by Louise Allen
Thoroughly undesirable types like working people, I presume?
‘Indeed, Twyford, but one does not have to look at all of that, or live near it. One simply has to profit from it.’
‘But with this agitation for Reform those manufacturing types in places like Birmingham will get the vote,’ Redhead objected. He made it sound as though the Midlands and the North were Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘And then where will we be?’
‘In the mire,’ Wraxall said loftily, ‘along with the swine. Naturally the Reform nonsense must be blocked or the greasy-handed burghers of Manchester and their ilk will think they have the upper hand. But investment, at arm’s length, now that’s the thing. They may be uneducated, uncultured and disruptive, but keep them in their place and they will lay – ’
‘–Golden eggs,’ I finished for him as I turned to face them. All three looked as though the potted palm had spoken. In French. ‘Cassandra Lawrence from America,’ I informed them. ‘Lord Wraxall, I have heard of you. And you are so right. Golden eggs indeed – but like the geese that lay them, these manufacturing types make such a mess of the lawn.’
Redhead and Eyeglasses backed away, muttering apologies. Obviously they needed to say safely away from dangerous women who had opinions and were brazen enough to voice them, but Wraxall bravely stood his ground. He had a nose that reminded me of the Duke of Wellington’s, a fine shock of brown hair, a reasonable, if lanky, figure – and the stance of someone who thought he was God’s gift to feeble-minded womanhood.
‘You have heard of me?’ He did not sound in the slightest bit surprised.
‘Naturally. As one of the most intelligent men in London.’ And one of the most objectionable. He smirked. I smirked back. ‘Steam, now that is where the money should be going,’ I said.
‘And canals.’ He seemed sufficiently taken aback by me to keep talking.
‘That is yesterday’s technology.’ I gave a dismissive wave of my hand that almost felled a pair of young ladies strolling past. ‘Valuable, of course, and transport, I agree with you, is key. But steam locomotion and steam power – ’
‘Trevithick?’ He curled a lip.
‘He had teething problems.’
‘But why are you interested, Miss… Lawrence, was it? That is no way for a young lady to catch a husband.’ He was regarding me with the fascinated air of a botanist who has just discovered a blue rose and is not at all certain he likes the look of it. I would have to be careful or I was going to lose him.
Chapter Twenty Three
‘I do not want to catch a husband,’ I retorted. ‘There are so few intelligent men around – present company excepted, naturally – and why would an intelligent woman wish to marry anyone anyway? I declare you are as bad as my cousin Radcliffe, wretched man. Not that I see much of him. I had to positively drag him out of the house this evening. All he seems to do is talk to that dull man Sir Clement Selbourne about the missing girl. Miss Troughton or whatever her name is.’
‘Trenton. Dreadful female.’
‘Really? How refreshing to hear an unbiased assessment of her, I am getting so weary of the hand-wringing over her possible fate. She is so perfect and so sweet and so – ’
‘Sweet? The girl has a tongue like an adder.’ He gave an artistic shudder.
‘A sharp wit?’ I asked. ‘Or merely spite masquerading as wit?’
‘You, Miss Lawrence, make intelligent deductions.’ Wraxall gave me an approving nod as though I was a star pupil. I returned a slight smile. I didn’t want him to think I was currying his favour, because I suspected that my refusal to flutter and giggle was what was intriguing him and keeping him talking. ‘She is a spiteful minx and my deduction is that her brother has removed her from polite society until she learns to behave in a more becoming manner.’
‘You think that adequate punishment for such behaviour?’ I was careful not to set up his hackles by letting on that I knew she had insulted him.
‘Good Heavens, yes.’ His laugh was a trifle shrill. ‘That is what chits like that live for. She can mope away on his dismal estate in Lancashire until he finds her a husband. I had thought her breeding and her looks would make her a suitable consort, but when I made her an offer she showed me the most appalling side to her nature – not at all what I had expected from her. Quite unsuitable, I cannot think what led me to make such an error of judgment.’
