"I ran away before she could make me crazy." Harry said with a faint smile, "And prison was better then home. And more useful." He added, although he knew if he'd spent any longer in there, locked away in the dark and the damp, he probably would have gone far crazier then anything Anna could have done to him.
"Well, I wouldn't be very successful if I didn't look after them. If I let them get hurt and well, by the end of it, I wouldn't have many of them working for me, would I?" He said, looking back over the lawn and flower beds. "Too much stick and none of them will be around to enjoy the carrot."
"You're hardly anything but proper. I mean, you're girls aren't wandering the streets, you know more Lords then Pitt himself, and Isabel's House is hardly a ruin, neither is it in a bloody dump like Hackney. And, if you don't mind me saying it, Constance, you're hardly under anyone's thumb."
He laughed then, gently patting her hand to show that no harm had been done. "You've never sounded like a fool. Least-wise, not to me."