He’s got iron control...

But she might be his undoing!

Part of The King’s Elite: Haunted by Penny Penhurst’s courage on the witness stand, meticulous barrister Lord Hadleigh offers her a housekeeper position at his estate. Despite trying to stay detached, Hadleigh is charmed by her small child and surprised by how much he yearns for this proud woman! Can he break through his own—and Penny’s—barriers to prove he’s a man she can trust...and love?

When VIRGINIA HEATH was a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older the stories became more complicated—sometimes taking weeks to get to their happy ending. One day she decided to embrace her insomnia and start writing them down. Virginia lives in Essex, with her wonderful husband and two teenagers. It still takes her for ever to fall asleep.

Also by Virginia Heath

The Wild Warriners miniseries

A Warriner to Protect Her

A Warriner to Rescue Her

A Warriner to Tempt Her

A Warriner to Seduce Her

The King’s Elite miniseries

The Mysterious Lord Millcroft

The Uncompromising Lord Flint

The Disgraceful Lord Gray

The Determined Lord Hadleigh

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Determined Lord Hadleigh

Virginia Heath

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08914-2

THE DETERMINED LORD HADLEIGH

© 2019 Susan Merritt

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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For Frankie and Shell.

Thanks for all your support

since I started my writing journey.

You are awesome!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue
The Old Bailey—May 1820

She had attended every single day of the trial. Alone in the gallery, her face pale, sitting erect, her slim shoulders pulled back as she stared straight ahead. Her hands were hidden among the folds of her skirt. It had taken Hadleigh almost a week to realise that she hid her hands because they provided the only clue to the way she was truly feeling as they twisted a ruined handkerchief into tight, agitated spirals which she kept proudly from view.

She had a child, he knew. A son who was a little over a year old. Yet she never brought the babe to the court as some did in a bid to elicit sympathy. Nor did she give any indication she noticed the hordes who had come to gloat at her tragedy. The blatant pointing and unsubtle whispering; the shameless newspaper artist who frequently perched himself directly in front of her and sketched her expression incorrectly for the breakfast entertainment of the masses—such was the gravitas of this case that everyone wanted to know about it. And about her.

The traitor’s wife.

That quiet dignity had both impressed him and humbled him because it was eerily familiar. Her honesty, yesterday, had shaken him to his core. In a last-ditch attempt to save her husband and prove his good character, the defence had called her as a witness at the last minute. Unexpectedly. They asked leading questions, to which she could answer only yes or no, then stepped aside so that he could cross-examine her.

‘Was he a good husband?’

She had looked him dead in the eye. ‘No.’ He had expected her to lie, but gave no indication of his surprise. Her gaze moved tentatively to the furious man in the dock. ‘No. He wasn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘He wasn’t at all who I had hoped he was.’

‘This court requires more explanation, Lady Penhurst. In what ways was the accused a bad husband?’ He’d had an inkling. More than an inkling, if he was honest, especially as he had lived in a house where a marriage had become a legal prison, but as the Crown Prosecutor his job was to present the government’s case as best he could. The jury deserved the whole truth about the man in the dock, no matter how unpalatable it was. Or how intrusive.

‘He was violent, Lord Hadleigh.’ His friend Leatham had said as much. Violent and depraved and his heart wept for her suffering. She reminded him of another woman in another time. One who had also endured stoically because she had had no option to do otherwise and had not wanted to burden him with her troubles. The bitter taste of bile stung his throat at the awful memory so long buried.

‘He beat you?’

Her eyes nervously flicked to her husband’s again because she knew that if he was acquitted, she would pay for her disloyalty today and there was nothing in law to stop that happening. But her spine stiffened again with resolve and she slowly inhaled as if to calm herself and find inner strength. He knew how much that small act of defiance cost her. ‘If I was lucky, only weekly.’ Her gloved index finger touched the bridge of her nose where the bone slightly protruded. ‘He broke my nose. Cracked a rib—’

‘Objection!’ The defence lawyer shot to his feet. ‘My learned friend knows what happens between a husband and a wife in the privacy of his house is not pertinent to this case.’

Hadleigh addressed the judge. ‘I believe it is pertinent m’lud. It gives the jury an insight into Viscount Penhurst’s character.’ Because a man who used his wife as a battering ram was rarely a good man, as his own mother had learned to her cost.

‘We have debated this many times before, Lord Hadleigh, therefore I know you are well aware the law clearly has no objections to a husband disciplining his wife.’ The judge had the temerity to look affronted that it had been brought up in the first place, seemingly perfectly happy that a husband had the right to beat his wife senseless and the courts who supposedly stood for justice would do nothing. ‘You will desist this line of questioning immediately and the witness’s answers will be struck from the proceedings.’

Hadleigh nodded, his teeth practically gnashing, consoling himself that while the law was an ass as far as the rights of married women were concerned, at least the seeds had been sown. You could strike words from the record, but once said, they took root in the mind. A few of the jurors had looked appalled. That would have to do. ‘My apologies.’ Hadleigh made no attempt to sound sincere before he turned back to her and the job in hand. ‘Lady Penhurst—you lived predominantly in Penhurst Hall in Sussex during your marriage, did you not?’

‘I did.’

‘Then do you expect this court to believe that you lived in that house and never suspected what was going on in the cellars right beneath your feet?’ Her husband had run part of a vast smuggling operation, utilising his estate’s close proximity to the sea to receive and sell on thousands of gallons of brandy in exchange for guns. Guns destined for France, and more specifically to the supporters of the imprisoned Napoleon who were desperate to see their great leader restored to power.

‘I have eyes, Lord Hadleigh. And ears. Therefore, I knew he was up to something but, to my shame, I had no idea what and nor did I truly attempt to find out.’

‘Why to your shame?’

‘Because my life was easier if I asked no questions. It is hard being married to a man who answers them with his fists.’ Another thing he had learned through bitter experience. ‘But with hindsight, I wish I had confided in someone.’

Then, unprompted and in a tumbled rush, she had begun to reel off what she had seen and heard which she had thought suspicious. Things she had neglected to mention the first time he had interrogated her fresh from her husband’s arrest, doubtless because she didn’t dare say a word against him then in fear of his retribution. Hadleigh had had no intention of calling her to the stand for precisely that reason—wives, even grossly abused ones, rarely turned against their husbands or even testified at all—so her sudden extensive and embellished testimony surprised him.

The guards in the cellars, the menacing servants who watched her every move and reported it back to her spouse, the odd messages which arrived at the house at odder hours which Penhurst always burned after reading, the new and endless supply of money that he spent like water. Most significant were the dates she freely shared. Dates when her husband had been home which coincided with the same dates the Excise Men had recorded sightings of smuggling ships on the Sussex coastline. Dates Hadleigh had already appraised the court of during this significant and well-discussed trial. All in all, it had been a damning testimony, an incredibly detailed and courageous one, and one he was of the opinion she had come to the court room determined to share despite being a named from the outset as a witness for the defence.

Lady Penhurst was a very brave woman.

As a reward, she was subjected to the most spiteful rebuttal from both her vile husband and the defence that Hadleigh had ever heard in all his years in the courtroom. Horrendous mudslinging which highlighted the gross disparity between the law for men and the law for women. He had been reprimanded by the judge for bringing up the way she was beaten by her husband, but that same judge had blithely ignored all Hadleigh’s objections to her haranguing because the court deserved to know what sort of a woman the witness was before they chose to believe her.

She was a liar. Who had lain with a succession of men for money. Deranged. Cold and frigid. A drunkard. Unfit to be a mother. Throughout the litany, she had stood proudly, her clasped hands shaking slightly, her expression pained but defiant. Grace in the face of the contemptible. He admired that, too.

By the end, Hadleigh hated his profession and himself more for not adequately defending her, even though it was neither his place nor his job to do so. But as it had been his intrusive questions she had answered with more detail than he could have possibly dreamed of, he knew she was suffering this contemptible onslaught thanks to him. Knew, too, that she had helped him by hammering the last few nails into Penhurst’s already rotten coffin regardless of the inevitable cost to herself.

As she left the witness box, she held her head high, but her eyes had dimmed. He knew it wasn’t the first time she had been whittled down and belittled by his sex. He’d seen that same expression many times and, while he could never ignore it, he had played along with his mother and pretended he hadn’t seen it. That nothing was amiss. That all would be well. A flimsy lie that had never come to fruition. Oh! To be able to turn back time and do things differently...

Hadleigh couldn’t shift his immense sense of guilt and shame throughout his closing arguments, although bizarrely that painful, niggling, unprofessional emotion made them sound stronger than any closing speech he had ever made before. Perhaps because he had argued for her. Used his voice in an arena where she had none. Treason aside, more than anything he now wanted Penhurst to pay for what he had done to the quietly proud and stoic woman sat all alone in the gallery.

Then the jury were sent to huddle in a private room to discuss their verdict, away from the circus in the gallery. They came back unanimous in less than ten short minutes.

Guilty.

Of high treason.

Her face had blanched then. Her blue eyes filling with tears and for the first time she stared down at her lap as her husband was dragged screaming from the court. He had hoped she didn’t regret her part in the verdict. It had been small, but largely insignificant, because Hadleigh had done his job well. But then he had no emotional attachment to Penhurst, so could regard the man’s inevitable demise through a detached and pragmatic lens. For her, there would be complicated ramifications as well as the release from her suffering. Penhurst had fathered her child and been her husband. There were many in society who would judge her unfairly and she was unlikely to ever be welcomed within its hypocritical ranks again thanks to the sins she had not committed but which branded her nevertheless.

While the judge retired for the night to consider the punishment, she had left the court alone as always and gone who knew where, not realising that more machinations far out of his sphere of control would occur before morning which would make her future life undeservedly more impossible than it already was.

Hadleigh learned it had been a reporter for one of the scandal sheets who had blithely informed her that her husband’s title and estate had been transferred back to the Crown, his ill-gotten fortune and all his assets seized. It was a petty act of revenge as far as Hadleigh was concerned, designed to put the fear of God into his yet unknown co-conspirators. A stark reminder of what a traitor could expect for his crimes against England and its King even in this enlightened day and age. But Penhurst’s infant son was no traitor and nor was the child’s abused mother, yet now both of them would also pay for his crimes and for much longer than the crooked Viscount would. Their entire lives had been ruined with one vengeful stroke of a pen.

That was not his concern.

