Thea nodded.
‘Not Emma?’ asked Harriet, her face falling.
Thea was horrified at the thought. ‘Absolutely not.’
Harriet’s brow creased a little. ‘Then who?’
Thea couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘Lady Foxmore,’ she said, a small smile playing on her lips. She was proud of her relationship with Martha, despite its current status.
Harriet’s mouth dropped open. ‘Not?’
‘Yes.’
‘As in?’
‘Martha Smilgrove, of Foxmore Square and Denbury,’ said Thea as Harriet’s eyes bulged and her mouth did not shut. She blinked a few times.
‘I can see that,’ she said eventually. ‘She is a handsome and impressive woman. An unrequited love for her would be hard.’
‘Not unrequited,’ clarified Thea.
Harriet blinked again. ‘Lady Foxmore told you she liked you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘For more than your weird, dried fish?’
Thea found she was quite enjoying herself. ‘Oh, far more than that.’ She drew her knees up in front of herself and grasped them with her arms. ‘She took me away to Scarborough and it all came out, and then we were together – in secret of course – for almost a year.’
She scanned Harriet’s face. It was unmoving save for a slight flicker of the eyes. She assumed there was activity happening inside. Probably Harriet trying not to picture it, she suspected. She wondered how much worse she could make it for her friend. ‘We were quite the pairing.’ She sighed, staring at the blue curtains flanking the tall window. ‘Lady Foxmore does like to excel at all endeavours in which she participates, as I think you know.’
Harriet made a sort of strangled sound. Thea reached to the table and retrieved her glass of port. ‘Will this help?’
Harriet took it and downed it all in one. That seemed to do the trick.
‘The Countess of Foxmore? The most upright, proper and most terrifying lady of society?’
Thea grinned. ‘The very same.’
‘And you…’ Harriet tried to gather herself. ‘I am sorry, Thea, but I do need to be very sure we are of the same understanding. Are you telling me that you were together, in that you did bedroom things together? You are not misunderstanding me and saying that you simply did nerdy things with plants?’
‘We were in love,’ Thea clarified. ‘And lust. Very much so.’
A little clarity seemed to return to Harriet’s eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’
‘Does it?’ asked Thea. Perhaps Harriet was more worldly than she had been, but until the night that Martha had confessed herfeelings – the one that Thea thought about often – she would have never guessed that Martha shared her inclinations.
‘She was the one who found me and Emma.’ Harriet flopped backwards on the seat so that one arm hung over the side, one over the back and she stared at the ceiling.
‘Not... doing the thing?’ A thousand thoughts raced through Thea’s head, but Harriet shook hers against the sofa back.
‘When we ran away. We didn’t know what to do after it happened. It was Fitzwilliam Fairclough who found us and called for his brother, Monty. He was about to alert the whole house when Emma knocked him out with a warming pan.’
Thea blinked. ‘She didn’t?’
‘She did.’
‘And Monty… Emma’s current husband… was there too?’
