Chapter Eleven

Present

Tegan was aware of someone standing in her peripheral vision — a tall, masculine shadow, with what looked like a white shirt on, dark trousers and a dark waistcoat.

At least, it looked like that from the corner of her eye. When she turned to look at the person, she realised that, yes, it was a man — a tall, dark man at that — but rather than wearing a white shirt and a waistcoat, the person was wearing a black T-shirt. And that person was Ryan Jackson.

Dammit. Why had he come here? Why hadn’t he just gone to the Tower Tearoom like he was supposed to?

‘Can I help?’ she asked, and even to herself she sounded clipped and unfriendly. ‘But you’ll have to wait a second. I’m just texting my boyfriend. Angelo. He lives in Sicily. He’s a musician.’

Ryan’s lip curled up at the corner and he looked at her strangely. Clearly, he wasn’t bothered about Angelo and why should he be? She had been messaging him a few minutes ago — well, responding to a text that asked how she was, and which had included a photo of a Sicilian sunrise. But did she really need to share all that with Ryan?

No.

‘Okay.’ Ryan continued to look at her strangely. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Although I did somehow think that you were working, and perhaps you’d have gone to the tearoom to do that. To work, I mean.’

Ouch. Now it looked as if she’d been messing around with Angelo instead of doing what she was meant to be doing. It galled her that Ryan thought that, but that was pretty much the case to be fair.

‘Why would I do that?’ she asked defensively. ‘Go and work in the tearoom, I mean. It’s coming up to lunchtime anyway, and you might have been there. Also,’ she shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t be fair if I commandeered a table, but to be honest Sorcha would pretty soon move me on if I tried that .’

Ryan nodded. ‘Good for Sorcha.’

He hovered for a moment, before turning around to leave.

Something in Tegan relented. She sighed, then called after him. ‘Ryan! Do you want to know what I’m really looking at?’

‘Not particularly.’ But he turned back around and took a few steps towards her. ‘But you did say you were messaging your boyfriend in Sydney.’

‘Sicily.’

‘Whatever. Let me guess.’ He sighed. ‘Rubbish music? Your next job? Social media influencers who you think are super-cool, but who would literally do my head in?’

‘Not smart, not funny.’ She glared at him. ‘ No music is worse than your crap and I’m sticking this one out for a year, despite you being part of it.’

‘Despite your boyfriend being in Sydney.’

‘Sicily.’

‘Sicily. Is he coming over, then? Actually, don’t tell me, I don’t care.’ He waved his hand around to illustrate. ‘But you being here for a year is pretty unfortunate for me. Don’t suppose you fancy reconsidering your post, do you? It would make me very happy. Unless, of course, I get the job in Glasgow I’ve applied for and then I’ll be away from you. Which would also make me very happy. But, having said that, you’re not chasing me out of this job with your attitude. I might have to stick it out for the long haul.’

‘Whoopee-do,’ muttered Tegan. ‘Then you really oughta be interested in what I have in front of me here.’

‘A pink phone?’

‘Smart ass. No. The research I’m doing. If we really have to work together and you won’t leave immediately — no? — okay, just checking again — then we should talk weddings.’

She realised what she’d said and knew the colour had drained from her face. It sounded a bit — intimate — that. Like they were getting married.

Ugh.

‘Elsie’s wedding, of course,’ she said for clarity.

‘Of course .’ Ryan was emphatic — she couldn’t be sure if he was being sarcastic or not, so chose to ignore him.

‘So it’s only recently come to light that she married Louis in December 1911. I’ve managed to dig a bit more, and I can confirm that Lady Elsie Alexandra Teague Pencradoc and Mr Louis William Ashby got married on Friday the twenty-second of December 1911, at St George’s Church, Bloomsbury. The winter solstice, no less.’

‘Perfect!’ Ryan took a step closer, his guard apparently dropped, and he even managed to look fairly excited. ‘That links really well to the theme.’

‘My theme.’ Tegan couldn’t help but claim it. The winter wedding thing had been her idea after all — but the solstice thing . . . yes. As Ryan said (and she reluctantly agreed), perfect.

