by Louise Allen
‘Does nothing shock you?’ Lucian snapped as the coach lurched into motion again.
‘Yes. Women being used and murdered and tossed into the Thames, James risking his life for loving as he does, the poverty all around us – do you want me to go on? All far more shocking than the way one man’s desires express themselves.’
‘Do you mean to say that in your time people openly express a desire to be flogged?’
‘No. Because it is considered a bit kinky and it certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But it is a private preference and nobody’s business but his, in my opinion.’
I saw him mentally file away kinky and cup of tea. I only hoped he did not keep a diary. ‘Everything we think of is a dead end.’ A sudden wave of depression had me sinking back into the corner of the carriage. ‘This will be too.’
‘We cannot give up,’ Lucian said.
‘No,’ I agreed, and found the will to smile at him. Lucian smiled back and I realised that this was what made this adventure so compelling – not shopping in Bond Street or seeing Almack’s, or even being fondled by Prince George. They were all interesting – even batting off the future Regent’s fat little fingers had a certain fascination – but what stopped me going wild with the fear of being stranded was this man and the way I was beginning to feel about him.
‘We will find her,’ Lucian said firmly. ‘And then we will find a way back for you.’
I was struck with an idea. What if I had come back in time in order to find Arabella and I was trapped here until that task, mission or whatever, was completed? And if so, why? Were Arabella and Sir Clement ancestors of mine and that was the pull that had brought me back?
I kept the thought to myself, but it was tantalising enough to make the rest of the journey to Brentford pass quickly. In all, even with the distraction of Wraxall’s private affairs, it had only taken an hour from James’s lodgings to the small town. We halted at what looked to me to be almost a village green for Garrick to ask the way of a man in a smock who was herding, or rather, attempting to herd, a flock of geese. While the yokel gave him elaborate directions with much arm-waving I tried to work out where we were in relation to my rather vague memories of Brentford and entirely failed. This was a small, rather scruffy town, nothing more.
The carriage moved off, took several turns and then stopped. Already we were out in the countryside again. Lucian opened the door and Garrick called down, ‘The gates are just ahead.’
‘Walk on slowly past them and we will see if the lodge is inhabited.’ Lucian closed the door and leant out as we passed the gates, massive and chained. Through them we could see a small lodge cottage with broken glass in the windows and weeds growing across the doorway.
‘No smoke from the chimney,’ I said. ‘It looks deserted.’
We got down and looked through the gate. ‘There are wheel marks.’ Lucian pointed to the muddy, rutted, driveway. ‘They seem fresh. And this chain and lock are new. See how shiny they are, although the gate itself is rusty.’
‘Someone’s at home,’ Garrick said. He was standing on the driver’s box. ‘I can just see the roof of the main house and there’s a thin trickle of smoke from one of the chimneys at the side. Kitchen, perhaps.’
‘Then we definitely need James and Clem. It is a big house, we have no idea what to expect and if Arabella is inside, she may need protection in case they put up a resistance.’
‘Can’t we get help from the local constable or magistrates?’ I asked.
Lucian snorted. ‘Without a warrant? On nothing but suspicions that, if we spell them out, are slanderous?’
‘I suppose not. But I hate just giving up and going away again.’ I looked around. There was a small copse of trees and shrubs opposite the gates. ‘You go back and fetch the others, but leave me here. I will hide in the trees and I can watch for anyone coming in or out. What if Arabella is in there and he moves her before we get back with help? At least I can see which way they go and describe the vehicle.’
Lucian looked at the copse and its dense undergrowth, then up and down the road, then back at me, frowning. ‘All right. Here, take this money, I do not like to leave you with nothing, although we will be back in three hours at most. I will try and be faster. Just stay well out of sight.’
‘I will. May I have a pistol? Just in case.’
‘Can you fire one?’
‘No, and I would much rather not. But I can point it, even if it is empty.’
Lucian leaned into the carriage and came out with one of the Manton pistols. He checked it before handing it to me. ‘It is not loaded, but if you need to use it to bluff, cock the hammer so it looks as though it is. But do not get seen in the first place.’
‘I won’t.’ It was a nice thick wood with plenty of places where I could sit and hide, yet keep the gates under surveillance.
It was also a staggeringly boring wood as I discovered after about an hour. Assorted birds came and inspected me as I sat on a fallen tree screened from the road by a clump of hawthorn bushes. I inspected them back. A squirrel came to join in, which at least was interesting because it was a red one, not the grey variety I was used to.
I had a pee behind another bush and accidentally encountered some stinging nettles at the same time and then spent ten minutes finding dock leaves, which didn’t work any better at soothing the sting than they had when I was a child.
There was some excitement when I heard sounds out on the road, but it was a man with a horse and two-wheeled dung cart plodding along. That left a memorable odour for some time.
I got up, walked up and down to stretch my legs and studied the gate again. It would be easy to climb. But I had said I would wait. I wondered what the time was. At least an hour had crawled by and there might be another two before Lucian returned. I was restless with boredom and queasy with hyped-up nerves that had no outlet in action.
