He shrugged. “So long as your dog is sufficiently trained and does not prove to be a distraction, I see no problem with that.”
“Oh.” She broke out in a smile. “Perfect. Then I accept your offer of employment.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Mrs. Smith. We haven’t even spoken about salary yet.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll recompense me fairly.”
“I—Mrs. Smith. Negotiate before you leave, while you still have options. It gives me too much power otherwise.”
“Does it?” She shrugged. “Oh well.”
“Oh well,” he repeated, thunderstruck. “Oh well?”
“I need to go get my trunk. I have, what, an hour and a half to be back here?”
“Yes,” he said. “So you should take fifteen minutes to discuss whether you will receive enough money to meet your needs.”
She sighed and shook her head, as if it were an enormous imposition. “Very well. What are you offering?”
God. He really could offer her anything. For a moment, frugality warred with fairness. But if she were as good as he believed, it wouldn’t do to undervalue her.
“Fifty Spanish dollars a year,” he said.
She made a face. “That’s far too much. But I suppose that’s your lookout. I accept.”
“It’s a good thing I’m hiring you for code,” Grayson said in bafflement, “not for your bargaining skills. At least negotiate me up by five dollars. One day you’ll realize how badly I’m underpaying you, and you’ll regret this.”
Her mouth set mulishly. “Captain Hunter, when Mrs. Flappert found out I didn’t want to marry her son, she said, and I quote, ‘I didn’t know I would have to be considering the feelings of a little Chinese girl.’”
Grayson winced.
She nodded at him. “Precisely so. You just spent fifteen minutes treating my feelings as if they mattered.” The smile she gave him was a blast of pure sunshine. She reached out and patted his shoulder. “Keep your five dollars.”
Chapter Nine
“So.” One single word from his cousin, laden with an entire paragraph.
Grayson watched Mrs. Smith go down the ladder—God, slipping and scarcely catching herself before biting back something that looked like laughter. He should have had someone help her.
“So.” Grayson gave a nod in answer.
“You got her.”
“Yes.”
“You got her to make a telegraphic code for Chinese characters.”
“Yes.” Grayson found himself smiling, which made absolutely no sense.
Zed nodded thoughtfully. “Did you mention to her that the last telegraphic expert you hired said what you wanted was not possible?”
“So-called telegraphic expert.” He shrugged. “If I listened to the people who said this was all impossible, we’d never have started. And now we’re halfway there. Telling me it’s impossible just makes me all the more ornery. When we started talking about a cable over the Pacific, they said it couldn’t be done.”
“And lo.” Zed grinned at him. “You haven’t done it yet.”
“No, but all the things they said—about the ocean being too wide and so forth—”
“Didn’t do any good until Japan decided to modernize. If you didn’t have a northwest base—”
Grayson just gave Zed a cocky smile. “That was all according to our plan. The transpacific cable was never impossible.” He looked at Zed. “And I’m going to do it.”
Zed clapped his shoulders. “Any more ornery and you’d turn into a mule. Which would be extremely inconvenient since this is my ship and there’s no room for livestock.”
“Ah.” Grayson held up a finger. “Thank you for the reminder. Permission to bring livestock aboard?”
“Grayson, what are you up to?”
“Nothing much.” He bit back a smile. “Very small livestock. Extremely manageable. You know Fuzhou, do you not?”
“Like the back of my hand.”
“Do you know the Flemings?”
“At the mercantile? They’re mostly reasonable. Why? Looking for shaving cream?” Zed reached out and rubbed the stubble on Grayson’s chin. “We’re going to have a woman on board. You might want to spruce yourself up a little for the company.”
Grayson elbowed him away. “I wouldn’t dare. If I get any more attractive, we’re going to have people combust around here. It’s a messy process, combustion. Very painful to clean up, what with the burn marks everywhere. I’d never burden your crew with that sort of thing. No, I’m afraid my good looks will just have to remain on the bearable side of smoldering. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve livestock to fetch before the tide comes in.”
Zed just shook his head. “You’re the worst cousin. I don’t know why I put up with you.”
Amelia had hired a cart to take her trunk to the docks. She preceded it up the hill to her home on foot. The clopping of hooves and the creaking of wheels behind her beat the time for her pace—swift, she had to be swift. If she outran the cart, maybe she’d earn enough time to explain her imminent departure.
By the time she reached home—was it even home anymore?—she was a mess. Her hair fell out of her bun, sweat trickled down her forehead, and her mind was in absolute turmoil.
She dashed through the door only to find the trunk Amelia had packed the previous night immediately inside. Her mother stood next to it, grimly tapping her foot.
“Oh.” Amelia grimaced. “Mother. Good…afternoon?”
“Good afternoon, Amelia. I see you have packed all your things. Did you change your mind? Are you going with Mrs. Flappert after all?”
“To marry the man I’ve never met?” Amelia made a face. “No. I have accepted Captain Hunter’s offer of employment.”
Her mother’s eye twitched. Her lips pressed together in disapproval. “And what, precisely, does Captain Hunter want with you? Has he explained your duties in detail?”
Amelia found herself flushing. “You would find it extremely boring, I assure you. He has no interest in me like that.”
But if he did want her like that—no, ridiculous, now was hardly the time to get distracted by a daydream.
“Boring. So boring you didn’t mention to me that you were contemplating leaving at any point yesterday? So boring you could not relate to me the substance of the offer?”
“I already told you everything relevant. I will be working on a Chinese telegraphic code.”
Her mother looked skeptical.
“And we only just finished salary negotiations this afternoon,” Amelia tacked on, thanking Captain Hunter in retrospect for giving her this very valuable piece of ammunition. Negotiations sounded very adult, very responsible.
“And you believed he wanted you for that? Amelia, millions of people speak Chinese better than you do.”
It was true. They did. She felt her ears burn. “Yes, but I have been working on a similar code for the written Chinese language. He’s seen the particulars.”