Breaking the Rake's Rules

Kitt was thoughtful for a moment. Rutherford knew his banking vocabulary. That was reassuring. ‘What do we mean by property, exactly?’ Property, was a pretty wide term.

‘It means the obvious, of course; homes and farms cannot be used as security.’ Rutherford paused for a long moment and Bryn looked up, neatly inserting herself into the conversation.

‘But it also means the less obvious, too, doesn’t it, Father? That merchandise like rum or sugar can’t be used as security either?’ Kitt recognised immediately it wasn’t a question as much as a prompt.

‘It’s not really a question of collateral then, is it?’ Kitt surmised, flashing Bryn an inquisitive glance. ‘We’re to invest and hope there’s profit. If there isn’t, we’re unlucky. There’s no recouping of funds.’ There would be no collateral. The charter had just couched it in different terms.

‘Yes. Certainly, we can invest in the plantations, we just can’t expect anything in return beyond a piece of the profits,’ Rutherford said, regaining his confidence. ‘Still, there’s money to be made here.’

Kitt raised his eyebrows, encouraging the man to say more about what that money might be. Rum certainly, sugar and even tobacco in places were good cash crops. Then there was the merchandising end of things if a man acted quickly enough and knew when to get out. There was a boom going on currently, riding the wave of emancipation. Freed slaves meant more wage-earning consumers and that meant more demand for goods. Kitt knew that boom would not last, but for now it was spawning a retail layer that had originally been focused only on wholesale to large plantations.

‘There’s land, for starters,’ Rutherford offered, looking pleased with himself.

‘There’s some,’ Kitt said evenly, but he found the choice odd. It wouldn’t have been his first option. But a non-native Englishman would. A newcomer wouldn’t understand. ‘Most of the land in Barbados is already under cultivation.’ He’d been here for six years and knew first-hand there wasn’t much left to claim unless it was bought from a previous owner. It was something the freedmen were struggling with. They wanted to be their own farmers, but there wasn’t any land. This was an area where only time could teach a newcomer the realities of property ownership on an island where land was definitely a finite commodity.

Sneed entered to announce the next appointment was waiting. Rutherford nodded and turned to Kitt. ‘I will be assembling the board of directors over the next few weeks. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk further. I hear you’re a successful businessman in these parts. You come recommended. Your expertise of the area would be useful in determining the right investments for us.’

‘Quite possibly.’ Kitt rose and shook the man’s hand. The veiled invitation was progress enough for today. It confirmed he had not been ruled out. He also appreciated he wasn’t being asked to commit today. The bank was going to happen. It was already a fait accompli. That was assured. What wasn’t assured was the bank’s success. If the bank was going to do well, it would need someone knowledgeable and strong at its helm. A weaker man might easily be led astray and subsequently Rutherford, too.

Selby rose as well. ‘I was hoping I might have a private word with you before I go?’ he said to Rutherford, shooting a pointed look in Kitt’s direction. In general, Selby didn’t like him. He was too reckless for the young man’s more conservative tastes. A plainer plea for privacy could not have been made. Kitt might have been offended over the dismissal if it hadn’t suited his purposes.

Kitt glanced over at Bryn. ‘Perhaps you could show me the gardens? You mentioned them last night and I’m eager to see them.’ He turned towards Rutherford. ‘If it’s all right with you, of course?’

Rutherford beamed and nodded. ‘Absolutely. Bryn dear, show our guest the gardens. I didn’t know you were a botanist, Captain?’

Kitt gave a short nod of his head. ‘I’m a man of diverse interests, Mr Rutherford.’ He offered Bryn his arm, feeling a smug sense of satisfaction at the disapproving frown on Selby’s face. It served him right for coming early and then asking for a private audience on top of that. ‘Shall we, Miss Rutherford? I want to see the trellis you’ve told me so much about. It’s a climbing trellis, if I remember correctly?’

Chapter Four (#ulink_05bde48c-6681-5363-ab5e-df396897b7a6)

‘You’re a wicked man to bring up the incident in such company,’ Bryn scolded him as soon as they stepped outside. She wasn’t truly upset with him, at least not about the potential for exposure anyway. She’d reasoned away those concerns last night. He had nothing to gain but an unwanted wife from telling.