I prowled back to the gate. I could be over in moments then I could creep a little closer to the house, have a look and be back long before Lucian and the others returned. After all, I reasoned as I tramped up and down, I had only promised not to be seen, I hadn’t said anything about not getting inside the grounds.
Oh, to hell with it. I had another good look up and down the road, then grabbed hold and let the first piece of ornate metalwork take my weight.
The hinges creaked and groaned and the iron shed rust like red snow, but it was as easy as climbing the wall bars in a school gym and certainly more secure than the ivy we had used that morning. I dropped to the other side and went to peer in at the lodge windows. That did not look as though anyone had used it for years, so I went on up the curving driveway keeping close to the edge and the overgrown shrubbery that bordered it. The bushes were almost as thick as the coppice outside the gate and at any sound I could be under cover in a moment. It was, I told myself, no different from hiding in the wood.
The driveway opened out into a wide space that had probably once been circular when the grass had been kept in order. The house was old – Charles II, I thought. Or possibly it was even older, although the mass of ivy that clad parts of it made it hard to be sure. It was built of brick with stone at the corners and was symmetrical, with a double set of curving steps to the front door and what looked like a semi-basement. Above that three stories rose up, topped with a row of attic windows breaking the line of the roof.
Stone walls to the height of the top of the main ground floor windows curved away on either side. On the right was a gate, perhaps to the gardens, and on the left was a large open arch which must lead to the stables. The chimney at the far end nearest the stable arch had a thin trail of smoke rising from it and I guessed Garrick was correct and that was where the service section was. So there was at least one person in the building.
There was no sign of a vehicle other than the wheel tracks and those looked as though several carriages had been and gone recently – or perhaps the same one repeatedly. The width was all the same and iron-clad coach wheels had no d
istinguishing tread like modern tyres.
I had gone far enough, I knew that. As I turned to go back I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was high up and for a moment I thought it must have been a pigeon flying over the roof. Then I saw it again, something pale behind one of the attic windows. It was hard to make out, even when I shaded my eyes and squinted, but what it looked like to me was someone in a pale gown, their hands on either side of the window frame, staring out. Staring out like a prisoner might.
Definitely time to return and wait for the others. I edged backwards and as I moved I thought the head of the figure moved too. She had seen me and, I realised, she was blonde. I raised a hand, waved, and the next moment she had been pulled round, away from the window. I could see a shadowy figure, much larger, looming behind her, a movement that was, surely, a raised hand.
I ran without thinking, not back down the drive, but to the door in the flanking wall. It opened reluctantly, the hinges rusted, the foliage jamming it, but there was enough space to squeeze through into the wreckage of what must once have been a fine formal garden.
What, I asked myself, do you think you are doing? This was incredibly risky, I knew that, but I found I simply could not turn my back on that pale figure, that prisoner in the attic. The violence of the way she was pulled back chilled me. I was a police officer, even if I was only a barely-trained Special, and help was at least an hour away. If that was Arabella I would have given her hope and I could not just leave her.
There was no semi-basement along this back wall of the house, only occasional small windows low to the ground, dark and clogged with dirt and cobwebs. A small flight of steps led up to a glazed door and I tried it, but it was locked shut and, desperate as I was to get in, I dared not risk the sound of breaking glass. Then I saw that one of the basement windows was already broken. It took a few minutes to pick the remaining glass out of the frame so I could look in without cutting my throat but I managed it without slicing the end off a finger.
There was a drop of about six feet to the floor of a small, empty room. Buoyed up by having found an entry I wriggled round so I could edge over, feet first and stomach down, and then hung onto the frame to break the fall. It was not until my feet hit the ground with a thump that I wondered what I would do if the door was locked, because there was no way I could reach to climb out of the window and there wasn’t a scrap of furniture, not even a crate, in the room.
When I tried it, the door opened onto a dark passageway and I retreated back inside to contemplate the inescapable fact that I might have been trapped. I wasted a moment giving myself a mental kicking for behaving like the heroines who sail blithely into the haunted castle ignoring the bats flitting overhead, the sign saying Beware of the Vampires and the locals all industriously sharpening stakes and harvesting garlic.
I felt in my pocket, feeling rather more sympathy with the numerous TSTL heroines I had ranted at in novels or on film. I obviously had never taken the effect of adrenaline into account. The unloaded pistol was still there, but that was all I had in the way of stakes and garlic. I looked around in the gloom and found a plank with a long nail in it, pulled that out and pocketed it, then went out into the passageway again. Everywhere smelled of damp and musty disuse. There was light at the end, furthest from the area where the chimney was smoking, so I tiptoed down towards it and found it was coming from an opening onto a flight of uncarpeted service stairs. They led upwards, towards where I wanted to go, and the dust lay thick and unmarked on them which meant no-one had come this way for some time.
I climbed, keeping to the edge to minimise creaks, and found myself at a half-open door onto a vast hallway. Again, the dust lay thick and unmarked. However people were getting up to the attics, it wasn’t up these stairs, or through the hall – but presumably there were service stairs from the kitchen area as well.
I went up further, looking out for footprints or weapons and finding neither. The stairs swept up to galleried landings with double doors leading off that hinted at large rooms behind, but I kept going, up to the third landing where the staircase stopped.
