He was devastated. ‘But I haven’t. I’m not. I was thinking of your good name.’
She gripped his hand more tightly. ‘Leave me to look after my good name, Mr Erskine,’ she said coyly. ‘No one saw us come in here. My sister Cassandra and I, we look after each other. If I ask her to give me an alibi she will, as I will give her the same, should she ask for it.’
Tom looked up at her in amazement. His sisters were both much older than him, both sober and serious without a flirtatious bone in their bodies. This sparkling, laughing girl with her warmth and daring dismissal of the social norms was something so new and exciting he couldn’t believe his good fortune. He was struck dumb. She took the opportunity to lean forward and give him a quick peck on his cheek. She pulled back before he could react. ‘I’ve never kissed a man before,’ she said, still half joking, half abashed at her own daring. ‘No,’ she pushed him away as he leaned towards her. ‘No, I shouldn’t have done that.’ She was all demure damsel again now.
His head was in a whirl, his whole body aflame with excitement and longing. ‘Fanny, my love,’ he stammered. ‘I must see you again.’
‘And you shall, I promise.’ She looked him up and down critically. ‘I like you too, Tom. We can meet here. It’s a safe place. Very private. And we can walk in the park too. I am sure there are shady little avenues there amongst the trees and shrubs.’
‘But you’re going back to Marlow.’
‘Not right away,’ she said indignantly. ‘Papa has to go back to his constituency, I suppose, but surely not yet.’
‘Your mother said you would be going as soon as the House rose for the summer recess.’
‘And when is that?’
He shook his head in mock despair. ‘Very soon.’
She frowned. ‘Mama promised that we would go to Bath this summer so my sisters could meet suitable husbands. I expect she meant that for me too.’ She was suddenly thoughtful. ‘Papa said he couldn’t afford such expense, so I suspect you’re right, we’ll go to Marlow. We always do. He will claim work calls him there, and Mama will be furious and disappointed. But Marlow isn’t far away. You could come there, Tom, and you haven’t really met Papa yet. He’s a nice man. Kind. He loves me.’ Her face warmed at the thought. ‘It’s Mama who deals with the business of his daughters. She knows he can refuse us nothing if we wheedle him.’
Tom laughed. ‘I can imagine no one at all could resist you if you wheedle.’
‘Not even you?’ She had a way of putting her head to one side that enchanted him.
‘Especially not me.’
‘Good.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘But for now, that must be all, Tom. I must go home or Cassandra and Jane will arrive before me and then Mama would discover our subterfuge. Go and see Papa. Make him like you.’ Again that head on one side. ‘That shouldn’t be hard.’ She stood on tiptoe and pecked his cheek again, then she caught his hand and ran with him towards the gates. Only when they had rounded the corner and were in sight of the house did she release him, blow him a kiss and run towards the front door. She didn’t look back.
He stood where he was, watching until the front door was opened and she disappeared inside. He had caught a glimpse of the maid who answered her knock, the quick exchange between them, Frances running in past her, the girl glancing surreptitiously out into the street before she gently closed the door and he could imagine that the servants in the house were as much in thrall as he was. Her mother would never know where she had been.
Slowly he turned away and almost without thinking where he was going he retraced his steps along the street to the square and to the bench where they had been sitting. His heart was aflutter and his brain whirling with conflicting emotions. If he hadn’t realised what had happened before, he knew it for certain now. He was in love.
32
It was the perfect place to meet. Frances and her maid Abigail would leave the house to walk in the sunshine or to buy ribbons or embroidery silks and as they passed Berkeley Square Frances would slip through the gate in the iron railings into the garden, with its gravel paths and central lawns, neat concealing shrubs and shady plane trees, leaving Abi to go on alone. It had been Frances’s idea and Thomas had seized on it with alacrity. It was she who sent him the note, she who dictated the best time for her to be able to leave the house without her mother’s close scrutiny and Abi was a willing double agent, carrying letters back and forth, choosing the prettiest silks for her mistress to carry back in triumph to the house and keeping absolute silence on the subject so that the servants in the Moore kitchen had no idea at all that anything was afoot.