Kitt merely grinned. ‘Harmless fun only, I assure you. It means nothing to anyone but us.’ Drat him, he was enjoying teasing her and that grin of his said he wasn’t done yet. ‘But you, miss, are another story entirely. You knew you would be at the meeting. I feel quite taken advantage of.’ He feigned hurt, then added with a wink, ‘I can’t let you have all the surprises.’

Bryn gave him a coy smile to indicate she understood his game. He no more liked losing the upper hand than she did. There was safety in having control. Control meant protection against the unexpected. ‘Ah, it’s to be retribution then?’ She couldn’t resist teasing him in return. His humour was infectious, even if she needed to remember it was deceiving. It would be too easy to forget that his good-natured response veiled something more, as did her own clever answers. They were both after the same thing—to take the other’s measure. What was fact and what was fiction when it came to the faces they showed society?

Bryn slanted him a sideways look as they walked. If she asked, would he give her the answer she wanted? What had he been doing in this same garden yesterday under significantly different circumstances? Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been an uninvited intruder. Today, he was received as a highly sought guest, a man whose favour her father would do well to curry. ‘It hardly seems fair for you to hold me accountable for such a small thing when you were the one who invaded my balcony. If we’re keeping a tally of surprises, you seem well ahead of me in that regard.’

Kitt stopped and turned towards her, his free hand covering hers where it rested on his sleeve. The simple gesture, something countless gentlemen had done on countless walks before, made her keenly sensitive to the intimacy of bare skin on bare skin. It was his eyes that made it different, how they followed his gesture, forcing her gaze to do the same until they rested on the point where his hand met hers. ‘Surprises or secrets, Bryn?’

His voice was a low rumble, his eyes lifting briefly to hers as he said her name. ‘I find the difference between the two to be slim indeed.’ This was how sin started, with a sharp stab of awareness igniting between them over the intimate caress of a name. Oh, he did not play fair! She’d meant to be interrogating him and here he was flirting with her, although flirting was not nearly a strong enough word for what he was doing.

‘Secrets?’ Bryn feigned ignorance of his intent.

‘Don’t play coy with me, I much prefer your bold mouth.’ Kitt’s gaze lingered on her lips. He was a master indeed at conjuring seduction out of thin air if he could turn the slightest of gestures into something more.

‘What were you doing in that meeting?’ It was said with the quality of a caress, but no less lethal for its intimacy. All seductions had their price.

‘What were you doing on my balcony?’ Bryn challenged in a breathy whisper. Now that they’d come to the crux of the conversation, the one subject they’d been dancing around, it was hard to concentrate. Most of her mind was focused on the fact they were only inches apart, inches from another kiss, from tasting the boldness of their mouths as he so bluntly put it. Her body knew it, hungered for it after only one taste.

Anticipation hummed through her, but Bryn steeled her resolve. Had he no sense of caution? Had she? Sneed could be coming out with lemonade this very minute. Maybe. The lady in her wouldn’t risk it, but the adventurer would. Sneed would be terribly busy this afternoon. The odds of getting away with a stolen kiss beneath the palms were probably in her favour...

Stop it! She had to quit thinking like this, although Kitt Sherard clearly thought like this on a very regular basis if the episode yesterday was anything to go on. Bryn took mental hold of herself: Make him accountable.Answers before kisses. Your father’s business depends on it. ‘What I was doing by the window is simple. The light is best by the window—’ Bryn began.

‘For writing? You were taking notes,’ he interrupted, his accusation implied in his tone. Kitt stopped his tracing, his hand closing over her wrist in a harsh grip. His blue eyes were harder now, their seductiveness gone. ‘You can fool Selby, but not me. I know what I saw. You were there for a purpose.’

‘It hardly matters,’ Bryn answered sharply. She did not have to stand here and validate her presence at that meeting to this man she barely knew just because he could turn her insides to mush and ruin any hopes of logical thought. All things considered, she was holding her ground well.

Kitt shrugged, his grip relaxing on her wrist. He gave her a slow smile. It was not a pleasant smile, it was a warning. Somewhere, she’d made a mistake and he was about to capitalise on it. ‘Perhaps you’re right and it hardly matters. What happened on the balcony stays on the balcony, after all.’

