Authors: Caro Peacock
I looked down at our feet – his polished brown boots, my serviceable black – just as a governess should. In fact, I was feeling too guilty to meet his eyes. Here he was, showing concern for a sister, just as I’d hope Tom would do for me, and I was helping her deceive him.
‘My sister knows no more about sketching than my spaniel does, and cares even less.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m not blaming you in any way, Miss Lock. I suggested you should make a friend of Celia, after all. But we’ve always been close and I sense sometimes when things are not well with her. Have you a brother, Miss Lock?’
‘Yes.’
I looked up at him and away again.
‘You’ll understand what I mean, then. I hope I’m wrong, but I sense Celia may be contemplating a step that might be very harmful for her.’
‘Harmful?’
‘A young woman’s reputation is easily harmed. My sister is the most warm-hearted girl in the world but, to be frank, without much forethought.’
‘Then I’ll be frank as well,’ I said. I looked him in the eyes now, not even trying to talk like a governess but doing my best for both of them. ‘The most important decision a woman makes is who she’ll marry. Shouldn’t she follow her own wishes?’
‘It’s not always as simple as that, is it, Miss Lock? Especially when families of some note are involved.’
I was on the point of replying sharply that note or no note, it made no difference to the heart. What silenced me was the thought that he might be thinking of his own mother who had married once for love and once for money. He let the silence draw out for a while.
‘I’m not asking you to betray a confidence, Miss Lock. I can only hope if you knew that Celia were on the point of doing something really unwise, you’d give a hint to me. In that case, I might be able to convince her to draw back before things went too far and came to other ears.’
The meaning was plain – Sir Herbert’s ears.
‘I understand.’
‘You’ll keep that in mind, Miss Lock?’
‘Yes. Yes, I shall.’
He stood up, gave me a brief nod as if something important had been agreed and walked away through the gap in the hedge.
I waited in the summerhouse until I thought family and guests would be dressing for dinner, then slipped in at the side entrance and returned to my copying. Near midnight, Mrs Quivering found me there and insisted I must go to bed. Crotchets and quavers danced behind my eyes all night and by six o’clock in the morning I was back at work. Mrs Quivering rewarded me with a cup of chocolate and warm sweet rolls for breakfast.
‘Just like Lady Mandeville has. Shall we be ready in time? The musicians are supposed to be arriving by midday.’
Soon after midday, she put her head round the door.
‘They’ve arrived and they’re eating. Then they want to start rehearsing in the damask drawing room.’
‘I’m just finishing. I’ll take them in.’
There was still a page of the second trumpet part to
do, but in my experience, musicians were not readily torn away from free food. I finished the page, blotted it and carried the whole pile of parts to the damask drawing room. It was one of the largest and most pleasant rooms in the house, with wide windows looking on to the terrace, white-painted wall panels, blue damask curtains and upholstery and a beautiful plaster ceiling with a design of musical instruments and swags of olive leaves against a pale blue background. When I arrived servants were putting out rows of chairs on the blue-and-gold carpet and the musicians were trickling in with music stands and cases. I asked a flautist where I might find their director.
‘Just coming in, ma’am.’
A dapper little figure came through the doorway, dark hair shining in the sun like a cap of patent leather.
‘Mr Suter,’ the flautist started saying, ‘there’s a lady –’
But he got no further because Daniel Suter and I were embracing like long-lost sister and brother and my carefully copied parts had gone flying all over the carpet. Indecorous, certainly, and goodness knows what Mrs Quivering would have said, but he had been part of my life as long as I could remember and dearer to me than almost all of my relatives by blood.
‘What a miracle,’ I said, when I got my breath back. ‘What a coincidence.’
‘Miraculous I may be, child, but I disdain mere coincidence. Kennedy gave me your message two days ago. I’d been in France until then.’
‘But how did you manage to be here with the orchestra?’
‘An acquaintance of mine had accepted, but was more than happy to pass on the honour when I helped him to three days of more congenial work.’ Then his smile faded. ‘Forgive me child, running on like this. Your father …’
‘I want so much to talk to you.’
‘And I to you, child. But what are you doing here?’
I knelt down and began gathering the scattered parts.
‘I’m the governess.’
‘Why in the world?’
‘I can’t tell you now. May we meet later?’
‘Later, when I’ve come all this way to find you? Not at all.’
‘But your rehearsal …’
I handed him the score. He looked through the first few pages, eyebrows raised. They were fine, expressive eyebrows. Some people joked that he could direct an orchestra with them alone. They came together as his forehead pinched in artistic pain, rose again in amusement as he flipped to the last few pages.
