by Лорен Уиллиг
Unlike Pammy’s mother, who had only learned that her second husband — Pammy’s father — was cheating on her when she came home from a trip to a spa in Arizona and found that all her clothes had been cleaned out of the closet and a younger model installed in her bed. When I say younger model, I mean that literally. Her replacement had been a runway model, all silky hair and exposed hipbones. The resulting divorce had been brutal and very, very bitter.
Pammy had her own reasons for her preoccupations.
It did say something about Pammy that she had always managed to stay on decent terms with her father. She handled him with the same casual insouciance with which she dealt with everything else in her life, never indicating by word or deed that she resented what he had done to her mother — but she had never had a boyfriend who had lasted more than three months. Most got the boot in fewer than two. Two weeks, that was.
Just enough time for Man-Trackers to issue a report.
We all joked about Pammy’s infamous two-week rule, but . . . I suddenly felt like the wormiest of worms. “Thanks, Pams,” I said soberly. “I’ll bear them in mind.”
We hung up with mutual expressions of goodwill. It took me a moment before I realized that I was no better off than before I had called. What with ice-cream flavors and Man-Trackers, I wasn’t the least bit closer to discovering what Colin actually did.
Dropping my mobile back into my bag, I wandered over to the long windows that looked out over the gardens. I did have a few options other than Man-Trackers. I could (a) continue snooping; (b) talk to Colin’s sister or his great-aunt; or (c) just ask Colin.
For a moment, I was tempted by option B. Colin’s great-aunt, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, had been the moving force in getting us together in the first place. She had also made some very interesting comments — oh, goodness, what was it that she had said? Colin had been raising a ruckus about my being allowed access to the family papers. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, as poised as an Edwardian duchess, had simply smiled at him and said, “The one doesn’t lead to the other, you know.” Or something like that. What did it mean? What did she mean?
Could she have meant that revealing the identities of nineteenth-century spies wouldn’t clue me in that he was following in the family tradition?
I did have her number stored in my mobile somewhere.
No. I folded my arms across my chest so they wouldn’t be tempted to reach for my mobile. I wasn’t going to do that. I had a choice to make. I could talk to Colin like a reasonable human being and set a pattern for a proper relationship — a real relationship, based on communication and trust — or I could continue skulking around behind his back like a dime store Mata Hari, abusing his trust in me in the process. It might be exciting, it might be titillating (playing with the unknown is always so much more thrilling than dealing with anything head on), but in the end it meant the difference between something real and something make-believe. At that rate, I might as well call Pammy’s Man-Trackers and have done with it.
Did I want something real? Up until now, there had always been intrigue of some kind. There had been the whole does-he-like-me/does-he-want-to-throttle-me dilemma so beloved of Gothic novelists to keep me entertained, and after that, once I knew he liked me, there had been all the euphoria of a new relationship coupled with a transatlantic separation. There hadn’t, until now, been any of the real bread and butter of a relationship, the day-to-day getting to know each other. Speculating like mad about the other person behind his back didn’t count.
Was it just the dating of a descendant of the Purple Gentian that I wanted? The thrill of being able to go home and tell everyone I’d caught a real, live Englishman — and then thrown him back? Or did I really want Colin, who wrote terse notes and woke up too early and forgot to pick up his socks?
I stared out over the graveled paths of his garden, past the eighteenth-century follies and the dead rosebushes, all the way to the old Norman tower that stood on its own crest to the east of the gardens. My eyes narrowed on the bulk of the tower. The last time I had been at Selwick Hall, Colin had warned me away from it, explaining that it was an insurance liability to let guests wander around inside. Or something like that.
What if the liability involved didn’t have anything to do with insurance?
There had been a big, shiny padlock on the door last time. The big, shiny padlock was probably still in place. But it was becoming quite clear that what I really needed was a walk. There would be nothing like a walk through the damp, cold air to whip my head back into order. Walks are supposed to be good for you, aren’t they?
After last time, I already knew the drill. I knew where to find the spare Wellies (and I knew that it would be a very bad idea not to put on the spare Wellies, even if the smallest ones were still a size too big) and I knew the shortest way from the kitchen door to the tower. I virtuously emptied out my coffee grounds and deposited the French press in the sink along the way. And I tried not to think about what I was really doing.
Outside, the countryside was doing its best to demonstrate why so many Britons like to go abroad to other climates during the winter months. Instead of properly raining, the sky was sniveling, leeching down an irresolute moisture that was too thick to be called mist and too insidious to be called rain. The ground was sodden, turning that squelchy black unique to winter, where the entire landscape appears to be etched in shades of black and gray. The tower was the grayest of the lot, a lowering pile of roughly cut stone, dark with damp. Moisture dripped off the padlock, falling with a dull plop to gather in a small puddle below.
The whole thing looked highly unhygienic.
Huddling in my quilted jacket, I contemplated the stone mass. Bizarre to think that people had once lived in here. At some point back in time, there would have been men jostling one another and exchanging bawdy jokes in Norman French. There would have been a solar somewhere up top, with women in pointy hats weaving on their looms. There would have been a hall with a great fire and meat roasting on it. Now, all that was left was a miserable, hollow cylinder of stone.
