An Earl Out of Time: Time After Time Book One (Time Out of Time 1)

by Louise Allen

  It was like being hugged by a velvet-covered sofa. One with prehensile limbs and about four hands.

  ‘Get your hands off me, you.. you…’ I twisted my head to see who I was going to knee in the groin once I got vertical. ‘You… Your Royal Highness.’ I was being expertly groped by Prince George, soon to be Prince Regent and eventually, King George IV.

  At which point the cavalry arrived. Or, rather two of the guardsmen from in front of the palace. I suspect they were motivated more by the need to extract the heir to the throne from whatever situation he had got himself into this time, than from any concern for either my virtue or Lucian’s health, but they were welcome nevertheless.

  ‘Allow us to assist, Your Royal Highness… if you will just take my arm, sir.’ They hauled him to his feet, chins and belly quivering, lavish velvet coat askew, cheeks flushed, corset creaking. Not a pretty sight.

  Two sensible young men were easing Lucian over onto his back, supporting his head in a way that made me think they had dealt with casualties before, which was confirmed when one of them offered me his hand. ‘Lieutenant Brookfield, ma’am. Are you able to rise, or shall I carry you into Berry Brother’s shop?’

  ‘Nothing is broken, Lieutenant, thank you.’ I allowed myself to be assisted to my feet with rather more grace than the Prince had exhibited, just as Lucian sat up, said something under his breath that made the other young man wince in sympathy, and looked at me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ we said in unison.

  ‘Perfectly. You?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ He got to his feet while our two allies held back the crowd that had gathered. ‘If someone would be so good as to hail a hackney carriage – ’

  Something glossy and black with a crest on its door drew up to the kerb and a groom jumped down, all crimson livery and gold lace and cockades. ‘His Royal Highness’s compliments, my lord, and please to allow us to drive you and the lady to your residences, unless you wish to come into the palace and have the doctor summoned. There is one on the premises.’

  ‘Please convey our thanks to Prince George. If you could take us to Albany, I would be most grateful.’

  He helped me in, both of us wincing and muttering as our bruises and scrapes came to life. The door closed with an expensive click as we settled onto deep, plum-coloured upholstery and we set off, leaving behind us a disappointed crowd with nothing to gawk at.

  ‘Tell me the truth – are you hurt? We can go directly to my doctor, or we can send for him once we arrive home.’ Lucian shifted on the seat to look at me better.

  ‘I have collected more bruises and a grazed knee. I’ll be sore tomorrow, but that’s all. No need for a doctor. Oh yes, and I’ve been groped by royalty, the fat old goat.’

  ‘He is only forty five,’ Lucian said.

  ‘Old enough to know better.’

  ‘Oh, I agree.’ He looked grim. ‘Anyone else and it would have been my pleasure to black his eye for you. Unfortunately – ’

  ‘One cannot punch the heir to the throne, I know. What on earth was he doing there?’

  ‘Sampling the claret in Berry Brothers’ cellars, I suspect, and recruiting his strength before the sermon.’ Lucian was looking grimmer than the bad manners of his next king would justify.

  ‘That was no accident, was it?’ I sounded surprisingly calm to my own ears. Last time I had literally fallen into the attack on Lucian. This time it had been personal. I looked down at my hands and saw that the palms of both gloves had been shredded.

  ‘No. I looked up St James’s and that carriage was coming down at a walk, otherwise I would have let it pass. I suspect they were shadowing us all the way down the street until we crossed.’

  ‘Which means someone has had a carriage waiting and watching just on the off-chance that we would come out. No-one knew that we were going to church, let alone that we would walk there.’

  ‘It was a reasonable guess, given the good weather and the number of churches close by. And it is probable that we would have gone for a stroll anyway.’ Lucian stripped off his gloves and flexed his hands.

  ‘Someone is getting desperate.’

  ‘And that is not good.’ I must have made some sound, a snort at the statement of the obvious perhaps, because he explained. ‘Not good because it confirms that whatever has happened to Arabella is serious enough to make murder an acceptable risk in order to conceal it. On the other hand, we must be getting close to something. I just wish I knew what it was.’

