Lady in Lace: Regency Timeslip

by Joanna Maitland

  "Mr Cosway has painted the Prince Regent, Bailey, and many other notables," Emma said. "I think that should be recommendation enough."

  Bailey's compressed lips suggested she was swallowing an indiscreet retort about the Regent and his cronies. In the end, she simply curtseyed herself out without a word.

  The moment the door closed behind the abigail, Emma crossed to the fire with Will's note and reached for the poker to stir up the flames.

  But what if the note was about Sanding?

  Oh dear. It might well be. And it was always wise to prepare for the unexpected. So Emma would do better to open the note, read what Will was proposing as a story to cover Sanding's apparent dismissal, and then burn it. If there were endearments in the note, or an invitation to return to the Lamb House, she would not read them.

  Will's note was full of the Sanding cover story. An elderly Portuguese lady, an old acquaintance from Will's Navy days, had arrived in London unexpectedly and was travelling to see friends in Shropshire, Hereford and south Wales. Since the Portuguese lady's English was not nearly as fluent as her French, Sanding was to accompany her as driver, general factotum and, when necessary, interpreter. On loan. Sanding's Portuguese was rudimentary but his French was adequate, Will added. At the end of the lady's visit to Wales, she would depart by ship from Falmouth without returning to London. She was "desolated" that she would be unable to renew her acquaintance with Lady Emma, but she had greatly enjoyed the time they had spent together. She was also immensely grateful to Sir William for the temporary loan of Sanding, who would be returning to London on the mail coach, at her expense.

  It was a much more convincing tale, Emma had to admit, than the one she had dreamt up. By the time Will's cover story was shared with anyone, the "Portuguese lady" would be long gone from London, never to return. And it would appear that the only member of the ton she had met during her brief stay in London, apart from her old friend Will Allmay, was Lady Emma Groatster, to whom she had lent her carriage. Driven by Sanding, her temporary factotum. All very neat indeed. Yes, Will Allmay was a very clever and devious man. No doubt that was one of the reasons he had been such a successful commander during the French wars.

  Emma's hand began to shake as she reached the end of the note. She had expected endearments from Will. There were none. Not one single word of love. The tears that had been buried deep in permafrost a few hours earlier were suddenly blurring her vision. She could hardly see to keep reading. At the very bottom of the page, squeezed in under the last line about the Portuguese lady, she could just make out a cryptic message in tiny writing. An afterthought, clearly. "Saturday. Hackney. As before."

  And that was all.

  She flung the note into the flames.

  I won't go. I can't meet him again. Not after Patience. It would hurt too much.

  She buried her face in her hands and let the tears flow.

  It was a long time before she regained enough control even to begin to decide what to do. She was losing the man she loved. It hurt. Deeply. She wanted to lash out, to take revenge, to hurt Will as he had hurt her.

  Why had he sent not one single word of love? Was that Patience's doing too?

  Emma would not go to the Lamb House on Saturday. He would worry, a little, when she did not come to him, but he would assume she had been unable to get away without being caught. He would not expect a message, since he knew she had no safe means of contacting him.

  She clung to her decision to refuse to see him. It was her only lifeline to rationality. No doubt "Mrs Smith" would send other notes, suggesting other meetings. Emma would not go to any of them.

  If Emma really wanted to avoid Will, and anything to do with him, the obvious solution was to transition back to the modern day, and stay there, but she couldn't do that. She had to be ready to sit for Richard Cosway. She needed that miniature. It could be the key to her glittering future career.

  She wiped the last of her tears and forced herself to think coherently.

  The next day was Friday. Cosway could have the whole day to paint Emma. She was prepared to sit for hours, if necessary. And he could have all of Saturday, too, if he wished. By early evening, he should have left for his own studio to finish the background detail of the work. So Emma would be free to transition back to the museum as soon as he left on Saturday, which would be hours before Will's luxurious hackney arrived to lurk in the mews behind the terrace.

