“Good!” Harriet said, and sat down on the wooden bench by the low wall that surrounded the garden, and took off her gloves. “Did I tell you what I did after I was jilted? Other than cry bucketsful, that is.”

“No, you didn’t.” Edilean sat down by her. “Tell me every word.”

Over the next few days, Edilean was tempted to tell Harriet the story of the diamonds and Angus, and ask her opinion of what was going on. But Edilean couldn’t tell Harriet about the diamonds because, legally, they belonged to James’s wife, which meant that they were closer to belonging to Harriet than to Edilean or Angus. No, it was better that Edilean figure out things herself.

After much contemplation, she came up with some reasons why Angus was working at a tavern. One, he wanted to be near Edilean, so he’d taken a job nearby. But that made no sense. With the money from the sale of the diamonds, he could have bought a place outside of Boston. He didn’t have to spend his days cleaning someone else’s stables.

The second thought was that he no longer had the diamonds. She wondered whether, if the jewels had been stolen, he would tell her about it. No. They could drive nails into him and he’d tell no one. His insufferable pride would never let him tell anyone anything.

There was the third thought-that he’d changed his mind about selling the diamonds and they were now locked away in a safe somewhere. But Edilean dismissed that idea. She well remembered that Angus had said he wanted his own home. If she knew him at all-and she did, no matter what he said-then he’d buy himself a place and work to death to make money from it, probably while vowing to repay Edilean.

The more she thought, the more she was sure that some catastrophe had caused Angus to lose the diamonds.

“And I know just where they went,” she said under her breath.

“What was that, dear?” Harriet asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

“You seem to be doing a lot of that lately,” Harriet said. “Not the out loud part, but the thinking.” She was frowning because Edilean was refusing to tell her what was in her mind.

That evening Harriet went out to buy some fish from the men just coming in on their boats, and Edilean again called Cuddy to her. “I want you to find this woman,” she said and handed him a drawing of Tabitha. There was a face and beside it was a full-length picture of Tabitha in her clothes, with her heavy top and bottom.

“Oh, yes, Miss,” Cuddy said. “I’ll like finding this one.”

“You get too near her and she’ll steal your purse. She has fingers like an eel sliding through jelly. Remember that and stay six feet from her.”

Cuddy nodded solemnly and put the picture inside his jacket.

“You should go now and look. I think she probably works better at night.”

“Will she be with the man at the tavern?”

“No,” Edilean said. “At least I don’t think so. Angus might not be able to see through her, but she’d know he’d catch on sooner or later. Go, now, and let me know what you find.”

“Yes, Miss,” he said, and hurried out of the room.

IT TOOK CUDDY over two weeks to find Tabitha. During that time Edilean had to deal with Harriet wanting to discharge him. “And why shouldn’t I get rid of him? He’s not here to do the work.”

Edilean would have done most anything to keep Harriet from finding out what she was doing. Besides the set of jewelry she wanted to hide, there was the fact that Edilean had told Harriet she was going to put Angus behind her. “I’ll do the work. What does a footman do?”

“Muck out after the horses, for one thing,” Harriet said, her hand on her hip and giving Edilean a look that said it would snow in July before Edilean did such a thing.

But Harriet hadn’t taken into account all the years Edilean had spent at other people’s houses-and all she’d done to get away from people. She borrowed one of Harriet’s workday dresses, hiked it up under a heavy belt, and went into the stables. Four hours later, there was a pile of horse manure in the stone courtyard and fresh straw in the stalls.

Afterward, she was tired, but it felt good to have done something besides sit in the parlor and listen to young men try to impress her. Harriet had been so shocked she’d been unable to speak. Edilean considered causing speechlessness in Harriet a triumph.

When Cuddy at last returned, he looked the worse for wear. His clothes were torn, and his face was dirty. “Pardon me, Miss,” he said as he sat down heavily on a chair in the kitchen.

Edilean sent the cook away. “What did you find out?”

“She was bought by a man at the docks.”

“Yes, a bondwoman,” Edilean said. “It’s for seven years, isn’t it?”

“That’s what she agreed to, but the man said she stole him blind the first night, then ran away. I liked to not have found her. If it weren’t that I know some people who are of, shall we say, a less than better class, I wouldn’t have found her.”

Edilean knew he was elaborating so she’d pay him more, but she didn’t have time for that. “Did you find her? Did you see her?”

“I did,” the man said. “Do you mind if I have a bit to eat and drink?”

Impatiently, Edilean went into the larder, got some cheese and bread, and put them on the table. She saw that there were also some bottles of homemade beer on the floor, and she picked one up. “I don’t know who in this house drinks beer, but you can have one.”

“Miss Harriet,” he said as he sliced off cheese. “She makes it and gives some to us men. She’s a good brewer.”

Edilean stared at him for a moment. It was her own house, paid for by her, but it looked as though things went on in it that she knew nothing about. She sat down on a chair across from him, even though she knew that sitting in the kitchen with a footman was something that her friends back in England wouldn’t have done on penalty of death.

“Where is she?” Edilean asked again.

“Living rough in the woods with a band of other prisoners. I think they mean to move south and buy a place to live, but they’ll stay here for a while.”

“And how did you learn all of this?”

“I stayed with them for a night.”

“Did you?” Edilean asked, her eyes lowered as she poured Cuddy some more beer. “And you saw Tabitha?”

“Thank you,” he said, taking a deep swallow of the beer. “I did. That picture you drew of her looks just like her. If you were a man, you could take to the road doing portraits.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Did Tabitha have on any jewelry?”

“Not that I remember.” His head came up. “Wait! One morning I saw a sparkly bracelet, and when she saw me looking at it, she pulled her sleeve down over it. It was just a bit of glass.”

“More like coal,” Edilean said under her breath. “When you finish that, I want you to come into the parlor and describe everything you saw, from the look of their camp to what Tabitha and the others were wearing.”

Cuddy looked as though he might be sick. “I didn’t look at what she was wearin’.”

“Did she have on a dress like mine?” Edilean was wearing a gown of apricot-colored silk, embroidered across the bodice with tendrils of lavender sweet peas.

“Not likely.” He was laughing at his own joke.

“So then, you did notice what Tabitha was wearing.”

“I guess I did,” Cuddy said, impressed with his own intelligence.

“I’ll be waiting, but hurry up because Harriet will be back soon.”

“Oh, right, Miss, I’ll be there in two shakes.”

Edilean had to use all her cunning to keep the secret of what she was doing from Harriet. Since Edilean had “lost her mind,” as Harriet put it, and destroyed her room, Harriet kept constant vigil over her. It was as though she thought Edilean was going to go insane at any moment. And all her humming and smiling and keeping busy didn’t fool Harriet a bit. She looked at Edilean suspiciously.