‘The caves are several miles inland, near the family mausoleum and the Church of St Lawrence. We have a long walk ahead of us.’ He frowned down at Charlotte. ‘Are you –?’
‘I’m fine,’ she asserted haughtily. No need to tell him about the blister on her heel or the fact that she could really rather use a few moments alone with a chamber pot. The last thing she wanted was his solicitude. One kind look, one sympathetic gesture, and she would dissolve into his arms in a pitiful little ball of jelly, cravenly crying for warmth and reassurance. She hardened her features to try to prevent any sign of weakness from slipping through. ‘Lead the way.’
Robert regarded her closely and Charlotte felt herself unconsciously trying to make her spine straighter, as though posture might be an indicator of stamina.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Onwards!’
He would have taken Charlotte’s arm, but Charlotte evaded him by leaning over to brush an imaginary leaf off her cloak.
Within a very short period of time she began to wish she had been more practical and less proud. No wonder most heroes in stories staged their adventures for summer, thought Charlotte despairingly. There was no romance to their expedition, only grim endurance and gruelling cold that bit through her bones and sapped all energy and strength. Not that she had had much of the latter to begin with.
They stayed close, for safety and the meagre warmth that came of keeping together. Robert took the lead, as by right, and Lieutenant Fluellen the rear, by an unspoken prearrangement as smoothly orchestrated as the movement of the mechanical devices Medmenham kept in his garden to shock his visitors. In the beginning, Henrietta and Miles kept up a quiet stream of desultory conversation, but by the time they reached the wilderness garden, with the willows weeping above their heads, the fronds catching at their cloaks like the fingers of mourning nymphs, and the mulch sopping sloppily beneath their feet, even they lapsed into grim silence, keeping their eyes on the path and reserving their strength for the task of carrying on.
There was no time to brood about Robert; every ounce of energy was expended on simply staying upright as they staggered down the tangled paths of Medmenham’s personal maze. Charlotte had thought that nothing could have been more like torture than the gravel paths that pounded her frozen feet through her thin evening slippers, but as they left the formal gardens for a carefully planned wilderness, she discovered that wood chips were worse, sinking unevenly beneath her weight and leaching forth an icy brown liquid that seeped through the sides of her slippers and made her frozen toes tingle painfully.
Charlotte lost all sense of time. They might have been wandering Medmenham’s grounds for hours or years, trapped in a sorcerer’s silver glass, miming the motions for his amusement.
The moonlight cast an unearthly glaze over the landscape, lending an eerie illusion of life to marble statues and the tortured shapes of trees. The topiary, clipped to resemble all manner of mythical and exotic beasts, seemed to scowl and roar as they ventured past. Griffins arched their unnatural claws and tigers yawned with green-fanged mouths. Charlotte felt as though she had stumbled into a mad poet’s disordered dreams. At every turn, a new grotesquerie confronted them. Marble nymphs fled across their path, pursued by a team of grinning, gloating satyrs displaying anatomical properties Charlotte had heard whispers of, but had never viewed in either stone or flesh. Leda disappeared between the wings of an amorous swan, while a sultry Venus beckoned them off the path to a pavilion whose scrolled marble benches glimmered dimly in the moonlight, double the width of any bench that graced the gardens of Girdings and hollowed in suspicious places.
‘Medmenham’s predecessor was a great patron of the arts,’ explained Robert stiffly, hauling Charlotte out of the way of an Apollo who, flinging himself to his knees, had buried his head between Daphne’s legs – no doubt in an excess of grief at seeing her turn into a tree. ‘He spent a good deal of time in Italy.’
This time, when he took her arm, Charlotte didn’t protest. She wasn’t quite sure how many more yards she still had in her. Her legs felt disconnected from the rest of her, like a doll she had possessed as a child, made of cylindrical pieces of polished wood with the limbs loosely connected by metal pegs, so that when you picked it up, the doll would dance, legs and arms jiggling disjointedly. That had been before Girdings, before her grandmother declared such simple playthings fit for the tenantry, not for the daughter of a duke. Charlotte had said she would give it away, but she hadn’t. She could still remember, then, her mother holding it and making it dance.