He shrugged, apparently dismissing Arabella as of no concern. ‘But to matters of more interest. I am reading a paper on the influence of Greek architecture on modern taste next week at Lady Quartermaine’s salon. My little talks are very popular, you should come along. I make certain they are comprehensible to the ladies.’
‘How very condescending of you.’ I gritted my teeth at him.
He didn’t seem to take it amiss. ‘I do try. One has a duty to spread knowledge and culture where one can. Your views on steam power are interesting, Miss… er… but it is not a subject with which a delicately reared female should occupy herself.’ Wraxall gave me a faint, supercilious smile and drifted away, his acolytes falling in behind now he had dismissed the irritating woman.
I saw Lucian near the door of the supper room and made my way over to him. ‘Just how easy is it to get away with murder?’ I demanded.
‘What? You think he has – ’
‘No, I do not. But he is an insufferable man and I am very tempted to hit him with a statue or drown him in that urn there,’ I retorted and gave Lucian a nudge towards the door through which people were beginning to wander in search of the tea, plain cake and orgeat – whatever that was – which were apparently the mainstay of Almack’s refreshments. ‘Take me in so I can try the orgeat.’
‘Orgeat? Are you certain?’ Lucian offered his arm.
‘I am going to look at that mirror.’
‘Do not try and go through it until I get back. Behave normally,’ he cautioned as he made for the table in the far corner.
I found the mirror and pretended to fix my earing, which gave me the opportunity to get my nose really close to the glass. Nothing. My breath misted the surface, reflections of people passing behind me looked perfectly normal.
‘It looks like any ordinary mirror tonight.’ Lucian appeared behind me, a glass in one hand. ‘Here you are.’
I took an incautious gulp and put the glass down. Orgeat, it turned out, is a sort of barley water with almonds infused in it. Absolutely non-alcoholic and distinctly odd and cloying.
The mirror glittered with reflected light. I stared at it and suddenly it misted, patchily, as though with someone’s invisible breath. I reached out and again there was the sensation of slight yielding, like touching plastic that had become hot in the sun. Then the mist drifted away and under my fingertips was nothing but hard glass. ‘This is the way, I’m sure of it,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t ready to let me through yet.’
The room was hot, noisy and, increasingly, sweaty. Almack’s was beginning to seem less enticing by the minute, or perhaps it was the panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach when the mirror refused to cooperate.
‘Can we go?’ I asked. ‘It is mission accomplished as far as Wraxall is concerned. I don’t think he knows anything about what has happened to Arabella.’
Lucian said something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like damn, but he took my arm and began to steer a way out through the in-coming refreshment seekers.
It took almost half an hour to retrieve our evening cloaks and Lucian’s hat, summon the carriage and travel the few hundred yards back to Albany. By then all I wanted was my bed. Alone. What with the ever-present niggles of desire for Lucian, panic over being trapped and terror at the thought of suddenly blinking out of existence because I had disrupted the flow of time, or whatever it was, I was in no mood for company.
Everything looked rather better in the morning light and, by some miracle, when I walked into breakfast all ready to report on Lord Wraxall Lucian was in the mood to talk too, without a sign of the newspaper barricade.
‘You said that you did not believe Wraxall had anything to do with Arabella’s disappearance,’ he said when I had chosen my breakfast and was buttering toast.
‘He is a complete little toad, arrogant and snobbish and prejudiced. But he spoke quite openly about Arabella’s behaviour when she turned down his proposal. He is amazed at his own poor judgment in even considering honouring her with his offer, but he seems to dismiss it as all the fault of her poor, feeble female intellect. I think he is one of those people who conveniently rewrites unpleasant situations in their head.
‘He is undoubtedly very intelligent – and completely without common sense or any grasp of other people’s thoughts and emotions. He tolerated me because I stood up to him and I was a novelty. But he drifted off, very rudely, the moment he became bored with me.’
