Harry pulled a chair up and sat down. He looked broodingly at Billy. If he turned him over to the police, he felt sure it would leak out to the newspapers. It would come out that Rose had been working as a typist and consorting with an ex-chorus girl from one of London’s lowest music halls and her social future would be ruined. And surely a few more weeks at the bank and living in that dreadful hostel would bring her to her senses.

He came to a decision. ‘Pack up,’ he ordered. ‘My man will call on you tomorrow with a steamship ticket to Australia – steerage. If he does not find you – let’s say at ten tomorrow morning – I will go to the police. At the least you will get a life sentence of hard labour for this. You will keep your mouth shut. You will not tell anyone. I have spies all over London,’ lied Harry. ‘How do you think I found you so easily?’

‘I’ll go, guv, honest. Just give me a chance.’

‘Very well. But if any word of this gets out, I shall find you and kill you, and then, I think, report you to the police, who will bury you in quicklime. I do not see why the state should pay for your incarceration.’

When Harry returned home, Becket informed him that Lady Rose was taking a bath and putting on clean clothes. Miss Levine was in the kitchen – ‘But I think a doctor should be called to look at her wrists.’

‘Why?’

Becket told him how Daisy had engineered the escape.

‘Call a doctor. What is Daisy doing in the kitchen?’

‘Lady Rose says she wants nothing more to do with her.’

‘Let’s see about that.’

CHAPTER THREE

As to making a companion of a servant or inviting her to the drawing room to have tea with one, as I have heard is sometimes done, such a thing is simply ruinous to the mistress’s authority in her own household and highly derogatory to her personal dignity.

Mrs C. E. Humphry,
Etiquette for every day (1902)

Harry waited patiently until Rose reappeared, bathed and dressed. ‘Thank you for all you have done,’ said Rose. ‘Have the police arrested that dreadful man?’

‘I am making arrangements to ship him off to Australia and I have frightened him into silence. Otherwise society would be delighted to hear of your latest escapade.’

‘Being kidnapped and tied up can hardly be described as an escapade.’

‘Granted. But the daughter of an earl working in an office would most certainly be regarded as an escapade.’

‘You are right,’ conceded Rose. ‘But what was the point of bringing us here?’