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  ‘Here is the contract we drew up the day he came to see me.’ Mr Rathbone came around the desk, holding out the paper.

  Laura forced her eyes to meet his. ‘Would you please get dressed?’

  ‘This is my house. You broke into it and threatened me. I may stand as I like. Now here is your proof.’ The paper fluttered at the end of one stiff, outstretched arm.

  In the flickering candlelight she read the list of her uncle’s debts laid out in points in the centre of the page. There were more names than just Mrs Topp’s. Most were unfamiliar, but a few she recognised from snatches of conversation she’d caught in the hallways of their ramshackle building. Below the terms were Mr Rathbone’s signature and that of a witness, a Mr Justin Connor. Next to them sat Uncle Robert’s uneven letters, the wide way he wrote his R and T clear.

  It wasn’t so much his signing away the shop that shocked her, it was the document he’d put his name to. ‘Where did you get this paper?’

  ‘Mr Townsend brought it to me the night he came here seeking a loan.’

  ‘This is mine. I wrote this, it was my plan to save our business.’

  ‘It was an excellent one and, combined with the collateral he possessed to secure the loan, the reason I extended him the sum. He could have succeeded, if he hadn’t gambled the money away.’ He laid the document on the desk. ‘Are you quite satisfied?’

  ‘I am.’ And we’re ruined.

  ‘Good, then you won’t need this.’ Mr Rathbone grabbed the barrel of the pistol and wrenched it from her hands.

  ‘No,’ she cried, as naked as him without the weapon.

  ‘The gun would have done you no good. It was improperly loaded.’ He pulled the flint from the hammer and tossed the now-useless weapon on the desk along with the contract. ‘Had you fired it, you would have blown your pretty face off.’

  She looked to where the weapon lay on the blotter, as useless as her hope and her foolish plans. This morning she had thought her situation couldn’t sink any lower. It seemed she had yet to reach the bottom, but all she could think of was her mother. Laura’s botched attempt to save them would no doubt land her in gaol. How would her mother survive without her and what would Uncle Robert do to her? ‘You should have let me fire it and finish myself.’

  He strode past her back to the bathroom. ‘You’d have ruined the carpet.’

  Anger overcame her sense of loss and she whirled on him. Without concern, he took up the banyan from the chair and slid his strong arms into the sleeves, pulling it shut over his nakedness. Laura’s anger flickered, nearly blown out by the sight of his skin caressed by the dark silk, before it flared again. ‘I can see all you care about is money.’

  He pulled the banyan ties tight across his slim middle. ‘I’m a businessman, Miss Townsend. Men interested in financial backing for ventures come to me, as well as those seeking to shore up a struggling business. I offer them finance to be repaid with interest, or, if they default, as your uncle did, I seize their goods and sell them to cover my losses. I have a family and employees whose welfare I must ensure. I am not a charity.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She looked down at the carpet he was so worried about, moving one toe of her worn-out half-boot to trace the swirling curve of a vine. In the brief time she’d spent plotting this ridiculous scheme, she’d failed to work out exactly how she might extricate herself from it without landing in the Old Bailey, or worse. She only hoped the generous nature he spoke of with his family and employees might extend to a very foolish young lady.

  ‘Mr Rathbone, please forgive me for intruding on your privacy and for trying to blacken your good name. I was not in possession of all the facts before I decided to confront you. It seems I was not in possession of my reason either.’ She smiled, trying to look the way she imagined a senseless young lady might look, in the hope of saving both her dignity and her freedom. It failed to soften the hard set of Mr Rathbone’s mouth.

  ‘Don’t play the fool. It’s not becoming of a woman of your ingenuity.’

  She dropped the smile but not her hope, unwilling to concede defeat. She couldn’t, not with her mother shivering at home. ‘Then let me offer you a proposal, one that speaks to you as a businessman.’

