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“I have always assumed he was bestowing these funds upon you, Mrs. Hinton,” Bint said. “After all, you were the being in this world whom Hinton most cherished and admired. He would not have wanted to see you in any difficulties attending on his passing.”

Bint regarded her with a glitter of envy in his eyes. Or was it covetousness? A whisper of distaste skittered across Sophronia’s shoulders.

Bint was enjoying his power over her, and not simply because he didn’t want the bank to part with funds in service of a such an unpromising cause as support of the former owner’s relict, an investment which would yield no returns for him. There was something more in play—some envy he had held for Henry, or some judgment he had made about Sophronia herself.

“Perhaps,” Bint said, folding his hands over the closed ledger, “Mr. Elkins may be able to shed light on the disposal of Hinton’s last bequests.”

“You may be assured I will discuss this with him.” Sophronia swallowed down the knot of panic in her throat. All the fierce fighting she had gone through to clear her claim to Henry’s assets, all the challenges she had encountered to his will, some of them from these men at Hinton’s—she had overcome them all, only to find that the state of her husband’s finances was barely enough to keep her for a year, much less the remainder of her life.

She saw Hinton House crumbling to ruins, herself subsiding into a shadow within it, and no dreams coming to fruition. No travel to foreign lands, nor anywhere outside Berkshire. No sound of girls’ voices ringing through her house or the brisk clatter of feet across the entrance hall as eager mothers came to enroll their beloved daughters for the learning that would enable them to exist in independence and self-reliance if they so wished, or if necessity required.

She would be able to save no one. Not even herself.

Rowden put a hand over hers, where she gripped her fingers around the arm of her chair in a desperate attempt to hold onto something solid. The weight of his hand, the warmth of his skin through his glove, felt like a benediction. Like an anchor in a storm-tossed sea. She met his eyes and found he was still able to communicate with her without speaking, the way they had once held entire conversations across the length of a room or a stableyard.

Courage, my girl, Rowden was telling her, and somehow, Sophronia knew she could find it. She just needed a moment to absorb this blow.

“Because of my great esteem for your husband, Mrs. Hinton, I am willing to make accommodations for these unfortunate circumstances.” Bint cast at Henry’s massive portrait a look that carried, Sophronia thought, more venom that admiration, but the shadow on his face was so fleeting, it might have been due to the Argand lamp. “We could discuss, perhaps, the terms for a loan? I could offer you very generous terms of interest, no more than ten percent⁠—”

“Ten percent?” Rowden snarled. “That’s outright robbery. She’d get a better deal going to John King.” King was a moneylender who notoriously borrowed to the upper class, despite the risk that aristocrats would simply refuse to pay their debts to a commoner.

Bint glared at him. The fold of skin beneath his eyes looked gray in the artificial light of the lamp, and Sophronia wondered if he were simply terrified of Rowden’s size and anger, or if there were heavier problems pressing on his conscience. She entertained a fleeting stab of sympathy. Henry would not have been an easy master, and his successor no doubt had learned of all the headaches that accompanied the business. When the trials and annoyances and obstinacy of well-heeled customers had troubled Henry’s days, he wore himself to a thread maintaining a veneer of civility at his place of business and vented all his outrage and resentment in the privacy of his home.

“I am endeavoring,” Bint said through clenched teeth, “to offer Mrs. Hinton succor through these unfortunate revelations. I expect she believed Hinton had provided much more generously for her, rather than leaving her with practically nothing.”

Sophronia straightened in her chair. Perhaps there was still hope. And perhaps Henry had simply withdrawn his own funds to invest elsewhere, in a venture he thought would be profitable and provide security for Sophronia. He would not have left her destitute; Hinton House was his pride and joy, the pinnacle of his achievement, his proof, along with his genteel wife, that he had reached the status of gentleman. He had wanted it to be his legacy.

There was something she simply was not seeing. She would take what information she could to Mr. Elkins, and he would know more.

“I would like to look at the ledger a moment longer, if I might.” Sophronia held out her hand for the book.

Bint’s fingers twitched, as if he could not persuade his hands to unclasp. His mouth formed the most peculiar shapes. Finally, Rowden tugged the ledger from beneath the man’s claws and flipped through it, resting on the page Bint had showed them, then turning back a page or two.

“My dear Mrs. Hinton. Might I abandon you for a moment? I believe you will be safe here with Mr. Bint.”

Sophronia raised her eyebrows at him. Rowden never, not once in their lives, had addressed her as “my dear” anything. There was something highly suspicious in the forced innocence of his tone.

“Naturally Mrs. Hinton is safe with me,” Bint scoffed. “I have the utmost respect for her person, and an acute sympathy for the situation in which she now finds herself.”

Rowden rose, letting his hand rest a moment on her shoulder as he passed behind her chair, and that small gesture filled her entire consciousness for long moments. Sophronia stared at the ledger sheet, unseeing.

She was bereft. She would never be able to convert the house to an educational institution given these numbers. She would never be able to afford much of anything.

And yet Rowden’s touch grounded her in a way she’d forgotten he could do. The closest thing she’d ever had to emotional support or an ally during her marriage was Aunt Edmons. Henry liked for Sophronia to be involved in charities, on committees, to make the occasional call to curry favor, but he had carefully kept her from cultivating friendships during their stays in London or Hungerford. He needed to be the center of her world, the recipient of her attention and time.

And with Rowden absent from her life, Sophronia had no real friends to turn to, not friends who knew her down to the soles of her feet. She had reams of friendly acquaintances, people with whom she was on sociable terms, and young girls she mentored, like Lily. But friends? Rowden had been her all-in-all.

Having his friendship back felt like that younger self had been returned to her. She was herself again, fully.

Even without funds. The Sophronia Rowden had known would never be defeated. She would never be held back from a goal she passionately desired. She would find a way to aim at her target.

And she knew, without a shred of doubt in her being, that Rowden would help her.

How she loved that man.

The realization stole her breath for a moment, left her head dizzy and her ears ringing, as if she’d come up the stairs too quickly from the cellar and knocked her forehead on the ceiling beam.

She loved Rowden. She wanted Rowden in her life in whatever means she could have him. Not simply the return of Rowden the boy she’d loved so completely, but Rowden the man she knew she could admire, rely on, and trust with her life.