Death at Dawn (21 page)

‘You slip out through the kitchens, into the back courtyard and through the archway.’

‘Through the kitchens in
that
?’

She laughed and whipped the sheet off the tailor’s dummy. Underneath was a shining cloud of white silk and silver embroidery.

‘My stepfather chose it in Paris. He insists I wear it.’

‘Like a bride.’

‘Or a sacrifice,’ she said.

‘And altogether the worst garment in the world for eloping. You might as well carry a chandelier with you. Are those the shoes?’

Soft white kid, embroidered with silver, that might just stand up to an evening of moderate dancing.

‘I must come up and change first, I suppose,’ she said. ‘We’ll meet here instead. Now, what can I find that’s drab coloured?’

She walked over to a white-and-gilt-painted wardrobe and opened the door on a muted rainbow of dresses, skirts and bodices in soft blues, pinks, apricots, with shawls of delicate lace or gleaming satin. With some trouble we discovered at the back of it a plain grey dress, a dark gabardine travelling cloak and the stoutest pair of shoes she owned, which were not very stout but would have to do. She ran a hand softly over the rows of dresses.

‘I shall hate leaving them.’

‘You can always buy more.’

‘So I can. Now, let’s choose a dress for you to wear tonight. It shall be yours to keep.’

‘Won’t this one do?’

A quick shake of the head was the only answer. She pulled dress after dress out of the wardrobe, trying each colour against my face, flinging them haphazardly on to the bed when they didn’t quite suit, until it looked like a barge fit for Cleopatra. After a while she narrowed the choice to a deep rose damask with silver-grey silk trim or moss-green ribbed silk with enough lace on the bodice to have kept Nottingham employed for weeks.

‘Which do you prefer, Elizabeth?’

‘Either.’

‘You must have an opinion.’

She was as shocked by my unconcern as I’d been at her politics. To please her, I opted for the rose damask, on the grounds that the skirt was less full and the satin pumps that went with it had low heels.

‘You must try it on. You’re taller than I am and not so …’ She made a gesture with her hands over her chest. ‘But we can always pad out your stays.’

I felt shy of stripping to my stays and petticoats in front of her, so I went behind a gilt leather screen in the corner. Although I’d chosen the rose damask with so little interest, it was sleek and comforting under my hands, like a cat. When I came out from behind the screen, feeling awkward in the grandest dress I’d ever worn, she clapped her hands.

‘It suits you so much better than me. It’s a great thing I’m not jealous. Come over here to the light.’ She looked critically. ‘You’re too thin for it, though. It hangs awkwardly at the waist. Come here and let me pin it.’
She was as deft as a seamstress. ‘Now, pull your stays down and let me lace you tighter. Breathe in.’

‘I can hardly breathe at all.’

‘It’s just a bit short and your ankles will show when you walk. Still, you have good ankles and the shoes might have been made for you.’

She laughed, delighting in it like a child dressing a doll. She made me sit down at her dressing table and did my crinkly hair with her own hands, pinning it up to one side with a mother-of-pearl comb of her own. Then she rummaged in her jewel case, brought out a necklace of opals and garnets on a silver chain and clasped it round my neck.

‘There, look at you. You’re quite a beauty.’

I’d hardly dared glance in the mirror while all this was going on. When I did, I couldn’t help gasping. The nuns and my aunts had all discouraged vanity and although my father had liked to see me well dressed, there were always more important things in life than clothes. The woman who stared back at me had a rather Spanish look with her dark hair and eyes and pale skin, set off by the rich rose of the bodice. Mother of pearl and opals glinted in the light reflected from the mirror.

‘You’re crying,’ Celia said. ‘Why?’

And indeed there was a tear trickling down the cheek of the dark beauty. I wiped it away.

‘Because my father will never see me and I’ll probably be old before my brother comes home.’

She put a hand on my shoulder.

‘Oh, my dear.’

