A Kiss Across Time

by Louise Allen

  ‘Damn all, in fact,’ I said. ‘We’ve questioned the other lodgers and at least visited George’s place of work. We can’t get anywhere with the gynaecological secrets of High Society until we can read the ledgers – what does that leave?’

  ‘Society itself.’ Luc refilled his tankard. ‘We will attend every event to which I have invitations and mingle. Tonight we want to meet Sir Thomas and Salmond, fish for political gossip and see if anyone has encountered the Comte. James, you need to see if anyone you know has picked up whispers on the grapevine.’

  ‘And me?’ I asked.

  ‘Confide in the ladies about the awful shock of calling on Doctor Talbot and discovering that he had been murdered.’

  ‘And why would I have been calling?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly speculate,’ Luc said. ‘You asked me, your cousin, who name a reputable doctor for female complaints and, as I knew Talbot slightly, I took you round. We encounter the hysterical valet – the rest is more or less the truth.’

  I rolled my eyes at him. Just what female complaint was I supposed to be suffering from, I wondered? I’d have to think of something suitably vague and non-scandalous.

  ‘Various packages and bandboxes have been delivered for you, Miss Lawrence,’ Garrick said while I was trying to decide what intimate symptoms I was willing to discuss with complete strangers. ‘I thought you would prefer to unpack yourself, but should anything require pressing you have only to ask.’

  I gathered that this evening’s reception required full dress – I’d have to get Garrick to tell me the difference between that and half dress – and that my existing gown was suitable, plus a number of pieces of jewellery from the safe. Apparently Luc’s mother preferred that he safeguard some of the family gems himself, rather than leave them in the Town House when she was out of London.

  ‘Won’t people recognise family pieces?’ I worried.

  ‘Your colouring is different from Mama’s,’ Luc said. ‘There are plenty of things that she never wears. Lay out your gown and we’ll find something suitable.’

  ‘Come and help me, Garrick,’ I suggested. ‘I can’t think of anything else to put on the boards.’

  The packages included an evening dress from Madame with a note that she’d had it in stock and it had only required a few alterations. It was a ravishing pale blue silk confection with a silver gauze overskirt and what looked like a precariously low neckline.

  I decided I wanted to wear that one. Garrick suggested silver ribbons in my hair, went and consulted Lucian while I gloated over it, and came back with diamond pins to go with the ribbons plus sapphire and diamond earrings, necklace and bracelets. They all looked terrifyingly expensive. I had borrowed the yellow diamonds of a collection they had referred to as the Pemberton Parure last time; this was probably another set brought into the family by some past heiress.

  Luc called through the closed door that he had to go and deal with some estate business at his attorney’s office. ‘It might be a good idea to lie down and try to sleep,’ he added. ‘We won’t be back until the small hours.’

  ‘I’ll bring your bath at five, Miss Lawrence.’ Garrick set out the jewellery boxes on the dressing table. ‘That will allow your skin to cool before you depart.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to the closing door as I began to rummage in the other parcels. Heaven forbid that I might appear flushed. Or, presumably, in any way less than perfect, I grumbled to myself, although it was hard to be churlish under the circumstances.

  Most of the underwear had arrived, fortunately. Part of me wanted to dress up in that gorgeous gown and put on all those sparkly things and part of me was muttering darkly about being forced into a straight-jacket of what was suitable and permissible. The sparkly things were winning, which I ought to regret, but can’t.

  I did manage to doze for a couple of hours and woke up feeling as though I’d been chewing blotting paper. Goodness knows how people manage to take power naps and wake up alert and raring to go. All I was raring for were a pee and a cup of tea, in that order.

  I negotiated the quite civilised inside loo, then went in search of Garrick and a cuppa. There was no sign of him so I brewed up myself, drifted into the drawing room and jumped when I realised I wasn’t alone. James was brooding on the sofa but he looked up and smiled faintly when he saw me.

  ‘Tea?’ I gestured with my mug but he shook his head. ‘Want me to go away?’ Another shake so I sat down beside him and rested against his shoulder. He shifted and leaned in companionably, so I sipped in silence, wondering what was wrong. Other than a good friend committing suicide, another being murdered and generally having to live a double life because of prejudice and persecution, of course.

