Never Lie to a Lady Read Online Free PDF

Indeed, she had never in her memory ventured beyond the West Indies until five years past, when she and Kieran had visited London to open a second office for Neville Shipping.
    But the moment her trunk hit the dock in this teeming city, she had felt at once as if she belonged. Not in the countryside, nor even in Mayfair, where their home was, but here, amidst all this grime and stench and pulsating activity. If the Thames was London’s main artery, then surely Wapping was its heart.
    Six days a week, Kieran’s barouche brought her from the luxurious confines of Berkeley Square, along the Strand and Fleet Street, and thence into another world. This was the world of the workingman; the mastmakers and the coopers, the lightermen and the watermen. The place where black-garbed customs clerks with ink-stained fingers brushed shoulders with aldermen and bankers. Where the East End merchant princes strode down from their opulent town homes in Wellclose Square to watch their fortunes sail into the Pool of London.
    Along this part of the Thames, the languages, the shops, and even the churches were as apt to be foreign as English. The Swedes and the Norwegians were preeminent. The Chinese and the Africans brought strange music and exotic foods. The French and the Italians were as at home in Wapping as in Cherbourg or Genoa. It was a glorious melting pot of humanity.
    Just then, the door behind Xanthia opened, sending another chill through the room. She turned from the window to see Gareth Lloyd, their business agent, coming into the office. He went at once to his desk in the corner and slapped down the baize ledger he had carried into the room. “The Belle Weather is in,” he said matter-of-factly. “She’s coming up Limehouse Reach just now.”
    Xanthia’s eyes widened. “What a splendid run!” Inordinately pleased, she left the window and went to her own desk to check the schedules. “All went well? Or has anyone come ashore?”
    “The boatswain came in. He says Captain Stretton took on an extra ton of ivory when she rounded the Cape.” Lloyd dragged a hand through his thick, golden hair. “Unfortunately, there’s been spoilage in the citrus. A black fungus. About a third has been lost, I collect.”
    That was unfortunate, but not wholly unexpected. Xanthia settled into her chair and began to rub her hands absently up and down her arms.
    Lloyd crossed to the fireplace and knelt. “You are freezing again.” He spoke without looking at her and began to poke at the coals. “I shall build up the fire.”
    “Thank you.”
    She watched him in silence. When the fire was thoroughly rekindled, Lloyd went to the huge map which all but covered the adjacent wall, and began to study the bloodred lines dotted with bright yellow pins, each of which represented one of Neville’s ships at sea. The red lines were their preferred trade routes, and Lloyd could likely have traced them in with a fingertip in the dark of night, so well did he know them.
    Gareth Lloyd had been with Neville Shipping since before her elder brother’s death a dozen years past. Luke had taken him on as an errand boy in the counting house. But Lloyd had quickly shown an uncanny knack for all things financial, and the West Indies was not precisely awash in talent. Those who risked the treacherous journey came to make their own fortunes, not someone else’s. A few succeeded, as Kieran had. Sugar was a lucrative business, often more lucrative than shipping.
    Gareth Lloyd, however, had continued to toil quietly in the service of another. After Luke’s death, Neville Shipping had floundered under a series of business agents, each more dishonest than the last. Kieran had profoundly disliked the company their brother had begun, and he was already worked to the bone by the plantations and mills which provided the bulk of the family’s wealth. But Xanthia had grown up at Luke’s feet, going regularly with him to the shipping office. It had been the best place to