We stayed silent for a while, looking at our faces in the mirror. I said I must go and reached up to unclasp the necklace.

‘Keep it as your bridesmaid present,’ she said.

‘Bridesmaid?’

‘The nearest I’ll have to one.’

She took the pins out of the dress and said I’d have to get Betty to help me alter it. While I was changing behind the screen, trying not to disarrange my hair, I remembered something.

‘Miss Mandeville …’

‘Please, call me Celia. After all, I call you Elizabeth.’

‘But my name’s … Celia, do you know if Mr Brighton and Lord Kilkeel brought a maid with them?’

‘Maid? Why would they do that? I know there’s a French valet. Here, I’ve found the rose-tinted silk stockings. You must have them.’

She kissed me on the cheek when I left, my arms weighed down with her finery.

Back in the schoolroom, Betty handled the rose damask with reverence. She took me to her room and made me try it on again so that she could pin and tack the alterations, then left me stitching while she took the children downstairs to make their public appearance. When they came back, the two boys looked stiff and solemn but Henrietta was spinning around like a clockwork toy.

‘I curtsied to him. I curtsied to him and he patted me on the head and said I was a pretty dear.’

Betty’s eyes caught mine over the child’s whirling ringlets. They were worried.

‘Miss Lock, what is all this about?’ she whispered.

I shook my head, from the impossibility of explaining, ran up the rickety stairs to my own room and changed into the damask dress and the pumps. I had to go down to the mirror in the schoolroom to put the mother-of-pearl comb in my hair and fasten the necklace. Betty gasped when she saw me.

‘Oh, Miss Lock, you look quite the lady.’

She grabbed a brush and set about my hair.

‘That’s my brush,’ Henrietta wailed. ‘And what’s she doing in Celia’s dress?’

For once Betty ignored her.

‘You’ll do. And oh, be careful of the dress, my dear Miss Lock.’

She bent suddenly and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her back then ran along the corridor and down the main stairs. Along the bedroom floor, doors were standing open, giving glimpses of ladies’ maids gathering up scattered clothes or just standing there with the numbed look of battle survivors. I went down the next flight, the thin leather soles of the pumps sliding on the carpet, damask skirts making every step feel like wading through water. There was a noise coming from below, a small orchestra playing and a great buzz of talk, like a theatre just before the curtain rises. When I paused at the door
to the first-floor landing and put a hand to my chest to steady my breathing, I felt the unfamiliar curve of my own pushed-up breasts, and the smoothness of Celia’s opals.

‘I’m still who I am,’ I told myself. ‘I’m still Liberty.’

But I didn’t feel it as I pushed open the door and stepped through.

The chandelier blazed with dozens of candles, each flame reflected hundreds of time over in droplets, like a volcano eruption of diamonds. More lights flashed up to meet them from the grand hall below: the jewels in the hair of the women, the decorations on the chests of the men, the champagne glasses. From here, the noise their talk made was something between a purr and a low roar. On a dais by the bottom of the staircase a small group of musicians were playing Mozart, with Daniel directing from the violin, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice. A fire blazed in the enormous gothic fireplace. Alongside, Mr Brighton outblazed the fire, gorgeous in a purple coat, a black-and-gold striped waistcoat, a high white stock, and a whole jeweller’s window of gold chains and rings. Beside him, Sir Herbert Mandeville looked stiff and statesmanlike in black and white. Lady
Mandeville stood next to her husband in dark blue silk and a necklace of diamonds and sapphires, her smile as fixed as if it had been cast in plaster of Paris. Celia, in apricot silk with a rope of pearls twined in her hair, was talking to an elderly lady in black velvet, her back firmly turned to her stepfather and Mr Brighton.

