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?’