"And no one would blame me," Beatrice added, her voice rising with pleasure. "I should be the wronged mistress, robbed by the very creature my husband raised above her station! He would be made to look the fool who could not see a viper in his own study." She laughed, a light and lovely sound that did not reach her eyes. "Oh, it is perfect!"
"You will need someone to place it," Margaret warned. "It cannot be your hand that hides it. If it were ever traced to you—"
"My own maid, Dorcas, will do it," Beatrice said at once. "She is loyal to her bones, and she hates the girl near as much as I do. She will slip into the wretch's quarters tonight before the gala and tuck the brooch where the housekeeper is sure to find it." She picked up her tea again, calm now, certain. "I shall arrange for the search myself. I shall be quite distraught."
Her friends laughed with her, and the three of them sat among the ferns, plotting the ruin of a woman they believed to be nothing: a foolish maid who had spilled tea and risen too high.
They did not know, any of them, that the girl they meant to brand a thief was the daughter of a noble house, nor that the Duke, whose foolishness they mocked, already doubted a far older and graver lie. They did not know that even as they laughed, Arthur and Genevieve were making their own quiet plans to slip from the estate that very night, to a place where the truth had lain hidden for ten long years.
Beatrice knew only that she had found her revenge, and she savored it.
"To the final night of the summit," she said, raising her cup.
"To the final night," her friends echoed.
And in the soft green light of the conservatory, the trap was set, though it was aimed at a creature far more dangerous than any of them imagined.
Beatrice finished her tea and rose, smoothing her skirts. She felt, for the first time since the spilled tea had stained her gown, entirely in command of her own house once more. By the close of the summit, the maid would be gone, her husband would be humbled, and order would be restored. She was so very pleased with herself that she never noticed how her certainty was built upon a name she did not know, and a secret that would in three days' time bring her whole world crashing down.
They went out under cover of darkness, when the great house had settled into sleep and the gala preparations were done for the night.