Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mr. Plodgely will keep mum?” Hope asked, folding her veil back up over her hat brim. She extracted a pin from the crown of her bonnet, a long, dangerous-looking item tipped with jet. The gleaming hatpin echoed some sentiment gleaming just as brightly in her eyes.
Triumph, glee—Joshua wasn’t sure what, but she fairly sparkled with it.
“Allow me.” He carefully plucked the pin from her hand. “In a moving coach, you could put your eye out with this thing.” He arranged the veil atop the brim and sat back.
He wanted to take Hope’s hand, but he also wanted to allow her a moment to bask in her success. In her newfound wealth and her success.
“Plodgely will go home,” Joshua said, “have a very frank talk with his missus, and conclude that his best course is to plead ignorance, which he can honestly do. He will remind all and sundry that when it came to your accounts, and that of several other bereaved clients, Mr. Peters managed the finances personally.”
“Several others?”
“Plodgely mentioned four off the top of his head. He’s not stupid.
He simply lacks guile.” Which was very likely why Peters had kept him on.
“He works hard, he’s honest, the clerks like him, though I’d bet you a shilling they refer to him as Beg Pardon behind his back.
” Clerks and schoolboys enjoyed many of the same pastimes.
“Plodgely’s sons are very nice little fellows,” Hope said. “We must ensure Peters’s crimes do not redound upon the innocent.”
Joshua still did not venture to take Hope’s hand. Something about her tone—a bit distracted, a little distant—prevented him.
“Plodgely and I discussed next steps,” Joshua said.
“He will examine the relevant client ledgers in Peters’s absence and will, when the moment is right, inform those clients that the market has improved where their investments are concerned.
He also hinted that Peters’s personal bankbook sits in the firm’s safe and that a discreet inspection of same might occur after all the clerks have left early. ”
Hope stared hard at the empty bench opposite. “Peters must pay, Joshua. I want the money coming out of his pocket, and in its place, I want him carrying around worry for how he’ll eat, where he’ll live, and whether he will have an old age to fret over.”
“Would you also like him paying five percent interest on the sums stolen?”
Some of her distraction faded. “Oh, yes. Interest. Interest would be lovely.”
Joshua took the length of the next street to consider what further measures might effect justice in Hope’s eyes. “Do you wish for Peters to sell his share of the firm to Plodgely for one pound?”
Hope’s eyes took on a warmth an entire loaf of fresh, buttery gingerbread might have inspired.
“I would like that very much, and might it be arranged that Peters announces a hasty decision to retire? A notice in The Times to that effect, on the financial pages and in whatever periodicals the solicitors read.”
Well, of course. Take away his livelihood, just as he’d taken away Hope’s access to all of Edwin’s earnings and to that good man’s savings.
“When the alternative is ruin and transportation, I’m sure Peters will accept the need to quit his practice.”
If Peters were smart, he had some means stashed out of sight, unknown to his employees, neighbors, or family, if any family he had. He would need every penny of his reserves just to survive by the time Joshua was done carrying out Hope’s orders.
“I am proud of you,” Joshua said. “You handled the situation quite well.” Like a lady who solved more pressing challenges every day before noon.
“Proud of me.” Hope patted his knee. “I am proud of me too. I daresay Edwin, strutting around in his wings and halo, is proud of me as well. He did not fail me, Joshua, not as I’d feared he had. He was simply too trusting, and so was I. Might we stop at a bakery?”
“Of course, but we should also stop at my bank.”
“Because my funds will be moved there. Yes, of course. But the bakery first, Joshua. Transacting business has left me peckish, and I can afford fresh gingerbread now.”
She could afford to buy the whole bakery, as well as a herd of ponies for Holly and a cheesemonger’s shop for Heifer.
“What will you do with your funds, Hope?”
She gave his knee a final, slow caress. “I don’t know. Buy a house, I suppose. There never was a mortgage, was there?”
“Plodgely never saw a bill of sale, never saw a loan agreement, and confirmed that as far as he knew, his firm has never had dealings with Chumley, who handles my personal affairs. We can safely assume Edwin did not buy the house.”
My house, though thinking of it thus brought no joy. The opposite, in fact.
“Just as well. The place is too big, exorbitantly expensive to heat, and full of all manner of appointments too fine for my tastes. Edwin would have it, though, and I thought perhaps a famous inventor needed an imposing domicile. He planned to turn the conservatory into his shop.”
