Rake with a Frozen Heart. Marguerite Kaye
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. I see she found her way back unaided.’
The pug, hearing her name, looked up from her pink-velvet cushion by the fireside and growled. Lady Ipswich hastened to pick the animal 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