Free Thief of Hearts by Patricia Gaffney

rested his head against the side of the coach and gone to sleep. Anna was pointing at something and explaining it to him. He squinted and bent forward awkwardly, pretending he couldn't see from so far away. "Should we switch?" he asked O'Dunne, all innocence.
    "Oh. Certainly." The lawyer got up and the two men changed places, Brodie's chain rattling as he flopped down beside Anna with a satisfied sigh.
    She reared away as if she smelled a two-day mackerel, her back poker-straight, shoulders rigid. That riled him. He clasped his hands and leaned over the writing case, studying the diagram intently, making sure the side of his thigh brushed hers. He heard her draw a startled breath and felt her go even stiffer. "What's this?" he asked, pointing, rattling. She had to shift toward him to see. He turned his head at that moment, and the tips of their noses touched. She went that pretty apricot color he was growing fond of, and he sat back, smiling.
    The lesson progressed. Anna began to lose some of her tension after a while, although Mr. Brodie's constant and, she suspected, deliberate nearness kept her from relaxing completely. It grew warm in the carriage, and she had a bad moment when, with some difficulty, he unbuttoned the full sleeves of his linen shirt and rolled them up to his elbows. The sight of so much muscular forearm and reddish-brown hair had the peculiar effect of temporarily emptying her mind. She didn't think she'd ever seen Nicholas's bare arms in all the years she'd known him. No, she was sure of it; she'd have remembered. "A gentleman doesn't roll up his sleeves in the presence of a lady," she almost admonished Brodie. But that was for another lesson; she didn't want to overload him with new information on his first day.
    "You say Jourdaine builds everything," he said after she'd described the facility with which they forged their own iron to make stems and stern frames. "Will it continue to, or do you think you'll specialize in one kind of ship someday?"
    It was an interesting question; Mr. Brodie had no idea how interesting. Not quite understanding the motives for her own candor, she confided her dream. "It was my hope that we would begin to concentrate on a new line of passenger ships, an intercontinental fleet of luxury liners that would sail between Europe and America. And sail them ourselves instead of selling them on contract to an independent shipping line. Now that's not likely to happen."
    "Why not?"
    She regarded him gravely. "Because Nicholas is dead. And because Stephen is only interested in building warships."
We can't lose
, she recalled her cousin insisting, for there was always a war somewhere, whether England was fighting it or not. His cynicism repelled her, but her father saw his point. Business was business. Without Nicholas to support her, she foresaw Jourdaine going in exactly the direction Stephen wanted it to.
    "But the company is still your father's, isn't it?" asked Brodie.
    "Yes."
    "And when he's gone it'll be yours, won't it?"
    "Yes."
    "Then I don't understand. Why can't you build what you want?"
    Anna laughed softly. "Mr. Brodie, your naiveté is charming, if a bit breathtaking. The answer, in a word, is because I'm a woman."
    "So?"
    It wasn't naiveté, she decided, it was stupidity. She shook her head impatiently, dismissing the subject, and began to explain the difference between knees, breasthooks, and crutches in longitudinal framing.
    The afternoon lengthened, grew warmer. O'Dunne fell asleep with his chin on his chest. Billy Flowers snored delicately. In the middle of a dissertation on wave troughs and their impact on keel design, Anna caught Brodie in a yawn. She laid down her pen.
    "Perhaps that's enough for today," she announced magnanimously.
    "Oh, don't stop on my account. This is fascinating."
    She suspected he was being facetious. "Where were you born, Mr. Brodie?" she asked abruptly, surprising both of them.
    "Didn't Nick tell you that?"
    "I'm asking you."
    "What