19. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Phineas didn’t cast a look behind him once he hit the path. He couldn’t—one glimpse of Rosanna and the life about to be lost to him, and his resolve would flee. He was going to lose the shape of breakfast in a sunlit room and walls that changed their pattern every other week and plump lips and indulgent smiles. He ground his teeth in commitment.

He would set that free. Set her free. Maybe make amends for every other failure in his life, too.

‘Are you certain you have the right address? This place looks as if it was abandoned decades ago.’ Rosanna tipped her chin upwards. A dot of light pinched her lovely upturned nose.

Phineas turned with the rest of them to look up at the old warehouse.

Paint peeled from the front door in thick slivers. The pintucked mortice between the red bricks, crisp and purposeful, spoke of past pride in construction. Dirt and soot caked over small rectangular panes on large windows with brick lintels, and a sunbeam snagged on a jagged corner of freshly broken glass. Slashes in the iron veranda over their heads let in strips of morning, and while the holes and loose nails suggested desertion, the solid beams and decorative cornices spoke of care, an artistic eye, and purpose. Once, this place had mattered to someone.

Phineas jumped to bash the steel sign over the door, then took a few short steps back to avoid the shower of dust and soot that scattered over the path. Hamish, who was taller than him, took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe at the bottom edges.

‘A. Is that a B? And another B… Iris… Did your father have a warehouse here?’

Hamish continued cleaning the sign until he had swept the bottom half of it and only a thin film of dust coated the top half. The gold had lost its sheen and mellowed, but the word itself was unmistakable. The building had once belonged to Iris’s father and had proudly displayed the name Abberton—Merchant and Trader .

‘Papa used to talk about this place. Before he… well, before. I think this was his first warehouse, from when he started importing tiles from Italy. He said it was near the river and the bigger traders. He used to watch them. At times, he’d go down and talk to the foremen and the workers, to try and understand how he might become a little better than everyone else. As he grew, he leased space rather than purchase bigger warehouses. I didn’t realise he had kept this one. Although maybe he didn’t either.’

Hamish wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Iris took a slow breath and gave him a weak smile as she patted his arm.

‘What’s the plan?’ Hamish asked.

‘There is no plan because none of you should be here. Especially not you.’ Phineas glared at Rosanna. How could he keep her safe if she was so determined to put herself in harm’s way?

‘This whole mess directly concerns me. I absolutely should be here,’ she replied with a huff.

‘For once, could you not argue with me? Could you perhaps—’

‘Shh!’ Iris tapped his shoulder. ‘There are people inside. I can hear them.’

The four of them gathered beneath a window which stood slightly ajar. Phineas and Hamish crouched down, while the ladies in full skirts flanked either side of the glass. Rosanna tilted her body towards the sound, looking anywhere but at him. Good. Her anger would make today easier. If he baited and goaded her, as he’d done so often with others, would she voluntarily cast him aside? Everyone had left him—his mother, his stepfather, Imogen, Arley… Why not Rosanna, too?

Phineas tipped his ear towards the open window. A mélange of yelling and frustration teased the air, but nothing distinct enough to be understood. He pulled himself up. Four vague shapes were moving behind the soot-streaked glass, disappearing and reappearing in blurs. Phineas lifted the window frame a half inch. Shouts and criticisms squeezed through the small gap. The four of them leant closer in unison.

‘…ridiculous… gone too far.’

‘We agreed this… what we would do!’

‘People might get hurt.’

‘—said profits were up, that you… managing the business better… Abberton and his daughter. If we’d known…’

‘Money does not last forever! I thought you wanted a little extra, not to buy another townhouse for a new mistress!’

Rosanna grasped her skirts, hoisted them up, and crouched between him and Hamish. Iris joined them. They crowded over one another, elbows and knees jostling for space until the four of them slotted together and watched through the gap.

The four men of Argonauts Trading—Mr Collins, the horse-racing enthusiast; Mr Vincent, the philanderer; Mr Sanders, the fastidious bookkeeper; and Lord Richard, the failed investor of the exchange—circled one another like angry street cats vying over a discarded bone. Wooden pallets and crates formed a wall behind them. The boxes looked as if they’d been sitting idle for an age, dappled with grey dust and with faded black stamps along the woodgrain.

Hamish peeked up over the sill. ‘What’s in all those boxes? Is it stock for the department store?’

Rosanna shook her head. ‘That stamp is for Thornfield and Co. They went out of business ten years ago. And women may do ridiculous things for fashion, but no woman is going to wear a dress that needs a crinoline any longer. Who do they think they are going to sell these things to?’

