Free Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory

a pint of porter and a slice of pie at midday, and Frances was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.
    “I should like to go out for a walk,” she said. “But Brown cannot escort me in the mornings.”
    Josiah was absorbed in business, a missing hogshead of tobacco—a great round barrel packed with whole, sweet-smelling, dried leaves—and he looked at her as if she were an interruption, a nuisance. “I meant to get you a carriage,” he said absently. “You cannot walk along the dockside.”
    “So I understand,” Frances said. “But I wish to go out.”
    He sighed, his mind still on the Rose and the question of missing cargo. “Perhaps we can hire a carriage.”
    “Today?”
    “I am very busy,” he replied. “And troubled over this ship. There is an entire hogshead of tobacco unaccounted for, and the captain can give me no satisfactory explanation. I shall have to pay excise tax on it as if I had it safe in my bond, as well as carrying the loss.”
    “I am sorry to hear that,” Frances said politely. “Where would I hire a carriage?”
    Josiah broke off with a sudden, short bark of laughter. “You are persistent, Mrs. Cole!”
    Frances flushed at his use of her new name. “I am sorry,” she said. “At home I always walked in the gardens in the morning.My health is not very strong, as you know, and the day is fine, and I wanted to go out.”
    “No, it is I who am at fault. I have not provided for you as I should have done,” Josiah apologized. “I will hire a carriage for you myself, and I will drive with you this afternoon and show you the sights you should see.”
    “If it is no trouble . . .”
    “It is an interruption to my work,” he said frankly. “But I should have provided you with some amusement. Can you not do sewing or painting or something of that nature?”
    “Not all day.”
    “No, I suppose not.” Josiah thought for a moment and then nodded at her and headed toward his office.
    “At what time shall I be ready for the carriage?” Frances called after him.
    “At two,” he said. “Tell Brown to go around to the coach yard and hire a coach, a landau or something open.” He nodded to her again and shut the door firmly in her face. Frances waited a moment and then went back to the parlor.
    Miss Cole’s place was empty, her ledger open at the accounts of the Rose. Frances leaned over the chair and saw the meticulous march of figures down the page, showing the purchase of petty goods for small sums. Sixpence for gold lace, threepence each for small knives, fourpence each for brass pots. She shrugged. She could not imagine how Miss Cole could bear to spend the day on these trifling sums, nor what difference they made to an enterprise of any size. She did not know what a trading ship sailing to the Sugar Islands would want with gold lace or small knives. Frances returned to her seat in the window and waited for two o’clock.
    T HE COACH WAS PROMPT; it was standing at the door as Frances came down the stairs wearing a large picture hat crowned with two fat feathers. She had changed into a walking dress: a great-coatdress with a wide collar and caped sleeves. Mindful of the plainness of Sarah’s attire, Frances was rather relieved to find only Josiah waiting for her at the door and Sarah shut up in the parlor.
    “I was afraid you would have forgotten,” she said. “Did you find your tobacco?”
    “The planter in Jamaica cheated us, or made a mistake,” Josiah answered. “And the captain had it wrong on the cargo manifest. They were loading in a hurry. I had ordered him to make haste—it was the last of the new crop—and this is what comes of it.”
    “I am sorry to hear it,” Frances said uncertainly. She felt she should condole with him, as one would to a man who has suffered a loss. But her training to avoid the vulgar topic of money was too powerful.
    “I shall write to the planter and send the letter by Rose when she sails,” Josiah decided. “Within fourteen or