A Fatal Freedom (11 page)

He’d been only too eager to explain the mysteries of the engine. ‘It’s internal combustion, two cylinder, can achieve almost thirty miles per hour, runs on petroleum spirit. I’ve only just bought her,’ he added.

It was not only this fact that had told Rachel she had been sadly mistaken in his situation, his voice said that here was a member of the upper classes, educated at a public school.

‘I should introduce myself. Rachel Fentiman,’ she said, holding out her hand.

He wiped his hands on his breeches and then clasped hers in a warm grip. ‘John Pitney, at your service.’

‘Are you visiting or have you moved into the square?’ Rachel thought he could not have lived there long, she would surely have noticed his tall, well set-up figure and attractively open features.

‘I, well, I live up there.’ John Pitney waved at the windows above what had once been a stable but now seemed to have been converted to house the automobile.

‘Really?’ The accommodation was designed to house one or more grooms; it hardly seemed suited to a young man of means.

‘Just out of the army and wanted to be independent, don’t you know, Miss Fentiman? Would you like a demonstration ride?’

Rachel was thrilled and allowed him to settle her on the padded leather seat. Then she exclaimed at the way the engine caught as he cranked it up with a handle inserted below a honeycomb-style metal screen she was told was the vehicle’s radiator. She laughed with exhilaration as he climbed in beside her, took hold of the steering wheel and told her to ‘hold tight’.

Then she was jerked violently back as he wielded what he told her was the ‘gear shaft’ and the vehicle plunged forward. ‘Good heavens!’ she said, clutching nervously at the side of her seat.

‘Sorry,’ her chauffeur said cheerfully, ‘the clutch is a bit fierce.’ The vehicle bounced over the cobblestones towards the end of the mews.

‘Oh, this is such fun!’ Rachel cried. ‘Where can we go?’

‘I am afraid neither of us is dressed for a sally on to the higway,’ he said, bringing them to a halt. ‘How about a proper spin tomorrow?’

‘Come and have a cup of tea and tell me all about yourself,’ Rachel said recklessly.

‘Miss Fentiman, you do realise we have not been properly introduced?’

She looked at him, surprised at his reaction, then saw that he was smiling.

‘Your automobile has surely performed all the introduction necessary.’

By the time they had consumed Martha’s tea and gingerbread, Rachel had elicited from her guest that he had resigned his commission as a captain in the Coldstream Guards at the end of the Boer War and was currently working for a company recently set up to produce and sell automobiles. It was the start of an enjoyable friendship. Much later she learned that he was the younger son of a duke, and was formally known as the Lord John Pitney, but he’d fallen out with his family when he’d insisted on leaving the army and going into what they considered to be ‘trade’.

Rachel didn’t care about his title, his background or what he did for a living; as far as she was concerned, John was her friend and he seemed to see her in the same light. He’d shared in her concern over her sister’s plight and nothing had seemed more natural now than that she should go to him in her distress.

John led her up the stairs to his living area and settled her on to the large sofa that took up most of the room.

‘Cup of tea or something stronger?’ he asked and went over to riddle the stove.

It was not a cold day but Rachel was shivering. ‘Tea, please.’

He filled a kettle, placed it on the stove, then found a rug and arranged it round her shoulders. ‘Now, tell me all.’

She told him everything that had happened, spilling out the words without thought, desperate to make him understand how terrible Alice’s situation was. John quietly listened, made tea, found cups and milk. He said nothing but she knew he understood her distress and his calm presence was comforting.

‘He’ll kill her, I know he will! Oh, not physically perhaps, but she’ll collapse, he’ll put her in an asylum, refuse to let her see her child and then she’ll die!’ Tears started to pour down her cheeks.

‘Rachel, dearest, you can’t know that.’ John sat beside her, took out a handkerchief and tenderly wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sure you can prevent any such event happening.’

‘There’ll be nothing I can do,’ she said bitterly. ‘You don’t know Joshua Peters.’

‘But surely if he behaves so badly to her, she’ll leave him again.’

‘He’ll make sure he keeps the child, he’ll have a legal right. You don’t know Alice either. She’s fixated, says it’s her
duty
to stay with him.’ Rachel burst into passionate sobs.

‘Hush, hush,’ he said, gathering her into his arms, holding her close.

