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.
They shared the same set of values, had a defined and unwavering moral compass and the same determination to see things through no matter what. It was a solitary path, but a noble one. A vocation even. Nothing was more important than getting the job finished and seeing justice done.
Righting wrongs.
That single-minded, driven determination was what made them the men they were and why they had climbed so quickly to the pinnacle of their careers. Nothing else was more important.
Except, apparently, now the soon-to-be Lady Fennimore was equally as important, or perhaps more so, and that was a state of affairs Hadleigh simply couldn’t fathom. He had never been in love. Never come close to it and couldn’t imagine why he would want to be. Despite knowing he was capable of experiencing powerful emotions, because Lord only knew they had plagued him since the blasted trial, they had never been something he had been comfortable with. He buried them, hid them and, if the situation warranted it, hot-footed it as fast as he could to escape them. Anger was destructive. Fear knotted the gut. Grief was too painful and shame gnawed at you from the inside as it was right now.
He’d had indigestion for a week thanks to his spectacular error of judgement and his insomnia concerning a certain former witness had got so bad, he rarely managed a few hours of broken sleep before his troubled conscience woke him up. The strange nightmare was cyclical and went nowhere. Stormy, proud blue eyes with ridiculously long lashes haunted his dreams. Fevered dreams where her expressive, elegant hands kept trying to hide the truth in his tangled sheets as his own tried frantically to hold one again. Or hold her. But she was always out of reach. It was driving him mad and he hated all the foggy-headed confusion which inevitably followed for hours afterwards.
If shame and his initial misplaced guilt was capable of doing all that, one didn’t need to experience romantic love to know that its power could be unbelievably destructive and he knew enough about it from observation to be certain it required far more effort and time than he was prepared to spend on it any time soon.
The old man saw his bride in the entrance to St George’s and visibly relaxed, his permanently scowling expression softening into a smile for once at just the sight of her. When the ceremony was over he proudly stood with her on his arm, basking in the congratulations of the guests and later in her company during the interminable wedding breakfast.
Interminable because, despite the crush, the laughter and the presence of good friends, Hadleigh felt alone. As if something was missing. An odd thought when he always preferred his own company and, being an only child, had lived like that for as long as he could remember. Both self-reliant and usually contentedly solitary. Yet that alien feeling refused to go away no matter how much small talk he exchanged with the other wedding guests at the wedding breakfast or how many times he reminded himself he was perfectly at ease with his life exactly as it was as the party whirled on around him.
Alongside that was the annoyingly persistent melancholy which he was usually very adept at burying in work, but which had bothered him un
relentingly since the Penhurst trial first began. Probably because Lady Penhurst’s situation reminded him too much of his mother’s. That, and the enormous hash he had made in trying to help her.
Rationally, he knew that. He dealt in evidence and truths, so it was impossible to ignore the stack of eerie coincidences piling inside his troubled conscience. Like his mother, Lady Penhurst had been subjected to both physical and mental abuse during her marriage. Exactly like his mother, she was an innocent suffering thanks to an overbearing man. And because history enjoyed repeating itself, both women were destined to suffer for ever for their spouses’ sins when they had had no hand in them themselves. The law gave no rights to wives. While Hadleigh was determined to uphold the law until his dying breath, he was also prepared to concede that as far as women were concerned the law was an ass, too, and desperately needed changing.
On this occasion it had been the biggest ass of all. A big, fat, clumsy, vengeful ass which he hadn’t been able to prevent or overturn despite his being entirely in the right. Which, in turn, had led him to be a big, fat, clumsy, ultimately domineering ass himself. Just like his father and her foul husband. History repeating itself again, yet that still didn’t make the truth any easier to swallow.
The Determined Lord Hadleigh Page 6