An Earl Out of Time (Time Into Time)

The idea made me smile. Lucian in modern clothes, Lucian behind the wheel of a fast sports car, Lucian…

‘That is better. Would talking about your problem with Arabella’s maid help?’

‘No, I suspect it will come to me at three in the morning.’ I turned my back on the boards. ‘Tell me about this evening. Who will I meet? What kind of entertainment is it?’

‘Lady Maxton is a widow with a lot of money and a firm determination to spend it before her stepchildren can get their hands on it. She holds what she likes to call musicales because that sounds vaguely cultured, but actually the musical element is a string quartet in one room with a lot of other rooms laid out for eating, card playing and gossiping.’

‘Loose behaviour?’

‘No. Madge is hospitable but tough. You can meet anyone and everyone at her house and she likes to keep it that way. She says that immoral behaviour makes everyone else uncomfortable, that arguing is unpleasant and that drunkenness is unappealing, so she employs large, polite footmen and a gimlet-eyed butler and everything goes smoothly.’

I liked the sound of Lady Maxton.

I liked her even more when I met her that evening. She was plump, dyed her hair, rouged her cheeks, had diamonds that made Lucian’s family gems that I was wearing again seem modest and, despite her beaming smile, looked as though she was quite firmly in control.

‘America? My dear Miss Lawrence, I could not be more thrilled! Of course you had to bring her, Radcliffe. Go along and enjoy yourself, my dear. Oh, and James Franklin, it is an age since I saw you. Now, what have you been up to?’ She tucked a hand under James’s arm and led him off, her rich laugh audible over the buzz of conversation and the strains of the string quartet.

After the atmosphere of Lord Welney’s party where everyone seemed to be on edge, anxious to prove what little devils they were, this was much more enjoyable. Not that keeping a watch on my tongue and trying to hide my gaping areas of ignorance of just about everything in this world was exactly relaxing. I thought I knew quite a lot from my reading, but I seemed to know nothing that helped with this intimate immersion in real life.

The men were easiest – they mostly wanted to flirt in a mild sort of way, and talk about themselves. They asked about Boston too and I was dredging into my memory of my short holiday there two years before to try and answer them.

The ladies, when they weren’t interrogating me about America, were more of a problem. Who was my modiste? I knew that, at least. My coiffeur? My maid, I told them with a mental apology to Garrick. Was I being presented at Court? No, I assured them with total confidence. Then they settled down to ask me about my family. I killed off most of my relatives without a qualm, looked as embarrassed and mysterious as I could when they probed my exact relationship to Lucian and invented a great aunt with whom I would be staying in Washington on my return.

I also had to invent a maiden aunt as chaperone in London and then was thrown completely when they asked where I was living.

‘Oh, I am such a goose! I have a memory like a sieve for all these street names – you must ask my cousin Lord Radcliffe. It is, er, that way though.’ I waved a vague hand northwards and managed to step on my own hem and tear it a little so I could make my escape to the ladies’ retiring room.

On the way I passed Lucian and hissed in his ear, ‘Where am I living? People keep asking and I don’t know what to tell them!’

‘Say Wimpole Street and that it is inordinately dowdy and you will be moving very soon and cannot receive callers until you do,’ he said. ‘Sorry, should have thought of that.’

The maid in the ladies’ room dealt competently with the little tear. She looked tired, I thought and hoped that Lady Maxton’s kindliness extended to allowing her maidservants a cup of hot milk at night.

‘That’s it,’ I said out loud. ‘The milk, of course.’

Chapter Fifteen

‘Miss?’ The maid was kneeling at my feet, whipping tiny stitches along the rip, but she looked up, startled. No wonder, she must have thought I was an idiot, prattling about milk.

‘Nothing, I was merely thinking aloud,’ I assured her and dug in my reticule for some of the coins that Lucian had given me. How much was a half crown worth? Two shillings and sixpence. I did some rapid mental arithmetic. Just about thirteen pence in modern money, but what was it then? I found a second one and, when she got to her feet, pressed them into her hand. ‘For you, thank you.’

‘Oh, Miss. Thank you.’ I had obviously overdone it for hem-mending but she had helped me catch the trailing thread of thought and that was priceless.

I shot out of the door with more haste than care and bumped into a man walking past. ‘I am so sorry, sir.’

‘My fault,’ he lied politely, steadying me with his left hand under my elbow. ‘I should have taken more care going past a door. May I escort you to the refreshment room?’ He laid the other hand over the first which brought him rather closer than I was comfortable with. I gave a bit of a wriggle and he lifted the hand abruptly, knocking my gloved knuckles with his ring as he did so and not appearing to realise. I hated the men I kept observing who were so free with their hands that they never noticed the signs of discomfort from whoever it was they were fondling.

I bit back the impulse to say Ouch loudly. ‘Thank you, sir. That would be delightful.’ A glass of champagne would be perfect. Essential, in fact, if I had to talk to him for long.

He was utterly unremarkable. Early middle age, I guessed, a stomach just beginning to test his tailor’s efforts a little, medium brown hair in a Regency comb-over, a face that was probably

pleasant enough when he was not worrying about something. As it was there were lines between his brows and bracketing his mouth and he looked as though a weekend in Brighton would do him the world of good.

And he made me think of my great-grandmother who had died three years ago, aged ninety seven. Anyone less like tiny, white-haired, sharp-nosed Gramma Lawrence was hard to imagine, but something was bringing back memories of Christmas. Christmas? And the crackle of wrapping paper and the smell of sherry and mince pies and fir tree and the kiss of thin old lips on my cheek. Thank you, Cassie darling. My favourite. How clever of you to remember…

That was it. The soap and talcum powder I used to give Gramma because it was her favourite and Great-Grandpapa had always bought it for her. Fougère des Bois, woodland fern. French Fern, the letter in Lord Cottingham’s desk from de Forrest had said. This wasn’t quite the same as Gramma’s favourite, but it was close.

‘We have not been introduced,’ I said, suddenly sure whose arm I was attached to. ‘I am Cassandra Lawrence, from Boston. In America, not Lincolnshire,’ I added with a little laugh, sounding, to my own ears, like a complete ditz. ‘Now, was it terribly forward of me to introduce myself?’