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“Shall I help you remove your riding habit, ma’am?”
“No, thank you. You may go.”
“I should tidy up.” Cranston looked around as if the room was a mess.
“Please go.” Sarah waited until the woman departed—as slowly as could be managed without outright insolence—and then went to look for Kenver. “Have you heard about Gwen?” she asked when she finally found him walking in the gardens.
“My father told me. Apparently…”
“Apparentlyshe has been a victim of malicious gossip.”
“Papa said she has been sneaking out to assignations.”
“Sneaking?Gwen?”
“It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing she would do,” Kenver admitted.
“Because she didn’t.”
“Papa said…”
“Who saw her?” Sarah demanded. “And what sort ofassignations?”
“I don’t know. Mama…”
“Dismissed Gwen because I liked her and enjoyed having her as an attendant?”
“She wouldn’t—”
“Do anything to distress me?” Sarah interrupted. Her eyes snapped with emotion. “She sent Cranston back, you know.”
Kenver had never seen her so agitated. “Treat a servant unfairly,” he finished. But suddenly he wasn’t sure. Since Sarah’s arrival, his mother had said and done things he never would have expected.
“I want to see Gwen,” said Sarah with narrowed eyes and a raised chin.
“I don’t know whether…”
“Don’t you?”
The glare that accompanied these words shook Kenver. He thought of Sarah as such a gentle person, but right now she looked fierce and…perilous.
“Will you help me? Or must I inquire for myself?”
“I suppose she went back to her family’s cottage.”
“You know where that is?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Sarah turned and started to walk away. After a few steps, she looked back over her shoulder. “Well?”
“You want to go there now?”
“Certainly.” She bit off the word.
Kenver moved to her side. He had to walk rapidly to keep up with her on the way to the stables.
They rode to a cottage on the south side of the Poldene estate. An older man emerged at the sound of hooves, and Gwen rushed out on his heels. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she cried as soon as she saw Sarah.