After a little, the sobs grew less and he wiped her eyes again. She closed them, the tears gone but hiccupping breaths worked through her body. ‘Rachel, Rachel,’ he said softly. She felt him kiss her eyelids and tidy damp strands of hair away from her face. The shivers running through her felt different and she found herself pressing against his body, lifting her face to his and slipping her arms around his neck. His hair was unexpectedly soft and she gave a little gasp.

He clasped her tightly, his breath came faster, and his mouth found hers. After a moment both their lips opened and she strained against him as the shivers ran through her more and more strongly. Never before had she experienced anything like this.

Then she felt him draw back. ‘No,’ she cried, unable to bear the removal of his arms. ‘Please!’

‘Oh, Rachel, you don’t know what you do to me,’ he breathed. ‘A man can only take so much.’

She ran her hands up into that soft hair and dragged his head down to hers again, pressed her mouth against his, forced her tongue between his lips. ‘I need you.’ It came out as a moan. ‘Please, please.’

Their clothes went everywhere, thrown off as each gazed at the other as though they were under some form of spell. Then the last piece of interfering fabric was discarded and they could entwine bare limbs on the deep sofa’s welcoming embrace until both their bodies seemed one.

Afterwards she lay against his chest, playing with the fair curls that grew there, while he stroked the long tresses that had come loose in her abandonment.

Rachel gave a deep sigh of pure contentment. ‘I never knew it could be like that,’ she murmured.

He kissed her nose. ‘It isn’t always, my darling.’

Rachel gave a gurgle of delight and kissed his left nipple. ‘So I’m special?’

‘Very, very special.’

Rachel could not imagine that Alice had experienced anything approaching so sublime a moment with Joshua but this was surely what she should be sharing with Daniel. She hated the thought that her sister should be so deprived; worse, that she should have to endure the caresses of such a man as Joshua Peters. There must be something Rachel could do to help her.

John pulled the rug over them both, tucking it in around their bodies. Another thought popped into Rachel’s head and she could not help laughing out loud.

‘What is so funny, my darling?’

‘I was thinking how horrified Aunt Lydia would be if she knew of my behaviour. She’s always saying how dreadful the Bohemian set are, that they’ve got the morals of alley cats.’ She pulled herself up and looked down at his blunt face with its warm brown eyes and kissed the scar above his right eyebrow. ‘Miaouw!’

Ursula missed Alice. While the quiet girl had been at Mrs Maple’s boarding house, she had had a friend to share her evenings with. The difficulty of Alice’s position, her listlessness and obvious distress at Daniel Rokeby’s continued absence from London, none of this had prevented her from being a pleasant companion. She didn’t have Rachel’s energy and intelligence but Alice was closer to Ursula in age and, despite the difficulties of her situation, could manage to see the humour in some of her tales of life working for Mrs Bruton.

There was the afternoon her employer had held one of her ‘At Homes’, with Ursula helping to serve the teas, and had announced in wondering tones how taken aback she had been by a performance of
Hamlet
she had attended the previous evening with friends. ‘I expected something out of the ordinary but to me it seemed as though the author had merely cobbled together a whole stream of quotations.’

There had been a moment’s stunned silence, then an elderly gentleman seated in a wing chair had stamped his cane approvingly upon the floor. ‘That’s the wittiest remark I’ve heard in a long while,’ he wheezed. Relieved laughter broke out.

‘My employer looked puzzled but gratified,’ Ursula said to a laughing Alice. For a moment she had sounded almost carefree.

Then there had been the King Charles spaniel puppy Mrs Bruton had acquired. ‘He can be my little guard dog,’ she said to Ursula. ‘And you will not mind taking little Robbie for walks, will you.’ It had not been a question. But Ursula did not mind at all, she was very fond of dogs and the animal was great fun. Mrs Bruton equipped herself with a dog whistle. ‘Only Robbie can hear it,’ she said and demonstrated, blowing through it and watching how the dog’s ears moved and his head went on one side, as though wondering what his mistress wanted him to do.

Ursula found the whistle a great help when she took the little dog into Hyde Park for a run. Then one day Robbie managed to get hold of Mrs Bruton’s finest nightdress, the one with the Brussels lace, pulling it downstairs behind him while he tossed the bodice in his mouth as he descended.