Or at least it shouldn’t be. But looking at her now, sat all alone in the gallery waiting to hear her violent and odious husband’s fate, he found he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her or not feel partly responsible for all she was about to suffer. Not a single family member had accompanied her on her daily trips to the court. Nor had a single family member leapt to her defence in any of the hundreds of newspaper stories that made outrageous and wild accusations. Was that because they had disowned her or because she had wanted to do this alone? Or perhaps she was alone? And why the blazes should he care about this woman when he had brought many a criminal to justice and not given two figs about any of their family, when the family were ultimately irrelevant when justice needed to be done?

While pretending to study a document in front of him, he found his gaze wandering back to her hands. As usual, they were buried in her dull skirt, out of sight. Her outfit today was austere, as they all had been this last week, but he noticed that, even though she was seated, the brown spencer hung from her frame. She had lost weight. Rapidly, if he was any judge, and the dark circles beneath her eyes were testament to the insomnia she had clearly suffered in the few scant weeks since her husband’s arrest. How would she sleep after today? Would she ever sleep again?

That was not his concern!

She wasn’t his responsibility and neither was her child. Doubtless someone would crawl out of the woodwork and take them in. If she had any sense, she would move to the opposite end of the country and change her name. Perhaps he should tell her as much once this was all over?

He sensed her looking at him and realised he had been openly staring. He schooled his features into the bland, emotionless mask he always wore and allowed his eyes to meet hers unrepentant. There was something about Lady Penhurst’s eyes which disarmed him and called to him in equal measure. He found he wanted to keep looking at them, as if within their sapphire-blue depths was something he needed, except the inexplicable guilt which had sat heavily on his shoulders for days got the better of him and he hastily looked away.

Not that he had anything in this instance to be guilty about. Penhurst was a traitor. He had robbed the Crown of taxes, as a minion of the infamous and still-unidentified mastermind known only as The Boss, he had willingly consorted with England’s worst enemies and had blood on his hands. Lots of blood. Too many innocent men had died thanks to that smuggling ring and it was hardly his fault the evidence had been so plentiful and compelling the man had got his rightful comeuppance. Hadleigh had no earthly reason to feel guilty at doing his job well. None whatsoever.

So why did he? Those eyes perhaps?

‘All rise.’

Putting his misplaced guilt and odd mood aside, he stood with the rest of the chamber and forced his gaze to remain fixed on the judge as he entered. The judge sat and so did the rest of the chamber, while Penhurst was brought in to hear the sentence. He appeared terrified and rightly so, his eyes darting around the room nervously while the whole indictment was read. Then, as Hadleigh and most of the baying crowd had expected, the clerk placed the black-silk square atop his wig as an eerie hush settled over the room.

Hadleigh’s gaze flicked to her and she was ashen, those lovely eyes swirling with emotion, his heart lurching painfully at the sight. All he could think of was what she might be thinking and what in God’s name was to become of her. No husband. No home. No money. None of it her fault.

Professional detachment be damned! Once the judge was done he would offer some help. He wouldn’t leave her all alone to be fed to the wolves today. He would escort her home. Give her money. A chance to start afresh. Something—anything—to make his misguided conscience feel better.

‘William Henry Ashley, formally the Viscount Penhurst and the Baron of Scarsdale, the court doth order you to be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be confined after your conviction. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.’

‘No!’ Penhurst broke free of his guards, scrambled over the dock and lunged at the bench. Instinctively, Hadleigh stepped forward to stop him and the Viscount’s fingers gripped his robe with all his might. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything!’ The genuine fear in the man’s expression was visceral. ‘You have the power to appeal! To respite my sentence! Transport me. Imprison me. Flog me. Do whatever you see fit, but surely I am more use to you alive than I am dead?’

Around them, the gallery had jumped to their feet and surged forward to get a better view. It took two clerks and four men to restrain the panicked Penhurst and several minutes to drag him kicking and howling from the melee of the court room before order was resumed. By the time it was, her chair was empty. The ruined, twisted handkerchief lying crumpled on the floor, still damp from her tears.

Chapter One
Cheapside—five months later

‘You are mistaken, Mr Palmer. I promise you I haven’t yet paid the account. I came in here today specifically to pay the account.’ Penny once again held out the money the pawnbroker had given her for her mother’s jade brooch only minutes before.

The shopkeeper smiled kindly, but made no attempt to take it. ‘’Tis all paid, Mrs Henley. In full.’ He turned around the ledger and pointed to the balance. ‘There is no mistake, I can assure you.’ His eyes wandered over to another woman in the corner who seemed perfectly content examining the rolls of ribbon all by herself. ‘If there’s nothing else I can help you with, Mrs Henley, I’d best see to my other customers.’

‘But I didn’t pay you, Mr Palmer!’

‘Somebody did, because it’s been noted down and I shan’t be taking the money twice. That wouldn’t be honest now, would it? And I pride myself on my honesty. Spend it on that little lad of yours, eh? I dare say he needs something. Growing boys always need something.’ He closed his ledger decisively. ‘Will there be anything else you need, Mrs Henley?’

He didn’t strike her as a stupid man, but it was obvious he was a stubborn one and too proud to admit his error. Perhaps his wife would be more accommodating? ‘Please send my regards to Mrs Palmer. I had hoped to see her today.’ She cast a glance over his shoulder to the little anteroom beyond the counter. ‘Unless she’s here so I can do so in person?’ The shopkeeper’s wife was meticulous and would find a way to gently correct her husband’s blatant accounting mistake.

‘She’s gone off to visit our daughter and the grandchildren, I’m afraid. I shall pass on your regards when she returns next week.’

Not wanting to argue further in public, Penny decided to come back then and attempt to pay her debt to the Palmers’ shop. She said her goodbyes and, mindful of the time, walked briskly up King Street to the home of her landlord, Mr Cohen, fully intending to pay in advance for her next month’s rent, only to find that, too, had been paid. Unlike the cheerful shopkeeper, Mr Cohen was a humourless individual who didn’t like to waste words.

‘I tell you it’s been paid, Mrs Henley. A full twelve months’ rent!’

‘But that is impossible! I haven’t paid you.’ But the coincidence was not lost on her and she found her teeth grinding at the suspicion as to who might have. ‘Who paid it?’

‘That I can’t say. Nor will I, as much as I don’t like it. Your benefactor wants to remain anonymous.’

‘Benefactor?’

The old man scowled and shook his head. His rheumy eyes burning with accusation. ‘That’s what I’ll call him for now, Mrs Henley—because he assured me he wasn’t your fancy man and I choose to think the best of my tenants, no matter how new they are to me or how implausible their stories.’

‘Fancy man?’ Penny didn’t need to hide her outrage at the suggestion. ‘I can assure you...’ The old man rudely held up his hand.

‘And I can assure you, rent or no rent, I’ll toss you out on your ear if I get so much as one whiff that he is. I won’t tolerate any scandal in one of my buildings, Mrs Henley—if indeed you are or have ever been a Mrs. If you hadn’t been vouched for personally by Mr Leatham, I never would have accepted you in the first place. I wonder what he’d have to say about a strange man paying a year’s worth of rent?’

An interesting question indeed. Exactly what would Seb Leatham have to say? He was a man of few words, but one used to blending into the background and doing covert things behind the scenes. Never mind that he would walk on hot coals if Clarissa asked him to.

Suddenly, a nasty suspicion began to bloom in her mind. This was all a little too contrived and convenient. Less than twenty-four hours before she had had a disagreement with Clarissa, the only friend she had left in the world and wife to the aforementioned Seb Leatham. It had been about her decision to seek employment somewhere as a governess or housekeeper or some such to make ends meet which had so thoroughly outraged Clarissa. She had been very vocal on the subject before she had backed down. Her friend had claimed she respected Penny’s decision even if she did not agree with it. Yet now, by some miracle, her rent and her household accounts were miraculously all settled by a mysterious benefactor. Twelve months gratis in Cheapside kept her close enough so her well-meaning friend could continue to keep an eye on her and Penny would have no need to sully her poor, pathetic hands with work in the interim.

‘I insist you give the money back whence it came, Mr Cohen! I’ll pay my own rent, thank you very much.’ She wasn’t that pathetic woman any longer. As much as she had grown to hate her husband, she had hated the woman she had been during their marriage more. A scared, spineless and stupid girl who had ignored everyone’s cautionary words about the man she had set her heart on marrying who had lived to rue the day. Oh! How she had hated being powerless and subservient, and because it went against the grain of her character she was determined to be a different woman now. She was neither worthless nor useless. Nor would she be beholden.

Because accepting charity and feeling beholden allowed others the opportunity to control her life and she was done with all that. How was keeping her in Cheapside any different from keeping her in Penhurst Hall? And just because her friends meant well, that didn’t give them the right to use their wealth secretively to get their own way. After three interminable years of being powerless and controlled, the only person who had any say about her life now was her son, Freddie. As he was still unable to talk, there was nobody else who held that power.

To prove her point, Penny began rummaging in her reticule for the money. What was the matter with working for a living anyway? Perhaps such a prospect daunted an aristocratic woman like Clarissa, but it didn’t faze Penny. She had come from trade, spent her formative years working within it and had enjoyed every second. Her mother and father had worked all their lives with her on their knee. Why, her father had built his business from scratch, from the ground up, and those same principles of hard work and honest enterprise were as ingrained in her as good manners. There was no shame in honest labour and she wouldn’t be deterred from finding a way to stand on her own two feet after everything she had endured. After three years she was finally free and intended to remain so. Making her own living, living her own life, was something she was looking forward to rather than dreading and just as her dear parents had, she would find a way to make it work around Freddie. A fresh, clean slate that left her shameful past firmly in the past.

‘He made me promise not to allow that—and paid me over the odds to ensure I complied.’ Old Cohen crossed his arms. ‘But if I find out there’s any funny business going on between you and him...’

‘For any funny business to be going on, Mr Cohen, I would first have to know who he is, don’t you think?’ Although whoever he was, he was linked to Seb Leatham somehow. The man was a high-ranking government spy, one who had a legion of subordinate spies to do his dirty work for him. She was going to strangle Clarissa. How dared she?

How dared she?

Not caring that she was being rude to her mean-spirited landlord, Penny turned on her heel and began to march home, imbued with the determination and outrage of the self-righteous. How dare Clarissa use her husband to go behind her back like that? When her friend had explicitly promised to support her in her endeavours and claimed she understood why Penny wanted to leave her old life and all its horrid memories well behind.

What other choice did she have? Her parents, God rest them, were dead and the distant relatives who still lived had disowned her before the trial had even started. Either she earned her own living or she lived on Clarissa’s charity again as she had during the humiliating trial. Because Lord alone knew there wasn’t enough of her mother’s old jewellery to pawn to keep her head above water for more than a few months at most. There certainly wasn’t enough of it yet to buy Freddie and her a cottage of their own in the wilds of the country.

