Page 29

Catherine

It had not been a good day, and with every passing second, it was getting worse.

“Careful!”

I swerved, desperately trying not to drop the brown paper bag of sweet pastries I was clutching in one hand over the poor person I had just walked straight into as I stepped around the corner into the blinking sunlight.

The man scowled at me, as though I had ruined his greatcoat. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

Apparently he didn’t actually want an answer, because he stormed past me and down along the street.

“My apologies,” I called after him.

I don’t know why I bothered. London was getting more and more crowded, more and more rude! Besides, I was running late.

Not that I was going to have a queue of customers waiting for me…

I dodged past the hurried Londoners, bleary eyed and exhausted on this Thursday morning, and tried to calculate mentally just how many days there was until rent.

Five? Six?

Well. So that meant I would have to sell…what. A pound’s worth of stock every day, each day, to make sure I had enough?

I swallowed, panic flaring just for a moment before I forced it down.

I was not going to panic. I could make it work. There was still enough time, just about. I wasn’t going to sink under the pressure. I wasn’t going to?—

The instant I turned the corner, I saw it.

Or at least, I saw something. Something fluttering on my door—the door to the shop I rented on Maddox Street, anyway.

It was the perfect location, close enough to Covent Garden to attract all the shoppers looking for trinkets, but close too to the Oxford Street shoppers who had all the money.

I’d found it two years ago and it had been a hard slog to keep it, but here I was…

Pasting up posters wasn’t supposed to be allowed on this street. I sipped my coffee and smiled ruefully as I approached my shop. Well, I could hardly blame them. I owned my own business, after all, and I knew how hard it was sometimes, getting the word out. All you had to do was…

My jaw dropped as I grew closer.

That wasn’t a flyer.

The word EVICTION was printed in large red letters at the top. I halted suddenly, feet from the door, unable to advance.

Eviction. Eviction?

No. No, no, no? —

“You must have known this was coming,” came a leery voice I knew all too well.

Closing my eyes for a moment to gain the strength I needed to deal with this lout—most unfortunately, also my landlord—I plastered a smile on my face as I turned on my heels.

“Mr. Matthews,” I said sweetly. “There appears to be some mistake.”

The man snorted, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. I tried hard to keep my disgust from being too obvious.

“Don’t be daft, Cat,” he said.

“Catherine,” I corrected immediately.

My friends, my family, my mother called me Cat. Not rogues who grifted me for far more rent than the place was worth and looked at me like I was a piece of meat.

“Y’had to know it was coming, Cat,” Mr. Matthews said, utterly ignoring me. “You’re often late on your rent?—”

“I’ve got another five days,” I said quickly. “And I'm confident this month, I really think I can?—”

“You’re two months behind as it is, and y’know how I feel about late rent,” he pointed out, sniffing again. “S’nothing personal.”

It was intensely personal, and I knew it.

I was never one for confrontation, and I could feel my voice quaking as I raised it, but I couldn’t go down without a fight.

This was my shop. Mine. I’d fought for so long to do this, to make beautiful art for a living. I couldn’t just let him throw me out, over a little money!

“You know as well as I do that you want higher rates for this place, and you’re not going to find someone to pay such an exorbitant?—”

“Already found someone,” my landlord grunted. “I need you out in a week.”

My mouth was open but no words were coming out.

Already…already found someone? How could he have—why would anyone pay more for a place like this? How could anyone afford it?

“But…” I swallowed, hating how dry my throat was, hating that I couldn’t find the words to defend myself.

That had been the dream. Take on my father’s kiln, prevent the need for going into service, and become someone who actually made things for a living, who had their own business.

Use my hands to make a living.

It had been wonderful. Glorious, for two whole years.

Fine, it had also been stressful. Walking away from the chance to live in as a housemaid, have your meals and bed provided for you, had been more of a shock than I’d expected.

The savings I had been convinced would survive for years had lasted me eight months.

Since then…well. Every month, I had to make rent. Every month, I did.

More or less.

“—and get that rubbish out before you leave,” Mr. Matthews was saying. “I don’t want my new tenants to have to clear it up.”

For a moment, I just stared, confused. Then the penny dropped. “My pottery is not rubbish, Mr.—”

“I honestly don’t care. Do what you want with it, chuck it, burn it, give it away, I doubt you could sell it,” he grinned darkly. “I want you gone. Locks change in six days.”

