so?’
Mrs Peters shook her head. ‘Don’t matter now. As Albert says, what’s done is done. The carriage will be waiting for you, miss.’
Henrietta took a final look at the perfect features of the elegant woman depicted in the portrait. There could be no denying the Countess of Pentland’s beauty, but there was a calculating hardness in the eyes she could not like, a glittering perfection to her appearance that made Henrietta think of polished granite. For some ridiculous reason, she did not like to imagine Rafe St Alban in love with this woman.
Taking leave of the housekeeper, she made her way down the front steps to the waiting coach, unable to stop herself looking back just in case the earl had changed his mind and deigned to say farewell to her himself. But there was no sign of him.
A large fountain dominated the courtyard, consisting of four dolphins supporting a statue of Neptune. Modelled on Bernini’s Triton fountain in Rome, Henrietta’s inner governess noted. Beyond the fountain, reached by a broad sweep of steps, pristine flower beds and immaculate lawns stretched into the distance. Like the house she had just left, the grounds spoke eloquently of elegance, taste and wealth.
The contrast with her own childhood home could not be more stark. The ramshackle house in which she had been raised was damp, draughty and neglected. A lack of funds, and other, more pressing priorities saw to that. Any spare money her parents had went to good causes. An unaccustomed gust of homesickness assailed Henrietta. Hopelessly inept her parents might be, but they always meant well. They always put others first, even if the others weren’t at all grateful. Even if it meant their only child coming last. Still, she never doubted that they loved her. She missed them.
But she had never been one to repine her lot. Henrietta straightened her shoulders and climbed into the waiting coach with its crest emblazoned on the door, already preparing herself for the forthcoming, almost certainly difficult, interview with her employer.
Rafe watched her departure from his bedroom window. Poor Henrietta Markham, it was unlikely in the extreme that Helen Ipswich would thank her for attempting to intervene—if that is what she really had done. He felt oddly uncomfortable at having allowed her to return on her own like a lamb to the slaughter. But he was not a shepherd and rescuing innocent creatures from Helen Ipswich’s clutches was not his responsibility.
As the carriage pulled off down the driveway, Rafe left the window, stripped off his boots and coat, and donned his dressing gown. Sitting by the fireside, a glass of brandy in hand, he caught Henrietta’s elusive scent still clinging to the silk. A long chestnut hair lay on the sleeve.
She had been a pleasant distraction. Unexpectedly desirable, too. That mouth. Those delectable curves.
But she was gone now. And later today, so too would he be. Back to London. Rafe took a sip of brandy. Two weeks ago he had turned thirty. Just over twelve years now since he had inherited the title, and almost five years to the day since he had become a widower. More than enough time to take up the reins of his life again, his grandmother, the Dowager Countess, chided him on a tediously regular basis. In a sense she was right, but in another she had no idea how impossible was her demand. The emotional scars he bore ran too deep for that. He had no desire at all to risk inflicting any further damage to his already battered psyche.
He took another, necessary, sip of brandy. The time had come. His grandmother would have to be made to relinquish once and for all any notion of a direct heir, though how he was going to convince her without revealing the unpalatable truth behind his reluctance, the terrible guilty secret that would haunt him to the grave, was quite another matter.
By the time the coach drew up at her employer’s front door, Henrietta’s natural optimism had reasserted itself. Whatever Rafe St Alban thought, she had tried to prevent a theft; even if she hadn’t actually succeeded, she could describe the housebreaker and that was surely something of an achievement. Entering the household, she was greeted by an air of suppressed excitement. The normally hangdog footman goggled at her. ‘Where have you been?’ he whispered. ‘They’ve been saying—’
‘My lady wishes to see you immediately,’ the butler interrupted.
‘Tell her I’ll be with her as soon as I’ve changed my clothes, if you please.’
‘Immediately,’ the butler repeated firmly.
Henrietta ascended the stairs, her heart fluttering nervously. Rafe St Alban had a point—her story did seem extremely unlikely. Reminding herself of one of Papa’s maxims, that she had nothing to fear in telling the truth, she straightened her back and held her head up proudly, but as she tapped on the door she was horribly aware of the difference between speaking the truth and actually being able to prove it.
Lady Helen Ipswich, who admitted to twenty-nine of her forty years, was in her boudoir. She had been extremely beautiful in her heyday and took immense pains to preserve the fragile illusion of youthful loveliness. In the flattering glow of candlelight, she almost succeeded. Born plain Nell Brown, she had progressed through various incarnations, from actress, to high flyer, to wife and mother—in point of fact, her first taste of motherhood had preceded her marriage by some fifteen years. This interesting piece of information was known only to herself, the child’s adoptive parents and the very expensive accoucheur who attended the birth of her official ‘first-born’, Lord Ipswich’s heir.
After seven years of marriage, Lady Ipswich had settled contentedly into early widowhood. Her past would always bar her from the more hallowed precincts of the haut ton. She had wisely never attempted to obtain vouchers for Almack’s. Her neighbour, the Earl of Pentland, would never extend her more than the commonest of courtesies and the curtest of bows. But as the relic of a peer of the realm, and with two legitimate children to boot, she had assumed a cloak of respectability effective enough to fool most unacquainted with her past—her governess included.
As to the persistent rumours that she had, having drained his purse, drained the life-blood from her husband, well, they were just that—rumours. The ageing Lord Ipswich had succumbed to an apoplexy. That it had occurred in the midst of a particularly energetic session in the marital bedchamber simply proved that Lady Ipswich had taken her hymeneal duties seriously. Her devotion to the wifely cause had, quite literally, taken his lordship’s breath away. Murder? Certainly not! Indeed, how could it be when at least five men of her intimate acquaintance had begged her—two on bended knee—to perform the same service for them. To date, she had refused.
The widow was at her toilette when Henrietta entered, seated in front of a mirror in the full glare of the unforgiving morning sun. The dressing table was a litter of glass jars and vials containing such patented aids to beauty as Olympian Dew and Denmark Lotion, a selection of perfumes from Messrs Price and Gosnell, various pots of rouge, eyelash tints and lip salves, a tangle of lace and ribbons, hair brushes, a half-empty vial of laudanum, several tortoiseshell combs, a pair of tweezers and numerous cards of invitation.
As Henrietta entered the room, Lady Ipswich was peering anxiously into her looking glass, having just discovered what looked alarmingly like a new wrinkle on her brow. At her age, and with her penchant for younger men, she could not be too careful. Only the other day, one of her lovers had commented that the unsightly mark left by the ribbon that tied her stockings had not faded by the time she rose to dress. Her skin no longer had the elastic quality of youth. He had paid for his bluntness, but still!
Finally satisfied with her reflection and her coiffure, she turned to face Henrietta. ‘So, you have deigned to return,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you care to explain yourself and your absence?’
‘If you remember, ma’am, I went looking for Princess.