I might have turned back then. I like to think that I would have. It was those ridiculous water drops that did it, drawing my attention back to the lock, which was, indeed, still very big, still very shiny, and still very much a lock. It was also very unfastened.
To be strictly accurate, it was only slightly unfastened. It was one of those padlocks that involves driving a bit of metal into another bit of metal. There must be some technical term for it, but as you can see, I know roughly as much about locks as I do about medieval solars. What I did know was that the locking bit hadn’t been entirely pushed home, so that while the lock still looked closed, there was a crucial gap between the end of the curved piece and the hole it was supposed to go into. Whoever had been inside last had been careless.
Surely it couldn’t hurt just to take a quick look inside.
Feeling like Nancy Drew (who, I would like to point out, was also Titian-haired), I eased the padlock open. Despite the shiny newness of the lock, the door didn’t open easily. It creaked and protested on hinges made cranky by damp. Either the original roof had survived or a new one had been put on, because there was no light at all in the interior. I hadn’t noticed from the outside, but the original arrow slits had all been boarded up, blocked with thick planks of wood.
This was all beginning to look exceedingly suspicious. Or it would have, had I been able to see anything.
Propping open the door with my back, I stood at the threshold, wishing I had possessed the good sense to bring a flashlight. The reluctant winter light, lying low to the ground like mist, scarcely penetrated the door frame. But there was something inside; I could make out that much. If there were any partitions, they had long since crumbled with time. From where I stood, the inside looked like one cavernous circle. But it wasn’t empty. Something large and metallic occupied the center of the room.
Unwilling to relinquish my hold on the door, I sidled closer by baby steps, one hand still
braced against the heavy door, propping it open as far as my arm would allow. Whatever was inside there looked like something straight out of The Avengers, a diabolical machine bristling with levers and gears.
I was so occupied in squinting at the amorphous shape in the darkness that I didn’t hear the steps behind me. All I noticed was that the light, that feeble trail of light coming through the doorway, had suddenly been eclipsed, blotting out what little light there was with a large, man-shaped shadow.
And then it was too late to do anything at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It took nearly an hour to find a crew crazy enough to convey them thirty miles along the Thames by night.
On hearing that their party wanted to go farther than just across the river, the first three boats turned them down flat. The river was treacherous by day, they protested; to go by night was a fool’s game. Only the promise of ten times their normal fee, in gold, had prevailed with the fourth boat, and even then the boatmen had grumbled on their benches, pulling their oars with visible reluctance.
Burdened with six oarsmen and five passengers, the boat moved slowly through the dark waters of the Thames. A foul reek rose from the river, a compound of all manner of waste that human habitation could devise, all dumped into the murky waters of the Thames. The stench of a cantonment in India in summer was nothing to it.
The ladies had retreated beneath the tilt, or canopy, that formed a rudimentary cabin in the middle of the boat, although the open-walled cabin provided little barrier between them and the unwashed bodies of the boatmen that warred with the Thames for the prize of most noxious stench. Curled up one against the other for warmth, the rocking of the boat had lulled Charlotte and Henrietta into sleep. Miles had been the next to go, slumped at his lady’s feet like a dog on a medieval tombstone. Even Tommy had succumbed, his long legs stretched out in front of him across the width of the cabin. At least, thought Robert, his presence formed a sort of windbreak for the ladies.
Only Robert remained awake, alone at the prow of boat, staring sightlessly at the waters ahead while the oars splashed rhythmically in and out of the water behind him. The lanterns hanging from the sides of the tilt did little to illuminate what lay ahead.
He sincerely hoped the boatmen knew where they were going. After all those years away, the Thames was as foreign to him as the Ganges. If the sun were shining, he still wouldn’t know Henley from King’s Lynn. One town looked much the same as another to him and the blurry memories of his youth provided no sure guide.
The not knowing where he was scraped at his nerves. It wasn’t just the physical landscape that confounded him; it was everything. Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to. An actor played the King, the King played the fool, and Charlotte — his own sweet, unworldly Charlotte — abandoned her tower to rout her dragons herself. The world had turned upside down and his head was spinning with it.
Or perhaps that was just the rocking of the boat. He had never been particularly good with boats. He liked his feet on firm ground.
There didn’t seem to be any firm ground to be had. His mind couldn’t quite close around the fact that Wrothan was dead. When he thought of the end of his quest, he had always assumed that there would be a duel, pistols at twenty paces or swords on some damp heath, with plenty of time to toy with his enemy, to make him sweat, to regret what he had done, before shouting something suitable to the occasion, like, “For the Colonel!” before plunging his rapier home. He had never expected to be beaten to the post by a French agent who had driven his knife home without so much as a by-your-leave, with no preamble, no ceremony.