He started to walk away, but the panic finally fired up my lungs and my legs.

I lurched after him, the pastries crumpling in the paper bag in my hands but what did that matter now. “Seven days!”

Mr. Matthews turned and stared. “Your rent is due in six days.”

“And that is when I will give it to you,” I said sternly, desperately praying for a rich fool to walk into my shop in the next few days and buy every damn thing. “Only on the seventh day will you know whether I’ve paid rent or not?—”

“All of it,” he said, eyes glinting. “All the stuff you owe me.”

I swallowed. Three months’ rent, then. Not a pound a day, more like five pounds—that is what I will have to earn. “Fine. You’ll get your money in six days.”

“And on the seventh, I’ll change the locks,” Mr. Matthews said with an evil grin. “Nice doing business with you, Cat.”

He sauntered away as if he owned the place. Which most unfortunately, he did.

The whole street.

I just stood there like an idiot, completely stunned. Three months’ rent to find in a week. Less than a week. Less than a week to save my shop, my career, everything I’ve worked for, everything that I am.

And rage, the like I have never known, poured through me.

What the hell was I supposed to do—and why did old Matthews think it acceptable to speak to me like that!

Urgh, it was infuriating! The very last thing I needed, when inspiration was particularly lacking and I had a shipment of clay sitting in the back that was currently not becoming… well, anything.

Certainly not anything I could sell.

Mr. Matthews turned a corner and something shifted in my shoulders, some tension melting away. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to be subjected to his nonsense today. I usually only had one visit a day, sometimes only one a week.

Now all I had to worry about was earning enough money to pay the man.

Taking a deep breath, and trying to remind myself that this was a life I chose, after all, I turned to march resolutely to my shop.

“Hell’s bells!”

The man I had utterly squished with my pastries, a lovely smear of what had to be raspberry dripping down his pristine cream waistcoat, glared at me.

I smiled weakly. “Whoops.”

Kineallen

It had not been a good day.

First, that meeting with our newest members. Could the idiots not see that he was trying? Did they have any idea how long it took for some wagers to pay off? Had they never heard of patience?

Then that irritating delay on the street. Why on earth anyone had thought it necessary to halt the traffic just because a carriage had slightly cast a wheel, and for forty whole minutes, the occupants boiling inside and starting to grumble as minute after minute passed, he had no idea.

Then that message. Laura was leaving—had left me. Fine, I hadn’t been enjoying her embraces. But she’d been perfect.

Convenient.

Malleable.

Now I was stuck without a mistress right when I actually needed one.

And now this .

“Hell’s bells!”

I wasn’t exactly injured, as I’d expected, but whatever it was dripped sticky and sweet and absolutely disgusting on my waistcoat.

“Whoops,” said the imbecile who had run into me and coated me with…raspberry? “I do apologize.”

Said the woman. Said the petite blonde with hair pinning delicately on her head, woven with threads of gold that glittered in the sunlight. Said the woman with a hand on her hip, color in her cheeks, and a smile that seemed to make her glow.

Damn, did she hit me on the head, too?

I took out a handkerchief from my pocket to clean up my face, and sighed as I saw that it had been marred by the same foodstuff. “You want to watch where you’re going?”

The woman’s lips parted.

I was being a jerk. There was no reason that it was her fault, though it was her—pastries, perhaps?

The trouble was, all the anger and irritation and frustration of the day had been on the tip of my tongue, and she just happened to be the poor fool to cross me right at the wrong time.

“There’s a whole pavement here, a large one, and you want to crush your pies on me?” I snapped. “I should send you the bill for the laundry, I'm a mess!”

I was being a cad. Berating this woman on the street wasn’t going to improve my day, and it certainly wasn’t going to improve hers.

Besides, she must know who I am. She’d flutter her eyelashes, most likely, and attempt to get a little coin out of me. It was so tiring, so boring moving about in a world where everyone knew I was a duke. What I wouldn’t give for? —

“You can pay your own laundry bills, if that embroidery is anything to go by!” the woman snapped, as though I had been the one to decorate her outfit with a little syrupy mess.

“I said I was sorry, and I'm not sure what else you want for me! You’re not the only one who is having a terrible day, you know!”