‘Ah, child, the sacrifice I have made for you.’ He called out a name and tossed the score across the room to one of the other musicians, who caught it neatly. ‘Take them through it,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll encounter anything you haven’t met a hundred times before. Sir Herbert informs me that he has no liking for pianissimo – or indeed any other fancy foreign issimo – so kindly keep that in mind.’
The other musician smiled, clearly used to Daniel. He took the rest of the parts from me and dumped them on the pianoforte.
‘Now, my dear lady, let us wander in the garden.’
‘People might see us.’
‘Am I such a disgrace?’
‘Guests, I mean. Governesses do not mix with them.’
‘Judging from what I’ve seen and heard of Sir Herbert, you may be wise in scorning his guests.’
‘Please be serious. I should be dismissed if I were seen walking with you.’
‘Where is the spirit of Figaro? But very well, we shall hide ourselves among the vegetables.’
‘Vegetables?’
‘There must surely be an honest vegetable garden where guests don’t go.’
Half a dozen gardeners were at work behind the warm brick walls when we got there, but they hardly looked up from their hoeing. We walked along gravel paths between borders of parsley, oregano and marjoram, alive with butterflies. Daniel Suter offered me his arm in a kind of courtly parody of a lady and gentleman strolling, but it was a good firm arm, and I was glad to keep hold of it.
‘My dear, why did you run away? All of your father’s friends will help you. There was no need for this servitude.’
‘I want to know who killed my father.’
‘What have they told you?’
‘They? Nobody’s told me anything, except one man, and I don’t know how far to believe him.’
‘Who?’
‘A man who calls himself Mr Blackstone.’
I felt his arm go tense under mine. We’d come to the end of our path, facing the wall, and had to choose right or left. There were beans growing on strings up the wall, their red and white flowers just opening and fat furry bees blundering round them. Daniel stood, apparently staring at the bees, but I guessed he was not seeing them.
‘So what do you know?’ I asked him.
‘Child, please leave it be. I’d give my own life, if I could, to bring your father back to you. But since I can’t …’
‘Since you can’t, at least do this for him. You know very well he wasn’t killed in a duel, don’t you?’
He gave the faintest of nods, slight as the movement of a bean leaf under the weight of a bee.
‘What else do you know?’ I said.
‘Very little. I’m sorry to say he’d been dead two weeks before I even heard about it. A few days after he left Paris, I went to Lyon. Somebody wrote to me there …’
‘Who?’
‘A friend.’ He mentioned a name that meant nothing to me. ‘He said he’d been shot, no more.’
We started walking again, turning left between beds of lettuces and chicory. I told him everything that had happened to me, from the time I left my aunt’s house.
When I came to how I was almost carried off by Lord Kilkeel and Mr Trumper, he said, ‘Damn them!’ so loudly that a couple of gardeners raised their heads from weeding.
‘You know them?’
‘The man Trumper, I think, yes. But go on.’
It took us three complete tours of the garden. Several times he stopped and looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying, then shook his head and walked on. I stopped before I came to Mr Brighton’s arrival and the incident in the loosebox. I couldn’t quite bring myself to talk about that.
‘So Blackstone sent you here?’ he said at the end.
‘Yes.’
‘He had no right.’
‘He had my father’s ring.’
I brought it out, untied the ribbon and put it into his hand. He held it for a while, then gave it back to me.
‘Blackstone gave you this? How did he get it?’
‘He said he bought it from the people in the morgue. He wanted to keep it, but I took it from him. He wears a ring like it. Who is he? Did he have some kind of power over my father?’
‘No.’ He sounded angry, then, more gently, ‘He had no kind of power over your father. But Blackstone is a man involved in many wild schemes, always has been. I think your father may unwittingly have been caught up in one of them.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘What you’ve told me is so new to me, I can’t make sense of it.’
‘What about this woman who needed help? How does she come into it? Blackstone says he doesn’t know who she is, but I think he has some idea.’
‘She’s as mysterious to me as she is to you. Your father and I were in Paris together and he said nothing about a …’
He stopped suddenly.
‘You’ve remembered something?’
‘No. Nothing to the purpose.’
We were near a stone water trough. He let go of my arm, sat down on the edge of it, and put his head in his hands.
‘Child, if I had the slightest idea, I’d have dragged your father back to England, bound hand and foot if necessary. But how could any of us tell? It seemed no more than a joke.’
‘He talked about a joke in his letter, then the quote from Shelley about princes. I couldn’t understand it, for a long time. Only I think I do now. There was somebody in Paris, wasn’t there? Somebody you were laughing at?’
‘Yes.’ He said it reluctantly, head bowed.
‘That person, I think he’s here now, in this house.’
‘What?’ His head came up.