  We were already at Albany, both porters running down the steps at the sight of the coat of arms on the carriage doors. It took even Lucian some time to shake off the well-intentioned efforts of royal grooms and anxious porters to have us carried over the threshold, but finally we were at the door.

  It swung open as the key grated in the lock to reveal Garrick looking uncharacteristically ruffled.

  ‘My lord? Bloody h– er… Are you hurt my lord? Miss Lawrence?’

  ‘Battered and bruised and exceedingly lucky,’ Lucian said, shepherding me inside. ‘If it were not for Miss Lawrence’s completely inappropriate interest in shops which no young lady should actually notice, let alone peer into, we would have been flattened by a carriage and pair outside the palace. As it was we escaped as you see, but Miss Lawrence suffered Prinny’s helpful attentions which can only have aggravated the shock.’

  ‘Aggravation is certainly the word. Dreadful man.’ I was about to launch into a rant when I realised that Garrick had been on edge as he opened the door and certainly before he could have taken in our dishevelled state. ‘What is wrong, Garrick?’

  ‘Miss Trenton’s maid, Martha Toms, is in the drawing room, my lord. She says she is too frightened to return.’

  ‘How did she get here?’ Lucian said. His aches and pains seemed to be forgotten and he looked sharply alert.

  ‘An urchin came the front desk with a note for you. Under the circumstances I thought it best to open it in case it was a message from Miss Trenton. I went and found Toms hiding behind some builders’ materials in the yard. I am fairly confident that no-one saw us.’

  ‘Right, then let us see what she has to say for herself.’

  ‘All of us?’ I asked as he strode towards the drawing room. ‘She might be frightened with so many of us.’

  ‘Garrick, we will stand outside the door. I will leave it ajar, it would be prudent to have collaboration of what she says.’

  In case this comes to court? My stomach cramped at the reminder that this might turn out to be a criminal case with a dead woman at the end of the search.

  I moved past them, opened the door and went in. I wanted Martha off-balance and it seemed I succeeded. She gave a little scream and jumped to her feet. A thin black cloak lay over the back of the chair and she was still wearing her maid’s white apron over her dress.

  ‘Oh! Miss, you didn’t half give me a fright.’ Her pert little face was pale and strained and she did not look so pretty any more.

  ‘Why have you come here, Martha?’ I asked.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘I was scared, Miss.’

  ‘I am not surprised.’ She looked up, wide-eyed. ‘I know you were lying. Now, tell us what really happened the night that Miss Trenton left. The truth this time.’

  ‘But I told you, Miss.’ She was wringing her hands.

  ‘You lied to me,’ I retorted. ‘I know most of it now, enough to know if you lie again. If you tell me the truth, all of it, now, I may be able to save you from prison.’ I thought I sounded confident but I was playing with absolutely no cards in my hand at all, other than a deep suspicion about the drugged milk and the knowledge that prisons were so terrible that the merest suggestion that she might end up in one would be a powerful threat.

  ‘Prison?’ she wavered.

  ‘That is what you are frightened of, isn’t it?’

  ‘No! No, Miss, I didn’t do nothing wrong, not on purpose. But someone’s trying to kill me.’

  ‘What?’

&nb
sp; Lucian’s sharp interjection as he shouldered through the door set her off weeping and it took me several minutes to calm her down. ‘Tell me what happened, Martha. What makes you think someone wants to hurt you?’

  ‘I’d been ever so worried about my lady, Miss.’ She blew her pink nose on the pocket handkerchief I’d pushed into her hand, looking more like a frightened mouse than the confident lady’s maid I had met before. ‘And when the Master sent for me yesterday, I thought I’d be given my notice and no references neither.’

  ‘And he threatened you?’

  ‘Oh no, he couldn’t have been nicer, Miss. He said he was leaving no stone unturned to get Miss Trenton back safely and she’d need me when she came home and I wasn’t to worry.’ Martha sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. ‘He didn’t suspect anything and I felt so guilty, Miss.’