I looked at the women especially, wondering if any of them could possibly have arrived curled up in the well of a travelling coach. Surely not the tall copper-haired woman in green, talking with great animation to a knight of the garter? Nor the plump one in purple and pink stripes whose high giggle soared like a hot-air balloon above the rest of the chatter. Nor the buttercup-haired beauty of thirty or so whose white breasts were pushed up so high that it was a wonder she could breathe. Then I saw Kilkeel. My knees went weak and I had to hold on to the curving marble balustrade. He was dressed more plainly than the rest, almost shabbily, and had got his pulpy body reptile-like into a corner, so that he could peer out without being noticed. He was looking straight at Mr Brighton. My nerve almost failed me and I thought I couldn’t go down after all.

The scene below me began to change. The noise faded to a quiet buzz. Sir Herbert held out his arm to the woman in purple-and-pink stripes, who gave another of her high giggles and took it. One of the garter knights offered his arm to Lady Mandeville, who stayed exactly where she was, still smiling her fixed smile, until a word and a frown from her husband made her flinch and seize
her guest’s arm like a wrecked mariner grasping a log. This left Mr Brighton by the fireplace, hands under his coat-tails, a vacant grin on his face. Sir Herbert went up to him and said something. Mr Brighton nodded and moved towards Celia without enthusiasm. She kept her back turned.

‘Celia.’

Sir Herbert’s sharp command was loud enough to be heard at the top of the staircase. Celia turned reluctantly, but would not take the smallest step towards Mr Brighton. He had to come across the room to her; her father’s brows were a black bar. When, finally, she let her white-gloved fingers rest very lightly on his arm, the whole room seemed to relax in a sigh of relief and Sir Herbert and the striped woman led the way into the dining room. Lady Mandeville followed with her partner, like a woman in a sad dream, with her daughter and Mr Brighton behind them and the other guests pairing-up to follow. Celia’s eyes were everywhere but on her partner, looking desperately all round the room. I realised with guilt that she was looking for me and must have willed her to look up, because just before they went through the door to the dining room, she did and caught my eye. She smiled, a great beam of relief that I hardly deserved, then mouthed ‘Hurry,’ and motioned me, with a flick of a fingertip, to come down.

I came as quickly as I could, still unused to the sway of rich fabric and stiff petticoats round my ankles, and tripped on the bottom stair. A hand came on my arm
to steady me, a strong and sharp-fingered little hand in a black lace glove. I looked up and there was Mrs Beedle, in black silk as usual. Her only concession to the occasion had been to replace her customary widow’s cap with a black velvet turban trimmed with white lace and jet beads. She was frowning. I assumed she was angry with me for being so nearly late and began apologising, but she took no notice and kept her grip on my arm, guiding me to the side of an orange tree in a pot at the bottom of the staircase.

‘Miss Lock, something has occurred.’ She said it in a low voice, her face close to mine. ‘You had better go into dinner as arranged, but as soon as the first couple of courses are over, please make an excuse and meet me in the schoolroom. You must say you’re indisposed, or anything you like.’

‘But what …?’

She shook her head, forbidding questions, and started to move away.

‘I hope you won’t let me down.’

Then she disappeared through a door behind the orange tree that I hadn’t even noticed before.

By now almost everybody had gone through to the dining room. Just one man was waiting, his back to me and his foot tapping impatiently. I hurried towards him, knowing he must be the one obliged to take me into dinner. When he heard my footsteps he turned and I regret to say I stopped and gawped at him like a five-year-old at a fairground. He was beautiful. The
dandyism that was an offence to the eye in Mr Brighton had reached a higher level entirely in him. He wore a claret-coloured cut-away coat and black velvet trousers with broad claret stripes down the outside legs. The silver brocade of his waistcoat was almost hidden by enough gold chains to fill a pirate’s chest, and the fingers of his white kid gloves sparkled with gold rings. Black ringlets cascaded almost to his collar, his face was as pale as paper, his lips full and as well shaped as a woman’s. His dark eyes managed to look at the same time both profoundly bored and very much alive. He stood poised and conscious of his effect on others, like an actor.

‘Miss Lock? I understand I am to have the privilege of taking you into dinner.’

