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deserved. Amelia’s favors were not to be bartered away so cheaply. Besides, there was some skimming Claire had managed to hide even from Mr. Parsons, so he had not gotten quite so much of a cut as he imagined.
    She sat now in her office, waiting for her beloved boy. It was a private room, tucked away off the library, where she was rarely disturbed. The furniture was shabby, but at one time, when it had been Maude’s mother’s room, it had been gaily decorated with colorful chintzes and a fine mahogany desk, neatly organized. Now the papers spilled out at random and the colors were faded into a dim memory.
    Claire cared nothing for the room; no one saw it but herself and an occasional family member or servant. She would spend none of the money from Maude’s estate on improvements to this house. Not until she was sure the house would belong to her precious John. Oh, the plan was too wonderful!
    She glanced into the gilt mirror hanging on the wall over the desk. At thirty-eight she was still a handsome woman, an older version of Amelia. But pinching pennies and a lifetime of unrealized dreams had etched lines around her tight mouth and cold eyes. She was still slender in her dark green silk dress that showed off the curves that had once attracted the hapless James. Well, if Mr. Parsons was no longer interested in her charms, she would shortly have the power to cut him out altogether.
    The door to the small room opened. Claire could smell the whiskey before she turned around, but to her relief, John seemed sober enough to talk business. That he was so like his rakehell of a father both amused and alarmed her. She had been immensely fond of Jack Burwell, enough to marry him at sixteen against even her ne’er-do-well family’s advice. But her life with him had been spent one step ahead of the bailiffs, and when he had been killed—shot in the back in a seamy public room on the wharf—he had left her penniless with two small children and nothing to survive on except her wits and her dark beauty.
    Claire had soon wed the besotted James in desperation, as the creditors hounded her like hungry wolves. She had been married to James less than a year—enough time to know that he offered precious little of the gracious life she coveted—when the news arrived of the fortuitous accident in the channel that had taken the lives of James’s older brother, his young wife, and small daughter, leaving James sole heir. Claire had wasted no time in moving the family to Romney Manor, a rambling house in the country to the north of London. For several days she had reveled in her new-found wealth and status, as wife to a landed country gentleman.
    Then had come that awful day, still stark in her bitter memory. The solicitors had arrived unexpectedly, babbling apologies, “So sorry, you understand, there was such confusion. No one knew. She was unconscious. She spoke no French....” The babble had trailed off as a child had been lifted from the carriage.
    James, the words finally penetrating his alcoholic fog, had stumbled forward with a cry of joy, falling to his knees, clutching the small girl to his breast as the little face had smiled into his, lifting her thin arms to wrap around his neck. Claire had stood on the steps behind him, staring at his bowed back, rage and hatred twisting her face, her fingers like claws at her sides, her recent triumph ashes in her heart. And in that moment, his amused, knowing eyes meeting hers across the touching scene, Mr. Parsons and Claire had formed their profitable partnership.
    Never had she forgiven that brat for taking away what she had worked so hard to achieve, status and independence. And never had she allowed the odious child, by kind word or deed, to feel anything but her bitterness. Still, over the years, Claire had cultivated a certain respectability, gathering into her capable, if larcenous, hands the reins of this acceptable estate. Her hands and those of the intrusive, but amenable, Mr.