A Fatal Freedom (8 page)

While attending to this task, Ursula had a good view of the square with a heavy curtain protecting her from being seen. A postman was delivering letters to houses on the other side. Two men dressed in formal business attire descended from a cab. A middle-aged woman hurried past the window. There was no sign of Jackman.

‘I found her on my doorstep,’ said Mrs Trenchard, taking the plate with a slice of cake Ursula handed to her. ‘About to ring the bell. Dear Felix is not at all well and must not be disturbed, so I bundled her into a cab and brought her here. I am afraid she was quite unable to give me a coherent account of her activities.’ She drummed her fingers irritably on the desk. ‘Apart from the fact that she has left her husband.’

Alice Peters was shivering, her huge violet eyes swollen and red, her mouth quivering. ‘I could not stay,’ she moaned. ‘I could not stay one more minute. Not after I knew my feelings for Daniel.’

A hand banged down on the desk. ‘I never thought to hear my sister’s child abandon her duty!’ The words seemed wrenched from Mrs Trenchard, her face a cold mask. Alice Peters visibly flinched.

‘She owes no duty to that brute,’ Rachel Fentiman said angrily. She rose. ‘How can you talk like that, Aunt? What about the equality for women that you fight for?’

‘Achieving female suffrage has nothing to do with the duty a wife owes to her husband.’

‘Balderdash!’ Rachel once again crouched beside her sister. ‘Tell us everything, Alice,’ she said gently. ‘When did you decide to leave Joshua?’

Alice sat pulling at the sodden linen of her handkerchief, took a deep breath and found her composure. ‘Joshua faced me with a private detective. He told me I had been followed. He had a whole list of times and places where Daniel and I had met.’ She gave a small gasp. ‘Rachel, you would have been proud of me. I don’t know how I held myself together; Joshua was outrageous and I found myself so angry.’ She looked round the room. ‘I think that’s why I’m here. Somehow, facing Joshua and that detective, I found I was stronger than I ever thought I could be. And I determined that from now on, I would not let Joshua rule my life.’

Rachel patted the now still hands. ‘But didn’t you tell me you thought someone had been observing you?’

‘Oh, that! But I only thought maybe a young man was trying to find an opportunity to meet an unaccompanied female. I wasn’t used to going around on my own; I felt vulnerable. But I never imagined I was being followed by a detective.’

‘What did you tell Joshua?’

‘I said Daniel was a friend of yours, Rachel. Well,’ Alice glanced quickly at her aunt then looked again at her sister. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? Didn’t we meet at a poetry afternoon you took me to? Didn’t you introduce us?’

‘Quite right. Daniel and I have been friends for several years,’ Rachel said soothingly. She removed the sodden handkerchief and handed her the plate with a slice of cake that Ursula offered.

‘When we went to the menagerie, I hadn’t told you he would be there, had I?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘But I was not surprised to find him waiting for us.’ She smiled at Alice.

Her sister dropped her gaze. ‘He’d been pleading with me for weeks to leave Joshua. He said we could live on the continent, that it was cheap in the South of France. I have the income that Mama left me. It should be enough if we live simply. That is until Daniel becomes a famous author.’ She looked passionately into Rachel’s eyes. ‘He is so clever and yet he loves me; loves me as Joshua never has.’

‘We all love you, darling.’

Alice ate a little of the cake in an absent-minded way. ‘It was at the menagerie that I realised how much I needed Daniel, that I couldn’t live without him.’

‘Pshaw!’ exclaimed Mrs Trenchard. Her hand resting on the desk clenched but she said nothing further.

‘I didn’t tell Joshua that, though, when he faced me with his detective,’ Alice said proudly. ‘I couldn’t tell him then that I was going to leave him; I had to make sure that, when I went, I wasn’t followed, because if Joshua found me, he’d force me to return.’ She gave a big sigh. ‘You will never know how hard it was to keep my true feelings secret, to make him think I was still an obedient wife.’ She smiled proudly and ate more of the cake.

Ursula watched the way Alice leaned confidingly towards her sister. The girl seemed young for her years. How long had Jackman said Mr and Mrs Peters had been married? Five years? Alice could have easily passed for eighteen and yet she had been married to that brute of a husband for five years.

