A Kiss Across Time

by Louise Allen

  Luc lifted himself on his elbows which transferred the pressure from my chest to lower down. Which was… interesting. ‘I can’t marry you. I cannot have a countess who could vanish at any moment.’

  ‘Marriage? Of course I don’t expect you to marry me.’

  He looked both relieved and confused. ‘No? And I will do my utmost not to get you with child.’

  ‘You won’t,’ I said bluntly. ‘I use a pill that ensures I cannot conceive while I am taking it.’ While he was absorbing that I added, ‘But you must use a condom.’ I hadn’t expected to have the condom-conversation when we were in quite this position and it was certainly a passion killer, but it wasn’t negotiable. I had no illusions about the sexual history of the average Georgian gentleman, however fastidious. ‘I’ve brought them, twenty-first century ones.’

  ‘I remember those, you had some in your reticule last time. That is prudent,’ he agreed. He didn’t seem to have taken offence.

  ‘I’ll have to get up,’ I said. ‘They are over there.’ I wriggled out of bed when he shifted back to his side, took several out of my bag and dropped them into his outstretched hand.

  ‘Optimist,’ Luc said, with a twitch of his lips.

  ‘I live in hope,’ I said primly and got back between the sheets.

  ‘You are sure?’

  We were sitting side by side, both facing forwards. It was easier to work this through while not looking at him. ‘I couldn’t get my head… I mean, I couldn’t reconcile the fact that we are two hundred years apart. But then something Garrick said made me think. While I am here, we are both in the same place and time. When I leave, we both continue in our own time. It isn’t any different from one of us being away on a journey.’

  Beside me Lucian dragged the shirt over his head and sent it flying to the foot of the bed. ‘In that case, in this space and in this time, I am yours and you are mine and I would dearly like to remove that nightgown.’

  Chapter Five

  Garrick is the most discreet and unobtrusive human being I have ever come across. I don’t know if he dematerialises or what, but when Lucian finally staggered out of bed – yes, I’m bragging, but he was definitely unsteady on his feet – and opened the door there was a can of hot water outside and another by his door. I hadn’t heard anything and we had been pretty quiet for the last twenty minutes, so how Garrick knew when to time the water and how he’d got it there so silently, I had no idea.

  ‘Whatever it is you pay him, it isn’t enough,’ I said, as Luc brought in my water can and located his shirt which had got half under the mattress.

  ‘I know. Sometimes I wake up screaming after a nightmare where he’s left me.’ He came back to the bedside and smoothed his hand over my hair. ‘Are you… well?’

  ‘Very well.’ Never better. That had been amazing and not simply because Luc knew what he was doing and did it with enthusiasm and consideration. Whatever it was that had drawn me to him across space and time was working its magic here too.

  The drawing room clock chimed and I counted. ‘Eight. I suppose I had better get up.’

  ‘If you don’t want the water to get cold and breakfast to burn.’ He grinned and went out leaving me to stretch and slide out of bed – yes, all right, I was a trifle unsteady too – and wash while I examined my feelings for some twinge of doubt or regret or second thoughts. Nothing, just toe-curling happiness and delicious residual tingles.

  Garrick managed to look as though he had no idea who had slept where last night which I didn’t believe for one moment, but for which I was grateful. James turned up just as the breakfast platters hit the sideboard, presumably drawn over several hundred metres from his lodgings by the smell of bacon.

  Garrick joined us, as he usually did for council of war meals. When we all had loaded plates Luc looked across at his brother. ‘Any luck at the lodgings last night?’

  ‘I managed to meet all the other residents.’ James had ignored the bacon in favour of steak, two eggs and a pile of buttered toast. How he stayed so slim I had no idea. ‘Mrs Kentish had them all in to dinner and introduced me as a friend of George’s.’

  ‘Had they any information?’

  ‘The three from the top floor agree that they hadn’t spoken to him much for the past couple of months. They said he’d seemed subdued – apparently he used to accept invitations up to the attic floor for cards quite regularly, then started refusing, saying he’d too much work on and he couldn’t concentrate. They all seemed genuinely distressed at the thought he was depressed enough to commit suicide.’

