Second Night (45 page)

‘There're enough emergency rations in there to keep you going until you can get down to the Halfway House,' he said.

‘And a first-aid box too, by the look of it,' remarked Caz.

Alan shrugged. ‘Well, you never know.' He shouldered the bag and grinned. ‘I reckon it's time to say hello to the tree and get a fire burning to warm up his old heart.' He slid the seaxe out of its scabbard and tapped the tip of the blade against Caz's mailed chest. ‘Then we'll see what these fancy new blades have to say for themselves.'

Caz laughed. ‘You're on!'

CHAPTER 76

Lauren stood on the crowded platform waiting for the London train, edging into the huddle of people sheltering out of the rain when she saw Shriek running over the footbridge.

I'll catch up with her in Manhattan,
she thought sadly.
It's so unbelievable. My dear geeky cousin Robbie's all lit up online like a Christmas tree, and I'm still waiting for my guy to call me. What is it with these English romances? What's Robbie doing that's so right and I'm getting so wrong?

The train came in. The doors opened and the crowd surged forward, carrying Lauren with them. She glanced out of the window. A tall figure in a long black coat was standing at the refreshment kiosk on the opposite platform. She pushed through the people and got out just as the doors were closing. The guard gestured angrily through the window. The train pulled away.

She ran over the bridge and came face to face with Caz.

‘Hey! Good to see you, Ghost Rider,' she said, smiling. ‘Good hat.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Are you having a party?' she asked, eyeing the large shopping bag stuffed full of boxes of pizza.

He shrugged and didn't answer. His eyes were deep, sapphire blue under the brim of his hat. She knew he was angry, but she wasn't going to be put off.

‘I've got some great news!' she exclaimed. ‘I've been dying to tell you! My Dad's got to be in Edinburgh for the whole of next summer. My mom's staying home, but he says I can go with him.' She dimpled provocatively. ‘It's just a short hop on a plane to London. We can meet up whenever we want.'

People were gathering close enough for them to be overheard. He threw his paper coffee cup in the waste bin and put an arm around her shoulders, heading her down the platform. She shook out her umbrella and held it over them, daring to hope as he led her down the slope to the workman's hut beside the fence and sat her on the bench under the shelter. The brazier was burned clean and black. It was surrounded by a thick circle of ash and looked as though it had been alight for many hours during the night.

‘There's no time for this game any more,' he told her.

‘No time for what?' she asked playfully. ‘No time for avoiding each other any more?'

‘You're leaving in a couple of weeks. Don't waste any more of your life hanging around after me.'

She looked away. A great sob rose in her throat. ‘Am I hanging around after you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Does it have to be so bad?'

‘Yes.'

She willed herself not to cry. ‘Would it be so bad if we were hanging around each other in Manhattan?'

He frowned. ‘What are you talking about now?'

‘My parents said I could invite you for Christmas. There's a ticket with your name on it, first class, no questions asked. We do New Year at Thunder Ridge. We snowmobile, we ski, all that kind of stuff.' She smiled bravely through the tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘How about that for a cool way to say goodbye?'

He shook his head. ‘Goodbye is the same wherever you say it, and it's already been said.'

‘But it's an all-in package!' she cried. ‘Unconditional ticket, unconditional fun, unconditional me! It's just for a couple of weeks! Is it so much to ask?'

She saw him clench both fists. He was staring past her at the brazier. She saw the rain falling, and black water dripping, puddling the piles of ash. He saw a hundred heads snaking around them and the old beggar woman's face replicated on every one. She heard the traffic in the bus station… a clock chiming... the pseudo voice announcing a train. He heard a hundred voices screaming:
‘Heartbiter! Heartbiter!'

‘It can't be done,' he said thickly.

He left her sitting on the bench in the rain. She kept the umbrella in front of her face while she cried. There was another train due in half an hour. She crossed the footbridge mechanically, placing one foot after the other. The northbound platform was empty. There was a line of black, moulded plastic seats along a wall. She sat down, shivering.