And yet was the operative word, because one day she would have one. That was her dream. The only thing which had sustained her these past months. A pretty place to call her own where she could finally put the past three years behind her. Of that she was determined. If those dreadful years married to Penhurst had taught her nothing, it had taught her that it was long past time she needed to stop being dictated to by others and take control of her own destiny in whatever shape she chose to make it.

Her respectable lodgings in Cheapside were only ever meant to be temporary. A place to lick her wounds in private while she considered all her options. She had happily taken Seb Leatham’s advice on that. Aside from the fact she had spent the first fourteen years of her life living here before her father could afford Mayfair and had always loved it. It was a busy area of the city which allowed a person to hide in plain sight. With all the businesses, merchants and transient visitors from far and wide, nobody looked twice at a well-heeled woman with a child in Cheapside. Nor did any of the upper crust of society venture here. They might send their servants, but they would never be seen dead on the same streets as those in trade.

Heaven forbid!

Any more than they would consider continuing their acquaintance with the widow of a traitor.

She stopped dead outside her building and sucked in a calming breath. Perhaps she shouldn’t be too hard on Clarissa? Her friend had stalwartly stood by her throughout everything. Quite openly. She would have sat with her through every minute of the trial if Penny hadn’t stopped her. She had claimed at the time she wanted Freddie to be with someone he knew, someone who cared for him, rather than admitting she didn’t want to taint or ruin her friend’s good reputation by well-meant association. Even now, months after Penhurst’s death, Penny refused point blank to darken Clarissa’s door in Grosvenor Square. That wouldn’t be fair, no matter what her friend said to the contrary. That hadn’t stopped her coming here and stepping into the breach when Penny needed somebody to watch her son and for that, she was in Clarissa’s debt.

This wasn’t worth losing her only true friend in the world for.

Wearily, she took the two flights of stairs slowly and tried to think of a more tactful way of voicing her annoyance at what was obviously meant to be a kindness. Especially as her life had been devoid of such niceness for so long.

She found Clarissa in the tiny parlour sat cross-legged on the floor helping Freddie build a lopsided tower with his wooden blocks, his current favourite toy. ‘You’re back early. I thought you had heaps of errands to run.’

Penny hadn’t confided to her friend that she was visiting the pawn shop and didn’t intend to. ‘I did—but something peculiar happened and I thought I’d better come back.’

‘Peculiar? You weren’t recognised, were you?’ Her only friend looked concerned at the prospect. People had been quite cruel during the trial. The press had positively hounded her.

‘No. Nothing so terrible.’ She untied her bonnet and placed it on the table with her gloves, then stalled for more time by carefully hanging up her cloak on the peg by the door, needing to give herself a stern talking to in order to be that better, stronger, independent version of herself.

Be tactful. But be assertive. This is your life and you can now live it exactly as you choose. Something you have yearned for. For three long years. ‘However, I did learn something niggling. Something probably best discussed over a cup of tea.’ More stalling, which irritated, although was annoyingly typical when one considered she had always shied away from conflict—even before Penhurst. It didn’t matter. All this self-flagellation at her supposed flaws was misplaced and pointless. One could still be fundamentally nice and assertive at the same time. It was not as if Clarissa would punch her.

She kissed her son noisily on the cheek before walking to the fireplace to grab the kettle and prepare the teapot. The lack of servants was another thing Clarissa worried about, but Penny genuinely rather liked her new privacy. It wasn’t that much work to clean up after herself and her son. Preparing meals was getting easier, but was certainly not her forte, yet a small price to pay for proper privacy. Besides, she still wasn’t completely over the sheer joy of being able to spend unrationed and unmonitored time with her boy. Proper time where she could be his mother rather than the scant few minutes her husband had allowed each day before her little cherub was taken back up to the nursery to the paid sneak, Nanny Francis, and out of her control. Penhurst’s servants had been her gaolers. Good riddance to the lot of them. She wouldn’t mourn their loss any more than she mourned his.

Clarissa took charge of pouring the tea a few minutes later, while Penny settled down with Freddie in her lap. Once done, her friend placed the steaming cup in front of her, then stared at Penny intently. ‘What’s happened?’

Best to get straight to the point. ‘I know you mean well, but you shouldn’t have paid my rent.’

Her friend blinked, then frowned. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Perhaps not in person, you’re far too clever for that, but you arranged for it to be paid behind my back and you settled my account at the shop as well.’ She smiled, softening the admonishment, but was quietly pleased that she had given it.

‘I didn’t. I wish I had...because heaven only knows you need someone to help you and I can well afford it. But honestly, Penny, I didn’t. I value our friendship too much to go against your express wishes and I meant it when I said I would respect your wishes. After everything, you of all people deserve to be mistress of your own life.’

‘Then Seb arranged for those bills to be paid without your knowledge.’

‘He wouldn’t do such a thing behind my back. Or yours for that matter. I know you have a justifiably jaded view of men and marriage, but Seb is an honourable man and he would never do anything without my knowing. He loves me.’

Penny picked up her tea and tried not to be irritated at her friend’s naivety. Men always did what they thought was best irrespective of the woman’s feelings. ‘Then how else do you explain twelve months’ worth of rent miraculously paid on my behalf?’

‘Twelve months!’ Her friend seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Someone has paid an entire year of rent? Who? And, more importantly, why?’

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Clarissa—let’s not play games.’ She wouldn’t feel bad for losing her temper. A line had to be drawn somewhere and her overprotective friend had pushed the boundary between concern and downright interference too far. ‘I appreciate I’ve been the biggest of fools, that I married a man you had the measure of from the outset and cautioned me against, that I put up with Penhurst and did his bidding like a quaking dolt for three years! I am walking proof of how stupidly trusting, misguided and downtrodden a woman can be! But I’m not an idiot. Not any more, at any rate. You directly or indirectly paid my rent without my consent or knowledge to stop me applying for work.’

‘No. I didn’t. I swear it. I had every intention of having another long chat with you about the topic today in the hope you might reconsider. That I will freely admit. I see no earthly reason why you continue to isolate yourself here in this tiny apartment in Cheapside when you could live with us comfortably in Grosvenor Square. And I was jolly well prepared to shake you by the shoulders if you continued to be stubborn, but I respect the fact that only you can make the decisions concerning you and Freddie. After Penhurst, and all the dire and wicked things he did to you, I would never dream of robbing you of free will.’ Her friend leaned forward and clasped her hand, looking worried. ‘I swear to you, Penny, I did not pay your rent.’

‘Then who did?’ It didn’t make sense. She had two distant cousins left, neither of whom wanted anything to do with her. They had been very specific on the subject in their final letter to her during the trial. No other friends. They had all been shamefully quick to desert her, too. Rats hurling themselves from a scuppered and sinking ship. It had hurt, but she understood it. Aside from Clarissa and her husband, she had no one.

‘You don’t suppose one of Penhurst’s old friends paid it for you?’

A cold chill skittered down Penny’s spine at the thought. ‘Why would they?’ Surely those cutthroats hated her? ‘I testified against him...’ Before those same cutthroats had violently murdered her husband in his cell. ‘And they’ve all been rounded up. Haven’t they?’ The ringleaders were all in gaol—but what if the government had missed someone? Would they wish her, a woman who knew nothing outside of what had happed within her own four walls, harm or malice? By the look on Clarissa’s suddenly pale face she suspected they did. ‘I thought nobody bar you, Seb and the authorities knew my new name and address.’ If her new lodgings and identity had leaked outside the safety of her minuscule intimate circle, to people who could feasibly perhaps want her dead, then she would have to take Freddie and leave tonight. Lord only knew where or how. She was down to her last five guineas—thanks, bizarrely, to the money she had not been allowed to pay to those to whom she owed it, six pieces of her mother’s jewellery and the clothes on her back.

Clarissa saw the fear and her tone instantly became reassuring. ‘Believe me, if those people wanted to punish you and knew where you were, they would have done so. Swiftly and mercilessly. It makes no sense they would offer you charity. Besides, they’ve arrested the leaders. Those crooks beneath them would have long fled if they have any sense. Staying in the capital is tantamount to a death sentence if they are caught. Whoever paid your rent doesn’t mean you harm, Penny. We can be certain of that. On the contrary, I suspect. They want to see you safe and well cared for.’

‘I don’t want anyone else’s money or their help. Especially if they are linked to my husband in some way.’ And even if they weren’t, she only had two friends left in the world and Freddie. Being beholden to a complete stranger, no matter how benevolent, made her feel uneasy. ‘But what if it is one of his criminal contacts?’ All manner of dire scenarios flitted through her mind, making her unconsciously tighten her hold on her son.

‘There’s nobody of importance left, dearest. All the authorities are convinced of it. What if I talk to Lord Fennimore or get Seb to investigate it? I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom of your mystery benefactor in no time and then we’ll set them straight as well as put your mind at ease. As soon as they realise their well-meaning interference is unwelcome, I’m sure they’ll leave well alone.’

Chapter Two

Hadleigh placed the little jade brooch in his desk drawer alongside the dented gold locket, well-worn cameo and the delicate ruby earrings, then locked it and pocketed the key. He was no expert on woman’s jewellery—or women’s anything, for that matter—but he doubted they were worth a great deal. They lacked the sparkle of the gems he saw glittering beneath the chandeliers at the few society events he was forced to attend when he couldn’t find the right excuse to get out of them. If anything, they were a sad, meagre collection of jewellery as far as he was concerned, but they were of great personal value to her. He had witnessed that with his own eyes this time as he had watched her dither outside the pawnbroker’s, staring at the brooch for the longest time lovingly before swapping it for a few coins.

Thanks to the Bow Street Runner he had assigned to watch her since she had moved to Cheapside three months ago, the detailed weekly reports had made it easy to see there was a pattern to those heart-wrenching visits. On the first of the month, every month, she pawned a trinket and used the proceeds to pay her bills. Today, he had paid them all before she left the house and retrieved the latest item within minutes of her leaving the pawnbroker’s shop, supremely thankful that she had not noticed him loitering in that convenient doorway as she had briskly bustled past within a hair’s breadth of him. A little too close for comfort, truth be told, when a man in his position shouldn’t be anywhere near a witness from a prior case.

But the same thought processes which had kept him up at night since the Penhurst verdict still plagued him. Continually worrying about her had compelled him to see her for himself today for the first time since the trial. He had needed to see with his own eyes exactly what was going on in her world and if her situation was as dire as the Runner had intimated it was. Solvent people, he had said in last week’s report, didn’t sell off the family silver.

