She could hear the invitation to quiz him about his adventures, but she ignored it, sticking firmly to her point.
‘You are so sure that your trick on Mrs Leander will rid me of her, yet I cannot help but –’
‘We are almost home now,’ he said. ‘Why not leave it to me? You are tired, I know, and will rest gladly. Do so, while I speak to Mrs Leander. If I am proved wrong, by all means quiz me. But if I am right you must accept the way of it, and ask no more questions. Is that fair?’
She considered carefully. ‘I’m not sure –’
He laughed. ‘I am,’ he said as the cab stopped. He opened the door and jumped out. ‘Come along now.’
‘My boots,’ she said, and reached for them, but he was too quick for her.
‘I will see to them,’ and he stretched out and took them in his hand, scooped her up before she could protest and carried her up the steps to the front door of number seventeen as she protested, her face crimson with embarrassment.
‘It is indeed high time you strengthened yourself with a little more good food,’ he said reprovingly as he set her on her feet. ‘You are as delicate and light as a bird. Here are your boots. Now, away to your room while I see off the cab. And –’ again he laughed‘– see off Mrs Leander.’
Eliza had heard their arrival from the kitchen below and came hurrying up to open the front door. She gaped at the sight of her mistress holding her boots in her hand.
‘Eliza,’ Tilly said hurriedly. ‘Where is Mrs Leander?’
Eliza made a grimace. ‘Sittin’ in the drawin’ room as cool as you please,’ she said. ‘Made me light the fire an’ everythin’, like I didn’t have enough to do, and the weather so sultry. Well, it was just her bein’ awkward. She’d rather sit there and sweat than let me be free of doin’ the fire for her –’
‘Hush, Eliza,’ Tilly said and looked a little nervously up the stairs. ‘I would prefer there should be no – um – arguments between you and her at present.’ Preventing Eliza from saying more than she should to Mrs Leander was a constant problem for Tilly. ‘Now, listen, I am going to my room to rest. When Mr Compton comes in, take him up to the drawing-room and leave him there. Do not interrupt, even if Mrs Leander rings for tea. Do you understand? Just leave him there with her.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Eliza said, staring as Tilly went hurrying upstairs, silent in her stocking feet, and then looked back over her shoulder as Freddy came up the front steps.
The last Tilly saw, as she paused at the top of the stairs, was his face turned towards her with a reassuring grin on it as he handed his hat to Eliza. And then she fled to throw herself on her bed and wait.
To her amazement, she dozed off. She had imagined that after the anxiety of her visit to Mr Conroy, let alone her luncheon and extraordinary conversation with Freddy, she would have been too tense to sleep. But sleep she did, and only woke suddenly when Eliza came into her room bearing a jug of cool lemonade and a glass.
‘Hmm?’ She struggled to sit up, so Eliza set down the tray and helped her.
‘Oh, Missus,’ she said, radiant. ‘Oh, Missus, such a to-do!’ And stood there with her hands folded on her apron, her face shining like a new apple and clearly bursting with news.
‘What has happened, Eliza?’ Tilly peered at her and then rubbed her eyes. ‘Bless my soul, what has happened?’
‘She’s gone, Mum,’ Eliza burst out as though she could hold it in no longer. ‘Bin and packed her bags and gone! Ain’t that something? Mr Freddy, he said she would, he come down to the kitchen to tell me to leave you restin’ and on no account to see her – Mrs Leander – and left you this note, Mum, and then he went.’ She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her apron pocket. ‘And then not half an hour after that, yon Madam sets to pealing the bell like a crazy thing and makes me go all the way up to the top, and tells me to carry down ’er bags and fetch ’er a cab on account she’s bin called away urgent like. And then she went and, well Mum, I was that turned about, I ’ardly knew what I was doin’. But it’s true, Mum, it really is, and I’m that happy I could cry!’ And she did, catching her breath as the tears ran down her face.
Tilly calmed her down as best she could and sent her back to the kitchen. When Eliza had gone, Tilly unfolded Freddy’s letter.
