‘I think so. Once more, at least. The solicitors who brought the deed box to me last time let slip there were boxes, plural, so that must mean at least two.’
He made a sort of humming, thinking noise. ‘Mama likes you. She’ll be pestering him to marry you.’
‘Likes me? She already suspects that there is something very strange about me – she’s more likely to accuse me of witchcraft than welcome me as a daughter-in-law.’
‘The boys like you too.’
‘James, stop it. This is difficult enough as it is.’
/> ‘So you do – ’
The sound of the front door silenced him and we both got up as Luc and Garrick came in. They looked drained and subdued. Luc opened his arms and I walked into his embrace and held as much as I could get my arms round as tight as I could.
After a bit he sighed and loosened his grip and I realised we were alone.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked.
‘I suppose so. Let’s get James in so I only have to say it once.’
Garrick came in as well, like a large warm boulder in the corner of the room radiating security and common-sense. James sat on the sofa and stared into the fire again.
‘Sir Thomas has resigned on the grounds of ill-health and is retiring to his estates in Cornwall and giving up all government involvement. Elliott is going out to India in a very junior post.’
‘A very unhealthy country, India,’ Garrick observed. ‘So many diseases. To say nothing of poisonous snakes, man-eating tigers.’
‘One can only hope. Miss Reece is to be confined in a secure private home for unstable ladies that Sir William recommended.’
I wondered just how many of those unstable women could have lived perfectly normal lives in my time and shut the thought down, hard. This was 1807 and it was a miracle she was not to be hanged.
‘How is Lady Radcliffe?’
‘Shaken, but relieved it is over and that we are all safe. She is playing with the boys which is her cure for all ills. Lady Turnham has been told the bare minimum but she said briskly that she doesn’t want to hear any more about it and hopes that next time you are visiting you can meet and do something extravagantly normal. Or that might have been extravagant and normal.’
I couldn’t help laughing at that and suddenly we had all relaxed. What had just happened was still there, a darkness outside the door, but in here we were safe and together.
‘Luc?’ He was watching me intently.
‘Last time, once it was all over, the mystery solved, everyone safe, you had to leave, go back to your time almost immediately.’
‘That’s right, I did.’ I concentrated on how I felt, then shook my head. ‘I’m perfectly fine at the moment. Last time things went out of focus, I had a sense of unreality that came and went. Nothing like that yet.’ It occurred to me to look at the clock. ‘What if it does start and I have to get to Almack’s and the mirror and they are closed or there is something happening there and crowds of people?’
Last time I had gone through the glass of the long mirror in the refreshment room and it was the only way I knew to get back. I fought down the panicky feeling that if I didn’t do it correctly then I might end up anywhere in time. Or nowhere.
‘If they are closed then we break in,’ said Luc. ‘If there is an assembly then we’ll just have to create a distraction. James can faint onto Lady Jersey, that would do it.’
‘Please! Make it Lord Alvanley, he’s more up to my weight. I’d flatten Lady Jersey, her husband would call me out and none of us would get vouchers for Almack’s ever again.’
‘I’m going to cook,’ I said. ‘What’s in the kitchen, Garrick?’
‘There is a fine cod. I was going to make crimped cod as a remove for – ’
‘No. Fish and chips is what we need. I’ll want flour, milk and egg, salt, vinegar, potatoes and a big pan of clean fat. This is kitchen table comfort food.’
I made them work – James peeling potatoes while Lucian sliced them into nice fat chips and Garrick melted down beef dripping for frying. He blanched the chips while I whipped up a batter then coated the fish. Then we fried the chips for the second time and did the fish, all golden and gorgeous.
‘These are called scraps,’ I explained, fishing out the fragments of cooked batter and draining them on one of the old dish cloths we’d sacrificed in lieu of kitchen paper. ‘They’re good too.’ I dumped it all in the middle of the table, dealt out plates and sat down. ‘Now we eat it with salt and vinegar and using our fingers if we want. Elbows on the table is perfectly correct.’
The food was good and the mood better. We were glad to be alive, glad that Talbot and Coates had been avenged, happy to be together. Then the chip pan caught fire and we stumbled about the smoke-filled kitchen throwing wet cloths over it and coughing.