Chapter 26

26

Sophie’s heart was pounding as she walked sedately across the grass. She was aware of being horribly exposed and vulnerable out here in the open; she’d have felt infinitely safer in a crowd in the worst back alley of London. But she reached the stone steps and climbed them, then struggled not to run along the curving colonnade towards the little hidden door. If Marchand was not waiting… But she was. The abigail did not speak, but took her hand and whisked her up a narrow staircase she did not remember seeing before, and into a maze of rooms that mirrored, Sophie thought, the part of the house in which she had hidden her treasure. At last they came to a chamber which appeared to be their destination. Marchand produced a key from somewhere about her person with brisk efficiency, opened the door and shoved her companion firmly inside, placing the key in her hand and saying, ‘Lock it behind me! Lord Drake will come when he is able.’ And then she hurried away.

In the sudden stillness, Sophie did as she had been commanded and then turned and looked about her. She found herself in a medium-sized chamber, and she had been right – it had two tall sash windows which opened onto the roof walk behind the parapet, where she had encountered Rafe and where he had first kissed her. Where he had gone on his knees to her, and she to him, in the moonlight. They’d come up here another way, by a different stair and across the leads from the centre of the house, that night after the disastrous dinner party. For whatever reason, he hadn’t taken her to his room, as he so easily could have done, and nor had he suggested they go there and spend the night in his bed. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted her there, in his private space. If that was so, she could have no cause to object: he owed her nothing. And she wasn’t sure at this distance of time if she’d have agreed to stay with him, if he’d proposed it – but she was here now.

It was a comfortably shabby room, with mismatched furniture that had plainly been taken from other parts of the house and assembled without the least concern for style or period. There were a couple of low bookcases – anything larger would never have fitted round the curve of the stair – which were crammed and yet quite inadequate for the many volumes they supported, so that by necessity yet more books were piled on top and lay in heaps on the floor besides. The bed was low and had once been elegant, with tall, tapering pillars at each corner of the frame, and was neatly made up with a faded, patched coverlet. A cracked old leather chair sat beside the fireplace, and the mantel supported yet more books, as well as various oddly assorted items: a cricket ball, some chipped Dresden ornaments, a little model ship. The walls were lined with more of the old Chinese paper she’d seen elsewhere, and now she looked more closely she saw the fine detail: tiny, exquisitely rendered people in rich, flowing robes went about their mysterious business in a landscape of contorted trees and strangely shaped sugarloaf mountains. To complete the decoration, a few small pictures hung here and there – she saw when she moved closer to examine them that they were mostly landscapes, old views of the estate. Under one window sat a battered trunk, the kind boys took away to school; the other had been left clear of any obstruction so that it would be easy to climb out onto the roof. She felt no impulse to open the trunk or otherwise pry into Lord Drake’s possessions; she knew how precious privacy could be, having so little of it herself.

It was a lovely room, she thought. Nothing in it was fine or new, nothing matched, but everything was somehow harmonious – much more so than in the grand, oppressive public rooms downstairs. She was quite calm, and felt safer here than she should, since she knew that Lord Wyverne was scouring the house for her. She was, looking at matters dispassionately, trapped here now. They had been excessively lucky to escape the attention of Lord Wyverne’s watchers just now, and she could not look to be so fortunate again, so she certainly could not escape, and if the building was searched thoroughly she’d surely be found in the end, even if the jewels weren’t. She couldn’t hide herself in a dark, dusty storeroom for very long, if it should come to that. Even if with Drake’s help she managed to evade capture for a while, even if his quarters were as sacrosanct as he believed them to be, she couldn’t stay in this room indefinitely. She ought to be panicking, but she wasn’t, and this was good, because panic prevented one from thinking clearly.

She didn’t have enough information to allow her to plan – she had no idea why she had so suddenly fallen under suspicion, and how Lord Drake and Marchand had learned of it, so there was at this moment little she could do. Nothing, really. She might as well be comfortable. She was not hungry, and there was a jug of slightly stale water she could drink, and, behind a cracked old screen in one corner of the room, a chamber pot if she should need it – currently empty, she was pleased to say. Very well; she’d spent time in many less pleasant places over the last few years.

After browsing carefully among the books, which were in both French and English, she chose one, an old favourite, and settled into the big chair to read it. She’d not had a great deal of leisure for reading for her own pleasure in recent years, nor money to spare for such frivolous purchases, and so she was soon, despite her plight, deeply absorbed in the familiar adventures of Evelina, and started when she heard tapping at the door.

‘It’s Drake,’ she heard through the panel. ‘Let me in – you have my only key.’

She’d taken it from the lock, habits of caution being deeply ingrained in her, and hastened to open the door now and admit him. He was immaculate as ever, but it was no surprise that he looked sombre as he secured the door behind him and turned to face her.

‘Have you discovered what has happened?’ she said steadily. ‘I thought I’d been so careful – why am I suspected? Or am I in fact not particularly under suspicion, and perhaps there has been some misunderstanding?’

‘Oh, no,’ he answered grimly. ‘It’s true that Wyverne has no especial reason to think you guilty of the theft, but he has most unluckily become aware that you are not precisely who you pretend to be, and therefore that your recommendations were probably forged. This leads him not unnaturally to think that you may also be guilty of the theft – I understand that he leapt at the idea with great enthusiasm and no doubt would be glad if it were so. Apart from anything else, it would enable him to blame Lady Wyverne, who employed you, and my grandmother, who has spent so much time with you. That sort of thing is always a consideration with him: he so enjoys putting others in the wrong.’

‘I understand that, but still I do not see how he has come to such a conclusion.’

‘He has not the least idea of your true identity – things are not quite so bad as that – but he is reasonably confident you are not the sedate lady’s companion that your references assert. This conclusion came to him, so the butler Kemp tells me, when he was sitting in his study, idly contemplating the pictures on the walls. You have met him, so I am sure you can imagine the sort of images he chooses to decorate his chamber. As he sat there, brooding over his loss, he realised to his enormous surprise that one of his more recent purchases, a most striking, quite lately painted representation of Danae in her shower of gold…’

‘Was me,’ she finished for him.