All is well, Tilly. I explained to Mrs Leander why it would be better if she left. She did not argue too much. I do not think you will have further problems. I trust you are quite recovered from the exertions of the morning. Your friend, F.
She refolded the letter slowly and put it in her reticule and then went down to the kitchen, bearing the tray of untasted lemonade.
‘Thank you, Eliza,’ she said absently. ‘That lemonade was very good.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Eliza said joyously, not noticing the lie. ‘Oh Mum, everythin’s good, ain’t it?’ Tilly nodded and went back upstairs to the morning room to sit and collect her thoughts.
Mrs Leander had worked in this house for – she had to work it out – thirteen years. Tilly had only been a child of five when she and Dorcas arrived. What could Freddy Compton possibly have found out about her to make Mrs Leander depart in such a hugger-mugger fashion? Tilly could bear it no longer: she had to ask him, and she got to her feet and hurried to the door. She did not even stop to tell Eliza where she was going. She just hurried out of the house and up the steps of the adjoining house, her skirts flying and bouncing as she went.
The door was answered by their housemaid, a woman of some forty summers Tilly judged, and not one with whom Eliza had struck up any sort of friendship, nor was likely to. She stood looking disapprovingly at Tilly, clearly scandalized by the fact that she had come out in a house gown and with no hat or pelisse of the sort that was required for street wear. But Tilly was past noticing any such matter and said breathlessly, ‘Mr Compton, where is he?’
The housemaid became positively wooden with disapproval and opened her mouth to speak, but Tilly could not wait. She ran past her and up the stairs, holding her skirts high to avoid the wet paint at the sides, and dodging past the workman who was crouching halfway up with a paint brush in his hand, and burst straight into the drawing-room.
Freddy was standing in his shirt sleeves, his head bent over a sheaf of papers, and he looked up at her, startled, as the housemaid came thumping along behind.
‘I could not prevent –’ the housemaid began but Freddy waved an irritably dismissive hand at her and the woman sniffed and went away.
‘Tell me what has happened!’ he commanded and she clapped her hands together and shook her head at him.
‘It is quite amazing! It is exactly as you said! She went. I did not even wake to hear her. I did fall asleep, and when I woke Eliza told me – she wasted no time at all. Freddy, you must tell me! What was it you said to her?’
He shook his head, laughing, clearly delighted to hear her news, but not unduly surprised. ‘We made a bargain, my dear Tilly, did we not? If she obliged and did as I told her, why then, you would ask no more questions.’
‘I made no such bargain!’ she protested. ‘You said it was to be so but I made no promises. Now, you must tell me, or I shall sit here until you do.’
‘No chairs,’ he pointed out. ‘The paper hangers have only just finished. The carpet is laid in place, I grant you, but the furniture does not arrive from the repository until tomorrow.’
‘I don’t care!’ she said. ‘I shall just sit on the floor!’ And she did, in a soft ballooning of her black skirt. She settled her crinoline around her as neatly as she could, and gazed up at him with her expression as quizzical as she could make it. She was, she realized with some surprise, happier than she could ever remember being. Freddy had made her happy; it was wonderful and delightful and such a relief after so long a period of unhappiness that she laughed aloud at the sheer joy of it. Then she folded her hands on her lap very neatly and firmly to make it clear to him that she would not budge until he answered her questions.
He laughed too and at once sat down b
eside her, cross-legged, and then they were both laughing, quite immoderately. The door opened again, and the housemaid came in, bearing a small table before her.
‘I took it upon myself to arrange tea, Sir,’ she said with the same wooden expression on her face. ‘I thought Madam might like some.’ Without seeming to show any awareness of the highly unusual manner in which her master was conversing with his guest, she fetched the tray of tea and set the plates and cups on the table with all the neatness that was possible and then, bobbing her head, went away. And all the time the two of them sat, unable to look at each other and bursting with laughter. The maid was barely out of the door before they both collapsed with it. Freddy threw himself back on the carpet and lay there quite abandoned to his merriment.
‘This is quite a shocking way to behave!’ Tilly said reprovingly. ‘What would Alice say if she were here?’
‘She would laugh loudest of all,’ Freddy said and Tilly nodded, for she was sure he was right.
