“What Gretna did not tell you,” the Marquis said, “was that Lord Wroxhall had made a diabolical plot to kidnap you, madam, and transport you to the West Indies.”

“Me! To transport me!” Maria exclaimed. “But – why? For what reason?”

“I think you can guess the reason.”

Maria went very pale.

“I had no idea he was my enemy,” she said, her hand going suddenly to her throat.

“He did not intend you to think so,” the Marquis asserted harshly. “It was a clever plot and might well have succeeded. You were to be taken aboard his yacht, while he, except for an hour or so during the evening, had a perfect alibi. The yacht would have sailed away without anyone knowing where it was going and weeks later after the hue and cry of your disappearance had perhaps begun to die down, the Prince would have received a letter from you saying that you could not stand poverty and the discomforts of your life with him any longer and so you had gone abroad. It would have been written in your own hand, madam, because you would have been forced to write it.”

“I-I cannot – believe it,” Maria moaned faintly. “And Gretna? How did Gretna know of this?”

“She did not,” the Marquis said grimly. “They thought to kidnap you by luring you from your house with a false message from the Prince that he desired your presence immediately. But you were asleep and Gretna could not waken you and so she went in your stead.”

“It was the night I had taken laudanum!” Maria exclaimed. “No, she would not have been able to waken me.”

“It was not until she was actually on board,” the Marquis continued, “that Lord Wroxhall discovered what a mistake had been made. He then decided not to return to Brighthelmstone, as he had intended, but to go on a cruise with Gretna. He has always lusted after her since the first moment he saw her.”

“Poor child, how frightened she must have been!” Maria breathed. “And you – you, my Lord, saved her?”

“Yes, by the Grace of God, Harry Carrington discovered that some plot was afoot from a friend of Lord Wroxhall’s called Sir Joseph Tanfield. He was in his company and drank most indiscreetly in the gaming room to ‘the end of Mistress Fitzherbert’. Harry thought it a strange toast and pressed him further, plying him with drink until he talked quite freely.”

He paused for a moment to look at Maria before he resumed.

“It was then, when Harry realised what was happening, that he came in search of me. I was not far behind the assailants who had been sent to kidnap you for I arrived at your house only twenty minutes after they had left. I asked for you and was told by a rather surprised maidservant that you were in bed.”