Banquet of Lies (7 page)

T
he house had stilled around her, and Gigi slowly became aware of the quiet, as if it were a sound itself rather than the lack of one.

She was comfortable here, she realized with surprise, setting down her father’s papers and arching her neck to relieve the stiffness. Part of that was knowing that her parents had been welcome here, and had liked both the previous viscounts and the current Lord Aldridge.

Edgars, for all his posturing and rules, had taken in someone like Mavis, and had the grace to thank his staff when thanks were due. He was better than he’d first appeared, and she knew this place could have been so much worse.

Her eyes fell on the letter she’d been reading, addressed to her father, and she fought the grief that rose up. The regard the man who had written the letter had for her father was clear, but there was no address, not even a name. The writer had simply signed himself D.

It did not help her.

If she could send the document in the hidden pocket she’d sewn into her petticoat directly to him, the massive weight of responsibility would lift a little off her chest, help her breathe a little easier. But the mysterious D. had made sure there was no clue as to where he lived or who he was.

Those details had all been in her father’s head. And while he’d always given her the documents he couriered for the Crown to hide in the pockets she’d sewn into all her petticoats, she’d never known anything about them. Not what was written on them, not why they were carrying them.

Her father had said it was much safer for her that way. Keeping the safekeeper safe, he’d always joked.

It wasn’t so funny now.

She stood and gathered the papers together, set them neatly back into their trunk, and locked it.

She should have been exhausted. But thinking of her father, reading his papers, had brought those last few minutes in the gardens of Tessin Palace back in stark relief.

She didn’t want to close her eyes, because she knew what would haunt her dreams.

She walked out of her bedroom, through her sitting room and into the kitchen, stepping quietly into her new domain.

A kitchen under her own command.

She smiled at the heady thought. In Pierre and Georges’s kitchen she had been only a sous-chef, and in the beginning, only on sufferance. She’d earned the title now, but in the old days, they had merely been humoring a grief-stricken
child who wanted to hear her mother’s language spoken all around her.

The kitchen was large and in darkness, except for a weak light that spilled down the stairs that led to the front hallway, left on for Lord Aldridge’s return.

The scent of dried herbs, lemon and a faint, lingering smell of the
boeuf bourguignon
hung in the air.

She fussed with the stove, then with the dishcloths, turning them where they hung to dry. Then she slipped into the cold store to check her brioche dough, and as she smoothed the damp cloth back over the bowl, she admitted to herself she was simply trying to stay busy.

She walked back into the kitchen and stood silent for a long moment, listening. Edgars was either in his rooms, right next to her own, or above, waiting for Aldridge to return.

She wanted to go out. And what did it matter if the new cook took the air late at night? It might even be advisable to set a precedent where that was concerned.

Before she could reconsider, she was up the back stairs, turning the big iron key in the lock and stepping out into the night.

She took the key with her and locked the door, unwilling to be locked out by mistake. She lifted her skirt and slipped it into one of her hidden petticoat pockets, and it knocked against the side of her knee as she started walking to the lane that ran along the back of the houses.

The alley wasn’t as straight as Chapel Street, twisting and winding along the rear gardens like a cat weaving through legs
in a crowd. It had no lights, either. The darkness was why she had chosen to go this way.

Up ahead, the bulky shape of Goldfern rose above its stone garden walls in the weak light of a half moon.

The lane was narrow, just wide enough for a single cart, and it smelled of sewage, rotting cabbage and the throat-catching odor of dead rat.

It was at least paved with cobbles, but they were slick with grime and she had to keep her wits as she walked on them.

The door to Goldfern’s gardens was poorly maintained, the paint peeling off it, and it didn’t sit flush with the thick stone wall into which it was set.

This was so surprising to her that she stared at it a moment. Perhaps the other side looked very different. No servant would expect either her or her father to step out of the back door into this lane. Yet she shivered, somehow disturbed.

She turned the handle, but the door was either locked or so swollen in its frame that it wouldn’t budge. She hadn’t expected it to be that easy, anyway.

She could turn around now and go back, but the thought of sleep was still so unwelcome, she stepped closer to the wall and ran her hands over the stones.

There were plenty of cracks and tiny ledges in the uneven stonework for her to climb up, even though she was still in her smart wool dress and leather shoes, rather than the
gákti
and boots the Sami had given her to climb with. She and her father had been taken into the mountains in Lapland near the
Norwegian border by the Sami people they had being staying with, and she had loved it.

If she hadn’t been her father’s companion, traveling Europe and beyond like a nomad to collect stories for his collection, she would have been forced to turn around and trudge back to Aldridge House. But she
had
been his companion. She knew she could do this.

She stretched up and caught her first hold, bracing her foot and pulling herself up, hand over hand, until she was balancing on top of the wall. It had taken less than two minutes.

She crouched on the wide ledge and turned her attention to Goldfern. She would rather see what she could from here than risk dropping to the ground inside and having difficulty getting back.

The minutes ticked by, the house lying still and silent, and the chill of the stone began to seep through the soles of her shoes and into her palms. She lifted her hands and laid them on her thighs to ease the bite.

There was nothing obviously wrong, nothing to see, but still she waited, the sight of her family home reminding her of happier times.

She was about to clamber down when a light flared behind a window, spilling out from a crack in the curtains and illuminating a small slice of garden.

