Kate Sheridan folded her gloves and tucked them into the belt of the linen smock she wore over coarse canvas trousers to work around the grounds. “Well, what do you think, Mrs. Bryan?” She frowned down at the sickly-looking calf lying in the hay. “Should we ask the veterinary to stop round?”
“I’m afraid so, m’lady,” Alice Bryan said, sounding vexed and regretful. “If we could only get the poor creature on its feet, I feel sure we could save it. But nothing I’ve tried seems to help.”
Mrs. Bryan was the new matron of the School for the Useful Arts, which Kate had begun several years before at Bishop’s Keep, the Essex estate she had inherited from her aunts. The school now enrolled nearly two dozen women—half who came daily from the neighboring villages, half boarders—for a year-long scientific and practical course in horticulture, dairying, bee-keeping, and orchard management, organized after a plan for scientific education in rural districts developed by the Countess of Warwick, near Dunmow. Mr. Humphries, Kate’s head gardener, taught horticulture (including glass-house growing and orchards); while Mrs. Bryan handled the dairying, poultry, and bee-keeping courses; Mrs. Grieve came in regularly to teach a course in the cultivation and use of herbs; and Kate herself taught the fundamentals of financial management—a subject in which she had some practical experience.
Kate had put a great deal of effort into this ambitious project during the past several years, for she felt it would give women the skills and confidence that would enable them to earn an independent living in rural areas, where land was rapidly going out of cultivation. Since the Corn Laws had been repealed, traditional crops such as wheat and oats could no longer compete with cheap foreign imports, and many farm workers were forced to desert their fields for factory jobs in the industrial cities. But there were still women in the villages, young women desperate for work and willing to take on the most poorly-paid pursuits. These deserted acres and unproductive lives could be turned to good account—if not by growing traditional crops, then by raising flowers, fruit, and vegetables for the inexhaustible new markets in the towns and cities. But this could happen only if young women learned how, at an early age, before they were driven into service or factory work.
Kate knew, despairingly, that her small effort wasn’t nearly enough. There were thousands, no
tens
of thousands, of women who needed help in finding good work for themselves and their families. And there was strong opposition from neighboring gentry, who were upset at the idea that women who might have gone into their service were instead hoping to become independent farmers, and from certain local clergy, who felt that education might encourage the village women to aspire to goals beyond those appropriate to their class. But at least it was a start, she consoled herself, and several small efforts might, collectively, turn the tide of townward migration. And even if only a few of her graduates succeeded in creating smallholdings and market gardens, they would show the way to others. They would—
“Two guests, m’lady. Miss Lovelace, and a young gentleman.”
Kate turned around to see the butler. Hodge’s tone was dryly correct, but the muscles knotted in his jaw reflected his belief that no self-respecting butler should have to summon her ladyship from a dirty byre, where she clearly did not belong.
Kate smiled. Nellie Lovelace was her young friend from the theater, whom she had not seen in months. “Thank you, Hodge. Tell Miss Lovelace that I’ll be there in a moment.” To Mrs. Bryan, she said, “Let’s send one of the girls to the surgery on a bicycle. Perhaps the vet can stop in this evening. And do let me know when he comes—I’d very much like to hear what he thinks.”
“Very good, m’lady,” Mrs. Bryan replied. She turned, raising her voice. “Polly!” she bawled. “Polly, ye’re needed. Come ’ere.” At her strident summons, the calf, startled, clambered clumsily to its feet.
“I’ve shown Miss Lovelace to the library, m’lady,” Hodge said stiffly, his eyebrows registering his disapproval of the lady in question, whom he had known when she worked at Bishop’s Keep a few years earlier, as a kitchen maid.
“Thank you, Hodge,” Kate said. “Please be so good as to send in some tea, would you?”
“Certainly, ma’am.” The butler opened the heavy oak library door and stepped back to allow Kate to enter.
“Nellie!” Kate exclaimed, holding out both hands. “What a delight it is to see you!”
“Good afternoon, m’lady.” The young woman who rose eagerly from the plum-colored settee was tall and dark-haired, with flashing dark eyes and a coquettish expression. She wore a stylish cream-colored flannel suit with a pink velvet sash, the jacket trimmed in silk soutache braid. Her wide-brimmed hat was made of braided straw and heaped with pink silk ribbons, and her cheeks and mouth were unmistakably rouged. No wonder Hodge disapproved, Kate thought. He was not used to seeing women who painted—although to her, Nellie looked splendid, in a theatrical sort of way.