‘So, my next idea—’ she pretended not to notice that he had folded his arms — ‘is that we go all out with a winter wonderland theme. Kind of like Narnia. Through the wardrobe door into Elsie’s wedding. We have replicas of her dress, her bouquet, all that sort of stuff—’

‘No.’ Ryan shook his head.

‘What?’ Tegan was momentarily shocked. He’d disagreed with her? ‘You disagreed with me?’

‘Yes.’

There was a beat and they stared at each other.

It almost choked her to say it, but, ‘Why?’

‘Narnia.’

‘What’s wrong with Narnia?’

‘It’s the wrong era.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because the kids in the story get evacuated in the Second World War. Way after Elsie’s wedding.’

‘Oh.’ There was no comeback for that. He was, annoyingly, correct. ‘Ah.’ Tegan began drumming her fingertips on the notepad. Narnia had been perfect. She had even sketched the flow of the Pencradoc rooms and where she would put the wardrobe door and what the corridor of trees would look like and where she’d have the lamppost . . .

‘You could do The Snow Queen ,’ said Ryan. ‘Fairy tale. Same sort of idea. Spectacular entrance into her world, corridor of trees, Snow Queen’s sleigh. Could Elsie’s wedding dress be the Snow Queen’s gown, with her sitting in the sleigh?’

‘Oh! No, because we really want to show off her dress. But she — well, she could be standing on a giant mirror, which could represent the frozen lake the Queen’s throne sits on. And the splinters of ice . . .’ The story came flooding into Tegan’s mind, which was odd, as she couldn’t remember ever reading the fairytale. All her ideas about the Snow Queen came from Narnia. But she must have read it, to know what she said next. ‘The splinters of ice had to spell out “eternity” before the little girl in the story could rescue the little boy.’

‘Gerda and Kai.’

‘ That’s it. So we have something representing those splinters of ice saying the word “eternity” and that links into the wedding theme. Awesome!’ Tegan would have high-fived anyone else. But she wasn’t going to touch Ryan, no way. And anyway, he still had his arms folded.

‘The corridor of trees,’ he said suddenly. ‘I think that could be a room. The ballroom’s fairly long — I’d think.’ He was quiet for a moment. Tegan nodded. It was, and Merryn had told her it was the permanent home to an exhibition of informal Pencradoc family pictures and sketches from the stores that probably didn’t warrant full exhibits themselves, but were little windows into the domestic world of the Teagues. ‘Yes. So you can have it in the ballroom and have the smaller room at the front — is that the morning room or something? — leading into the main exhibition—’

‘Yes! That smaller room as you go in, on the right of the staircase — it’s the drawing room — could be a pop-up gallery with photos, letters, that kind of jazz.’

‘It actually sounds great. And not too much work.’ Ryan smiled.

‘Definitely manageable.’ Tegan nodded.

There was a silence and it would have been the natural point for them to close down the conversation. But oddly, Ryan didn’t make a move to leave the gothic rose garden.

Instead, he said, ‘I’ve got some papers in my bag here.’ He patted the document case, slung diagonally across his body. He almost looked embarrassed. ‘I never thought I’d end up the kind of a guy with a man-bag.’

‘It’s not a good look on you,’ said Tegan.

‘Much as I hate to agree with you, I agree.’ Ryan pulled a face. ‘But I do have stuff you might be interested in. But you haven’t asked, sooooo . . .’

‘Oh, God. Don’t make me physically ask you.’ Tegan folded her arms. ‘I refuse to play that game.’

‘Fair enough. See you via email soon. Hopefully not in person.’ He turned around and began to walk out of the garden, but curiosity got the better of her.

‘All right then,’ she said, cross with herself. ‘Please may I see what you’ve got in your delightful man-bag?’ She closed her eyes. Asking Ryan anything was anathema to her sensibilities.

He paused, back still turned to her, then he responded. ‘All right. Seeing as you asked so nicely, I shall share the contents of my man-bag with you.’

Tegan rolled her eyes heavenwards in an extremely dramatic fashion to indicate her extreme exasperation with this annoying man, but sadly, the gesture was wasted on Ryan as he was still turned away from her.

