Horatio Lyle Read Free Page B

asleep, so . . .
    She tried to work out her moves, piece by piece. She was lying on her side, staring at a tall window through which faint sunlight crept, as if embarrassed to call itself morning.
    She was in a bed. This caused her sudden alarm, and she sat up, feeling the unusual softness. A bed . Not just any bed, but a big bed, with sheets and blankets and . . . feather pillows and . . . She looked round the room. Miss Chaste must have been more of a fool than even she had suspected. She slipped, utterly silent, out of the bed.
    The room wasn’t particularly big, the only features in it, apart from the bed, being the large window, a stool in one corner, a shelf laden with books, and a small desk with a mirror above it whose centre had an unlikely and slightly alarming, perfectly rounded scorch mark. Tess was wearing what she always wore - the only clothes she owned: a pair of worn trousers that were starting to give way at the knees and a shirt several sizes too large. Looking around, she saw her padded jacket with holes at the elbows, lying on the stool, neatly folded. She scampered across the room, snatched the jacket up, and for a second saw her face in the mirror above the desk. She hesitated. Her dark brown hair stuck out around her face in every direction, and her dirty pale face, long and knowing, stared back with a surprised expression, unused to seeing itself.
    She crept to the door. It was unlocked, which was a surprise. She pushed it open and stepped out into the cold corridor beyond. Floorboards covered with a red carpet, a candle burnt down on a table, thin curtains open across the window at the end to let in more light. She padded in what she thought was perfect silence to the end of the corridor and pushed open a door that led to a flight of stairs. Slowly, she took them one at a time, testing each to avoid creaks. Halfway down, she became aware of a distant rumbling and speeded up, anxious to find the imagined loot and get out. She went past two landings and into the cold of the basement, where she crept along a corridor, listening for any sounds of life. She heard a fire burning behind a nearby plain white door to her right, hesitated, then pushed it open a little. There was a large stove, open to receive more wood, and a figure in shirt sleeves, black trousers and bare feet, bent over to toss on a log. Without looking up he said, ‘Good morning’ in a tone of polite disinterest.
    For a second she thought about running, but then . . . He was cooking breakfast.
    Tess stepped carefully inside. The man straightened up, pushing the stove door shut, turned to her and grinned. She saw a pair of grey eyes and sandy hair, reddish in places. He looked terribly, terribly familiar, but she knew, knew that this couldn’t be, well, him , because that wasn’t what was in her plan, that wasn’t how it worked, not her plans, especially not with the bigwig who had paid, not if she was . . .
    Tess heard the cracking of eggs and the hissing of oil. She took in a row of neatly tidied desks, a low wooden kitchen table, and a dog bowl marked ‘Tate’ in large letters.
    ‘Sit down, lass, make yourself comfortable.’ His voice was unusual. If she ’d been back on the streets with her friends she would have said it belonged to a bigwig, except there was a familiar stop on the ‘d’s and the ‘t’s, something that was common in the slums of Shadwell and the rookeries of Soho.
    She sat down cautiously. ‘Are you Miss Chaste’s butler?’
    ‘Me?’ He looked slightly alarmed. ‘Goodness, no.’
    This was possibly a good thing. She drew herself up to her full, and less-than-impressive height. ‘Do you know who I am?’
    He smiled brightly, and said in a conversational, light-hearted tone, flipping a slice of bacon, ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I am . . . ’ her mind raced and her voice changed slightly, rising a little in pitch and slurring the vowels, ‘Lady Teresa of France. I am a guest of your mistress. She ’s