“We’ve never discussed it. We’ve talked about trading and shipping and companies, that sort of thing. And how to bring peace between you two. But a merger would be advantageous, wouldn’t it?”
“Na with those two. You’re na in the same class. Yet.”
“But one day I will be?”
“Maybe.” Struan lit the cheroot. “You really think you could control Gorth?”
“Perhaps I wouldn’t need to control him. Any more than he’d need to control me. Say I do marry Miss Brock. Gorth has his company, we have ours. Separate. We can still compete. But amiably. Without hate.” Culum’s tone hardened. “Let’s think like a Tai-Pan for a moment. Brock has a beloved daughter. I ingratiate myself with her and with Gorth. By marrying her I’ll merely be softening Brock’s animosity to me while I gain experience. Always holding out the bait of a merger of the companies. Then I can savage them when
I’m ready. A safe and beautiful ploy. The pox on the girl. Just use her—to the greater glory of The Noble House.”
Struan said nothing.
“Haven’t you considered these possibilities dispassionately?” Culum went on. “I’d forgotten you’re much too clever not to have noticed that I’m in love with her.”
“Aye,” Struan said. He carefully knocked the ash off his cheroot into a silver ashtray. “I’ve considered you—and Tess—‘dispassionately.’ ”
“And what was your conclusion?”
“That the dangers, for you, outweigh the advantages.”
“Then you totally disapprove of my marrying her?”
“I disapprove of your loving her. But the fact is you do love her, or think you do. And another fact is that you’ll marry her, if you can.” Struan took a long draw on the cheroot. “Do you think Brock will approve?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he will, God help me!”
“I think he will, God help you.”
“But you won’t?”
“I told you once before: I’m the only man on this earth you can completely trust. Provided you dinna, with calculation, go against the house.”
“But you think such a marriage is against the interests of the company?”
“I did na say that. I said you dinna understand the dangers.” Struan put out the cheroot and stood up. “She’s under age. Will you wait five years for her?”
“Yes,” he said, appalled by the length of time. “Yes, by God. You don’t know what she means to me. She’s—well, she’s the only girl I could ever really love. I won’t change and you don’t understand, you can’t. Yes, I’ll wait five years. I’m in love with her.”
“Is she in love with you?”
“I don’t know. I—she seems to like me. I pray she will. Oh God in heaven, what am I going to do?”
Thank God, I’m na that young again, Struan thought with compassion. Now I know that love is like the sea, sometimes calm and sometimes stormy; it’s dangerous, beautiful, death-dealing, life-giving. But never permanent, everchanging. And unique only for a short span in the eyes of time.
“You’ll do nothing, lad. But I’ll talk to Brock tonight.”
“No,” Culum said anxiously. “This is my life. I don’t want you to—”
“What you want to do crosses my life and Brock’s,” Struan interrupted. “I’ll talk to Brock.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
Struan fanned a fly away from his face. “What about the twenty guineas, Culum?”
“What?”
“My coffin money. The twenty golden coins Brock gave me, and you kept. Had you forgotten?”
Culum opened his mouth to say no but changed his mind. “Yes, I’d forgotten them. At least they’d slipped my mind.” His anguish showed in the depths of his eyes. “Why should I want to lie to you? I almost lied. That’s terrible.”
“Aye,” Struan said, pleased that Culum had passed another test and learned another lesson.
“What about the coins?”
“Nothing. Except you should remember them. That’s Brock. Gorth’s worse because he’s na even got his father’s generosity.”
It was almost midnight.
“Sit thee down, Dirk,” Brock said, rubbing his beard. “Grog, beer or brandy?”
“Brandy.”
“Brandy-ah,” Brock ordered the servant, then motioned to the food on the table in the glittering candlelight. “Help thyself to vittles, Dirk.” He scratched his armpits which were thick with the sores called “prickly heat.” “God-rotting weather! Why the devil baint thee suffering along with the rest of us’n?”
“I live right,” Struan said, and stuck his legs out comfortably. “I’ve told you a million times. If you bathe four times a day you will na get prickly heat. Lice’ll vanish and—”
“That be having nothing to do with it,” Brock said. “That be foolishness. Against nature, by God.” He laughed.
“Them wot says thee’s shipmate o’ the devil mayhaps’ve put the finger on why thee’s as thee are. Eh?” He shoved his empty half-gallon silver tankard at the servant, who immediately filled it from the small barrel of beer that was set against a wall. Muskets and cutlasses were on racks nearby. “But thee’ll get thy reward soon enough, eh, Dirk?” Brock pointed a blunt thumb downward.
Struan took the large balloon-shaped crystal glass and sniffed the brandy. “We all get our rewards, Tyler.” Struan kept the brandy close to his nose to counteract the stench of the room. He wondered if Tess stank like her father and mother, and if Brock knew the reason for his visit. The windows were tight shut against the night and the monstrous hum from the square below.
Brock grunted and lifted the full tankard and drank thirstily. He was wearing his usual woolen frock coat and heavy underwear and high cravat and waistcoat. He studied Struan bleakly. Struan appeared cool and strong in his light shirt and white trousers and half boots, the red-gold hairs on his vast chest catching the candlelight. “Thee looks right proper naked, lad. Proper disgusting.”
“It’s the coming fashion, Tyler. Health!” Struan raised his glass and they drank.
“Talking of devil, I beared Maureen Quance be bending poor old Aristotle more’n maybe. Rumor sayed they be going home on next tide.”
“He’ll escape, or cut his throat before he does that.”
Brock guffawed. “When she come up sudden-like at ball, I baint laughing so much since Ma catched tits in’t mangle.” He waved a hand in dismissal and the servant left. “I heared all thy ships be off.”
“Aye. A great season eh?”
“Yus. And it be better when
Blue Witch berth first in London Town. I heard she be a day ahead.” Brock drank deeply of the beer and sweated copiously. “Jeff Cooper sayed his last boat be gone so Whampoa be clear.”
“Are you staying in Canton?”
Brock shook his head. “We be going tomorrer. To Queen’s Town, then Macao. But we be keeping this place open, not like afore.”
“Longstaff’s staying. Negotiations’ll be going on, I suppose.” Struan felt tension in the air and his disquiet increased.
“Thee knowed there be no concluding here.” Brock was fiddling with the patch over his eye. He half lifted it and rubbed the jagged, scarred socket. The string that had held the patch over the years had worn a neat red channel in his forehead. “Gorth sayed that Robb’s youngest beed with fever.”