We retreated to the dining room to finish the chips, drink ale and recover.
James eventually went home, smoky, slightly tipsy and decidedly greasy. Garrick took himself off to bed, muttering about what Peggy would say in the morning when she saw the kitchen and Luc and I went to his room.
I suppose it was inevitable that our mood would take a swoop downwards in sheer reaction. ‘I just want to cuddle,’ I mumbled, burrowing up to him and letting the feather mattress engulf us. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, that’s what I want too.’ Luc pulled me tighter against him. ‘What a perfectly bloody mess.’
In more ways than one. ‘One over-indulged young man with only average intelligence, one man with power and no scruples about using it, some hideous prejudice, and a vulnerable young woman. If Elliott Reece had just kept his prick in his pants…’
‘If Sir Thomas had seen his nephew for what he was… I suppose he was all he had as an heir so he thought he was making the best of things…’
We were both mumbling ourselves to sleep. I buried my nose in Luc’s dark chest hair and breathed in the subtle mixture of clean man and exclusive cologne with subtle overtones of chip fat and drifted off.
I woke up with the vague feeling that I’d heard a clock chime. It was a full moon and, even within Albany, enough light reached the windows to penetrate the thin draperies and show me the room in black and white. Tilting, blurring black and white.
‘Luc!’ I shook his shoulder. ‘Wake up!’
‘What?’ He surfaced fast. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I need to get to the mirror – it has started.’
We scrambled into clothes. I pulled on the gown I’d been wearing, there was no time to find my own clothes, no time for underwear or stockings.
Lucian opened the door, roared, ‘Garrick!’ and began to haul his shirt over his head as the other man came out, nightshirt over breeches. ‘We need to get to Almack’s. What’s the time?’
‘Three.’ Garrick turned back into the kitchen.
By the time we stumbled out, cloaks flung over our jumble of clothes, he re-emerged in a greatcoat holding a hessian bag that bulged. ‘Tools,’ he said.
We ran, down the Lime Walk, through the house, down the steps and across the yard into Piccadilly. The street was virtually empty and we were across and pounding down the slope of Duke Street, across Jermyn Street, straight towards Almack’s. It is a five minute stroll normally but I have no idea how long it took us – two minutes, perhaps.
Lucian skidded to a halt just short of Duke Street. ‘Quietly now, there will be a watchman.’
If there was he could probably hear me gasping for breath. I tried to get myself under control, clinging to the railings beside me while Luc and Garrick went and surveyed the street which was wavering ominously.
‘There – you can see the light from his lantern.’ Garrick pointed. ‘Upstairs. If we go into King’s Place we can open a window.’
King’s Place was a narrow, smelly alleyway on the western edge of the building. Luc propped me against the wall while Garrick gave him a leg up to jemmy open a window with a tool from the hessian bag. Then he leaned down and hauled me up and through. ‘Go and make a disturbance at the front door,’ he whispered and closed the window.
We were in the service area I realised as I tried to walk steadily and quietly. Luc found a flight of uncarpeted stairs and began to climb, then there was a splintering crash from the front, followed by another. Garrick was breaking windows. There was the sound of pounding feet overhead, someone was shouting – the watchman presumably – then there was the racket of a hand bell as he signalled for the Watch.
‘Run,’ Lucian ordered. ‘It doesn’t matter about making a noise now.’ We were upstairs by then, rushing along a passageway that opened out suddenly into the assembly room.
I knew where I was and the refreshment room and its mirror were through the closed double doors ahead of us. We flung them open and ran for the mirror.
‘Yes, look at it,’ I panted. Moonlight was striking the surface and we could see not only our reflections but a swirling grey mist behind the glass.
‘Cassie.’ Luc kissed me, hard, desperate. ‘Come back soon. Promise.’
‘I promise,’ I said. Somehow I would. Somewhen.
Then I reached out to touch the mirror and my hand went right though into cold, dry, moving fog. ‘Luc – ’
He let go of my other hand and I was though, into the wind, into the dark, the sensation of his lips on mine still so vivid that I stared into the void, straining to see his face. Nothing. There was a sound like a door latch snapping shut and I was whirling through space and time, turbulent air rushing in my ears, trying to think, trying to prepare for a hard landing, trying, desperately, to hope I was on my way home.
There was no warning, no time to roll with it. I landed painfully, face down, on something hard. When I opened my eyes it was the familiar imitation wood flooring of my kitchen, and I was hazily grateful that I hadn’t got round to replacing it with slate as I’d been promising myself I would.
A heavy weight landed on the small of my back and made a loud, and presumably obscene, remark in Cat.