His voice was languid, with a tinge of annoyance. I thought of my guest list. He certainly was not a cathedral canon.

‘Mr Disraeli?’ I said.

He was justifiably annoyed at my lateness. I was prepared for that. What took me by surprise was the look in his eyes when he straightened up from the most perfunctory of bows. There was approval there, the kind a man bestows on a pretty woman. I thought there must be somebody walking behind me until I realised that he was seeing the dark-haired beauty who’d looked back at me from Celia’s mirror. It was a strange feeling, as if that made both of us into actors who could stroll across the stage, arm in arm, knowing our lines and our busi
ness. I put my gloved hand on the arm he offered me, very lightly so as not to spoil the nap of his coat, and we walked quickly into the dining room.

We’d only just reached our seats at the far end of the table when the bishop was on his feet saying grace. I’ve sat through sermons shorter than that grace, but at least it gave me a chance to look around, as far as I could with head bowed. The white-clothed table seemed to extend far into the distance. Footmen in black-and-gold jackets with powdered wigs stood along the walls. Silver candelabra blazed all down the middle of the table, although the light of a July evening was still coming in through the windows. Posies of gardenias and tuberoses alternated with the candles, giving off a scent so sweet that it was almost oppressive.

‘… and guide us, oh Lord, in all our endeavours small and great …’

The air quivered from the candle flames so that the group at the top of the table were little more than a blur, though I could make out Celia’s apricot dress. Kilkeel must be up there somewhere, but if I couldn’t see him, he probably couldn’t see me. Trying to keep the seating plan in mind, I managed to put names to some of the faces around the middle of the table. There were ladies whose political salons were so famous I’d read about them in the more frivolous newspapers, gentlemen whose speeches in the Lords and Commons were respectfully noted by
The Times
.

‘… keeping our minds humbly obedient to Thy
will, Who hath cast down the proud and exalted the meek …’

The cathedral canon on my left was echoing every word
sotto voce
. On my right. Mr Disraeli was doing exactly what I was doing, looking round. I sensed an increasing tension in him, at odds with his languid dandy air.

‘… humble gratitude for Thy bountiful gifts. Amen.’

The footmen pushed forward chairs for the ladies to sit down, mine included. A line of waiters appeared from the kitchens carrying great silver tureens. A buzz of talk started.

‘Have you any notion why we are all here?’ said Mr Disraeli.

I stared. I’d expected small talk and had prepared myself to make polite dinner-party conversation when my mind and body ached to be elsewhere. Caught off balance by his directness, I was tempted for a moment to be honest with him. I had the strangest feeling of fellowship, as if he and I were both floating free in the world, like limpets that had not found a place to fix themselves. Then I reminded myself that I’d met him only minutes before, that he was presumably a friend of Sir Herbert, and that honesty to strangers was a luxury I could no longer afford. I smiled at him, trying to look cool and quizzical.

‘Have you?’

‘A lady of my acquaintance was most insistent that I should attend.’ He glanced towards one of the political
salon hostesses, the copper-haired woman. ‘She said it would be useful to my career to meet our new monarch as soon as possible.’

‘You were expecting to find the queen here?’

‘I believed that was being hinted. I’ve stolen time from my election campaign. I confess I am wondering why.’

‘You do not know Sir Herbert well?’

‘Only by reputation.’ He did not sound as if he admired him. ‘Are you a friend of the family, may I ask?’

I nodded. Any other way of explaining my presence would have been too complicated. I could see he was trying to judge my importance. My place at the far end of the table argued against it; on the other hand a man with an eye for jewellery could hardly have missed the value of Celia’s opals.

‘What did the old lady want with you so urgently?’

So he was sharp-eyed, as well as impudent.

‘That was Mrs Beedle,’ I said. ‘Our hostess’s mother.’

A waiter was ladling turtle soup into our plates, the rich smell of it mingling with hot candlewax and tuberoses.

