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We hope you enjoyed reading A Most Unlikely Lady .

Chapter One

Penny Smith huddled in the dark alcove of Lord William Renquist’s servants’ entrance to the kitchen.

Why must clandestine meetings always happen in the middle of the night?

Especially when the middle of the night in London was bloody freezing, even as spring started to sweeten the soot-stained air.

Why not teatime on a sunny Thursday afternoon with buttery shortbread and lemon tarts?

She had never been treated to afternoon tea and tarts, though she’d certainly served her fair share to the lords and ladies employing her.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

But dreams didn’t change the weather. She hugged her arms around her in the dark alcove – nary a tart in sight – and tried to think warm thoughts. It didn’t help. Shivering, she hopped from one foot to the other.

‘Have you found anything yet? I know it’s only been two weeks, but…

’ Constable Sweet’s ragged face, more familiar to her than her own father’s, creased into lines of concern.

‘He’s set to arrive tomorrow, or I ’spose it’s today now, eh little dove?

’ He pulled a pocket watch from his vest and squinted at its face.

‘Nearly two in the mornin’ and ’ere we are still scuttling about. ’

Penny tamped down her growing frustration.

She knew it was two in the morning because she needed to be setting coal in the fireplaces in three short hours.

She knew Lord Renquist was scheduled to return to his Belgrave mansion today because the housekeeper, Mrs Harding, had turned into a dictator of domestic duties even the dreaded Little Boney Bonaparte would have found intimidating.

She knew her time was running out to find evidence against Lord Renquist because the clock ticked ever closer to his arrival.

And she knew digging around in his personal belongings while he was in residence would prove much more challenging than when he was languishing in some lavish country estate in the north because she wasn’t an idiot.

She didn’t need Constable Sweet to remind her. These facts plagued her like… well, like the plague.

‘I’m trying my best, Constable Sweet, but Mrs Harding doesn’t leave a body much time to breathe, let alone snoop in places I’m not meant to be.’ Penny took a deep breath and forced calm into her voice. ‘She’s got all the servants in a frenzy preparing for the bastard’s return.’

It’s hardly Constable Sweet’s fault I’ve found no evidence.

The poor man had done more for her than any other person. The last thing the constable needed was Penny’s ire when it should rightly be focused on herself for failing in her mission.

Constable Sweet lay a heavy hand on her arm, squeezing gently. His scent of tobacco and peppermint comforted her more than a warm blanket in the frigid air.

‘I know you’re doing your best, dove.’

But her best wasn’t good enough.

‘I just need more time, Constable Sweet.’ The words rang hollow even to her own ears.

‘Time is the one thing we don’t have. If it wasn’t for your mother’s situation, I’d never ask you to risk so much.

But she’s taking it harder this time. I do what I can, but I’m not working in the prison any more.

’ Constable Sweet winced and Penny’s soul suffered another crack as she thought of her mother.

The constable’s eyes drooped at the corners, giving him the look of a perpetually depressed dog.

‘I can’t protect her as well as I used to with my new position taking up so many hours.

I’ve got a man inside watching out for her when he can, but you know how difficult it is in there.

You’ve already lost your father. I couldn’t stand to see you lose your mother as well. ’

Penny swallowed hard. Guilt and despair tugged at her.

But slipping into the quagmire of regret wouldn’t help her mother.

The only parent she’d known. The one person who sacrificed everything to protect her.

Penny’s father died when she was just eight years old, but he had been absent from her life the moment they were imprisoned for vagrancy when she was only two.

Men and women were sent to different buildings and not allowed to communicate during their sentences.

Thirty days of hard labour turned into years when inmates couldn’t afford to pay their release fees.

Penny’s heart held a blank space for Patrick Smith, a shadowy figure with no shape or scent.

A ghost of what had once been a son, soldier, husband, and father before dying in a prison cell as one more nameless convict.

