By the time Philip arrived in the schoolroom one minute later, milk from three glasses had been sloshed onto the tray and one cake was looking unappetizingly soggy.
"Henry is receiving a secret message again," he announced excitedly almost before he could close the door behind him.
"What is it and who sent it?" Penelope demanded.
"I don't know, but I mean to try to find out," Philip replied.
"I bet Mr. Cranshawe is sending her gifts and trying to charm her," Penelope said.
"More likely that moneylender making demands already, Philip replied.
"It is probably merely some ribbons that she has had delivered," said Miss Manford, "or some small piece of jewelry she has bought."
"Well, when she goes out later today," Philip said firmly, "Pen and I are going to go into her room again and see if we can find what it is."
"Oh, bless my soul," Miss Manford added, hands waving ineffectually in the air, "do you really think you ought, dear boy?"
Henry was out riding when the package arrived. She was in a very black mood. She knew that she ran the risk of meeting Oliver Cranshawe, but she did not care. If she saw him, she would gallop away from him. If he persisted in following her, she would ignore him or use her riding crop on him if she had to. But she had had to get out.
She had made Marius bring her home early from a dinner party the evening -before, pleading a headache. And, indeed, it had not been just an excuse. She had ridden home in the carriage beside her husband in unaccustomed silence. He, too, had made no effort to sustain a conversation. But she had had a feeling, as she gazed out of the window into the darkness, that he watched her from beneath half-closed eyelids. He had accompanied her to the door of her bedchamer and kissed her hand as he said goodnight, with something she might have called tenderness had she not known differently. She had not slept before dawn but had tossed and turned in her bed, in a fever of jumbled thoughts.
Cranshawe was not in the park. A couple of young men who were- occasionally part of her court looked as if they were about to join her, but she smiled and waved vaguely at them and spurred jet into a canter, and they did not follow.
Henry felt wretched in the extreme. Until her conversation with Oliver the day before, she had not known just how deeply in love with Marius she was. The knowledge that he had married her so cynically, with no feeling for her at all, except perhaps contempt, hurt like a knife being slowly turned in her chest. For a while she had tried to convince herself that Cranshawe had been lying, but she did not credit him with enough imagination to invent such an ingenious story. It was undoubtedly true.
It hurt terribly to know that the conditions of her marriage must be widely known. She must be the laughingstock-the little green country girl who had been picked at random because she was young and likely to be a good breeder. He would have chosen a horse, or even a cow, with more care.
She could not quite understand why, if he had married her only for her reproductive functions, he had not asserted his rights on their wedding night and continually ever since. Probably he had made that wager on impulse and had found himself repulsed when faced with the physical fact of a wife for whom he had no feelings. He had finally taken her, goaded on by anger at her clandestine meeting with his heir. But he had obviously found the experience unpleasant. He seemed to find it preferable to be without an heir of his own issue than to have normal marital relations with his wife.
Henry wanted to hate him. She did hate him! But she could not stop herself from caring. She had grown to enjoy his companionship, to need his attention and approval. She had come to love him and want his caresses. She had given herself to him completely on that one night they bad had together, and had believed that for him it had been as earth-shattering an experience as it had been for her. It was painful and humiliating to know that it was anger merely that had provoked him and that all he had been feeling was contempt, or at best only a momentary lust. Henry had never wanted a man, had never wanted caresses or tenderness. She had certainly never wanted the dependency of love. Her fall was, therefore, all the harder. She had no defense against the pain of an emotion that she had never experienced before and that she did not understand.
She did not know what she was going to do. She could not stay with Marius. She would not live with him day by day, aching for every kind word or chance touch. She would not be thus shamed in her own eyes. But what choice had she? She was her husband's property, totally dependent on him for the necessities of life. He had once told her that he would apply for an annulment if she truly wanted one, if she loved Oliver Cranshawe. Would he still be willing? Not an annulment, of course. It was too late for that. But a divorce? It was almost unthinkable. There were only a few instances of divorce in living memory, and the divorced woman was ostracized from society for the rest of her life. Not that that would bother her, Henry thought. But where would she go? What would she do? She had had very little money of her own to start with." That little had all become her husband's when she married.
Henry's thoughts were interrupted at that point when she noticed that jet's coat was beginning to lather. She realized with guilty dismay, that she had been constantly spurring him on, refusing to walk him for even a short distance. It was as if she had been trying to outdistance her own thoughts.
She rode her horse to the stables and satisfied herself that the head groom himself would immediately rub down poor jet. She walked to the main doors and into the hall, where she paused to remove her riding hat and leather gloves.
"I have instructions to deliver this package into your hands at the earliest possible moment, your Grace," the butler said, bowing stiffly from the waist and holding the parcel out to her on a salver.
Henry took it with a murmured thanks. Drat the man, she thought. Could he not leave her alone even for a day? What now? She went straight to her room and shut the door firmly behind her.
A couple of minutes later she sat on her bed, feeling the blood draining from her head. She believed she was about to faint. In one cold palm, shining accusingly up at her, lay her sapphire ring. In the other hand she clutched the short note that had accompanied it, written apparently in a disguised hand. Another sheet of paper lay in her lap.
Henry closed her eyes and let her head hang downward until she felt the blood pounding through her temples again and knew that she would not faint. She put the note down on the bed beside her for a moment and pushed the ring back onto the third finger of her right band. She had never thought that she would be dismayed to see it again so soon. She picked up the paper from her lap. Yes, it was the contract she had signed and left with the moneylender. She really was free of that debt, then. She laughed shakily, but the sound came out very like a sob.
Henry picked up the note and read it again.
Your Grace [it said],
Your debt has been paid in full and your ring
redeemed. Please do not be afraid. All will be well.
[There was no signature.]
Henry closed her eyes again and crumpled the note into a tight wad. It fell to the floor unheeded, to be found later by Philip and Penelope. How had he found out? She had not given him any indication about where she had got the money. And even if he had suspected, how did he know which moneylender? And why had he paid off the debt and sent her the ring and the contract? Did he delight so much in tormenting her?
One thing was clear, at least. If she had not been entirely in Cranshawe's power before, she most certainly was now. She was more in his debt than ever. The money' he had paid to redeem her loan amounted to much more than the original three thousand pounds. And, in addition to the money she owed him, he now held even more of her secrets. He could expose, not only Giles' secret and her own indiscretion in turning to him for help instead of to her husband, but also the fact that she had dabbled in the underworld of moneylenders. Her reputation would be ruined beyond repair. Marius would never believe in her essential innocence. Not that his good opinion mattered any longer, of course.