A Kiss Across Time (Time Into Time)

James subsided into seething silence and, when we arrived, got out of the carriage and stalked off by himself.

‘He will get over it,’ Luc said curtly, helping me out. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

I did my best not to, not helped by the fact that Luc was clearly very worried indeed about his brother.

I had wondered how anyone could host a full-scale garden party with hundreds of guests in central London, then realised that many of the great Town houses had very large gardens that had been built over during the Victorian period. In the twenty-first century only the royal palaces and the Saudi Embassy in what was Crewe House on Curzon Street have kept their sweeping grounds, but the Liverpool’s house and garden could easily accommodate the crowd of guests.

‘I can see some of the gentlemen from Mr Salmond’s office,’ I said once we had negotiated the receiving line and emerged onto the terrace. ‘I’ll just – ’

‘You can’t simply stroll up to a group of men.’ Luc slapped his hand over mine where it rested in the crook of his elbow. ‘I will have to come with you and then drift away.’

We were recognised and greeted warmly. I got the impression that enough champagne had been drunk, at just on midday, to relax everyone nicely. I smiled and apologised for not having remembered names and was mentally able to tick off Messrs Green, Hopkins, Bradshaw, Ruggles, Galway and Prettiman.

Luc wandered away and I settled down to half an hour of chatting, mild flirting and fizz before I started digging. ‘I was so excited to discover that the Home Office is in charge of spies. Or are you all really secret agents of the Crown?’

They grinned and shuffled their feet and did their best to look dashing and mysterious, all except Mr Prettiman who appeared to have no sense of humour. ‘Certainly not.’ He looked down his over-long nose at me. ‘English gentlemen do not engage in such activities.’ Oh yeah? ‘The Home Office directs the activities of various foreign nationals who may be of assistance.’

‘That’s mostly Sir Thomas’s section,’ Mr Hopkins explained. I remembered him from our visit to the office, skinny and freckled. ‘They give themselves airs about it.’

‘Mostly?’ I queried. ‘So none of you have anything to do with it?’ I looked disappointed. ‘Or are some of you really spy masters and you are just teasing me?’ I opened my eyes wide. ‘Oh no, was that poor man who died involved with spies? Is there really a deep dark mystery?’

‘Coates? No, of course not.’ That was Prettiman again, looking disapproving. ‘He worked on petitions. Deadly stuff, because it is exceedingly dull and he had to spend so much time hanging around St James’s Palace waiting for courtiers. Excuse me.’ He stalked off.

‘Stuffy so-and-so,’ Hopkins said and the others nodded. ‘Actually, I did wonder if Coates was trying to get a transfer to Sir Thomas’s section. He was asking about intelligence a few weeks ago. Do you recall, Bradshaw?’

Mr Bradshaw blinked at me from behind thick lenses. ‘He was, wasn’t he? But I think that was because Mr Reece put his back up. That’s Sir Thomas’s nephew who works with him. Objectionable type. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been baiting Coates with how much more important his work was than ours, that kind of thing. Anyway, Coates mentioned Reece several times.’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t have anything to do with them upstairs really.’

That was some meat to chew over, although what it meant – if anything – I couldn’t tell. I thought I had better do some circulating, see if I could find some of the ladies whose names had been in Talbot’s ledgers. I thanked the young men for their company and the champagne, said I had to catch up with Lord Radcliffe and strolled off.

The gardens had been heavily planted with clumps of shrubs. I rounded one group and found myself not out in the open again, but in a kind of little glade. ‘Drat.’ I turned on

my heel and walked slap into a man.

‘I am so sorry,’ he drawled and took me by the elbows as though to steady me. He was, presumably, used to females becoming unsteady at the sight of him, with some reason. He was gorgeous – thick black hair, deep blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones. Elliott Reece, of course.

Mr Reece might be delicious to look at, if one ignored the assessing look in his eyes, but he was also a Class One creep, as I rapidly discovered. The supporting hands didn’t let go but his thumbs began to caress the inside of my elbows and his mouth curved into an expression that managed to mix lasciviousness with a large dose of smug.

‘Oh!’ I teetered forward, fell against him and, when he shifted his grip to grab me by the waist, I used my elbow to catch him in the ribs and trod on his instep with the neat little heel of my shoe.

He let go, reeled back and mouthed something that I had no trouble interpreting as Anglo-Saxon and four-lettered. Now I had to be careful. I wanted to talk to him but I did not want to be groped by him and this was going to take some doing.

‘I am so sorry!’ I rushed forward, caught his arm and pushed him down on to a bench that was just behind him. ‘I quite lost my balance. Are you hurt, sir?’ I plumped down on the other end of the seat and put my parasol and reticule between us. ‘You are so brave – I must have caused you pain.’ I batted my eyelashes, a thing I had never done seriously in my entire life before, but was becoming worryingly proficient at in 1807. I gazed at him, wondering if I could go for worshipful or whether that was completely overdoing it. ‘Would you like to use my smelling salts?’

‘No. That is, no thank you.’ The calculating look was back in his eyes and I guessed he’d decided I was a foolish, clumsy female who was too naive to realise that she was in any danger from a good-looking man in the shrubbery. This, come to think of it, was the one thing I had promised Luc I would not do. ‘Elliott Reece at you service, ma’am. I realise that we have not been introduced – ’

‘I think almost knocking each other over counts.’ I managed a light laugh. ‘I am Cassandra Lawrence from Boston in the United States and I am visiting relatives in London.’

‘You are American?’ Now what was there in that to make him suddenly so alert, so focused?

‘Yes. My first visit.’

‘I wonder you chose to come here and not to Paris. The French are your allies, after all.’

‘We are not at war with Britain and I, for one, have no sympathy with the extremes of the French revolution.’

‘No? You are not in favour of democracy and the overthrow of a corrupt monarchy?’

‘I am not in favour of chopping off people’s heads on an industrial scale,’ I snapped, then realised that my tone was hardly that of the ditzy blonde I had been portraying. ‘It makes me feel quite ill,’ I added, fanning myself with one gloved hand. ‘But I hardly understand the subtleties of the politics involved.’ I was going to have nightmares over how easy it was to behave as men like him expected of a woman.