by Nita Abrams
He leaned over the edge. “Serena!” he hissed.
She jumped away from the man—it was Mr. Clermont, which didn’t surprise him one bit—and looked up. He expected a scolding, but instead she looked almost relieved. “Simon! Thank God! Can you help us? We’re locked out.”
Clermont’s face tilted up as well. He looked tense.
“Knock,” Simon suggested. “Someone will hear you eventually. Or just go down to the bottom and go back in through the kitchen.”
Clermont cleared his throat. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“Oh.” He was, in fact, dimly aware that adulthood was not the paradise of freedom he had imagined as a six-year-old confined to bed for weeks at a time. That Serena was not supposed to be out on a dark staircase kissing Mr. Clermont, even if she was going to marry him. “I’ll come open it, if I can.”
He couldn’t. When he came down from the attic, he could hear guests talking as they made their way back to the ballroom. He beat a hasty retreat back to the attic and found the window above the staircase. By dragging a crate over, he managed to open it and get his head and shoulders out. Serena and Clermont were facing the door, looking apprehensive. Clermont had his arm around her, and she was leaning on him slightly. At the noise of the window opening, they both looked up.
“Can’t get there unseen,” he said, breathless. “Too many people now. You’ll have to take your chances going down from here; the footmen will be coming in a minute to open the door.”
“Will you fit through that window?” Clermont asked.
He nodded.
“Do you have your telescope with you?”
Another nod.
“Lower it down, and then wriggle through. I’ll catch you.”
He obeyed, more nervous about the telescope than about his own descent. It was only a five foot drop to Clermont’s arms, though. He was set on his feet quickly enough, and reached out to repossess the telescope.
“Not so fast,” said Clermont. Something in his tone made Simon nervous. “Tell me, have you ever dreamed of being a hero? Of rescuing a damsel in distress?”
He had a notion of what was coming and started to shake his head.
But Clermont didn’t give him time to reply. “Good,” he said cheerfully, as though it were all settled. “Now is your chance.”
20
In the end, they had gone along with Julien’s proposal. Simon was understandably reluctant to be a human sacrifice, but when Serena had explained, very patiently (for her), that she would truly rather be dead than discovered alone with Julien, the boy had agreed. He had even offered some improvements to the scheme. He and Serena had crept down to the lower landing, taken the lantern from its hook outside the door, and produced a dramatic chase scene. Serena, armed with the lantern, went running down the stairs after the fleeing Simon, scolding and threatening him loudly. Everyone—servants, guests on the terrace, link-boys chatting at the kitchen door—had turned to look. And behind them, in the dark, Julien had followed, holding the telescope case as though it were a tray, balanced between his two hands. Nobody would look at yet another servant on the darkened staircase when they had a virago in a ball gown chasing a runaway boy as an alternative. That had been their plan, and it had worked. At least so far.
He was around the corner now, in the narrow passageway Simon had described. It was utterly dark and deserted. He had no idea where it led, or what he would do if Simon didn’t manage to elude his pursuers, who by now surely included people truly intent on catching him. After several minutes had gone by, he began to feel nervous. He even took a few steps further down the passage, but there was a figure lurking a bit farther on, and light and voices at the other end, and he retreated.
Quick footsteps came up behind him. “Sorry,” Simon whispered, panting. “Had to go around through the garden next door. Tore my jacket on the fence; mother will be furious.”
“Your jacket will be the least of your worries,” he whispered back. “Where are we going? There are people at the other end of this alley.”
“Of course there are, that’s the front of the house. Some of the coachmen are pulled up there already.”
“Don’t you think I will be a bit conspicuous if I emerge from a hole in the wall into Harland Place? How will I explain myself?”
“I already told you, I’m letting you into the house so that you can make your way to the library. Just be patient a minute; my knife is sticking.”
In the dark Julien couldn’t see very clearly what Simon was doing. He appeared to be running a small knife blade along the join between a window frame and the wall of the house. Since there were stout iron bars on the outside of the window, prying it open didn’t seem very useful to Julien, but when Simon told him to crouch down, he obeyed.
“Ah!” Simon sounded relieved. “Got it.”
To Julien’s astonishment, the window swung out suddenly at chest height, along with a section of the wall below it. It missed his head by inches.
“Climb in.” Simon’s voice was tense. “This is a small room adjoining Sir Charles’s study. The door into the study is opposite this window. No one will be anywhere near it tonight, I’m sure. When you come out of the study, turn left, go around a corner, and the narrow wooden door ahead of you is the rear entrance to the library. Hurry, I have to go let Serena catch me.”
Julien started to pull himself into the black opening.
“Wait!” Simon whispered urgently. “Where’s my telescope?”
“At your feet.” He added, very low, but not in a whisper, “Thank you, Simon.”
“Just don’t tell anyone I know about this door. Even Serena. Ned Barrett swore me to secrecy.”
“I won’t,” promised Julien. He heard the light footsteps running back towards the kitchen entrance, and after a minute, a great shout. The reprobate had been captured, and it was time for Mr. Julien Clermont to establish his presence elsewhere.
