caught my breath. Lydiard Park, one of Lord Gerard’s many estates, was close by my family home in Swindon. In the two years that I had been serving my lady we had never gone there.
I must have been gaping like a simpleton for she gave me a smile. ‘You will be pleased to see your parents again, I imagine.’
Pleased? Pleased to return to Swindon, where my father had sold me into Lord Gerard’s service, pleased to enter once more into that web of deception and criminality? It was not the word that I would have chosen. What pleased me was to be as far from Swindon and the smuggling gangs as I could possibly be.
When I did not reply, Lady Gerard turned away. She was not particularly interested in my emotions, being far more concerned with her own.
‘Dr Baird was correct,’ she said. ‘Fresh country air and a change of scene will be most restorative.’
‘Yes, milady. Do the childen accompany us?’ Lady Gerard looked astonished. ‘Good God, no. They stay here in the nursery.’
I started to run through in my mind all the things that we would need to take. Suddenly there was so much to do. My lady was at her querulous worst, sending me running hither and thither on endless errands, demanding that I pack a dozen gowns and then removing them immediately from the portmanteau in favour of a different style, despatching me to the perfumer, the haberdasher and the bookseller. By evening I was hot and sweaty and exhausted whilst my lady turned the house on its head in her haste to be gone.
‘You will bring the golden gown with us,’ she ordered at one point, thrusting it into my hands. I could not see that she would have opportunity to wear the wretched thing but I had more pressing matters to think of so I folded it small and forced it into an empty corner of the last box. Perhaps when we were in the country she might forget about it and I could destroy it as Lord G had demanded.
Eventually, when her ladyship had driven us all, coachman, maids, footmen and the cook to utter distraction with her orders for the following day, I had the idea of giving her some of the dose Dr Baird had left to alleviate the pain. She had not asked for it, but it was laudanum and it made her sleep.
I dragged myself wearily up the wooden stairs to my room under the eaves. It was stifling hot in there as evening fell over the city and though I opened the tiny window that was too high up to give me a view, no air stirred. First I packed my own small portmanteau and then I sat down at the bare wooden table and drew from the drawer paper, quill and ink.
‘My lord,’ I wrote, ‘I write to acquaint you with Lady Gerard’s business.’ The letter would not reach him for ten days or more, I knew, but he expected me to provide a regular report. ‘This morning she sent for Dr Baird who recommended that she spend some time in the country.’ I paused, biting the end of the quill, trying to decide whether to mention the doctor’s indiscretion, tantamount to a declaration. It would be malicious of me to write of it when Lady Gerard had very properly declined his offer but the sour resentment I felt towards them both had my pen scurrying across the page.
‘The doctor offered Lady Gerard his personal assistance.’ I underlined the last two words. That would be sufficient to have Dr Baird dismissed, which gave me great satisfaction.
‘We travel to Lydiard House in the morning,’ I finished.
I paused again, looking at the candle flame as it burned low. Should I lie or should I omit?
‘I have completed the other commission you required of me,’ I wrote. ‘The gown has been destroyed.’
Chapter 4
Fenella
Present Day
Fen caught the last train from London Paddington to Hungerford. Swindon station would have been much closer but there was a bus replacement service yet again for part of the journey and she did not relish walking through the centre of Reading at midnight for the privilege of being stuck on a coach for another hour.
She took a window seat in the first of the two carriages, only realising when a businessman in a striped shirt wheezed into the seat beside her that she was trapped. She felt a moment of panic, the old feeling of sickness in the pit of her stomach, her pulse racing. Then the man settled back onto the seat with a waft of stale sweat and a contented sigh and she almost laughed aloud. The train was packed and she was safer with this bulwark between her and the crowds.
She could feel the tide of friendship and laughter starting to wear off now, like champagne left open. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t actually had any champagne – knowing she was driving later had been her excuse but the truth was she did not trust herself after a few glasses. It was very easy to lose what small shreds of self she had left.
These days she didn’t go up to London often. She had lived there with Jake for eight years but oddly her old life felt, at the same time, both distant and dangerously near. Her old friends seemed such a long way away that even when she was sitting in the club with them it was as though they were on a far shore and she was an observer not a participant. She had tried so hard, laughed, danced, and chatted as much as she could above the pounding beat of the music. They had all known that something had changed. She had seen it in the puzzled smiles and the slight awkwardness. No one understood why they could not go back to how it had been before. No one mentioned it though, not even Kesia, who had been the person who had invited her in the first place.
‘We’ll go somewhere new,’ she had said when she had called Fen. ‘Somewhere you never went with Jake. Don’t worry,’ she had added, taking Fen’s silence for impending refusal. ‘I know you’re still a bit iffy about going out but we’ll all look after you.’
‘I know you will,’ Fen said. She had injected some warmth into her voice. ‘Thanks. You have all been fabulous.’
‘So you’ll come?’ Kesia sounded eager. ‘Please do, Fen. We miss you. Jessie’s gutted she can’t be there too but Dev is whisking her away somewhere for their anniversary.’
‘She told me,’ Fen said. Jessie was still her best friend, the one constant in a life that had changed almost out of recognition. Her schoolgirl friendship with Kesia had survived too although Kes had been abroad travelling a lot. She was back in London now and keen to meet up with everyone, hence the invitation.
‘You can’t keep hiding away,’ Kesia said now. ‘It’s been two years, Fen. Show that loser he can’t ruin your life.’
Fen appreciated the sentiment even if it was expressed somewhat insensitively. She no longer wanted to scream when people gave their opinion about her relationship with Jake. They had absolutely no idea what she had been through but she had accepted that now. She simply closed her ears to the words and accepted the clumsy kindness in the spirit it was meant.
‘Well…’ she said cautiously.
‘You’ll come!’ Kesia said instantly. ‘Fantastic!’
Of course Fen had agreed. She acknowledged now that refusal had been impossible. Kesia, Laura and the others were amongst her oldest friends and they loved her. They had all stuck together through thick and thin, through college and awful first jobs and slightly less awful second ones. There had been marriages, children, divorces, affairs, all the successes and disasters of life. They had celebrated and commiserated, fixed the problems with wine and conversation like old friends did.
Murder
