Damsel in Distress by Joan Smith Page A

if the girl would go into the house alone. How would she explain herself to the butler? The girl took a key out of her purse, unlocked the door, and walked in. Nothing further could be learned, so Caroline hurried back to Newt’s carriage.
    “Where the deuce was you?” Newt asked. “I was half of a mind to go after you.”
    “I was eavesdropping. Let us follow Bernard.”
    Newt pulled the drawstring, but when they turned the corner in pursuit of Bernard, two similar carriages were on the road in front of them. One of them turned at the next corner. They followed it for a block; it stopped, and a party of four got out and went into a house.
    “We’ve lost him,” Newt said. “Pity. Shall we take a run back to the Pantheon and see if Blanchard and the others are still there?”
    “No, I think not. I am more interested in Bernard.” She told Newt what she had overheard as they drove to Berkeley Square. Newt went in for a drink and to discuss what they should do.
    “Lady Helen said, ‘Now that she has the money. ’ I wonder what she meant by that,” Caroline said.
    “And who ‘she’ is,” Newt added, tugging at his ear.
    “It could be anyone.”
    “I daresay it is.”
    “It must be someone she is very eager to see in London, though.”
    “A friend or cousin,” Newt suggested. “Lady Helen must have sent blunt to someone. Kind of her.”
    “Yes, if that is what is going on.”
    “No mention of the necklace?”
    “Not a word. She seems remarkably unconcerned for a young lady who has just misplaced a necklace worth a fortune.”
    An idea was scratching at the back of Caroline’s mind. It was so devious, she hardly liked to express it, but she had to wonder if the money Helen spoke of had come from selling the necklace. That would mean Lady Helen had hidden the necklace and only claimed it had been lost or stolen to get the money without Dolmain becoming suspicious. But would the girl give so much money only to assure the company of a friend or cousin? No, she must be mistaken. Besides, the necklace could hardly have been sold so quickly. It had only gone missing the night before.
    The whole affair was very odd. Caroline was extremely loath to call on Dolmain. She would rather have a tooth drawn than speak to him, but she felt it her duty to inform him that his daughter had been at the disreputable Pantheon, and come home alone in a carriage with a man. She also disliked to tattle on the girl, but if Helen were her daughter, she would expect her friends to do no less. Bernard might be anyone, a gazetted flirt, a fortune hunter, a rakehell.
    She decided she would write to Dolmain rather than call on him. Helen was safe at home, so she would write her note tonight and have it dispatched early in the morning, to ensure Dolmain’s receiving it before he went to the House.
    “A taking little thing, Lady Helen, ain’t she?” Newt said, with a moonish look on his face that revealed he was once more on the trail of a wife. “A mile above me, of course. I could not hope to win her with a ten-foot pole.”
    “She is a minx. I do not trust her above half.”
    “I like those green eyes,” Newt continued. “Not cat eyes. I don’t care for a cat’s eye in a lady’s face. More like a dog’s eye really. Friendly. I wonder if she would like to go for a drive tomorrow.”
    Caro did not think there was much danger of Lady Helen accepting the offer. She had seemed quite vexed with Newt for destroying the buckle of her slipper the evening before.
    “ You can ask her,” she said with a shrug.
    “P’raps I will. Well, I am off. I’ll keep my ear to the ground. Bernard. I wonder if that is his first or last name, I know a Bernard Tyson, and a George Bernard. Odd, that.”
    “Do let me know if you discover anything.”
    Newt finally left, and Caroline wrote her note to be delivered to Dolmain early in the morning. She left the note with Crumm, then went to bed, where she tossed and turned for an hour before