  Mr Rathbone stood silent and she couldn’t discern if he planned to listen or to summon a footman to fetch the constable. She didn’t give him a chance to answer, hoping her words might at least make him consider her offer and postpone for some time whatever fate he had in mind for her. ‘Among the contents of the inventory you seized was a large bolt of cotton woven into a very fine cloth. It’s from a special variety, grown in Egypt. It can be rendered, like the Indian kind, into a very fine, almost transparent cloth, but it costs less to produce. I plan to introduce it through Madame Pillet, a modiste to many fashionable and influential ladies. Their orders for the fabric alone could bring in hundreds of pounds. With the profits, I can import more and establish a fine trade. If you return the inventory to me, I’ll pay you a portion of the profits until the original debt is settled.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t entertain your proposal,’ he answered without consideration. ‘The contents of the draper shop were sold to settle Mr Townsend’s debts. I no longer have the bolt of cotton to which you are referring.’

  ‘But you know who has it. You could get it back and we could still reach an arrangement.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘You’re leaving us to starve,’ she blurted out as even this slim hope dissolved. There was no chance of reviving the business, or doing anything other than sinking into even more degrading poverty.

  No sign of sympathy or regret marred the smoothness of his face. ‘Your plan has merit, but will not succeed. If the cotton becomes fashionable, those with better connections and more money will race to import it before you can secure more, flooding the market with it and lessening its value.’

  ‘But before then?’ she protested meekly.

  ‘I can’t afford to gamble my money on the whims of the ton. Nor can you.’

  ‘I can’t rely on my uncle Robert if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s got everything out of us he wanted, my father’s business and what was left of the money,’ she scoffed. ‘It won’t be long before we see the backside of him. Then what will happen to me and my mother?’

  ‘You must have other family?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Uncle Robert saw to it that they were driven away when he borrowed money from them and never repaid it.’ She dropped her hands to her sides in imitation of Mr Rathbone, trying to appear as confident and sure as he did. ‘I know what I did tonight was foolish and I never meant to hurt you, I only wanted the merchandise back because I couldn’t see the business fail. It took my father years to build and my uncle Robert less than a year to destroy.’

  * * *

  If Philip had passed Miss Townsend on the street, he’d have overlooked her. Forced to stare down the end of a barrel at her, he couldn’t miss the stunning light of determination in her round hazel eyes. It was undiminished by the faint circles darkening the smooth skin underneath them or the slight hollow beneath the high cheekbones. Loose waves of auburn hair hung on either side of her face and down to the shoulders of her worn-out dress. The sad garment hung loose on her. Regular meals would bring back the fullness of her cheeks and the softness of her waist. Her skin was pale, like Arabella’s had been, but where illness had faded his late wife’s bloom, only hardship dampened the lustre of the lady before him. ‘In business, it’s always best to keep facts and emotions separate so one does not cloud the other.’

  ‘I’ll remember that when I’m starving,’ she spat.

  ‘You won’t starve. You’re too smart.’ There was something of life and fight in Miss Townsend, a trait Arabella had not possessed. Despite his annoyance at being distu
rbed tonight, he admired it too much to see it snuffed out by gaol fever. He swept the pistol from the desk and held it out to her. ‘Thank you for an interesting evening, Miss Townsend.’

  Hope flooded her cheeks with a wash of pink. ‘You’re letting me go?’

  ‘Would you prefer I call the constable and have you hauled before the magistrate?’

  ‘No.’

  He moved aside and waved his hand at the door. ‘Then go.’

  In a flutter of threadbare bombazine, she was gone.

  ‘You there, stop.’ Justin’s voice sounded through the downstairs hall before the thud of the back door hitting the wall and the squeak of the garden gate let Philip know Miss Townsend was away.

  A second later Justin came running in, his pistol drawn. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Quite.’ Philip sat down in his chair, rubbing his still-damp chin with his fingers. Miss Townsend had stirred something inside him—not pity, or even lust, though she was pretty. No, it was curiosity, like the first time he’d seen Arabella sitting across his desk next to her father, Dr Hale. Philip hadn’t been able to focus on anything but her while Dr Hale had laid out his plans for a small medical school. The school had failed and Dr Hale had lost both his and Philip’s money. It was the only time Philip had allowed emotion to guide a business decision.

  ‘Leave it to you to be so cavalier about an intruder threatening you.’ Justin lowered the hammer on the pistol.

  ‘She was never a threat.’ Philip curled one finger to rub it along his ring finger still missing the plain wedding band he’d buried with Arabella. No, this was nothing like the day he’d met his wife. There was no emotion to touch his love for Arabella, especially not in the guise of this stranger, no matter how intriguing she might appear.

  ‘You look like the devil.’ Justin slid the pistol in the holster under his coat.

