She tried to read his reaction in his eyes; he gave her a blank expression, but nodded.

Heartened, she continued, “So I went to look at the house-Upton Grange. To see how big it is, how hard it might be to get inside and search it. I didn’t know if Barham would be there or not.” Her lips turned down; she met Ro’s eyes. “He is-and he’s got a houseful of guests.”

Ro nodded. “Indeed.” He hesitated, then asked, “I assume that means you’ve realized you can’t, at least at present, search Upton Grange for this letter?”

If fate was kind, all would be well, and he could see her on her way back to her home in Wiltshire, safe and sound, the instant the rain ceased and the roads cleared.

Instead, she frowned at him. “Of course not. I have to get the letter back, and sooner rather than later. Every day it remains in Barham’s clutches increases the risk of his discovering and reading it. I would have thought that was obvious.”

Ro’s jaw tightened until he thought it might crack. “Perhaps. What, however, is rather less obvious is why you believe you-specifically you-have to be the one to retrieve this letter. Why not Addison, or failing that, Tab herself?”

Lydia narrowed her eyes to slits. “That is even more obvious. It can’t be Addison because the only way he could get the letter back without raising Barham’s suspicions is to honor his IOU-and he can’t because he’s halfway up the River Tick. None of us would dream of trusting Addison to search Barham’s house and retrieve the letter by stealth-he’s a bumbling incompetent. He’d be caught, and the scandal would be even worse.”

“And what of Tabitha?”

Ro’s eyes were a hard, bleak gray, obdurate and unyielding. Lydia looked into them, then drew a deep, resolute breath, and told him the truth knowing full well he wasn’t going to like it.