Page 60 of Undercover with the Heiress
Phineas braced himself against the safe and heaved himself up, then slumped backwards. Lawrence reached out to assist, but as Phineas extended his own shaking palm to meet him, Rosanna shoved her father aside.
‘Phineas Babbage, don’t you dare do that again.’ She grasped his shirt and hauled him towards her. His side creaked with pain, but when she kissed him, he found comfort in her touch and solace in her lips. She pushed him away, and he sagged again, then slid onto the floor. ‘Don’t you dare sacrifice yourself.Don’t you ever think I will be better off without you when I would be destroyed.’
Phineas gripped his side as he coughed into a laugh. ‘Youarebetter without me.’
‘No!’ She flared with anger and hurt, her words so honest he had to close his eyes against her fierceness. ‘How dare you? How dare you assume to think on my behalf? How dare you decide that I, who has had to suffer through your views on jam and your missives on boots, do not love you enough to be utterly devastated if something were to happen to you?’ She grasped his cheeks and kissed him before withdrawing. ‘You said I was your equal. Don’t ever assume to think on my behalf. You are a stupid man, Phineas Babbage. You will not dictate to my heart ever again.’ And then she flung herself at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and sobbed against his shoulder.
He kissed her cheek and pulled her tight to counter the dark and fear that had subsumed his senses. She tasted like fresh air and honey, like days stretched naked in bed in the sunshine and nights huddled by the fire. She smelt like burning oak in a hearth and sugar-coated almonds and any other good scrap of memory that had slipped from his life. More than anything, as she shoved him away with one hand and drew him close with the other, he held tight to his Rosanna, his ferocious Mrs Babbage who met the world like a firecracker in whisky.
Why had he thought she needed to be saved, when all along, she had been saving him?
He coughed, and his chest pinched. Lord, he’d cracked a rib. ‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered, then laughed, which made his whole body shake with joy and pain again. ‘I won’t think to protect you ever again. I swear it.’
‘Good.’ She settled against his chest. Phineas took another strained breath and stroked his wife’s gloriously soft hair. All for him, all his own. ‘But seriously, Phineas,’ Rosanna chastised.‘Kidnapped in your own home. Some bloody spy you are. You will never live this down.’
Epilogue
Christmas Eve, 1876
Phineas set his ruler against the ledger. Readied his pen. Drew a long, crisp line.
‘Not still working, are you, sir?’ Felix stepped into the upper room, now converted into an office. ‘It’s Christmas Eve.’
‘Only completing the entries for this quarter. Then I’ll finish up.’
‘I’ve set your whisky and a glass in the library, just how you like it. Are you certain you don’t mind me heading out? It seems a sad thing to spend Christmas alone, with only liquor for company.’
Phineas cast a crestfallen glance at the telegram that had arrived earlier that afternoon. Owing to a shift in the weather and ice on the rails, Rosanna and Johannes had been delayed on their return from Brighton. They’d been away these past two weeks, and now she wouldn’t be home for Christmas either. Phineas shrugged off his disappointment. He’d spent Christmases alone before. Better she get home safely than not at all.
‘Don’t fret, I’ll only be having one drink. Enjoy your evening with Letitia. Best of luck. I hope she says yes.’
‘How did you…?’
Phineas raised his brows. ‘I always know.’
He hadn’t actually known. Rosanna had pointed out to him how much time Felix spent on the upper floors and how smitten he seemed with the lady’s maid. But no point in letting that fact slip. His wife was right often enough as it was. ‘Don’t feel as if you need to quit. A married couple will want their own lodgings, I understand, but there’s always employment for you here. If you want it.’
‘Thank you, sir. Fingers crossed, ey?’ Felix buttoned his coat. ‘Merry Christmas. Don’t work too late.’
Felix left. Phineas returned to his ledgers. Across the top margin, he wrote the date, the costings, and the sale price in his smooth hand. The steady work of breaking up and selling off the individual components of Abberton & Co., of trying to recoup losses and refund shareholders, was best done in a quiet house. After he’d discretely provided the bank with everything they needed to carry out their own investigations, he’d resigned from his position. Pennington had been right about his skill at making investments and speculating. It had been a long time since Phineas had relied on his clerk’s salary, and the thought of sitting in a room adjacent to the tall Mosler safes still left him unsettled. Besides, this was where he was needed. This was where he could help.
Phineas tallied the final column. He closed the book, sat back, and rubbed a hand across his weary eyes. The room had turned darker as he worked, so he lit a candle to guide his way downstairs. He walked along the hallway, papered with bright woodblock and decorated with paintings purchased during their honeymoon in Venice and Rome, into the stairwell where photographs hung frame-to-frame. A stretch of happinessfilled every wall, and even though he was the only person in his residence this evening—Jean had begged time to visit her grandmother in France, while Hugh had travelled to see his parents—he didn’t feel alone. That’s what home was, wasn’t it? A place where you never felt alone because you knew you belonged and the spirit of those you cared about remained, even if they weren’t with you.
In the library, Phineas set his candle beside the whisky. He poured an inch into a glass, then eased the decanter back to stop the drip. He took a sip as he crossed the short distance to the mantlepiece, then tapped the top of the frame that held the photograph of Imogen. After he’d sent her sufficient forgeries of paperwork to pass as a woman named Mabel, she must have stopped putting off the farmer who brought her flowers. An envelope containing a newspaper cutting from theChelmsford Chroniclewedding announcement column was the only acknowledgement he’d received, but all he needed. And in the unlikely event that Pennington ever saw life outside a cell again, Phineas couldn’t imagine the fiend would bother to chase down the woman who’d once been his wife. Would he be full of enough fire to come for Phineas after his release? Possibly… And yet, if that day ever came, Phineas would be ready—because as much as it worried him, he would not be alone.
Phineas clinked his glass against the frame beside Imogen’s, the frame that held an old calotype of his friend, the failed duke. ‘Here’s to you, Arley.Joyeux Noël.’ Next, he raised his glass to a picture of Mother, the corporal, and himself as a boy. Rosanna had found thecarte postalehidden in a book and insisted that the only relic from his childhood join the little line-up of his past. Some days, he felt warmth at seeing the small family of his memory. Others, a little sadness. And he was learning to accept that both those feelings could exist side by side. Neither needed to be put into a box just because they didn’t get along.
A slight tug and a bump against his shin shook his thoughts into the room. At his feet, little baby Hazel blubbered, rocked on all fours, then rolled onto her bottom.
‘Who let you in?’ he asked.
Hazel looked up, her green eyes bright and happy. ‘Mum mum mum,’ she recited, before clapping her hands and pursing her lips to blow apffft.
‘You cannot spend Christmas alone,’ Wilhelmina said as she entered the room. ‘We also received a telegram. And we thought we’d save you the pitying invitation to dine with us by coming to you. Do you have a tree?’
Behind her, a flashing line of red coats and loud voices filled the space just outside the library door. This was what came of giving his in-laws a key. Some Hempels stomped upstairs to the front parlour that looked out over the street. Elliot stuck his head into the room. ‘Did Jean leave any little cakes?’ he asked, then took off before waiting for the answer, likely making for the kitchens to investigate for himself.
‘I feed them. All the time. I swear it. Children are always hungry.’ Wilhelmina squeezed his arm. ‘You watch Hazel. Leave the rest to us.’
