* * *
At breakfast the next morning we discussed what he would most like to do, or see, in my time.
‘London?’ I suggested. ‘Or would you like to wander about locally a bit and get used to things? London can be a bit full-on – Luc?’
‘I need to go back,’ he said, frowning. ‘It isn’t the family, I think.’ He thumped his fist on the table in frustration. ‘Damn it, I am not used to this, I cannot interpret what is happening.’
‘Go,’ I said, pushing back my chair and heading for the bedroom. ‘I’ll change into my nineteenth century clothes and, when you get there, think hard about me and I will try and follow.’
I turned back, saw him shimmer as he held the case with the pictures, then he was gone. I pulled out the clothes I had been wearing when I shifted back the last time and struggled into them, muttering with frustration at tapes and corset strings. Then I grabbed my bag, stuffed in the packet of pills from the bedside table, and ran back to where the portrait miniature of Luc hung on the wall at a cat-proof height.
The little picture was already warming when I laid my hand on it and that was the signal that it was almost ready to pitch me back in time. I held tight to my bag and braced myself.
The brightly-lit room faded to black, I was spun around into the usual violent, rushing, wind, then I landed with a thud on something that said, ‘Ough!’ but grappled me firmly into a competent masculine embrace before we crashed to the ground.
Chapter Two
Luc? No, when I opened my eyes I found myself staring into the amused green gaze of his younger brother James.
Once my head had stopped spinning I removed my elbow from James’s stomach and sat up to find that we were sprawled on the terrace at the rear of Luc’s London house in St James’s Square. Fortunately there was no one else about.
James, who looks very like Luc, except that he is blond and Luc is dark, is one of my favourite people, the brother I never had. He is also gay, not a safe thing to be at that time. Fortunately he had settled happily on the Leicestershire estate of his elderly godfather, whose heir he is, along with his partner, Christopher Lyle, the old man’s secretary.
‘James!’ I hugged him, then we staggered to our feet and brushed ourselves down. ‘What are you doing in London? Not that I’m not thrilled to see you.’
‘Business for my godfather, a chance to see the family and we need to pay visits to our tailors and bootmakers,’ he explained. ‘Luc is in the drawing room. He tells me he has visited your time – and I want some of those shoes he was wearing when he came back.’
‘Well, you can’t have any,’ I told him briskly, imagining the arrival of designer trainers in nineteenth century London. ‘Luc should have changed before he returned. When did he arrive and what is the date?’
‘He appeared an hour ago, just before nine o’clock. Today is Sunday the twenty eighth of June. Mama has just left for church and the twins are out with their nanny in the park. Kit is here too,’ he added warningly.
That was Christopher Lyle, who did not know where and when I came from, only that I was a female friend of the family from America. He probably wondered at the amount of freedom I had, despite being a single woman, but no one had enlightened him and he was too polite to ask.
‘What about Garrick and Carola?’
‘They are visiting his sister and her family in Greenwich,’ James said.
Garrick and his wife live in their own apartment on the third floor. He is Luc’s best friend, had been his most unconventional valet, and was now his confidential agent, business manager and, when required, family bodyguard. They too were in on my secret.
‘It is wonderful to be here,’ I said, following him from the terrace into the breakfast room. ‘But what is wrong? Something called Luc back.’
‘Murder,’ James said grimly.
Unfortunately, I tend to find myself back in Luc’s time when there is some mystery to be solved and, interesting as it was, I was beginning to wish that I could just spend a peaceful few weeks absorbing the Georgian world. ‘Who?’ It was a worry because it was always something that impacted on Luc personally.
‘Adrien Prescott,’ James said as we emerged into the hallway. ‘No, it is all right,’ he added hastily as I gasped. ‘He isn’t the one who is dead, but he came to us for help. It is his employer who has been murdered – and only three houses from here. Prescott arrived just over an hour ago, closely followed by Luc who fortunately materialised, or whatever the word is, in his own dressing room. He sent me to watch for you.’
Until recently Adrien had been the twins’ temporary tutor – or manny as I insisted on calling him, to Luc’s horror. The boys are really much too young for a tutor, but they had needed someone young and tough who wouldn’t buckle under their exuberant energy and could take the strain off their grandmother and rather elderly nanny.
Adrien had become involved in our last, very messy, mystery. He had even been a murder suspect at one point, until it emerged that his suspicious behaviour was down to his apparently hopeless love for Miss Rowena McNeil, the daughter of an exceedingly well-off East India Company nabob. He had left Luc’s employ about a month ago to take up the position of secretary to his cousin, who had just inherited a title. Adrien had political ambitions and hoped that he would make valuable contacts, as well as eventually earning enough to support Rowena.
‘They are in Luc’s study,’ James said. ‘Before we go in, I’ll tell you what I know. The dead man is Viscount Tillingham, Prescott’s cousin and employer. Prescott came in to work this morning, which he wouldn’t normally do, it being Sunday, and found him cold and dead on the floor behind his desk, apparently knifed in the chest.’
‘Cold? Surely the staff had missed the Viscount if he had been dead that long in his own home?’
‘Tillingham was working on a speech to the House of Lords and, when he was in the throes, as it were, he did not like to be disturbed, but used a campaign bed set up in the corner of the study. The butler had a quick look first thing this morning, saw the bed was undisturbed, could not see his employer, who wa
s hidden by the desk, and concluded that he must have gone out for an early walk after working through the night.’