Frankie's Letter (13 page)

That evening Anthony dined with Michael Greenwood who, enthusiastically throwing himself into the part of Martin Rycroft, seemed to have picked up an extraordinary amount of miner's slang in his session with ‘Uncle John'.

The following afternoon he departed with Sir Charles and his valet, Sedgley, for Starhanger.

The train, as was commonplace in the war, was delayed, re-routed and shunted into sidings on what seemed to Anthony to be nothing more than a whim. They had the compartment to themselves, Sir Charles's valet travelling in another part of the train.

Sir Charles hoped to get the ball rolling that evening. Bertram Farlow and another assistant, Peter Warren, were in a room in the St George's, across the corridor from Greenwood, with instructions that one of them should be on watch all the time. Greenwood, for his part, was to leave his room locked but empty for reasonable periods of time.

Farlow and Warren had instructions not to interfere. What Sir Charles wanted wasn't some wretched agent of the Weasel variety but confirmation that the gentleman was at Starhanger. Naturally enough, Farlow and Warren were ignorant of what lay behind their assignment; all they had to do was watch.

As they dawdled through Kent, the conversation lapsed. Sir Charles buried himself in the
Morning Post
and Anthony, an unread newspaper on his knee, sat in the corner of the carriage, sightlessly looking at the rain-sheened patchwork of fleeting woods and fields, savouring his thoughts. Every rumble, every bump, brought him closer to Tara O'Bryan, the woman in blue.

It was crazy, he thought. He was a doctor. He knew that hearts didn't really stop – not without grave consequences, at any rate – but in those seconds outside Swan and Edgars, with those wretched white feather women clutching at his coat, he could have sworn his had.

Why on earth the sight of her face should have had such an affect, he'd didn't know. She wasn't the first pretty girl he'd ever seen or the first he'd ever been attracted to. Pretty? That was the wrong word. She was beautiful, the sort of beauty that took your breath away, like dawn behind the mountains or a silver path of moonlight over a shifting sea. In those few seconds his life had changed beyond all calculation. What the future held he didn't know. For the moment he was content it held her.

They were met at the tiny station of Swayling Halt by Sherston's head groom, Kindred, driving a pony and trap. Their luggage was loaded onto the back. The rain had stopped, the clouds cleared away and they clip-clopped through the lengthening evening shadows through the village towards Starhanger.

As the trap turned into the drive, the bulk of Starhanger appeared in the distance. It was an ancient black-and-white timber framed house with what Anthony guessed was the original great hall, flanked by two sympathetically constructed wings, complete with tall Tudor chimneys and leaded windows, sparkling gold in the western sun.

‘I hope the plumbing's up to scratch,' muttered Sir Charles softly. ‘I've suffered before in these historic gems.'

The door was opened to them by a butler whose name, Anthony later learned, was Vyse. There was, it seemed, a dinner party that evening, and the guests should be arriving soon. Mr Sherston and the rest of the household were, said Vyse, with an air of deep regret, dressing for dinner. Their late arrival was unavoidable, with the trains in their current parlous state, but if the gentlemen would care to be shown to their rooms . . .?

Anthony washed, shaved and scrambled into his dress uniform at breakneck speed, crammed the diamonds into his pocket and made it, together with Sir Charles, down to the hall before the dinner gong rang.

He squared his shoulders as he walked into the crowded room, eagerly scanning the faces. With a twist of disappointment, he saw the woman in blue wasn't among them.

Sherston looked up with a welcoming smile as they walked in. ‘There you are!' He laid a friendly arm on Anthony's elbow. ‘Let me introduce you to everyone. It's quite a crowd,' he added in an undertone, ‘but only you and Sir Charles are staying for the weekend.'

Anthony, with Sir Charles by his side, was introduced to at least five or six local worthies and their better halves.

Anthony was struck how well Sherston fitted into this milieu. Admittedly, the man was among his own guests in his own house, but county society was notoriously stiff-necked and reluctant to accept incomers. Yet Sherston, with his shrewd eyes and Irish brogue, was obviously accepted and liked by people as diverse as the fiercely moustached retired General Harker, Sir Gilbert Ward and the benignly smiling Mrs Morpeth, the doctor's wife. ‘And this,' said Sherston, completing the introductions, ‘is my sister, Mrs O'Bryan.'

