A Modest Independence Read online

  Fothergill gave Tom a brief measuring look before dropping his gaze back to the documents. He proceeded to go over them page by page, his gnarled fingers tracing the words as he read.

  He was plainly ill. His coat and trousers were loose and his skin was waxen, stretched tight over the bones of his face. He had the look of a well-heeled cadaver. A man too stubborn and willful to die.

  Tom straightened his waistcoat. Good God, was this to be his future as well? Alone in a fine house, wasting away by bits, with nothing to warm him save the occasional news of a vanquished adversary?

  “The doctor’s been,” Fothergill said, as if he could read his mind. “I’m not at death’s door yet.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to think you were.”

  “I’m fit as can be expected. Fitter than most, I’ll wager. Why, I could return to practice tomorrow.”

  “You may take over the reins whenever you please.”

  Fothergill gave another snort. “Conceited pup. You know you’re the better solicitor. You’ve known it for ten years and more.” He turned to the next page of the contract. “I credit myself.”

  “Naturally.”

  “That’s not to say you don’t have a God-given talent for legal maneuvering. Take this phrasing here.” He pointed at a line. “Ingenious, Finchley. Utterly ingenious.”

  “I thought it was rather clever myself.”

  “Indeed. You’ve bound the villain up good and proper for the foreseeable future. He won’t even realize it until it’s too late.”

  “The villain,” Tom repeated. “In this case, it’s difficult to tell which one of them that is.”

  Fothergill’s head jerked up. “Difficult, you say? What’s so difficult about it?”

  “Both parties have behaved abominably. Blackmail. Corruption. Kidnapping. Between them, they’ve done it all. Were they anyone else, they’d have been brought up on charges.”

  “The difference being that Viscount Atwater and the Earl of Warren are not anyone else. Neither are they both villains. If you don’t understand that, my boy, you understand nothing.”

  Tom’s expression tightened. “I wrote the contract, didn’t I?”

  “So you did.” Fothergill folded the papers in half. “I’m pleased to see your personal views haven’t affected your ethical obligations.”

  “If you’re questioning my loyalty to my client—”

  “You as good as said Atwater was a villain.”

  “And so he is. When has that ever made a difference? I don’t need to like my clients. I don’t even need to believe them. As long as they pay for the services I render, my loyalty is theirs.”

  Fothergill’s mouth twisted. “One of the first lessons I taught you.”

  “You may rest assured it has been well learned.” The edge of bitterness in his voice surprised him.

  It surprised Fothergill as well. The old solicitor’s wiry brows lowered in disapproval. “You’re not yourself, Finchley. First late to our appointment, and now voicing these erratic opinions. What the devil is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nonsense. You’re distracted. Restless.”

  Tom exhaled. He was distracted. And restless, too. He needed to pay a visit to the East End. And he needed to stop by his rooms. With any luck, he’d have just enough time to shave and change before he was due in Half Moon Street. “If I’m anything, it’s exhausted. Lest you forget, I worked straight through Christmas.”

  Fothergill waved the folded papers. “Then take some time off, by all means. Now that you’ve executed an agreement on that cursed plot of land—”

  “There’s no guarantee they’ll abide by it.”

  “Of course they’ll abide by it. They’ll have to. It’s a signed contract, enforceable by law.”

  “For common men, perhaps. Men of little money and less learning. But Warren and Atwater are a different breed.”

  “They’re gentlemen.”

  Tom gave a short, humorless laugh. “They’re no gentlemen, Fothergill. Maybe in breeding, but certainly not in practice. The pair of them have no honor that I can see.” He retrieved the papers and thrust them back into his attaché case. “They’ve signed this, yes. But the law is meaningless in these cases. What power does it have if no one obeys it? If no one enforces it?”

  Fothergill’s features settled into grim lines. “You’re tired, my boy.”

  “I am tired,” Tom said. “Tired of helping evil men to prosper.”

  “You call your clients evil?”

