Undercover with the Heiress

In the heart of London’s dazzling society, Rosanna Hempel seems to have it all—a doting father, a promising future as the heiress to the family business, and the adoration of a charming suitor. Her life is a flawless portrait of privilege and potential—until a single fateful moment in the park shatters her world. The lord who vowed her everything abandons her, leaving her only hope in the hands of the infuriating man next door, the bland, boring bank clerk, Phineas Babbage.

Phineas, weary of his mundane life on Honeysuckle Street, dreams of escape and new beginnings. Yet, when he stumbles upon a distraught Rosanna Hempel, he finds himself ensnared in a web of passion, peril and wallpaper choices. His quest to unravel the mystery of his lost love intertwines with his unexpected enchantment with Rosanna, and as their sham marriage deepens, he must confront his own desires and fears.

Will they find common ground? Can they set aside their differences and solve the mystery, annul their sham marriage and return to their individual lives?

Because that’s what they both want.

Isn’t it?

Undercover with the Heiress is Book 3 in the Tales from Honeysuckle Street series. All books in the series are loosely connected standalone reads. With a guaranteed HEA, Undercover with the Heiress is a story of love lost, family and redemption. Its main tropes are enemies to lovers and age-gap. It features HOT open-door intimacy. It includes strong language and sexy times.

This novel contains themes of and references to past loss of a child that some audiences may find confronting.

