to her feet and shaking the creases from her crinoline gown.
Letty seemed about to demur but Emily lifted her chin challengingly and the maid bobbed and left the room.
Emily paced around the book-lined study and blamed her father for his hostile attitude to Craig. It was that sort of attitude that would prevent Craig from coming to her directly for help.
Her father was kindness itself, but he was the sort of man who gave little credit to anyone who had fallen from grace.
Letty knocked and glancing up Emily saw a slight figure with a mass of dark hair following the maid into the room. The shoemaker’s daughter was pretty enough but poorly dressed with a Welsh shawl over her shoulders and not even a hat to cover her hair.
Emily waved her hand to Letty, ‘I’ll send for you when I want you.’ She moved towards a seat and regarded the girl steadily for a long moment. If she’d hoped to unnerve her the way she did Letty then she was wrong.
‘Yes?’ Emily said sharply, ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m Angharad Morgan,’ the girl began, her dark eyes challenging Emily to interrupt. ‘I was asked to bring you these papers.’
She brought from under her shawl an untidy sheaf of documents and handed them to Emily without so much as bobbing a polite curtsy.
Emily took them, glancing at them quickly. ‘So? These are sheets from an accounts book, what are they to me?’
The girl lowered her voice. ‘They might clear the name of Craig Grenfell. Anyway,’ she said challengingly, ‘he thought you’d be able to help him, perhaps he was wrong.’
Emily sank down into a chair and studied the pages closely, controlling the urge to slap the insolent hussy’s pretty face. On closer inspection it became clear there were two sets of figures for the same period of time for the Grenfell Leather Trading Company. The profit margin on one sheet was much lower than the other and Emily drew in her breath sharply. It was obvious that someone had robbed the company of a great deal of money and Craig was trusting her to find out who.
Emily frowned, ‘Have you looked at these?’ She glanced up at the girl standing before her and shook her head. ‘How silly of me, I don’t suppose you can even read let alone add all this up.’
‘Indeed I can!’ the girl answered with quiet confidence. ‘The figures mean that someone has been defrauding the company and it wasn’t Craig Grenfell because if you look at the dates you’ll see that the fiddling went on even when Craig was in prison.’ The girl fell silent as Emily approached her.
‘Mr Grenfell to you. And what do you know about him?’ Emily asked in a dangerously quiet voice. The girl shook her head.
‘You must get all this seen to properly if you want to clear Craig’s name, that’s all I know.’
Emily felt anger run through her. ‘How dare you try to tell me what to do?’ she spoke icily. ‘You are an ignorant, uneducated girl and now you’ve delivered your message, you’d better leave.’
Angharad Morgan lifted her head with an air of dignity that infuriated Emily still further. With a last disdainful look, the shoemaker’s daughter turned towards the door.
‘I’ve said my piece, it’s up to you.’ Her voice was controlled even as she lifted her hand to silence Emily. ‘I’m going, don’t worry.’
Emily caught her arm in sudden desperation. ‘If you know where Craig is you must tell me, don’t you understand, he and I are going to be married, I must see him.’
Angharad looked at her from under thick lashes. ‘Would you put him in danger then?’
‘Of course not.’ Emily straightened. ‘Very well, pass on the message that I will clear Mr Grenfell’s name.’ She smiled in triumph, ‘Then he will be back where he belongs, with his own kind.’
Emily didn’t know why she was being so defensive with this girl from the lower order in her simple garments and with her wild hair. Was it because the girl had something indomitable about her, a