Read Chapter 6: The Debt Collector

The hackney carriage rattled over wet cobblestones, its wheels sending up sprays of murky water that misted the windows. Helena pressed her nose to the glass, watching the familiar elegance of Mayfair give way to something narrower, dirtier, more dangerous. The buildings leaned toward one another like gossips sharing secrets, their ground floors given over to pawnbrokers and chandleries.

She had told her father she needed to visit a modiste. It was not entirely a lie—she did require gowns for the season ahead—but the address she had given the driver was not Mr. Finch's establishment on Bond Street.

Julian had slipped out of the Marsden townhouse at half past seven that morning, and Helena had been waiting across the street since dawn, shivering in the early chill and telling herself that following him was simply good strategy. Knowledge was power. If Julian Ashford had business in the warren of alleys behind Cheapside, she wanted to know what it was.

The carriage stopped at the mouth of an alley so narrow that the driver refused to take it further. Helena descended, pulling her plain wool cloak tighter about her shoulders. She had dressed deliberately—no feathers, no jewels, nothing that might mark her as a lady of quality. Here, such markers would be a target painted on her back.

She found Julian at the end of the alley, speaking through a grate set into a heavy oak door. Even from a distance, she could see the set of his shoulders—tense, watchful. The man on the other side of the grate was invisible, but his voice carried, thin and reedy.

"Mr. Grub will see you, then. Mind your purse."

The door creaked open. Julian disappeared inside.

Helena counted to thirty before slipping after him, pressing herself into a shadowed alcove beside the entrance. The door had been left ajar—perhaps an oversight, perhaps an invitation. She eased it open and stepped into darkness.

The room stank of lamp oil and old paper. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with ledgers and bundles of documents tied with string. A single candle burned on a scarred wooden desk, illuminating a man so thin he seemed composed of nothing but angles. His hands, splayed across the desk before him, were the colour of old parchment, and his eyes—small and dark and terribly sharp—fixed on Julian with the patience of a spider.

"Mr. Ashford," the man said. "You come recommended by Mr. Croft."

Helena's breath caught. Croft. The name her father had spoken with such shame. She pressed herself deeper into the shadows, straining to hear.

"I come on business," Julian replied. His voice was calm, measured. "I understand you hold paper on certain assets of the Ashworth estate."

Grub's thin lips curved into something that might have been a smile. "I hold many papers, Mr. Ashford. You must be more specific." He gestured to the shelves around him. "Half of London's desperate gentry sleeps in these ledgers. Their silver, their land, their grandmothers' pearls—all of it lives here, waiting to be redeemed or sold."

"The Eclipse trophy. Silver, shaped like a horse. Presented at Whitbury twenty years past."

Something flickered in Grub's eyes. "Ah. The Ashworth prize." He reached for a ledger, running a finger down columns of cramped writing. "Yes. I hold the paper on that piece."

"Who owns it now?"

Grub's finger stopped. He looked up at Julian with an expression of genuine curiosity. "You wish to purchase the paper? Or to know who did?"

"The latter, for now."

A pause. Grub tilted his head, birdlike. "Mr. Croft said you were a careful man. But careful men do not ask questions about paper they do not hold, unless they mean to make trouble." He closed the ledger with a soft thump. "The trophy belongs to a silversmith in Ludgate Hill. Name of Pettifer. He paid good coin for it—three hundred pounds, if the record serves."

Three hundred pounds. Helena's hands clenched in the folds of her cloak. The trophy had been worth five times that. Her father had been cheated, and badly.

"And the loans they secured?" Julian pressed. "The full extent of Lord Ashworth's obligations?"

Grub laughed, a dry sound like rattling bones. "You think I will lay out my competitor's books to a stranger? Mr. Croft would have my fingers for it."

"Croft's debts are not my concern."

"No?" Grub leaned forward, his sharp face catching the candlelight. "Then you are the only man in London who feels so. Lord Ashworth owes Croft thirty thousand pounds. I know this because Croft boasted of it—said the old man was so deep in the mire that he'd sell his own daughter if Croft asked nicely." He paused, letting the words hang. "The trophy was part of the security against that debt. Croft sold it to me when the old man defaulted on his first payment. Pettifer bought it from me two weeks past."

Julian was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had gone hard. "And if the daughter were to try to recover it? To pay the debt herself?"

"She would need thirty thousand pounds and a miracle." Grub shrugged. "The trophy is gone, Mr. Ashford. Pettifer will have melted it down by now, or sold it on to some collector with more money than sense. Either way, it is beyond her reach."

Helena's throat tightened. Melted down. Her mother's words came back to her—*that trophy was your father's pride, the proof that he was once the man she married*. And now it was nothing but melted silver in some stranger's workshop.

She had heard enough. She turned to slip back through the door—

And collided with something solid.

Julian's hand closed around her arm before she could gasp. He must have sensed her presence, must have known she was there all along. His grip was firm but not cruel, and when he spoke, his voice was low and controlled.

"Lady Helena. What a surprise."

"Release me." She tried to pull away, but he held fast.

"You were listening."

"I was following you. There is a difference."

"Indeed there is—one implies intent to deceive, the other merely intent to investigate." He guided her out of the shop, past the narrow alley, until they stood on the main thoroughfare. Only then did he let go of her arm.

She rounded on him, her voice shaking with fury. "You knew. You knew about the trophy, about my father's debts, about all of it. You came here to confirm what Croft already told you, so you could hold it over me."

Julian's jaw tightened. "I came here to understand the full measure of what your father owes. A man who does not know his enemy's debts does not know his enemy."

"My father is not your enemy."

"No?" Julian met her gaze, something unreadable in his dark eyes. "He signed away his land to cover a debt he cannot pay. He sold his wife's heirloom to a man who paid him a fraction of its worth. He has put his daughter in a position where she must lie to a countess to protect a legacy he has already forfeited." He paused. "He is his own worst enemy, Lady Helena. And he is dragging you down with him."

For a moment, she had no words. The truth of it struck her like a blow to the chest.

"I will save my estate," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "With or without you. With or without the trophy."

"You cannot save it alone."

"Then I will find a way to save it with someone else. There are other investors in London. Other patrons who might—"

"There are not." Julian stepped closer, and she had to resist the urge to step back. "I have spent three years building my reputation in this city. I know every man who might fund a racing stable, and every one of them will tell you the same thing: the Ashworth estate is a sinking ship, and only a fool would board it."

"Then why did you board it?"

The question hung between them. Julian's expression flickered—something raw and unguarded beneath the careful mask—before he smoothed it away.

"Because I am not a fool," he said quietly. "And I know a thoroughbred when I see one."

He turned and walked away, leaving Helena standing alone in the narrow street, her heart pounding and her mind racing with the terrible, wonderful possibility that she had just misjudged him entirely.