  Once she was back in the museum, on her own twenty-first century turf, she'd be much more objective about her dilemma, she was sure. She would work out exactly what to do. She would have to return to the Regency one last time – there was no way round that, since she needed to get hold of the finished miniature – but she ought to be able to find a way of carrying out her plan without involving Will Allmay.

  Preferably, she thought fiercely, without setting eyes on him at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "And the death of Butterfly was so moving that I cried," Melanie said, shaking her head. "Richard didn't," she added with a grin, "but that's par for the course. I can tell you that the only time I've ever seen him shed a tear was when Chloë was born. He tried to hide it, even then. Men, eh?"

  Emma murmured sympathetically and nodded. Melanie had been going on about Madam Butterfly all through the meal. Since Richard and Melanie had been kind enough to invite her to Sunday supper, Emma had had to pretend to be more interested in the Puccini than she really was.

  "Chloë really enjoyed her time with you last night, Emma," Richard said, avoiding his wife's eye. "She said you tell wonderful stories. Much better than mine."

  Emma smiled and scraped up the last spoonful of her lemon mousse.

  "But she did complain about one thing. Apparently you wouldn't get down on the floor to play horses with her. Must admit I was surprised. I thought it was the game the two of you always played?"

  "Ah. Yes, well—" Emma began. "The truth is that I was too stiff to do it last night."

  Richard's eyebrows went up. "Must have been very energetic housework you were doing yesterday."

  Emma laughed. "Actually, I went riding yesterday."

  "Horse-riding?" Melanie said. "You've never mentioned that before."

  "I rode all through my teens and at uni as well. I stopped after I got married. I, er, I couldn't fit it in." She swallowed and pushed the black memory away. "Anyway, I decided that my weekends were too boring these days – housework and shopping are not exactly riveting, are they? – and that I would start riding again. And I had this crazy idea that I ought to do something completely new. So I decided to learn to ride side-saddle."

  "Side-saddle? I didn't think anyone did that nowadays," Melanie said, surprised.

  "The Queen used to do it at the Trooping of the Colour. My instructor showed me a video of her. She looked very elegant. Before our time, of course," Emma added.

  "I remember seeing her on TV," Richard said, leaning forward. "She used to ride a big black horse called 'Burmese'. It was a gift from the Mounties, wasn't it?"

  Emma nodded. "The Queen did it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I can tell you, from yesterday's experience, that it isn't. Having both legs on the same side of the horse feels weird."

  "Doesn't it feel a bit unsafe?" Melanie asked. "Didn't you worry you'd slide off?"

  Emma knew that Melanie had never ridden. "I was surprised at how safe it actually felt. There's a special horn on the saddle that you hook your leg around so it's a lot safer than it looks. The most difficult part of it was keeping my body straight in the saddle. The instructor said that upper body posture was the key to making it work. I think I got the hang of it, more or less, by the end of the lesson." In fact, her instructor had said she was a natural.

  "So will you do more?" Melanie asked doubtfully.

  "Yes, I think so. I really enjoyed it." Surprisingly, she had. And so, even though she wouldn't ever be riding in the Regency – she planned only one more, very short, visit to the past – she had
decided to have more side-saddle lessons. She would do some normal riding, as well. "If I ride regularly, I won't be as stiff and sore as I was yesterday. Tell Chloë I'm sorry. Next time I come to babysit, I'll do better, I promise."

  "So you've been nursing your aches today, have you? Hot baths and embrocation?" Richard added, with a laugh.

  "Well…" Emma made a face. Why not tell them about her discovery? She couldn't tell them the whole truth, though. "Actually, I spent most of the day at the Lamb House. Well, not in the house, but in the grounds. It was such a beautiful spring day and, after the fun of riding yesterday, I wanted to be out in the fresh air. No, Richard," she added, guessing the sarky comment that was on the tip of his tongue, "I didn't do my housework before I left home. I decided that housework could wait till next weekend." She chuckled. "I went there to enjoy the park and garden, but I think I may found something."

  "Really? What?" he said, eagerly.

