Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1

by Bingham, Charlotte

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Go back to your bed,’ Jack Ward repeated slowly, as if to a child. ‘Please.’

  ‘I might be able to help you find what you are looking for.’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’

  ‘You know I overheard what was going on that night,’ Poppy persisted. ‘The night you came to my rescue. I know my husband was up to some sort of no good. And I suspect that actually you and he are not – or were not in his case – on the same side.’

  There was a short silence, then Jack Ward lowered both his torch and his revolver, replacing the latter in his coat pocket.

  ‘Your husband—’ he began.

  ‘My late husband,’ Poppy corrected him.

  ‘Your late husband had a pocket book. Leather-covered. An antique-looking thing, bound in dark red hide. I need it, urgently, for my work.’

  ‘I saw it once or twice, yes. I know the book you mean.’

  ‘Do you know where he kept it?’

  ‘I saw him putting it in the safe on at least one occasion, so I imagine your suspicion is probably right – and that’s where it is now.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t know the combination of this safe.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Mr Ward. I don’t have any idea.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Jack Ward breathed in deeply.

  ‘I have to have this book, Lady Tetherington. So if you have any bright ideas …’

  ‘Wouldn’t he – I mean if this journal is important to him, wouldn’t he have taken it with him?’

  ‘My thoughts entirely. But apparently this was not the case. No – ’ He held up one hand. ‘ – don’t ask me how I know, because I can’t tell you. All I can say is that we know the journal is still somewhere in this house.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Just stick to me knowing.’

  Poppy nodded but accompanied the gesture with a shrug, to indicate that she did not think all that much of what he had said.

  ‘How many numbers is the combination?’ Poppy wondered. ‘Do you know? I mean can you tell?’

  ‘Four. You know how many permutations that is?’

  ‘I can hazard a guess. But my husband’s – my husband was a bit sort of self-obsessed. So I imagine he would choose a number that related to him, rather than just any old random numbers. His middle name was Narcissus.’

  ‘I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Birthdays. Age. Lucky number? And if you’re asking—’

  ‘Which I am.’

  ‘He was born on the seventeenth of April, he is – was thirty-five, and his lucky number was thirteen.’

  ‘Worth a try. But don’t bet on it.’

  Jack Ward scribbled the permutations of those three numbers down on a sheet of paper, rose, pushed his glasses on to the top of his head, and shone the torch on the dial of the safe.

  ‘I think this might help,’ Poppy said, switching on the desk light. ‘After all, I know you’re here now.’

  Jack Ward looked at her dolefully, raised one eyebrow in doubt, and clicked off the light.

  ‘Never use permanent light. Always use a torch. Switches off quicker, see?’

  He turned back to his work.

  The first attempt to open the safe using seventeen and thirty-five failed, as did the second using seventeen and thirteen. Without holding out much hope Jack Ward dialled thirteen and thirty-five.

  ‘No?’ Poppy wondered.

  ‘Unsurprisingly – no,’ Jack Ward agreed.

  ‘Try thirty-five thirteen.’

  ‘I might as well start nought-nought-nought-nought and work my way up through the subsequent six million permutations.’

  ‘Just as you might as well give it a try,’ Poppy suggested, sounding impatient even to herself.

  Jack Ward’s expressionless face looked round at her again before he turned back to follow her recommendation. To his well-disguised amazement the tumblers clicked and fell and the safe door swung open.

  ‘Just guesswork?’ he asked, standing back and preparing to delve inside. ‘Or inside information?’

  Poppy shrugged.

  ‘Knowing one’s enemy, I suppose,’ she replied. ‘Not that I knew him that well. But the combination had to be something to do with himself, because that was Basil.’

  Jack Ward withdrew a slender journal bound in dark antique leather.

  ‘This is obviously pretty important,’ Poppy remarked, wandering over to the desk. ‘This book must be important for you to go to all this trouble.’

  At once Jack Ward shut the book up the way one schoolboy might hide his work from another.

