Byron's Child (23 page)

She smiled at him. “Thank you, Giles, that will set my mind at rest. You will let Giles enquire, will you not, Roland dear? It would look very odd for Viscount Faringdale to be making such enquiries, whereas Cousin Giles will not be recognized.”

She should have been a politician, Giles decided.

Roland’s comment about Byron suggested another persuasive detail. The moment came to report to Roland that Lord Thorncrest’s coachman had asked an ostler the way to the late Lord Wentworth’s estate at Kirkby Mallory.

“Apparently the man also wanted to know whether Lady Byron is in residence. Her mother inherited the estate, I gather. The ostler’s not sure if she’s there or in London, but it seems to me that Thorncrest might have brought a message from Byron to his wife, or possibly to her mother. In any case, they’ve gone in that direction, so we’d better follow.”

Roland was so confused by this additional complication that he made not the least demur.

The village of Kirkby Mallory was a mere hamlet and its only inn, the Crooked Sixpence, little more than a tavern. Fresh whitewash and newly blackened beams, together with the rosy glow of firelight through the windows in the dusk, suggested that the weary traveller might find a degree of comfort within. These particular weary travellers noticed nothing but the dark blue chaise drawn up to one side of the building.

“They are here,” said Charlotte with a sigh of relief. “Whatever we find, I am not stirring another inch this day.”

Giles flung open the carriage door, jumped down without waiting for the step, and strode into the inn. A plump man in a white apron bustled forward.

“How may I serve…?” His voice died away as Giles held up his hand.

Cutting through the babble from the taproom on his left, a clear American voice, raised in indignation, floated from a half-open door at the back of the house. “But you promised to help.”

“I must have been mad,” came Lord Thorncrest’s answer. “I cannot possibly allow Emily to be mixed up in this havey-cavey business.”

It sounded as if Jodie’s plans had gone awry. Grinning, Giles sauntered down the stone-flagged passage and pushed the door open. The scene that met his gaze wiped the grin from his face.

Jodie stood in front of a blazing fire, hands on hips, glaring down at the earl. He was seated beside Emily on a wooden settle, his arm protectively about her shoulders. And in Emily’s arms was a baby.

“Hush, you will wake it,” she said softly.

Giles groaned. Three startled faces turned towards him. Only the crackle of burning logs and the sound of his footsteps broke the silence as he stalked forward and dropped into a cane-bottomed chair across the hearth from the settle.

“So you’ve got her already. I only hope you can come up with a way to give her back.”

Three mouths opened to answer him, to be forestalled by Roland and Charlotte’s entrance. With a face like thunder, pale blue eyes popping, Roland took in the appalling sight of his sister with a babe in her arms and a man’s arm about her.

“What,” he demanded awfully, “is the meaning of this? You shall answer to me, Thorncrest.”

“I think I shall faint,” said Charlotte promptly.

Emily jumped up, thrust the baby at Thorncrest, and ran to support her sister-in-law to a chair. Roland started bellowing orders, shouting for the landlord to bring hartshorn and sal volatile and brandy. Dinah and Matty rushed in, followed by Frederick, a waiter, and a small child in a smocked pinafore who stood sucking its thumb and watching the confusion with wide-eyed fascination.

Giles took Emily’s place on the settle beside Lord Thorncrest and the baby, and beckoned Jodie closer.

“We told Roland Jodie made a mistake and you’re on the way to Liverpool,” he said swiftly. “He then came to the conclusion that you two are eloping. Lord only knows what he thinks now. He’ll soon realize the baby can’t be Emily’s, so I expect he’ll decide it’s yours, Jodie, and possibly that Charles is the father. We have to get rid of it quickly. Any ideas?”

“That’s easy,” said Jodie. “It’s the landlady’s.”

“What! You mean you…?”

“Can we postpone explanations,” the earl requested testily. “The brat has soaked me to the skin.”

Jodie went off into peals of slightly hysterical laughter. The baby at once began to wail. Noting Thorncrest’s scowl, Giles swallowed his grin and scooped the shrieking infant from his arms.

“My sister’s— my other sister’s child has done that to me a couple of times,” he said with sympathy. “Dinah! Dinah! Return this to its mother if you please.”