‘He’s the reason Mr Blackstone wants me to spy. I think I know now why my father was killed. I knew yesterday.’
When I’d seen Mr Brighton in the orchard, the look on his face, his whole posture, had gathered so many threads together. Daniel’s large dark eyes were fixed on mine. There was so much sadness in them that it scared me. He took my right hand between both of his.
‘Child, you are coming with me now.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to London. Don’t even go in to collect your bonnet. We shall go to the stables and steal a horse if necessary.’
‘I already have a horse and I am not going anywhere.’
‘Then I shall carry you.’
He shifted as if he intended to make good his threat. The thought of neat, ironic Daniel carrying a struggling woman over his shoulder was too much for me and I laughed out loud.
‘Oh my dear, I have already been carried off by my father’s enemies. Spare me the same treatment from his friends.’
He didn’t laugh. ‘So I failed to protect your father and I’m to fail again with his daughter?’
‘If you owe him anything, isn’t it justice at least?’
‘I owe it to him to keep you alive.’
‘I don’t believe I’m in danger. Another person may be.’
‘Why did you want to find me, if you won’t let me care for you?’
‘I wanted to know what happened when you were
with my father in Paris. But I believe I’ve guessed most of it now. There are two other things I need you to do for me.’
‘What?’
‘Look at a picture and look at a person.’
His eyebrows went up to his hair-line.
‘The picture is to the left of the big drawing-room door,’ I said. ‘The person is an honoured guest and will probably be sitting close to Sir Herbert at dinner. If I am right, you’ll have seen him at least once before.’
‘We are to play quartets to them after dinner. If I do this, will you come back to London with me?’
‘After the weekend, yes.’
‘Tonight.’
‘No. Carry out your engagement, play their
Welcome
Home
nonsense, then we’ll go.’
Whatever happened, I could not desert Celia until either I’d talked her out of elopement or she was safely in the arms of her Philip.
‘I’d rather play his funeral march,’ he said.
I knew then that I’d won my point and gave his hand a squeeze.
‘I’ll leave first. We should not be seen together any more. Will you meet me here tonight, after you’ve played your quartets?’
For reply, he hummed a few bars from Figaro about meeting in the garden, but his dark eyes were miserable. I left him sitting on the water trough.
*
Back in the schoolroom, Betty was mending a pinafore.
‘Where did you get to? Miss Mandeville came looking for you. She wants some more help with her sketching. She said to tell you she’d be on the terrace.’
I found her sitting alone on a bench by a statue of Diana the Huntress, sketchpad on her lap, face shaded by a lavender parasol wedged between the slats of the bench. The sketch consisted of a few vague lines that might have been ploughland or seashore.
‘Where’s Mr Brighton?’ I said.
‘Playing billiards with Stephen.’ She stuck out her lower lip, moistened her finger on it and dabbed at an imaginary billiard cue. ‘How could anybody think I’d marry such a ragdoll of a man? I shouldn’t do it if he were Czar of all the Russias.’
She scored a line across her sketch, so savagely that the point of her pencil broke.
‘Your brother spoke to me about you,’ I said.
She gripped my arm.
‘What did he say?’
‘He thinks you might be on the point of doing something unwise.’
‘You didn’t tell him? Surely you didn’t.’
Her fingers dug into my arm.
‘No, I didn’t.’
She let go of my arm.
‘He said you were close,’ I said.
‘We were. Until this.’
It was no more than a murmur. I thought of Tom and
how he’d feel if I were to elope without telling him.
‘I do believe he cares about you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps if you were to make him understand how totally opposed you are to Mr Brighton …’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Stephen does care for me, but he doesn’t understand. And I think he’s scared of my stepfather.’
‘He did not strike me as a person easily scared.’
‘Sir Herbert bought off his IOUs to get him out of prison. He could use them to put him back, if he wanted.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Stephen told me that himself. You mustn’t tell him, Elizabeth. I forbid you to even think about telling him.’
She scored another line across the page, splintering wood from the broken pencil.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ I asked.
‘Philip is coming for me on Saturday night, at nine o’clock. He’ll have a carriage waiting on the back road. I want you to come with me.’
‘Elope with you?’
‘Of course not. Just as far as the carriage. I don’t know my way down the back road and I’ll have things to carry. And we must be so much more careful now, if Stephen suspects.’
Her fingers picked nervously at the pencil.
‘It’s a serious decision to make, leaving your family,’ I said.
‘Do you think I don’t know that? I’ll probably never see my mother again, or Stephen, or Betty.’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Perhaps if you were to speak to your mother …’
‘What good would that do? She’s terrified of my stepfather too, surely you’ve seen that. I dread to think what he’ll do to her after I’ve gone.’