For a gently bred lady to stoop that low, things had to be dire. She must be at her wits’ end with worrying about how to pay for things. He sincerely hoped she would sleep easier tonight knowing she no longer ran the risk of being evicted. Hadleigh certainly hoped he would sleep sounder. He also hoped that single act of benevolent charity would appease his niggling conscience. A conscience which bothered him the most in the dead of night when he should have been snatching enough hours of rest to keep his legal mind fresh. He was plagued with insomnia and desperately needed proper sleep. And now unburdened, would grab some—just as soon as he finished today’s mountain of paperwork.

He cast a glance at the stack of case notes and witness statements on his desk, next to yet another cold and unappealing candlelit supper his valet had left out for him and allowed himself a pitying groan. There was at least another hour’s work there, perhaps two, before he could even consider heading to his bed.

There was no doubt this was the biggest case of his career. For over a year, the King’s Elite had been seeking the criminal mastermind behind a dangerous smuggling ring. A few weeks ago, they had finally found the person and, as the appointed Crown Prosecutor, Hadleigh’s current and enormous quest for justice had truly started. The infamous, well-connected and dangerous Boss, who had been the scourge of the hallowed halls of Westminster as well as turning more peers than the odious Viscount Penhurst traitor, had finally been unmasked and arrested. And to everyone’s shock, including Hadleigh’s, the man they had been seeking was in fact a woman.

Viscountess Gislingham was now safely under lock and key in the most secure prison in the country—the Tower of London. Six other peers were similarly incarcerated in Newgate. It was Hadleigh’s job to build a watertight case against her and her fellow traitors so they could crush that evil smuggling ring once and for all. Months of painstaking work lay ahead of him, work that would need his full attention. Already Lady Penhurst had occupied far too much of it, when he desperately needed his rest and was tired of mulling over and fretting about her situation. Paying her debts had been an act of charity to himself as well as to her. How was he supposed to be on top form when he spent night after night tossing and turning? Dreaming of knotted handkerchiefs, proudly set shoulders and pretty blue eyes swirling with heart-wrenching emotion.

The question brought her image starkly into view and he ruthlessly banished it as he sat down.

Enough! She was not his problem!

This case was.

He tore a chunk of bread from the half-loaf near his elbow, sawed off a slice of ham and chewed both dispassionately as he reread the meticulous interrogation notes he had made only this morning during another interminable stint with the traitors at Newgate. Five were still pleading their innocence. One had broken and was blabbing everything he knew. Whether or not the information he had given was enough to justify lessening the man’s sentence was still in doubt. But in his experience, once a criminal committed to turning King’s evidence, they committed wholeheartedly. Tomorrow could be interesting, but he needed to be fully prepared.

Within minutes, Hadleigh was so engrossed, the sound of a fist pummelling his front door had him jumping out of his skin. People didn’t bang on his door. Especially not this close to midnight. One of the main reasons he continued to live in bachelor lodgings at the Albany, rather than his own house less than an hour’s carriage drive from the capital, was that there was always a porter at the main entrance to dissuade unwelcome visitors from calling at unsociable hours—or any hours, for that matter—and bothering him. That was his excuse and he was sticking to it. He was a solitary beast by nature, partly because his work made it difficult to have unguarded conversations with most people and partly because he had been on his own for so long he was used to it. The Albany, close to his work, made perfect sense. That haunted house down the road didn’t.

The fist bashed the door again, reminding him that Prescott, his valet, always took Thursday afternoons off and rarely returned before Friday morning. It also told him whoever was pummelling his woodwork with such vigour was probably known to the porter, hence he had been let in. Something important must have happened since he left chambers. ‘I’m coming!’

He had expected it to have something to do with the government, so was not surprised when he flung open the door and Seb Leatham strode in, looking furious.

‘What’s happened?’ Immediately his mind went to the prisoners and his case. Experience had taught them that The Boss’s smuggling gang had no respect for the law or its institutions. Viscount Penhurst and another conspirator, the Marquis of Deal, had been brutally murdered in their cells in Newgate a few days after their sentences had been issued in case they made any final confessions. The bloodthirsty crew of assassins had also ruthlessly sent three prison guards to meet their maker that same night. It had been a grim and stark reminder of exactly how powerful the group of criminals they were dealing with were. ‘Please tell me nobody else is dead!’

‘Not yet. But the night is young and as I’m royally furious I shan’t rule it out.’ His friend barged past him and stalked into the only room with a light burning—Hadleigh’s study. He tossed his hat on the desk, folded his meaty arms across his chest and glared.

‘I am not entirely sure I follow...’

‘I made allowances for the Bow Street Runner.’ Seb’s eyes bored into his, his tautly controlled stance quietly terrifying. ‘After everything she has suffered, and in light of the dangerous people her husband dealt with, I reasoned the more people who had eyes on her the better.’

He knew about the Bow Street Runner?

Oh, dear. All ideas of anonymously appeasing his niggling conscience with a secret act of charity swiftly disappeared. ‘This is about Lady Penhurst?’

‘You’re damn right this is about Penny!’ One pointed finger prodded him right in the breast bone. ‘What the hell were you thinking, paying her debts off like that?’

Confused that Seb had so swiftly traced it back to him and even more confused that the man was angry about his obvious thoughtful and noble generosity, Hadleigh grabbed the still-prodding digit and made a point of pushing it away. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I reasoned she would be pleased not to have to struggle to make ends meet after the Runner informed me she was struggling.’

‘Then clearly you don’t know Penny very well. And clearly you know nothing whatsoever about my wife!’ Seb began to pace, his hands waving in annoyance. ‘Good grief, man! Talk about taking a mallet to crack a nut! What were you thinking?’

‘After the Crown abandoned her, I was trying to help.’

‘Well, you’ve gone and made a splendid hash of it. What the hell am I going to tell Clarissa?’

‘As it was meant to be an anonymous gesture, you will tell her nothing, because it has nothing to do with her either.’

At that, Seb finally sat down with a huff in Hadleigh’s chair and shook his head. ‘Spoken like a true bachelor. Unfortunately, as it was Clarissa who expressly asked me to investigate her best friend’s mystery benefactor, and because your ham-fisted attempt at being a Good Samaritan has spectacularly served to scare the living daylights out of both women, I have no choice but to tell her.’

‘Why would they be scared?’

‘You really have no clue, do you? Which is exactly the reason why you should leave the spying and covert machinations to us trained spies and stick to barristering.’

‘I don’t think barristering is an actual word.’

‘And still you fiddle while Rome burns!’

‘The Devil is in the detail...’ Words he lived by. He was good with details, although clearly he had missed one here.

‘Shall I spell it out to you in simple terms?’ Seb did not wait for a response. ‘Firstly, think about the particular circumstances of your good deed. Only a few months ago, that poor woman’s vile husband was arrested on charges of treason. Your own investigation linked him to a whole host of unsavoury characters. Cutthroats. Smugglers. Cold-blooded murderers. When Penny testified against him, she testified against them, too. We assume we’ve rounded them all up now that we’ve captured the ringleader—but what if we haven’t? It is entirely reasonable to assume any stragglers might have an axe to grind with her. It is one of the main reasons I actively encouraged her to assume an alias!’ He stood then and began to pace. ‘Furthermore, in paying those debts covertly, you have also alerted a very proud and determined woman to the fact she is under close watch at all times.’

‘A gross exaggeration. The Bow Street Runner does not watch her at all times. He has quite specific instructions as I do not want to alert her to his presence.’

‘That I am well aware of. Fortunately, my Invisibles have had her on continuous watch since the moment her husband was first arrested.’ And hence the reason, no doubt, that Hadleigh’s generosity had been quickly traced back to him despite his best intentions of keeping his guilty secret. The Invisible branch of the King’s Elite specialised in blending into the background and watching unseen. Worse, the angry man in front of him had personally trained every last one of them. ‘However pragmatic, logical and well meaning it was meant to be, Penny is not going to take the news well. Not when we’ve had the devil of a job keeping her near us in London and not when she was constantly watched for years on her husband’s instruction. She is adamant she is entirely done with all that nonsense going forward. And who can blame her? You should have consulted with me!’

‘I do not answer to you, Leatham. Or Lord Fennimore. I answer to the Attorney General.’

‘Did you consult the Attorney General?’

Of course not. Had he have done, he would have been reprimanded for even considering helping a traitor’s wife. A barrister was supposed to keep his professional life entirely separate from his personal one. They wore wigs and gowns to avoid being recognised out of court by disgruntled receivers of justice or their families or being tracked down by the press and goaded into discussing cases. The Attorney General would take a very dim view of Hadleigh’s overwhelming urge to rescue the woman they had callously ruined with one stroke of a pen. ‘I wanted to help her.’

‘Then you went about it in a very poor manner and have undone months of work. I am actually tempted to strangle you!’

‘What work?’

‘For the first time in years, she has proper freedom and independence—and even though we know that independence comes courtesy of the pawn shop every month, it is still an achievement. A point of honour and pride. One that we will destroy the second she learns a whole host of people have been working behind the scenes to create the illusion she is coping perfectly well all on her own.’

‘She isn’t?’

‘I think she puts on a good front. She’s a good mother and seems to enjoy being mistress of her own house, but it worries Clarissa that she’s all alone. That bastard knocked all the confidence out of her and such things take a long time to heal, but that aside, she has nothing. She is nowhere near ready for the harsh realities of life yet, especially one she will be forced to start from scratch. Not that she’ll hear it. It’s almost as if she’s embarrassed by the situation she has been placed in and blames herself a great deal for it, when we all know she was a victim of cruel circumstance. Clarissa has been trying to support her to no avail. Penny point-blank refuses to live with us and is unbelievably stubborn about accepting what she sees as charity.

‘She has two perfectly good feet, apparently, and thinks it’s long past time she stood on them, regardless of her empty purse. London is expensive and she has a mind to move somewhere cheaper and far away from the ton before she is recognised. I can’t deny the risk of her true identity being revealed is greater here than anywhere else in the country. That worries me, of course, but if nothing else, here I can ensure she is safe and my wife can be there for her. Recently, she’s even started talking about seeking employment, for heaven’s sake, in a big house or school somewhere, so she’s clearly concerned about her future. Yet she is so proud she prefers to sell her mother’s jewellery to make ends meet. Again, something she has no idea we know or have blatantly interfered with. Thanks to you, she might discover Clarissa and I have surreptitiously been giving her money all along.’

‘You have?’

