The Matter of the Secret Bride

“I need not point out . . . what a source of uneasiness it must be to you, to her, and, above all to the nation, to have it a matter of dispute and discussion whether the Prince of Wales is married.”

Fox, Charles James, Private Correspondence to George, Prince of Wales

Once Adam left them, Mrs. Fitzherbert took up a lamp and led Rosalind out of the sitting room and up a staircase with an elaborately carved railing.

“If I may,” asked Rosalind as they climbed, “where are your wards now?”

“They are in the country with my brother and his family. I felt it best that they not be in London at this time.”

During the divorce trial.

“A sensible precaution,” agreed Rosalind.

The third-floor hallway was as broad and luxuriously carpeted as the second was. She might be out of favor in many circles, but Mrs. Fitzherbert continued to live well and keep her home up to the minute in terms of fashion.

Mrs. Fitzherbert opened the door to what Rosalind assumed must be her private apartments. Like the rest of the house, it was richly decorated, but the furnishings here were older and heavier. There was a wealth of velvet and carved wood, as opposed to the pale silks and painted furniture downstairs. The atmosphere, however, had been lightened by the addition of gold window draperies, a white marble fireplace, and several large mirrors.

A woman—very evidently Mrs. Fitzherbert’s lady’s maid—rose to her feet from the chair beside the empty hearth.

“It’s all right, Burrowes,” said Mrs. Fitzherbert. “You can leave us.”

“If you are certain, madam.” Burrowes looked hard at Rosalind, attempting to size her up with one uncompromising glower. Rosalind returned her steely assessment stoically. Burrowes, she judged, was close to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s age. Her hair and eyes were both iron gray, and her expression was as severe and correct as her black dress.

“Yes, I am certain,” said Mrs. Fitzherbert. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Fitzherbert said nothing more until Burrowes had curtsied and departed. Only then did she turn to Rosalind. “Before you ask, Miss Thorne, Burrowes has been with me for years. She has kept all my secrets, and I would suspect my daughters of robbing me before I would suspect her. If she wanted to profit from my . . . unusual situation, she could have done so years ago.”

“I know it is painful to have to contemplate such a possibility,” said Rosalind. “But in a case of robbery, it is unavoidable.”

Mrs. Fitzherbert’s hand strayed to her miniature. “No, it is perfectly all right. I brought you here precisely because this is necessary.” She let her hand fall. “There is my box.” She pointed to the broad, marble-topped desk and the chaos around it.

Rosalind took the lamp so that she might see better. Papers and letters were heaped in piles on the desktop, with a few scattered on the carpet. One drawer gaped open. The box itself—a perfectly ordinary black metal strongbox about the size of a loaf of bread—sat on the desk, its lid thrown open. The broken lock lay beside it.

Rosalind moved closer. “Is that where the box was stored?” She indicated the open drawer.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fitzherbert. “I keep it locked, and I have the key.”

Rosalind bent closer. She could see no splintering or scratches around the drawer lock.

“Where is the key now?” she asked.

Mrs. Fitzherbert moved to her bedside table, opened the drawer there, and removed a ring of keys. She sorted through these and held one up. Rosalind nodded.

“Are they normally kept there?”

“No. I keep them in my desk in the sitting room downstairs, where I do the household accounts. But I brought them up so I could go through my drawers and see if anything else was missing.” Mrs. Fitzherbert frowned. “I suppose. . . if someone knew where the keys were, they could have simply taken them from the sitting room.”

“What about the key for the strongbox? Is it also on that ring?”

“No, I keep that with me, along with the key to my jewel case.”

Rosalind picked up the broken lock from the desktop and held it closer to the lamp. Now she could see the hasp had been cut—the break was too clean for the lock to have been smashed or twisted.

“Oh, Lord. Have I been a fool?” Mrs. Fitzherbert pressed her hand against her cheek. “I did not . . . I refused to believe it could have been one of my servants . . .”

“We cannot come to any conclusion yet,” said Rosalind. “Drawer locks are easily defeated. Even a schoolgirl with a letter opener could get into such a desk without leaving a trace.” As I have reason to know. She turned back toward the desk. “Are all the things here as you found them?”

“More or less. I did look through what remained, to see if anything else had been taken.” Mrs. Fitzherbert paused and swallowed. “I saw immediately that the marriage certificate was gone.”

Odd. Rosalind pondered the disorder. Why take time to break open the box lock and search for one particular thing? she asked herself. It would have been faster, and quieter, to take the whole box.

The answer came a heartbeat later. The whole box would have been more difficult to conceal.

