Margaret McPhee - The Regency Season - Gentleman Rogues

Her father was not shirtless and glistening in sweat. The clothes he wore were new—a fine fitted tailcoat and matching breeches, pale shirt and stockings, dark neckcloth and waistcoat. His grey hair was cut short and tidy and combed neat. A new pair of spectacles was perched on the end of his nose. He was the very image of respectability, sitting there at a large desk in the middle of the room writing within a ledger. Like the gentleman he had once been. So many emotions welled up at the sight. Surprise and relief, pride and affection. She pressed her gloved fingers to her lips to control them.

‘Emma!’ He set the pen down in its wooden holder. Got to his feet, came to her and embraced her.

She heard the office door close behind the foreman.

‘Oh, Papa! How on earth...?’ She looked him up and down before gazing around them at the change in his environment.

‘It is a miracle, is it not?’ He laughed. ‘The very day that you left the company deemed they had a need of someone who could manage the accounts in-house rather than farm it out to an office on the other side of town. A money-saving venture they said. They seemed to know that I had something of an education and offered me the job. Fate has dealt us both good fortune, Emma.’

‘It seems that it has,’ she said quietly.

‘And the vast increase in wage means I can afford some very fine rooms not so far away in Burr Street, although I have not yet had a chance to write to Mrs Tadcaster so that she could inform you.’

‘And you are eating?’

‘Like a king. There are some splendid chop-houses in the vicinity.’ There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it.

Her smile broadened. It was so good to see him like this.

‘Now tell me all about how things are with you, my dear girl. I have been worrying over you.’

‘I accepted the position with Lady Lamerton so that you would not worry.’

He smiled. ‘Ah, it is true. But I confess that my worry is a great deal less than it used to be. And besides, it is a father’s duty to worry over his daughter.’

‘And a daughter’s duty to worry over her father.’

They laughed and talked some more. She told him that young Lord Lamerton was making enquiries as to Kit’s whereabouts. She told of her life with the Dowager Lady Lamerton, of what was the same in the ton and what had changed. But she made no mention of the newcomer Mr Stratham.

‘You see,’ said her father. ‘Am I not proved right? Accepting the position was the best thing to do.’

‘It was,’ she said, but she did not smile.

Her last view of him as she left was of him sitting at the big wooden desk, a contented expression on his face, as he dipped his pen into the inkwell and wrote entries into the large ruled ledger open before him.

Emma left the London Docks and headed west towards Mayfair, walking with a hundred other people across roads and along pavements. All around was the hurried tread of boots and shoes, the buzz of voices, and, louder than all, the clatter of horses’ shoes. But what she heard in her head as she walked were the words that Ned had spoken to her on a morning that seemed now to belong to another time and another world.

I used to work on the docks... I still know a few folk in the dockyard... I could have a word. See if there are any easier jobs going.

And she knew that it was neither fate that had rescued her father from hefting crates upon the warehouse floor, nor a miracle, but Ned Stratham.

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