The silence was beginning to get to me. I knew there were at least two other people in this house – the woman at the window and the person who had lit the fire – and yet I could hear nothing. It was as though the house was holding its breath and listening to me.
I was going to have to explore this floor for the attic stairs or turn around, go back to the ground floor and get out. Prudence told me I had pushed my luck far enough. It was time to leave, go to the gate, wait for help in the form of four large, armed gentlemen. I turned, one foot on the second step down, and a door above me slammed.
Chapter Twenty Five
There was something about the sound, something vicious and angry, that brought me round and sent me off along the corridor that led from the landing. I tried every door that I passed. They were all unlocked, all opened into large rooms holding the traces of past grandeur – carved panelling, elaborate, broken plasterwork, bedraggled hangings, rickety furniture. There was nothing to suggest they had been entered in months.
I retraced my steps, checking more carefully, and in a closet leading off one of the smaller rooms I found a jib door, made without obvious frame or handle in order to blend in with the wall. The dark edge all the way round was all that betrayed it and I had to run my hands over it until I found the recessed finger-hole that let me pull it open.
Behind it was a landing with a flight of steep, uncarpeted stairs that went both down and up. The centre of them was marked with footprints, too close together to make any sense of. They could have been men’s or women’s, there might have been many people or only one using the stairs repeatedly.
Down below a door closed, normally this time, not slammed, but the sound echoed up the stairwell, reminding me to be quiet. I stood in the silence watching the disturbed dust motes in a shaft of sunlight swirl and gradually slow and felt truly afraid for the first time since my reckless rush into the house.
Well, I was here now. I took the pistol from my pocket, pulled back the hammer, almost dislocating my thumb in the process, and held it in what I hoped looked a confident manner with one finger on the trigger. Then I climbed, my trainers almost silent on the worn wood.
There was a window at either end of the attic corridor when I reached it and, dirty as they were, they gave just enough light to be able to move confidently. I followed the track of the footprints, careful to keep within them so the pattern of my soles did not show up, the fancy tread so different from the plain leather soles of all the other shoes that had passed that way.
If the footprints hadn’t led me to the door then the key in the lock would have told me which was the right one. I listened, one ear pressed to the panels, but could hear nothing, so I turned the key and opened the door.
The young woman inside was sitting on a stool by the window, an embroidery hoop in her hand. When I entered she looked up, her expression aloof, then, when she saw it was a stranger, the composure vanished and she leapt to her feet and grabbed for the small scissors in her box of silks. ‘Do not come any closer!’
‘Arabella? Are you Arabella Trenton?’ I took off my hat as I spoke so she could see I was a woman and shoved the pistol into my pocket.
‘Yes. Yes, I am. You were outside earlier. Who are you?’ She was just as she had been described to me, charmingly pretty, with a mass of blonde curls, blue eyes and a sweet, innocent face that just now was set into an expression of strained determination. No wilting violet, Sir Clement’s lady-love. Oddly, despite the fact that she was obviously a captive, she was dressed in an expensive-looking morning dress and the room, even though it was in the attic, was carpeted and furnished like a lady’s sitting room.
‘Cassandra Lawrence. I am helping Sir Clement and his friends search for you.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ She said it prayerfully, eyes closed for a second. ‘Is Clement here?’
‘He is coming, very soon, along with Lord R
adcliffe, his brother James and Garrick, Lord Radcliffe’s valet. I should have waited for them, but I saw you at the window and thought someone had pulled you back roughly.’
She rubbed her upper arm and winced. ‘They do not like me looking out for a long time. I do not know what they think I am going to do. Fly away?’
‘Who are they?’ And what should we do now? I wondered. Try and escape, lock ourselves in or hide somewhere else in the house until help came?
‘It is Lord de Forrest’s people,’ she said. ‘I think he must be mad.’ She said it flatly as though it was beyond comprehension. ‘He tricked me into eloping – I thought he was Clement until he took off his mask – and then he said I was a wanton and not to be trusted, but that he would marry me anyway to save me from disgrace. But I do not want to marry him. He is middle aged and… and odd.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘My step-brother?’ She paced away from me and back again. I had never seen anyone wring their hands before. ‘He has been so strange this last year. He says I must not fix my interest with anyone, that I am too young, too innocent. But I love Clement and I want to marry him and he loves me and all he wants is to look after me.’
‘Your step-brother doesn’t need your money, does he?’
She looked surprised at the question. ‘No, certainly not. He inherited a lot from his father and he is very careful. Is that why you think he does not want me to marry?’
‘I can’t think what else could explain it. Does he know you are here?’
‘He cannot, can he? Otherwise he would come and take me away. Lord de Forrest is a friend of his, but surely Peter would not allow him to keep me like this? I think Lord de Forrest has gone completely insane.’
‘Has he tried to… touch you?’
‘Ravish me, you mean? No, he has not tried to do anything like that. He has not even kissed me.’ She looked completely puzzled. ‘I would have thought he would, wouldn’t you? I expected him to. Then I would have to marry him, or so Peter would say when he found out.’