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?’ Although whoever he was, he was linked to Seb Leatham somehow. The man was a high-ranking government spy, one who had a legion of subordinate spies to do his dirty work for him. She was going to strangle Clarissa. How dared she?
How dared she?
Not caring that she was being rude to her mean-spirited landlord, Penny turned on her heel and began to march home, imbued with the determination and outrage of the self-righteous. How dare Clarissa use her husband to go behind her back like that? When her friend had explicitly promised to support her in her endeavours and claimed she understood why Penny wanted to leave her old life and all its horrid memories well behind.
What other choice did she have? Her parents, God rest them, were dead and the distant relatives who still lived had disowned her before the trial had even started. Either she earned her own living or she lived on Clarissa’s charity again as she had during the humiliating trial. Because Lord alone knew there wasn’t enough of her mother’s old jewellery to pawn to keep her head above water for more than a few months at most. There certainly wasn’t enough of it yet to buy Freddie and her a cottage of their own in the wilds of the country.
And yet was the operative word, because one day she would have one. That was her dream. The only thing which had sustained her these past months. A pretty place to call her own where she could finally put the past three years behind her. Of that she was determined. If those dreadful years married to Penhurst had taught her nothing, it had taught her that it was long past time she needed to stop being dictated to by others and take control of her own destiny in whatever shape she chose to make it.
Her respectable lodgings in Cheapside were only ever meant to be temporary. A place to lick her wounds in private while she considered all her options. She had happily taken Seb Leatham’s advice on that. Aside from the fact she had spent the first fourteen years of her life living here before her father could afford Mayfair and had always loved it. It was a busy area of the city which allowed a person to hide in plain sight. With all the businesses, merchants and transient visitors from far and wide, nobody looked twice at a well-heeled woman with a child in Cheapside. Nor did any of the upper crust of society venture here. They might send their servants, but they would never be seen dead on the same streets as those in trade.
Heaven forbid!
Any more than they would consider continuing their acquaintance with the widow of a traitor.
She stopped dead outside her building and sucked in a calming breath. Perhaps she shouldn’t be too hard on Clarissa? Her friend had stalwartly stood by her throughout everything. Quite openly. She would have sat with her through every minute of the trial if Penny hadn’t stopped her. She had claimed at the time she wanted Freddie to be with someone he knew, someone who cared for him, rather than admitting she didn’t want to taint or ruin her friend’s good reputation by well-meant association. Even now, months after Penhurst’s death, Penny refused point blank to darken Clarissa’s door in Grosvenor Square. That wouldn’t be fair, no matter what her friend said to the contrary. That hadn’t stopped her coming here and stepping into the breach when Penny needed somebody to watch her son and for that, she was in Clarissa’s debt.
This wasn’t worth losing her only true friend in the world for.
Wearily, she took the two flights of stairs slowly and tried to think of a more tactful way of voicing her annoyance at what was obviously meant to be a kindness. Especially as her life had been devoid of such niceness for so long.
She found Clarissa in the tiny parlour sat cross-legged on the floor helping Freddie build a lopsided tower with his wooden blocks, his