  ‘What about the German piano maker on the floor below?’

  ‘He only moved in when George had taken over the apartment below him, so he didn’t know him as well as the others. He was very quiet, very formal, although that might simply be a mixture of foreign manners and having to communicate in English.’ James pulled a face, as though he wasn’t convincing himself, and reached for the jug of ale.

  ‘Worth pursuing,’ I suggested, shuddering faintly at the thought of steak and ale for breakfast. ‘It could be that it was no coincidence that his arrival coincided with George becoming depressed.’

  ‘Did anyone admit to seeing George’s visitors?’ Luc pushed away his empty plate and accepted a cup of coffee from Garrick with a nod. I couldn’t decide whether Garrick was being extra straight-faced that morning or if it was my imagination.

  ‘Dawkins, that’s one of the top floor dwellers, said he met Thomas Salmond one day, coming out of George’s rooms. Didn’t know him, if course, but wandered in to see George who mentioned his name and that he was his superior at the Home Office. Dawkins said he looked an amiable old cove, all side-whiskers and bushy brows and jolly chuckles.’

  ‘Sure to be a villain,’ I said. ‘He sounds too good to be true and if he’s that amiable, why didn’t George take his troubles to him?’

  ‘Didn’t want to disappoint him?’ Garrick suggested. None of us looked very convinced.

  ‘There’s a good chance that tonight’s reception will have both Salmond and Sir Thomas Reece there because the host is Lord Pettigrew and he’s a political ally of Reece. His entertainments are usually stuffed with government place-holders,’ Lucian said. He looked across at me. ‘I, er, forgot to ask you – any progress with the cypher?’

  Forgot? Otherwise engaged, you mean… I managed not to blush, I think. ‘No joy at all. It isn’t a simple straight substitution, but beyond that, I’ve no idea. I can’t believe it is very complex, not when he’d also hidden the ledgers so well.’

  There was a knock at the door. Garrick went out and came back with the first post which Lucian sorted through rapidly. ‘I have a summons to the inquest on Coates – and on Talbot. That was fast. Fortunately not both the same day. Coates tomorrow, Talbot the day afterwards. Garrick, this is for you – Talbot, perhaps?’

  Garrick slit the seal and nodded.

  ‘You’ll probably have the same as I have, James. Both of them.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘They think you stayed downstairs with Mrs Kentish at George’s and we didn’t let them know you actually saw Talbot’s body,’ James said.

  ‘Protecting the helpless little female?’ I enquired.

  ‘Absolutely,’ James said with a smirk that just begged to have a bread roll thrown at him. I restrained myself.

  ‘All the better for observing the audience at the inquests.’ Luc glared at his brother. ‘You’ll need a veil,’ he told me.

  ‘I need an evening dress as well,’ I put in. ‘For this evening.’

  ‘I will press the one you wore to Almack’s on your last visit, Miss Lawrence,’ Garrick said. ‘There is also a veil in the chest of drawers.’

  ‘Last time I went to social events as your American cousin people asked me where I was staying. What do I tell them? And what if I encounter someone I met before and they ask what I’ve been doing for the past month?’

  ‘Influenza,’ Luc said. ‘Settled on your lungs. You’ve bee
n staying at a physician’s house in Bath to recover. And now you are back I’ve taken lodgings for you and your lady companion in Hill Street. She has now come down with something or another, which is why you are relying on my escort and you aren’t At Home to visitors.’

  ‘I’ll imply it is some embarrassing female complaint and no-one will dare ask in case I tell them,’ I suggested. ‘Which reminds me of something I was going to tell you. You know I’ve been careful not to reveal the future?’ They all nodded. ‘Well, despite that, I am going to give you advice about health and you must listen to me. Never, under any circumstances, allow yourselves to be bled. It never does any good and in most cases it makes everything worse, could even kill you. You need every drop of blood you can hang onto. All this stuff about humours is utter nonsense.’

  ‘Never?’ James asked dubiously. ‘What about leeches?’

