by Louise Allen
‘Cassie?’ Lucian was right beside me and, without opening my eyes, I turned towards him and was in his arms. ‘What is it?’ The way he held me was tender and comforting and I wriggled closer. He made a muffled sound like a sigh, but did not speak.
‘I am fearful all of a sudden. Fearful for Arabella, fearful for myself,’ I admitted, my nose buried in his beautifully-tied neckcloth. ‘What if we cannot find her? What if I cannot get home?’
‘We will find her.’ Lucian’s voice was a reassuring rumble in my ear. ‘And we will get you back to your own time somehow.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘But I will try my hardest. Although…’ He broke off and just held me.
‘Although?’
‘Would it be so very terrible if you had to stay? No, ignore me,’ he said, sounding angry with himself. ‘Of course it would be terrible. Your friends and family would be distraught, you would be stranded so far from everything you know and love. Ignore me,’ he said again. ‘I am being selfish.’
‘Selfish?’ I pushed back in his embrace until I could look into his face.
‘I would not be sorry, for myself, if you stayed,’ Lucian admitted. He seemed deadly serious, but what did he mean? I had no experience of men of this era, only what I had read of them, and it would be all too easy to see what I wanted to see, a modern man dressed up in romantic Georgian clothes. Yes, I could have an affair with him, or a one-night stand, and then what happened if I truly was stuck here? Would he make me his mistress for a few months and then…
‘What are you thinking?’ His eyes were deep, dark, green. Mysterious, warm, heavy-lidded.
I tried telling myself that this man had ceased to exist more than a hundred years ago. It wasn’t working very well as a tactic. ‘I am thinking that I can only exist one moment at a time. That is all any of us can do. And right now, in this moment, I want to kiss you.’
‘Good,’ was all Lucian said before he bent his head.
I was lost. It wasn’t simply that he was a very good kisser, although he was. It wasn’t even that my body was clamouring to get close to his, to get our clothes off, to make love. It was something more. Lucian was not just an attractive, interesting, man he was, somehow, my man. I stopped thinking, stopped worrying and kissed him back, found the top button of his waistcoat and began working on it, felt his hand sliding under my skirts, caressing up my stockinged leg to the bare flesh above the garter.
We both went very still. Was he waiting for agreement or simply savouring the moment? Was I going to say yes, or pull back and give way to the panic that was still fluttering somewhere at the back of my mind?
The door opened and then closed rapidly and that moment, savoured or not, was gone. I found myself back sitting upright on the sofa, skirts elegantly arranged around my ankles, and Lucian was two strides away, twitching his neck cloth into its usual immaculate folds.
‘I apologise.’ He turned back to meet my gaze.
‘What for? Stopping?’ I sounded snippy and that was how I felt. Cross, frustrated and embarrassed.
‘For making love to you on the sofa when Garrick might walk in at any moment.’
‘Well, I can see it must be a terrible shock to him to realise that you have a sex life,’ I began and then stopped when I heard how I sounded. Lucian had colour up over his cheekbones – I had shocked him again with my language – and he had been attempting to act as a gentleman should, according to the mores of his times. ‘You are quite right, of course, I am sorry I snapped.’
‘I think it would be better if I go out to dinner this evening. You must be very tired. A quiet evening and an early night is what you need. I will tell Garrick to come and discuss what you would like to eat.’ Lucian was gone before I could protest.
And anyway, why should I protest? He had an entire life out there and he should be living it, not stuck in his apartment with me. He was probably going to visit some glamorous and expensive courtesan…
‘Miss Lawrence?’
I jumped so much I almost came off the sofa. ‘Oh. Garrick.’
‘I wondered what you would care to eat this evening.’
‘What do you recommend, Garrick?’ Fish and chips and a tub of ice cream sounded perfect. Or a takeaway curry, viciously hot. I could go to sleep with indigestion and wake up in the morning in my own bed.
