Page 88 of The Gentlewoman Apprentice

I have scarce known a soul whom I could trust not to forsake me…

These thoughts should not have been shared with her master tailor. If she had known the identity of her valentine, she never would have confided so much.

Yet he had read them and fallen in love with her at a safe distance. He hid behind the letters because it was safer than standing in front of her. It was not a charming convention but a form of control. He managed how much of himself he risked while taking all she offered.

Sharp knocks at his office door preceded Charlotte’s entrance. The comfort of her company settled easily as she sat across from his desk.

“I thought you could use a visit. You shouldn’t be alone to watch the disgrace build momentum across the street. Lucius sends his regards.” Her gaze swept the room, pausing on the open drawer, the burgundy ribbon, the stack of letters. Her lips fell into a straight line.

“How are you?” she asked, in the careful tone she had adopted since his father’s death.

“Well enough.”

“Then you won’t mind hearing that Giles is receiving commissions—three, last I heard. Every woman in Stroud has visited The Golden Thimble, and word is spreading to Gloucester.” She leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “How are we going to stop her?”

He ought to feel grateful for her support.

“Well? You cannot do nothing,” she said. “The guild would intervene if you asked. We both know they never liked her.”

As though Margaret were an affliction to be uprooted with the proper tools.

“She wrote to me,” he said.

Charlotte straightened slowly. “And?”

Peter didn’t know where to begin. Charlotte and Lucius remained his closest friends, but he had not told them everything. “She has a younger brother, a boy of eight or nine whom she raised and believed depended on her financially. For him, she would do anything.”

Understanding crept into Charlotte’s eyes. “Even break the restrictions of her indenture.”

“Exactly. But she recently discovered Samuel no longer requires her money.” He turned the letter over in his hands.

“She has the brass of a dock thief.”

“That may be a truer comparison than you know. I believe Margaret comes from east London.”

“That does not excuse what she did to you.”

“No.” He would not pretend otherwise.

“Then why do you justify her?”

The question struck a tender place. She was not alone in wrongdoing.

“She ran my shop better than I ever did. She collected five years of unpaid debts. She sat with me the night my father died and said nothing because she understood silence was what I required.”

“And she stole your clients, hid information from the guild, and operated an illegal business from across the street. Peter.” Charlotte leaned forward again. “You are like my own brother. That is why I must see Sloan Tailoring put to rights.”

“I know.”

“She used you.”

“Yes.”

“Then what is there to forgive?” she asked.

He turned from her and looked out the window at the shuttered front of The Golden Thimble. He should despise the sight of it.

“She asked me once if I was her valentine.”