Conversely, Harriet Smith’s deep-brown eyes, her silver-streaked hair, her scent of rosemary and linseed, the sound of her voice, low and soft, were as clear to Penny now as the last time she saw her mother, six long months ago.

A dangerous amalgamation of hope and fear seeped into the fractures of Penny’s heart. Hope she might earn the money needed to rescue her mother; fear she might fail.

I can’t lose Mother in that black hole of a prison. I won’t!

If Harriet died in prison, the gaping wound left in Penny’s soul would never heal.

Coughing into his sleeve, Constable Sweet continued.

‘Commissioner Worthington has promised to pay well for any evidence against these ghastly Devil’s Sons.

He and the prime minister are determined to bring these men to justice.

The reward money is more than enough to pay off your mother’s guards and get her out. ’

The corrupt band of blue bloods who called themselves the Devil’s Sons seduced young country girls to the bustling streets of London with promises of getting positions as maids in lofty houses.

But when the women came to interview, they were drugged instead and shipped across the Channel to France for a life of untold horror in Europe’s flesh markets.

Ferreting out the members of this group was proving increasingly difficult, as evidenced by the commissioner’s willingness to pay for proof of their guilt.

Penny bit her cheek. She was so close to reaching her goal.

Not just earning enough money to pay Harriet’s release fee, but setting her mother up with a room in a lodging house in Cheapside where she would have a clean bed, food, and more safety than prison or the streets could offer.

Penny’s wages weren’t nearly enough to pay the exorbitant fees demanded by corrupt jailors, but she could afford rent for her mother when Harriet was finally released.

That’s why Penny needed to get evidence against Lord Renquist, and fast. She would free her mother while helping Constable Sweet, the commissioner, and Prime Minister Russell destroy an evil, flesh-trading ring one lord at a time.

Not bad for an illiterate maid born in the gutters of St Giles, raised in the Steel, and earning her living cleaning piss pots for pampered toffs.

And to take down the Marquess of Stoneway? Finally give the man the comeuppance he deserves? Justice is rarely so sweet.

Lord Renquist was one of the lords who supported the Vagrancy Act of 1838 just as his father supported the original Act in 1824. That cruel law caused her family’s imprisonment in the Middlesex House of Correction, better known to the inmates housed there as the Steel.

When her father returned home from the Battle of Waterloo with no job prospects and no money, they slept rough for weeks until the bobbies picked them up for vagrancy.

Penny’s childhood was full of picking oakum, sifting sand, and staying silent for endless hours in the cell she shared with her mother. All thanks to Lord Renquist and rich toffs just like him.

Her mother still slept rough on occasion when jobs ran thin and she lost wages.

Penny would have helped if she knew how dire things had become for Harriet, but her mother was proud and refused to ask her daughter for the precious pennies meaning the difference between sleeping in a bed or huddling in a shadowed stoop night after night.

Six months ago, Harriet was swept up once more into prison for the heinous crime of homelessness.

Some of the same lords who signed off on the Vagrancy Act were rumoured members of the Devil’s Sons.

The bastards perpetrated sins against innocent girls with no consequences while simultaneously guaranteeing the poor people of London – including Penny’s mother – remained firmly under their polished boots.

Not for much longer. Not if I can find the evidence I need. At least one poncy lord will dance at the end of a rope for his crimes.

Cold delight bubbled in her blood like lye.

Lord William Renquist, the Marquess of Stoneway, was the physical embodiment of everything Penny hated.

She had never met him, but it wasn’t hard to imagine his lordship.

Wealthy. Excessive. Arrogant. Cruel. Finding evidence against him would be a pleasure.

Just imagining his fall from the ivory tower she cleaned filled her with joy.

Penny’s thoughts drifted again to her mother. An oily film of guilt dissolved her pleasant daydreams of Lord Renquist’s destruction. She knew exactly how vile and violent the prisons were, especially for the vulnerable. Harriet was getting older, weaker, and she was alone.