9 June 1876
Nine inches was the perfect length. Three inches the perfect width.
Phineas aligned his ruler with the edge of the page and drew a sharp red line along its length. He waited a moment for the ink to dry, then slid the ruler across so he could mark out the next column. He set the square edge against the bottom of the page. Checked its position. Readied his pen.
‘Babbage!’
Martins, the supervisor of clerks for the new accounts sector at Empire Savings and Loans, hollered at Phineas from the door, his head turning as he glared across the room. He strode between the desks and took each corner at an angular jerk. Clerks perched on stools cowered into their ledgers, all of them focusing hard on their numbers but tilting their heads just a little, no doubt to witness the approaching telling-off. All of them grateful that, today, it was not them.
Phineas pressed his pen against the ruler’s edge. Blood-red ink leeched from the nib onto the page as he dragged the pen along the wood. It really was an excellent piece of equipment. A ruler like this was stable. It had a smooth, flat base that didn’t shift with the pressure of his pen but still allowed him to see the existing margins without losing track of the other columns on the page.
It was also flimsy enough to snap with a determined flick, yet sturdy enough to plunge into a man’s throat without splitting.
Not that Phineas had much need for violence.
Not these days, anyway.
Martins tapped Phineas’s desk. ‘Beaverbrook tells me you were late.’
Phineas slid from his stool to stand in some form of contrition. He’d forgotten the difference between a conciliatory and a bored expression and hoped that his slight frown and set mouth conveyed some hint of penance. ‘I may, perhaps, have been delayed a little,’ he said. ‘The streets were busy.’
In reality, he had been at a board meeting for Spencer & Co. Travel. The damn thing had gone on for far longer than necessary. He probably could have antagonised Lawrence Hempel a little less. Then he might have arrived at the bank on time.
Martins crossed his arms over his chest, his flat palms tucked against his side, lifting his chin so that he could look down his nose. The man had been promoted from amongst the clerks a little over a month ago, and he seemed intent on lording his newfound power over his subordinates rather than using his experience at their level to ease their day. Yet, the light coating of dust on the tip of his boot showed he still buffed them himself at home, and his trouser hems had been tacked with an experienced yet inattentive hand, as they ran at an uneven angle. As Martins blustered something about managerial expectations, and punctuality is an indicator of commitment, Phineas gathered other fragments of information about the man. A black button that was a slightly different size to the others. A loose thread. A stiff collar. A perfectly trimmed moustache.
‘What do you have to say for yourself, Babbage?’
What did he have to say? In another life, another world, he would have so many things to say. He would look Martins square in the eye. He wouldn’t even blink as he delivered his assessment. They gave you a promotion but not much of an increase in wages to accompany the extra duties, but you took it anyway because you value status over quiet stability. The dust on your shoe shows you take a different route to work, which means you’ve moved. You no longer have your shoes cleaned by a boot-spit, and the smudge on your collar suggests you shine them yourself, at home. Your wife still sees to your laundry and mending, but she takes no care, as she’s exhausted from seeing to the extra work from the boarder you’ve taken on so that you can afford the rent on rooms over a shop on a slightly better street. The rose tint that saw her accept your proposal has faded, and she’s wondering what else there is in a future with you, as after three years there is still no babe. While you blame her, she can’t help but wonder—what if it’s you? And there’s one surefire way she can find out the answer, and he’s leasing your spare room…
‘Well, Babbage? I’m waiting.’
Phineas straightened as he met Martins’s hard stare. Martins’s nostrils flared slightly.
‘It won’t happen again,’ Phineas said.
Martins grunted what he likely thought was a manly dismissal. He sounded like an old dog growling into a dream of better days. Then he spun and stomped from the room.
As Phineas slid back into his seat, the bank clerks around him settled back into their worship of the pen. They called them the kings of the clerks, and in their own way, he supposed they were. Paid a little more than other clerks, working in clean offices, and perched on stools that were their thrones—there was no chance of a maimed leg, like on a construction site, or a hand crushed between crates, like on a loading dock. This bank was smaller than Barclays or the Bank of London, but it still offered enough opportunities for promotion, which gave their trivial lives a little hope and aspiration. Something that they lacked as they trudged the distance between Clapham and here like a morose, conformist, black-suited army, only to drown in the mundane repetition of column after column.
Thank heavens he wasn’t one of them. He was just a man passing through, gathering information. And now that he was certain there was nothing else to learn here, it was time he moved on.
The other clerks sunk back into their ledgers, focusing on the mind-numbing tedium of tracking income, orders, and papers. Phineas flipped back through the pages of the ledger he’d been working on and scanned the columns before his eyes settled on a few inconsistent numbers. A four that should have been a six. A problematic two. He checked the company name at the front of the ledger, then scanned the room, searching for the clerk who was responsible for updating these accounts. No, it couldn’t be. He’d had such hope for the boy. Phineas inspected the pages again, scooped up the heavy tome, and folded it into the crook of his arm to cross the room. He slid the ledger onto Taylor’s desk.
‘Would you mind checking my figures, sir?’
Taylor paused mid pen-stroke. His ash and grey eyebrows furrowed. ‘I’m tired, Babbage. And it’s been a long week already.’
‘Just check my figures.’
His figures were fine, of course. Precise. Never a number wrong, never a sum out. There were no errors when it came to his calculations of pennies and pence. The phrase was code for an anomaly in the columns, a shuffling of money from one account to another, or an odd withdrawal. Usually an indicator that an employee, surrounded by all that wealth, had decided to take a little for himself.
Ever since the days of the Bank of London’s financial catastrophe, many banks kept a few men on the floor to oversee the books in a way that went beyond tallying columns. Sniffing out scams and swindles or unusual financial activity, they allowed the bank to deal with an indiscretion before it got out of hand. It wasn’t about the money—it was about maintaining public esteem and confidence. Men like Phineas and Taylor received no glory for their work, just a few more notes in their pay packet. But looking for signs of fraud did make the monotony more tolerable, and for Phineas, it also gave him an extra motive to keep his distance from his colleagues. He didn’t want to hesitate if he needed to rat out a man.
