Page 65 of A Modest Independence

“There’s nothing sweet about it. It’s the truth. I realized it not long after meeting you. You’re the most imperfectly perfect woman I’ve ever encountered.”

“Imperfectly perfect.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t. “I haven’t the slightest idea what that means.”

“It was you who found Thornhill’s advertisement in the Times. You who arranged for Lady Helena to escape from London. I daresay some might call it managing. I call it downright heroic. You take care of people. You help to solve their problems.”

“And you don’t?”

“The difference being that I’m paid for it. Very well paid by people who often don’t deserve to be helped.”

“Did Mr. Thornhill pay for your help?”

“No, but—”

“Yet it was you who placed the matrimonial advertisement in the first place. You who determined the method for saving Helena and her fortune from her uncle.”

Tom frowned. “That was different.”

“I don’t see how.”

“What I did for Thornhill I did for a friend. A man who’s like a brother to me. A decent, honorable fellow who deserves a chance at happiness. The rest of my clients are neither decent nor honorable.”

“Not all of your clients fit that description, surely. What about Ahmad? What about Mr. and Mrs. Jarrow’s son?”

“Those cases were different, too.”

“Different how?”

“Out of the common way. Not representative of the bulk of the cases I take.” Tom briefly removed his spectacles to massage the bridge of his nose. He looked suddenly tired, his blue eyes even wearier than they normally were. “Several years ago I began to become somewhat disenchanted with the work I was doing for Fothergill. In the main, I didn’t like my primary client.”

“The gentleman engaged in the land dispute?”

Tom nodded. “His case and its various offshoots had come to form the bulk of my practice and…I was tired of it. I decided then that I’d start taking on additional cases of my own. That I would use the skills I’d learned from Fothergill, employ the knowledge he’d given me, to help those who actually deserved to be helped.”

“A laudable goal.”

“Fothergill thought it foolish. Especially as the cases I took on usually involved the poor. Those stuck in untenable situations. I could often solve things for them with a letter or a word dropped in the right ear. It was no great sacrifice of my time.”

“Still, it’s very generous of you.”

“Hardly. Helping people like Ahmad and the Jarrows’ son is selfish. I do it because of how it makes me feel. Since Fothergill’s retirement, I’ve taken on more cases like theirs. Some days, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

“Do you dislike your client so much?”

“What I dislike is being used as a weapon.”

Jenny’s brows shot up. “Is that how you view the work you do for him? I thought you loved the law.”

“I do, but there are aspects of my practice that have little to do with it.”

“What aspects?”

Tom settled his spectacles back onto his nose. At first it seemed as though he wouldn’t answer her; however, after a weighted pause, he finally spoke. “I told you once that in the orphanage I learned that there was strength in knowledge.”

She remembered. It had been the night he came to Half Moon Street. “You said that you’d developed a propensity for keeping secrets.”

“Sometimes I think that’s why Fothergill chose me. He recognized the habit in me. Because he was the same, you see. He listened to everyone. He accumulated scraps of information. People’s darkest secrets. Their deepest desires. He used the knowledge to make himself powerful—and to help those who could afford his fee.”

Jenny moistened her lips. On the train from Marseilles, she’d hesitated to voice her suspicions. She’d been too afraid of offending him. Of harming their friendship. But now, after all they’d been through together, it seemed foolish to remain silent. “You’re speaking of blackmail.”