‘I have some poussins. I suggest roasting them spatchcocked, removed with whitebait fried in seasoned flour, a dish of green peas, duchesse potatoes, a mixed sallet of greens and a fruit tart and cream to follow.’
‘That sounds fabulous, Garrick, thank you.’ He looked as gratified as I had ever seen him allow himself to look and turned to leave. ‘May I help you cook? And will you share it with me?’
‘Miss Lawrence?’
‘I would love to learn to make some dishes from this period and I would be sorry to have to eat alone.’
‘You cook, Miss Lawrence?’
‘More or less,’ I said. ‘I don’t keep servants, Garrick, very few people in my time do. I don’t prepare meals from scratch much though.’ He looked puzzled. ‘You show me how you cook and I will tell you how I cook.’ I can make pizza from basics and I wondered if I dare introduce Georgian society to the American Hot. I probably wouldn’t be able to get the chillies, I decided regretfully, imagining Prince George after consuming one. It would have given the caricaturists something to fire their imaginations and it would certainly be a fitting revenge for his wandering hands.
‘Very well, Miss Lawrence. If you would find that entertaining I would be most interested.’
We cooked, we ate and we talked. We also drank, far too much for my resolution to keep the future to myself. I woke the next morning with a hangover and that cold itch between my shoulder blades and the memory of telling Garrick about woks, microwaves and burgers. On the other hand, I was still there to have a headache and the itch, so that was a plus.
Garrick also looked a trifle heavy-eyed at breakfast and neither of us seemed to mind Lucian’s usual brooding silence over his first cups of coffee. He did not say anything about what he had been doing the previous evening and we did not reveal the shocking fact that I had peeled potatoes while comparing take-away food provision then and in the twenty first century. Garrick was still having trouble getting his head around the concept of the telephone, but I didn’t want to explain too much in case he decided to invent it early.
Eventually, having waited patiently through Lucian’s third cup of coffee, I judged him ready to communicate.
‘What is the etiquette for a tea party with young ladies?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea, I do not attend them.’
‘I suppose not. Should I take flowers or confectionary or a gift of some kind for the hostess?’
‘Unnecessary.’ He was definite about that at least. ‘You will need an afternoon gown, which I assume Garrick has ordered, and jewels that are more modest than the diamonds. Pearls, amber, that kind of thing. I’ll find you something. Then you go and gossip and drink tea for several hours.’
‘Or, in this case, interrogate,’ I said, spreading raspberry jam on toast. ‘I shall be quite open about the fact that Arabella has been abducted and has not eloped. After all, they are her friends, so they should want to help. I will pick their brains and promise not to reveal anything to their own discredit.’
Lucian nodded and reached for the ham. I pushed the platter towards him. ‘Did you have a pleasant dinner last night?’
‘Awkward. Cottingham was there. But it was interesting because some of the older ladies got hold of him after dinner and started asking him about Miss Trenton and all the rumours they were hearing. I found myself a comfortable corner and listened without him noticing me, I believe.’ Lucian buttered bread, then cut into his ham.
‘Well?’ I demanded. He didn’t go to a courtesan, just to a friend’s house, I thought, and bit my lip to keep my smile under control.
‘I think the stra
in is getting to him. He was rambling on about her purity and beauty and innocence and how he does not want her marrying for at least a Season to preserve that purity. It was all a bit embarrassing, to be honest.’
‘Absolutely cringe-making,’ I agreed with a shudder. ‘What’s with the purity stuff? Isn’t there an expectation that all the young ladies on the Marriage Mart are virgins?’
It was taking less time now for Lucian to process my lapses into slang and my frank references to sexuality. He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. But it was more almost… religious. It must be the anxiety. He will have a brain storm or a nervous collapse if this goes on much longer.’
‘I think it sounds very odd indeed. If I was him I would be worrying that she has been raped, that she is terrified and captive, not go wittering on about purity. That sounds like a saint, almost, like you said, religious – not some flesh and blood young woman.’ It reminded me more of the hypocrisy of the Victorians than what I had assumed was the more rational realism of the Georgians, but no doubt that was very simplistic of me. ‘I am glad we haven’t told him about what actually happened that night, it might send him over the edge into a breakdown.’
