“It is not for let.”
John frowned. “But the sign said—”
The gentleman tapped the placard. “For sale. I’m not interested in leasing. I need the blunt now. We can draw up the papers today if you can pay…” He named an astronomical sum.
John’s head grew dizzy. Even if he used every penny he’d socketed away over the past decade, he could barely scrape together half of that number.
“What about…payments?” he tried weakly.
“I accept payments,” said the gentleman. “One payment. In a lump sum.”
John nodded and backed out of the doorway. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
“Everyone does.” The gentleman shut the door in John’s face and turned the key.
John took another step backwards for a better view.
This was the tea shop of his dreams. Look how perfect it was! The windows, where he would hang the specials of the day. The tables, which he would dress in white linen with crisp green napkins. The kitchen, which he would stock with the finest ingredients, organized by size and shape and function so that he could put every item on the menu together blindfolded.
John was so busy imagining all the ways he could make his tea room successful and indestructible, the rest of Brighton disappeared around him. All he could see was his own future, bright and clear and joyful.
He didn’t register the runaway carriage bearing down on him until it was too late.
Chapter 2
Miss Allegra Brown sat squished between her two younger cousins in a seat meant for two, perched high atop a fancy phaeton along the main shopping thoroughfare in Brighton.
Or possibly it was Allegra who was squishing Portia and Dorcas, rather than the other way round. She was the larger of the three and seated in the middle, which ought to give the delicate duo more comfort, were it not for the unsteady way the horses jerked the phaeton this way and that.
It was not the horses’ fault.
Her Uncle Townsend had determined it was time for his daughters to learn how to drive, and had instructed Allegra to teach them, as she had taught almost every other subject contained in their pretty heads.
Allegra did not know how to drive.
Luckily, clearer heads prevailed—specifically, that of ever-logical, eighteen-year-old Dorcas—and one of Uncle’s grooms had done the teaching. It was now Allegra’s job to ensure her cousins were seen being young and pretty and fashionable. Portia had been out an entire year without catching a husband, if you can imagine the embarrassment. Nineteen years old! Her younger sister out now, too! Now there were two of them to marry off. Chop-chop, Allegra. Your post as chaperone isn’t meant to last the rest of your life.
Technically, Allegra did not have a post at all.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” she asked her cousins.
Portia’s big blue eyes went wide with romantic zeal. “Something your darling Captain L’Amour once said?”
“Indeed.”
Captain Hamish L’Amour was Allegra’s regrettably absent long-term suitor, who was perfect in every way: dashing, doting, strong, sensitive, smitten, clever, adventurous, accomplished, and one hundred percent fictitious.
“My darling captain once regaled me with the time he had to row a frigate past a pirate armada—” Did one row a frigate? Did pirates have armadas? Allegra had no idea, but more importantly, neither did her cousins. “—and a violent storm pitched the sea so that the boats rocked on the waves, much like we are doing atop this phaeton.”
Portia gasped in horror. “Did he get away safely?”
“Of course he got away,” Dorcas snapped. “How would he tell the tale, if he didn’t survive?”
“I said ‘safely,’” her sister protested. “Perhaps that is how he lost his leg.”
They both turned to her eagerly.
Allegra’s imaginary suitor had surrendered a limb in the course of a valiant adventure, but as she had not yet decided what that valiant adventure might be, she staved off her cousins’ questions with the sorrowful recrimination that they knew very well Captain L’Amour had requested his betrothed never to tell that story, lest danger return to their shores.
“He already wore a false leg by that time,” she told her cousins. “And it was only due to his extraordinary skill at the wheel—” Or was it called the helm? “—that he was able to thread through those pitching ships and their roaring cannons to reach safety on the other side.”
Portia sighed wistfully. “I hope I marry a Navy man.”
“Captain L’Amour is a privateer,” Dorcas reminded her.
“Allegra’s captain was a sailor for the Crown before he became a privateer, and besides, he’s already spoken for, isn’t he?” Portia replied. “I can marry a Navy man if I like.”
“If one offers for you,” Dorcas corrected. “The war is over, if you haven’t heard. They’re not stationed here any longer.”
“Well, the men haven’t disappeared, have they? They’re still around somewhere. There must be some in Brighton.” Portia stuck out her lower lip. “It is the absolute worst luck for the war to end seventeen months before my come-out.”
“That is a ghoulish thing to say,” Allegra informed her. “And you are absolutely right. My darling Captain L’Amour would never have caught my eye if it weren’t for his dashing officer’s regimentals.”
“I thought it was the romantic scar upon his face that caught your eye,” Dorcas said.
“I can drool at two things at once,” Allegra said primly.
“Oh, many more than that,” Portia gushed. “You mentioned his chiseled jaw…his wide shoulders…his strong chest…his thick arms…and thighs like…tree trunks, was it?”
“That was before he lost his leg,” Dorcas answered. “Now he has perfectly normal man-thighs.”
“Trees come in every shape and size,” Portia shot back. “Now he’s simply more…dogwood than oak. Both types have perfectly respectable trunks.”
“Enough about Captain L’Amour’s trunk,” Allegra said. “Mind the reins, if you would, please. I shouldn’t like him to find me mangled on the side of the road.”
“He would still love you,” Portia said staunchly. “Even if you had to replace every part of your body with a wooden prosthesis.”
“What?” Dorcas sputtered. “That doesn’t even make sense. How is she supposed to think with a wooden brain?”
“Father says gentlemen do not want a woman who thinks,” Portia informed her.
“Then I don’t understand how you’re still unmarried,” Dorcas muttered. She turned to Allegra. “Tell us more about the old days. What were streets like without gas lighting?”
Portia clapped her hands together. “Did you have to take a donkey to your come-out?”
“She didn’t have a come-out,” Dorcas reminded her. “She was our governess at the time, remember?”
“Not really,” Portia admitted. “I didn’t pay much attention to our lessons, and I’m dreadful with dates. What must life have been like in London before the French Revolution?”