Fragmented memories circled through her mind, more real than anything around her. Whispering in the corner of Almack’s with Henrietta and Penelope during their very first season; summer days in the gardens of Girdings with Evelina for company; Robert, as he had been once upon a time, boosting her onto the edge of the fountain to watch the goldfish swim in the sunlight. And, behind it all, she could see her mother’s arms, in blue wool sleeves, holding on to her old wooden doll, making it dance.
With a flutter of anxiety, Charlotte realised she was drifting away into a sort of waking sleep.
With a strength born of fear, she struggled back to reality. Cold, miserable, clammy reality. Charlotte stepped down hard on a stone, feeling the bite of it straight through her sodden slippers. That was real, just as the damp cling of her muslin skirt against her legs was real.
‘You don’t want one of these statues for the gardens of Girdings, then?’ Charlotte’s lips were cracked and clumsy, her voice rusty. Talking to Robert would keep her awake, at least. She had a feeling that she looked even worse than she sounded. The hem of her once fashionable dress was caked with mud and it clung to her legs as she moved, making the going even more difficult than it would otherwise be.
Robert’s hand tightened on her arm, with a pressure that was unmistakably an embrace. ‘And scandalise all your ministers of state on the roof?’
There was a tenderness in his voice that made Charlotte’s heart clench in a very inconvenient way.
Irritation, she told herself. It was the intimation of intimacy that irked her. He had no right to be bringing up that night on the roof. He had forfeited the right to that when he changed his mind the first time.
On the positive side, there was nothing like a bit of romantic turmoil to bring one fully awake.
‘I don’t know,’ Charlotte said contrarily, keeping her head down and her eyes on her hem. ‘It’s been awfully quiet for them up there. A little scandal might do them good.’
‘They would probably tumble off their perches with the shock,’ Robert replied idly, helping her over a rough patch of ground.
‘They might be stronger than that.’ Charlotte could feel her heels beginning to dig in. ‘Perhaps they want a little variety.’
‘Or,’ said Robert, missing the point entirely, ‘perhaps they’re made of plaster and don’t really care.’
‘Stone,’ Charlotte corrected, kicking her skirt out of the way. ‘Not plaster. It’s stronger.’
She could feel his steps slow as he paused to look down at her. Charlotte resolutely kept her own eyes on the ground, struggling forward one laboured step at a time. If he didn’t realise why she was upset, she didn’t want to tell him. Especially since she wasn’t quite sure why herself.
‘We can rest for a moment, if you like,’ he suggested, with infuriating solicitude. ‘At least get you out of the wind.’
If she stopped, she might never move again. And it would be just as cold wherever they were.
‘And let the Frenchman catch us up?’ she countered. ‘How far are we from the caves?’
Robert pointed directly ahead. Above the trees, an immense golden orb dominated the horizon, shimmering with reflected moonlight. It looked, thought Charlotte, like a sceptre sculpted for the king of a race of giants. ‘Do you see that gold ball?’
‘It would be hard not to,’ she said, and was a little ashamed of quite how snappish she sounded. ‘What is it?’
‘Medmenham’
s church,’ said Robert. ‘I was told that it is positioned directly over the deepest part of the caves, the bit they call Hades.’
Dizzy and miserable as she was, Charlotte appreciated the conceit. ‘It’s like Dante’s Divine Comedy, with Inferno below and Paradise above.’
‘And Purgatory in the middle.’ Robert pronounced the word with a grim relish that made Charlotte wonder, for the first time, if he might not be in a sort of purgatory, too. She risked a sidelong glance in his direction. He had assumed leadership of their expedition so easily, taken charge of her so casually, that she had assumed this must all be little more than a lark for him, all in a night’s work. Including the improper proposals.
Before she could find a cautious way of broaching the topic, Robert said briskly, ‘Medmenham’s mausoleum covers the back entrance to the caves.’ Turning his head, he raised his voice ever so slightly to carry to the people behind them. ‘As we approach, it’s probably best if we try to be as quiet as possible.’
‘What’s that?’ Miles called out.