  "I'm not sure exactly what it is," she began, untruthfully – she had gone there determined to look for Will's bath house and she was pretty sure she had found it – "but I think I've found the remains of a building under a stand of trees, near the old stables. It must have been demolished ages ago. Geraldine wasn't at the house yesterday so I couldn't ask her about it, but I'll do so the next time I'm there. If there really is something under those trees, maybe we can do a geophys survey to determine the extent of it."

  "Fascinating," Richard said. "Any idea what it might have been for?"

  Emma knew better than to push her luck. "No. Probably just for storage. Or something equally boring. I'll see what Geraldine says. If it was at all important, there'll be something in the archives, I imagine."

  Richard nodded enthusiastically.

  Melanie was looking bored. She obviously didn't share Richard and Emma's professional fascination for computer surveys of the ground to determine where buildings might have stood, centuries before. "Richard mentioned something about a damaged ballgown. Gold lace, you said, didn't you, love? It sounds fabulous."

  "It's very badly damaged, unfortunately, but it would have been quite dazzling when it was new," Emma replied. "It's not a court dress – ladies were still wearing dresses with hoops at court then – but it would have been worn to the highest of high society balls, I'm sure."

  "Do we know who it belonged to?" Melanie was clearly much more interested in costume than in lost buildings.

  "No, the records are very poor." Melanie looked so disappointed that Emma decided, on the spur of the moment, to tell her a bit more about the lace gown. "But I think – I'm speculating here, because I've got very little to go on – that it may have belonged to a rich Regency widow who was connected to the Lamb House in some way. I'm trying to research her, but it's difficult because I haven't been able to discover what her surname was. I'm pretty sure she was Lady Emma Something, though."

  Melanie laughed. "No wonder you want to know about her. I'd want to follow up a mysterious Lady Melanie, if I came across one. Don't suppose I would, though?"

  Emma shook her head. "It's a lovely name, but I don't think it was common in the early nineteenth century. They went for Mary, and Jane, and Catherine."

  "And Emma," Melanie put in, with a grin. "Is the gold lace gown on display? I'd really love to see it. It sounds amazing."

  "I can arrange a special showing, just for you, Melanie. I'll get it out, next time you and Chloë come to the museum. Chloë will have to learn how to look without touching, though."

  Melanie winced. "That won't be easy, but I'll do my best." She started to gather up the dessert plates. "Would you like coffee?"

  "Yes, please. Thank you for a lovely meal, Melanie. Much, much tastier than the microwave supper for one I'd been planning." Emma made a face. "It was very kind of you both to invite me."

  "Least we could do when you filled last night's babysitting breach at such short notice," Richard replied, getting up to help with the clearing. "No, stay there, Emma. Our kitchen is barely big enough for two, far less three." After Melanie had left the room, he added, in a low voice, "And you were remarkably restrained about Madam Butterfly as well. Melanie was a bit OTT, I thought. Thank you for putting up with her riding her hobby horse."

  "I'd put up with anything for Melanie's lemon mousse," Emma said, with a grin, as he followed his wife into the kitchen. It was true that Melanie was a terrific cook. And sitting round the table in their cosy living room, chatting about opera and life in general, Emma felt very much at ease. In Will's Regency, had she ever felt this relaxed? The problem was that, when she was Lady Emma Groatster, she was constantly on edge, watching out for pitfalls. If she really got things wrong, she might even be ostracised. And then where would she be?

  In the back of her mind, her conscience told her she was making a mountain out of a molehill, mostly in order to rationalise her cowardly decision to desert Will Allmay. Lady Emma Groatster, daughter of a peer of the realm, could get away with pretty much anything. Society would smile on her faux-pas and call them merely "eccentric".

  Emma sighed, remembering. Yes, there were rules in the Regency. No lady there could be as free as a woman in the twenty-first century, though a Regency widow could do very much as she liked, especially if she was as rich as Lady Emma Groatster. But a Regency wife was a different story. A wife was the property of her husband and bound by his decisions. A husband could be a tyrant.