‘Of course we have! We couldn’t see her struggle! Penhurst sold everything her parents left her of value. Those trinkets she sells every month are pinchbeck and paste at best and all of them in total would barely have raised enough to scrape six months’ rent. I’ve been bribing the pawnbroker to give her an excellent price for them to keep her from leaving any time soon.’

‘Ah.’ Hadleigh would not mention he had paid more than market worth to buy them back each month. He was going to have stern words with that wily, conniving pawnbroker on the morrow.

‘Ah, indeed. I dread to think how she will react if she ever finds out how Clarissa and I have been quietly interfering.’ Seb let out a long, laboured breath. ‘That’s not true. I know exactly what she’ll do. She’ll feel betrayed and she’ll leave. To go and stand on her own two feet. One lone, proud woman with nothing bar a small child, no money and a past that could come back to bite her at every turn. Believe me, the world is a hard place for a woman like that...’ Seb’s broad shoulders seemed to deflate as he exhaled.

‘Which brings me to my final point, the most sensitive and delicate of all the points, and one which a sad bachelor like yourself will have little experience of—my wife trusted me to find Penny’s mystery benefactor.’ Seb slapped his own chest hard. ‘She trusted me! Knowing that I would sort it quickly and make it right. Put poor Penny’s mind at ease and stop her fleeing out of the sphere of our covert and careful protection. Your actions could destroy months of our good work, a lifelong friendship and ultimately leave Penny vulnerable. So, you see, I have to report it all back to Clarissa tonight. I made a promise.’

Yes, perhaps Hadleigh had unintentionally made a delicate situation worse, but Seb was being overdramatic about it. ‘Surely you don’t have to report everything back to Clarissa? Be selective. Lie if need be. Isn’t that what spies excel at? You lie for a living.’

Seb smiled winsomely, his eyes softening for the first time since he had stormed into the place uninvited. ‘That I do—but I would never lie to my wife. She is my everything.’

Hadleigh wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t. Seb was newly married and still head over heels in love. It was all a bit bizarre and he didn’t understand it. Apart from his mother growing up, he had managed to sidestep any emotional attachments or strong bonds in his life. Largely because emotions in general made him uncomfortable, especially his own. He kept friends at a polite distance, too, preferring the reassuring company of his work more. He could socialise and enjoy it, he didn’t suffer from a lack of confidence or shyness around people as Seb did, yet he was still always oddly relieved when a gathering came to an end so he could retreat back into his own space again. Even his sporadic and discreet affairs were with women who were wedded to their independence. Getting too close to anyone made him uncomfortable.

He had always been the same. A little detached. Naturally solitary. A typical only child, he supposed. Lonely. Where had that thought come from? Good grief, he needed some proper sleep. ‘Then tell Clarissa the truth and have her lie to her friend. I meant well and I have no intention of taking the money back when she obviously needs it.’ That route would only lead to more tossing and turning and vivid dreams involving soulful blue eyes, when he needed to be on top form till this trial was over.

‘You have placed me in an impossible position.’ His friend raked his hand through his hair in agitation. ‘I’ll be honest and say, I cannot promise Clarissa will not unmask you. She and Penny are very close and Penny is very upset. Ultimately, we will do what is best for Penny and continue to do whatever it takes to keep her close by.’

‘I understand.’ At least he thought he did. Seb didn’t want Lady Penhurst to know he was protecting her. Hadleigh could sleep better knowing that someone was. ‘If you think it would help, I am happy to tell her it was all down to me if it comes to it.’ Which he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t. Her poignant expression and sorrowful eyes outside the pawnshop this morning had haunted all his waking thoughts since. Given the strange hold the woman seemed to have over him, meeting her again, actually conversing with her, was exceedingly unwise.

‘That should keep your own machinations on the lady’s behalf out of it.’ Not ideal, but he could see he had rather put Seb in an awkward and potentially untenable situation. And he didn’t want to be the cause of Lady Penhurst either fleeing the safety of their care or taking menial work which was beneath her. That, certainly, had never been his intention. But then, neither had he intended to ever have to speak to her. A conversation which was bound to be awkward, all things considered. Definitely unprofessional in the extreme. He had prosecuted her husband, for pity’s sake! ‘Perhaps once I explain my actions were borne out of genuine concern, based on irrefutable fact—’ alongside an unhealthy and guilt-fuelled obsession with her ‘—I am hopeful she will see sense and accept the gift in the spirit in which it was intended. Clearly the woman needs help.’

He used reason for a living. If it came to it, once he stated his case, plainly, and backed it with logical evidence, the truth would become apparent. Failing that, he would use the quick wits he had been blessed with and his innate ability to read people to convince her to accept his financial help. She shouldn’t have to struggle alone. Not when he could easily right that wrong at the very least.

‘And clearly, my learned friend, you don’t know much about women if you think that will be the outcome.’ Seb appeared amused as well as appeased as he walked to the door. ‘But I shall pass all this on to Clarissa and see what she thinks. As long as it keeps both of us above suspicion and still allows me to keep a vigilant eye on Penny, I am more than happy for you to suffer all the consequences.’

Chapter Three

‘Try not to be nervous. Now that we know who the culprit is and that it was meant well, there really is nothing to worry about.’ Clarissa offered another one of her reassuring smiles of encouragement which Penny returned half-heartedly when the truth was she was still reeling from the revelation hours later.

While it was a relief to know that she wasn’t in any immediate danger, to learn that the man responsible for paying all her debts was the same man who had doggedly pursued her husband through the courts was bizarre. Why would he do that? It made absolutely no sense.

She was nothing to him. Just another face in an ever-changing sea of faces on the busy witness stand of the Old Bailey. Their interactions had been brief and impersonal. Or at least his interactions with her had been impersonal. He never once showed an ounce of human emotion in all the many long hours of the trial. For her, those hours had been deeply personal and life-changing. One minute she had been unhappily married to a brute and the next unwittingly married to a traitor who had been sentenced to death. Now, suddenly, out of the blue, the prosecution lawyer decided he needed to pay all her rent... Why? And more importantly, what the blazes was she supposed to say to him on the subject when he imminently arrived at her small apartment.

‘It is peculiar though...isn’t it? Why would he do it?’ Penny asked. Clarissa had asked the same question at least sixty times since Seb had told her the news just after dawn. What exactly had motivated him to be so unwelcomely generous? Guilt? Penny sincerely hoped not. ‘And what possessed him to set a Bow Street Runner on me to watch my every move?’ Knowing she had been under surveillance when she had assumed she was safe—completely incognito—really bothered her. Aside from the unpalatable fact that it was reminiscent of her years under watch during her awful marriage, if the Runner had easily found her, would the press? Or her horrid husband’s criminal friends? That was the trouble with London. In a vastly overcrowded capital, it was too easy to hide in plain sight. She had become complacent and, in so doing, had stayed far longer than she had originally intended. A situation she needed to quickly remedy for Freddie’s sake.

‘I don’t think he did that for anything other than noble reasons. In many ways, I would actually find it a comfort that somebody cared enough to want to ensure my safety and...’ Clarissa’s voice petered off as Penny glared and the fraught silence settled between them once again.

They had spoken about this most of the morning. While Clarissa seemed of the opinion it was perfectly acceptable to take the man’s money now that they knew who it came from, because it made her life considerably easier, Penny found the idea of his or anyone’s charity abhorrent. Again, it felt uncomfortably familiar. Penhurst had made her jump through hoops for every farthing she dared ask for and then used it to his advantage afterwards. You need a new dress? Wear this one... Freddie needs toys? He can have them if you stop bothering Nanny Francis... Your mother is dying and you need to take the post to visit her? If you do as you are told for the next week, and beg convincingly, I might give you the fare...

Such experiences scarred a person.

Besides, never a lender or a borrower be. Her father’s old motto rung in her ears and was too ingrained to shift. She had marched blindly into a marriage with a shameless borrower and her life had been both miserable and embarrassing as a result. Before he began his career as a criminal, it had been Penny who had had to deal with the debt collectors and the awkward conversations with friends who had lent him money in good faith when Penhurst knew full well he was in no position to pay it back.

Just thinking about how her life had been made her muscles tense and her toes curl inside her shoes. She would not start her new life beholden to anyone.

How did one explain all that to Clarissa?

Nor could Clarissa possibly empathise, particularly as their perspectives were so at odds. But then Clarissa had not had every aspect of her life controlled and Penny had. What she had initially assumed was her besotted groom’s eagerness to have her in his life had quickly turned into a rigid and oppressive life which his penchant for ruthless violence ensured she adhered to. Simple, everyday activities like walking to the village to buy ribbons were restricted unless expressly sanctioned by him. Not that she ever did buy ribbons. To buy ribbons, one needed pin money and despite bringing a significant dowry to the marriage, Penhurst never gave her a farthing unless it had many strings attached.

Control like that made you crave the opposite. Freedom and independence like she used to have. Which was why Penny was eager to start afresh. A new life. A new place. A new, improved and better her, shaped by her past certainly, but not tied to it. Rightly or wrongly, she saw her current situation as a second chance and one she refused to squander. Well before his arrest, her life shackled to Penhurst had become a wretched existence. That that had ended, regardless of the circumstances, had to be viewed as a blessing and she was not inclined to mourn its loss.

Her friend wanted to anchor her here where the past hovered ominously to haunt her for her own well-meant but ultimately insulting reasons. Poor, mistreated, misguided and fragile Penny. A label which was probably well deserved, but now galled, because it reminded her too much of the woman she had temporarily been, but now loathed. Much as she loved Clarissa and would be forever grateful to her, her overprotectiveness now was stifling and, when they clashed on any topics involving Penny’s future, felt alarmingly like control once again and instinctively that made her chafe against it. Like her awful husband and her oppressive sham of a marriage, the green, anxiously compliant and tragic Lady Penelope Penhurst was dead and good riddance to her. Long live Penny Henley! Whoever Penny Henley was.

They had both lapsed back into their own quiet thoughts, the brittle peace broken only by the ominous ticking of the second-hand clock on the tiny mantel, until the polite tap on the door had her practically jumping out of her seat.

‘Finally!’ Clarissa stood with the innate grace her plainer friend had always envied and smoothed down her dress, the action highlighting the first beginnings of the tiny baby bump forming in her normally perfectly flat tummy. The bump which she had yet to formally appraise Penny of, no doubt not to give her another excuse to want to stop being a needy burden on her generous friend’s time. ‘Sit straighter. Pull your shoulders back. Don’t smile. Remember, you want to keep the upper hand.’