  ‘That important, is it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ was all Jack Ward would tell her. ‘It’s in code apparently.’

  The next thing Poppy knew Jack Ward had a tight hold on her arm and a finger to his lips. He said nothing, his eyes behind his spectacles narrowing at her to warn her of danger, before edging her round the room towards the window. Poppy frowned back at him, as if to ask what was going on, only for Jack Ward to grimace at the door while giving a curt nod to indicate they might have company.

  They were by the heavy curtains that hung in front of the study windows opening on the outside wall of the house. Pulling the drapes quickly aside, Poppy saw the windows were open, and guessed that not only must this have been the way her uninvited visitor entered, but it was also going to be his exit route – and, obviously, hers. Judging from the way she was being urged towards the open window, Poppy was fairly certain he was not going to be leaving alone. He shone his torch outside, and suddenly Poppy could see the point of his earlier remark. You certainly couldn’t shine a lamp so easily.

  ‘There’s a bit of a drop.’

  ‘Why don’t you go first and catch me?’

  ‘Hang on from the edge and drop,’ Jack Ward instructed her, keeping his whispered tone reassuring.

  Jack Ward’s manner was enough for Poppy. She felt neither afraid nor daring, and promptly handed him her little dog and clambered nimbly up on to the stone ledge in her thinly slippered feet before turning herself round, gripping the bottom of the lintel, holding on tight and allowing herself to drop the eight or so feet into the flowerbed below. Unhurt, but now considerably muddier, she stood up, reaching skywards for George. Jack Ward promptly dropped the uncomplaining dachshund into Poppy’s outstretched hands. When she had him safely under her arm, Poppy scrambled clear, suspecting rightly that Jack Ward would follow at once, which he did.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered, grabbing her hand. ‘Round the corner and out of sight, and hang on tight.’

  They had barely made the corner of the building when Poppy heard voices behind them. Glancing back as Jack Ward towed her round to safety she saw two heads peering out of the study window, although she was unable to identify either. Then suddenly she saw a familiar face turn in their direction, and a hand being held up, but before she could observe anything more Jack Ward had hauled her out of sight.

  ‘Now what?’ Poppy gasped, as they stopped both to draw breath and become orientated. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’

  ‘Get out of here as fast as we can. Come on.’

  He took hold of her arm, only for Poppy to resist.

  ‘Mr Ward, in case you may not have noticed, I am in my night things.’

  ‘I know, but I’m afraid that can’t be helped. We’ll find you a change soon enough, once we’re out of this rather tight spot.’

  He had a firm hold on her arm by now, half pushing half hurrying her away from the house, not towards the drive or the stable yard, but across the lawns and towards the woods beyond the lake.

  Poppy ran along beside him imagining that he was panicking for nothing, until coming towards her, indistinctly, but nevertheless real, she heard the sound of urgent voices, and saw what looked like Leon and Craddock running around the front of the house waving torches, shouting and pointing in various directions. But Jack Ward had stolen a march on them, and not
only that, he was headed in the direction it seemed no one was looking, and towards what, Poppy now prayed devoutly, their pursuers would consider to be the one place from which there was no immediate escape from Mellerfont, the densely planted woodland to the north of the lake.

  When they were well inside the small forest, Jack Ward slowed to a stop and let go of Poppy’s arm. Poppy, almost completely out of breath by now, her barely protected feet sore from the run across first gravel, then a cinder path and finally the rough ground lying on the verge of the woods, and poor George tucked firmly under her free arm, put the other arm out to steady herself against the rough bark of an old fir tree, and stood trying to catch her breath.

  ‘I don’t believe this is happening. I know I’m going to wake up in a moment and find I was in bed asleep all the time.’

  ‘We can’t stop, I’m afraid,’ Jack told her in a low voice, coming to her side. ‘They’re no slouches, that lot down there. And they’ll be sure to have the dogs out and after us before you can say knife. So we have to get round through the woods and up on to the lane above. It’s only about a quarter of a mile. Think you can make it, Lady Tetherington?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘Except I do happen to be freezing. If it’s of any interest.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack Ward said, taking off both his overcoat and his jacket at once. ‘I should have thought.’ He looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘There wasn’t exactly a lot of time for chivalry back there. Come on – we’d better get moving.’

