A Secret Ambition

V

"I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me." Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

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V.

"Has this Sir Richard Frogmore committed a great crime against you, Mr McCarthy?" Lily asked delicately as the quill in her hand hovered over the paper. She managed to catch a drop of ink in her palm right before it destroyed what she had written so far.

Lily was still entirely uncertain of how 'eejit' was spelled.

"Have you not heard of the man?" Mr McCarthy responded with an arched brow.

"Should I have?" Lily thought that she perhaps more than most had a likely chance of being aware of a titled gentleman, even if she was not acquainted with him. But then, she supposed, she had not yet been presented to society. She had never attended a ball and she had never been formally introduced to a man she was not related to. Sir Richard Frogmore might as well have been Father Christmas.

Lily then, however, stilled, as Mr McCarthy's brows began to furrow, and she worried that her ignorance of this Sir Richard, whomever he was, betrayed some sort of hole in her fickle identity.

Mr McCarthy, though, put Lily's worries to rest soon after as he uttered, "How fortunate you are that you have not had to encounter the swine that calls himself a baronet. Less of a baronet and more of a gombeen if you ask me."

Lily did not have the gall to ask what a 'gombeen' was, though she could quite easily assume that it was not a compliment.

"You see, Miss Bennett, I'm but a small merchant. I've one ship only. Emerald Eyes, she's called."

Mr McCarthy began to fish through a stack of papers on his desk, clearly searching for something, before he found what he was looking for. He placed the sheet on top of the letter that Lily had been writing, and she looked down upon a sketch of a large trading ship.

"That's her." Mr McCarthy might have been showing Lily a picture of his own child for the pride in his voice. "Sir Richard Frogmore has a fleet of ten ships," he continued explaining. "He's been in this business far longer than I have, and he doesn't take well to people he perceives as threats. That and Irishmen."

"Did he attempt to interfere with your ship?" Lily inferred.

Mr McCarthy nodded. "I'm in cotton," he continued. "Ethical cotton. I've just had a shipment return to England from the Caribbean and I found out that a few of Frogmore's gombeen sailors attempted to steal aboard my ship and soak my crop."

Cotton. Trading. Crops. Caribbean.

These were all words that would make sense to Lily in the coming days and weeks as she learned exactly what it was a merchant was responsible for.

"And that is bad? Wet cotton?"

"Wet cotton is worth a pittance compared to a good yield. He could have rotted my crop and ruined me." Mr McCarthy's voice was intense with a visceral anger at the very possibility of being ruined. His eyes looked down at her as she attempted to make sense of this man. "I won't be ruined," he said firmly through gritted teeth.

"Of course," Lily replied softly.

"What you must understand, Miss Bennett, is that I must work twice as hard as every other man in this business," Mr McCarthy continued intensely. "People like Sir Richard Frogface don't like my kind, and they are quite willing to do whatever it takes to ruin me. The law doesn't care about the Irish. So, it is down to me."

Lily understood the point that Mr McCarthy was trying to make, even if she was unfamiliar as to why it was so challenging for him as an Irishman to succeed. Lily was clearly very ignorant as to what struggles befell the Irish, and that ignorance immediately made Lily feel very stupid. How could she be unaware of what life was like for one quarter of Britain's citizens?