Emerging from the pack around Charlotte, the abigail obliged.

“I’m going to change,” grunted Lord Thorncrest.

Giles pulled Jodie down beside him on the settle in the earl’s place. She looked distinctly unhappy, he noted with a rush of tenderness. He steeled himself to sternness.

“Well?”

“Well, you see, I was thinking of Ada as a little girl. In my book, there’s a portrait and a great description of her at two or three. So when Emily pointed out that she is only four months old, we decided to practise with the landlady’s baby. It screamed all the time I was holding it,” she confessed.

“You can’t imagine what a relief it is to me to discover you haven’t kidnapped Ada yet.”

“We haven’t come up with a plan to get hold of her. The  people here say there are guards, in case her father tries to abduct her. When Thorncrest heard that he backed out.”

“I’m astonished he ever contemplated helping you. Jodie, it won’t do. Quite apart from the moral and legal implications, there’s absolutely no knowing what might happen if we tried to take her with us to the future.”

“Cassandra came here without changing anything,” she said stubbornly.

“We can’t be sure of that.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Besides, Cassandra is a very different case from Lord Byron’s daughter. Ada has a well-documented history, and she affected our own time at least to the extent of having a computer language named after her. There would have to be some changes, and we can’t tell where they’d lead.”

“But the law of Conservation of Reality…”

“…is of limited scope. It applies to small matters in which some mistake might have been made or consequences are minor. I can’t explain the maths to you, but I assure you, messing with the time stream is not a good idea. Perhaps you’ll believe me when I say I’ve given up all thought of publishing when we get home.”

“Oh Giles, no!” The concern in her dark eyes suggested that she guessed how difficult that decision had been.

He took her hand. “I don’t know if I’m right to tell you this—I meant to wait until just before we go, so that you would not worry in advance, and Harry said I should not tell you at all—Jodie, there’s some danger involved in going back. The numbers and equipment are as good as we can make them, and we know that Cassandra did it safely. Still, there’s no guarantee. All other objections aside, we have no right to subject Ada to that risk.”

Her little hand tensed in his. “You mean, we might come out some other time or place? Or our atoms spread out across the galaxy, or another dimension?”

If the room had not been full of people, he would have taken her in his arms and kissed the fear away. Instead he merely nodded. “It’s up to you. You can choose to stay here.”

“But you are going.”

Again he nodded. “There’s too much calling me home.”

Her lips trembled but she managed a smile. “So if I stay, it will be you who are questioned by the police about my disappearance.”

“That will make a much less interesting story for the tabloids. Don’t try to make a quick decision. You have a whole day to make up your mind. But if we’re not at Waterstock by early Saturday it’s going to be pretty difficult to find another opportunity.”

“It’s only sixty miles or so. Charles said we can do it easily.”

“With him driving, perhaps. He may not agree to, now. And don’t forget that Roland thinks we are aiming at Bristol, which must be a good hundred plus, cross-country.”

“Oh dear, poor Roland,” said Jodie guiltily. “And he is worried about Charlotte, too.”

The crowd around Charlotte was dispersing, leaving their patient looking remarkably, not to say suspiciously, pink-cheeked and healthy. Lord Thorncrest returned to announce that he had asked the landlord to add several dishes to the dinner already ordered, which would be served at any moment. Charlotte, who was being urged by her husband to retire, declared that she was more in need of sustenance than repose.

A short while later they were all seated around the white-clothed table at one side of the room, eating and drinking as if they were an ordinary family party travelling on some perfectly unexceptionable occasion.

It could not last, Giles knew, nor did it. As soon as the waiter had withdrawn, Roland began to fuss.

“I do not know where you have hidden the child, but…”

“We must discuss how Giles and Miss Judith are to reach Bristol in time for their ship’s departure,” said Lord Thorncrest firmly.

“Impossible.” Roland was diverted as intended.

“I think not,” the earl said languidly, “if I drive. I am considered something of a whip, I believe.”

“We must try,” Giles said, with a grateful glance at Thorncrest. “Our passage is booked and it may not be easy to find another berth at this season.”

“I shall go too,” announced Emily. “I cannot bear to part with Jodie a moment before I must.”

Roland was not about to let his sister out of his sight again without a fight. Once more Charlotte sprang to the rescue.