  “No, I… That is…” He ran a hand over his hair. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Fothergill was quiet for a long moment. And then he said, “Ring the bell for Palgrave.”

  Tom rose and went to the tasseled cord by the fireplace. Within seconds of tugging it, the butler materialized at the doors of the study. “You rang, sir?”

  “Go down to the cellar, Palgrave,” Fothergill commanded. “Fetch that bottle of port I’ve been saving.”

  Tom opened his mouth to protest, but Fothergill forestalled him. “Sit down, Finchley. You and I have much to discuss.”

  A sinking feeling in his stomach, Tom lowered back into his chair. He cast a glance at the gilded clock on the mantelshelf.

  “Do you have somewhere else to be?” Fothergill asked. “Another client to call on?”

  “No. No other clients.”

  Fothergill gave him a sharp look. He disapproved of entanglements with women. Females affected a man’s focus. Made him weak in the head. Prone to taking foolish risks and making equally foolish decisions. “The law is a demanding mistress, my boy. She must come first, last, and always. Take care that you don’t forget it.”

  As if Tom ever could.

  “You’re over an hour late.” Jenny closed and bolted the front door behind Mr. Finchley. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the clatter of carriage wheels echoed in the street as the hansom cab that had delivered him to Half Moon Street rolled away into the darkness.

  Mr. Finchley looked around the empty hall. It was lit by a low-hanging gasolier, which illuminated a wide circle beneath it, leaving the edges of the hall steeped in shadows. “Why are you opening the door? Where’s Mr. Jarrow?”

  “Assisting Mrs. Jarrow in the kitchen.” Jenny helped him off with his coat.

  The Jarrows were former clients of his. A stern-faced married couple who, between themselves, represented the entirety of the household staff. Mr. Jarrow acted as a combination butler and footman, and Mrs. Jarrow fulfilled the dual roles of housekeeper and cook. They were fiercely loyal to Mr. Finchley. He’d saved their son from being hanged, or so Mrs. Jarrow claimed.

  “He should be opening the door, not you,” Mr. Finchley said. “It’s past nine o’clock.”

  “I know very well what time it is.” Jenny draped his coat over her arm, and then, on impulse, leaned close to him—so close that her nose brushed lightly against his collar—and inhaled.

  He drew back from her with a start.

  “Have you been at your club?” she asked.

  “My club? What club?”

  “You smell of cigars.” She sniffed him again. “And liquor.”

  Mr. Finchley stared at her. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. The dim glow of the gaslight revealed the beginnings of a blush on his neck.

  At least, Jenny thought it was a blush. She supposed it could be yet another aftereffect of a night of overindulgence. Her lips compressed. She had no tolerance for men who couldn’t control their vices. “Have you been drinking, sir? Is that why you’re late?”

  “Miss Holloway…”

  She stepped back and took his measure, her gaze raking him from the top of his head to the toes of his leather boots. He was wearing the same suit he’d worn when she’d called on him in Fleet Street. But the fabric of his clothing was no
longer starched and pressed. His black waistcoat and trousers were rumpled. His hair was rumpled, too. Brushed carelessly to the side in soft waves that flopped down over his forehead.

  Her fingers itched to smooth it back from his face. To straighten and soothe him. As if he were her husband, returning home after a difficult day.

  A ridiculous thought. And one that sent a pang of longing through her vitals.

  “Well?” Mr. Finchley’s brows lifted. The red flush on his neck darkened, creeping up to burn in his lean cheeks. “Do I pass muster?”

  “You look dreadful,” Jenny said frankly. “Have you eaten?”

  He ran a hand over his face.

  “Have you?” she asked again.

  He shook his head. He looked weary. Wearier than he had at his office. And older, too, if that was possible. His light blue eyes had creases around them. Matching brackets framed the corners of his mouth.