Anthony looked at her with sharpened interest. So this was Tara O'Bryan's mother. There wasn't much family resemblance. She was a striking-looking woman with piercing green eyes and dark hair streaked with iron grey. For some reason she radiated disapproval.

She eyed him up warily before extending her hand. ‘So you're the Colonel Brooke Patrick's been so excited about.' She, it was perfectly obvious, didn't share her brother's enthusiasm.

There wasn't really any answer to that, so Anthony compromised with a conventional mutter of, ‘How d'you do.'

Sherston coughed awkwardly, aware of his sister's antagonism. His face lightened as a young lady came down the stairs. ‘Ah,' he said, with scarcely concealed relief. ‘This is my niece, Tara. Tara, my dear, come and meet Colonel Brooke.'

Anthony had eagerly anticipated this moment for days. The woman in blue! . . . Only she
wasn't
the woman in blue but a complete stranger.

She held out her hand and Anthony took it mechanically.

‘Uncle Patrick's told me such a lot about you,' she said with a friendly smile.

Tara O'Bryan? This
couldn't
be Tara O'Bryan. She was good looking enough, he supposed, with dark hair and green eyes, but she wasn't Tara. She
couldn't
be Tara. Only she was.

His dismay must have shown. Anthony, his world turned upside down, managed to say something – he wasn't sure what – and Tara, puzzled by his response, put her hand on her uncle's arm. ‘I'm not the last to arrive, am I, Uncle Patrick?'

‘No, my dear,' he said affectionately. ‘Josette hasn't come down yet.'

‘Josette?' asked Anthony, numbly.

‘My wife, Colonel,' replied Sherston briskly. There was the rustle of a dress on the stairs. ‘Here she is now.'

And there, her hand lightly poised on the banister, as she looked across the hall, was the fair-haired woman in blue. She still wore blue, a velvet gown, with sapphires and diamonds at her neck and a clasp of sapphires and diamonds in her hair. Anthony felt as if his stomach had gone down in a lift.

‘This is my wife, Josette,' said Sherston, as if to hammer the last nail into his hopes.

My wife!
What the devil was Sherston, the middle-aged Sherston, doing with such a wife? Sherston was old and she was adorably young. Far too young to be married to
him
.

She held her hand out to him, smiling in welcome, a smile that dimpled her cheeks. ‘You must be Colonel Brooke. We expected you and Sir Charles earlier but these trains are dreadful, aren't they?'

Anthony took her hand, feeling as if every eye in the room was fixed on him. His whole arm was tingling at her touch. He'd been so anxious to hear her speak that the sense of what she said took him a moment to grasp. He managed a reply and inwardly cursed himself, knowing how awkward he must seem.

He looked away and saw Tara O'Bryan's watchful, intelligent eyes fixed on him. She was someone to be reckoned with. As surely as if he'd shouted it out loud, he knew she'd guessed his secret. He felt a spot of colour flame his cheeks and then, thank God, the gong in the hall sounded and they went into dinner.

Talk about saved by the bell, thought Anthony ruefully as he took his place, and tried very hard to interest himself in his companions.

He was sitting between a Mrs Moulton and a Mrs Farraday. The meal dragged on interminably. Anthony wanted to be alone, to try and sort his thoughts into some sort of order, and all the time Josette was there, real, so real, and yet as utterly unobtainable as a saint in a stained-glass window.

She was married.

So what?
demanded a voice at the back of his mind. The answer to that was that he didn't want an affair. He didn't have affairs. They were messy and awkward and upset his ideas of right and wrong.

A wild hope bit at the edges of his mind. If
Sherston
was the spy, Sherston was guilty of High Treason. That meant the death penalty. He writhed away from the thought. That was far too like murder for comfort. Echoes of the Biblical story of David and Bathsheba occurred to him. David wanted Bathsheba. She was married to Uriah, so David had Uriah killed. David wasn't the hero of that story.

But if Sherston was their man? Anthony tried to choke down the hope, but hope, even a forlorn hope, was like bindweed, hard to root up and nearly impossible to kill.
He's possible. Well, so he is.
But granted all that – and it was a lot to grant – Josette was rich and he wasn't. At a guess, a single stone from Josette's necklace amounted to a year of his income.