  This time they ran side by side without Jack Ward’s having to drag her along. Now they were running over ground that contained sharp flints as well as fir cones and smaller pebbles; in fact the going was so bad at one point that Poppy fell, grazing both her knees. Jack Ward helped her up at once, but Poppy just shook her head, picked up George who had slipped from her arms, and ran on, if anything even faster, and without complaint.

  Less than a couple of minutes later they found themselves on the lane as hoped, and thanks to Ward’s excellent sense of direction less than fifty yards from a small car parked on the verge.

  Jack Ward shut Poppy in the passenger seat, grabbed a travel rug off the back seat, opened the driver’s door, threw Poppy the rug then jumped in himself.

  ‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘Keys. The keys are in my jacket pocket, I think. Quickly.’

  Poppy dug deep into the pockets but at first could find no keys.

  ‘Quickly!’ Jack urged her. ‘I can hear dogs!’

  Poppy’s blood ran cold as she too heard the barking and baying of Basil’s guard dogs, just before she saw the flashing of lights as their pursuers closed on them.

  ‘My coat!’

  Leaning across her, Jack delved in his overcoat pockets, first the far side and then the pocket nearest to him. Finding the keys at last, he jammed one into the ignition but it wouldn’t fit.

  The next one he tried did.

  ‘Now all we need is for Bessie not to start,’ he said, glancing up to see the first dog leap out of the woods and begin to run for the car. Quickly he turned the key and pressed the start button. The ignition failed to fire. Jack yanked out the choke and tried again. This time the engine coughed and mercifully fired. At once Jack engaged gear, released the handbrake and floored the throttle. The car leaped forward, just as the first Alsatian hurled itself towards them. As Jack accelerated down the road, Poppy looked back over her shoulder through the rear window to see two men jump up the bank from the woods on to the road. One of them had a rifle.

  ‘It’s Leon with a gun!’

  ‘Duck!’

  Poppy put both her hands on the back of her head and ducked as low as she could, having thrown an even more bewildered George into the foot well. Jack, with a glance in his driving mirror, first swerved the car violently then also ducked his head down, but not as low as Poppy so that he could still just about see the road ahead. He kept swerving the car from left to right in an effort to avoid the shots he knew must follow, and follow they did, just as Jack saw a right hand corner ahead and steered for the safety it would afford them.

  From the sudden sound above them it seemed that the first shot must have passed overhead, but the second drilled through the back window, shattering the glass and thumping into the cloth lining of the car roof. Jack immediately swung the car to the left, and only just in time, as a third shot smashed past his wing mirror. Seconds later he had swung them right again and to safety, well out of sight round the sharp right hand bend that introduced them to the top of a very steep hill.

  ‘You all right, Lady Tetherington?’ he enquired politely.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ Poppy replied, sitting back up.

  ‘At least it was only gunfire.’

  ‘Only?’

  ‘Yes. For a moment I was convinced we’d blown a tyre. Now that would have been serious.’

  ‘This is no time for good old British humour, Mr Ward. George and I have quite lost our sang froid. Now what?’

  ‘London,’ he replied.

  ‘London?’ Poppy echoed in amazement. ‘Dressed like this?’ She stared down at herself. ‘I can’t go to London dressed like this. I’m American. We like clothes.’

  ‘We’ll stop off somewhere for the night, don’t worry,’ Jack assured her. ‘We can shop for some clothes for you in the morning.’

  ‘I think you might have to define that we,’ Poppy said with a sigh. ‘I for one am certainly not going to go shopping in one torn nightdress and an equally ruined dressing gown.’

  Jack Ward looked round at her, his face expressionless as usual.

