More Than Willing Read online

  “The title to your home.”

  His father paused and Gray fought the clenching in his chest.

  “Mayfair Manor.”

  His knees buckled and he reached for the nearest piece of furniture to steady himself. “Damn you! Damn you to hell and back.”

  “It’s yours. It was your mother’s and—”

  “My mother’s dead!”

  “But you’re not!” The earl took a step closer to his son. “Even though you may wish it, you did not die that night.”

  Gray could barely breathe. He pushed himself away from the chair and took a step to the other side of the room. He wanted to escape but there was no place to run.

  “I will cover the debts you’ve accumulated to date but not one pound more.” His father’s voice brought him back to reality.

  Gray forced a shaky smile. “Have you finally decided to wash your hands of me, Father?”

  The Earl of Camden’s reaction was minute but Gray knew his words scored a hit.

  “Contrary to what you think, son, I haven’t washed my hands of you. I’ve simply admitted defeat in my efforts to reach you.”

  “You want me to believe you’re doing this for my own good?”

  “You’ll believe what you want. You always have.”

  The Earl of Camden gave a slow shake of his head then walked to the door with his back straight and his shoulders rigid. “You have a place to live and the means to support yourself. Do with it what you will.”

  “You expect me to live at Mayfair?”

  “I expect you to find the courage to face what happened there.”

  Gray’s blood turned to ice. “You can’t bring yourself to forgive me, can you?” he said when his father reached the door.

  The earl stopped with his hand on the knob. For a long time Gray didn’t think his father intended to answer him, then he turned slowly around and locked his gaze with Gray’s.

  “It’s not my forgiveness you need,” he said with another slow shake of his head. “It’s your own.”

  Gray glared at his father’s back as he walked from the room and stared at the open doorway. He heard the front door open and close and knew Briggs had shown his father from the house.

  He still stood in the same spot when Briggs returned. Without a word the butler closed the door and left him alone.

  His father had given him Mayfair Manor. If what he’d done hadn’t been so cruel it might have been amusing, but there was nothing humorous about giving him the place that had destroyed his life.

  No, he hadn’t left him with a home. And Gray knew nothing about running a brewery. His father cut him off without a care as to how he would make his way in the world. But was that any more than he deserved?

  Gray walked to the small table and picked up the full decanter of whiskey. He didn’t bother pouring any into his glass but lifted the near-full bottle and took a long swallow.

  His head pounded and a painful weight settled inside his chest. He took another swallow, then carried the bottle to one of the overstuffed chairs that flanked the fireplace and sat down. He didn’t just want to get drunk. He needed to get drunk.

  An alcoholic haze was the only way he’d face the demons that hovered just beyond his consciousness, waiting to torment him.

  Chapter Two

  November 16, 1856

  Maggie Bradford stole down the back stairway of Bradford House, hoping no one would stop her and make her later than she was already. She threw the hood of her warm woolen cloak over her head and took a deep breath in readiness to step out into the chilly fall air. The weather had turned wintry sometime during the night and a light skiff of clear, clean snow blanketed the ground.

  She loved the winters and even though she knew the snow wasn’t here to stay, she was glad for this fleeting glimpse of what was to come. Surely by the time spring arrived, things wouldn’t seem so bleak.

  She pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders and reached for the handle.

  “Maggie?” a soft voice whispered from behind her as if the owner didn’t want to be overheard.

  She stopped with her hand on the latch and turned around.

  Great-Aunt Hester scurried toward her, her hands pumping with each rushed step she took and her cheeks flushed as if she’d run the length of Bradford House to get here.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Your cousin’s footman is here with a message for you.”

  “At this hour?” She chastised herself because she’d laid awake nearly all night, then fallen asleep just when she should have risen. “Blast,” she hissed, using a word she’d heard one of the brewery workers use when a cask had fallen on his foot. “What does he want?”

  “He came with a message from your cousin Lyman. He wants permission to call on you later this afternoon.” Aunt Hester stopped and darted Maggie a frantic look. “You don’t think he knows, do you?” Aunt Hester’s eyes grew large as saucers. Her youthful face seemed to age, and the confident manner in which she carried herself faltered. Maggie hurried to reassure her.

  “No. Cousin Lyman doesn’t know anything. He’s just making a pest of himself. Since moving into Grange House he wants to renew an acquaintance he says is far too remote. His land borders ours and he’s being neighborly.”

  “Oh, do be careful, Margaret. He’s very persistent.”

  She smiled. “He knows he’s in line to inherit when father dies and has come to drool over the estate he knows will be his one day.”

  “But if he finds out…”

  Maggie’s smile faded and she felt the blood rush from her head. She didn’t need this right now. She had other more important things to worry about. Their winter brewing had just gotten under way and she couldn’t afford to lose one pound of profit. Not if she wanted to secure futures for Felicity and Charlotte.

  “Cousin Lyman doesn’t know anything. He can’t.”

  “But if he did know something.”

  Maggie brushed off her aunt’s warning with a wave of her hand. “The only threat cousin Lyman presents is that he’s evaluating whether or not I’d make a suitable wife.”

