Merely the Groom (Free Fellows League 2)

“Shepherdston keeps a fine stable. We could go riding.” Gillian shook her head. “Not unless it’s in a coach or carriage. I don’t ride.”

Colin frowned. “At all?”

She shook her head. “My father never kept horses. And I never learned how to ride.”

“What do you do for exercise,” he asked, “if you don’t ride?”

“I walk.”

“Walk?” Colin shuddered in pretended disgust. “God invented horses and carriages so we wouldn’t have to walk.”

Gillian stuck her tongue out at him. “I like to walk. For miles and miles.” She looked up at him. “We could go for a walk. There must be somewhere to walk on an estate the size of this one.”

“Indeed there is, my lady,” Colin told her. “Shepherdston Hall has a huge garden with a labyrinth and a pond and a pavilion and a parkland beyond.”

“A pond?” Gillian’s eyes lit up.

“An ornamental fish pond,” Colin elaborated. “Too shallow for bathing but just right for wading.”

“And sailing boats...” she added.

“And sailing boats,” he confirmed.

“Do you have any boats we could sail?”

Colin glanced over to see if she was teasing him, but Gillian was completely serious about sailing boats on the pond and eagerly looking forward to it.

She smiled up at him. “I love sailing boats. When I was a little girl, my father and I would take our toy boats—”

“Your father has toy boats?” Colin couldn’t imagine that the Baron Davies he’d met and with whom he’d negotiated would bother with the likes of toy boats—or with little girls. But he knew the man had a soft spot for his wife and daughter and could be quite sentimental on occasion, so perhaps toy boats weren’t completely out of the question.

“My father loves boats,” Gillian told him. “And ships. He owns a fleet of them. Beautiful sailing vessels that navigate the oceans of the world and dock in all sorts of exotic ports of call, bringing back silks and satins and cotton from Egypt and all sorts of spices—even tea and coffee.”

“I thought Lord Davies was a silk merchant.”

“Silk was the primary article of trade when he first began, but over the past few years, trade negotiations and troubles with China and Japan have caused him to expand his store of goods,” she explained.

Colin grinned. “Has he by any chance expanded his store of goods to include French brandy and other hard-to-get items of contraband? Items for which there is a great demand and a great deal of profit?”

Gillian was indignant “Papa would never risk his patent by engaging in smuggling contraband. His title means too much to him, and he’s proud to have attained it legally.”

Her answer surprised him. Almost everyone engaged in shipping did a bit of smuggling. It seemed unlikely that a man of Baron Davies’s wealth and means would refuse to take part in the profiteering. “There is a great deal of profit to be made.”

“Papa doesn’t need to smuggle. He stocked up on those items years ago, in anticipation of a war. He had warehouses full of French brandy and bolts of damask and lace he bought before the war. Because we cannot sell contraband items to the public, we still have an ample supply to meet our private demand.”

“You have a private demand for contraband items?” Gillian’s eyes sparkled. “You might say we have a royal patent as official and legal suppliers of French brandy and other hard-to-come-by items. And that while serving in his capacity as a royal patent holder, my father was elevated in status from Mr. Davies to Baron Davies.”

“You know a great deal about your father’s business,” Colin complimented her.

“I should,” she said. “I am my father’s only child and the heiress to everything he’s worked so hard to build. Until I reached the age of ten and three, I spent nearly every waking hour at the warehouse and on the docks learning the business. And every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, if the weather was good, Papa and I would take our toy boats to the Serpentine in the park and sail them.”

“What happened when you reached the age of ten and three?” Colin asked, as they entered the dining room.

Gillian blushed. “I blossomed into a young lady,” she said. “And my father thought it was too dangerous for me to roam the warehouses and the docks. Everything changed. There were no more Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at the park. From then on, I was educated by a governess at home, where I learned the ladylike arts of needlework and the piano, watercolors, languages, and how to run a household.”

“Sounds deadly dull by comparison,” Colin said.

Gillian laughed. “It was. And although we didn’t sail them on the Serpentine anymore, Papa and I continued to design and build toy boats. And he brought home the ships’ manifests for me to inventory so I could keep up with the business and my higher mathematical skills.”