Thomas was in thrall. She gave him a tiny portrait miniature of herself and demanded one from him in return – something that cost him far more than he could afford. When the kissing stopped, sometimes they would talk, sitting side by side on a bench under a mulberry tree. He knew everything there was to know about her now, the books she liked to read – novels – the fact that she liked animals as much as he did, the fact that the injustices of the world could fan her into a fury of impotent rage, and indignation that her father could so order her life that he decided whom she could see and entertain and eventually marry. ‘He owns me, Tom!’ she cried in wild indignation. ‘That’s the law!’
‘But he doesn’t oversee your every excursion,’ Tom soothed. His hands moved gently down her arms as he drew her closer for another kiss. ‘You wouldn’t be here if he did.’
‘No, I could be open and honest and tell them how much I love you!’
Tom froze. ‘You love me?’ He had never dared hope, never thought beyond these moments in the shadows.
She grinned impishly, not realising how much the frank declaration had affected him. ‘We are going to a masquerade ball next week. Can you be there? Then we can be together openly. Mama cannot object to my dancing with you once or twice if you come and bow and be charming to her. She admits you’re a good-looking young man.’ She smiled up at him archly.
He pulled her close again. ‘I shall do my best, my darling.’
‘And it appears you are well connected,’ she added. She knew her mother had been asking about him amongst her friends.
‘To my brother, the earl, perhaps.’ Mrs Moore hadn’t appeared to think much of his connections when he had spoken to her.
‘Especially to your brother, the earl.’ She snuggled into his embrace. ‘She was impressed. He is of ancient lineage, I gather. Me, I don’t care if your brother is a pedlar. I would still love you as much.’
He pulled her close. ‘It’s nearly time for Abi to come back.’ He glanced over her head towards the gates. There was someone there, a silhouette against the sunshine. A tall figure who stood for some seconds looking in their direction, then stepped back out of sight.
She felt him tense and pulled away. ‘What is it?’
‘There was someone there. I thought he was watching us.’
‘No! Who?’
‘I don’t know. No one I recognised.’
‘Has Papa sent someone to spy on us, do you think?’ She jumped to her feet, thoroughly frightened.
‘But he doesn’t know. Abi would never betray you.’ He stood up too and caught her hand again. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m sure it was a stranger.’
But that was the trouble, he wasn’t sure at all. Just for a moment the figure had seemed familiar and the man’s presence, in a landscape of moving shadows and crowded pavements, had made him uneasy.
‘Let’s abandon our meeting tomorrow, my darling. We shall see each other in any case at the ball,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we have been too regular in coming here and someone has become curious. Best to be safe. I don’t want your papa to be suspicious. We must do everything by the book.’
‘Everything?’ She looked up at him, startled, her eyes wide with anxiety.
‘When I ask him for your hand.’
‘Oh, Tom.’ She flung her arms round his neck. ‘When?’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps after the ball. We m
ust see whether or not your parents are pleased to see me there.’ He stepped back from her, her hands still warm in his own. ‘And besides, I have to find out whether you would agree to the match first. I don’t believe I’ve asked you yet. If I did, do you think you would say yes?’
‘Mistress Frances?’ They hadn’t even noticed Abi’s arrival. ‘We should go. It’s getting late.’ She was looking anxiously over her shoulder.
Frances blew him a kiss and she was gone. She never answered his question.