  ‘For reducing bruises or big blood blisters, yes, otherwise, no. And never if they’ve been used on anyone else. And never, ever, let a surgeon near you with instruments that haven’t been boiled, or with unwashed hands. What causes infection in a wound is dirt, including dirt so small you can’t see it. It will be almost the end of this century before doctors realise this and they stop killing more people than they cure.’ I didn’t think I’d manage to convince them on germ theory, but surely observation would have told them that dirt in wounds led to trouble?

  ‘Boil instruments?’ Garrick asked.

  ‘Boiled, not just washed. And hands scrubbed,’ I said. ‘Trust me on this, it will save your lives. But there’s no point in telling doctors – they’ll cling to this nonsense about humours and won’t recognise what causes infections until they are absolutely forced to at the end of this century.’

  ‘Why are you telling us this? Is there something you know about that is going to happen?’ Luc asked.

  ‘No. It just came to me when I was in Doctor Talbot’s consulting room. I’ve read about how infection caused so many childbed fevers, killed so many women, and I thought I should tell you about blood-letting and sterilisation.’

  There was a nasty little silence, then I remembered that Luc’s wife had died in childbed. When deep in hole, stop digging, I thought. Change the subject. ‘What are we going to do today?’ I asked. Probably it was a bit too bright, but everyone relaxed infinitesimally.

  ‘I thought of talking my way into the Home Office and finding if any of Coates’s colleagues will open up,’ Luc said.

  ‘And I can come? Your American cousin wanting to see how government works? Will they let you in?’

  ‘I am Radcliffe,’ Luc said, looking down his nose. ‘Of course they will let me in.’

  I glanced at the others. Neither of them appeared to think this an idle boast. Security must be absolutely appalling if anyone with a title could just swan into government departments where they didn’t belong.

  ‘Could George have been spying?’ I asked, following through on the thought.

  ‘It isn’t the Ministry at War or the Foreign Office,’ James pointed out. ‘The Home Office is responsible for intelligence, but George wasn’t involved with that. The French wouldn’t have any interest in the kind of thing he was doing.’

  ‘True, I suppose.’ I wasn’t entirely convinced. Get a clerk at one department under your thumb and perhaps he would give you entrée to more sensitive sections…

  ‘But first we are going shopping. You need more clothes,’ Luc said. ‘Two day dresses, another pelisse, more bonnets and another evening gown at the very least.’

  ‘And underwear,’ I added. They all studied their plates with great interest so I bit my lip and did not tease them. It was tempting to think about putting a travel-sized fashion magazine in my bag next time though. The beachwear number, perhaps. Or why stop at the magazine? Easier to tuck something silky and sexy in my bag…

  ‘Cassandra?’ Now they were all staring at me.

  ‘Er… Daydreaming.’ Oh yes. ‘Yes, shopping. Excellent.’ Not that I was exactly thrilled by Luc’s close acquaintance with Madame Vernier’s exclusive dress shop. He might escort his mother there, of course, but I rather suspected the bills he paid Madame were for outfitting past mistresses. Just so long as they were past.

  Madame was delighted to see us, and I was delighted with her shop. Who wouldn’t be? Fabulous fabrics, skilled dressmakers all focused on me and a wealthy man to pay the bills. Shocking of me to accept that, but I could hardly pay him back in anything but my help and I doubt a few outfits for me would put a dent in Luc’s bank account.

  With three day dresses, another walking dress, some outer garments I’ve forgotten the name of and two evening gowns on order it turned out that Lucian knew the best milliners as well. So we took fabric samples and I chose two bonnets. Bonnet sounds such a drab word, but these were outrageously pretty and seriously frivolous.

  Which just left the underwear. To my huge relief Lucian left me at Regine, the lingerie specialist Madame Vernier recommended. He gave them his card and instructions to send the bills to him. They thought I was his mistress, of course. It was strange how I wouldn’t turn a hair if someone assumed I was in a relationship with a man in my own time, but this left me warm under the collar. Presumably it was the assumption that money was changing hands.

  He pointed out the bookshop across the road where he would wait for me and sauntered off leaving me to the tender mercies of a dauntingly chic assistant with a vaguely French accent. I told myself she had probably been no closer to Paris than London Bridge and said, ‘I need everything.’ And that included nightgowns. I wanted something gorgeous and I needed a thoroughly respectable robe to go over the top if I wanted to enchant Luc and not give Garrick heart failure.

