know. People who owed my father and couldn’t pay often reacted the same way when pressed.’ It wasn’t so very different and yet it was. They hadn’t looked down on her the way Mr Williams had just done. If they had done, her father would send them off and then remind her afterwards of her worth. What was her worth now? Certainly not what she’d once imagined, back when she’d dreamed of a loving husband standing with her behind the counter of their own shop, greeting clients together the way her parents had used to.
‘Many people come here when they’re desperate.’ Philip laid the papers back on the corner of the desk. ‘It affects their better sense.’
Laura wondered if she’d lost hers. Whatever comfort she’d taken in the clean clothes, comfortable bed and good food vanished. She eyed the neat stack of papers, wanting to knock it to the floor, scatter the sheets across the wood and cover the scratch. She’d been desperate enough to come here and turn over the only asset she still possessed to Philip, just as her uncle had been willing to relinquish the business, and Mr Williams the shipping shares. Unlike those men, Laura had been forced by others to part with what little she had left, just as she’d been forced to teach Uncle Robert the business when her father had brought him in, despite her and her mother’s protests. Then she’d been forced to watch while he’d taken everything away piece by awful piece. ‘I wish you hadn’t asked me to join you.’
‘I needed your assistance and experience. I knew the shipping shares were worthless. The company refuses to invest in steam engines which I and many others believe are the future, and their fleet is outdated. It was your expertise in cloth I needed.’
She sucked in a deep breath at the blunt statement, struggling to push back the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She straightened her spine and looked at him. If he could stand so impassively in front of her, she would do so, too, and not dissolve into some blubbering girl. ‘Surely there are other people you could have called on.’
‘There are, but I need to know if you can see through what a man says to find the truth of his situation, to gauge his suitability in case there comes a time when you must act alone.’ He pressed his fingers into the stack of papers, making them dip in the middle, something of unease in the simple motion. So he wasn’t infallible after all and he knew it. It was encouraging to know. It made him at last seem mortal, though no less irritating. ‘Your instincts proved correct, as I suspected they would.’
‘And what of my feelings?’ She swept the stack of papers off the desk, sending them fluttering to the floor, her anger fuelled as much by Mr Williams as all the frustrations and humiliations of the past year. ‘Did you ever take those into consideration, or how being bullied and brought low by a man like Mr Williams might hurt me?’
The papers settled over the floor like snow. Philip watched, emotionless, as a contract balanced on the edge of the seat cushion before sliding off to cover the scratch on the wood.
Outside, her mother and Jane passed by the window as they made their way inside.
Horror rushed in to blot out her anger. What had she done? This was Philip’s house, his business and she was here at his whim. His generosity could be withdrawn at any moment and she and her mother would be back in Seven Dials shivering and starving.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to act so childishly.’ She dropped to her knees and snatched up the papers. The edges flapped with her trembling hands as she tried to force them into a neat pile, but they wouldn’t cooperate. The more her hands shook, the more the helplessness widened to consume her. ‘It won’t happen again, I promise. I don’t know what came over me.’
He came around the desk and lowered himself on to one knee across from her. Taking the uneven stack out of her hands, he laid it on the floor beside him. Then he gently caught her chin with his fingers and tilted her face up to his. ‘Forgive me. I should have waited to introduce you to the business.’
Concern softened his blue eyes. He was sorry, genuinely so, with no trace of the false, self-serving contrition her uncle used to offer her father. The same faint bond which had slipped between them last night encircled them again. Philip cared for her and wanted her to be happy. The realisation drained the anger from her, but it couldn’t erase the hurt, worries, helplessness and humiliations she’d suffered so many times. They pressed down on her and not even Philip’s reassuring touch could drive them away.
‘I invited you here because you’re too strong to be bullied by such a man,’ Philip explained.
‘I wish I was.’ She rocked back on her heels and away from his fingers, then fled the room.
The hall and stairway blurred as her eyes filled with tears. They streaked steadily down her cheeks as she made for her mother’s room and pushed open the door without knocking. Thankfully, Jane wasn’t with her. Her mother looked up from the chair by the window, her smile vanishing at the sight of Laura’s expression. Without a word, she held out her arms and Laura flung herself into them, burying her face in her chest to cry.
* * *
Philip lowered his hand, the warmth of Laura’s skin still lingering on his fingertips. It didn’t dispel the cold sitting hard in his chest. None of the insults hurled at him by any defaulting client had pierced him as hard as the realisation he’d allowed a client to hurt someone in his care.
He dragged the last few contracts out from under the desk and shoved them down on top of the pile on the floor. He should have followed his instincts and waited to introduce her to someone like Mr Williams. Instead, he’d dismissed his doubts and convinced himself she was fit to face the ugly man. He should have known better. She was strong, but she’d suffered a great deal and, like him, needed time. It was a mistake, one he should have known better than to make.
‘I said you didn’t understand the terms of the contract and I was right.’ Justin slid into the room and settled into his favourite chair by the cold fireplace. ‘You can’t treat her like a client.’
Philip hauled himself and the contracts off the floor. ‘It was never my intention to.’
‘Yes, it was.’ He reached over to the side table next to him and plucked a crystal glass and decanter of Scotch from it. ‘Thankfully, she’s no shrinking violet which is good if she’s going to marry you.’
‘Perhaps I was short-sighted in my assumptions about our arrangement.’ And its simplicity. Justin was right, it wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d first believed. ‘Assuming, after this morning, our agreement still stands.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, she’ll marry you.’ Justin poured out a measure of Scotch, then returned the decanter to the table. ‘Now you must ask yourself, why do you really want to marry her? And I want the real reason, not your drivel about needing a housekeeper.’
Philip traced the scratch in the floor with his boot. The memory of Laura scrambling about for the papers, as lost and frightened as he’d been the morning Arabella had died, tore at him. That cold morning, he’d come to this room and nearly ripped it all to pieces, gouging the floorboards in a fruitless effort to overturn the desk. If Justin hadn’t found him, he might have destroyed the room and himself.
‘I lost something when Arabella died; it was as if I buried my humanity with her.’ Every day he felt the hardness creeping in where warmth and happiness used to be. It hurt to admit it, even to his closest friend. ‘My father always said it was the one thing we must hold on to in this business because it’s too easy to lose, as evidenced by so many others in our profession.’
‘You’ve hardly become like them. You never will.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ After Arabella’s death, Philip had shut himself off from his emotions just to move through the day without crumbling. As time passed it was growing more difficult to draw them out again.
‘You think Miss Townsend can help you reclaim your humanity?’
Philip didn’t respond, but studied the snaking scratch marking the wood. When the workmen had repaired the room, he’d refused