The signal light showed green. A fast train whipped through the station in a blur. The light went red. Another train stopped at the opposite platform. The doors opened and closed. The train left. The man in the kiosk picked up a pen and ticked down a list in the newspaper he was reading.

The signal light went green again. Bright, yellow-white lights appeared where the tracks merged into the rain. The train came in. The doors opened. She found a seat by a window in the first-class carriage. The train pulled away. By the time she got to London, she was livid with rage.

CHAPTER 77

Sir Jonas gave out the invitations for the midwinter party when most of the would-be guests were assembled in the kitchen for lunch. He had whispered reassuringly to Jemima when she brought his morning tea to the study and noticed the growing pile of much anticipated cream-coloured envelopes on the desk.

‘Considering the urgency of our need to maintain the highest levels of estate security in these difficult days, I thought it best to retain our commitment to invite only the family to celebrate the midwinter festival. I have consulted with Mister Laurence and he assures me that there will be no hard feelings should I exclude his current girlfriend from our little list. I am confident that your sentiments are of a similar persuasion with regard to your own affairs, my dear Lady Sibylla.'

Thus there were no tricky, shuffling moments to be endured when Jemima and Laurence accepted their invitations, and Tristan was doubly pleased when he was asked to deliver a similar envelope to Melanie.

‘Good one!' he chortled happily. ‘Thank you, sir, very much! She'd be gutted to be left out.'

Sir Jonas looked momentarily nonplussed, before deciding that the inference of this peculiar expression was that Miss Melanie would be pleased to accept her invitation rather than find herself in danger of fatal evisceration.

Jasper immediately returned the favour. He patted the old man affably on the shoulder. ‘You need a decent night out, boss. It's time you treated yourself to a bit of R & R. Lots of good nosh, plenty of booze, great company. Parade starts six-thirty sharp tomorrow in the yard. What do you say?'

Sir Jonas stepped hastily away from the threat of the all-enveloping arm, spluttering, ‘Ah, ah, thank you, Mister Jasper. I-II'm sure I couldn't possibly spend an evening in a p-public house.'

As soon as they had finished work in the kitchen, Jemima and Sara ran upstairs to choose their dresses for the party.

‘I've managed to match up twenty-eight in the book,' said Jemima.

‘Out of how many?' asked Sara excitedly.

‘Fifty-four. There are loads of others as well that must have belonged to Lady Mattie, but they're not in the book. Ma's got a couple of the black ones down at the lodge, but I like Lady Christina's dresses the best.'

‘I wonder what happened to the rest?'

‘I don't know. Four are marked ‘Given to Alice' so she probably just gave them away when she got fed up with them. That's what Daisy thinks.'

‘Lucky Alice!'

The walk-in wardrobe smelled strongly of mothballs. The glittering dresses were hung on the rails on either side. The cloak had been wrapped in fresh tissue paper and hidden in one of the cupboards under Daisy's careful direction.

Sara's face lit up. ‘And lucky us! And oh, what misery if nothing fits!'

‘We should be able to make them fit. Lady Christina was about the same height as we are, and they've got tucks and darts all over the place that we should be able to let out. Do you want to see the book before you choose? I've racked them in order.'

Sara laughed. ‘No! I don't want to see something completely gorgeous and then find it's been thrown out.'

Jemima held a shining, emerald green gown against herself, fingering the layered silken skirts. ‘You can't have this one. This is mine for next year. No negotiation.'

Sara gasped. ‘Do they all have necklines as low as that?'

Jemima grinned. ‘Some.'

‘I want one!'

They rummaged through the racks – Sara exclaiming in delight, Jemima muttering, ‘Not black, not purple, blue's too boring. I don't feel like gold, not silver either and brown's horrid. So how about this?'

She bunched up her hair under a scarlet sequined headband and posed between the mirrors by the window with the matching red spangled dress draped over her front. ‘Yes!'

‘And this for me!' sang Sara, holding up a low-necked silk gown. The embroidered purple bodice fitted tightly to the waist. The matching underskirt was overlaid with a jupe made entirely of chiffon diamond-shapes, hand-stitched together in alternating shining purple and coppery tan.