33
‘It all depends how we go about finding a ghost expert.’ Finlay had brought back a selection of cold cuts, the components of a salad and a bottle of his favourite white wine for lunch from a short meeting with his agent. ‘Max was a mine of information on the subject when I asked him. Starting at the top: there is a ghostly department at the university. Did you know that? The Koestler Parapsychology Unit. Serious scientific stuff. He knows someone there who you could talk to. If you don’t want to take the academic route, there are the churches, most of which have blokes for dealing with this sort of thing and will exorcise and bless your house, or you, if you’re lucky.’ He glanced at her face. ‘Perhaps not the church! Then there are the private operators. Ladies who tiptoe out of shady streets and appear swathed in shawls at psychic fairs.’ He chuckled, passing her a glass of wine. ‘According to Max, some of them actually know their stuff.’
Ruth clinked glasses with him. ‘How on earth does he know all this? I thought agents were down-to-earth businessmen who brook no nonsense.’
‘They are.’ He gave a wicked chuckle. ‘That’s why useless wimps like me need them. But he gathers a lot of usually useless information along the way and occasionally it comes in handy.’
Ruth climbed onto a stool and leaned her elbows on the island amongst his waxed paper packets of cheese and prosciutto, sipping from her glass. ‘None of that quite helps me though. I don’t want a scientific bucket of cold water, which is what the university probably administers; I don’t want a dotty old lady. And you’re right about my view of churches. But I want to believe in Thomas.’ It came out as a wail. ‘And I don’t want that awful other …’ she hesitated, unable to bring herself to even describe him, ‘that being from the lower circles of hell.’
Finlay smiled. ‘How lovely to have a literate guest who can ascribe a ghost to the correct department in Dante’s inferno. But, sweetheart, you addressed the problem with garlic and onions. That surely is advice from the shady ladies’ department.’
‘I don’t think Dion Fortune was quite a shady lady. But as far as I know, she wasn’t university either.’ Ruth sighed as he leaned forward and topped up her glass. ‘I gather she was Christian if a bit unorthodox, and into some very complicated ancient magical studies,’ she went on thoughtfully. ‘Come on, Fin. We need another category. An expert who believes it all and knows how to handle it. I don’t want validation, I want discrimination and then maybe explanation. I want Thomas encouraged and I want the other bloke banished forever.’
‘I’m not sure who else to ask.’
‘I thought all Scots were psychic.’
Finlay put his head on one side. ‘I think that’s an over-generalisation,’ he said gently.
‘But you said you had seen a ghost here.’
‘That’s the kind of ghost who wafts around charmingly in the distance from time to time.’ He began to lay out the food on a wooden platter. ‘I don’t think I could cope with any other kind. Leave it with me. We’ll find someone, I promise.’
‘I’m coming with you. I want to see inside his house.’
Timothy stared at April in horror. This was the last thing he wanted. The Old Mill House was his private place.
‘I’ve seen his kitchen on the telly,’ she went on dreamily, ‘with pots of herbs and lovely pans and things.’
They were sitting over a fish-and-chip takeaway by an oil stove. Timothy had been over to Muirhouse again that afternoon to see if there was any post. There wasn’t and he had a strange feeling someone had been in there. ‘They make the programme in a studio,’ he said, deliberately pouring cold water on her idea. ‘It would just spoil it if you saw his real kitchen. It is very ordinary. I’ve seen it through the window.’
She stared at him and for a moment he saw something like devastation in her eyes. He really had destroyed it for her. He glanced down at the table. They were eating off newspaper in a condemned house with almost nothing to call their own except their dreams and he had knocked hers on the head. But then it was her fault they were living the way they did. He had always followed her lead. Ten years older than him, it had been April who had brought him up. He didn’t even remember their parents. Even when he was a little boy she had been pursuing some agenda he had never quite fathomed, as though she were trying to pay life back. He sighed. He wasn’t going to take her to the Old Mill House. If he went, and he knew he would, it would be alone, with a torch, wearing gloves. One way or another he intended to make damn sure they would have enough money after his visit to see them through the winter.