“I thought,” Kate said, putting her cheek to Nellie’s, “that we had settled that m’lady business long ago. You must call me Kate, or I shall call you Ellie Wurtz, as you were when we met, and you won’t like that.” She turned to Nellie’s companion, a thin young man, finely-featured and rather effeminate. He wore a white linen suit with a puff of beige silk handkerchief in the breast pocket and a gold watch chain draped elegantly across an embroidered cream waist-coat. “And who is this friend you’ve brought for a visit?”
Nellie’s slanted glance, Kate thought, was more than a little uncomfortable. “This is Charles Conway. My . . . my cousin. From Brighton.”
“Welcome to Bishop’s Keep, Mr. Conway,” Kate said with a smile, as the young man made a graceful bow over her hand. With half a smile, she added, “I wasn’t aware that Nellie had any cousins, in Brighton or elsewhere, so I am even more glad to know you.”
Kate had discovered Nellie Lovelace some four years before, when she was still thin, pale Ellie Wurtz, a seventeen-year-old orphan waif living in Miller’s Court, off one of the worst streets in the East End.
3
She had brought the girl to Bishop’s Keep, where Ellie had worked as Mrs. Pratt’s kitchen maid for nearly a year, eating regular meals and spending her spare time reading with Kate until her gaunt frame had filled out and her confidence had begun to bloom. Then, because the girl wanted more than anything else to become an actress, Kate had introduced her to those she knew in the theater: Bram Stoker, at the Lyceum, and Frank Curzon, who managed the Royal Strand. Now Nellie Lovelace, hers was one of the brightest stars in the firmament of the newly popular musical theater, and Kate read frequently of her in the London papers.
Nellie cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Charles isn’t exactly a . . . a cousin,” she said, her cheeks glowing under her rouge.
Kate smiled, thinking that perhaps Nellie was about to tell her that there was an engagement in the offing—although this slight, rather pretty young man did not strike her as the sort who would steal Nellie’s heart. She would expect her to be attracted to a man’s man, someone with more energy and self-confidence.
“Nor from Brighton,” Nellie added. She raised and lowered an apologetic shoulder and glanced at her friend. “I’m sorry, Lottie,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I tried, but I just can’t lie to Lady Sheridan.”
“I didn’t really expect you could,” the other said in a practical tone. The voice was low and throaty, but it was not a man’s voice. “I’m very sorry, Lady Sheridan. Please forgive us for trying to deceive you. My name is Charlotte Conway—Lottie.”
Kate looked at the speaker sharply, realizing that he was really
she.
“My goodness,” she said, startled. “It’s a very effective disguise. I was completely fooled.”
“I’ve learned a trick or two when it comes to costume,” Nellie said smugly. “But really, the only thing we did was cut Lottie’s hair and beg a suit of clothes at the theater. She makes a very handsome young man, don’t you think?”
“I do indeed,” Kate said, “although it was a pity, Miss Conway, that you had to sacrifice your hair.”
“Not a bit of it.” Charlotte tossed her head. “To tell the truth, Lady Sheridan, it’s topping. I feel light as a feather!”
The library door opened and a maid appeared with a tea tray. She set it down, curtsied quickly, and disappeared.
“Now, then,” Kate said, sitting down in front of the tray and picking up the silver teapot. “Why don’t we have a cup of tea while you two tell me what this is all about?”
“Thank you,” Nellie said. She sat back down on the plum-colored settee, her friend beside her. “I do hope we haven’t interrupted your work.”
Kate chuckled, looking down at her smudged tunic and trousers and brushing off a straw. “I was attending to a sick calf. As you can see, I’m not dressed for callers, but since Miss Conway is in trousers, too, I don’t feel a bit awkward.” Filling a cup and handing it to Nellie, she added, “Now, then. Let’s hear the story.”
The narrative took only a few moments, and by the time their cups had been emptied once and then refilled, Kate had heard the whole narrative, from Yuri Messenko’s death in Hyde Park to the raid on the
Clarion
and Charlotte’s narrow escape across the roof, to Nellie’s decision to bring her friend to Bishop’s Keep.