‘Let's try them on,' suggested Jemima.

They kicked off their slippers and ran into the bedroom to get changed in front of the fire. Jemima had more success in hooking herself into the more loosely fitting cocktail dress. Sara gasped and held her breath as they went back into the dressing room to look at themselves in the mirrors. She let go the hooks and laughed, her eyes watering. ‘I didn't think I was so fat!'

‘That dress would have been worn over a tight corset,' said Jemima, with the hindsight of many hours of studying her benefactress's fashion habits.

‘What else did she wear with it?'

‘I think there was a matching shawl.'

‘Did you find it?'

‘No.' Jemima opened the old photo album. Each of the pictures had been hand-tinted to show the colour and detail of the various formal ball and evening gowns, and a selection of more casual, but equally glittering, cocktail dresses.

‘Wow!' Sara put her head on one side, studying the face of the woman looking out at them from every page. ‘She's different from what I'd thought she'd look like.'

‘More elegant?' asked Jemima.

‘As elegant, perhaps not so beautiful.'

‘That's what I thought too.'

They found the picture of the gown. Sara shrugged. ‘Well, I'll just have to manage without the corset and the shawl, as well as the head piece and the purple slippers.'

‘We'll find something in the accessory shop in the town,' said Jemima. ‘That's what Ma and I did last year.'

They went back to the mirrors – two glittering figures shivering in the draught from the window, one in red with worn yellow socks, the other unhooked and splendid in sagging green socks.

‘Don't we look amazing?' giggled Jemima.

‘Perfect! The very last word in fashion, my dear.' Sara pulled at her hair. ‘I'll have this coloured to match the dress. That'll be one up on Lady Christina.' She examined the needlework in the opening at her waist. ‘We need scissors and a sewing machine.'

‘They're all in the sewing room in the servants' quarters!' said Jemima, putting on her slippers.

‘Isn't it locked?'

‘It wasn't this morning. Come on!'

The turret stairwell felt bitterly cold after the comparative warmth of the gallery, which had been heated from the fire kept blazing in the main hall since they had the news of Daisy's imminent return. The heavy door to the servants' quarters was still unlocked. Giggling, the two girls crept into the deserted wing at the back of the house.

‘I've left my phone in the bedroom,' whispered Sara. ‘Supposing we get locked in?'

‘Then we'll just have to bang on the floor and shout.'

‘Why are we whispering?'

Jemima laughed. ‘I don't know.'

On the right-hand side of a narrow central passage, two small rooms overlooked the sloping roof of the kitchen. The first doubled as a bedroom and a sewing room. The second, and smallest, had been converted into a bathroom. What had been originally the butler's bed-sitting room at the end of the passage had a view over the vegetable garden and the orchard. On the left of the passage the little kitchen in the housekeeper's flat commanded the same view, while the sitting room and the bedroom looked west over the old-fashioned herb garden to the enclosed yard at the rear of the stable block. A tantalising smell of slow-roasting chicken and bacon wafted out from under the door. In Daisy's absence, the key had been left in the lock.

The girls looked at each other.

‘Do we dare?' whispered Sara.

‘Why not?'

They slipped into a warm and welcoming little kitchen that was a perfect, miniature replica of the one downstairs, except that the range had been black-leaded and there was a coalscuttle beside the hearth. Jemima bent down and looked in the oven. She counted ten large potatoes baking on the tray on the shelf. A big chicken was roasting in a heavy cast-iron pot in the bottom of the oven, surrounded by what looked like a whole string of sausages wrapped in slices of bacon.

‘This is weird,' she said. ‘There's no chicken on the menu for today and we've already got the meat for tomorrow. Who's going to eat it?'

Sara was examining the contents of the two cardboard boxes left on the table. ‘Look at this.' She handed Jemima a note in John's precisely crafted handwriting:

Dear Caz. I hope I got enough to last you for tonight. I'll pick up extra supplies for tomorrow on my way back from the hospital. If you can think of anything more, leave me a note in the greenhouse and I'll see what I can sort out. John.