  ‘Guilty?’ Lucian snapped and I held up one hand to hush him. She needed to tell the story her way.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I couldn’t settle, Miss, and that’s the truth. So I got the basket of mending and I took it up to the sewing room at the top of the stairs where the light’s good. I knew none of the other girls would be up there then and I wanted to be alone and all quiet-like – to think.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So I worked on the mending and then I heard the clock strike four and the light had gone. I was that parched, I wanted a cup of tea and Cook would have got the kettle on. So I picked up my basket and I went out to the landing. It was pretty gloomy, but I know it ever so well. I was just on the top step and someone pushed me, right between my shoulders, Miss, and I went head over heels down those stairs and landed all of a heap at the bottom.’

  ‘You weren’t hurt?’ She seemed to have all her limbs in working order now.

  ‘Just had the wind knocked out of me, and I was bruised, of course, Miss. And shaken.’

  ‘But you saw who it was?’

  ‘No, Miss. You see, the corridor goes right across the attic floor to the other servants’ rooms and there’s stairs at the other end. They must have gone that way.’

  I remembered the lay-out from our candle-lit burglary.

  ‘When I got up and went downstairs there was such a bustle, I couldn’t tell who could have been up there. And the back gate was open and deliveries were coming in – and the ash man had come to clear the ash heap and I didn’t dare ask in case I made anyone suspicious.’

  She was gaining confidence now, perhaps with the relief of telling someone. ‘I asked Cook if I could stay in the kitchen, told her the light was good for darning, so I was there all evening and after supper I went up quickly and I locked myself in my room and shoved a chair under the handle. And, ever so late, someone tried the door.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t sleep, you see, and I was just lying there and the moonlight was falling on the door and I heard the catch grate and then I could see the handle too, turning one way and then the other. So I got up and took my water jug and I stood behind the door all night so that if anyone got in I could hit them. But no-one tried again.’

  She subsided as though she was too tired to go on and I found I believed her completely. But we were no further forward. Anyone in the house might have pushed her and the place was easy enough to get into – we had proved that only the other night. Or someone could have infiltrated the place under the guise of deliveries or clearing the ash pile.

  Garrick came in with the tea tray, poured three cups and handed them round. I saw him heap sugar into the one he gave to Martha.

  ‘So what happened the night your mistress went missing, Martha? You have to tell us, we know you lied about it. Or do you wish your mistress harm?’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘Because if anything has happened to her, then you will be an accessory to it, make no mistake about that. And if she is dead…’

  It was cruel, but I daren’t risk her hiding anything, not now we knew definitely that we were dealing with a potential killer. I thought for a moment that she was going to faint, but somehow she got control of herself. ‘No, Miss! Oh no, I’d never do nothing to harm my young lady. She loves Sir Clement, I knew that. I only wanted them to be happy. I only wanted to help them.’

  ‘Sir Clement.’ I managed not to make it a question, even as I felt all my certainties shift. Lucian would be devastated if his friend had lied to him, deceived him. Tried to kill him. I could not believe it of the kind, decent-seeming man I had met. ‘He spoke to you and asked for your help?’

  ‘No, Miss. He sent Miss Trenton a note.’

  I heard Lucian’s sharp intake of breath, but he kept quiet.

  ‘A lad gave it to her when we were walking in the Square. He was careful, because we’d got one of the footmen with us as usual. But he didn’t see. And when we got back here my lady read it and cried a bit – happy tears, like. Then she read it to me.’

  ‘You didn’t read it?’

  ‘No, Miss. I can’t read, only a few words.’

  ‘But she recognised the handwriting?’

  ‘I suppose so, Miss. He’s sent notes before and she hid them away and kept taking them out and reading them, so she’d know his hand.’

  What did it say? As accurately as possible.’