Perhaps that was why he’d let himself become embroiled in the lives of his neighbours in Honeysuckle Street—it gave him something of substance to do and tested his brain instead of seeing him stuck in the paper-pushing tedium of columns and rows and margins.
Taylor leant forwards and studied the page, his gaze lingering on the suspect transfers. ‘Who?’
‘New lad, Robinson. Only a few pounds, but more than what most start with. He’s still young. A shake-up might be enough to set him straight.’
‘They all start small. That’s what gives them courage. You know the rules.’
‘Of course I know them. I wrote them.’ Phineas tapped at the column. ‘It’s too clumsy to be committed. His mother’s sick. Maybe a reminder that a long-term position will do her more favours than a short-term windfall will be enough to steer him straight? Look at the boy. Newgate would break him.’
And not just mentally. Physically, too. Robinson was all twig, his limbs as spindly as the legs of the tall stool he perched on. He took a sheet of blotting paper and laid it across his work with focused particularity. Given time, he’d make a good clerk, and if he found someone to share his life with, he’d likely not be too miserable about it.
Taylor watched the lad over the gold rim of his glasses, then rolled his eyes and sat back. ‘Make conversation with him before he leaves. See if you can nudge him into line. But one penny more, and I’ll report him up the line. Then they can deal with him.’
With a dutiful nod—as if he really was a clerk speaking with a slightly more experienced clerk, and not a bank-employed spy sniffing out fraud before it got out of hand—Phineas folded the ledger closed. He was about to slide it off the desk when Taylor thumped another tome on top of it.
‘My turn. Check my figures, Babbage.’
Phineas’s fingers brushed over suede leather as he traced the bright foil stamp on the cover. The Argonauts Trading Company must be an important client. A new one too, judging by the brightness of the marbled paper on the inside. Phineas flipped through the pages, scanning each row.
‘They used to be Abberton & Co.,’ Taylor continued. ‘Changed the company name last year and brought in a new board member. Some buy out.’
‘It was a takeover, and a bastard one at that. Are they in trouble? They deserve to drown for what they did.’
Abberton & Co. had been the company run by his neighbour Iris and her father, Albert. She’d hidden her father’s illness from the board and had gradually taken on the work herself. The board had only noticed when she’d been caught in a scandal, and when her father’s declining mental state had become known, they had voted to strip the Abbertons of their position, claiming that the company could not be associated with a woman with a reputation. While Iris had found her feet with a new business that Phineas and many of the neighbours on Honeysuckle Street were investors in, the loss must have been hard for her to take. How were those buffoons faring now, without her?
‘They’re not in trouble,’ Taylor said. ‘Quite the opposite. What do you know about them?’
‘Abberton & Co. were a trading company,’ Phineas explained. ‘Abberton imported high-quality goods and sold them to London businesses. He ran a tight business, but never a greedy one. He always said he was happy working in the middle.’
‘Argonauts are aiming far higher than the middle. They’re looking to open their own department stores, modelled on the Whiteley, only bigger. They’ll use all their export chains, but without a middleman. They plan on charging the same prices and keeping the profit. A modest share offer to the public to fund construction of the building, the promise of fantastical returns… the usual. They’ve asked the bank to sell on their behalf and extend their credit.’
‘Not using the Stock Exchange?’
‘They’re too small for the exchange. And given the offer, my hunch is that they’re hoping to encourage women investors who have a harder time finding a broker willing to represent them on the floor. And who might be excited by the prospect of shopping.’
It was a risky move, but if it paid off, likely to be highly profitable. It might elevate the company from its place as a wholesale supplier to a household name. If it paid off.
Phineas glanced over each page, searching for the telltale smudge of an erased number or a wobbly line that revealed a hesitant hand. For all their grim muteness, the numbers on the page held as many tells as an amateur at cards. But each number had been written with confidence, every sum was correct, every column ran straight. So precise it could have been his own work.
‘Who’s the new board member?’ Phineas asked.
‘Lord Richard, one of the Marquess of Hanley’s sons.’
‘Compulsory aristocrat?’
Taylor chuckled. ‘Likely.’
There wasn’t a board in England that dared to sell shares to the public without an aristocrat on the board. For reasons he’d never understood, the stamp of a noble increased public confidence and made investors more willing to open their purses. But then, the average man or woman didn’t see the books that he saw.
Phineas scanned the list of investors. The regular mix of toffs making side investments, pretending they didn’t need new money, and new money trying to make more money, in the hopes of impressing the old money.
Phineas slid his finger over the page in a snake trail.
‘Nothing out of place. Everything is in order.’ Phineas turned another page. Lists of income and expenses, withdrawals and deposits, taxes and wages. He flipped the book closed. ‘All in order.’
‘Nothing else?’ Taylor remained impassive.
‘Nothing.’
‘And yet?’
Phineas tapped the cover. And yet. ‘Too perfect. No one in here does work like that. Except me.’
Taylor leant back in his chair and nodded. ‘That’s it. Couldn’t quite spot it myself. It’s been nice working with you, Babbage. I’ll miss your eye, but more so your logic. Which way you headed? North? East?’
‘South. Very, very south.’
Back at his desk, Phineas lined up his pens, rulers, pencils, and inks like usual, as if it was just another day coming to an end. Around him, clerks tucked umbrellas under their arms. They were completely unnecessary beneath the blazing June sky, but every clerk in London brandished one like a sword, even Phineas. He gave his desk one last tap in a mute farewell.
Monday he’d send a note to say he was unwell. In a week, another letter, to ask for extended leave. A month later, he’d notify the managers that he was moving for his health. They’d barely remember his name by then. They barely remembered it now.
And he’d be long gone, with fathoms of sea and sky and land between him and this city.
Clerks filed out, eager to get home to their small dwellings over shops. The ledger sat unattended on Taylor’s desk. Phineas hesitated. He should at least find something to tell Iris, given that she was a stockholder in the company, to warn her of a problem if there was one. He opened the book once again, searching for some other clue. He flipped through the pages one by one but saw nothing out of place except for the overwhelming perfection.
Curiosity will do you no good. You can’t keep getting involved in these people’s lives. It’s time to move on.
Phineas closed the book, clutched his umbrella, and set off home.