Mr. Grant sighed. "It is quite all right, Miss Hartley. I have another hat."
"Then you had better keep it far away from Bramble," said Clara.
She stood on the steps and watched her sister run across the lawn after the naughty pony. Polly's golden hair flew out behind her in the wind; her cheeks were pink, her laugh loud and strong. Only six months ago, that same girl had lain shivering on the cold stone porch of a London church, too weak to stand, coughing blood into a handkerchief. The doctors had said she would not see the spring. And here it was, spring, and there was Polly running.
Clara pressed her hand against her heart and closed her eyes for a moment. She did this often now: whenever the happiness grew too large to hold, she simply stood still and let it fill her up, because she still could not quite believe that any of it was real.
So much had happened in those six months.
The trial of the Earl of Marlowe had been the talk of all England; every newspaper in the country had printed the story. People who had never heard the name of Thomas Hartley now spoke of him in every drawing room and tavern from London to Edinburgh.
The trial lasted eleven days. Mr. Drummond the banker gave evidence; the Bow Street officers gave evidence; Sir Matthew Kendall read aloud the old Duke's sworn statement word by word in a voice that shook with anger. And then, one after another, the men the Earl owed money to came forward—there were a great many of them. It turned out that Thomas Hartley had not been the only honest man the Earl of Marlowe had cheated; he had simply been the only one who refused to stay quiet.
On the last day, the Earl stood in the dock and looked out at the crowded courtroom, looking very different now: thinner, grayer, the fine fur collar gone. Clara sat in the front row between the Duke and old Mrs. Pike; she did not look away from him, not for one moment.
When the judge read out the sentence, the courtroom fell silent: fourteen years' transportation to the prison colonies of Australia—the very same sentence that Lady Cecilia had promised Clara in that dark cell in Newgate with such delight.
As the guards led him away, the Earl passed close to the front row. He stopped for a moment and looked down at Clara, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something.
Clara looked back at him calmly. "My father died in Newgate," she said quietly. "You will not die there. I hope that one day in Australia, you will think about why."
The Earl said nothing. The guards pulled him away, and that was the last time Clara Hartley ever saw the man who had destroyed her family.