‘Good. My men are waiting with a cart in the street.’ He strode to the window and waved to someone below. ‘Ready your things, we leave at once.’
‘You were so sure I’d accept.’ The man was unbelievable.
He faced her as he had in his room, his confidence as mesmerising as it was irksome. ‘I’m always sure when it comes to matters of business.’
Not a second later, the door opened and another young man in a tan coat entered. ‘Philip, you kept us waiting so long, you had me worried.’
‘Mr Connor, allow me to introduce Miss Townsend, my intended. Miss Townsend, this is my friend and associate, Mr Justin Connor.’
Mr Connor swept off his hat and made a low bow. He was shorter than Mr Rathbone and broader through the hips and chest. His hair was light brown like his eyes, which revealed his amusement as much as his smile. ‘A pleasure, Miss Townsend. It seems you’ve made quite an impression on my friend.’
Finally, someone with some sense of humour. ‘Yes, he was just telling me how much my beauty and charm have enthralled him.’
‘Spirited, too. I think it’ll be a successful match.’ He directed the comment as much to Mr Rathbone as to her.
If Mr Rathbone was needled by his associate’s wit, he gave no indication, his countenance the same as when she’d surprised him in his bath. She wondered if he possessed any other expression.
Behind Mr Connor, four burly men in coarse but clean jackets filed into the room. Laura shifted on her feet at the notable tension coursing between them as they took up positions along the wall and near the door. From their thick belts hung clubs like the ones the night watchmen used to carry in Cheapside, where the draper shop was situated. The old watchmen didn’t dare wander through these parts after dark. It was a wonder Laura had made it home unmolested after leaving Mr Rathbone’s. It seemed whatever luck had led her into his house and out again without landing her in the Old Bailey had followed her home. Hopefully, it would continue to walk with her down the aisle.
‘Mr Rathbone, is there some reason for the weapons?’ If he was to be her husband, there was no point being shy with him. ‘Are my mother and I to be made prisoners?’
Mr Rathbone moved closer, his eyes stern and serious. ‘Mr Townsend has proven himself selfish and uncaring. I assume he has held on to you and your mother for this long because he thinks there’s still something to gain from you. He won’t take kindly to my removing you from his control.’
Laura sank a little, sickened by how accurate a sketch Mr Rathbone drew of her uncle. ‘I don’t know what he could hope to gain from us. Everything we had, he took.’
‘Not everything.’ The words were softer than before, just like his eyes. Concern lingered behind his stiff countenance, faint like the subtle weave in a silk pattern, something one could only see if it were held the correct way in the right light. It dissolved some of her fear and made her wonder what other hidden depths existed beneath his stoic exterior.
Mr Connor’s watch case clicked closed. ‘Philip, we should hurry, he could return.’
The prodding snipped the faint connection between them like scissors against a fine silk thread.
Mr Rathbone’s eyes swept the room and, it seemed, deliberately avoided hers. ‘Now, Miss Townsend, what should we remove?’
Laura looked over the sad furniture, happy to break his gaze and the odd line of reasoning it created. The setting sun cut through the room and she wished there were curtains to close, anything to hide the mouldering walls announcing the extent of her poverty. Despite how far they’d fallen since her father’s death, the indignity of it all still burned. Most of the furniture was her uncle’s, from his time with the army in India, where he’d made even less of a success of himself than he had in London. It was all in a sorry state, chipped and scratched. A couple of pieces belonged to her and her mother, the remnants of happier days in the rooms above the draper shop.
‘We’ll take the portrait of Father.’ She motioned to the painting hanging over the sagging mantel. The varnish had turned dark around the edges, but those hazel eyes, so similar to Laura’s, still watched over them with the same clarity as they had in life. It was the one aspect of her father the artist had rendered perfectly.
One of Mr Rathbone’s men reached up and removed it from its nail, exposing the stained and faded wallpaper beneath it.
‘And this?’ Mr Rathbone tapped the tip of his walking stick against a locked trunk beside the bedroom door.
‘It belongs to my uncle.’ She rolled her wrist—the memory of the bruises she’d received when her uncle had caught her trying to pick the lock one night still stung. Whatever was in there, be it valuables or the body of a wife from India, he hadn’t wanted her to see it. At this moment, she didn’t care. He could have the trunk and whatever comfort he drew from the contents. ‘The desk was my grandmother’s. My mother will want it.’
Two men took up positions on either side of the desk, heaving it up and shuffling past the door to her mother’s room just as she tugged it open.
‘What’s going on here?’ she demanded, her thin frame barely filling the tilted and sagging jamb. She snapped up her walking stick, laying it across the chest of the closest burly man and stopping both cold. ‘Are we being evicted?’
Laura rushed to her mother, gently lowered the walking stick and took her by the arm to steady her. ‘No, we’re moving. Now, this moment.’
‘Moving? Where?’ She looked past Laura to the men behind her.
‘Mother, allow me to introduce Mr Rathbone.’
Mr Rathbone bowed with respect, not mockery, but it failed to ease the suspicion hardening her mother’s pale-brown eyes.
‘Yes, I know who he is.’ Her mother eyed the moneylender down the length of her straight nose like she used to do with ragamuffins intent on swiping a ribbon from the shop. The fierce look would send them scurrying off in search of easier pickings. Mr Rathbone wasn’t so easily cowed. He met her stern glare as he had met almost everything else which had transpired between them, with no emotion.
‘He and I are to be married and we are to live with him,’ Laura announced. There was no other way to break the startling news.
‘Was this the price of Robert’s loan?’ Her mother banged her walking stick against the floor. ‘If so, I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you sell yourself to pay off one of Robert’s debts. Your uncle isn’t worth it. I deny my permission for this marriage.’
Laura stiffened. At three and twenty, she was two years past the age when such consent was necessary. However, she could feel her mother’s strong will rising, a will which illness, misfortune and widowhood had sapped from her this past year. It gave Laura hope for her future.
‘You have every right to object,’ Mr Rathbone agreed, his features taking on a more civil countenance. ‘As Miss Townsend’s mother, I should have consulted you on the matter before making the proposal. I apologise for my breach of manners, but the circumstances of our betrothal are most unusual and allowed no time for a more formal courtship. May we discuss the matter now, in private?’
He moved forward and held out his arm. Beneath the stern set of her mother’s expression, Laura caught the subtle arch of a raised eyebrow. He’d won her with his manners,