The very idea should have made Joshua shudder, but heating the whole vast space just to keep plants warm certainly qualified as a vanity. Edwin’s inventions made life easier and safer for many. That the conservatory now housed a surreptitious complement of discarded boys was somehow fitting.
“You don’t need to make any decisions at the moment,” Joshua said. “That house is Holly’s home, and she need not leave it until you are ready to make a change.”
She need not leave it at all, if Joshua could persuade Hope to marry him, but the longer the coach rattled along the Strand and the longer the reality of Hope’s changed circumstances settled into Joshua’s mind—Edwin’s inventions were quite lucrative and would be for years—the less confident he was that the New Year would see a proper courtship begun.
Joshua directed the coachman to stop at the bakery patronized by the bank, and rather than send the footman to secure the coveted treat, he escorted Hope inside.
“That aroma, that fragrance of baking treats, must be the scent of heaven,” Hope said, perusing a glass-topped case full of artfully displayed French confections. “These are too pretty to eat.”
“Made fresh this mornin’,” the plump lady behind the counter said, “and they taste even better than they look. I know a certain duchess who favors the chocolate tarts, and they are scrumptious, if I do say so my own self.”
She wore a pristine cap and full-length apron, and her countenance would have been appropriate for Father Christmas’s wife. The shop bell tinkled merrily, and the windows were festooned with greenery, though Joshua was feeling anything but cheerful.
As Hope deliberated over a boxful of assorted treats, Joshua saw her slipping off into a new, secure, happy life without him.
No financial exigencies or confusion about house ownership would throw them together, and he’d be relegated to meeting with her quarterly to review accounts—or worse, with her solicitor—until she decided to move her funds to another bank.
Then, one day, he’d see a small announcement in the Society pages, and…
“What’s your favorite?” Hope asked. “I know you do not care for the anise biscuits, and you can do full justice to your half of any slice of gingerbread, but which one is your favorite?”
You. You are my favorite, with your determination and pragmatism, and disdain for vanities, and your devotion to your child and to that stupid cat.
Who was, in fact, a sage among felines.
“Mr. Penrose adores Italian cream cake,” the lady behind the counter said. “I do recognize you, sir, though you could use some good tucker, and I’ve probably put on a few pounds since you sailed all those years ago. You were a very loyal client, or so you’d have us believe.”
She put a slice of pale, rich cake into the box, managing not to touch any of the treasures already arranged therein.
“He sneaked half the goods to those naughty boys that bank employs,” the lady went on. “They aren’t so naughty after the bank gets hold of them, though, and some of them aren’t boys anymore. Will there be anything else?”
“Another box,” Joshua said. “For the bank’s boys.” Hope had already ordered enough for the conservatory lodgers to feast on until Twelfth Night.
The footman was summoned to collect the boxes, and Joshua escorted Hope back out to the waiting coach and four.
She assumed the forward-facing bench, the boxes on the seat opposite. Joshua resumed his place beside her, a privilege he might soon lose.
“I fear,” Hope said, “that I will wake up, be once again a pauper, and find all those delicacies are hallucinations born of prolonged hunger.”
“The delicacies are real.” Had the attraction between them been real? Joshua could answer in the affirmative for himself, unequivocally.
“You are thinking of Mr. Peters, aren’t you?” Hope asked. “I never want to see him again, Joshua. The thought of him infuriates me, and I might well do him an injury if I lay eyes on him.”
“I will summon him to the bank, ask His Grace and Mr. Edward Wentworth to join the meeting as my witnesses, and see your wishes regarding Peters’s fate carried out. He will doubtless leave London posthaste for more affordable climes where English law does not pertain.”
Paris, perhaps, or Scotland. Scottish winters were not to be trifled with.
“You are all business, Joshua. I can see why your bank prospered. I would hardly associate the man who hung paper stars for Holly with the stern, imposing figure who turned Plodgely’s knees weak. You make quite an impression.”
“I’ve been around finance since I was not much older than Holly. Grandpapa insisted that handling other people’s money was as sacred a trust as handling their health, their offspring, or their confidences. Peters has much to answer for.”
Hope eyed the boxes on the opposite bench. “Will our business at the bank take long?”
She was still Hope. Still the self-possessed, sensible lady he adored. No treats in a moving coach, lest something spill.