Rosalind’s natural environment was the parlor. She knew sitting room etiquette intimately. She understood how to create an atmosphere of trust and comfort, and how to use conversation and convention to lull someone into saying more than they might otherwise. But she had also made her way into places where she would not have been admitted, to acquire things that she would not have been given. These experiences, along with afternoons spent in conversation with Adam and other Bow Street officers, had given Rosalind an unexpected education in the minutia of housebreaking. She had heard stories of how much professional thieves could conceal about their persons, especially women, with their aprons and their voluminous skirts.

But a person who was not a professional, who was acting because they saw opportunity or was following another person’s instructions, might decide that it would be best to steal only the single piece of paper.

Then, too, there was the matter of the law. Her quick perusal showed there were indeed banknotes among the stacks of documents. If the thief was caught and the contents of the box were worth more than five pounds, the penalty for their actions could very well be transportation to a penal colony.

Or hanging.

“Is this room’s door locked when you are not at home?” she asked Mrs. Fitzherbert.

“It is, as a precaution. There have been attempts at burglary before.”

Rosalind turned to the door and bent down to examine the brass plate around the keyhole. There were no scratches there or splinters in the wood. She straightened. The box had been forced. The drawer might have been forced. The door had not. At least not that Rosalind could see. There were, she knew, tools for defeating locks. However, no one but an experienced housebreaker would have them or the knowledge of how to use them. And that was the exact sort of person who would have taken the whole box.

“Where are the household keys kept?” she asked.

Mrs. Fitzherbert opened her mouth and closed it again. “Do you know, I have not the faintest idea. My housekeeper has a set, of course, and Burrowes has the keys to my door and jewel case . . . The butler, of course, keeps the keys to the cellar, but beyond that, I don’t know.”

“And you have made inquiries of the servants?”

“I have.” Her expression told Rosalind she’d found this a distasteful exercise. “I learned nothing, but I suppose I should not be surprised at that.”

“Has the staff been with you long?”

“Most of them for years.”

“No one has left recently?”

“No. But surely, if one of my servants was the thief, they would leave immediately after taking what they wanted.”

“Not if the theft was planned before it was executed.”

“Because if they left immediately afterward, they would be the first one suspected,” said Mrs. Fitzherbert. “Yes, of course. I should have thought of that.”

“There is no reason that you should have.”

It was frequently and unfortunately the case that whenever any item went missing in an aristocratic household, the servants were blamed. In Rosalind’s experience, the staff was seldom at fault, especially if the item was rare or valuable. However, it was also true that even people who were normally honest—and who understood the risks perfectly well—could falter in the face of unusual temptation.

Or if they believed they were helping a beloved mistress, despite initial appearances. Or, indeed, if they believed they were helping their country.

Rosalind set these thoughts aside for later.

“How many staff do you keep?” she asked.

“Fifteen living in, not counting the coachman and grooms, of course. There are between twenty and twenty-five during the day, with extra help brought in as needed for the laundry and so forth.”

That was a large staff for a house this size, but even in her relative retirement, Mrs. Fitzherbert lived and entertained at a rarified level. So many servants meant that a daytime disturbance would be quickly noticed. Any would-be housebreaker would have little time for mistakes. They would need to know where to go and what to look for.

“Were the windows closed at the time?” asked Rosalind, mostly to gain time to think.

Mrs. Fitzherbert considered. “I believe they may have been opened to air the room. It has been so stifling of late.”

Rosalind moved to the windows and parted the drapes. She did not truly expect to see anything there, but she wished to be thorough.

Motion in the twilight street below caught her eye. She froze.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Fitzherbert.

It was an odd, in-between time. Those still at home were quiet in their houses. Those who had gone out—for a supper or a rout or the theater—would not be back for some hours yet. So, the street below remained as empty as when Rosalind and Adam had first knocked on Mrs. Fitzherbert’s door.

This made the man on horseback quite visible.

From this angle, Rosalind could see only that he was a large man in a high-crowned hat. He sat the horse uneasily, with his feet in the stirrups sticking out awkwardly on either side. He rode slowly past the house to the end of the street and then turned and rode back.

Mrs. Fitzherbert, noticing Rosalind’s stillness, moved to her side. She looked down into the quiet street and saw the rider.

In that moment, Rosalind felt sure the other woman would faint dead away.

“Who is it?” she asked.

But Mrs. Fitzherbert just gripped her shoulder as she stared into the street. It was enough. Rosalind knew who she saw.

“Mrs. Fitzherbert, is that your husband?”