picking it up the next morning. If you want your babe to carry my name, you should do something about it soon, lass."
    He obviously saw her slowness to reply as a need for more time to think on the subject. What her dear mentor and husband could not know, was that she'd already begun to consider his plan during her walk home. First, she wondered if she could possibly do it at all. And secondly, there was this unexplainable attraction she felt toward the Englishman. If this is what Becky had meant when she said Mary-Michael would know it when she felt it, then she was certainly feeling something. That was the only reason she was considering doing this.
    She wondered what it would be like to create her babe with this man, the one whose name she did not remember.
    "I would never push you to do this," Mr. Watkins said, "except I know my days are now numbered."
    "I never thought... That is, when we wed, I... I didn't think I would care, or that I would desire a child as much as I do." She wiped at a single tear, unwilling to cry over this again. "And now... after Rowan and Emily, I just don't think... I could go through falling in love with other little ones, only to have them taken from me again." She swiped at one more falling tear, then another and another. "I miss them so much."
    "As do I lass."
    "Sometimes I feel this desire for a babe has me so envious of my own friends that I avoid them. I know they sense me distancing myself from them, too. It's not that I'm not happy for them, because you know I am." She wiped again. "It's just that I'm so jealous of their happiness I've thrown myself into my work even more and given up their company so as not to feel my own pain. It's a self-centered jealousy that I fight, sir, and I'm not sure that those selfish emotions are something I should feel if I want to be a good mother."
    "You are the least selfish woman I know, Mrs. Watkins, and you deserve this child of your heart." He sat back and closed his eyes. "Besides, you wouldn't be feeling those conflicting emotions if you had a child."
    "But what I have to do to get this