‘She would also,’ she said, ‘make you tell us both what it was you said to Mrs Leander that had the effect that it did.’
He was sitting up again now and looking at her and the laughter had vanished from his face.
‘Ah – Alice,’ he said. ‘I had not thought –’
‘Yes?’ She too stopped laughing and looked at him and somewhere at the back of her mind she thought how different he looked when he smiled. Now he looks rather – well, foolish again. He should smile or laugh all the time.
‘It would be better not to tell Alice about all this, I think,’ he said after a moment. ‘She would give me no peace until she knew all about – well, it is, after all, not a matter to be bruited abroad. I promised Mrs Leander that if she went I would say nothing about her to any one. That I would keep her secret as if it were my own.’ He made a little face then, and it acted the way a smile did in that it took away the air of foolishness from his countenance. ‘That was the arrangement I made. I told her fairly that she was not welcome by you, however comfortable Mr Kingsley might be, and that as your friend I had charged myself with the task of persuading her to leave the house as you wished her to. I assured her that I would never make any mention of the matters I knew about, that not a whisper about them would pass my lips and the least I can do is be honourable. You would not wish me to be otherwise, I think.’
Tilly was silent for a long moment and then nodded. ‘I see. Then there was really something that you knew about her.’
‘Truly, Tilly, you are unkind to press me.’ He looked serious again and with it his normal, rather uninteresting self, and she did not feel comfortable with that, and anyway she knew he was right. She must ask no more.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I must go home. I thank you, more than you can imagine.’ She put out her hand and he at once clambered to his feet and held out his and pulled her up.
‘Now Mary has fetched the tea, I think we must drink it,’ he said. ‘Permit me to give you some. Cream? Sugar?’
‘If you please,’ she said gravely and took the cup from him and they stood there, side by side, drinking their tea, as he told her of the changes that had been made in the room and the plans they had to redecorate the dining – and breakfast-rooms on the floor below.
‘It is better for dear Alice to be away while all this is going on,’ he said. ‘It is so dispiriting for a woman to have to see her home in such disarray – I was glad when she was invited into Staffordshire.’
They continued to make small talk until he at last took her cup from her and saw her to the front door and she went home, marvelling at the way the man could change so. It was very odd the way they had laughed and he had seemed so charming, and how rapidly all that had vanished when he started to speak seriously; and she thought – he is quite the opposite of most people, who seem foolish when they laugh. I am so glad he is my neighbour. Even if Alice is sometimes tiresome.
She had to talk to Eliza about the dinner and make what plans she could for her father’s return, because she knew that however elated she might be at Mrs Leander’s departure, he would be quite the reverse. She had to decide what to say to him and she had not thought at all about that yet; she had hardly had time, and she stood for a moment in the quiet hall, looking about her, trying to arrange her thoughts.
It felt different now, knowing that that woman was no longer there; more like her own true home, and she took a deep breath and hurried to the stairs. She would have to go to Mrs Leander’s room and check that all was well. The fact that the room was also her father’s was something that she did not care to think about; it still seemed necessary to her to check that the woman had really gone. After all, she only had Eliza’s word for it. It might be as well to be certain she had left no possessions behind, thus showing perhaps that she intended to return.
But it was clear that Eliza had reported no more than the truth. The wardrobes that had been filled with Mrs Leander’s clothes, and still smelled of the Chypre perfume she always used, were quite empty. The drawers of the tallboy had been tugged out and emptied and now hung drunkenly in their frames, and she pushed them back into position carefully, her heart lifting with each one. The woman had gone, she really had, and she did not intend to return; and Tilly went down to the kitchen to talk to Eliza about dinner in an almost bemused state.
By the time she had settled Eliza, who was so excited and happy that she seemed ready to float to the ceiling and fly around it, and put her to mincing yesterday’s cold beef to be made into a cottage pie – which, fortunately, Austen Kingsley liked a great deal – some of Tilly’s fatigue was returning. She would have liked nothing better than an early night and a cup of hot milk for supper, but that could not be. Not tonight. So she dressed as carefully as she could, pulling on her black silk gown with the jet beads and dressing her hair as carefully as she could. Then, at the last moment, she turned back to her dressing-table to get her mother’s pearls. It would help her, she felt, to have them clasped about her neck. She would feel more like the mistress of the house as she now undoubtedly was, and that would strengthen her in her dealings with her father, which were not going to be at all easy.
