the dressing-and-bathing room to his bedroom without so much as a second look, as though she were not standing there threatening his life and he was not stark naked and leaving a trail of wet footprints on the wood floor. He headed to the small desk in the opposite corner of the bedroom, near the windows and across from the tall, four-poster bed hung with expensive embroidered curtains. Behind the desk, he opened one of the drawers. Neither the neat stack of papers on top nor the oil lamp on the corner did anything to prevent her from seeing him as Eve must have seen Adam after they’d tasted the apple. Laura could feel her own judgement coming. What she wouldn’t give for a lightning bolt from above, or at the very least a large fig leaf.
‘Here is the contract we drew up the day he came to see me.’ Mr Rathbone came around the desk, holding out the paper.
Laura forced her eyes to meet his. ‘Would you please get dressed?’
‘This is my house. You broke into it and threatened me. I may stand as I like. Now here is your proof.’ The paper fluttered at the end of one stiff, outstretched arm.
In the flickering candlelight she read the list of her uncle’s debts laid out in points in the centre of the page. There were more names than just Mrs Topp’s. Most were unfamiliar, but a few she recognised from snatches of conversation she’d caught in the hallways of their ramshackle building. Below the terms were Mr Rathbone’s signature and that of a witness, a Mr Justin Connor. Next to them sat Uncle Robert’s uneven letters, the wide way he wrote his R and T clear.
It wasn’t so much his signing away the shop that shocked her, it was the document he’d put his name to. ‘Where did you get this paper?’
‘Mr Townsend brought it to me the night he came here seeking a loan.’
‘This is mine. I wrote this, it was my plan to save our business.’
‘It was an excellent one and, combined with the collateral he possessed to secure the loan, the reason I extended him the sum. He could have succeeded, if he hadn’t gambled the money away.’ He laid the document on the desk. ‘Are you quite satisfied?’
‘I am.’ And we’re ruined.
‘Good, then you won’t need this.’ Mr Rathbone grabbed the barrel of the pistol and wrenched it from her hands.
‘No,’ she cried, as naked as him without the weapon.
‘The gun would have done you no good. It was improperly loaded.’ He pulled the flint from the hammer and tossed the now-useless weapon on the desk along with the contract. ‘Had you fired it, you would have blown your pretty face off.’
She looked to where the weapon lay on the blotter, as useless as her hope and her foolish plans. This morning she had thought her situation couldn’t sink any lower. It seemed she had yet to reach the bottom, but all she could think of was her mother. Laura’s botched attempt to save them would no doubt land her in gaol. How would her mother survive without her and what would Uncle Robert do to her? ‘You should have let me fire it and finish myself.’
He strode past her back to the bathroom. ‘You’d have ruined the carpet.’
Anger overcame her sense of loss and she whirled on him. Without concern, he took up the banyan from the chair and slid his strong arms into the sleeves, pulling it shut over his nakedness. Laura’s anger flickered, nearly blown out by the sight of his skin caressed by the dark silk, before it flared again. ‘I can see all you care about is money.’
He pulled the banyan ties tight across his slim middle. ‘I’m a businessman, Miss Townsend. Men interested in financial backing for ventures come to me, as well as those seeking to shore up a struggling business. I offer them finance to be repaid with interest, or, if they default, as your uncle did, I seize their goods and sell them to cover my losses. I have a family and employees whose welfare I must ensure. I am not a charity.’
‘No, of course not.’ She looked down at the carpet he was so worried about, moving one toe of her worn-out half-boot to trace the swirling curve of a vine. In the brief time she’d spent plotting this ridiculous scheme, she’d failed to work out exactly how she might extricate herself from it without landing in the Old Bailey, or worse. She only hoped the generous nature he spoke of with his family and employees might extend to a very foolish young lady.
‘Mr Rathbone, please forgive me for intruding on your privacy and for trying to blacken your good name. I was not in possession of all the facts before I decided to confront you. It seems I was not in possession of my reason either.’ She smiled, trying to look the way she imagined a senseless young lady might look, in the hope of saving both her dignity and her freedom. It failed to soften the hard set of Mr Rathbone’s mouth.
‘Don’t play the fool. It’s not becoming of a woman of your ingenuity.’
She dropped the smile but not her hope, unwilling to concede defeat. She couldn’t, not with her mother shivering at home. ‘Then let me offer you a proposal, one that speaks to you as a businessman.’
Mr Rathbone stood silent and she couldn’t discern if he planned to listen or to summon a footman to fetch the constable. She didn’t give him a chance to answer, hoping her words might at least make him consider her offer and postpone for some time whatever fate he had in mind for her. ‘Among the contents of the inventory you seized was a large bolt of cotton woven into a very fine cloth. It’s from a special variety, grown in Egypt. It can be rendered, like the Indian kind, into a very fine, almost transparent cloth, but it costs less to produce. I plan to introduce it through Madame Pillet, a modiste to many fashionable and influential ladies. Their orders for the fabric alone could bring in hundreds of pounds. With the profits, I can import more and establish a fine trade. If you return the inventory to me, I’ll pay you a portion of the profits until the original debt is settled.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t entertain your proposal,’ he answered without consideration. ‘The contents of the draper shop were sold to settle Mr Townsend’s debts. I no longer have the bolt of cotton to which you are referring.’
‘But you know who has it. You could get it back and we could still reach an arrangement.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You’re leaving us to starve,’ she blurted out as even this slim hope dissolved. There was no chance of reviving the business, or doing anything other than sinking into even more degrading poverty.
No sign of sympathy or regret marred the smoothness of his face. ‘Your plan has merit, but will not succeed. If the cotton becomes fashionable, those with better connections and more money will race to import it before you can secure more, flooding the market with it and lessening its value.’
‘But before then?’ she protested meekly.
‘I can’t afford to gamble my money on the whims of the ton. Nor can you.’
‘I can’t rely on my uncle Robert if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s got everything out of us he wanted, my father’s business and what was left of the money,’ she scoffed. ‘It won’t be long before we see the backside of him. Then what will happen to me and my mother?’
‘You must have other family?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Friends?’
‘Uncle Robert saw to it that they were driven
