up. ‘No thanks to you, Miss Markham.’ She tickled the dog under the chin. ‘You’re a clever little Princess, aren’t you? Yes, you are,’ she said, before fixing Henrietta with a baleful stare. ‘You should know that while you were off failing to find my precious Princess, the house was broken into. My emeralds have been stolen.’
‘The Ipswich emeralds!’ Henrietta knew them well. They were family heirlooms and extremely distinctive. Lady Ipswich was inordinately fond of them and Henrietta had much admired them herself.
‘Gone. The safe was broken into and they were taken.’
‘Good heavens.’ Henrietta clutched the back of a flimsy filigree chair. The man who had abducted her was clearly no common housebreaker, but a most daring and outrageous thief indeed. And she had encountered him. More, could identify him. ‘I can’t quite believe it,’ she said faintly. ‘He did not look at all like the sort of man who would attempt such a shocking crime. In actual fact, he looked as if he would be more at home picking pockets in the street.’
Now it was Lady Ipswich’s turn to pale. ‘You saw him?’
Henrietta nodded vigorously. ‘Indeed, my lady. That explains why he hit me. If he were to be caught, he would surely hang for his crime.’ As the implications began to dawn on her, Henrietta’s knees gave way. He really had left her for dead. If Rafe St Alban had not found her … Muttering an apology, she sank down on to the chair.
‘What did he look like? Describe him to me,’ Lady Ipswich demanded.
Henrietta furrowed her brow. ‘He was quite short, not much taller than me. He had an eyepatch. And an accent. From the north somewhere. Liverpool, perhaps? Quite distinctive.’
‘You would know him again if you saw him?’
‘Oh, I have no doubt about that. Most certainly.’
Lady Ipswich began to pace the room, clasping and unclasping her hands. ‘I have already spoken to the magistrate,’ she said. ‘He has sent for a Bow Street Runner.’
‘They will wish to interview me. I may even be instrumental in having him brought to justice. Goodness!’ Henrietta put a trembling hand to her forehead in an effort to stop the feeling of light-headedness threatening to engulf her.
With a snort of disdain, Lady Ipswich thrust a silver vial of sal volatile at her, then continued with her pacing, muttering all the while to herself. Henrietta took a cautious sniff of the smelling salts before hastily replacing the stopper. Her head had begun to ache again and she felt sick. It was one thing to play a trivial part in a minor break-in, quite another to have a starring role in sending a man to the gallows. Oh God, she didn’t want to think about that.
‘You said he hit you?’ Lady Ipswich said abruptly, fixing her with a piercing gaze.
Henrietta’s hand instinctively went to the tender lump on her head. ‘He knocked me out and carried me off. I have been lying unconscious in a ditch.’
‘No one else saw him, or you, for that matter?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘In fact,’ Lady Ipswich said, turning on Henrietta with an enigmatic smile, ‘I have only your word for what happened.’
‘Well, yes, but the emeralds are missing, and the safe was broken into, and so—’
‘So the solution is obvious,’ Lady Ipswich declared triumphantly.
Henrietta stared at her blankly. ‘Solution?’
‘You, Miss Markham, are quite patently in league with the thief!’
Henrietta’s jaw dropped. Were she not already sitting down, she would have collapsed. ‘I?’
‘It was you who told him the whereabouts of the safe. You who let him into my house and later broke the glass on the window downstairs to fake a break-in. You who smuggled my poor Princess out into the night in order to prevent her from raising the alarm.’
‘You think—you truly think—no, you can’t possibly. It’s preposterous.’
‘You are his accomplice.’ Lady Ipswich nodded to herself several times. ‘I see it now, it is the only logical explanation. No doubt he looks nothing like this lurid description you gave me. An eyepatch indeed! You made it up to put everyone off the scent. Well, Miss Markham, let me tell you that there are no flies on Nell—I mean, Helen Ipswich. I am on to you and your little game, and so, too, will be the gentleman from Bow Street who is making his way here from London as we speak.’ Striding over to the fireplace, she rang the bell vigorously. ‘You shall be confined to your room until he arrives. You are also summarily dismissed from my employ.’
Henrietta gaped. A huge part of her, the rational part, told her it was all a silly misunderstanding that could be easily remedied, but there was another part that reminded her of her lowly position, of the facts as they must seem to her employer, of the way that Rafe St Alban had reacted to her story. What she said wasn’t really that credible. And she had no proof to back it up. Not a whit. Absolutely none.
‘Did you hear me?’
Henrietta stumbled to her feet. ‘But, madam, my lady, I beg of you, you cannot possibly think …’
‘Get out,’ Lady Ipswich demanded, as the door opened to reveal the startled butler. ‘Get out and do not let me see you again until the Runner comes. I cannot believe I have been harbouring a thief and a brazen liar under my roof.’
‘I am not a thief and I am most certainly not a liar.’ Outrage at the accusations bolstered Henrietta’s courage. She never told even the tiniest, whitest lie. Papa had raised her to believe in absolute truth at all costs. ‘I would never, ever do such an underhand and dishonest thing,’ she said, her voice shaking with emotion.
Lady Ipswich coldly turned her back on her. Henrietta shook her head in confusion. She felt woozy. There was a rushing sound like a spate of water in her ears. Her fingers were freezing as she clasped them together in an effort to stop herself shaking. She wished she hadn’t left the sal volatile on the chair. ‘When he hears the truth of the matter, the magistrate—Runner—whatever—they will believe me. They will.’
Lady Ipswich’s laugh tinkled like shattering glass as she eyed her former governess contemptuously. ‘Ask yourself, my dear, whose version are they more likely to believe, yours or mine?’
‘But Lord Pentland …’
Lady Ipswich’s eyes narrowed. ‘What, prey, has Lord Pentland to do with this?’
‘Merely that it was he who found me. It was his carriage which brought me back.’
‘You told Rafe St Alban this ridiculous tale of being kidnapped?’ Lady Ipswich’s voice rose to what would be described in a less titled lady as a shriek. Her face was once again drained of colour.
Henrietta eyed her with dismay. Her employer had not the sweetest of tempers, but she was not normally prone to such dramatic mood swings. The loss of the heirloom had obviously overset her, she decided, as her ladyship retrieved the smelling salts, took a deep sniff and sneezed twice. ‘It is not a ridiculous tale, my lady, it is the truth.’
‘What