  I wished, not for the first time, that it was possible to adopt brothers. I’d have claimed James like a shot. ‘Tell me to shut up if I’m out of order,’ I said when my mug was half empty. ‘But do you have anyone special yourself?’

  ‘No.’ Then, ‘Yes.’

  I made a Go on, I’m listening sort of noise.

  ‘He won’t accept that this is right, that we should be together. He married last year. Naturally we had to stop meeting. His wife is expecting their first child.’

  ‘Does she know?’ I asked, swivelling round to look at him, appalled for all three of them.

  James shook his head. ‘I can’t blame him. His father is a clergyman so he believes we were heading for hell fire,’ he said with a bitter twist of his lips.

  ‘Did you love him?’

  He shrugged, which was probably a Yes.

  There wasn’t much to say to that. Nothing that wasn’t a platitude, anyway. I put down my mug and curled up against his side, tipped my head so it rested against his shoulder and concentrated on sending good vibes. After a moment I felt the weight of his head against mine as he relaxed. Did his blighted love life mean he was celibate at the moment? It would make him safer if he was, but this was a healthy young Georgian male, not a heartsick girl. I doubted that he’d renounced sex.

  James fell asleep, I sat there, wide awake, chasing theories and facts and supposition round and round with absolutely no results at all.

  Chapter Seven

  James woke when the front door banged closed and Luc and Garrick came in. He was obviously one of the lucky kind who wake from naps refreshed, not woolly-headed, because he sat up alertly with no sign of his earlier melancholy.

  Garrick looked subtlety different, a lot more dangerous somehow. No-one would take him for a gentleman’s gentleman, yet he was wearing exactly what he had when I last saw him. The body language between him and Luc was different too. I had seen it before when they were investigating, or there was danger – the master/servant relationship changed into something quite different. They were equals, friends, somehow.

  ‘What have you two been up to?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were off on estate business, Luc.’

  ‘I was, and some very tedious disputes over leases have been resolved. Then we went and leaned a little on Bromley.’

  ‘Doctor Talbot’s man? Any results?’

  Luc subsided into his favourite chair and Garrick, without being asked, took one on the other side of the hearth. ‘Nothing to the point. He is adamant that Talbot had not seemed worried or alarmed in the past few weeks. He was certainly not taking precautions against attack.’

  ‘How could he tell?’ James got up and went to stare at the incident board. ‘Talbot was a pretty imperturbable sort.’

  ‘Apparently a few months back a lady he had been attending in the early stages of pregnancy developed an infatuation for him. The husband found out and made threats and Talbot employed an ex-Runner as a bodyguard for a month and gave Bromley a whole list of instructions about security – checking the locks, not admitting strangers however plausible their reasons were, and so forth. The husband calmed down, the bodyguard is not on the payroll any longer, but Bromley stuck with the security precautions.’

  ‘Was Talbot bisexual?’ I asked Jame
s. ‘Or were the lady’s instincts completely off-target?’

  ‘Attracted to both men and women?’ James clarified. Apparently that was another phrase that wasn’t in use. ‘No. Definitely not. But he was a good-looking man and had a very sympathetic manner.’

  I remembered the battered head and blood-streaked face and suppressed a shudder. ‘I suppose a woman who was innocent of the range of sexual desire and who might not be feeling very well could develop an attraction to someone who was concerned about them, even if they gave her no encouragement. Especially if her husband wasn’t being understanding about the impact of pregnancy. I had a friend whose husband was a complete ass when she had bad morning sickness. Kept saying it was all in her mind. Why she didn’t hit him with a poker and run off with someone else I’ll never know.’

  ‘Still might have been something like that,’ Garrick observed. ‘But possibly the doctor did not realise someone was infatuated and that her husband knew of it.’