  Jenny’s heart squeezed with sympathy. She ignored it. He didn’t deserve any sympathy. He’d persuaded her to dine with him at eight, against her better judgment. And she’d agreed. She’d put on a silk dinner dress and arranged her hair in fresh rolls and plaits secured with nearly two dozen headache-inducing pins. She’d seen that the table was beautifully set and the chicken cooked just so. All had been in readiness for him. She had been in readiness for him.

  And here he was, an hour late and smelling of liquor, with his clothes un-pressed and not a drop of pomade in his hair. As if she weren’t worthy of a second’s consideration.

  “Come on, then,” she said crossly. “Mrs. Jarrow will warm something up for you.”

  Mr. Finchley trailed after her up the stairs. Thirty minutes later, after consuming a plate of reheated chicken and downing a glass of watered wine, he put his head in his hands and groaned. “I’ve bungled this badly.”

  Jenny regarded him from her place across the dining table. A branch of half-melted beeswax candles stood between them, the flickering flames casting a pattern of shadows over the linen tablecloth, china plates, and glassware. “This? There is no this. There’s only my travel plans and my money. I trust you’ve remembered that much.”

  He made a hoarse sound. “How could I forget?”

  “Men forget any number of things when they’re in their cups.”

  “I’m not in my cups, Miss Holloway. I’m just…” He shook his head. “I was obliged to visit another solicitor this evening. My former partner. The gentleman under whom I studied before I was called to the Bar. He kept me later than I’d anticipated.”

  “Didn’t you tell him you had a prior engagement?”

  “God, no.”

  She hadn’t thought it possible to feel any worse. “Why in the world not?”

  “That’s not the sort of thing one shares with a man like Fothergill. Not unless one wants him to involve himself. To interfere. He can’t help it, you see. He enjoys knowing things. It’s how he accumulates power.”

  Jenny frowned. She cast her mind back to conversations she’d had with Helena. Secrets they’d shared during the endless rainy afternoons spent shut up indoors at the Abbey. “Is he the solicitor who took you out of the orphanage?”

  Mr. Finchley’s gaze sharpened behind his spectacles. “You know about that?”

  “Only what Helena’s told me.”

  “Which is?”

  “She said there were four of you. Four friends in the orphanage. And that, for a time, you’d all gone your separate ways. That Mr. Cross had his accident, Mr. Thornhill joined the army, and that you were apprenticed to a London solicitor. The other boy—”

  “Alex Archer.”

  “She said he’d disappeared long ago. That he’d broken his apprenticeship and…vanished.”

  Mr. Finchley’s eyes dropped to his plate. He appeared to hesitate. As if he were preoccupied by a sudden thought or feeling. A memory, perhaps. It was the space of seconds. A mere instant. No time at all, really. But when he looked at her again, the change in his countenance was marked. “It’s true,” he said. “Every word of it.”

  Jenny fingered the stem of her wineglass. So, the fate of Alex Archer was not a topic that Mr. Finchley cared to pursue. She supposed she could understand that. If someone she’d loved like a brother had simply disappeared from the face of the earth, she might be rather sensitive about the subject as well.

  “It seemed to me,” she said, “that, among the four of you, it was your situation that ended most happily.”

  “You believe so, do you?”

  “To be articled to a solicitor, and then to become a solicitor yourself? It’s quite distinguished. Unless…” A terrible thought struck her. “He didn’t mistreat you, did he?”

  Mr. Finchley appeared surprised by her question. “Fothergill? No. He was a good mentor, in his way. He taught me everything he knew.”

  “I expect you feel you owe him.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you often drink and smoke with him of an evening?”

  He grimaced. “Hardly ever. Had I known he’d keep me so long, I wouldn’t have promised to meet you for dinner. I apologize for that, by the way. You appear to have gone to a great deal of trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.” She raised a self-conscious hand to adjust one of the pins in her hair. She was going to have a throbbing megrim in the morning and she’d have no one to blame but herself. What had she been thinking to try such an elaborate coiffure? Her hair was far too heavy to arrange in rolls at the sides and back. It needed plaits or twisted coils to hold the weight of it.