Out in the passageway the band of sky overhead had at least offered a dim glow. Inside, once he had pulled the panel closed, it was pitch black; he would have to rely on Simon’s description. He stood and moved forward in a slow, shuffling step, his hands outstretched, until he ran into a wall. Then he crouched and ran his hands along the baseboard until the molding abruptly stopped. This was the door, then. There was no light underneath. Very, very slowly he reached up, found the handle and eased it open.
In the adjacent room there was a faint source of illumination from under the double doors on the opposite side. To Julien’s deprived eyes it was a feast. He could make out furniture shapes—a desk, bookcases—even the dim outline of a fireplace. He strode confidently across this larger room, put his ear to the door frame, and listened. Satisfied with the silence outside, he tried to open the door. It was locked.
He swore silently in three languages. The god of locks apparently had it in for him tonight. After a minute, he swore again, realizing that he was now irretrievably trapped. He had no idea how to trigger the catch of the concealed door from inside the house. Desperate, he looked around in the near-darkness. There was a window in this room as well. He pulled aside the curtains and at once let them fall back. That window looked directly out onto the space behind the kitchen, where some amused servants who had come out to see the hunt for Simon were still lingering. And it was, like the other window, barred.
Julien forced himself to stay calm. He tugged the draperies aside again cautiously, just enough to let some moonlight filter into the room. His gaze traveled over the desk, the bins full of papers, the stacks of books on the table, the cabinets and shelves against the wall. There must be some other exit, or some way to open the door. Perhaps he could pick the lock with a letter opener. He wished he had thought to borrow Simon’s penknife. Then he heard footsteps and voices. The light under the door grew stronger. By the time the key turned he was behind the curtains, pressing as close to the corner of the embrasure as he dared and praying that the maid emptying a kettle on the paving s
tones five yards away would not look too closely at the window she was facing. His damned hair had a tendency to reflect even small amounts of light.
Through the narrow gap between the curtains he saw the room brighten and smelled candle wax. Several people—he could not tell how many—had come in. There was a rustling of paper.
“Here it is. Odd, I thought I had left it folded.” The voice was vaguely familiar. Sir Charles, presumably.
A pause, then another voice, gravelly and curt. “Yes, we’ll need this Monday morning, you were right. In the meantime I would prefer it kept in the safe with the others, even though it says nothing revealing.”
“The door to this room is now locked at all times.”
“Even so,” said the gravelly voice.
“Very well,” said an invisible Barrett. “What about Piers’s diaries? Put them away as well?”
“No need. They are of no obvious value to anyone save ourselves—unlike the letters.”
The light was receding, along with several sets of footsteps—and not in the direction of the outer doors. When he heard a muffled clang, the sound of keys rattling, and sotto-voce imprecations from the direction of the smaller room, Julien realized that the safe must be in there. And so, perforce, were the two men, with their candle. The god of locks had finally taken pity on him. He pulled off his pumps and slithered as quickly and quietly as he could towards the half-open doors and freedom.
“Blast it, the mechanism has never been the same since Bassington’s son had a go at it,” he heard Barrett complain as he gained the hallway.
He was so relieved, so eager to get out to the front of the house and be seen, that he was careless. Coming round the corner, he nearly ran into the footman who was stationed there. Both men froze. The man’s eyes, dropped, incredulous, to the shoes Julien was holding in his hands.
“Er—may I help you, sir?” His tone told Julien clearly that no guests were meant to be anywhere near this place.
He tried to look wild-eyed and slightly tipsy. Wild-eyed, at least, was not difficult, after the last twenty minutes. “Have you seen a woman?” he asked in an affected drawl. “A tall woman—” Oh, God, he was describing Serena! He improvised quickly. “A tall woman, wearing green. A blonde,” he added for good measure. He produced a leer. “She has her shoes off, as well. I lost sight of her on the back staircase.”
The footman was looking horrified, as well he might. This was not that sort of party. Julien reflected that at least it didn’t matter if his reputation was in shreds after tonight. It would only advance by one day the shredding which would begin tomorrow. The important thing was to protect Serena. He produced two silver coins. “One of these, my fine fellow, if you say nothing of this,” he announced pompously. “And another if you can tell me where the lady went.” Another leer.
“I couldn’t say, sir, I’m sorry.” The man looked as though he was about to choke.
Julien gave him both coins anyway, and made his way as much by accident as anything else to the back of the library, which adjoined the entrance hall. It was empty, as Serena had hoped—too public for an illicit rendezvous, too far from the ballroom to serve as an auxiliary sitting room. He had barely gotten his breath back, barely regained some of his lost composure, when two men he knew walked by, arguing about a speech delivered in the House of Lords earlier that week. He hailed them, invited them in, joined as naturally as he could in their conversation, and eventually went out with them to the central staircase. It had been a narrow escape, but all was now well. Three gentlemen, emerging from the library after supper together—would not everyone assume they had been together for some time? And the library was, after all, in the front part of the house, on the ground floor, quite a distance from the site where Serena had apprehended her cousin.