* * *

It was just as well Tegan couldn’t see Ryan’s face. He was, some would say, smirking by this point. It felt good to have the upper hand, even for a moment.

And boy, was he going to savour it.

He turned, very, very slowly, to face her, then nodded, equally slowly. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

He could tell she was biting her lip, trying desperately not to snipe back at him in case he came back with some smart retort. And then, let’s face it, they’d get absolutely nowhere — even though they had apparently agreed on the content of the exhibition without any bloodshed.

‘May I?’ He indicated the seat next to her on the bench. He didn’t really want to sit there, so very close to her, but it seemed the most appropriate option. To sit on the ground would a) put her in a higher physical position than himself, and b) be rather stupid when there was a perfectly serviceable bench right there.

Tegan nodded shortly. Ryan hid a smile and walked over. He perched on the edge of the bench — okay, he might be sitting on a perfectly serviceable bench, but there was no need to sit right next to her — and opened the flap on his bag.

‘I just grabbed a couple of things,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there’s more waiting to be found—’

‘So you only did half a job then. Useful.’

‘Spirited,’ muttered Ryan. ‘And worth ignoring. Here we go.’ He pulled the treasures he’d located out of the dreadful bag and dumped the offending receptacle on the ground. ‘I’ve got a letter from Elsie to her brother, dated from the November, asking him to go down to London to see her dress . . .’

‘Well, I guess it is part of the run-up to the event. But does it give any more information beyond that?’

‘Hmm. You’re determined to be a teensy-tiny bit negative, aren’t you, Tegan? But for your information, yes, it does give us more than you think. She says something about hoping he’ll call a truce with Viola for her sake, and then there’s this . . .’ Ryan enjoyed his next move — he flourished the letter at his blonde nemesis. There was no other word for it. ‘Elsie actually drew her dress. She sketched it out on the back of the page. See?’

‘Oh! My word.’ Tegan leaned forward to take a better look. Her ponytail fell across him and tickled his hand as he held the letter out and she peered down at it. He moved backwards slightly. He wasn’t sure if the sensation was making him itch or sending weird little sensory prickles across his skin.

Regardless, he held the letter out at a distance and allowed Tegan to study it.

‘This is actually — quite cool.’ Tegan nodded. ‘I’ve seen a photograph of her in her wedding dress, but only, like, the top half. You’ve probably seen it today as well. It’s outside Coren’s office.’ She demonstrated by waving her arms around her own top half. ‘And there was a bouquet. A huge bouquet.’

‘This photo?’ Another flourish. Ryan was starting to enjoy this. ‘Yes. I already saw it, thank you.’

‘No need for that attitude.’ She sniffed. ‘But yes. That’s the one. Well. A copy. We’ve got the original one here. I noticed that it’s been made into one of the new postcards they sell. I saw them yesterday when I was having a wander around the estate.’

‘Yes, I’m aware this is a copy, thank you. Sybill got it for me — well, for the archives — it’s a bit bigger than postcard size.’

‘It’s got so much detail in. Far better than the postcard. Thanks.’

Ryan blinked in surprise. Was she actually thanking him? Wow. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And when you look at the sketch she sent Laurie—’

‘Woah — Laurie ?’ Tegan looked shocked. ‘Her brother was called Laurie ?’

‘Yes.’ Ryan looked at her oddly. ‘What’s strange about that? I would have thought you would have known that.’

Tegan had the grace to blush and shrug very slightly. ‘I mean, I knew Elsie had loads of brothers and sisters, but I didn’t know their names. I haven’t, like, learned them yet.’

‘So you only did half a job then. Useful.’

‘Spirited.’ But he chanced a glance at her and she almost — almost — smiled. ‘And I’ve only just started the job.’

‘Whatever. Look. Here’s another letter. It’s from Elsie to her sisters — Isolde and Medora .’ He emphasised their names, very slowly. There was no need for Tegan to know he’d only recently learnt the Teague family’s names properly himself. ‘She’s telling them she expects them to be bridesmaids along with their cousins and Viola.’

Tegan took the letter and read it. ‘So, if her sisters were Isolde and Medora,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Who was Viola? The other girl she asked to be bridesmaid?’