Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

J ack looked out over the park from the window of the private sitting room he shared with Grace on the first floor of Lassiter Court. The moon was bright, reflecting off the frost on the grass, and turning the bare trees into Gothic silhouettes.

‘Get me a whisky, Jack, would you?’ Grace said from the settee in front of the fire. She had her feet tucked underneath her, and a shawl over her shoulders. ‘I need something to steady myself after all the excitement. What a life Nikolai has lived!’

‘I’ll join you.’ Jack twitched the curtains shut and went to the drinks tray.

Clara had followed Nikolai’s improvised intermission with aplomb, and the children in the audience had been as good as gold for the rest of the performance. Jack had stayed late at the theatre to make sure there were no more problems with the lift during the evening show, then returned to Lassiter Court to find his wife and mother swapping stories with Nikolai – or rather, His Excellency, Grand Duke Nikolai Goranovich Kuznetsov – over a splendid supper, and both looking happier than he’d seen them in months. Even the servants seemed giddy at the idea they had an actual duke to serve boiled greens to. Jack had smiled and nodded away then, but in the privacy of their sitting room, his smile had grown ragged at the edges. He’d lived quite the life, too, after all. Serving in France, years in a prisoner of war camp, then working in Paris till he drifted back home, wandered into The Empire with a vague message from his late adoptive mother, and had been seized by the theatre bug. He’d found love, and his natural parent. He and Lancelot Drake had saved a girl from a burning theatre and almost got cooked in the process. That was as dramatic as anything Nikolai had done, wasn’t it?

Grace was looking at him. ‘Don’t you like him, Jack? But you like everybody. What on earth do you have against the poor man?’

It was an uncomfortable question. He hadn’t actually said anything against Nikolai. He handed her her drink and took his place on the settee next to her, his arm round her shoulders. She was still waiting for an answer. He wasn’t sure he had one to give.

For a start, he thought, he didn’t like everybody . He liked most people, that was true. But he did not like, for example, Sir Edmund Lassiter, grandson of the man who had built this lovely house in which he was living, and any number of factories around Highbridge. He didn’t like Edmund’s mother, Constance, either. Admittedly, after that Jack was a bit pushed to think of anyone who made his hackles stand up the way Grand Duke Nikolai did.

And he couldn’t say why. Not because he didn’t know, but because he was aware that it made him sound petty and childish. In the years since Lillian and he had discovered they were mother and child, he had been the apple of her eye. She was not effusive, and was respectful of the memory of his adoptive parents, but Jack had felt the diffused beam of her love and pride washing over him in a consistent and comforting manner. He had sensed it had shifted away from him slightly during the shenanigans at the theatre in the afternoon, and in the evening he had come home to find he was definitely sharing it with the oh so charming Nikolai. And his wife – his very own wife – was charmed by this man, too. He’d done everything he could to cheer and encourage Grace through her troubles – their troubles – and she’d been terribly brave, but for the last year he’d sensed a veil of sadness round her. It made him feel as if he couldn’t see her properly, and it broke his heart. Then when he’d come home and found her deep in conversation with Lillian and Nikolai about all the latest plays in London, she’d looked almost like her old self again.

He was irked, and felt badly for being irked. Nikolai’s wholehearted, intelligent and sympathetic understanding as Lillian talked about the drains, the dwindling box office receipts and the damned restaurant, had irked him further. The irkedness compounded and made him itch.

‘You don’t like him,’ his wife said. ‘Honestly, Jack . . .’

He removed his arm from round her shoulders and leant forward, glowering at the carpet.

‘Don’t tell me I’m being unreasonable. I know I am. But the man swans in from God knows where—’

‘From Marakovia.’

‘Which is almost the same thing, and he’s witty and well-read and energetic and horribly talented. You should have heard him on stage, Grace. I haven’t seen anything like it for years. And you and Lillian obviously think he’s marvellous.’ He swallowed his whisky too quickly. ‘I can’t trust him. If he’s so wonderful, why did they throw him out of his own country?’