I was driven to Lady Henrietta Fanshawe’s house without any escort other than Garrick sitting up beside the driver. It seemed ridiculous to borrow a maid just to go to a tea party.
‘Miss Lawrence.’ Lady Henrietta got up from a sofa where she was already surrounded by young women. I just hoped she hadn’t warned them that I was a threatening bully who would drag out all their naughty secrets. ‘Cousin Clement explained and I am sorry I was so… difficult before when we spoke. We all want to help.’
There was a murmur of agreement and decisive nods from the others, so she introduced me and we all sat down again.
‘Let me make a plan of who is sitting where so I make sure I remember all your names correctly.’ I took out a notebook and pencil that Lucian had given me and looked up to find them staring at me like mesmerised rabbits. ‘This is just to help me, I promise. I will only use information that is strictly relevant and I will not make public who told me.’ Those of us investigating were not public, and I was certainly going to tell them, but I suspected that the idea of four men hearing their stories, and one of them a valet, would not go down well.
They relaxed a little but they were still silent. ‘Look, I will ask questions – will that help? Yes? What did Arabella tell you about Sir Clement? I am asking this with his permission.’
‘That she loved him and wanted to marry him.’ I checked my diagram. A Miss Frogmore, an intelligent-looking brunette. ‘Her brother did not approve, but she said she would wait for however long it took, even if it was the seven years until she was twenty five.’
‘Why until then?’
‘Lord Cottingham is her guardian until then, or until she marries with his permission.’
‘Were any other men courting her?’
‘Lord Welney,’ Henrietta reminded me.
‘Yes – and while I think of it, I had better warn you about his technique.’ I explained about the invitations to his racy parties and his way of checking for “suitable” brides. Henrietta went scarlet and the others gasped in outrage.
‘I do not think he was very serious about Arabella,’ Miss Frogmore said. ‘He was the same with all of us – those of us with any expectations of money, that is. But what an absolute beast to tempt and tease and then condemn anyone who took up his invitations.’
‘What about the younger men? Was there someone who you thought was attracted to her, someone she turned down or who might have felt they had to take drastic action or lose her?’
There was a chorus of No and a lot of shaken heads.
‘There was no-one in particular other than Sir Clement,’ Miss Ashcroft, a blonde with a stunning pearl necklace said. ‘It is quite early in the Season really. I noticed it the year I came out. All the young men want to get to know everyone, if they are serious about finding a bride, that is. There is usually a number of instant attachments, like Arabella and Sir Clement, then a period when things are a bit calmer while people look around them. Arabella was much admired, of course, but she did not flirt and she was nice to everyone. I am sure there are no wounded hearts or men resenting snubs.’
‘Except for Gerald Pomfret,’ Miss Frogmore suggested with a laugh.
Several of her friends wrinkled their noses at the name. ‘Who is he?’ I asked. ‘And what is wrong with him?’
‘He is Viscount Wraxall, the Earl of Luckford’s heir,’ Miss Frogmore said. ‘He is very intelligent. Very. They say that if he were not the heir then he would have a spectacular academic career at Oxford or Cambridge. But he is so clever that he regards everyone else as idiots.’
‘And if we do not fawn on him and tell him how wonderful he is – let alone dare to disagree with him – then he is spiteful and objectionable,’ Miss Ashcroft explained. ‘I overheard him laughing about me with his nasty little coterie of friends. I had told him that I did not think knowing all about long-dead civilisations made someone of more worth than having a kind heart and a generous spirit. That was when he was mocking poor Mr Fellowes who is an absolute sweetheart, even if he is a bit of a blockhead. Lord Wraxall was saying to the others that it was a good thing I had an excellent dowry because no-one would want to marry a brainless little dab of a creature like me otherwise.’ Miss Ashcroft was all of five foot tall and obviously in full possession of a perfectly good brain.