‘I don’t think it’s for selling,’ Phineas said. ‘I think it’s for kindling.’

Still arguing with one another, the men of Argonauts Trading clustered around the boxes. Mr Sanders dropped a heavy ledger, maybe the one Rosanna had found in their offices, onto one. Lord Richard flipped the book open and ripped a large page from the binding. He scrunched it into a ball and stuffed the mass between a gap.

Rosanna rested her elbow on Phineas’s knee to steady herself. Then, curse her, she stayed. Reliant on him. Needing him.

He leant in as close as he dared, hoping to avoid her scent, but he still inhaled her freshness, the lingering aroma of roses and sunshine. ‘Why would they burn it all?’ he asked. ‘They’ll have nothing to sell for their big share push, and the company’s expansion—’

‘But maybe that was the plan all along,’ Rosanna finished for him. Phineas held her gaze as realisation lit between the two of them, then fizzed and burned as they solved the riddle in the same instance. ‘That’s how they’re going to keep everyone’s money,’ she continued. ‘They’ll say they lost all their stock in the fire, then claim bankruptcy.’

‘It was one thing to take the company from us, but I will not let them destroy it. This is not how Papa’s dream ends.’ Iris stood and marched past the rows of grimy windows to heave the door open. ‘Gents!’ she bellowed into the cavern. ‘Might I have a word?’

‘I am not missing this.’ Hamish scarpered after his wife.

Rosanna rested a hand on the window ledge, as if she was about to push herself up to follow, but paused. Instead, she turned to face Phineas. She brushed at the dust that had settled on his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry for ruining everything. And for making your life intolerable. It’s likely little consolation, but I… I will always be grateful for your help.’

‘I didn’t mean what I said, about you ruining everything.’ A little of the dirt from the windows had smudged its way onto her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb. ‘I work best alone, is all.’

‘Have you always worked alone?’ Rosanna asked.

‘Of course,’ he replied.

‘Then how do you know that’s your best?’

Always one for the off-hand questions with complex answers. The simplicity of it crunched, like an unexpected punch. He didn’t know—but oh, how he yearned to find out. He ached to take her hand and confess as much, but he shoved the urge down. He was a former convict, a bank clerk with a name that wasn’t even his. She’d do better without him. He couldn’t give her even a sliver of the life she deserved.

‘Do you want to watch from here or follow?’ he asked.

‘Follow,’ she said, and gave him her most spectacular and mischievous of grins. Sunlight in her eyes, energy and anticipation in her step, brimming with life and vitality, she skipped past him. ‘As if I’m going to watch Lord Richard’s downfall from a distance.’

Phineas followed her into the warehouse.

There, the four men of Argonauts stood frozen with their mouths hanging agape, like a line of well-dressed fish. They were all staring at Iris. Hatless, gloveless, stiff with rage, she glowered back at them, even as they shuffled their feet with guilt. Iris crossed the distance to the boxes and the ledgers at a steady pace. Lord Richard took a menacing step towards her, only for Hamish to pull himself up to his full height. Lord Richard promptly faltered, then moved back into line.

Iris possessed one of the keenest minds Phineas had ever known, not just for numbers but for pounds and pence. She tallied columns, read annotations, and, like him, she understood the stories hidden in the margins. Methodically, she scanned each page of the heavy book, then turned to the next, her brow furrowing deeper. Lips set thin, she turned to Mr Sanders.

‘It wasn’t meant to be like this,’ Mr Sanders stammered. ‘At first, it was just one little advance. It seemed so harmless. Then half a per cent increase in the dividends. Things became a little worrisome, so we thought a new board member to replace Abberton might help. Lord Richard seemed to know so much about shares. But he lost as much as Mr Collins at the races. It all happened so fast.’

‘You took over one of the healthiest companies in London. It’s gone.’ Iris slammed the ledger closed. ‘You must refund the shareholders. You have to tell them it was a lie. Or I will. I will take it to the papers.’

‘No!’ Mr Sanders cried. ‘If this becomes public, the investors will come to the office, demanding answers. Crowds like that grow angry, sometimes violent. If you make it public, all those people will lose everything—’

‘They don’t have anything,’ Iris countered.

‘But they think they do!’ Mr Sanders pressed his palm against his forehead, his eyes widening with panic. ‘They have bits of paper that are their fortunes. If you tell them the truth, you’ll destroy them. Terrible things happen when companies fail. Remember Tipperary!’ Sanders pleaded. His hectic gaze darted between all of them, settling on Phineas.