‘So you asked him directly about her?’ Lucian attacked a seriously underdone hunk of beef and I looked away, thinking longingly of a bowl of granola and yoghurt with fresh fruit.
‘I said it was a bore listening to you and your friends worrying endlessly about her. And he said that he thought her brother had packed her off to his Lancashire estates until she came round to a more suitable frame of mind about proposals.’
Lucian grunted. Some trailing edge of a thought wafted past. I poured more coffee and brooded and then realised what it was. My dream about stately homes the other night had been my subconscious at work.
‘You all have country houses, don’t you? Aristocrats, I mean.’ He nodded, looking rather as if I had asked whether all aristocrats had heads. ‘Where is yours?’
‘Suffolk. Clement’s is in Shropshire and Cottingham’s seat is in Lancashire. Welney…’ He frowned in thought. ‘Nottinghamshire. And Wraxall has a hunting lodge there too. Otherwise he uses his father’s various houses – not a good risk for hiding an abducted woman, if that is what you were wondering about.’
‘And de Forrest?’
Lucian put down his coffee cup with a rattle. ‘Middlesex. Damn it, I should have thought – but he never uses the place.’
‘Where in Middlesex?’
‘Brentford.’
‘But that’s – ’ I almost said London. ‘That is hardly any distance at all.’
‘Seven miles, at most,’ Lucian agreed. ‘A very easy drive out of Town.’
‘Then why does he keep a set of rooms in London and not use his own home?’
‘Because the house is closed up under wraps because of his money problems. The farmland is leased, I imagine, but I seem to recall that the house itself is old. It was in poor repair when he inherited it, along with considerable debts, so it is probably difficult to rent out.’
‘Why not sell and get rid of such a white elephant?’
Again, mutual incomprehension. ‘Because it is the family seat,’ Lucian said, as though having to explain that water ran downhill.
‘We need to search it, don’t we? Will anyone be there?’
‘A gatekeeper, perhaps. I honestly do not know how much he has had to cut back on the staff, but it can only be a skeleton presence if it is merely a question of keeping the place secure and weathertight.’
‘Let’s go now, at once,’ I urged. ‘It is broad daylight, much easier to look for clues.’
‘Clem is not free this morning. He sent a note to say he has gone to the dentist – that was one reason he has been looking so glum, toothache on top of all the worry. He is not normally so negative.’
‘But there is you and me and Garrick and James, that is plenty of people.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, me,’ I said as Garrick came back into the room with the coffee pot. ‘Garrick, are there any breeches around that would fit me?’
Since our chummy cookery session Garrick seemed less prone to surprise at what I asked him. He narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘Might be, Miss Lawrence. Let me have a rummage.’
‘And a shirt and coat and neckcloth,’ I called as he went out. ‘Oh, and a hat.’
Lucian made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whimper, but when I looked at him he grinned. ‘I wish I could see you in your time.’
I grinned back. ‘I wish you could too.’
Garrick worked his usual magic and we set out in the carriage for James’s lodgings with me in a pair of breeches and a coat borrowed from the head porter’s son, one of Lucian’s shirts and a spotted handkerchief round my neck. That, apparently, was called a Belcher after the famous bare-knuckle fighter Jem Belcher. Garrick contributed a somewhat battered low-crowned hat and a pair of woollen stockings and I added my black trainers on the grounds that if I had to run or climb they were the best option.
The first set-back was at James’s lodgings. He was out, the landlord informed Lucian. Perhaps Tattersall’s, perhaps his bootmaker. Or it might be both.
‘We will go to Brentford anyway,’ Lucian decided. ‘At least we can assess what we are up against.’
We went through a turnpike gate and along Knightsbridge – or Knight’s Bridge. It was unrecognisable to me, with even the southern edge of Hyde Park hidden behind a high brick wall. Already we were passing large houses set back on the southern side of the road, mixed in with market gardens and humbler cottages and inns. We drove through Kensington, a bustling village with an ugly church, and then we were back in the country again.
‘This is an incredibly busy road.’