‘So did Arabella have anything to do with him?’
‘She snubbed him,’ Miss Frogmore said. ‘Very publicly. He had been hanging around her, talking all that so-called intellectual nonsense he spouts, and being a dead bore, and then apparently he proposed and tried to kiss her in an alcove at Lady Blessington’s party. And she flung open the curtain and said, really loudly, that she could not imagine why any woman would want to marry a man who kissed like a dead flounder and who had the common sense of a vole.’
‘It was wonderful,’ one of the others agreed. ‘And he stormed off and has cut her dead ever since, which must have been a great relief to her.’
I was not so sure. This was a highly intelligent young man of title, wealth, privilege but with no common sense and an inflated sense of his own self-worth. Would he take his dismissal in good part and stay away or would he concoct some elaborate revenge? If he was intellectually bright then he could have thought through a very elaborate plan.
‘It has certainly stopped him being such a nuisance. But to return to men who might have an interest in Arabella, there is Lord de Forrest,’ Lady Grace Twite observed. ‘I think he is rather odd, do you not agree?’ she appealed to her friends. ‘He hangs around and does not seem to want to fix his interest with anyone, even though I have heard lots of rumours about him needing to marry for money. And yet he always seems rather… possessive of Arabella.’
‘He used to visit her house a lot, but surely that is because he is a friend of her step-brother’s,’ Miss Frogmore observed. ‘She said he made her uneasy, but he does seem to touch rather a lot, do you not think? Perhaps that was all it was. I try to avoid him, he is one of those men who always seem to brush against you accidentally-on-purpose.’
‘I noticed that,’ I agreed. And then what she had said stuck home. ‘Step-brother?’
‘Why yes, Arabella’s mother married Lord Cottingham’s father, did you not know?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’ Or, rather, I did. That must have been what I missed at Lady Maxton’s musicale, someone referring to Lord Cottingham as her step-brother. Did it make any difference? I couldn’t see that it did – they had grown up together and he would have developed protective brotherly feelings for her, reinforced by the fact that he was her guardian and trustee. Judging from that charming portrait of their parents I had seen in the hall it must have been a loving household.
‘I think she was frightened of him.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Frightened?’ I looked to see who had s
poken and saw it was the one young woman who had said nothing so far, a Miss Bishop. ‘Arabella was frightened of her own brother?’
She coloured up at the attention her observation was drawing. ‘He was so adamant about Sir Clement and so strict with her if he thought she spent too much time talking to any one gentleman. And she told me he was livid when she danced twice with Lord Pelling. I cannot see why, because my Mama is very strict, but she never minds two dances. Three, of course, would be fast.’
‘She was not frightened because he struck her when he was angry?’ I was back to my fear that we were dealing with manslaughter.
‘Oh no,’ several chorused at once.
Miss Frogmore leaned forward earnestly. ‘I am certain she would have said, because Miss – well, I will not mention names, but the others all know who I mean – confided in us that her father used a strap on her when he discovered she had been corresponding with a man. And Arabella was fierce about it and said it was a disgrace and she could not believe that Miss… that our other friend could be so forgiving about it. If Lord Cottingham had struck her she would have told us, I am certain.’
That was a relief. Things were bad enough as it was, without the idea that Arabella had fled to escape abuse.
We talked some more and ate far too many little cakes, but they told me nothing more that seemed at all helpful. I did wonder about Gerald Pomfret, though.
Lucian and James were waiting for me when I returned and Sir Clement followed close on my heels. Garrick set up the boards again and we sat around the table for me to report back.
‘Nothing really,’ I confessed. ‘They all agreed there was no-one for her other than Sir Clement.’ I looked away as he pinched the bridge of his nose, obviously fighting tears. ‘She had said nothing to any of them about a man who was persistent, although they did mention Viscount Wraxall. They said she had snubbed him, very publicly.’
‘Objectionable little toad,’ James said. ‘He is spiteful and supercilious.’