‘Tipperary? In Ireland?’ Hamish asked.

‘Not Tipperary the place, the Tipperary Bank,’ Phineas said. ‘The owner lost all the money, everyone’s money, in bad investments on the stock market. He took out loans from other banks, stole customer’s bonds, embezzled the family fortune. When he couldn’t find a way out of the debt, he shot himself. But when the bank’s failure became public… Let’s just say he wasn’t the only one to suffer a terrible fate. People will do things you can’t imagine for money.’

They would pretend to love. Pretend to hate. They would destroy other people. They would shatter a world.

The only thing more malicious than greed was revenge.

What would Iris do?

‘How much debt?’ Iris asked. ‘Show me.’

‘It looks worse than it is. It just—’

‘Show me!’ Iris roared. Mr Sanders startled, then turned a few pages before pointing at a column. Iris raised a shaking hand to cover her mouth. Her shoulders sagged, and she pinched her eyes closed, drawing a deep breath. When she opened them again, she turned to Mr Sanders. She pulled out her purse and unclasped the fastening. ‘You are going to sell the company to me. The entire company. Every building, every share, every piece of old merchandise. I will make you an exceedingly generous offer. I will pay one pound to you…’ Iris laid a coin on the table. ‘One for Mr Vincent.’ She placed another beside it, then two more. ‘One for Mr Collins. And one for Lord Richard. I will manage everything from here. If you try to launch another company, my associate Mr Babbage will have you all denounced at the Exchange, and you won’t even be able to open a bank account or get a line of credit at the grocers. Do you understand?’

Mr Sanders slid the coin from the table into his palm. Still not meeting her gaze, Mr Collins and Mr Vincent nodded.

‘That’s not enough,’ Lord Richard protested. ‘I need more than a pound. I need—’ He looked straight at Rosanna. ‘You.’

Desperation drove some men to violence and depravity, but in others, it brought on intense stupidity. Lord Richard, a man of panache, flair, and smooth words, was clearly one of the latter. His foolishness made him fast, and with a lunge and a cry, he grabbed Rosanna and wrapped his elbow around her neck. ‘Don’t think I won’t hurt her!’ he shouted. ‘I will. Give me her money. All of it.’

Fear lit Rosanna’s expression for a sharp second before she found Phineas and he held her steady gaze until the nip of terror dissolved. With an eye roll and a smirk, Rosanna brought her heel down hard on Lord Richard’s boot. When he yelped, she slid from his hold, but instead of running like Phineas had taught her, she turned and shoved Lord Richard in the chest. He staggered, but before he could fall, Phineas strode forward, caught him by the collar, and dragged him away. He hauled the lord across the dusty floorboards, then shoved him against the wall. Lord Richard winced as his head collided with the bricks.

‘No one touches my wife!’ Phineas spat. Fury engulfed every inch of him, more than the coward deserved, but when it came to Rosanna, everything engulfed him. ‘Where is Pennington? Why is he in London?’

‘I never met him, only his men,’ Lord Richard spluttered. ‘He swears he’ll hurt my family if I don’t pay. I have a sister. She’s so little… Please. I never meant to hurt anyone. I don’t know what to do.’

Phineas tightened his hold on the lord’s collar. He tried to draw upon cold indifference. To let the man be the victim of his own stupidity. What was it to him if Pennington went after Lord Richard’s family or the man himself? Phineas would be so far away by the time the news reached the papers, he’d never even know.

His grip slackened. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cheque book and a pen. Then he scrawled Rosanna’s worth across the bill of exchange. ‘You no longer owe Pennington.’ Phineas tucked the note into the man’s pocket. ‘You owe me, and you will repay me by staying away from my wife. One step wrong, I will call in my debt. I’m not a monster like him. I’m a far simpler man. I won’t come for your family. I will come for you. Understood?’

Lord Richard coughed as Phineas twisted his collar. ‘Understood,’ he scratched out. ‘I’ll settle with him, then go abroad. I swear it.’

Phineas let go and turned away. Behind him, Lord Richard crumpled to the floor. Before him, Rosanna splayed a hand across her chest. He tried to read the look in her eyes, the grimness in her expression, but he ached, his body too wrung out and depleted to decipher any of it.

‘It’s done,’ he said to her, his voice echoing hollow in his chest. ‘You’re free.’