  ‘It’s been a trying day.’ He’d thought the headaches of it were over when he’d sunk down into the hot water. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  He stared past Justin to the copper bathtub and the thin tendrils of steam still rising from it. Nothing but problems had plagued him today. A cobbler had called to secure a loan to increase his business. The cobbler’s endless words of reassurance and lack of collateral had warned Philip off the venture. The man hadn’t reacted kindly to Philip’s refusal. He’d only just been ejected from the house when Justin had arrived with news of an import company with an outstanding loan having been declared bankrupt. It’d been a scramble to seize the goods stored in the warehouse before the importer moved them and left Philip with the loss.

  With business matters secured, household ones had rushed in to consume the remainder of the day. His sister, Jane, had tried his patience with yet another demand for an expensive dress too mature for a budding young woman of thirteen. She’d railed at him with their grandmother’s temper before stomping away after Philip threatened to cut off her dress allowance. On the heels of Jane’s tantrum came the news that Mrs Marston, his son Thomas’s nurse, was moving to Bath to take care of her grandson, leaving Philip with only a month to engage a replacement. Jane was too young to be of assistance and Mrs Palmer, despite running his house with the efficiency of a factory, was not up to the task of mothering his sister and son or finding a suitable replacement for Mrs Marston.

  What Philip needed was a wife, someone to deal with these domestic matters.

  Justin plucked a small chair from the wall, turned it around in front of the desk, then straddled it, leaning his elbows on the polished back. ‘So, who was the woman?’

  ‘The niece of Robert Townsend.’ Philip smoothed his hands over his wet hair. ‘She wanted her collateral back.’

  ‘Don’t they all.’ Justin snorted, propping his chin in his palm. ‘I left two extra men to guard the importer’s stock until you can sell it.’

  ‘We’ll see to it tomorrow,’ Philip said vaguely, his thoughts consumed with something other than business.

  Justin raised one curious eyebrow. ‘What did she do to you?’

  Philip straightened a pen on the blotter. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never seen you this cavalier about a full warehouse. Usually you’re all plans until I’m up all night and engaged through most of tomorrow seeing to it, but not tonight. Why?’

  Philip studied his old friend and partner. Justin had stood beside him at his wedding and at Arabella’s funeral. He balled his hand into a fist. His wife should have had the chance to raise their son and attend to their house. Now, it fell to the people Philip paid to assist him. Not the most ideal of situations and one he would soon correct.

  Straightening in the chair, he laced his fingers over his stomach. It wasn’t Miss Townsend’s disturbance which troubled him now, as much as the opportunity she presented. His father had trained him to assess a client in a matter of seconds. He’d measured up Miss Townsend and, despite the ridiculousness of her attempted threat, found her useful qualities continued to tip the scales in her favour.

  It was madness and he knew it. He should recommend her and the mother to Halcyon House, his charitable organisation, and be done with them both, not continue to entertain the plan developing in his mind. He’d chosen Arabella with his heart, ignoring her frailty, believing it wouldn’t come between them. He’d been a fool and in the end their love had killed her.

  Small footsteps pattered down the long hallway outside his bedroom door before steady, larger ones followed. In a moment, he’d help Mrs Marston get Thomas back to sleep, but first there was business to discuss.

  ‘I have another plan in mind, Justin.’ He picked up Robert Townsend’s contract. It was sheer luck he’d decided to bring it upstairs with the others, as was his habit, to review before bed or if he was restless in the middle of the night. He handed it to his friend. ‘Find out everything you can about his niece.’

  ‘I knew I wouldn’t get off so easy tonight.’ He rose from the chair and set it back by the wall, then plucked the paper from Philip’s hand.

  ‘Speak to anyone who might know her from her lodgings and from the neighbourhood where the draper shop used to be, I’m sure you can discover its location.’

  ‘You know I can.’ He folded the contract and slid it into his pocket.

  ‘Get a sense of her reputation, character and situation. Find out any and every detail you can and bring it to me as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is she going to become a client?’

  Philip rose, eager to see to his son. ‘No. She might become my wife.’

  Copyright © 2015 by Georgie Reinstein

  ISBN-13: 9781460378595

  The Soldier’s Dark Secret

  Copyright © 2015 by Marguerite Kaye

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