  Aunt Hester’s eyes opened wider in surprise. “Would you consider marrying him?”

  “Of course not. You more than anyone know I have no intention of ever marrying.”

  Her aunt’s question surprised her. Marriage wasn’t a possibility. She wasn’t like Felicity and Charlotte. They needed someone to take care of them. She didn’t.

  “Where did you show him?”

  “I put him in the yellow room to wait for you.”

  Maggie nodded. “Give me at least a half an hour, then send him to the brewery.”

  “You intend to speak with him there?”

  “I have no intention of speaking with him anywhere,” she said into the look of incredulity on her aunt’s face. “I intend to let him wait for me in a room well supplied with a large amount of our finest ale.”

  Aunt Hester clasped her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Your father was such a fool. He should have appointed you the brewery overseer.”

  “You know that wasn’t possible. This is a man’s world. Brewery workers aren’t ready to take orders from a woman.”

  “Your mama said the same thing, yet she ran the brewery from the day she married your father until the day she died.”

  “But all the orders came through Papa and Henry Tibbles.”

  Aunt Hester’s eyes filled with sadness like they always did when they spoke of Maggie’s father.

  “Your mama had a gift for making the right decisions, just like you do. The brewery showed a profit every year and would have shown more if only things had been different.”

  “But they weren’t. And no matter what Mother did, Father couldn’t be content here.”

  “Your papa was a wonderful man when your mama first met him,” Aunt Hester said. “All of Society thought the sun rose and set in him. If only drinking and gambling hadn’t become so important to him.”

  “I
know,” Maggie said, pretending she understood.

  “But that’s behind us now,” Aunt Hester said. “The brewery is bound to show a profit this year.”

  “It has to,” Maggie whispered as her aunt patted her hand.

  “It will. Even though I don’t care for Mr. Murdock personally, I know he was an excellent choice to oversee the running of the brewery.”

  She pulled her thoughts away from the uncertainty of their situation and caught her aunt’s gaze with a smile. “You just have a negative impression of him because he asked you to dance with him at the winter ball and he didn’t give you a chance to refuse.”

  Aunt Hester harrumphed with an unladylike snort. “The man overstepped his bounds. I am the dowager Countess of Martinase and no matter his position, he’s still a common brewer.”

  “His second cousin is Viscount Aldren and you know it.”

  “But Mr. Murdock is not titled.”

  Maggie laughed. “Your nose is threatening to get lost in the clouds, Aunt Hester.”

  “It’s just that the nerve of him to even ask me to dance…”

  “Did you ever stop to think Mr. Murdock may like you?”

  Aunt Hester gave another unladylike harrumph that made Maggie chuckle. But her chuckle quickly faded when she thought again of her cousin’s footman waiting upstairs and the message he’d been sent to deliver. “Give me half an hour then send cousin Lyman’s footman to the brewery.”

  “Very well, but be careful, girl. If Lyman takes after his father, there’s a streak in him that bears watching.”

  “He doesn’t,” she said, hoping that were true. Even her father admitted that the world was a better place after his cousin had died in a hunting accident.

  “You can’t know that. He’s only just moved here.”

  “I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.” Maggie turned again to reach for the latch. “Half an hour,” she reminded her aunt then walked out the door and to the gate in the garden wall that opened onto the street.

  Leaving Bradford House from the side exit was the shortest route to the brewery. She’d taken this path nearly every day since she was old enough to walk. Her earliest memories were of walking with her mother as they crossed the busy street while wagons heaped with bags of barley turned into the brewery. It always stirred an excitement she still felt deep inside her as she listened to the loud noise of the machines crushing the malt grains into coarse powder.

  She hurried her footsteps as the same anticipation rushed her blood through her veins. When Bradford House was no longer hers she’d have to find lodging somewhere on the four acres that the brewery encompassed. But she’d never give up one foot of it. The place was too much a part of her.

  It didn’t matter that she was a female. She had the same passion for the brewery as her mother, the same gift for running the operation as her mother. Only she would never sit back like her mother and let a man take credit for her ideas.

  When her sisters were finally settled and she was free from any obligations, she intended to take her place as the owner of Bradford Brewery. And she wouldn’t need a husband to hide behind. She wouldn’t need a man to mask the responsibilities that were rightfully hers – mere woman that she was.

  She thought of the men who’d shown an interest in her during the two London Seasons her father had forced her to endure. Every one of them had been eager to marry her for her father’s brewery, and every one of them would have acted just as eager to stand up and claim as their own every improvement she made that deepened their pockets. Well, she wouldn’t allow it. Her mother made that mistake and it had destroyed everything, including the man she loved.

  She crossed the street that separated Bradford Estate from the brewery and pushed open a heavy wooden side door. The recording offices were in the front of the brewery and her father’s private office was in the back. The room she used was next to her father’s, the same one her mother had used. Sometimes when she walked through the door, she expected to see her mother working behind the desk. But that was only her active imagination, and wishful thinking.