Robert mimed lowering of voice by raising one hand and bringing it slowly down. Miles looked abashed. Charlotte swallowed her grin before Robert could see it; it looked too much like his own.
At the gates of the mausoleum, the men arranged themselves in a triangular formation. Behind them, Charlotte saw Henrietta ease her pistol out of the folds of her pelisse. Charlotte couldn’t quite recall what she had done with her own pistol. She thought she might have left it in the carriage. Since the carriage was back in London, three hours by river, she doubted it would do her much good.
The mausoleum sounded quiet enough to her. All she could hear was the sodden slap of the tree leaves and the laboured rise and fall of her own breathing. But the men were clearly primed for battle, cloaks off, pistols at the ready. Charlotte, who had always dreamt of brave battles with banners flaring, felt at a loss. This was no formal joust at which she could wave her veil and cheer her champion; if anything, it would be an ambush.
But who was ambushing whom? Charlotte’s fingernails bit into her palms as the men burst through the entrance of the mausoleum.
They were greeted with resounding silence. There was no scramble of booted feet on wet grass, no jostling for weaponry, no grunts or battle cries, just the sound of their own laboured breathing.
Aside from its scattering of masonry, the grounds of the mausoleum were entirely empty.
Miles straightened from his fighting crouch. ‘Where is everyone?’ he demanded indignantly.
Charlotte and Henrietta ducked under the archway into the mausoleum. It was as eccentric in its design as the rest of the grounds, open to the elements, dotted with arches and monuments and other classical effluvia, in no particular pattern that Charlotte could discern. Between the granite walls and the barren ground, it did, however, succeed in conveying a decidedly grim impression. That, at least, seemed in keeping with Charlotte’s notion of a mausoleum.
‘There should be someone here.’ Robert prowled around the side of an urn, looking more than a little bit irritated at being balked of his battle. ‘Wrothan wouldn’t have left his prize unguarded.’
Charlotte saw no need to voice what they were all thinking, that there would only be a need for guards if the king was, in fact, on the premises. After their long, miserable journey, failure didn’t bear thinking of.
‘He would need someone on hand,’ she said instead. ‘Someone to bring the king food at intervals.’
‘Poor ton to starve the king,’ seconded Miles.
‘Poor business sense, too,’ said Lieutenant Fluellen cheerfully. ‘You can’t ransom a royal skeleton.’
‘So where are they?’ asked Henrietta, as indignant as a hostess whose guests had failed to appear for dinner.
‘Down in the caves with the king?’ suggested Miles. ‘If I wanted to guard someone, I’d jolly well stay close.’
‘There was someone here,’ muttered Robert, squinting at the ground around the perimeter. ‘Do you see this?’ When he straightened, he was holding a long-stemmed clay pipe. ‘The bowl is still warm.’
‘Cheerful place for a smoke,’ commented Miles, grimacing at the funereal monuments.
‘But a logical place if one was about to go underground,’ said Lieutenant Fluellen thoughtfully. ‘The guard must have popped up for a smoke before going back down into the caves.’
‘Guard or guards?’ asked Charlotte, looking anxiously around her. She kept thinking she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, only to turn and find yet another urn or arch.
Above it all, the gold-tipped spire of the church looked smugly on. The entrance seemed to lie at the other side of the mausoleum. Could the entrance to the caves lie through there? Despite Robert’s assertion that the back entrance to the caves lay through the mausoleum, she had yet to see it.
‘Three guards at most,’ said Lieutenant Fluellen authoritatively. As all the others looked at him, he shrugged. ‘Well, it just sounded like a logical number.’
‘All down in the caves,’ said Miles, rubbing his hands together.
‘If they’re here,’ said Robert repressively. ‘We might be barking up the wrong tree entirely.’
‘Or down the wrong cave,’ said Charlotte.
‘What about the church?’ asked Henrietta, squinting at the nondescript granite façade of Medmenham’s church. With its rough stone, square bell tower, and squat design, it looked more like a fortress than a place of worship. ‘If I were your Mr Whatever-His-Name-Was, I would prefer to hide my monarch above ground.’