‘Bristol and Bath and all points west,’ Lucian pointed out as a stagecoach went past towards London, the guard blowing for the turnpike. ‘What the – ’ He was staring at a plain carriage that had just passed us, heading in the same direction that we were. ‘That was Wraxall, I would recognise that nose anywhere.’
‘We must follow him,’ I said, even as Lucian lowered the window glass leaned out and shouted up to Garrick.
‘Co-incidence?’
‘Surely not.’ Lucian dropped back into his seat. ‘We are almost at Turnham Green. I cannot think of any reason why Wraxall should be coming this way, unless he has decided to set out for Bath.’ He frowned. ‘And that hardly seems the sort of place to attract him. It is inhabited by retired colonels and invalid ladies these days.’
The carriage was slowing, then it stopped. Lucian got out, spoke to Garrick and leaned into the door to report. ‘Wraxall’s coach turned into a villa just ahead. This is an area where men set up their mistresses, so that could be the explanation.’
‘Or it could be something more sinister and it isn’t a mistress he has hidden here.’
‘Exactly. I will have to check.’
I climbed out. ‘How? We can hardly march up to the front door and knock.’
‘I will scout around the back. Stay here with Garrick.’
‘Like hell I will,’ I informed his retreating back. Lucian vanished through what must be a gap in the hedge and I followed, ignoring Garrick’s protests. I pushed through the foliage, jammed my hat back on my head and found myself on a lawn that ran down the side of the house. The windows were shuttered and the only signs of life were Lucian’s coat-tails as he rounded the far corner. I set off in pursuit, staying close to the walls and peering in at each window to see if there were cracks in the blinds.
The back of the house was covered in ivy and, as I peered round the corner, I saw Lucian looking up assessingly at the window above. He put his hat on the ground, stripped off his coat and began to climb. I joined him on the other side where an equally old and gnarled ivy stem made a perfectly good ladder. He froze, glanced across, opened his mouth, closed it and shook his head at me. But he kept climbing.
We ended up like an unusual architectural ornament, one each side of the window, our heads just above the level of the cill. As though pulled by the same string we both leaned in – and I almost fell off.
Whatever I had expected to see it had not been a pair of naked male buttocks. Rather nice firm buttocks, but even so, the stem under my feet sagged as I recoiled and I scrabbled for balance until the rubber soles of my trainers gripped the ro
ugh bark again.
There was a sharp, sinister crack from the room and I peered in again to see a woman clad head to foot in plain black, a riding crop in her hand, advancing on the naked man who, I could see now from the glossy head of brown hair, was Wraxall.
‘You know what you have to do.’
Silent, head bowed, Wraxall went and stood in front of a St Andrew’s cross of wooden beams and fitted his arms and legs against it. Thankfully, he was still facing away from the window.
I felt my grip on the ivy loosening as I realised what I was about to witness.
Chapter Twenty Four
Before things got any more intense I scrambled down from the window with more speed than grace and landed in a heap on the grass, not too certain how I felt, other than ashamed to have been spying on a very private moment. How anyone could enjoy being whipped was beyond me – but then sexual desire was a many-faceted thing and who was I to judge? And if a man spent his life totally invested in being superior to everyone else, then perhaps being dominated like that was a positive relief.
Lucian landed beside me, red in the face, and not from the exertion of climbing, either. He looked hideously embarrassed. I held out my hand and he hauled me to my feet. We retrieved our hats and he led the way round the side of the house back to the carriage without speaking.
I climbed in and left Lucian to tell Garrick what we’d seen.
‘Bloody hell!’
Lucian’s reply was inaudible. He got in, slammed the door and threw himself back on the seat opposite me.
‘It was too much to hope we would find Arabella so easily,’ I offered.
‘You… You could have broken your neck.’
Ah. Easier to tell me off for unladylike behaviour and pretend neither of us saw anything embarrassing through that window.
‘Nonsense. My shoes have non-slip soles and I am lighter than you are so those branches were less likely to break.’