She found the blue velvet box where she had hidden it, behind her handkerchiefs in her top right-hand drawer. When she opened it, it was empty.
Chapter Sixteen
‘YOU’RE LYING,’ Austen Kingsley said flatly. ‘She would not have dared.’
Tilly took a sharp little breath in through her nose. She had known he would be angry, had expected shouting and rage, but she had not thought he would behave like this. To deny so flatly the truth that was before his eyes, that Mrs Leander had gone and had no intention of returning, and had taken from Tilly’s dressing-table her mother’s pearls; that she had not expected. She tried again.
‘I assure you, Papa, that it is so. She sent for Eliza, bade her carry her bags down and call a cab. And she went. You may speak to Eliza yourself. She was quite clear in every detail.’
‘She would not dare,’ he said again. ‘She could not.’
He sat at the table, his shoulders hunched and his head down, like a bull about to charge, staring at her from beneath brows that looked rough and ugly from the angle at which she saw them. It was an odd posture for him and despite his similarity to a dangerous animal, she suddenly realized that there was no danger in him at all, and thought – he’s frightened. This is not anger, nor is it disbelief. He’s frightened. What is there for him to be afraid of? I don’t understand.
‘And to steal your mother’s pearls? Why should she do that?’
‘Because they are valuable, I imagine,’ Tilly said with a touch of acerbity. ‘I never noticed Mrs Leander not to be interested in money.’
‘And what sensible person is not interested in money?’ he roared and she winced but was oddly glad to see the rage again. This was the familiar father she understood. ‘Don’t talk stupid rubbish to me, Madam, or by God I’ll –’ But the fire seemed to die down as fast as it had burned up. ‘She h
ad only to ask,’ he mumbled. ‘Only to ask.’
Tilly said nothing, just sat and watched him. The remains of their dinner lay congealing on the table, and a cabinet pudding carefully made by Eliza and well garnished with jam to hide its imperfections stood untouched on the sideboard. It clearly would not be eaten tonight.
She tried, genuinely tried, to enter his feelings. Was he fond of Mrs Leander? Had she been more to him than just a harlot, kept conveniently at home to save him the trouble of venturing out to a house of assignation? Tilly had always believed that to be the case, if she had thought of the matter at all. She certainly could not imagine her father caring for any person other than himself. All her life he had been a presence that was noise and bombast and coldness.
To perceive him now, as she was trying to do, as person like herself inasmuch as he had emotions that were soft and vulnerable to pain, was difficult if not impossible. And imperceptibly she shook her head in an act of denial of her own. He could not feel as she had in the long weeks after Frank’s death, could not know the guilt, the emptiness, the loneliness of it all. Not until this afternoon with Freddy had she known any lighter feelings at all. Was her father now thrown into the selfsame state of misery and loss because of Mrs Leander? The shake of her head became more definite. It was not possible. Not her father. Not Mrs Leander.
She leaned forwards and tried again. ‘Papa, I am afraid that it is true. If you doubt it, simply look in your room. The wardrobes she used are quite empty.’
He lifted his chin and stared at her. ‘I care not,’ he said with an attempt at insouciance, a sort of sketch of the way he usually was, and she felt again a pang for him and it amazed her. To feel sorry for her father? Everything was getting stranger and stranger this evening.
‘I care not a whit for her, nor for anyone else,’ he shouted suddenly. He pulled himself to his feet, holding on to the table so tightly that he pulled the cloth askew and threatened to send plates and glasses tumbling to the floor. ‘Whatever I do, it makes no nevermind, does it? God damn all you women and all of your souls to hellfire. I hope you rot!’ And he turned, lumbering and awkward, and pushed his way out of the room. She stood there staring after him and listened to the thud of the front door as he slammed out of the house.
London Lodgings Page 17