He was feeling almost jaunty as he made his way up the stairs and returned to the ballroom. He would be a model guest for the remainder of the evening, he promised himself. He would bring ratafia to the dowagers in the card room. He would dance with wallflowers. There was his hostess, in fact, smiling at him in that way that all hostesses smile when they spy a potential partner for a lonely guest. His hostess, Lady Barrett. His tall, blond hostess. She was, of course, wearing green.
No wonder the poor footman had been on the verge of apoplexy.
“I think that went off rather well,” the earl said. “Don’t you, my dear?” He sank down with a sigh into a large, old-fashioned chair which would have been banished from the countess’s dressing room long ago had it not been his favorite seat.
“No, I do not.” She knew she sounded cross, but after hours of smiling and chatting and rapping men on the knuckles with her fan and laughing—laughing!—about the frustration of her hopes, she was too tired to pretend.
“Well, I suppose there was that little incident with Simon,” he conceded.
“You may cane him with my blessing this time,” she said, stalking over to her dressing table and sitting down with her back to her husband. “Imagine! Chased across the back courtyard in front of half the Barretts’ staff, and a dozen guests besides! Poor Mr. Royce has offered to resign his post as tutor, as though it was his fault. He spent more than an hour searching the house and grounds, you know, and came in quite cold and miserable.”
“Clara, I am not blaming Royce for tonight. But it did remind me, once again, that he is not a very good tutor. Perhaps it is time to consider some other arrangement.”
“Dismiss Jasper?” she turned around. She had come to like the awkward, stiff young man, even though it had become increasingly clear that he would never make a husband for Serena.
“No, no,” he reassured her. “I would retain him as my secretary, of course. There is certainly more and more work of that sort for him these days. No, I was thinking that it might be time to send Simon to school.”
Her husband had made this suggestion before. For the first time ever, she did not reject it out of hand but sat silent, thinking.
He misinterpreted her silence. “I know you are concerned about his health, my dear, but I cannot recall any truly serious illnesses in recent years. And just now, when we returned, you found him sleeping soundly, with no trace of fever or cough, whereas young Royce was sweating and trembling after only an hour outside.”
She was still thinking. She was thinking of Serena, of how lovely she had looked tonight, even when frowning at her partner. Of how her body had contradicted that frown, leaning towards Clermont every time the movement separated them. Of how Clermont’s eyes had followed her when she walked off with Philip Derring. Clermont had been amused by the waistcoat, as she had suspected he would be. But someone had to give the two young people a push, or they would circle around each other like fencers for months. And she was thinking of how Simon had ruined all of it by popping out of some alcove off the ballroom and giving Serena an excuse to do what she wanted to do anyway: leave.
“Where would you send him?” she asked finally.
He gave the little cough he always produced when surprised. “Winchester, of course.”
“Do you think that wise?”
“Why not? The Piers family has always sent its sons to Winchester.”
“The Barrett boys are at Winchester,” she reminded him, “which means he would be even more likely to get into mischief than he is already. Do you want him to be the first Piers to be expelled from the school?”
“My cousin Charles has already claimed that honor, as you may remember.”
She had not remembered; given the flamboyant nature of Charles Piers’s later misdemeanors, expulsion from school shrank to insignificance. “By all means, then, send him to Winchester. Perhaps he could even begin this Easter term.” She was conscious that her casual tone was a bit forced, and evidently her husband noticed it as well.
He got up and came over to her. “Clara, are you so very angry at Simon? Surely you don’t think his escapade tonight ruined the dance? If anything, it offered an amusing topic of conversation.”
Her pent-up frustration exploded. “Yes, I am angry! The boy monopolizes Serena! He positively clings to her, like a—a limpet! And she to him! Well, tonight she had a chance to spend time with people her own age—to flirt and dance and have someone fetch her shawl and all those other little diversions a young woman of her birth and looks should enjoy. And our wretched son managed to make a spectacle of himself and my niece, with the result that she left after supper—and you know perfectly well that it will be another five years before I can persuade her to emerge in public again!” She added, despairing, “I am the worst mother in the world! I cannot make Serena and Simon behave, try as I might. I don’t understand either one of them, and I never will.”
He sat down next to her, which made the little upholstered bench very crowded. Taking her hand, he said gently, “Would it make you feel better to learn that Julien Clermont has made an appointment to speak with me tomorrow evening about a private matter?”
She turned toward him, incredulous.
“And that I received a confidential message from Mr. Hewitt late this afternoon that Clermont has deposited a large sum at the bank to be held in my name?”
“Settlements,” she breathed. “He means to make an offer. Oh, George.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them back. An odd, half-selfish happiness filled her—happiness for Serena, happiness for herself, that she had not bungled so badly after all. “Yes, it would make me feel better.”
“Not a word to anyone, mind you! Not to Robbins, not to Mrs. Digby, and especially not to Serena.”
“Of course not,” she said automatically. “Of course not.”
By noon of the following day, every single person in the Bassington household had learned that Julien Clermont was coming that evening to ask the earl for Miss Serena’s hand. Every single person except Serena, that is. When she got up and came downstairs, she did notice that the servants were giving her peculiar glances, but she assumed those sideways looks were the result of her involvement with Simon’s disgrace. Her aunt was nowhere to be seen; that, too, was a bit odd. Probably the countess had come home very late last night and was still abed.