  ‘We’ll work something out,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  The drive was a long and arduous one, and certainly had they not been in headlong flight it would have been a journey both Jack and Poppy would rather not have undertaken. The ordeal was made worse by the hole in the back window, and the cold of the car had Poppy shivering, silently, and sometimes not so silently.

  After several hours on the road they arrived at a small nondescript town, somewhere, Jack Ward explained, in the south midlands, where he drove slowly round the streets apparently looking for an address, until a policeman with a torch suddenly stepped out in front of the car and flagged them to a halt. Before Jack could say anything, he put his head into the driver’s window to demand what they were doing out at this hour of the night driving in a suspicious manner. Jack glanced at Poppy. She had sunk even lower in her seat, desperate for the policeman not to catch sight of her state of undress as Jack stepped out of the car to explain many things, including the shattered back window.

  Poppy watched intrigued as he muttered something to the policeman, taking a small leather wallet from his inside pocket as he did so. The officer’s manner changed immediately, and he pointed in the opposite direction.

  Turning the car round, Jack drove off in line with the directions he had just been given, until he pulled up outside a row of identical-looking semidetached houses.

  ‘Here we do be,’ he muttered, assuming a country accent, and indicating for Poppy to disembark. ‘Sorry for the unguided tour, but at night all streets are grey.’

  ‘He seemed to be a friendly sort of policeman,’ Poppy remarked in a whisper as they stood on the pavement by the car. ‘Rather helpful sort in fact.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack agreed quietly. ‘Wasn’t he just?’

  With the help of his pocket torch Jack found the house he was looking for, took a key from his pocket and let himself in, Poppy following in answer to his beckoning gesture.

  ‘This where you live?’ she asked, once they were inside the hall.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Jack replied quickly, opening the door into the living room and nodding for Poppy to enter. ‘Wait here, please. I won’t be a minute.’

  Poppy sat carefully on the edge of a square-armed easy chair, staring first at her still muddied legs and nightclothes, and then round the unlit room, wondering what on earth was happening, and into quite what her curiosity had led her. She was gra
teful for the warmth of the room, for its ordinariness, which seemed so welcoming after Mellerfont and its grandeur and discomforts. On the other hand, once she was thawing out a little, she could not help wondering who or what her companion was. She really knew nothing about him other than that he had somehow to be connected to some sort of political opposition to Basil and his minions, which meant he must be what Poppy would deem a good rather than a bad egg.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the return of Jack Ward, accompanied now by a sleepy-looking tousle-haired woman busily doing up her tartan dressing gown.

  ‘This is Julia,’ Jack announced. ‘Julia, this is Miss Smith.’

  Julia looked up from her tassel tying, shook her long hair back from her eyes and nodded at Poppy.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘I’m quite used to this with the Colonel here.’

  ‘Julia has very kindly offered us a bed for the night,’ Jack said, taking off the hat he had kept on despite the fact that he was only in his shirtsleeves. ‘She’ll also find you something to wear tomorrow.’

  Both Poppy and George, exhausted by their adventures, finally slept without stirring, so much so that when they eventually awoke it was late morning. Judging from the animated conversation she could hear drifting up from downstairs, Jack and Julia had risen well in advance of them.

  As soon as Poppy entered the kitchen the conversation stopped, Julia engaging her guest in small talk while Jack excused himself to go and smoke his pipe in the small back garden. After a decent and ample fried breakfast and two cups of excellent tea, Julia took Poppy upstairs and found her some suitably ordinary clothes from her wardrobe.

  Jack looked up in some surprise when he saw Poppy coming downstairs dressed all but identically to Julia, in a short-sleeved blouse, a plain dark blue skirt, a black wool cardigan, stockings and a pair of wellington boots.

  ‘Our only failure,’ Poppy explained, holding her spectacles up to the light to see if they required cleaning. ‘My feet are a little smaller than Julia’s, and I’m afraid I floundered a bit in her shoes, so we settled for wellington boots and three pairs of socks to bulk them out.’

  ‘You never know.’ Julia smiled. ‘You could start a fashion.’