Not all of this was news to Kate, of course. She had read of the young Anarchist’s death in
The Times,
and Charles had told her about the raid on the
Clarion
and the arrest of everyone in the office, except for the editor, who had got away. He had also told her that he wanted to talk with the editor, as part of his inquiry into the Hyde Park explosion. Since he had only consented to investigate and report back to Ponsonby, it occurred to her now that Miss Conway might be willing to help him—although she would probably refuse if she were afraid of implicating any of her friends.
Kate didn’t reveal these thoughts, however. Instead, she merely remarked, in a mild tone, “My goodness, Miss Conway. You
have
had an adventure.”
“Worthy of one of Beryl Bardwell’s heroines,” Nellie put in. She gestured to a row of red leather-bound books on a shelf, “That’s who she is, Lottie. Lady Sheridan, I mean. She’s Beryl Bardwell. The famous novelist.” She turned to Kate. “I simply adore your most recent one—
Death on the Moor
. So realistic, in every detail. One would almost think you were on Dartmoor when that man broke out of that horrible prison!”
Kate suppressed a smile. As a matter of fact, she
had
been on Dartmoor when the man escaped, she and Charles and Conan Doyle. As a writer, she found it best to work from her own experience, although that sometimes got her into trouble with acquaintances who did not fancy meeting their own fictional counterparts in one of her books. Just now, she was at work on a book set at Glamis Castle in Scotland, where Charles had been summoned to find one of the Royal Family’s lost black sheep.
4
Of course, she didn’t dare reveal the details of what had happened while they were there—the whole episode was, as Charles kept reminding her, a State Secret. But Glamis Castle had proved a splendid setting for a ghost story, with echoes of Macbeth and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and she would be taking the finished manuscript to her publisher in a few weeks.
Charlotte frowned. “Beryl Bardwell? I don’t think I’ve read—” She glanced at the bookshelf, hesitated, then added awkwardly, “I don’t have much time for novels, I’m afraid, Lady Sheridan.”
“I can’t think that you would,” Kate said, seeing her discomfort and wanting to ease it. “My novels are meant to fill idle moments, and I doubt that you have many of those.” She smiled at Nellie, who wore an embarrassed look. “It does seem as if we all have our secret identities, doesn’t it? Nellie has adopted a stage name, I write novels under a pseudonym, and you—”
“And I’m hiding from the police,” Miss Conway said. She put down her cup. “But I’m not under arrest,” she added earnestly. “I haven’t done anything wrong or against the law, so you wouldn’t be harboring a criminal.” She looked flustered. “That is, if you—”
“So you want me to take Miss Conway in?” Kate asked, with a questioning look at Nellie. “Is that why you’ve come?”
“In a word, yes,” Nellie said, “and thank you for putting it so simply. It’s all very unfortunate, of course, but that awful fellow has staked out his spies everywhere. Lottie’s disguise got her out of London, but—”
“Who?” Kate interrupted. “What ‘awful fellow’?”
“Inspector Ashcraft, from New Scotland Yard,” Miss Conway replied. Her mouth tightened. “He thinks I don’t know his name, or even that he is a police officer, for he always goes in plain clothes—brown tweeds, and a brown bowler hat. But all of us know him, for he has made himself an infernal nuisance. He thinks it’s his duty to harass us, even though we’ve not broken the law. It is
not
a crime to speak and write about the wrongs the people must endure and to say how we believe they can be righted.” A grim smile touched her lips. “At least, it isn’t a crime yet, although the government may make it so.” She looked down, her hands twisting in her lap. “I have no idea what Adam and Ivan and Pierre have been charged with, or whether they have been charged at all.”
“Who are they?” Kate asked.
“Ivan Kopinski and Pierre Mouffetard are employed at the
Clarion,
” Miss Conway replied, her voice thin and tense. “Adam Gould is a friend of mine. He doesn’t work at the paper—he was only there so we could go to lunch together. But the police put all three of them into a van and took them off. They’re still being held, as far as I know.”
“The important thing is that these men haven’t
done
anything against the law,” Nellie said urgently. “And neither has Lottie. But she must be kept out of sight.” She extended her hand with a melodramatic gesture. “Please, Kate, please help us!”
Kate thought swiftly. “Why don’t you both plan to stay overnight, at least,” she suggested. “I believe that my husband will be interested in meeting Miss Conway and hearing her story. But he’s driven over to Chelmsford this morning to visit Mr. Marconi’s wireless laboratory. When he comes back—certainly by teatime—we can all discuss the situation.”