Clarissa had staged the room to put the lawyer at a distinct disadvantage. Penny sat in the tallest and most regal chair, one which her friend had had delivered from her own house less than an hour ago to give the illusion of a gravitas she did not feel. Both Clarissa and Seb were to sit on the small sofa near the room’s only window, there for moral support and to ensure Penny did not allow herself to be walked over. This was well meant, but it galled. As if she would continue being a doormat after all the times Penhurst had metaphorically wiped his muddy feet on her back!

Lord Hadleigh got to sit in the short, hard chair next to the roaring fireplace. Being mild by October standards, the unnecessary fire would also serve to make the interfering lawyer feel uncomfortable. Clarissa intended the man to bake like a crusty loaf while he sweated out his apology. While Penny thought all her friend’s staging was taking things a bit too far, she did hope the searing heat would encourage him to leave swiftly. Hopefully with a polite flea in his ear, put there by the new, assertive, improved version of herself and after promising to acquire a refund from Mr Cohen for the rent. Because Lord only knew Penny stood no chance of scrabbling together a year’s worth of rent any time soon to repay him.

Clarissa opened the door and the lawyer positively filled the frame. An unpleasant surprise, when she had worked hard to convince herself he had only seemed imposing in the courtroom because of his austere barrister’s attire, and she had been entirely intimidated by the proceedings and the intentional, dramatic theatre of the Old Bailey.

He stepped in, his sharp eyes taking in the whole room, and only then did she notice Clarissa’s enormous husband behind him. Heavens, the barrister really was tall! And handsome, in an aristocratic and detached sort of way. She hadn’t noticed that before—probably because of the wig and gown. The intimidating staging of the legal system.

‘We shan’t beat around the bush...’ Clarissa gestured specifically to the tiny chair ‘...seeing that you clearly have some explaining to do and we are keen to hear it.’

He walked straight past the chair and stopped in front of Penny, inclining his golden head politely and taking her hand. ‘Lady Penhurst—my humblest of apologies. Leatham here tells me my clumsy gesture caused you angst and for that I shall never forgive myself.’

For some reason, she had not expected an outright apology straight away. Nor such a pretty one. Nor had she expected his gloveless hand to be so warm or his touch so reassuring. As if he had read her mind, his other hand came to rest on top of hers in what she assumed was meant as a friendly gesture, but in actuality made her feel a little odd. Not in an unpleasant way, but those large, gentle hands, combined with the way his unusual burnt-amber eyes locked and held with hers, set her pulse jumping.

She recognised the sensation from long ago. That frisson of awareness and excitement she remembered only too well from those initial heady days of her first and only Season, when a dashing new suitor showed an interest and flirted. Her former hopelessly romantic heart would begin to race as her vivid, naive imagination began to conjure up scenarios of a future with him. Because then, despite all the teachings of her sensible and hard-working parents, she had abandoned good sense for unrealistic dreams of romance and love. What a foolish girl she had been then!

Instinctively, she disentangled her hand and buried it with the other safely within the folds of her skirt. She watched his eyes dip to them before he smiled and her stupid pulse quickened further. She had never seen him smile. It suited him. ‘It was not my intention to cause you concern.’

‘What exactly was your intention?’ Annoyance at her own body’s reaction made her tone irritated and for that, at least, she was glad. She had fallen for pretty words once before and look where that had got her. Annoyed was decisive. Penny Henley was decisive.

He took a step back, but appeared perfectly content to stand. Uncharitably, Penny decided he was avoiding the chair on purpose to deny her the chance to take control and she instantly bristled. ‘I imagine, given our limited and professional acquaintance, my actions do seem a trifle odd, but believe me, they truly were well meant. After the Crown saw fit to render you homeless, I could not in all good conscience allow you and your innocent son to struggle.’

He considered Freddie? That was nice... Good grief, girl, grow a backbone! You used to have such a fine one. He took it upon himself to make a decision for you when he had no right. None whatsoever. She wasn’t a wife any longer. Not a chattel nor a charity case.

‘Do prosecution barristers regularly pay the household bills of defence witnesses?’ He blinked, the only sign her forthright words had been unexpected.

‘Under normal circumstances, the Crown would not take the archaic decision to strip a family of their title and assets.’ They agreed on that at least. Losing her home had ripped the floor from under her feet, hurting far more than losing her distasteful husband. ‘I was merely attempting to make some small amends for that travesty in my own ham-fisted and clumsy way.’

A plausible answer. A charming and disarming one. But not to her direct question and Penny felt her hackles rise further. He was being the unfazed and convincing lawyer she had seen every day at the Old Bailey, attempting to play her like a violin. She had seen him in action. He was charming and decisive. Used to commanding the ears and then the thoughts of those who found themselves listening to his clever arguments and well-chosen words. A man who had reluctantly come here today with one purpose. To justify having her put under surveillance for months and then anonymously settling her debts—apparently for her own good.

Despite all of Clarissa’s careful staging, he now thoroughly commanded the room. He had ignored the tiny chair. Avoided the sweltering fire. And instead of regally looking down her nose at him, Penny was forced to look up. A long way up. Another professional trick he had clearly done on purpose. She stood, hoping she appeared partially regal despite the vast difference in their heights, and allowed her irritation to show plainly on her face. Money aside, no matter which way one looked at it, having her followed was a gross invasion of her privacy, one she had every right to feel angry about.

‘Did the Crown also sanction the Runner you had spy on me?’

He blinked again, frowning slightly. ‘No. Of course they didn’t. My actions have nothing to do with the government or the Crown in any way.’

‘But you are such a noble man, such a seeker of justice, that you simply decided to right a wrong regardless? Or do you merely have a guilty conscience about what transpired?’

‘Not at all.’ He took another step back and his normally inscrutable expression dissolved briefly into one of outrage. ‘I had no part in their decision.’ The bland barrister’s mask slipped back in place. ‘If you must know, I petitioned the Attorney General on your behalf.’

That she knew. Clarissa and Seb had told her as much that dreadful night in their house in Grosvenor Square once she realised she no longer had a home to go back to. Those had been the darkest and most hopeless days of her life. The press had huddled outside the house like vultures, doing whatever they could to catch a glimpse of the traitor’s wife—soon to be traitor’s widow. No peer of the realm had been stripped of his title and his estates in decades. Neither had any peer been sentenced to death for any crime—let alone treason—since Lord Lovat after the Battle of Culloden two generations previously. Meanwhile, inside her friend’s house Penny had been too stunned, too broken down after years of her oppressive marriage, to do anything other than weep or stare, catatonic.

What was she going to do? What was to become of her son? Oh, woe is me!

When news came days later that her husband had escaped the hangman’s noose only because his criminal associates had decided it was safer to have him murdered in Newgate than risk having him make any deathbed confessions which might implicate them, an intrepid reporter had broken into Seb’s house. The intruder had successfully climbed three stairs before he was tackled and removed by the guards. Those had been three stairs too many for Penny and strangely galvanised her into action, awaking a part of her which had lain dormant for too many years. She was so tired of being the helpless victim.

Weeping and lamenting Oh, woe is me was not going to change a single thing and it certainly wasn’t going to protect her son. Only she could do both—yet could do neither while feeling pathetically sorry for herself when she only had herself to blame. The signs had been there from the outset. Clarissa had warned her. Even her father had offered to help her flee the church on the morning of her marriage despite spending a king’s ransom on the gown, the elaborate wedding breakfast and the marriage settlements, and despite knowing her mother would also be devastated to have encouraged the match. But blinded by the belief she was madly in love and madly loved in return by her handsome, titled, ardent suitor, she had positively floated down the aisle towards her groom, regardless of the niggling voice in her head which cautioned she was making a huge mistake.

It had been a revelation to finally accept the fact she had made her own bed, through her own foolish weaknesses, and now had to lie in it—and just because her new bed was hard and uncomfortable, it didn’t make it a bad bed. If anything, it was a significantly superior bed to the one she had been lying in. Only this time, she could make it exactly as she wanted.

The next day she had gone into hiding, in plain sight at Seb’s suggestion, to live independently for the first time in her twenty-four years and she had not looked back or wallowed in one drop of pointless self-pity since. Her new life had started and she found she rather enjoyed it. The past was the past. Done. Dead. She had come to terms with it all and was well shot of it. Didn’t allow herself to think upon it any more.

Yet now the past was back in the most unexpected and unforeseen way. Not from the press. Not from being recognised. But from the man still stood proudly in front of her. Too proudly when he was the one clearly in the wrong here. What gave him the right to assert change on her life when he’d had a professional hand in creating her current situation? Did he feel guilt at proving her husband guilty?

Perhaps that was the problem? That awful possibility had been niggling since she had learned the truth this morning. What if his guilt about the trial ran deeper than he was letting on? If so, then it kicked a veritable hornets’ nest she was only too content to leave well alone.

For five months, there had been no doubt in her mind that Penhurst had been guilty of all the charges levelled against him and probably more. Penny had realised as much the moment the King’s Men had stormed into her house and arrested him. Later, the lawyer’s case had been convincing and thorough, and while she felt stupid at her own ignorance and ashamed of her own cowardice to question that ignorance, so many things she had seen or heard during the final year of her marriage suddenly made perfect sense once all the pieces of the puzzle were finally slotted together.

Lord Hadleigh had done that. So much so, it had given her the confidence to stand up to her husband by telling the truth and she had resigned herself to hearing a guilty verdict.

Resigned was the wrong word.

It suggested she was dreading the verdict, when the opposite was true. While she had not expected a peer of the realm to receive the death penalty, she had anticipated a guilty verdict and a life blessedly free from Penhurst afterwards. Looked forward to it eagerly—something which caused her guilt late at night when sleep eluded her. Whatever Penhurst had done, he was still the father of her son. Something she knew she would one day have to explain to her little boy.

Was it wrong to be completely relieved to be free of him? Or to have helped him on his way by testifying against him the moment fate had given her the chance? For five months, she had consoled herself that she had done the right thing for Freddie’s sake so that he could grow into the man he was meant to be rather than one tainted and poisoned by his sire’s warped morals.

The lawyer’s guilty conscience suddenly made her question the validity of the trial. Had Lord Hadleigh embellished the truth or lied? Covered important and pertinent details up? Fabricated evidence? She sincerely hoped not. Penny did not want to have any of her relief at the tumultuous end of her marriage dampened. She had hated Penhurst and was glad he was dead. Felt no guilt at his violent passing whatsoever. But guilt might well explain why the lawyer had paid her rent for an entire year.

* * *

‘I don’t want your blood money!’

