Not Quite Married by Betina Krahn Read Free Book Online

wrenched free of his father’s grip.
    “My right. My future.”
    “Not anymore, it isn’t.” For a moment that declaration crackled on the air between them. “If your brother Edward must take up your title, then he will take up your future as well.”
    The decision was made. It would take a while for Aaron to appreciate the irony in the fact that it was his father who actually voiced his ultimate and final answer. He was quaking so with anger, that all he could do was storm out the door. Behind him his father spewed impotent fury.
    “Worthless . . . ungrateful wretch! You’ll regret this!”
    The night was cool and the paving stones were wet from a recent rain. Aaron paused in the middle of the square surrounded by fashionable new London town homes and looked back at the doors that had slammed shut behind him. They would not reopen.

    What had just been done, would never be undone.
    Battling the turbulence raging in him, he struck off on the first street leading east, toward the docks. There was only one place for him to go now, only one place he wanted to be.
    When he reached the shipyards, he made his way past several dry docks to the berth where his ship was under construction. He stood looking down the long, gently curved keel. The sight of that substantial spine and those long, graceful ribs drained some of the anger and frustration from him. This was what he wanted . . . to flesh out these timber bones with strakes and decking and rigging
    . . . like Ezekiel of yore, to witness the fleshing of dry bones into something living. Wanted it so badly that he ached.
    Climbing the scaffolding, he slipped inside the skeletal structure and walked its length, running his hands up and down the exquisitely curved and planed ribs. In his mind’s eye he could see how she would look finished . . . her towering masts, her painted strakes, her polished railings. He could almost smell the oiled teak of the decking and the must of the new canvas sails.
    His breath caught as he inhaled, seeking a trace of those half-realized scents.
    He would find another way to get the money he needed. Five thousand pounds was a considerable sum, but not exactly a fortune. Perhaps if he went to the courts . . . Most of London’s magistrates belonged to his father’s damnable club. He might try borrowing. But his father raced horses and went shooting with most of London’s bankers. He could sell something—everything.
    He had a bit of silver, a number of fine garments, a coach and a string of horses. But then, how could he convince others to invest in his new ship design if it appeared to have paupered him?
    Anger and loss swelled in him, blocking out all further thought for the moment. He whirled and headed for the nearest tavern.

    The Aces & Arms lay just outside the entrance to the shipyards and catered to a seafaring crowd; commercial seamen and navy tars mingled with workers from the lower rungs of the shipwrights’ crafts. It was a bright, noisy place filled with a haze of tobacco and fermented sweat and the smell of potent, bitter ale.
    He entered, sat down at a small table near the bar, and ordered whiskey and ale . . . and plenty of it. Somewhere in the middle of his second drink, a body slammed into his table, knocking over the pitcher of ale he intended to consume, and causing him to spill whiskey down the front of his shirt and waistcoat.
    “Dammit!” He was on his feet in a flash, itching to pound somebody, anybody.
    “Ye drunken fool—of all times fer ye to get shite-faced!” A knotty old seaman rolled across the table, hit the floor, and whirled to face his attacker with raised fists. Aaron found himself smack between a crusty old salt and a hard-eyed gent in a frock coat and flashy red satin waistcoat. A roar and a fist came out of nowhere and Aaron reacted instinctively, dodging and reversing to plant a fist square in an anger-bloated face.
    The fight was over as quickly as it had begun and the trade resumed as if nothing