“Ivy appears to be in blooming good health.” Miss Abbott opened a satchel that could have doubled as a traveling valise. “She goes to market in Fendle Bridge every Wednesday with her uncle’s housekeeper and attends services regularly. She is being raised in the home of the Reverend Whitlock Shaw, her nominal uncle, where she appears to be well cared for.”

Appearances, as Robert knew, could be devilishly deceptive.

Miss Abbott withdrew a piece of paper from the depths of her satchel. “I thought you’d like to see this.” She passed over a sketch, a thorough likeness of a girl who might well have been a very young Constance Wentworth.

“Did her hair stay red?” Constance asked, handling the page as if it were a holy relic. “She was born with bright red hair.”

“Her hair is quite red.”

Something about Miss Abbott’s tone caught Robert’s ear. “You never did answer Lady Constance’s question: Is the child happy?”

The unfaltering Miss Abbott peered at her teacup. “She’s at a difficult age.”

“I am at a difficult age,” Robert replied. “I’m at the age where I’d rather deal in plain speech and uncomfortable truths than endure polite dithering.”

“Just tell us,” Constance said. “If now is not the time to make myself known to her, I can be patient, but surely some funds, a finishing school, a governess, a competence—there must be something I can do.”

The girl portrayed in the sketch had a bleak expression. She was pretty enough, though she would be prettier in a few years’ time, and yet, her gaze suggested she did not look forward to whatever those years held.

“My agent chatted with the curate,” Miss Abbott said. “Curates tend to be more forthcoming than vicars, happier to pass the time. He said Ivy has been a trial to her uncle, who is not the vicar in Fendle Bridge. Mr. Shaw is preparing to emigrate to New South Wales, where he hopes to have a congregation in one of the settlement colonies. Ivy has run away twice in an effort to avoid joining her uncle on his travels, but he is the guardian the family has chosen for her, the oldest Shaw brother. She is bound to go with him.”

Constance pitched into Robert, her forehead against his shoulder. “Oh, God. New South Wales is full of felons, and she’s just a girl.”

Robert looped an arm around Constance’s shoulders. “Can the reverend be persuaded to place his niece with other parties here in England?”

Miss Abbott closed the snaps of the satchel and set it aside. “He’s the patriarch on that side of the family, which is how Ivy ended up with him. She is difficult, according to the curate, and her aunts and uncles were hoping Mr. Whitlock Shaw would be able to curb her headstrong tendencies.”

Constance made a sound of inarticulate misery.