She froze.

Whoever it was didn’t linger, moving to the next room and then the next, all along the back of the house.

There was something purposeful about the way the light moved, as if the person holding it was conducting a search.

But a search for what?

Evidence that she was back in London? Had been to the house?

Whoever held the lamp stood in the library now, the light shining across the lawn. It took her a moment to understand that the person had drawn back the curtains to look out into the garden, and she shrank back, catching the briefest glimpse of a man.

The light went out.

Could he have seen her?

She reasoned with herself that he could not. She was crouched low and in complete darkness, and the light hadn’t been strong enough to reach across to the back wall. And yet, could she take the chance?

He could simply be done with the back rooms and have moved on to search the front of the house. But her imagination conjured the shadow man, his lantern extinguished, slipping out of the house and circling around to wait for her in the alley below.

A spike of fear lanced through her. She peered carefully into the alley—though it would be impossible for him to already be there, even if she were right—before she started climbing down. She took it too fast, scraping her hands and fumbling her footing, until she dropped and landed hard on the cobbles, hands stinging, knees jolted.

She started back for Aldridge House, hobbling a little until
her legs stopped aching. She wanted to run, but it would slow her down even more if she fell on the grime-slick cobbles, so she forced herself to a quick, careful walk. She looked over her shoulder, but there was nothing but darkness and silence behind her.

It didn’t comfort her in the least.

At last she reached the little alleyway that led to the kitchen door, breathing hard, with perspiration beading on her forehead and between her shoulder blades.

A sheet of newspaper skittered down the alley on a sudden gust of wind, and she thought her heart would stop. Gasping, her imagination conjuring shadow men behind her, she rattled the handle for a few panicked seconds until she remembered she had the key.

She had to steel herself to extract it from her hidden pocket without dropping it, and with shaking fingers she unlocked the door and threw herself inside, slamming it shut behind her.

She needed two tries to get the key into the lock, and only relaxed when she heard the comforting clunk of the bolt engaging. Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead on the door. When she turned slowly around, she let out a soft scream.

Edgars was staring at her from the middle of the kitchen, his body tense as if ready for danger, the candle in his hand throwing leaping shadows about the room.

“All right?” he asked eventually, when they had stared at each other for almost a minute.

She let out a long breath and briefly closed her eyes.
Careful now. Very careful.
“
Oui
. I couldn’t sleep. It is always so, in a strange, new place. So I take the walk, and I think there is someone following me. But it is nothing. Just nerves. I am overtired.” She let the French accent clog her speech like thick cream and walked down the stairs, giving Edgars a wide berth as she went to her door.

He had turned to follow her and was still staring at her. She gave him a nod. “Good night, Mr. Edgars.”

He nodded back, but as she closed her door, she saw what was in his eyes.

Suspicion.

J
onathan walked home deep in thought. Mention of the Barringtons had dredged up memories for him—memories of the last time he and his brother and father had been together, while he was on leave from the army. His father, already extremely ill, had died a few months after he’d gone back to his unit.

He recalled the day his father had invited Adèle Barrington for tea. Had she brought her daughter with her that day? He couldn’t recall; all he could remember was vying with his brother and his father for Mrs. Barrington’s smiles and laughter. She had brought sunlight into the house.

None of them could get enough of her, of her feminine warmth, in a home too long the preserve of men only.

He recalled wondering how Barrington could bear to stay away from home for such long periods of time, with a jewel like Adèle Barrington waiting for him.

He came level with Aldridge House. The Barrington place,
Goldfern, was just a little way along. He continued on toward it, unwilling to go into his own house just yet.

He hardly noticed Goldfern going about his business day to day, but it was a huge, hulking place that took up more than its fair share of the street. He couldn’t ever remember seeing anyone come or go from there; Barrington had been away since Gerald died of appendicitis and he’d come home to take the title.

The house had been empty all that time.

He’d been staring at the house for less than a minute when he became aware of a light behind one of the curtains. It fluctuated, as if someone held a lantern and was moving about the room.

He walked closer.

It was nearly midnight, and with the house empty, there was no reason for a servant to be up and wandering at this time.

He stepped over the low iron railing into the narrow strip of garden that ran between the street and the house. The window was high—as at his own house, there would be a floor below with high ceilings, housing the kitchens and some of the servants’ quarters. It meant the windowsill was just in line with the top of his head; he wouldn’t be able to peer inside.

He walked to the path and up the stairs to the front door, and hammered with the door knocker. Then he ran back to the window to see the reaction. If it was a servant, he or she would come to the door.

The light disappeared abruptly, as if someone had blown it out, and he heard the faint sound of running footsteps.

Nothing innocent about this at all.

He thought the person had run right, and sped along the front to the right side of the house and looked down. A figure was climbing out a low-set window at the far end.

He gave a shout and started running again, but the intruder had seen him and was off, racing across the garden. A man, well built and tall. He disappeared into the shadows at the back of the garden and Jonathan heard the door onto the access lane slam open.

The garden was simply laid out, with a wide swath of lawn to the back, and he was at the garden door himself very quickly. It was ajar, the key hanging slightly out as if wrenched, and he stepped into the lane. It was pitch-dark, and there was no sound. It was as if the runner had never been.