  She’d been much more sensible when it came to her dinner dress. The plain brown silk had nary a flounce or a frill. Its only attributes were a bodice that fit snug to her figure and a scooped neckline that showed off the barest hint of her modest décolletage. It made her feel daringly feminine.

  Mr. Finchley’s gaze drifted over her. “You look very well.”

  Her heart thumped hard. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t receive many compliments from gentlemen. She was too opinionated. Too sharp and self-reliant. Helena said it intimidated some men. Which was stupid, really. Jenny appreciated a bit of gallantry just as much as the next female. More so, perhaps, since she’d experienced so little of it in her life.

  “I, on the other hand, look somewhat the worse for wear.” Mr. Finchley gave his wrinkled waistcoat a brief, rueful glance. “I’m terribly sorry. I’d thought there would be time to stop by my rooms and change.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, but still…I’d like you to understand.” When she said nothing in response, he continued, somewhat haltingly. “You see…there’s a case of mine—of mine and Fothergill’s—that’s of some duration. A dispute over a parcel of land. It’s been going on for more years than I can count. This morning there was a positive development. At least, it’s positive on its face. It may yet prove to be another legal quagmire. I was obliged to visit Fothergill to give him the news.”

  “And he wished to celebrate?”

  “What he wished to do was read me a lecture. One that lasted through an entire bottle of port—drunk mostly by him—and two cigars. If he hadn’t dozed off, I’d be there still.” Mr. Finchley sighed. “Today has been an unmitigated disaster. Absolutely awful, from start to finish.”

  “I visited you. I suppose that was awful, too.”

  His mouth hitched in a fleeting half smile. “Nonsense. Your visit was the finest part of my day.”

  “Was it?” She was mortified to hear a soft thread of hope in her words. A trace of—oh lord, was it neediness? Desperation? As if she were some dried-up old spinster, heart gone aflutter at the barest praise from a gentleman.

  She reached for her glass of wine and downed a hasty swallow. “I expect any visit would seem pleasant when compared to the one you received from Mrs. Culpepper.”

  “True.”
Mr. Finchley rested his head in his hand. His expression sobered. “I hadn’t seen her in months. Not since the summer.”

  Jenny’s pulse ceased fluttering. She lowered her glass back to the table. A sense of the reality of the situation settled low and sour in her stomach. Mr. Finchley had a mistress. A beautiful—if somewhat long in the tooth—mistress.

  She shouldn’t permit him to speak on the subject. Oh, but she was so terribly curious. “Have you been acquainted with her long?”

  “Since I was one and twenty. It was only after I’d been called to the Bar that I could afford her. Prior to that, she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “Do you mean…you’d met her before?”

  He nodded. “I first made her acquaintance when I was just a lad. She was performing with a theatrical troupe in a coastal town about five miles south of Abbott’s Holcombe. She was young and pretty—and desperately in need of funds. Her husband was out of work and she’d just given birth to her second child.”

  “Her second child!”

  “Her third, if we’re being precise.” His mouth quirked again, but there was no trace of humor in his expression. “She’s my mother, Miss Holloway.”

  Jenny’s mouth fell open. “Mrs. Culpepper?”

  “Her name was Finchley before she married. Myra Finchley.”

  She continued to gape at him. “But she looks so young! Why, she must have been just a girl when she—”

  “She was thirteen when she bore me.”

  “Good gracious. I mean to say…heavens.” Jenny gave a slightly breathless laugh. It was born more of discomfort that amusement. “I thought she was someone else entirely.”

  “I know you did.”

  “I assumed she was your—”

  “I don’t have one of those,” he said. “I never have.”

  “Oh.” Warmth flooded her face. “I see. That’s… Well, that’s splendid.”

  Splendid?

  Oh, God.

  Mr. Finchley smiled. A quiet smile that shone more in his eyes than on his lips. “I’ve never seen you at a loss for words before.”