Page 4 of The Hazardous Measure of Love
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 was hidden by the desk, and concluded that he must have gone out for an early walk after working through the night.’
James opened the door of the study for me. ‘Miss Lawrence has arrived, Luc.’
Both the men who had been standing by the desk looked round and Luc came across and kissed my hand. ‘Not the welcome I would have hoped for you, Cassandra. Our friend Adrien has just made a most unpleasant discovery.’
Adrien was as gangling, tall and mousey as I remembered him, which was not surprising as it was scarcely a month in his time since we had last met. But he was also subdued and pale, not the energetic, enthusiastic young man I had come to know and like.
‘James told me.’ I held out my hand and shook his. ‘I am sorry to meet you again at such a difficult time.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘My poor cousin.’
I wondered how long it would take before he realised that, with his employer’s death, his first foothold on the ladder of a successful political career had been knocked away, and with it his hopes for securing Rowena McNeil’s hand. Here at least, I thought, was someone with good reason for wishing his cousin a long and healthy life.
‘Now that you and James have joined us, I should summarise before we go around to Tillingham’s house to make certain I have the facts correct,’ Luc said. ‘He was working on a speech on the subject of the taxation of food imports.’ He looked at Adrien who nodded. ‘His staff knew not to disturb him and were not alarmed at his absence from his bed in the morning. The butler was puzzled when he could not see him in the study, but was not unduly concerned, even then.’
‘I learned very quickly that Cousin Henry was very rigid in his work routines,’ Adrien said. ‘And the staff were trained not to disturb him. If I had not called to bring some statistics that I had been gathering for him, I do not know when he might have been discovered. Perhaps not until it was time for luncheon. It was his habit to attend Evensong, not Matins.’
‘So, you went to the study to leave the figures and found him?’ I asked. ‘How could you see him when the butler did not?’
‘I noticed that the papers on his side of the desk were not quite tidy, which is most unlike my cousin. The desk is very wide, the kind they call a partners’ desk with drawers on both sides. I would work on one side and he on the other, so it was not until I walked right around it that I saw him lying on the floor between the desk and the chair.’ Adrien had become even paler. ‘I did not see the blood at first and I thought he had fainted and perhaps hit his head, but then the side of his coat fell back when I tried to lift him and I found my hand was red…’
‘What did you do next?’ Luc was brisk and the tone had its effect on the younger man.
‘I realised he was cold. There was no pulse and the blood was not flowing. He was clearly dead and I did not think the body should be disturbed, so I called Grainger, the butler, and left him on guard outside the study while I came for you, sir. I knew you would see things that would be missed if I let the doctor and the constable loose in the room first.’