Mrs Moulton, a stout, salt-of-the-earth type, who must have enjoyed a challenge, grilled him on the topic of diet and health in the army, amongst other conversational gambits. Although he found Mrs Moulton trying, he was grateful not to be sitting next to Tara. Those perceptive eyes had found out far too much about him than he was comfortable with. And all the time, Mrs Moulton talked to him about bully beef and plum jam for the army because he was a doctor and a decent man and ought to take a decent interest in ordinary, decent conversations.

The main course, which he ate mechanically, was mutton and artichokes. As he watched, Josette laughed, sat forward in her chair and ate a forkful of mutton. It seemed incredible that she should move, breath and eat, especially something as mundane as mutton and artichokes.

All he really wanted to do was look at Josette. At the same time he had enough wit to see that he couldn't simply gaze at her like an urchin looking into a baker's shop window and, predictably, overdid things the other way.

He felt ridiculously self-conscious and found it a thankless struggle to take any sensible part in the conversation. Even the redoubtable Mrs Moulton tired at last and addressed her remarks on the importance of pigswill to her other neighbour, Elstead, Sherston's secretary, a middle-aged man of comfortable proportions, who made all the right remarks in the right places.

The ladies departed at last, the port was brought out and the room filled up with the fug of cigar smoke.

‘What the devil's the matter?' asked Sir Charles in an undertone when they were at the sideboard together.

So much for his powers of concealment, thought Anthony ruefully. ‘Nothing,' he said shortly. ‘Mutton doesn't agree with me.' He didn't know why strong emotion should look like indigestion but it seemed to satisfy Sir Charles.

How on earth he got through the next half-hour or so he didn't know. He seemed to be existing on four levels. On the surface he chatted politely. He could hear himself doing it. Next, he wondered what he was going to say to Tara O'Bryan. At the same time he passionately wanted to get out into the fresh air and think but, most of all, he had the aching desire to see Josette again. Eventually, thank goodness, Sherston decided it was time to go into the drawing room. Anthony got to his feet with relief but Sir Charles called him back with an almost imperceptible flick of his eyes.

‘Have you got the diamonds?' he asked softly.

Anthony nodded.

‘Good,' said Sir Charles. ‘Watch for your cue and follow my lead. See what you can get out of Miss O'Bryan about Cavanaugh.'

They followed Sherston across the hall and into the drawing room.

Josette was there. He watched hungrily as she flicked a wisp of fair hair over her perfect ear-lobe. The sight of her didn't make him happy; she seemed so utterly out of reach.

Vyse, the butler, brought in coffee and Josette busied herself with pouring it out. Standing in front of the hearth, Sherston, Sir Charles, General Harker, Dr Morpeth and the other men were discussing Gallipoli. Mrs Moulton was holding forth on the problems besetting the village sewing circle, a discussion in which Josette showed a surprising degree of technical knowledge about which fabric was suitable for what purpose and Veronica O'Bryan was buried behind a magazine.

Tara handed Anthony a cup of coffee. Mindful of his instructions, Anthony followed her to the sofa and sat down beside her. He was casting around for a way to bring up Cavanaugh's name when she solved the problem for him.

‘Colonel,' she said tentatively, ‘Uncle Patrick said you knew Terry Cavanaugh.' He nodded. She ran her finger round the top of her coffee cup, obviously bracing herself. ‘How did he die?'

Anthony was prepared for this. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that although Veronica O'Bryan was still apparently deep in her magazine, her body had stiffened in attention. Although Tara was unaware of it, Veronica O'Bryan was listening keenly. ‘It was in Germany,' he said, seeing how Mrs O'Bryan's fingers tightened on the magazine.

Tara gave a little cry of surprise. ‘Germany? What was he doing there?'

‘He was reporting for an American paper, I think,' said Anthony casually. This was the story he and Sir Charles had worked out. ‘He injured his foot in an accident, I believe, and died of blood poisoning. At least, that's what I heard.' The fingers on the magazine relaxed.

Tara's face twisted in compassion. ‘Poor Terry,' she murmured. ‘I liked him, although . . .' She broke off.

Anthony's mind worked quickly. Sherston had told them that Cavanaugh was related to his sister's family, that it was his sister who had made his acquaintance, but it wasn't Veronica O'Bryan who wanted to know about Cavanaugh, it was Tara.