Chapter One
I’m not sure if time travel normally follows encounters with talking bears, but my first experience of it certainly did. The bear didn’t remain significant for long, but my encounter with Lucian Franklin, Earl of Radcliffe, in April 1807 could certainly be called noteworthy. I’m Cassandra Lawrence, a technical translator with a side-line volunteering as a Police Special Constable in my home town of Welhamstead in the Hertfordshire commuter belt. I don’t normally have much to do with earls, dead or alive, but this one managed to cope with a twenty-first century woman with admirable calm and only a sharp intake of breath every five minutes or so. The effect he had on me was rather less soothing, but we managed to solve the mystery of a missing girl together. I only wish I could work out how to have a relationship across two hundred years as easily…
Welhamstead Library, Hertfordshire, 11 May, not long ago.
‘You could perfectly well look this up on-line, Cassie,’ my sister Sophie grumbled, banging the vast red and gold book down on the library table. ‘And why you need me to do it for you, I can’t imagine.’
Across the room Jenny Gordon, a writer friend, looked up from her tablet, grinned at me, then went back to wrestling with her latest steam punk novel.
‘Because I don’t want to look at any information besides the details of the house and I’ll be tempted to peek if I had it in front of me.’ It was hardly a satisfactory explanation for someone who didn’t know that I was acquainted with the 3rd Earl of Radcliffe (born 1779) personally. Very personally.
‘Weird.’ Sophie pulled a face but she opened the book. ‘This for some kind of quiz? What did you say the name was?’
‘The surname’s Franklin, the title is Earl of Radcliffe. I just want to know what the family seat is and where it is, Soph.’
She flipped through from the back. ‘Upholland, Urville, Ralston… Here we are, Radcliffe, Whitebeams, Suffolk. Do you want the address and post code?’ She started tapping it into her phone.
‘Thanks. So it’s still in the family? Not been given to the National Trust or bought by a Hollywood A-lister?’
‘Nope. Belongs to the 8th Earl.’
‘I wonder if it’s open to the public.’ I fished out my own phone and had a look. ‘Yes, but not until June and we’re only May.’ That was probably a good thing. The thought of snooping around Luc’s family home was too tempting and too fraught with dangers. Someone alive two hundred years ago was dead now, of course I knew that. But I didn’t want to come face to face with his tomb in the family chapel, thank you very much.
We heaved the Peerage back on the shelves, waved to Jenny and walked along to the Stuck on You Coffee Shop in the High Street where I treated Sophie to coffee and a signature gooey treat as a thank you for humouring my unexplained obsession with Regency earls.
‘They’ve got new stock in at Slink,’ Sophie said, seductively. Soph can shop at Olympic level and, given a lucrative freelance IT career and a husband who is something in the City, does so at any opportunity.
‘I’ve got a paper on fluid mechanics to translate from German and a pile of invoices to prepare. And if I don’t get those out there’s no way I can cross the threshold at Slink, let alone buy anything.’ I could hardly tell my sister that I was getting an edgy feeling that I should go home, get close to the miniature of Luc that I had found in a local antique shop (the one with the bear which doesn’t talk, as it turned out). The miniature that had propelled me through space and time. There really is no easy way to explain to your elder sister that your latest date was born in the eighteenth century.
We finished our coffee and kissed and Sophie bounced off down the High Street, credit card cringing, while I turned for home, a flat in a converted Georgian house just off the High Street. The cat flap in the front door was swinging as I came up the stairs which meant that Trubshaw, my big ginger tom, had been out scrounging off the neighbours. They all think he’s adorable and under-fed. I can hardly lift the great lump.
I found him growling at the miniature of Lucian, frustrated because I’d finally managed to find a place to hang it where he couldn’t swipe it off the wall. I can’t decide whether he’s jealous of Luc or frightened of whatever the miniature is. Probably both. He was almost too busy being cross to eat the food I put down for him, but greed won.
‘Feeling edgy, Trubble?’ It was a one-sided conversation, he didn’t bother to look up. ‘Me too. I think I’ll get ready, just in case.’
I’d given a lot of thought to preparing for time travel back to 1807, ever since members of the local old-established firm of solicitors turned up on my doorstep with the things I’d left behind me last time. It was the younger, bouncier, members of the firm who delivered the deed box, explaining that it had been gathering dust on the shelves since 1807 when an aristocrat had deposited the contents, and a sizeable fee, with strict instructions on when and where it was to be delivered. Understandably they were absolutely agog to find out what was in it. I wouldn’t let them look – and had to make up a story about an ancestress leaving her shocking correspondence – because I could hardly explain how a modern cross-body bag complete with phone and warrant card had got in there. And then they incautiously revealed that there were other boxes and I knew I was going back.
So… Faithful bag, to be worn at all times with the strap across so it survived the exceedingly bumpy ride. Inside: the Pill and a stock of condoms. (We weren’t lovers exactly. Yet. But…) Real handkerchiefs – try explaining paper tissues in 1807. Plain notebook with pencils. Very subtle mascara. Moisturiser. Lip gloss. Comb.
Then clothes. I wasn’t risking the cashmere yoga pants and top (Christmas present from Sophie, naturally) which I’d been wearing last time.
Leggings, plain black trainers, t-shirt, oversize sloppy sweater were more practical. With any luck Garrick, Luc’s magnificent and enigmatic gentleman’s gentleman, would have kept the gowns and accessories that Luc had bought me last time.
Changed, bag slung on, I sat down and finalised invoices ready for emailing out. I pressed Send before I risked going over and touching the miniature. Yes, it was warm, almost hot, under my fingers. I unhooked it, carried it across to the desk, sat down and started to read through the technical paper. Fluid mechanics in German is not, frankly, very riveting, which was my excuse for picking up the miniature every two minutes.