‘Yesterday I discovered that Joshua would be out that evening, a Masonic affair. I knew he would be late home and that he would sleep in his dressing room. So I wrote to Mrs Rokeby. Daniel had said his mother would be happy to take me in until we could leave for France. I told her I would come today. Then I wrote and told Daniel the same.’ She gave her sister another of those confiding looks. ‘Usually I would have given the letters to Millie, my maid, to post. But lately I have suspected that she has been too free with details of where I’m going. I told myself I was too suspicious; Millie and I have always been close.’ She gave a little gasp and put down the now empty plate, ‘I’ve always relied on her; in that dreadful house, she’s been my support, but how else could that detective have been able to follow me?’

‘So you didn’t tell Millie you were going to leave?’ Rachel said.

Alice shook her head. She’d taken off whatever hat she had been wearing and tendrils of fair hair hung down beside her cheeks. ‘I posted the letters myself. Last night I hardly slept. I rose very early, long before it was Millie’s time to come and wake me, and I dressed myself.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I had trouble with my corsets and then could hardly do up my waist band; it was such a relief to have Martha pull the strings properly tight.’

Ursula could not help wondering at the girl’s anxiety about the size of her waist, then told herself she did not care enough about her own. As long as she looked neat, she was happy.

‘I left a note for Joshua and took a small bag with necessities. Nobody saw me leave.’ Another little gasp. ‘Millie will have had such a shock!’

Martha reappeared. ‘Thought you might need some hot water,’ she said, filling the teapot. ‘Are you all right now, dear?’ she said to Alice. ‘Your poor mother would be so upset to see you in this state.’

Alice smiled at her. ‘If only I had taken you as my maid after Mama passed away.’

‘There, there, my little dear. Who would have looked after your sister? Now, you let me know if there’s anything else I can do.’ She looked across at Rachel Fentiman. ‘Will there be anything else?’

‘No, thank you, Martha, that will be all.’

The woman patted Alice’s shoulder and left the room.

‘I do wish you had let me know what you meant to do, Alice,’ said Rachel, handing her cup to Ursula for a refill. ‘I could have told you that Mrs Rokeby was unexpectedly called away. Her mother is very ill in the Lake District. I met Daniel at a friend’s house three days ago and he told me he was to take her there the following day. Did you go to her house?’

Ursula offered more tea to Mrs Trenchard, who waved her away with an impatient gesture.

‘No one was there,’ Alice wailed. ‘So then I went round to Daniel’s rooms and no one was there either. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare come here because I was certain this was the first place Joshua would look for me. I couldn’t think where to go.’ Tears came again and Rachel found a clean handkerchief for her. ‘I wasn’t far from Regent’s Park. Daniel took me to the Zoological Gardens there a little while ago; he wanted me to see the new idea of bringing the animals out into the open instead of keeping them inside. I was amazed that camels and lions and monkeys, which are used to such hot climates, could survive our cold weather, but they do!’ Her eyes were wide with surprise. ‘And they looked so happy to be in the fresh air. Daniel said I mustn’t think they have emotions like us but they really did look happy.’ It was as though she felt it important they believed this. Gradually she had become much calmer, as though she had once again found that inner strength she had talked about earlier.

‘So you went to the Zoological Gardens just now? Did you expect to see him there?’ Her tone suggested this would have been a vain hope.

‘Not really but they have tea rooms and I thought I could get some refreshment and work out what I should do. Even though I took cabs, I was exhausted from all the travel and carrying my bag, and everything seemed so hopeless.’ She looked like a child who had been dragged around beyond its strength. ‘I thought that perhaps Mrs Rokeby had been so scandalised by my letter she had decided not to open her house to me after all.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I tried not to think that Daniel might also have regretted encouraging me.’ Then she looked straight at her sister. ‘But I knew I could not return to Joshua. So finally the only place I could think to go was to Aunt Lydia’s. I didn’t realise that Uncle Felix was ill. I am so sorry.’ She sounded hopelessly sad.

A capacious Gladstone bag stood by the entrance door to the living room. Ursula thought of the fragile-looking Alice trailing around London with it. No wonder she was exhausted. The radiance the girl had displayed in the menagerie had vanished; she was drained of colour, a waif.

No one wanted more tea and Ursula went to sit down by the window table but a movement outside caught her eye. Thomas Jackman was unobtrusively descending the basement steps of a house across the square.