‘So I’m afraid I was instructed to return Robbie to the breeder who had supplied him,’ Ursula told Alice ruefully. ‘Now she keeps the dog whistle in her handbag as a reminder of him.’

Alice had laughed at that as well. What seemed to please her most, however, was questioning Ursula about America and the possibilities for employment on both the east and west coasts.

‘You see, Daniel talks about us going to live on the continent, it being so much cheaper there. But Mr Peters says that all the Europeans are liars and cheats. He does business with them, you see, and has lived there as well.’

‘I was educated in Paris,’ said Ursula gently. ‘We found the Parisians were very proud. They seemed to look down on us foreignors, but I don’t think we were cheated.’

‘Mr Peters was quite adamant.’ Alice looked at her with wide open eyes. ‘He said quite the worst were those in Cairo.’

‘Ah, well, my only experience of Egyptians was a girl who was very lovely but not very intelligent. She could never manage the French subjunctive.’

‘Oh, nor me,’ said Alice mournfully. ‘Mr Peters also said that he fears the Germans.’

‘Fears?’

‘Well, he says they want to be, as he puts it, “top dog”. The Kaiser is very jealous of the British Empire, he says.’

‘I’m afraid I know nothing about that,’ said Ursula, who disliked talking about Mr Peters. ‘But there are plenty of opportunities in America for a man with drive and ambition,’ she added, getting out the playing cards that were always with her for a session of the two-handed patience she had discovered that Alice enjoyed.

After the girl had returned to her husband, Ursula fought a feeling of loneliness. It had been a long time since she had been able to enjoy spending time with someone so close to her in age, especially one who seemed to share her taste in books.

Ursula had hoped to hear how Alice was faring back with her husband. But there was no news. A note to Miss Fentiman, politely hoping that her sister was in good health, had not been answered. Ursula could not help being worried: how had Mr Peters reacted to his wife’s return? How was Alice managing without Daniel? On the surface, the girl seemed gentle and malleable, the last person, in fact, to make the scandalous decision to leave her husband for another man. A scandalous decision, yes, and one that Ursula was sure had required considerable courage – and she was equally sure that Alice had needed to summon up even more courage to abandon her new love and return to the thoroughly unpleasant bully that was Joshua Peters.

Ursula almost considered approaching Thomas Jackman to see if he had any news. But she still could not forgive him for taking employment with such a horrid man as Peters.

* * *

Some ten days after Alice had left the boarding house, Ursula arrived at Wilton Crescent to find Mrs Bruton handsomely attired in a new outfit of pale grey crepe elaborately designed with pleated panels on skirt and sleeves offset with a large number of moulded gilt buttons.

‘We are to take up Count Meyerhoff’s invitation to visit the
Maison Rose
,’ said Mrs Bruton. ‘You look most handsome, my dear,’ she added, surveying her secretary.

As Ursula had left the previous evening, Mrs Bruton asked her to pay particular attention to her appearance the next day, ‘For I have a little plan in mind,’ she’d added mysteriously.

Mrs Bruton was always full of ‘little plans’ and occasionally warned Ursula that the following day she should dress as ‘a woman of leisure’. Ursula had accompanied her employer to Kew Gardens, to various exhibitions, and to sample tea at Fortnum and Mason’s, which had proved a great treat.

It was for these occasions that Ursula was grateful for several cast-off outfits given her by the Countess of Mountstanton. ‘By the time I can discard my mourning,’ Helen had said in bitter tones, ‘these will all be out of fashion.’ Today, therefore, Ursula had abandoned black for a pale blue shantung costume that matched Mrs Bruton’s for style.

They were bound for Mayfair. The distance from Wilton Crescent was not far; Ursula would have been happy to walk but this did not suit Mrs Bruton. So the young lad who performed a number of menial duties in the Bruton establishment had been sent to find and bring a hansom cab to the house.

‘I would not like my new footwear to suffer,’ Mrs Bruton said while they were waiting. She stretched out a slim ankle in a small soft grey suede bootee. ‘Particularly since we are to visit a fashion house.’

It was nearly two weeks since Count Meyerhoff’s note had arrived. Thinking that it might be her duty to remind her employer of the invitation, Ursula had mentioned the matter.