Bryn saw the trap too late. She’d walked right into it for all her careful play up until now. He was casting her as the hypocrite. How else could she argue the balcony mattered, but her presence at the meeting did not? There was nothing for it but to answer. She met his gaze, giving no sign of having contradicted herself. ‘My father needs reliable men in this venture.’

‘Men like James Selby?’ Kitt put in with an arch of his blond brow. ‘Selby wouldn’t know an opportunity if it jumped up and bit him in the arse.’

‘And you would?’ Bryn countered sharply, only to receive one of his disarming grins.

‘Nothing bites me in the arse, princess, opportunity or otherwise.’

His candour made her blush. Her mind had run right down that rather provocative path created by his words, just as it had last night at the the thought of his bath, as he’d likely intended. ‘I’m not worried about the balcony,’ Bryn said staunchly, keeping an eye on the bright coral hibiscus across the yard to maintain her composure. It was far less distracting than the man beside her. ‘I want to know because you will be doing business with my father. That worries me more than a few stolen kisses. If he is to trust you, he needs to know you.’ And what about her? Could she trust him?

The question was merely one of many which had plagued her last night long after she’d returned from the Crenshaws’. What sort of man climbed balconies in sweat-streaked shirts and then turned up in expensive evening clothes a few hours later at an exclusive soirée, only to sit down at the piano and entertain the ladies as if he had manners.

‘Ah, perhaps this is more about you than it is about your father,’ Kitt said shrewdly. ‘You needn’t worry, I won’t blackmail you with the balcony.’

‘Of course not,’ Bryn retorted. ‘You’d be doing nothing more than compromising yourself into a marriage if my father found out and that can hardly be what a man like you wants.’

His eyes narrowed, the air about them crackling with tension. ‘A man like me?’ He became positively lethal in those moments. She’d trodden on dangerous ground with her hot words. ‘What do you know about men like me?’

She held her ground. ‘Enough to know you’re not the marrying kind.’ This had become a perilous verbal pas de deux. What had started as a probe into the nature of his business character had rapidly become personal.

‘I assume you mean one without a moral code, who takes what he wants without thought for the consequences, someone who serves only himself?’ He was riveting like this, a sleek, predatory animal, stalking her with his eyes. No gentleman had ever behaved thusly with her. They were all too busy pandering to her, to her fortune.

His hand reached up to cup her jaw, the pad of his thumb stroking the fullness of her lower lip with a hint of roughness to match his words. ‘Your logic fails you, if you believe there’s nothing to fear from a “man like me”.’

‘You don’t frighten me.’ Far from it. He excited her. Bryn swallowed hard, more aroused than insulted at being called into account for her words.

‘Maybe I should.’ His voice was a low rumble, part-seduction, part-intimidation. She couldn’t decide which. ‘I would think my sort would be extraordinarily interested in a woman like you: beautiful, wealthy, well positioned socially, kisses like the naughtiest of angels.’ He bent close, close enough to put his mouth to her ear, for his lips to brush the shell of it. ‘Princess, I am the epitome of everything you’ve been warned about.’

All she had to do was make the smallest of movements to fall into him and whatever he was offering. She leaned towards him, into him, but too late.

Kitt stepped back, releasing her. ‘Now that’s settled, if you’ll excuse me? I have another appointment.’

A more cautious woman would retreat the field and admit defeat, but not Bryn. She was determined to not let him get away without an answer. A man who wouldn’t give one was definitely hiding something. ‘You’re really not going to tell me?’ She gave him a last chance to confess. ‘About the balcony?’

He swept her a bow, eyes full of mischief. ‘You have my permission to let your imagination run free.’

She would not let him get away with boyish charm after the rather adult heat of the previous moments. Bryn fixed him with a hard stare. ‘I can imagine quite a lot of reasons, none of them good.’ Perhaps if he thought she would imagine the worst, he’d rush to amend that image. Having a poor impression of him could hardly be what he wanted when a position on the bank board was on the line. She was not naive. She knew what sort of men came to the Caribbean: adventurers, men who were down on their luck, men who wanted to make new lives. Certainly there were a few like James Selby who was here for decent opportunities as a merchant, but he was not the norm.

Kitt gave her a sly smile. ‘Then I leave you with this: you’re a smart woman. You already know men who scale balconies are up to no good. You don’t need me to tell you that.’