Grace put her hand on his cheek, turning his face towards her. ‘You know perfectly well why. He was supporting democratic reform, despite being an aristocrat. Gosh, he’s put your poor nose out of joint, hasn’t he?’

‘He’s probably just after Lillian’s money.’

He regretted this as soon as he’d said it. One of the perils of being married was learning to recognise, with painful clarity, tiny expressions of irritation on one’s beloved’s face. He saw one now. Grace removed her hand, and his skin felt strangely cold without it.

‘Nonsense,’ Grace said stoutly. ‘That’s a despicable thing to say, Jack, and you know it. Lillian is a very beautiful, very clever woman and she has a spine of steel. If it wasn’t for the scandal around your parentage getting out, she’d have had every man in Highbridge proposing to her.’ That stung him. ‘I’m very pleased she met Nikolai. And he’s so fascinating!’

None of this was making Jack feel any better about Nikolai, or Marakovia.

Grace got up, taking his empty glass from him, and poured them both another drink.

‘And I’m not sure Lillian has very much money anymore,’ she continued, more gently. ‘The Corot that was in the dining room has disappeared. I think she sold it to keep this place going. The theatre is just scraping by, and it’s not like I’m bringing in any money.’

‘I just wish she hadn’t gone on so about the troubles at the theatre,’ Jack said sulkily, accepting the drink. ‘It made me feel about twelve.’

Grace wrinkled her nose and handed him his glass. ‘Lillian doesn’t blame you, darling. It’s not your fault Darien was a liability, or the fact you’ve had all the building’s teething troubles to deal with. She thinks you’ve been doing a magnificent job, considering. So do I.’

Something about that ‘considering’ made Jack feel very small.

‘Then you’ve had me to deal with,’ she added as she sat down. He set his glass aside and took her hand in both of his.

‘You, my darling, matter more to me than everything else in the whole damn world. I am never “dealing” with you. My greatest ambition is to be half the husband you deserve.’

Grace rested her head against his shoulder, and her voice became a little clotted. ‘I have taken you away from things, though, Jack. I know I have. I should have been braver about the play, and the babies.’

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, feeling that horribly familiar shudder in her frame which meant she was crying a little. After a few minutes, she shook herself and put out her hand. Jack gave her his handkerchief and she blew her nose.

‘You’ve been unwell, Grace. I wanted to look after you.’

‘I have to pull myself together.’

‘You don’t have to do anything.’

She groaned. ‘Yes, I do . I do think I’d feel better if I could at least write. Then at least I’d be making something, and I think then waiting for babies wouldn’t be so hard. But I just keep hearing that notice in my head, then when I stop doing that I’m exhausted, and that’s when all the sadness sort of falls in on me. I keep thinking of everyone else who has children and it makes me sick with envy. It’s like being stuck in a whirlpool.’ He closed his hand around hers. ‘Honestly, I practically threw myself at Lillian when she and Nikolai arrived. His stories were a lovely distraction. Are you sure you don’t want me to come and work at The Empire again?’

He leant forward and kissed her. ‘You hired me the first day I turned up at the theatre. I can’t have you there as my assistant. I just can’t. You’re a marvellous writer, Grace. It would be terribly wrong to take you away from that.’

‘But, Jack . . .’

Her eyes looked huge in her pale face.

‘Please just keep writing,’ he said.

She sighed and settled against him. ‘I wish it was that easy! You know today, before they arrived, I sort of prayed for something to happen. I need to . . . Oh, I don’t know what I need. I hope it’s talking to Nikolai about theatre, because it certainly isn’t knitting.’

He took a long swallow of his whisky. ‘Good Lord, Grace! That’s a dangerous wish.’

She bit her lip, a glimmer in her eye.

‘Yes, I suppose it was, but Jimmy was making me desperate. Still, if it’s just a glamorous Marakovian coming to visit, that’s not all bad, is it?’

Jack tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear and let his hand rest on her shoulder. ‘As long as it stops there, I’ll cope.’