  It seemed strange to buy things but not emerge from the shop with a delicious carrier bag full of gorgeousness and tissue paper. Sophie would have felt seriously short-changed, but apparently everything would be delivered as a form of delayed-gratification torture.

  Bookshops were the same, it seemed. Luc had a pile on the bookseller’s desk and an assistant was hovering with brown paper and string. I tipped my head on one side to read the titles. Wordsworth – something in two volumes, Alexander von Humboldt’s Voyages and Tales From Shakespeare. ‘And some novels for the lady,’ he added blandly as I came in. ‘Whatever is new and fashionable.’

  ‘A subject for conversation at receptions and so on,’ he said as he ushered me out again, protesting that I wanted to choose my own books.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. ‘Now I am absolutely gasping for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Tea,’ Luc said firmly, cutting diagonally across New Bond Street. ‘Ladies do not frequent coffee shops. There’s a fashionable tea shop just up here. Very respectable,’ he added with a grin.

  ‘So I should hope,’ I said with my best Dowager Duchess of Grantham vice (proving watching Downton Abbey had not been in vain) voice.

  As a result we were both snorting with laughter when we went in and had to make a rapid recovery when several parties of ladies turned to look at us. It was really rather charming, all sea-green paintwork with little round tables and very dashing waiters in tight trousers – chosen to please the mainly female clientele, I guessed – gliding about with menus on wooden paddles and making eyes at the customers while tempting them with tiny sweet morsels.

  Someone waved from a table in the far corner and I recognised Lady Henrietta Fanshawe, the cousin of Sir Clement Selborne who had been at the heart of the adventure I had fallen into last time. Henrietta was a complete air-head, but quite sweet with it. I wouldn’t have minded saying hello, but she was sitting with a young man and they looked like a couple. Goodness knows what her mama would say – Lady Fanshawe probably thought she was shopping with friends. I waved back but made no attempt to go over and she looked relieved. Yes, definitely a clandestine meeting.

  We ordered tea and a selection of mixed pastries and did our best to behave ourselves. The problem was the laughter had completely undermined my ef
forts to behave as though Luc and I had not slept together, had not spent the hours after dawn making love.

  It seemed to have had the same effect on him, judging by the brush of his foot against mine. I pressed back, then reached out, put my hand on his thigh and squeezed gently.

  ‘Baggage,’ he murmured, but he placed his hand over mine and made no attempt to move it until the waiter appeared with our order.

  ‘Who, me?’ I batted my eyelashes and did my best to look demure. It was such an unfamiliar expression it hurt.

  ‘Have a lemon tart,’ Luc growled. ‘I refuse to be thrown out of a Bond Street teashop for lewd behaviour.’

  The pastries were so good I stopped teasing him. ‘What do I do at Whitehall?’ I asked.

  ‘Look impressed, decorative, and say as little as possible. You can try the eyelash-batting trick if you like and we find a gullible employee to try it on.’

  I gave him A Look. Impressed, decorative, quiet. Oh yes?

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Let me count the ways.’ I sank my teeth into another lemon tart, let the sweet acidity work its magic. ‘Have you read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman?’

  ‘Mary Wollstonecraft? Yes.’ Sensibly, he was looking wary now.

  ‘Take that as a slight hint on how women in my time view things. We do not do impressed simply because a man is speaking, we do not tolerate being told to be quiet while a man is speaking and if we set out to look decorative it is for our own pleasure.’ I smiled. Sweetly.

  To do Luc justice he didn’t flinch. ‘You could pretend?’ he suggested. Innocently.

  It took me a moment to realise I was being teased. ‘What is the penalty for upending a plate of cakes over the head of a member of the House of Lords?’

  ‘You are bundled into the nearest hackney carriage, taken back to his abode and forced to lick off all the cream.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’

  I thought his eyes were going to cross, then he sobered. ‘You make me laugh. I cannot recall the last time I just laughed over something foolish. Not clever or cutting or witty, just warm and friendly.’