‘I am glad he hasn’t hurt you, but you know Sir Clement would marry you, whatever de Forrest has done, or however long you have been missing,’ I said firmly, hoping I was right.
‘Who the ’ell are you?’ a voice behind me demanded as the door banged open and Arabella cried out in alarm.
It was a woman dressed in a plain gown with a stained white apron over it. She was big and brawny, my mental picture of a washerwoman or a Billingsgate fishwife, but even so, I thought I could take her. The pistol was jammed in my pocket, but I went straight at her, yanked her off balance by her arm, got a foot behind her leg and swivelled.
She was going down. I jumped clear, ready to get her arms behind her back when Arabella screamed again. I saw movement, a large, looming darkness, but it was too late. There was a searing pain at the back of my head and everything went black.
When I woke I lay with my eyes closed, wondering if the thunderous headache would become entirely agonising if I opened them or whether I would throw up. Both seemed likely so I took the coward’s way out and told myself it was safest to stay still and listen for a while in case anyone was in the room with me.
There was no sound of movement or breathing and I gradually became aware that, apart from my head and my queasy stomach, I was suspiciously comfortable. I opened my eyes and found myself in darkness, black and complete. I panicked, curled up and retched out of sheer terror that the blow had blinded me. Then I saw just the faintest line of light that must be the bottom of the door and breathed again.
I was lying on something so soft and large that it could only be a bed. I explored and found it had a heap of pillows and linen sheets that felt smooth and expensive to the touch. This was no dungeon, nor a cellar room, and the air smelled fresh, which meant there must be a window somewhere. I got up, my feet sinking into carpet, and moved around the space, hands outstretched. I went to the door first – locked, of course – then around the edges, bumping into furniture until I found the swags of heavy drapes.
The light that flooded in when I pulled them open was almost painful, but I was relieved to see that the view was down the drive towards where the gates were hidden by the shrubbery. A glance around the room showed me that I was alone. What had they done with Arabella?
I tugged and shoved at the sash and managed to slide up the window about eight inches and for a moment I had hope, until I leaned out and saw there was a drop of two floors and then the sunken well of the semi-basement below that. There was no drainpipe, no ivy – which was ironic given how much of the stuff seemed to be draping the house just about everywhere else – and no convenient ledges.
But at least I could see. I dragged back the fabric completely and wondered why someone had thought it necessary to create what were, in effect, blackout curtains. The room was a large bedchamber furnished and decorated in what looked like the best of taste and fashion. There was another door which opened onto a windowless dressing room. I used the facilities and peered into the mirror at my dirty face, rumpled clothing and bruised cheek. The lump on my head was best left alone.
Washing my face and hands at least made me feel less unsteady on my feet and I tried the main door without much optimism. It was locked. Why didn’t they teach Special Constables to pick locks?
Where were Lucian and the others? I had no way of telling the time, but by the sun the afternoon was well advanced. And when they did come, how would they find me? I paced back towards the bed and my old hat that had been thrown on the floor rolled away as I kicked it.
A signal… I took the largest bath sheet from the dressing room and the nail from my pocket. They must have missed it when they removed the pistol. I made a hole in the crown of the hat, then I threaded in one corner of the sheet and knotted it. Something white hanging out of a window might just be bedding airing, but with an old hat tied to the end it must surely attract the attention of anyone seeing it.
I opened the window, hung out my signal and closed it again, trapping the end. Then, nail in hand, I tried to pick the door lock. It was hopeless, of course. The door panels were solid and felt thick when I tapped them, so breaking through them was no solution either.
Despite its elaborate furnishings the room yielded nothing to use as a weapon and I was at the point of crawling into the hearth to see how wide the chimney was when the snick of the lock brought me back to the centre of the room, the nail concealed in the palm of my hand.
I expected to see my rescuers at best, or de Forrest at worst. When Lord Cottingham stepped in I just stared at him, suspicion after suspicion clicking into place. It all made sense, all the little clues finding their right hole in the jigsaw. Blackout curtains, French Fern cologne, Arabella’s purity, the age of the couple in that double portrait, Lord Welney’s little games.
‘You stupid, interfering bitch,’ Cottingham said, quite calmly.
‘You should know that Lord Radcliffe and others will be arriving at any moment.’ I tried to match his even tone.
‘No they will not. I saw the carriage on its way here and had time to arrange matters for its return. Radcliffe is dead, or very badly injured, it does not matter which, and that man of his too.’
There was anger more than anything. Grief would come later, I was aware of it somewhere, screaming at me, threatening despair and weakness, but anger was uppermost and I seized on it gratefully, channelled it, sharpened it into a weapon to fight with. ‘What have you done?’
‘I saw the carriage drive through Brentford and discovered the driver had been asking for this house, so I organised a little carriage accident. The layabouts at the Halfway House on the Kensington turnpike no longer have so much business keeping watch for the gentlemen of the road, not now the patrols have driven the highwaymen away, but they are still good look-outs and they are skilled at crippling a coach. I gave the men the signal when I saw Radcliffe did not have Arabella with him. It was a bad accident. They were shooting the horses when I came past and both bodies were laid out on the roadside.’
Both bodies and the journey back from here. Not James and Sir Clement then. Lucian and Garrick had not even been able to reach Town and fetch help. ‘You are going to a great deal of trouble in order to rape your step-sister,’ I observed dispassionately, visualising just what I could do with the nail in my hand if I got close enough to him.
That word broke through his calm superiority. ‘Rape? It will be no such thing. No-one else is worthy of her, no-one understands just how pure and beautiful Arabella is. She should be mine, only mine, I knew that from the moment she came to the house with her mother and my fool of a father married the woman. Married her. At their age.’
So I was right. It had been a late second marriage and Cottingham had not grown up with Arabella, developing brotherly feelings for her. As an adult he had found himself sharing a house with a lovely, nubile, young woman and had become obsessed.
‘Do you know what the church says? Do you?’ he demanded.
‘No.’
‘That man and wife are one flesh and that those related to either by consanguinity are related to the spouse to the same degree. They say she is my sister. That it would be incest. I cannot marry her, my pure beautiful darling. Have you ever heard anything so insane?’
‘No,’ I agreed with some feeling. He was obviously insane, or at least obsessed to a violent degree, but I could understand his anger that a woman not related to him by blood in any way, with whom he had not grown up, should still be considered his blood. My tone seemed to calm him a little and his hectic colour ebbed. ‘How old were you when you met?’ I asked.
‘Twenty eight. She was fifteen, like a rosebud unfurling. Perfect, pure, innocent…’
If he started ranting about purity again I was going to throw up, I thought. He was thirteen years older than Arabella. Why had he not formed a relationship before that, I wondered? Had some abnormality in him, some attraction to young girls, made him avoid other, more suitable women nearer his own age? Or perhaps he had tried and they had