  ‘That leaves his entire patient list, almost.’ I got up and added a sheet headed Possibly Infatuated Patients to the murder boards. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to visit every pregnant member of the ton to enquire about their romantic fantasies or ask whether their husband is murderously jealous.’ The three of them looked at me. ‘Oh, for goodness sake! Yes, it is a perfectly sensible line of enquiry but …’

  ‘But we do have access to the ledgers that list the legitimate patients, the ones whose husbands would know they are seeing a doctor,’ James said. ‘Difficult to be murderously jealous of a situation you aren’t aware of, so perhaps we could eliminate whoever is in the coded files. If we could read them.’

  ‘Yes…’ I agreed cautiously. ‘But what about someone who discovers their wife or daughter’s secret? That would be another group that Talbot wouldn’t have protected against because he thought they would have no idea.’

  Luc made the kind of noise usually written down as Aargh. ‘Even so, I think it would be worthwhile going through the uncoded ledgers for the past two years and listing everyone who might have fallen for him.’

  ‘Might? How can one tell?’ I had a good idea who it was who was going to be ploughing through those pages.

  ‘I don’t pretend to understand the working of the female mind,’ Luc began and got a sofa cushion right in the face. He threw it back and I caught it. ‘But I would suggest it would take more than one appointment to develop such feelings and possibly the kind of ailment or problem that might require sympathetic discussion. Not, for example, making someone happy by announcing that they were pregnant with a wanted child, for example.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I admitted. ‘Do we fetch the ledgers here?’

  ‘No, better not to remove them. The coded ones no-one knew about, but taking the open ones could give rise to all kinds of questions. You had best work on them at Talbot’s house.’

  Wonderful. Travel through time to Georgian London and experience the thrill of spending hours poring over medical files in a stuffy office...

  ‘OK.’ Eyebrows went up. ‘I mean, very well.’ A pity I wasn’t an historian who could get a fascinating paper on early nineteenth century gynaecological disorders out of it.

  ‘I will heat the water for baths, if you will excuse me.’ Garrick got to his feet, somehow back to gentleman’s gentleman again. ‘Do you require a bath, Mr James?’

  ‘No.’ He got up and swiped at his crumpled coat tails. ‘Thank you, Garrick. Shall I come here, Luc? Or will you pick me up?’

  ‘We’ll pick you up.’ Luc gave me a heavy-lidded look that I had no trouble interpreting. Bed then baths or baths and sex combined were what was on his mind.

  I got up and headed for the door. ‘I’ll go to my room. See you later, James.’ I leant down as I passed Luc to murmur. ‘No time. Behave yourself.’

  That provoked a rather stimulating growl. Perhaps we wouldn’t be too exhausted after our evening out.

  The blue and silver ensemble with the diamonds got full approval from Luc, to the point where I thought for a few minutes that we weren’t going to make it out after all. I hoped I had a becoming hint of colour in my cheeks rather than a hectic blush after he’d kissed his way along the low neckline and done things with his tongue that had me tingling down to my toes, all in the time it took Garrick to find my evening cloak.

  James did not appear to notice anything amiss when we collected him from his lodgings just around the corner and, with Garrick on the box and the three of us in our splendour inside, we rattled off to the reception.

  I had done some reading when I had landed back in my own time and discovered, thanks to the realisation that there were other boxes waiting for me at the solicitors, that I must be coming back. I had found original books on etiquette on-line and a heap of modern guides to Georgian social life. The one thing I hadn’t managed was dancing classes because there wasn’t a group in my area that specialised in historical dance. I would just have to fall back on my fictitious lung infection and residual weakness if we attended any balls.

  There was red carpet on the pavement, a blaze of torchieres outside and men holding back the gawpers who crowded round to see which nobs were attending.

  ‘We’ll be in the Society columns tomorrow,’ James said. ‘There will be footmen receiving tips to tell reporters who you are and there’ll be ladies inside earning pin money sending in descriptions of gowns – which will have to be smuggled out before they leave in order to reach the early editions.’

  I am about to be papped, I thought. At least there’s no flash photography… It occurred to me, as I gathered my skirts together carefully before getting out, that I would be able to look up the newspapers on-line. It would be evidence in print that I really was here and not dreaming, although of course, the solicitor’s boxes were even harder evidence.