  Even though eager to get busy on the mountain of paperwork she knew waited for her, out of habit, she’d take a tour of the brewery and check on the brewing process before she locked herself in her office for the day.

  She turned the knob and opened the accounting room door. Henry Tibbles kept the books for the brewery and had been with them as long as Maggie remembered. Her mother had always said Henry was indispensable, that she didn’t know how they’d ever get along when Tibbles retired. But hopefully that wouldn’t be for a long time. Although Tibbles’s hair had thinned and was grayer than the muddy brown it used to be, he was still as precise as ever, and not one pound was spent that he didn’t know about.

  “Good morning, Miss Bradford,” Henry said looking up from the ledgers he worked on.

  “Good morning, Henry. Have you seen Mr. Murdock?”

  “He came a few minutes ago looking for you.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “He said to tell you he’d be in the Mash Room.”

  She hung her cloak on a hook in a small clothes closet then placed her bonnet on the shelf above it. To enter the brewery bareheaded would surprise anyone who didn’t know her, but she’d learned long ago that wearing anything with ribbons and frills was not only foolish but dangerous. She put on the long, dark apron that had been her mother’s before it became her own daily uniform, then closed the closet and reached for the door.

  “Have you heard from your father?” Henry asked, dipping his pen into the ink well.

  Maggie turned with a smile on her face. “Yes, I received a letter by post yesterday afternoon. He’s still in France and was going to look at a new variety of barley he’d heard about. It’s supposed to add a rich spicy aroma different from our signature blend.”

  “Will he be home soon, then?”

  Maggie knew the brewery workers expected her father to return shortly. The winter brewing season had started and Harold Bradford was always there from beginning to end. This year was different, though. “I thought he would, but he mentioned going to Italy to look at a new brewery being built just outside Venice.”

  “I see,” Henry said with a question in his voice.

  “I’m sure he’ll return soon,” Maggie said to reassure the worker, then turned toward the door. She stopped. “A footman will be here looking for me in a few minutes. Please show him to my office and supply him with a decanter of our best ale.”

  “Our best?”

  “Yes, our best. And plenty of it.”

  A frown covered Henry’s face. “Of course, Miss Bradford.”

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  She quit the room before he could see how uncomfortable his questions made her. Or before he had time to ask a question that indicated he knew too much.

  Before she turned down the long hallway that led to her office, she climbed the steep stairs to the second level and stepped out onto the open wooden balcony that ran along all three sides of the U-shaped brewery compound. From this level she could watch the wagons below bring in barley and huge amounts of coal. She could look across the brewery yard and see the coopers repair the old casks and assemble new, and follow the line of buildings and watch the draymen ready their wagons for deliveries. Bradford Brewery was a hive of activity with nearly one hundred workmen doing the various tasks that brewing a new batch of ale demanded.

  Maggie pushed away from the railing and walked past the Mash Room where the grist, or crushed barley, was heated in the mash-tuns. She stopped in front of the hop boil area and looked around her.

  The delicate hops were stored on the level above her in an area nearly two hundred feet long by fifty feet wide, and kept dark and dry so that bright sunshine couldn’t spoil the potency of the grain.

  With a smile, she remembered sneaking up there as a child and breathing in the wonderful fragrances; some so bitter they stole her breath, some so spicy they made he
r sneeze, and some with the same citrusy aroma as the oranges she and her sisters found in their stockings every Christmas. Every special blend of hops had been perfected to add just the right amount of flavor and aroma.

  Maggie sighed as she let her gaze roam over everything that would one day be hers. She loved it here. Loved everything about the brewery and the magic that happened during the winter months when a new batch of ale was produced.

  A swelling of pride pressed against her chest and she couldn’t stop the smile that lifted the corners of her mouth. Her future was here. She would always be able to support herself with the brewery profits, and as soon as the brewing season was over, she’d finally have enough money to take Felicity and Charlotte to London for their Season. With Felicity’s beauty and sweet personality she was guaranteed to find a husband to love her and protect her from anyone who would take advantage of her giving nature.

  Charlotte would be a little more difficult, not because she wasn’t a beauty – she was. But unlike Felicity, books had always been more important to her than social events. With the profits from this year’s season, Maggie would provide Charlotte with a dowry to attract just the right man who’d recognize her superb intelligence and admire her insatiable curiosity.

  Finding husbands for both Felicity and Charlotte was of the utmost importance. Neither of her sisters was suited to living their lives alone. Neither of them would be content to live their lives here in the country. She was. She’d discovered that fact during her first Season, when of the scores of men who’d courted her, not one of them stirred even the slightest passion. Not one of them was the kind of man to whom she could hand over the brewery she knew her father had left her in his will. Not one was someone she could trust to manage the brewery with the same standard of excellence for which her family was known.

  Content with the path she’d chosen for herself and her sisters, Maggie continued along the second-level walkway. Movement below stopped her and she looked down.

  Several of the brewery workers walked out from an exit on the lower level. When they reached a spot where they were far enough from the building to see the roof clearly, they turned and stared up.