  ‘Um…’ Her brow furrowed with the effort of recollection. ‘My darling Bella… It is impossible, he is never going to agree… No, it was consent. That’s it. Your brother is never going to consent. If you love me, flee with me, come to Scotland where we can be married. Or did he say wed? Anyway, same thing.’ She was gaining confidence now, pleased to be remembering so much.

  I rewarded her with a nod and a slight smile. ‘Go on.’

  She brightened a little at the encouragement and sat up straighter. ‘Meet me tomorrow night at one of the clock outside the back gate. Bring nothing with you. If you trust your maid, then have her close the gate after us and tell her to take laudanum so she may seem to be drugged and escape blame. He’s ever so nice, that Sir Clement, thinking to put me out of the way of trouble, don’t you think?’

  ‘He is indeed,’ I said, wondering what Lucian was going to do to him to get him to confess what he had done with Arabella. Had Sir Clement set the footpads on Lucian, sent that coach to kill us today? If he had, then I was going to take a swing at him myself. ‘Did he ask for a message in return?’

  ‘Yes, Miss. I was to carry a note out to the Square in the morning, early, and the same boy would take it from me. So went and the boy was there. Then that night we let ourselves out of the garden door at a quarter to one and unbarred the back gate and we waited and a man came to the end of the alleyway with a lantern and we walked down and there was a carriage. The groom got up on the box and the door opened and a man held out his hand and in she got and I handed up the valise to the groom and ran back and barred the gate and locked the garden door.

  ‘I locked the bedchamber door, because Miss Trenton said it would make a mystery which might confuse things, then I drank the milk that she’d got from the tea table earlier. She’d put the drops in, quite a few, she said, so I would look properly drowsy when they found me. We’d still got them from when she had the toothache last month. So I did what she said and the next thing I knew there was this crashing noise and shouting and there was such a to-do.’

  Either the girl was a world-class actress or this was the truth. The first time I had spoken to her I had felt that something wasn’t right, even though I had no idea what. Now I was convinced this was the true story.

  ‘Will you have to tell his lordship what I did?’ Martha was wringing her hands again, her eyes wide and anxious. ‘He’ll throw me out without a character.’ Then she bit her lip. ‘Not that I dare go back anyway. Oh, Miss, what am I going to do?’

  I supposed we should hand her to the Bow Street Runners. She certainly wasn’t safe in that house if someone could get in so easily, or could bribe a servant to attempt murder. We could tell Lord Cottingham – the very fact that he was hoping for his sister’s return and reassuring her maid seemed to demonstra
te his innocence…

  Instinct made me shake my head. ‘No. We won’t tell anyone, not yet, anyway. I believe you thought you were helping your mistress and not doing harm. But if harm has befallen her, I cannot promise to shield you. And do not even think about running away – you would make yourself look even more guilty if something is wrong. And they will find you.’ Goodness knows how, if she vanished into the teeming slums, but the threat seemed to work.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Miss. I’ll do what you say, I promise.’ She burst into tears and I found her another handkerchief and sat her down and patted her hand until she stopped sniffing.

  She managed a damp smile, so I jerked my head towards the door and the two men followed me out. ‘Where can we hide her?’ I asked.

  ‘My sister in Greenwich,’ Garrick suggested. ‘My nephew’s in Town, my lord, called in just before Martha arrived. Jane sent him up yesterday to pay some bills and he dropped by to see how I was before he went back. He’s in the kitchen now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucian agreed. He was grim-faced. ‘Are you sure we can get her out unseen?’

  ‘He can bring the cart round. It’ll be full of parcels and tools and the Lord knows what else. He can haul her out like a roll of carpet and put her in the back until he’s well clear of Town. Sensible lad, he is, our Fred.’

  That sounded perfect, but I could hardly concentrate on Garrick’s plotting and Lucian’s terse comments. My mind was spinning. Who? And why? And, rather more to the point, what now? Sir Clement, obviously, but how to tackle him?

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, Garrick, provided you do not think your sister will be put in any danger by this,’ Lucian was saying when I pulled my attention back to the two of them.