Kerslake did not look pleased. ‘You might regret not moving more quickly upon this matter, Mrs St Harlow.’
Irritation bloomed at his criticism, but the relationship between her and Henry Kerslake had been foundering just as certainly as their profits had been increasing. Another few months and she could sell the business at a good advantage. Aurelia was more and more desperate for that time to come.
‘I met a man on the way in who was asking questions about the sort of cargo we bring in here each month. I told him what I knew and he went on his way.’
‘Did he talk to others around here as well?’
‘I don’t know.’
Aurelia felt rattled by the news. A few of her designs had gone missing lately as had a book of invoices detailing payments pending, the new contracts secured detailed in pounds and pence. Could this person have had something to do with that? Perhaps another mill was on the prowl to see what it was they were to produce next. They had been lucky in their choices of design so far and mayhap this had been noticed by a less successful venture.
Some mills had failed even in the four years she had been in business, their warehouses empty and still, the slumps and booms that were so much a part of the English silk industry taking their toll. She wished there could have been someone to talk over these problems with, someone to give her guidance and advice, but her father’s mind had long since dwelt in a place where no one could reach him and her three sisters’ world encompassed none of this. Realising she was again biting her nails, Aurelia stopped. She would place sturdier locks on all of the doors and pray that such measures would be sufficient deterrent.
Henry Kerslake was not quite finished, however. ‘The stranger had that unmistakable air of wealth about him, if you ask me, Mrs St Harlow.’
Shock reverberated through her. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Tall with dark hair and he moved in the way of a man who knows exactly where he is going.’
Lord Hawkhurst? Could it possibly be him? Had he been making enquiries about her that had led him back here? Danger made her breath shallow, although underneath some other small feeling blossomed quietly. She might see him again. He could be here right now, outside somewhere watching. Her glance went to the window, but there was only stillness, the grounds around the warehouse empty.
Fingering the silk on the table before her, she tried to settle back into some sort of work, but the colours and patterns swam into nothingness and all she could see were the golden eyes of a man who had begun to invade her night-time thoughts.
She was therefore pleased when Henry looked at his timepiece and packed up his things, in preparation for a meeting in town with one of the suppliers of buttons.
‘I have left orders in the box for you to sort through, Mrs St Harlow. Dickens & Jones want extras of the fine, blue, handmade shawls for their shop in Regent Street. Perhaps we might need to employ more staff at Chester Street to cope?’
Aurelia winced. Another problem that she would have to deal with quickly. Was there no end to her worries today? She was pleased when Kerslake left and a rare silence enfolded her.
She did not feel like working, fidgety nervousness making her stand, a prickling feeling raising the fine hair on her forearms. She was still at the window a few moments later when a knock on the door took her attention. Thinking it to be Kerslake, she opened it, but it was not him, and the air that she had just breathed in congealed at the back of her throat.
Mrs Aurelia St Harlow stood before him, a swathe of scarlet silk in her hands and wearing the same black dress Stephen had seen her in every time he’d met her.
‘You?’ Her voice could not have been more shocked, her mismatched eyes widened and fearful. ‘What are you doing here?’
Hawkhurst had to smile at that because the question was exactly the one he was about to ask her and because there was no earthly reason why a well-to-do lady should be lurking in the run-down buildings on the back streets of the Limestone Hole warehouses.
Save one.
‘You work here?’ Everything had just got a whole lot harder and the mission he had been sent on by the Service was in danger of being compromised entirely. His glance took in the bolts of fabric and the squares of colours and designs that littered a large wooden table in the middle of the room. Ledgers were piled up five high in a bookcase beside it and further off in one corner a dog stood chained to the wall, his teeth bared in grisly defiance.
‘Down, Caesar!’ The animal crouched uncertainly at her command, flecks of spittle around its jawline. Stephen got the feeling that if it could forsake its chains it would be at his throat in an instant; much like its mistress if the look on Aurelia St Harlow’s face was anything to go by.
‘A nice pet,’ he drawled and stayed where he was.
‘Protection,’ she returned, the anger in her eyes boding badly. She neither asked him inside nor shut the door to keep him out.
An impasse. The sky solved the situation by suddenly opening, rain scudding in the wind towards them across the line of brick buildings drenching everything, and she allowed him through. The dog rose again on its haunches at his movement forwards, a low growl filling the room.
‘He is not used to visitors.’
‘I will stand by the door, then.’
‘It might be wise.’ When she smiled briefly the lines of worry melted into radiance and he drew in breath. God, Aurelia St Harlow’s beauty held a sensuality that always surprised him and, doffing his hat, he placed it in front of his tight trousers, the effect she had on his anatomy singular and strong. Irritation mounted.
‘I cannot remember my cousin delving into silks.’
‘That is because he didn’t.’
‘You are saying this is your doing?’
‘My father’s family have manufactured silk buttons for a hundred years. It is in the Beauchamp blood.’
‘And he approves?’
The quick tilt of her head worried him. She looked momentarily disappointed.
‘Women these days are less likely to seek authorisation from the men around them, Lord Hawkhurst, for there is a new movement afoot that allows for women’s emancipation. My late husband would have been more than horrified at any such thought, but there it is; I can work in any field of industry that I am competent in and no one can stop me.’
‘Indeed?’ The idea was beginning to occur to him that she was the most fearless female he had ever met. He could not even begin to imagine ladies such as Elizabeth Berkeley and her ilk secreting themselves in such a dangerous part of London with an animal who probably had feral wolf in its bloodlines.
A grimmer thought also surfaced.
Could she be the one sending information to France through the textile channels from England? His agent had been most specific