‘Blood money?’ Her harsh words took him aback. ‘I can assure you, madam, my gift was nothing of the sort.’ Hadleigh raked an agitated hand through his hair and began to pace. The very idea was as preposterous as it was insulting and he wanted to loudly proclaim his utter disgust at the suggestion. He was a principled man who believed in right and wrong. Good and evil. Justice and truth. A man who righted wrongs, not caused them. How dare she even suggest his motives were fuelled by...what? Malpractice? Deceit? Wrongdoing? And on what evidence was his good reputation so unfairly besmirched?

But as he paced the worn old rug on the hard, scuffed wooden floor, took in the mismatched furniture, the cramped and basic surroundings alongside the proud and clearly frightened woman stood before him, he couldn’t help but remember a similar scene years ago. And another time when he had attempted to rescue a woman who flatly refused to be rescued because there was nothing she needed to be rescued from.

Absolutely nothing.

Hadleigh realised that losing his temper now, just as it had done then, would not help her at all. Better to stick to reason, logic and the truth and keep emotion well out of it.

‘I can see why you would jump to that conclusion, so please allow me to reassure you. My actions had nothing to do with guilt regarding your husband or the way his trial was carried out. I am sorry if you find that difficult to hear, but on that score I am remorseless...’ Good grief! Hardly the best way to win her over and accept his benevolence in the spirit it was intended. ‘I acted as I did more out of a sense of regret that you had to suffer more than was necessary and completely unjustly. If the Crown refused to see you right, then someone needed to. I am a wealthy man, so it was no hardship for me to help. Consider it my penance for failing to get the Crown to see sense.’ He was righting a wrong. It was that simple.

‘That does not explain why you saw fit to have me spied upon these past months.’

‘I didn’t have you spied upon.’ So much for sticking to reason, logic and the truth. Hadleigh found himself wincing. She had a perfectly valid reason to be angry with him and now that he was seeing it all through her eyes, he had made a royal hash of it. ‘All right... I suppose in a manner of speaking I did, but again it was not done with any malice. After you had been left with nothing—through no fault of your own, I might add—I needed to reassure myself you and your child were coping all alone. When the Runner informed me you were selling your jewellery...’

‘Insignificant pieces to which I had no attachment.’ Her pretty face flushed as she resolutely avoided her friends’ sympathetic eyes and he realised he had inadvertently put his big, fat foot in it again. Like his mother, she was too ashamed of her situation to accept help despite none of it being her fault. ‘Things given to me by a husband which I would prefer to forget and mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ Despite the fact that both her friends, and he, knew she was pawning her mother’s jewellery to pay her monthly bills, she was still labouring under the misapprehension that her friends, at least, didn’t. ‘I no longer wanted any reminders of him in my house.’

She was proud in the face of defeat and his heart wept for her. His hands wanted to touch her, tug her into his arms and hold her close. What was that about, aside from the bone-deep exhaustion which came from weeks of sleeplessness? No wonder his emotions were a tad frayed and close to the surface. ‘A perfectly understandable reason to sell them and one which makes me sorrier my heavy-handed and unnecessary response has caused you both worry and embarrassment.’

‘I am not in need of charity, Lord Hadleigh.’

‘That I can plainly see, my lady.’ Blast it all to hell, he had gone about this all wrong. Pride always came before a fall and, like his mother, this one would rather suffer in silence than allow the world to see her pain. He, of all people, should have pre-empted such a reaction. ‘And once again, I humbly apologise for insulting you. It was well intentioned, although, I concede, highly inappropriate and misguided.’

It was time to make a hasty retreat before he was backed into a corner of his own making and forced into rescinding his gift before she had had time to mull over the many benefits of it. Given a little time, and the obvious easing of her financial burdens, she might be convinced to keep it.

‘I really meant no offence, or to cause you worry of any kind. Although I can see that my ham-fisted, overbearing and overzealous attempt at helping you has done exactly that, and for that I am sorry. This has most definitely not been my finest hour. But know that I am on your side whether you want me to be or not.’ From his pocket he produced a calling card which he gently pressed into her hand, making it impossible for her to refuse it. For some reason, his fingers longed to linger so he quickly snatched them away.

‘What I should have done all those months ago, rather than put a watch on you, was simply this. Should you need anything...anything at all...money, help...a ham-fisted but well-meaning friend...all you need do is ask. Whatever it is, whenever it is, send word to this address and I will move heaven and earth to see it done.’ Before she could respond he bowed. ‘Good day to you, Lady Penhurst. Thank you for allowing me the chance to explain and to see for myself the error of my ways. You have been most gracious.’ Then, with the swiftest and politest of nods to the room in general, he promptly turned and marched swiftly out the door.

Chapter Four

Three days of silence lulled him into a false sense of security, so Hadleigh wasn’t expecting his clerk to inform him she had turned up at his chambers unannounced, wishing to speak to him. While the clerk went to fetch her, he braced himself for another difficult conversation and was not disappointed. She arrived ramrod straight and proud, only her eyes giving him any indication she was nowhere near as confident as she wanted to portray. They were wide and restless, darting every which way before finally settling on him stood politely behind his paper-strewn desk.

‘Please forgive the intrusion, Lord Hadleigh, but I needed to speak with you.’

The gaunt, pale woman from the courtroom was gone and clearly her appetite had improved in the intervening months, as the same dull spencer which had once hung from her frame was now filled with gloriously feminine curves. She might be petite in stature, but there was no disguising she was all woman. Something he had no right noticing considering the circumstances.

‘It is no intrusion at all.’ He gestured to the chair opposite and she sat daintily on the edge, gripping her reticule for all she was worth. Her errant hands, once again, saying much more of the truth than he was likely to get out of her pretty mouth. ‘What did you wish to speak to me about, Lady Penhurst?’

Her dark brows drew together in an expression of what he thought might be distaste as her fingers toyed with the ribbon handle of her bag. ‘I am not Lady Penhurst any longer and, if you don’t mind, I would prefer not to be addressed as such. I go by Mrs Henley now, which was my mother’s maiden name.’ Her troubled blue eyes flicked to his briefly as she shrugged an apology. He found himself drowning in their intense, stormy depths. ‘There is less chance of my being recognised with a run-of-the-mill name and I would prefer not to use my real married name any more...for obvious reasons.’ And there it was again, that flash of distaste, although whether it was at the thought of her husband or her situation, he had no idea.

‘Of course...very wise.’ He settled back in his chair, hoping his posture would help her to relax, calmly waiting for her to proceed. It didn’t. Only the smallest fraction of her bottom was on the chair, her knuckles quite white as she continued to nervously fiddle and twist the ribbons further.

After a few seconds ticked by awkwardly, she sat up straighter. ‘The thing is, I went to visit my landlord, Mr Cohen, this morning...and was informed you have made no attempt to contact him since our last meeting...to retrieve your money.’

‘Mrs Henley, might I speak plainly?’ She nodded, eyes widening once again as if fearing his words. ‘I think we would both agree our last meeting was a little awkward. I believe we both left a great deal unsaid.’ How to frame these next words in the most gentle and appeasing way and leave her dignity intact? ‘For my part, I realised that neither Clarissa nor Seb knew you were selling your jewellery, so I quickly backtracked to avoid further embarrassing you.’

‘I explained about the jewellery, Lord Hadleigh.’ Two charming pink spots began to appear on her cheeks which called her a liar. ‘They were gifts from my husband and I no longer wanted them.’

Pride always came before a fall. ‘I beg to differ. I saw you that morning outside the pawnshop.’ It had done odd things to his heart.

‘You did?’ That seemed to surprise her and set her expressive eyes blinking. She had lovely long lashes. Dark and thick. The sort that waylaid a man’s thoughts from the important task at hand, much like the way she filled out that spencer.

‘Indeed I did, so I saw for myself how difficult you found it to part with them.’ Should he tell her he had the brooch? That it was safe with all the other trinkets necessity had forced her to sell and hers again whenever she wanted? Probably not. It would make her feel more beholden, when clearly beholden was the state which caused her the greatest discomfort. ‘I also went in and questioned the pawnbroker who showed me the piece. It was old and well-worn. You were married only three years, were you not? Hardly long enough to cause the deterioration I witnessed in that brooch. Which lead me to believe it was hardly the sort of piece of jewellery a husband would give to his wife.’

‘My husband was not a generous man...’

‘Mrs Henley, we both know that was your mother’s brooch or your grandmother’s. It was a sentimental item. Worth more to the heart than the purse.’ He had similar items himself. The handkerchiefs his mother had embroidered for him. Her letters sent while he was away studying. The last one filled with no hint of the nightmare she was living or the absolute fear she must have been feeling in the days before her death. If only he could turn back time.

‘And what if it was?’ The sudden affected bravado was brittle and unconvincing. Eerily familiar. ‘It was still mine to do with as I wished.’

He mentally took a step away from those old emotions which had suddenly decided to plague him to focus on the here and now. An unfair wrong he could easily right and the woman his soul appeared to demand he rescue. ‘The Runner said you took the money from the jewellery each month directly to the shops and used it to pay your accounts.’ Hadleigh decided to present her with irrefutable evidence in the hope she might realise further lies were pointless. ‘You always go to Palmer’s Shop of All Things first because it is closest to the pawnshop. Then you walk to your landlord Mr Cohen’s place next, followed by Shank’s the butcher and Mrs Writtle’s bakery. I can even tell you how much you paid to each of these merchants and how much you received for each precious piece of your mother’s jewellery that was sold.’

She blinked rapidly, her mouth opening to speak before she closed it firmly. For several moments, she seemed smaller and he realised now might be the best chance he had of appealing to her logic. ‘You see, I had a very clear picture of your finances, Mrs Henley, before I took it upon myself to assist you with them.’ He exhaled slowly and waited for her dipped eyes to pluck up the courage to rise back up to meet his. ‘You were barely making ends meet and unless you have a jewellery box stuffed full of old earrings and brooches to sell, I also knew your reserves would likely soon run out. That is why I stepped in...or stomped in more like.’ He smiled to soften the blows he had just dealt her. ‘I wanted to take that worry away from you. I still do. That is why I have not, nor will I make any attempt to get the rent money back from Mr Cohen. Allow me to help you.’

She was silent for an age, sat perfectly still. Only the occasional movement of the fingers now buried within the folds of her skirt made her appear less like an inanimate statue. ‘Your Runner really was thorough, wasn’t he?’

‘I made sure I engaged the best.’

‘Except he didn’t know everything, did he?’ Her head tilted and she gazed at him down her nose, her slim shoulders rising proudly. For some reason, he liked that version of her more. She wasn’t broken. She had gumption. ‘I am leaving Cheapside soon to take employment elsewhere. That has always been my intention. So you see, Lord Hadleigh, your decision to pay a year’s worth of my rent was quite pointless.’