Nor had he ever expected to find himself trailing in Charlotte’s wake, following her lead through a maze of palace paths and assumed identities where his sword arm meant less than her calm knowledge of the court. He had been wrong. She wasn’t made of porcelain but of wrought iron, deceptively delicate, stronger than stone. It was tempting to believe that this was something new, forged from the strange enchantments that seemed to have turned the whole world on its head. Remembering Charlotte’s quiet fortitude in the face of her grandmother’s tantrums, Robert thought not. It had always been there. He had simply been too busy basking in the glow of her adoration to pay any notice.
The realization made him feel oddly bare, stripped of the only role that lent him any hope of dignity. What good was he, if not to slay her dragons for her? What good was he to anyone? He hadn’t even accomplished his own revenge. Someone else had seized that for him.
The futility of his vigil — of all his vigils — pressed in around him like the dark waters of the river.
Behind him, a rustling noise caught his attention. He turned to see Charlotte emerge from the tilt.
Hunched over beneath a motley collection of rugs taken from the carriage, she moved like an old woman, her limbs stiff with cold and sleep. Aside from being slightly blue around the lips, she looked just the same as she always had: slight, soft-featured, defenseless, her hair rough with sleep and her eyes slightly unfocused. She did not look like anyone’s idea of a warrior maiden.
“Hello,” she whispered hoarsely. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with two hands, she blinked blearily at him as she asked, “Are we there yet?”
“Close,” Robert lied, although he wasn’t sure whether it was precisely a lie or not. They had certainly been on the river long enough — three hours, by his last count. They should be close to Medmenham by now. Shouldn’t they? He bloody hated not knowing where they were.
He bared his teeth in a reassuring smile. “We’ll be there soon.”
“G-good.” Charlotte nodded her approval. She was sleepy enough that even that small movement made her sway in place.
Reaching out, Robert hastily caught her by the shoulders. There wasn’t much chance of her going over the side, but why risk it? Through the layers of cloak and dress, the bones of her shoulders felt tiny and fragile beneath his hands, like a bird’s. She had lost weight since Girdings. Weren’t they feeding her at the Palace?
“You’re cold,” he said, just to say something, before his undisciplined, sleep-deprived mind could wander off in any more inappropriate directions. Judging her steady enough not to pitch over in the river, he released her.
Charlotte’s blue lips cracked into a wry smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.” She hitched up the blanket that had fallen to the crooks of her elbows, shivering where the cold wool touched her shoulders. Her dress was muslin, thin and entirely impractical for winter, short-sleeved and scoop-necked.
Robert held out an arm, lifting his thick cloak to provide a place for her. It was only for warmth, after all. Soldiers might bunk together for warmth on a cold night, if it meant the difference between death and survival. The cold wind off the river shot through the opening in his cloak, attacking the thin linen of his shirt like a plague of stinging needles. “Come here.”
Charlotte went very still. Robert was reminded of a rabbit in a field, scenting a predator. The comparison was not a pleasing one. “No, thank you,” she said, even though her lips were blue and her teeth clattered together as she said it.
Her wariness cut him to the core.
“Are you sure?” Robert held the cloak open, enduring the bite of the wind, willing her to change her mind. It could be so simple, just one step, then another, such a small space to cross to reach where they had been before. He tried to inject some levity into his voice, to camouflage the enormity of what was at stake. “Don’t freeze just to spite me.”
It didn’t have the desired effect. Charlotte shook her head, taking a step back, away from him. What had happened to the Charlotte on the roof, the Charlotte who would have followed him anywhere? He hadn’t realized how much he prized that trust until he had betrayed it. He wanted it back.
Charlotte tugged at the corners of her rug, hunching her shoulders beneath its meager shelter. She looked very small and very alone as she said, “Don’t worry. I’m quite all right on my own.”
> “I can see that,” he said, trying to substitute humor for hurt. “I felt decidedly superfluous tonight.”
Sluggish with sleep, Charlotte frowned at him from beneath her rumpled hair. “What do you mean?”
Robert grimaced, feeling like a churl. “Consider it a badly botched compliment,” he said. And then, because it was true, he added, sincerely, “You were magnificent in the Queen’s House.”
“All I did was show you the way,” said Charlotte. “Anyone familiar with the Queen’s House could have done the same.”
He was losing her. He could see her starting to retreat into the tilt, angling back towards the shadows beneath the canopy, slipping away from him as quietly and politely as a dream on waking.
“That was hardly all,” said Robert hastily. “How did you know that the man in the bed wasn’t the real King?”
It wasn’t entirely a subterfuge; he did want to know. But, mostly, he wanted to keep her talking. It was a poor counterfeit of the intimacy they had had back at Girdings. Robert felt as though he were slowly and painfully scaling the walls of a fortress he had once occupied by right and foolishly abandoned.
It worked. Charlotte paused, leaning one hand against the frame as she looked back towards Robert, weighing the events of the evening.
“It was mostly a guess,” she admitted. “The man in the bed sounded wrong. He smelled wrong. They weren’t drugging the false King, Mr. — oh, whatever his name was.”
“Pendergast,” Robert supplied. “Or Prendergast. Even so. I would never have noticed. And neither would any of the others. But for you, the ploy would have worked.”
Had he been too effusive? Charlotte regarded him warily, more nonplussed than pleased. Had he been so chary with his compliments before?