Ursula shrank back against the window curtains. Once again the man had placed her in an invidious position. She had thwarted him at the menagerie. If only he hadn’t revealed his chauvinistic attitudes, his belief in male superiority.

Alice Peters was a woman being forced to remain in an unhappy marriage. Should she continue to support her own sex or must she allow her former comrade to fulfil his contract?

‘What am I to do, Rachel?’ asked Alice.

Mrs Trenchard rose. ‘You must return to your husband, that is what you must do.’ She seemed to recover some of the authority she had shown at the tea party. ‘I am very sorry, child. It is not a marriage I would have wished on you but you agreed to it and now you must follow your duty. If you cannot do that, I suggest you go to an hotel. I cannot help you.’

‘I cannot afford an hotel,’ Alice said desperately. ‘Daniel’s mother might not return to London for some time. What am I to do?’

Rachel Fentiman looked around her living room. ‘If you stay here, Joshua Peters will find you. Let me try and think of a friend you could go to.’

Ursula made up her mind.

‘I know my landlady has a free room, Mrs Peters. Her charges are far less than an hotel’s. Would you like to come back with me for a night or two? It is not far away, just the other side of Victoria station. Your sister could contact you there when she has arranged other accommodation.’

‘Miss Grandison, you have found the perfect solution. You will not mind that, Alice, will you?’ Rachel Fentiman sounded greatly relieved. ‘I am sure in a day or so either Daniel will be back or I shall have found somewhere more … well, a friend you can stay with.’ She asked Ursula for the address of her lodging house and scribbled it down. Then she picked up a chic straw hat from the top of a pile of books. ‘Now, let me put this on you.’

‘Miss Grandison, I am sure you mean well but I am not at all sure this is the right solution,’ said Mrs Trenchard.

Ursula picked up the Gladstone bag. It was heavy but she felt well able to carry it as far as her boarding house.

‘Is there a back way, Miss Fentiman, that you could show us? I think it would be circumspect for us not to use the front door. And perhaps Mrs Trenchard could leave with us in the same way?’ For if Jackman believed it was only Ursula that Rachel Fentiman was entertaining in her rooms, he was unlikely to continue his surveillance for much longer and would never know she had left earlier than he.

Miss Fentiman showed no surprise at this suggestion. ‘What a good idea. Follow me.’

‘I will leave the way I came in, via the front door,’ Mrs Trenchard said coldly.

‘Aunt Lydia, for once, please just do as someone else wants.’

Mrs Trenchard stood rigid for several seconds. ‘Rachel, I can hardly believe what I have just heard. To think that … well, what my dear sister would have said. After everything we have done for you.’

Miss Fentiman coloured painfully. ‘Aunt Lydia, I apologise. I had no right to speak to you like that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘At the moment, though, Alice has nowhere to go and this idea of Ursula’s is the only solution that will do. And as for your leaving with us, it’s just, well, if Joshua is in the habit of engaging detectives, would it not be best to evade any possibility one is even now watching this house?’

Ursula’s belief in Rachel Fentiman’s intelligence was strengthened.

Mrs Trenchard looked horrified and glanced towards the window.

‘Come with me,’ Rachel said firmly. She took a key from the mantelpiece and led the way out of the room. After a moment’s hesitation, Mrs Trenchard followed Alice and Ursula.

They were taken through a courtyard at the back of the building and at the end, a door in a wall was unlocked. They emerged into a mews. Ursula swiftly assessed its occupants. A farrier was reshoeing a horse; a groom led a saddled and bridled horse into its stable; and two motor vehicles stood on the cobbled way. One had its bonnet up, its engine being inspected by a sturdy, fair-haired young man; jacket abandoned, he was wearing breeches, with braces over a collarless shirt. The competent manner with which he removed a sparking plug convinced Ursula he knew his business. As the little party drew level with the machine, he raised an intelligent-looking face and nodded to Rachel. She half raised a hand in acknowledgement but turned to Ursula.

‘If you walk through that arch at the end and turn left, you will almost certainly find a cab,’ she said. ‘Thank you again, Miss Grandison. I will seek you and Alice out tomorrow. What time are you due at Mrs Bruton’s?’

‘It’s not one of my days with her, so come any time.’

Ursula took a firmer grip on the Gladstone bag, said farewell to Mrs Trenchard, then turned to Alice Peters in time to see her raise a hand to her forehead.