He didn’t believe her. ‘Perhaps—but at least it gives you the option to decide whether or not now is the right time to take employment. You have a young son, do you not? Is he old enough for you to leave him?’

‘I shan’t be leaving him. He will be coming with me.’ Her nose rose a notch higher. ‘Therefore, you have wasted a great deal of money.’

‘It is mine to waste, my lady.’

She briefly chewed on her bottom lip, drawing his eyes to it, before she caught herself and feigned nonchalance. ‘Have it your own way.’ She stood quickly, looking as though she was about to break into a run, then surprised him by rifling in her reticule. ‘I anticipated your refusal.’ She placed six guineas in a neat stack on his desk. ‘I believe that covers half of the debt I owe you. I will begin reimbursing you for the rest as soon as I receive my first month’s wages.’

* * *

He hadn’t been expecting that, she could see, because he stiffened and frowned at the coins. Finally, after what felt like an age, his penetrating gaze fixed on her. He had unusual eyes. Golden brown, almost amber in colour. Unnerving and perceptive. They matched his hair which was a tad too long and curling above his collar and austere, simply tied cravat. Pompous and handsome. The all-too-familiar combination. His prolonged scrutiny unnerved her, but she stood proudly. She had made a plan, a good one, and all she had to do was stick to it.

‘There is no way I will accept it.’ To prove his point, he slid the column of coins back towards her. She ignored them.

‘As our business is now concluded, I shall bid you a good day, Lord Hadleigh.’ She had hoped to appear formidable as she said this before turning and striding decisively towards the door.

‘Oh, for goodness sake! Stop being so stubborn when it is patently obvious you need it!’ He stood, his palms flat and braced on his desk as he quashed the brief flash of temper and replaced it with an expression which was irritatingly reasonable. ‘The Crown, in its lack of wisdom, did you wrong and I am simply making it a little bit right.’

‘That is your opinion and you are entitled to it, just as I am entitled to be stubbornly opposed to your unwelcome interference in my life.’ An awkward silence hung and she let it. There was no point in arguing with the man. He was used to getting his own way, as men were, and she needed to get used to being the new improved Penny who was mistress of her own destiny. Besides, it felt empowering to take a little control back from this man who was clearly used to owning it.

The overbearing lawyer stared, then for the first time since she had encountered him he appeared awkward in his own skin. He glanced down at his feet, then raked a hand through his hair before those unusual eyes locked on hers, the emotion in them unfathomable. But there was emotion. And it wasn’t anger at her rude behaviour. ‘Why won’t you allow me to help you?’

‘I have no need of anyone’s help, my lord.’

‘I think you do. The life you now have is no life for either you or your son.’

That was insulting. It might well not be much of a life yet, but it was infinitely better than the one she had had and she was committed to making it better. What right did he have to judge her? To do what he thought best and enforce his will? ‘My life is none of your business.’ Another rude outburst which she wasn’t the least bit sorry for. Clearly, a tiny bit of her spine had already grown back to so plainly voice her outrage.

‘I cannot, in all good conscience, allow you and your son to continue living like that when I have the means and the desire to help you. Is a life of poverty, pawnshops, scrimping and saving...’ he scowled again as if the cosy little oasis she had lovingly made was somehow abhorrent ‘...truly the life you want for your son?’

‘Was it your intention to insult me and the life I have worked hard to make for myself? For if it was, you have succeeded, sir.’

‘I meant no offence. I am merely trying to help to make your lot in life better after the grievous injustice you have been made to suffer.’

‘By bullying me into your way of thinking? By accepting your money to make yourself feel better about whatever it is that has put a bee in your bonnet?’ She watched his golden eyebrows draw together a second before his eyes dropped to stare at the ground. ‘If you really want to help me improve my lot, my lord, then you can start by sparing me the continued ordeal of your presence or interference.’ Realising her feet had taken her back towards his desk during her impassioned speech, Penny briskly walked back to the door, strangely enjoying the sensation of being angry at a man and not fearing his retribution, although bewildered as to why she didn’t fear it with him when he was so annoyingly overbearing.

It made no difference that his broad shoulders were slumped or that his normally piercing gaze was rooted to the floor as if he was miraculously unsure of himself. As if a man like him would ever know what it truly felt to be uncertain about anything. He deserved one more parting shot and so did she. ‘I have spent three miserable years being dictated to by a man. Three years being bullied and lectured.’

‘You cannot compare my actions to his.’ He appeared hurt at the suggestion.

‘Can I not? You had me spied upon, just like him. You are trying to enforce your will upon me—just like him. And ultimately, whatever your intentions, noble or otherwise, you are using my weaknesses to control me. You just belittled me to my face. Just...like...him.’ She sounded like her old self, the one before Penhurst she still liked. It was a heady feeling and she was proud of herself. This was the Penny she wanted to be again. Brave and undaunted. Unapologetically marching to the beat of her own drum.

‘You are not my master, sir. I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I am that nobody is any longer nor will anyone ever be again. Nor do I need a benefactor. What you see as for my own good to right a wrong, I see as unwarranted and insulting interference now that I finally have my freedom back. If I want money, I will earn it. My labour in return for wages! Because that is an equal transaction, one I am entirely familiar with. One both parties can terminate whenever they see fit.’

Head still bent, his eyes lifted, seeking hers almost tentatively. ‘I find myself again in the awkward position of having to offer you another heartfelt apology, for if you misconstrued any of my actions as bullying then I am mortified. I abhor bullies and it is humbling to realise that in attempting to enforce my will, I inadvertently became one. You are quite correct—you have every right to be angry at me. If it is any consolation at all, I am furious at myself.’ He looked pained and awkward as he slowly picked up the six guineas from the desk and placed them in the drawer. Only once he had pushed it closed did those unusual perceptive eyes lock with hers again. They were swirling with an emotion she couldn’t quite fathom. Regret? Sadness? Shame? Whatever it was it made him seem more human. ‘But for the record, despite all the mounting evidence to the contrary, I swear to you on my life I am nothing like him.’

Chapter Five

The pews in St George’s in Hanover Square weren’t meant for big men, yet for some inexplicable reason the ushers at Lord Fennimore’s wedding had decided to seat the two biggest together in the middle of a row. Seb Leatham’s ridiculously burly shoulders were encroaching into his space on one side and a strange woman’s ludicrously large bonnet inhabited the other. In silent, tacit agreement, both men were twisted at the same obtuse angle to try to make the best of it.

‘Dear God, I hope the bride arrives soon!’ Leatham hated social occasions and was already getting twitchy.

‘It’s the bride’s prerogative to be late, so please try to sit still.’

‘My leg is going to sleep. My backside is already numb!’

‘Then it shouldn’t be long till your leg joins it and you won’t feel the pain any more.’ If only all pain could be so easily desensitised. The dull, constant one in his conscience had taken permanent root since she had held a mirror up to his face. What had he been thinking? Acting like the Admiral of the fleet, snapping out orders and expecting them to be followed, when any fool with half a brain would know a woman who had suffered at the hands of a dictatorial, brutish husband was never going to respond well to such behaviour. Common sense would tell them that the reaction would either be cowering fear or bristling outrage. He was heartened that her response to his I-know-better-than-you tactics had been to fight back. He doubted he could live with himself if he had caused a woman’s fear. No matter how much he worried that the man in the mirror that day might be a little too much like his father for comfort, to be that much like his father made him feel physically sick.

‘The bride is certainly milking her prerogative to be late! There is late and then there is just plain self-indulgence.’

A scowling society matron offered them a pointed look, one which clearly said shut up. Hadleigh lowered his voice further, because he couldn’t pretend even to himself any longer that he didn’t need to know. ‘How is she?’ A very touchy subject, seeing as Leatham had threatened to break his idiotic, ham-fisted and worthless neck over the guineas incident three weeks ago.

‘How the blazes do you think she is?’ Seb offered him his most withering of glances. ‘Applying for every blasted housekeeper or governess job from here to John O’Groats to no avail to pay you back what she owes you. Hell-bent on leaving London as soon as possible regardless. Scrimping on food for herself to make the last pennies she has stretch further. Clarissa is beside herself with worry! I hope you are pleased with yourself. If she ends up working for some robbing scoundrel for farthings in the back of beyond, I give you fair warning, I’ve promised my wife I’ll give her your jewels as earrings.’ His friend threw up his hands despite the confined space. ‘I just don’t understand it. You are normally such an affable fellow. Charming, even. Upright, upstanding—normally annoyingly very sensible. Yet in all your dealings with poor Penny you have been a total oafish idiot!’

Hadleigh couldn’t argue with that description. ‘Surely I can do something to help? I could try talking to her again...’ Something he had desperately wanted to do since she had given back his now-tainted six guineas and left him with a heavy heart and his tail between his legs. He only wanted to make things right and it was driving him mad that he had been thwarted in that noble quest.

‘Stay away from her!’ Seb’s elbow jabbed him hard in the ribs. ‘Unless you know some generous toff with an estate that needs a very well-paid housekeeper, you’ve caused more than enough trouble already!’ Hadleigh had an estate... She wanted to trade her labour for honest wages...that might just work...

No! Bad idea... A very bad idea. For so many reasons.

‘Hallelujah!’ Seb’s cry had the stern matron frowning again. ‘I do believe it’s finally time for the off.’

Hadleigh settled back in the pew as the organ began to play and fixed his gaze firmly on Lord Fennimore waiting nervously at the altar in an attempt to stop his mind whirring. There was no point in attempting to meddle again. She wouldn’t take well to it and Seb would kill him. Clarissa, too. Lady Penhurst probably hated him. Another depressing thought. Not that he wanted her to like him, but still...she thought him a bully. No better than her awful husband. He felt an ache form between his eyebrows and realised he was scowling, something which was hardly fair on the bride, so he stalwartly banished all thoughts of saving the proud and exasperating woman who didn’t want rescuing to focus on the unlikely wedding about to take place in front of him.

The Commander of the King’s Elite was close to sixty and, up until recently, had been a confirmed bachelor wedded solely to his profession. Yet, like Warriner, Leatham, Flint and Gray, he had also fallen victim to the parson’s trap. All five men—Hadleigh’s friends and comrades—had succumbed in quick succession this past year. Like dominoes, lined up just to fall, there had also been an inevitability about it. The ladies they had fallen for were all perfect for them. But out of the five of them, only Lord Fennimore’s impending nuptials had surprised him. Not because his choice of bride was wrong—Hadleigh had developed a soft spot for the indomitable Harriet and wished them all the happiness in the world—but because he saw a great deal of himself in old Fennimore. More, he hoped, than he saw of his father.

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