‘What did she mean about your not letting her down? Are you accustomed to letting people down?’

‘I hope not.’

I must have put more feeling into that than I intended, because he gave a sharp sideways glance. I took a small spoonful of soup and sipped. I’d never tasted turtle before. It was meaty rather than fishy, almost overpoweringly so. The combination of tastes,
smells and his questions was making my head spin.

‘So you write novels,’ I said, trying to take refuge in the small talk I’d prepared.

‘Yes.’

It did not seem to please him. He was looking intently towards the top of the table.

‘And you’re in the midst of an election campaign?’

His eyes came back to me.

‘In a few weeks’ time I shall be the Member of Parliament for Maidstone. You haven’t forgotten there must be a general election when a new monarch comes to the throne?’

I had forgotten. Too much had happened in the past few weeks for me to care about elections.

‘You are sure of being elected?’

‘Quite sure.’

A Tory, presumably, since he was on Sir Herbert’s guest list. I was sorry about that. The waiters cleared the soup plates away and served turbot. I drank cool white wine. By rights, with the change of courses, I should have turned to converse with my neighbour on the other side, but the canon seemed happily occupied with his fish. I noticed there was an empty place opposite him, and that the woman next to it looked put out at not being provided with a second gentleman. After all the trouble taken with the table plan, this struck me as odd, but I had little time to think about it.

‘Are you in Sir Herbert Mandeville’s confidence?’

This time there was undisguised urgency in Mr Disraeli’s question. Neither of us was eating.

‘No.’ At least I could answer that truthfully.

‘Do you know if he’s on particularly friendly terms with Kilkeel?’

A shiver ran up my spine.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I know of the man, also by reputation.’

‘So what is Lord Kilkeel’s reputation?’

He gave me a considering look.

‘As one of the greatest rogues who ever graced the Bar.’

‘Oh.’

‘That surprises you? Offends you perhaps? Are you connected in some way with him?’

‘No!’ I couldn’t help saying it so loudly that the canon glanced up from his fish. Then, more calmly I hoped: ‘So he’s a lawyer. In what way is he a rogue?’

‘He’s a constitutional lawyer, probably the best of his generation. Even his enemies have to admit his intellect. He’s also the greatest political turncoat of our times. Whatever party is in or out, Kilkeel always has the ear of the men who matter. It’s a question of knowing where all the bodies are buried.’

‘Bodies?’

‘You look alarmed. I speak metaphorically, of course. Any government ever formed has work to do which it can never admit to and, as often as not, Kilkeel is the man called upon to do it.’

‘What sort of work?’

He glanced at me over the rim of his wine glass.

‘For one thing, he helped fabricate some of the evidence against the late and unlamented Queen Caroline.’

I held his gaze. If he saw confusion in my face he probably thought it was because of the queen’s alleged and all too probable adultery. But I was thinking, Charlotte again. Caroline was her mother. He put down his glass and looked me in the eye.

‘When Kilkeel is present on any occasion, the prudent man asks himself why. And that is what I am asking myself now, Miss Lock. For some reason, I think you know a lot more about all this than you’re telling me.’

By any normal standards, this was intolerably bad manners. After all, I’d claimed to be a friend of the family. When I got to my feet, blushing I dare say, and asked him to excuse me, he must have thought that was the reason. He was, I think, drawling an unflustered apology as I went, but I didn’t stop to hear because waiters were coming in with trays of roast beef and it was time to keep my appointment with Mrs Beedle upstairs. I walked past rows of black-and-gold footmen to the door, keeping my face turned away from the top of the table. When I heard a commotion behind me, I glanced round, scared that the inquisitive Mr Disraeli might be coming after me. But it was only one of the waiters. He must have slipped and fallen on his back, overcome by the weight of his tureen of vegetables,
because his black-trousered legs were sticking out from a knot of other waiters, and peas and carrots were scattered on the floor all round him.