That too, was because of Miss Wray, who had said she was fine and was dying. She shook him off. “I’m all right. We must go to the Baileys’. I’ve been a fool-the constable is coming for Jack, his leg is from a mantrap and I told Mr. Snively-”

“You! I felt sorry for you, I kept your secret-I didn’t tell a soul about the girl calling for his lordship day and night-and you turned us in! What will become of my children?” Mrs. Bailey turned away from Penelope and sat down hard in one of the rush-bottomed chairs, burying her face in her hands. “What will become of my children?” The children in question stood in a little knot, silent and fearful.

“We’re too late?” Penelope said stupidly, though she had known it from the moment she had seen Mrs. Bailey’s white, wild face. “He’s been taken?”

Mrs. Bailey burst out weeping. “They’ll send him to Australia. I’ll be all alone like Aggie Cusher.”

Penelope was used to thinking herself good in a crisis, but she had never before been the cause of the crisis. She stood frozen, trying to think. To throw in their sympathies altogether with Mrs. Bailey was impossible; it would be all round the country in a moment that the Bedlows aided and abetted poachers. Nev would be a pariah, and was it illegal? But neither could they abandon the Baileys. Penelope tried to think of a middle course.

Nev sat in the other chair and offered Mrs. Bailey his handkerchief. “Penelope, why don’t you make Mrs. Bailey some tea?” Penelope did not quite trust Nev to deal with this, and still she was grateful to give over thinking and begin the simple preparations, filling the ancient kettle and measuring out the tea leaves as best she could with a tin cup.

“Mrs. Bailey, you must calm yourself,” Nev said. “You’re frightening the children.”

Mrs. Bailey blew her nose, took a few last gasping sobs, and made a pitiful attempt at a smile. The little Baileys did not look reassured. “Why don’t you go into Miss Raeburn’s room and join Annie?” she said hoarsely. “This is grown folk’s business.”

The children filed out, silently. Mrs. Bailey blew her nose again, saw the embroidered monogram, and started. She looked at Penelope, tending the kettle. “She oughtn’t to be waiting on me, it isn’t right.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Nev said. “A cup of tea will do you good, and we need your help if we’re to find a way out of this for Jack.”

“What do you care?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t sound angry anymore, just confused. “It’s her who turned Jack in.”

“You may hate me for my stupidity,” Penelope said quietly, “but I promise you it was that, not malice. I did not recognize-they don’t have traps in town. I told Mr. Snively because I thought he might raise Jack’s allowance.”

Mrs. Bailey closed her eyes. “You meant well, anyway.”

“Mrs. Bailey, you must be honest with me,” Nev said. “Jack’s leg was caught in a trap, was it not?”

Mrs. Bailey nodded. “No one who’d ever seen a trap could look at that leg and not know. I thought-the nurse was from town and she was going away and his leg was doing so bad, I didn’t want him to lose it, I didn’t want him to die. He told me not to show her, and I insisted-I sent him to his death-”

“You mustn’t blame yourself. You did what you thought was best, because you love him and you were afraid.”

Penelope marveled at the conviction and sympathy in Nev’s voice. How did he always seem to know what to say? And how could Mrs. Bailey help but be comforted?

Mrs. Bailey couldn’t. She nodded, looking a little calmer.

“Listen to me carefully.” Nev took Mrs. Bailey’s hand. “Think before you answer. Is it possible that Jack was caught in the trap while in the woods for some innocent purpose, in broad daylight, and was simply afraid to tell anyone?”

Penelope caught her breath. Nev had found the middle course she had not been able to hit.

For the first time, there was hope in Mrs. Bailey’s eyes. “Yes,” she said cautiously. “Yes-we thought suspicion might fall on him. He was only-only-”

“I am sure he was only going to visit a friend at Greygloss.” He said it so very plausibly. Nev, Penelope realized with a shock, was a good liar. She had thought it so easy to read him at the start of their acquaintance-had he simply never bothered with concealment? Had he chosen to be honest with her?

Or, she thought with a sudden painful jolt, had all of it been a lie? The endearing candor, the kiss, I still wouldn’t offer for you if I didn’t feel we could rub along tolerably well together-had he been sweet-talking a plain, gullible heiress into doing exactly as he wished? Had he been surprised at how easy it was?

She pushed the thought away as unworthy of both of them, but it was too near her deepest anxieties to vanish entirely. She could feel it hovering at the back of her mind like a malevolent bat.

“Yes, that’s it precisely.” Mrs. Bailey’s hands trembled with relief as she took the cup of tea Penelope offered her.

“Very well,” Nev said. “I doubt I can get you in to see Jack today, but tomorrow morning we’ll go to the jail and you can speak with him and tend to his leg. Mr. Garrett is sure to know of some legal colleague of his father’s who’ll take the case. With some luck we will see Jack out of this whole.”

Mrs. Bailey grasped his hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Thank you!”

“I would do as much for any of my people who were in difficulties unjustly,” Nev said. “You can thank me by keeping Jack out of trouble in future.”

Mrs. Bailey would have kept them there half the night with tearful protestations of gratitude if Nev had not bundled them out the door by main force.

“You were splendid,” Penelope said as they walked home. Credit where credit was due, even if her emotions were in a miserable whirl. “Really splendid. I couldn’t think what to say, and you-”

“I had to do something. You were so upset.”

It was so far from what she had expected him to say that for a moment she was speechless. “Surely-surely you would have helped her anyway.”

Nev shrugged. “Jack Bailey knew the risks when he broke the law. I would have tried to help, but I doubt I would have gone so far.”

Penelope felt at once guilty and pleased, and guilty for feeling pleased.

Sir Jasper watched the constable’s deputies disperse like a pack of hounds in search of a scent. He smiled, thinking of the foxes they would be bringing back with them. He had been too pessimistic; the district was not spiraling out of his control at all.

He was so pleased that when he heard the clatter of an approaching cart and saw that it was the Bedlows with Mrs. Bailey in tow, he even greeted them with enthusiasm. “This is the biggest breakthrough we’ve had in years! You should be very proud, Lady Bedlow.”

“What-what do you mean?” the countess asked.

“The beggar’s talked! He’s given us names, places-we’ll have the whole gang!” It hadn’t even been that difficult. Sir Jasper had merely explained the situation to Bailey: on the one hand, languishing in jail with room-and-board fees piling up, then being sent to the Assizes and a quick hanging, with his wife and children left to fend for themselves in a cruel world; on the other, going home to his fond family that very afternoon.

The Bedlows did not seem to realize what great news this was. Bedlow actually laughed. “Come now, Sir Jasper, you’ve frightened the poor man into giving false information! His wife assures me that he was merely passing through the woods on an ill-advised shortcut to the home of one of your laborers, and when he was injured, was afraid to speak for fear of being suspected.”

“And you believe her?” Sir Jasper listened incredulously as the man rambled on, assuring him of Bailey’s long history of loyal labor and honesty. The new earl was even more gullible than his father.

He looked at the Cit countess to see how she was taking her husband’s idiocy, but she simply looked white and miserable. Still sulking about her husband’s actress, then. Sir Jasper smiled. At this rate they’d be separated by Michaelmas, and without his father-in-law’s pocketbook to back him, Lord Bedlow would be begging Sir Jasper to take Loweston-and his sister-off his hands by the New Year.