  Will Allmay would never be a tyrant to Emma.

  But he wasn't going to marry Emma. He was going to marry Patience Sinclair-Smythe.

  And married to that woman, Emma thought viciously, he'll have every reason to end up being a tyrant.

  It could never be a happy marriage. Will, who loved to laugh and tease, would be shackled for the rest of his life to a humourless, detestable harridan who would probably end up as bad as her mother. Or worse. Marriage to Patience would be bound to make him miserable. Surely a woman who really loved him would try to save him from that?

  Emma gulped. Did she love him enough to try? She honestly didn't know.

  ~ ~ ~

  On Monday morning, Emma arrived at the museum bright and early, to do some more data input before anyone else arrived. She would have liked to go straight to the Lamb House, to quiz Geraldine about the demolished bath house, but unfortunately the museum was expecting an important visitor, an assessor from a charitable foundation. If he were really impressed with what Emma showed him, he might recommend a donation. And, after deep cuts in their Local Authority funding, the museum needed all the cash it could get its hands on.

  Emma found she was actually enjoying the data entry work. It was satisfying to see the pile of index cards going down. Emotionally, too, she was on a more even keel after the excitement of the weekend. She had decided to take things one step at a time. She wouldn't decide anything about what she should do in the Regency until she'd sorted out all the loose ends about the modern-day Lamb House. She planned to spend the whole of Tuesday there. And to insist that Geraldine take her discovery seriously. If there was material in the archives about Will's bath house, Emma would need Geraldine's expertise to dig it out.

  "Emma?" It was Richard, delivering the day's post. "This came for you. Looks like a book." He handed her a standard cardboard carton, big enough to contain a single paperback.

  "I didn't order anything online," Emma said, puzzled.

  "Perhaps it's a gift to the museum?" Richard said, dropping the package onto her desk. "Lovely to see you last night. Melanie sends her love. Sorry I can't stop to chat. I must get on with dishing all these out. We're very popular today, for some reason." He left the office with a cheery wave.

  Emma ripped open the package. A small black book fell out, and a slip of paper which proved to be a gift card from an online bookseller. There was no sender's name.

  Emma had learned to be very chary about anonymous gifts. Or anonymous phone calls. Or anonymous anything. The person behind them always seemed to be Julian. And his motives were always vindictive.<
br />
  She checked the carton. It looked as if it had been sent directly from the retailer, but it was always possible that Julian could have intercepted it en route. She should have been warier about opening it. Emma stopped and took a deep breath. She needed to stay calm here. And she should certainly be wary of touching anything Julian might have sent. She used a pen to lever the cover open. Her anonymous "gift" turned out to be a rather classy address book.

  Why would Julian send Emma an address book, of all things?

  She'd had quite enough of Julian's playacting and gamesmanship. She refused to let him get to her any more. If he were here now, she decided, she'd lob his damned address book at his head. Followed by every weighty tome in the place until he was buried under a mountain of them.

  Something odd about the front page caught her eye. The book had gilded thumb-index tabs for all the letters of the alphabet.

  There was no S. It had been cut out. And S was for Stanley. Emma Stanley.

  Another one of Julian's mind games, was it? Well, this time she'd show him. She pulled the book open where the missing S should have been. The page was still there. It had been scissored into the shape of a large E. For Emma. And coloured blood red.

  Fury flooded through her. She swore viciously. She tore out the bloody page and stuffed it into the shredder. Then she tore out all the rest of the pages, handful by handful, and shredded them too. When only the black board covers were left, she tossed them into the bin. Followed by the cardboard carton.

  She hesitated for all of a second over the gift card. Should she use it to make enquiries about the sender? No, that was what Julian would expect her to do. He enjoyed putting Emma through the wringer. And it would be useless in any case, because there would be nothing to find. Julian was too good at covering his tracks.

  She put the gift card through the shredder. And then she did a war dance round it, as if she'd put her bastard ex in there too. Because, at long last, in her mind, she had.