‘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.