  Why was I wondering about that now? Because Luc and I had become lovers and I was desperate to believe that this was real?

  I stopped worrying when we finally arrived at the red carpet and the brothers jumped down to help me out with enough ceremony for a duchess. There was too much to remember – head up, shoulders back, small steps, smile graciously but not enthusiastically, lift skirts just enough to protect them, fingertips on Luc’s arm…

  The place was already buzzing when we got through the front door. Ladies were greeting each other with double air-kisses and insincere-sounding cries of admiration for gowns or hair-dos. Footmen were directing people to cloak rooms and rushing out to find reticules and indoor shoes that had been left in carriages that were even now driving off, heading for side streets to await a summons hours later.

  I was directed to the ladies’ room, deposited my cloak and fought my way to a mirror to check my hair and the state of my pink cheeks. I’d used a little mascara and a lightly tinted foundation, worrying that it might be noticed, but it was almost invisible compared with some of the rouge and eye-black I could see around me, at least on the married women. The unmarried girls in their white and pastel gowns were far more discreet.

  Technically, I suppose, I should have been amongst the pastel brigade, but my fictitious status as a mysterious American distant cousin who was ‘out’ in Boston, seemed to make me acceptable in the guise of a young matron.

  James and Luc were waiting for me when I emerged, the pair of them looking expensive, elegant and very masculine in their corbeau-blue tail coats and blinding white linen. I averted my gaze from the skin-tight knitted black silk evening breeches and remembered reading about one outspoken old dowager who approved of the fashion because, ‘It is nice to see what the young men are thinking about.’ Goodness knows where all the sheltered virgins were supposed to look. Perhaps that was the reason for the handsome waistcoats, to direct the eye upwards. James’s was tobacco brown shot through with gold thread, Luc’s was silver and black.

  We joined the queue leading upstairs to the receiving line. ‘Remind me whose party this is,’ I whispered as we climbed one step at a time with me trying to keep
my skirts out from under other people’s feet.

  ‘Lady Pettigrew. Her husband’s a key supporter of the government.’

  ‘Whigs?’ I hazarded.

  ‘No, Tory, although heaven knows what the Prime Minister, the Duke of Portland, really is.’

  I tried to remember which party was which. I have to confess I had been more diligent with my researches on social affairs and fashions than I had on politics. The Whigs were strong on a broad church and constitutional monarchy and were anti-slavery, I recalled, whereas the Tories were more monarchical and strictly Church of England, often High Church or even Catholic. Some harboured Jacobite sympathies. And that was about the extent of my knowledge.

  ‘Which are you?’ I asked in a murmur.

  ‘Whig,’ they said in unison, which was a relief, I decided.

  I was introduced to Lord and Lady Pettigrew, managed to curtsy without falling on my behind and found myself in a crowded chamber big enough to be a ballroom.

  We circulated, then James strolled off to join a group of young men and women who were laughing immoderately over something involving someone called Horace, a pig and a wager.

  ‘There’s one of our men,’ Luc said, nodding towards a middle-aged gentleman, tall, skinny, with greying hair and a long sharp nose. He looked alert and intelligent and not someone to suffer fools gladly. ‘Sir Thomas Reece.’ He began to angle towards the Under Secretary, then stopped. ‘Here’s a suitable bunch of ladies for you, I think.’

  I watched with some admiration for the way he greeted several of the women who ranged in age from, I would guess, late forties down to two who might have been as young as seventeen. I was introduced and then incorporated into the group for interrogation, a curiosity to be politely filleted for every detail. Luc, mission accomplished, strolled off and, very casually, encountered Sir Thomas.

  Then I was too busy fielding questions to see how he was faring. Yes, I was a distant cousin of Lord Radcliffe. Yes, I really was from Boston in the United States. No, I hadn’t been presented at Court, yes, England was very exciting and London was wonderful and as soon as I was fully well I intended exploring and going to the theatre and opera. Yes, I had hired a house, but I wasn’t receiving yet because my companion was laid low with an er – lowering of eyelids, mumbling – a feminine complaint.