It was time to move on again. Find another crib. Andrew lay on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring round the room critically. Unlike his previous berth this place was shabby and dirty and dark. He could afford something much better and he was beginning to dislike the way the landlord looked at him so calculatingly when he came to collect the rent. On the plus side these knots of narrow noisy streets in the Rookeries, with their filth and their bawds and the perpetual dusk of the tall buildings reaching across towards one another beneath strings of washing, were the perfect hideout. Even if anyone had spotted him when he was out and about on his own particular business, they wouldn’t dare follow him back here. He frowned. Somewhere down in the street a child was screaming. There were shouts and he heard the wail of a woman. No doubt some dirty brat had got under the wheels of a cart.
He stretched and reached for the bottle by his bed. Perhaps a short doze then he would get dressed up and go out, wander the smart areas around the park and pick some more pockets or collect some more coins from the gutters. Whoever had said that London’s streets were paved with gold had been right. It was astonishing how often the gentry, drunk or just careless, dropped their money without realising it or without wanting to scrabble in the muck to pick them up.
He smiled lazily to himself, wondering how Thomas was doing. He was still on leave, in London, living like a prince in the house of that weird countess. No doubt he was still following that dark-eyed doxy around, all doe-eyed and lustful. When Andrew had seen them kissing under a tree it had been all he could do not to puke!
He settled back more comfortably on the pillow and went back to one of his favourite daydreams: getting even. Perhaps it was time to make an advance on Miss Moore himself. Oh yes, he had made it his business to find out her name and exactly what number Charles Street her father lived at. An MP, no less. Andrew had spent a great deal of time thinking up the perfect trick to play on the lovers. The ever-so-proper MP and his wife wouldn’t be pleased to know that their daughter was hanging out in secret with a sailor boy who had picked up the pox in the West Indies, indeed they wouldn’t. Then when Miss Moore was at her most devastated he would move in to comfort her. She was clearly not averse to secret rendezvous. Once he had her alone in an avenue between the trees without her maid he would find out just what it was that attracted Tom to her so much. He licked his lips. She would be ruined, of course. But that was the whole point.
When he went out an hour later he had in his pocket a neatly folded and sealed letter addressed to Mr Daniel Moore, MP. He was particularly pleased with the seal he had bought at a printer’s and stationer’s shop in Little Britain. It depicted Hermes the messenger of the gods.
* * *
Their leave was nearly over. Thomas stared at his fellow ensign, shocked. He had lost track of time over the past few weeks and been so distracted by the delightful dalliance with Fanny that everything else had gone out of his head.
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‘We are posted to Minorca, my friend. The most boring of the overseas postings, I hear!’ Alex was sitting on the far side of the table in the Cheshire Cheese. ‘How could you not have seen the notices?’
Tom was dismayed. ‘I can’t go.’
‘You have to, old boy. Unless you can buy yourself out. Don’t be stupid. Why would you not want to go? You’d enjoy it with your endless sketchbooks! And at least we’re not bound for the West Indies!’
Tom could only think of one recourse. He hadn’t seen much of his brother David over the last few months. The Earl of Buchan was lodging in London, not far from his sisters, but Tom had little time for the religious fervour his eldest brother had displayed since his father’s death; he had enough of that at the breakfast table in Lady Huntingdon’s house now she was back in residence. Today, however, he made a point of catching David before he was out of the house in the morning.
‘I have to buy myself out of the army.’ Tom made no bones about why he had come. ‘There must be some more money due to me from Papa’s estate.’
‘What on earth makes you think that?’ They were in the morning room and David wandered over to the sideboard to pour himself some coffee. He had sent the servants away after one look at the agitated expression on his youngest brother’s face. ‘You and Harry seem to think I have become the family’s bank.’
That gave Tom pause for thought. Harry was in Edinburgh, working as a lawyer, and a very successful one, by all accounts. Why had he been soliciting money from his brother?
‘What does he need it for?’ As soon as the distracting thought had occurred to Tom the words were out there, hanging in the silence.
David raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think that need concern you. But, for that matter, what do you need it for so urgently? You have a commission—’
‘Which I paid for myself with every penny of my savings from four years’ sweat in the navy!’