When she opened her eyes, it was dark. She moaned and shifted uncomfortably. Her head hurt terribly, but she sensed she hadn't been out for long. Someone or something had hit her on the head, hard enough to knock her senseless, but only momentarily.
Perhaps the same person had dragged her too, because she was lying in the corner of the small dark room. The dull ache in her armpits testified to that.
She tried to clear her head, to think. Esther was close by - bent over, intent on whatever she had been doing when Harry had surprised her. She raised her head to try and see more, but the woman's bulky frame obscured whatever was in front of her. A small pile of brown paper parcels was visible on the floor and she seemed to be systematically packaging things up. Harry could guess what they were.
A range of emotions ran through her: relief that her mother's possessions were within her grasp, followed by a hard cold anger. Was this how Esther re-paid the Winfields for welcoming her into the family?
She wondered where Giles was. Presumably, he had been the one who had hit her from behind. The two of them must be in league together; Dempsey had been right – about Giles, at least. Neither of them had considered that he might be in cahoots with Esther, too. Admittedly she had always been a cold fish, but Harry felt hollow gloom at the understanding that she was involved. She couldn't help it; there was a sense of betrayal that hurt deeply. And how could Giles do this to his flesh and blood? Even with everything she had learned of the dark side of human nature over the years, she was shocked that he could have struck her like that, her uncle, who'd known her since she was a baby. You never really know a person she thought. Those words again.
Her hands had been roughly bound behind her back with a scarf of some kind. It wasn't tight, and she thought that she could easily get free if she wanted to. But she didn't try it - not just yet. She thought that the best plan was to stay quiet, to watch and wait. She had no idea where her gun was – in one of their pockets, presumably – so she had to be careful. It seemed as though Esther had almost forgotten she was there, completely intent as she was on her task of parceling up the silver.
Harry wondered where the items of jewelry were being sent. Abroad perhaps, sold on so they couldn't be traced. Anger came again and she clenched her fists. Then she remembered Jasper. Where was he? Had he barked when she was hit and been silenced by Giles? Please no.
Suddenly there were quick footsteps on the stone stairs, and a torch beam came into view followed by the figure of a man. Harry started. It wasn't her uncle; it was Porter, her father's manservant. Tall and thin, she recognized him immediately, even in the gloom and despite the fact that he wasn't wearing his customary black and white work clothes. Instead, he was dressed in dark cords and a hunting jacket, with a woolen hat pulled down low on his head.
Involuntarily, she made a small sound of surprise. He looked down at her, smiling unpleasantly.
"Lady Harriet, I see you're awake."
It was incongruous the way he said it, as if he was rousing her in the morning with a cup of tea. Instead, he was pointing a large hunting rifle in her face.
Hearing him, Esther stopped what she was doing and turned to look at Harry with a mixture of impatience and fury, as if she didn't want to be reminded of the intruder because it made her too angry.
Their eyes were on her now and with an effort she pushed herself upright so her back was against the wall. The old paraffin lamp cast a glow across the room and a draft blew in from the stairwell, chilling and uncomfortable.
"Porter, what are you doing?" she said. " Daddy will be so upset. How could you?"
He didn't respond, just held her gaze. He had always been here, she thought; he had worked at Winfield Hall for as long as she could remember, and his father before him. Freddy always treated his staff extremely well, so it happened quite a lot – family members taking over roles. What had he done to Porter to deserve this betrayal?
She thought she saw a momentary flicker of something – perhaps shame – in his face. But then Esther spoke.
"John and I go back a long way, Harriet. We were at school together. Believe me, your blessed father won't miss the jewelry, not really. If he's as attached to it as he professes to be, why did it take him so long to realise it was missing? In the end, we had to let him know ourselves."
"Out of interest," she said, keeping her voice calm. "Why did you let him know? That seems very strange. And as for him not noticing, given that he has been betrayed by someone he considered to be one of his most loyal members of staff, I think it's more a case of trusting the wrong people, wouldn't you say?"
She fixed a steely gaze on Porter.
"John is charged with checking the safe every Saturday, so not to have reported the disappearance yesterday would have been unfeasible," Esther said, ignoring her second question. "Our plans to have the jewelry transported to a trusted contact should be complete in around an hour's time, so we felt we could just about take the risk, although having you stumble in on us is rather unfortunate, of course." She gave Harry another look of barely disguised contempt and anger.
"Besides, to leave it any longer would be to miss a good opportunity to pin it on the most likely person present to have actually committed the crime." Now, she smiled unpleasantly.
Harry winced. "And I suppose that would be James?"
"Very astute, Harriet," Esther had turned back to the table then and continued with her work. Harry could sense the urgency, the sense that time was of the essence. Grey dawn was visible through the open door - soon it would be morning, and surely daylight meant danger for them.
Porter kept the gun trained on her, but he wouldn't look her in the eye.
"You certainly seem taken with lover boy" said Esther over her shoulder, "but you should know as well as I do – Americans simply can't be trusted. I doubt it will take much to convince Freddy of that, with his outstanding old school true-brit credentials, and all. It's a shame because I like James, I really do. He was very comforting to me in the library this afternoon."
Harry stiffened. Esther glanced back at her and laughed shortly.
"What, you didn't know? Don't tell me he didn't mention it. Oh, don't worry dear. Nothing untoward happened. He just caught me in a little moment, and was extremely charming and consoling. Perhaps I could have seduced him if I'd have liked, but I didn't have the heart." She laughed and tossed back her head so that the shawl fell away, letting loose her thick hair.
Harry thought back to the previous afternoon and Dempsey's appearance in the bedroom with that strange book – something about land reform, the last thing on earth she'd have expected him to pick out. At the time, she'd been vaguely perplexed, but had simply dismissed it as one of his eccentricities, of which there were several. Now she thought about it, he had seemed rather awkward and flustered at the time. What had occurred between him and Esther? Whatever it was, Esther was surely delusional if she thought James had been interested in her. He was a one-man woman, wasn't he? She felt the old familiar sense of anxiety - a remnant of her marriage - rise in her gorge; but it was quickly replaced with rage towards Esther for making her doubt him.
"Thanks for filling me in," she said tightly. "Now perhaps you might like to untie me, and abandon this whole charade. You'll never get away with it, you know."