‘Excellent thought!’ said Lieutenant Fluellen, a little too heartily. ‘You and Lady Charlotte can investigate the church while we inspect the caves.’
‘I second that.’ Miles’s relief was palpable. ‘Divide and conquer and all that.’
No one pointed out that it was enemies who were supposed to be divided, not allies.
Henrietta kept quiet because she had already decided that she was right and the others were wrong; Charlotte could tell from the set of her friend’s shoulders that she was already planning her ‘I told you so’ in elaborate and loving detail. Charlotte held her tongue for the opposite reason. If they did encounter a cadre of hardened villains (or even not so hardened villains) down in the caves, she and Henrietta would be more trouble than help. She had no illusions about her own utility in a battle. It might be nice to seize a moment of glory, to strike a blow for king and country as she did in her daydreams, but she knew, realistically, that she was far more likely to trip over her own skirt, walk in front of someone at a crucial moment, or be captured, dragged to one side, and used to make Robert, Miles, and Lieutenant Fluellen throw down their weapons. All things considered, she and Henrietta were more use to the king out of the caves than in them.
Charlotte shivered as the grim reality of their situation set in. Maybe they would be lucky, maybe there wouldn’t be any sort of battle. It was difficult to remember that she once thought of battles with a romantic frisson of excitement; now, with the reality looming, the prospect brought only dread.
Their tiny army was already making its preparations, jostling together alongside the massive urn that Robert swore contained the secret entrance to the tunnels. As Miles peered through the hole in the side of the urn, in whispered conversation with Lieutenant Fluellen, Charlotte caught Robert’s eye. He immediately detached himself from his fellows and strode towards her.
And Charlotte realised that something rather alarming had happened. She no longer heard trumpets when she looked at him. There were no more fanfares or imaginary banners. He was just Robert, not a mythical knight in shining armour, not a hero in a storybook. The old infatuation had died, but what had replaced it was even more debilitating; like the bitter winter wind, it stripped through all her outer layers, biting clear to the bone.
It was fortunate that he had no idea, Charlotte thought, as he strolled over to her, tall and golden and radiating martial energy. It would hurt badly enough in the morning when he r
emembered that he was he and she was she and that he really wasn’t that enamoured of her after all. It would be even harder if he knew just how much she cared. Harder for both of them. She knew him well enough now for that.
‘We’re off to slay your dragons,’ he said wryly. ‘Or dragon, as the case may be.’
Once Charlotte would have thought it a charming turn of phrase; now she felt a whisper of superstitious dread. This wasn’t a tale out of one of her books. There was no armour to guard him, no enchantments to protect him, no happily ever after to ensure his safe return.
‘Is it very dangerous?’ she asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question even as she asked it. Of course, it was dangerous.
‘No,’ he said, and she knew he was lying through his teeth, lying right through the broad, reassuring smile he donned like armour. ‘There are three of us, after all.’
But there might be three of them as well. Their putative opponents had the advantage of knowing their terrain. Down in the darkness of the caves, who knew what might happen?
Nothing had really changed; tomorrow morning would still be tomorrow morning, but all that paled into insignificance against the gaping hole in the side of the urn that led into caves of unknown peril and treachery.
Charlotte clutched Robert’s arm, her fingernails biting through the thin fabric of his sleeve. ‘Be careful.’
‘Rob!’ Lieutenant Fluellen called softly, only his head sticking out of the back of the urn. ‘Any day now!’
‘Coming,’ Robert called back, and rolled his eyes for Charlotte’s benefit.
Charlotte was in no mood to be so cheaply diverted. ‘You should go,’ she said, very seriously. ‘I won’t keep you.’
With one finger, Robert gently lifted her chin. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll be back.’
And then, before Charlotte could say anything else at all, he grabbed her to him in a quick, fierce embrace. Although he had removed his cloak and coat, she could feel the heat radiating through his shirt as he clasped her to him, his arms like bars of iron around her back. Throwing caution to the winds, Charlotte wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, kissed him good luck, kissed him goodbye, kissed him forgiveness, kissed him everything she had meant to say and hadn’t.