“Of course, if you think it necessary we shall go with them to chaperone Emily, but I confess I should prefer a day of rest before setting out again.

“I can easily return Emily to Waterstock instead of London on Saturday,” Thorncrest proposed. “Then you can meet us there.”

Roland was persuaded to agree to this plan. Giles noticed that Jodie did not join in the discussion. She had scarcely spoken to him since he had frustrated her charitable project, he realized with a pang.

The poor girl looked exhausted, pale with dark smudges under her eyes. Immediately after the meal she retired to the chamber the three ladies would have to share, and the others were not far behind her. The mythical need to reach Bristol next day dictated an early start.

Jodie twisted and turned on the uncomfortable truckle bed. What a mess she had made of everything! Giles must think her a complete nodcock. He had every reason to despise her.

When he had talked of the moral and legal implications of her plan to kidnap Ada, she had been ready to sink. Kidnap was the right word, she acknowledged. Knowing that Ada’s life would be miserable gave her no right to interfere, to remove the child from her mother, her family, her world. There was no certainty even that she would have been happier or more fulfilled in the future.

No wonder, then, that Giles’s decision to dare the dangerous way home did not depend on hers to go with him. If she chose to stay here she might do so with his blessing. Though her absence from the future might be a nine days’ wonder, it would cause him little trouble. With no motive and no corpus delicti he could not be charged with murder. Her disappearance would grieve her family; to Giles she would be no more than a troublesome acquaintance he had parted from in unusual circumstances.

Tears welled in Jodie’s eyes. She wiped them away and suppressed a sob, for in the big bed next to her Charlotte and Emily breathed evenly in the depths of tranquil sleep.

Chapter Twenty

The sun had not yet risen when the little group of travellers stood outside the Crooked Sixpence next morning. While Roland issued a stream of commands to Emily, Jodie bade Charlotte another hurried good-bye.

“I’m sorry to leave you all alone here with Roland,” she said, “but you will be back with Emily again tomorrow.”

“I do not mind being alone with him,” Charlotte protested softly. “He never scolds me any more since you came.”

“In comparison to me, you are a veritable saint.” Jodie’s smile was wry.

“Oh no, just different. So different that I daresay you will not understand how it is that I love him. But I do, Jodie.”

“I’m glad. I’m very glad.”

They hugged each other wordlessly. Then Roland kissed Jodie’s cheek and handed her into the carriage. As she settled herself beside Emily on the blue velvet seat, with Dinah opposite, she saw him solicitously urge his wife into the inn, out of the chilly wind. Charlotte turned on the doorstep for one last wave as the carriage jolted into motion.

Was she really Giles’s great-grandmother? Jodie wondered. If the twentieth-century Lady Faringdale had a family tree or a copy of Burke’s Peerage, she could look it up. But a family tree might show that Charlotte had died in childbirth. Jodie decided that she couldn’t bear to find out, even if they arrived home safely, and if Giles did not immediately bundle his discreditable charge back to her digs in Oxford.

Despite the dank weather, Giles had chosen to ride. In her misery, Jodie was unable to take any pleasure in the greening hedgerows. They were moving slowly enough to see a few primroses raising their pale faces above rosettes of crinkled leaves, vivid clusters of violets nodding in the breeze—slowly, that is, compared to a car. By contemporary standards they raced along, Lord Thorncrest driving as if they really had to reach Bristol.

In Coventry, however, he handed the reins to his coachman and joined Giles on horseback. After stopping for luncheon at the Swan in Banbury, they reached Waterstock in mid-afternoon.

Harry Font’s preparations were well under way. Behind the stables, several planks raised on bricks bore a row of large glass jars lined with foil and linked by pink-gleaming copper wire. From the end of the row a wire stretched up to the tile roof, where it coiled around one of the lightning rods.

Leaving the gentlemen fussing over what Harry called a Voltaic Cell and Giles called a battery, Jodie and Emily went into the house. Mrs. Briggs greeted them with a tea tray, not at all put out by their unexpected arrival.

A groom had carried their portmanteaux up to their chambers and when they went up Dinah had already unpacked. She had left Jodie’s few twentieth-century belongings on top of the dresser.