Kate smiled. Nellie Lovelace was her young friend from the theater, whom she had not seen in months. “Thank you, Hodge. Tell Miss Lovelace that I’ll be there in a moment.” To Mrs. Bryan, she said, “Let’s send one of the girls to the surgery on a bicycle. Perhaps the vet can stop in this evening. And do let me know when he comes-I’d very much like to hear what he thinks.”
“Very good, m’lady,” Mrs. Bryan replied. She turned, raising her voice. “Polly!” she bawled. “Polly, ye’re needed. Come ’ere.” At her strident summons, the calf, startled, clambered clumsily to its feet.
“I’ve shown Miss Lovelace to the library, m’lady,” Hodge said stiffly, his eyebrows registering his disapproval of the lady in question, whom he had known when she worked at Bishop’s Keep a few years earlier, as a kitchen maid.
“Thank you, Hodge,” Kate said. “Please be so good as to send in some tea, would you?”
“Certainly, ma’am.” The butler opened the heavy oak library door and stepped back to allow Kate to enter.
“Nellie!” Kate exclaimed, holding out both hands. “What a delight it is to see you!”
“Good afternoon, m’lady.” The young woman who rose eagerly from the plum-colored settee was tall and dark-haired, with flashing dark eyes and a coquettish expression. She wore a stylish cream-colored flannel suit with a pink velvet sash, the jacket trimmed in silk soutache braid. Her wide-brimmed hat was made of braided straw and heaped with pink silk ribbons, and her cheeks and mouth were unmistakably rouged. No wonder Hodge disapproved, Kate thought. He was not used to seeing women who painted-although to her, Nellie looked splendid, in a theatrical sort of way.
“I thought,” Kate said, putting her cheek to Nellie’s, “that we had settled that m’lady business long ago. You must call me Kate, or I shall call you Ellie Wurtz, as you were when we met, and you won’t like that.” She turned to Nellie’s companion, a thin young man, finely-featured and rather effeminate. He wore a white linen suit with a puff of beige silk handkerchief in the breast pocket and a gold watch chain draped elegantly across an embroidered cream waist-coat. “And who is this friend you’ve brought for a visit?”
Nellie’s slanted glance, Kate thought, was more than a little uncomfortable. “This is Charles Conway. My… my cousin. From Brighton.”
“Welcome to Bishop’s Keep, Mr. Conway,” Kate said with a smile, as the young man made a graceful bow over her hand. With half a smile, she added, “I wasn’t aware that Nellie had any cousins, in Brighton or elsewhere, so I am even more glad to know you.”
Kate had discovered Nellie Lovelace some four years before, when she was still thin, pale Ellie Wurtz, a seventeen-year-old orphan waif living in Miller’s Court, off one of the worst streets in the East End. [3] She had brought the girl to Bishop’s Keep, where Ellie had worked as Mrs. Pratt’s kitchen maid for nearly a year, eating regular meals and spending her spare time reading with Kate until her gaunt frame had filled out and her confidence had begun to bloom. Then, because the girl wanted more than anything else to become an actress, Kate had introduced her to those she knew in the theater: Bram Stoker, at the Lyceum, and Frank Curzon, who managed the Royal Strand. Now Nellie Lovelace, hers was one of the brightest stars in the firmament of the newly popular musical theater, and Kate read frequently of her in the London papers.
Nellie cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Charles isn’t exactly a… a cousin,” she said, her cheeks glowing under her rouge.
Kate smiled, thinking that perhaps Nellie was about to tell her that there was an engagement in the offing-although this slight, rather pretty young man did not strike her as the sort who would steal Nellie’s heart. She would expect her to be attracted to a man’s man, someone with more energy and self-confidence.
“Nor from Brighton,” Nellie added. She raised and lowered an apologetic shoulder and glanced at her friend. “I’m sorry, Lottie,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I tried, but I just can’t lie to Lady Sheridan.”
“I didn’t really expect you could,” the other said in a practical tone. The voice was low and throaty, but it was not a man’s voice. “I’m very sorry, Lady Sheridan. Please forgive us for trying to deceive you. My name is Charlotte Conway-Lottie.”
Kate looked at the speaker sharply, realizing that he was really she. “My goodness,” she said, startled. “It’s a very effective disguise. I was completely fooled.”
“I’ve learned a trick or two when it comes to costume,” Nellie said smugly. “But really, the only thing we did was cut Lottie’s hair and beg a suit of clothes at the theater. She makes a very handsome young man, don’t you think?”
“I do indeed,” Kate said, “although it was a pity, Miss Conway, that you had to sacrifice your hair.”
“Not a bit of it.” Charlotte tossed her head. “To tell the truth, Lady Sheridan, it’s topping. I feel light as a feather!”
The library door opened and a maid appeared with a tea tray. She set it down, curtsied quickly, and disappeared.
“Now, then,” Kate said, sitting down in front of the tray and picking up the silver teapot. “Why don’t we have a cup of tea while you two tell me what this is all about?”
“Thank you,” Nellie said. She sat back down on the plum-colored settee, her friend beside her. “I do hope we haven’t interrupted your work.”
Kate chuckled, looking down at her smudged tunic and trousers and brushing off a straw. “I was attending to a sick calf. As you can see, I’m not dressed for callers, but since Miss Conway is in trousers, too, I don’t feel a bit awkward.” Filling a cup and handing it to Nellie, she added, “Now, then. Let’s hear the story.”
The narrative took only a few moments, and by the time their cups had been emptied once and then refilled, Kate had heard the whole narrative, from Yuri Messenko’s death in Hyde Park to the raid on the Clarion and Charlotte ’s narrow escape across the roof, to Nellie’s decision to bring her friend to Bishop’s Keep.
Not all of this was news to Kate, of course. She had read of the young Anarchist’s death in The Times, and Charles had told her about the raid on the Clarion and the arrest of everyone in the office, except for the editor, who had got away. He had also told her that he wanted to talk with the editor, as part of his inquiry into the Hyde Park explosion. Since he had only consented to investigate and report back to Ponsonby, it occurred to her now that Miss Conway might be willing to help him-although she would probably refuse if she were afraid of implicating any of her friends.
Kate didn’t reveal these thoughts, however. Instead, she merely remarked, in a mild tone, “My goodness, Miss Conway. You have had an adventure.”
“Worthy of one of Beryl Bardwell’s heroines,” Nellie put in. She gestured to a row of red leather-bound books on a shelf, “That’s who she is, Lottie. Lady Sheridan, I mean. She’s Beryl Bardwell. The famous novelist.” She turned to Kate. “I simply adore your most recent one-Death on the Moor. So realistic, in every detail. One would almost think you were on Dartmoor when that man broke out of that horrible prison!”
Kate suppressed a smile. As a matter of fact, she had been on Dartmoor when the man escaped, she and Charles and Conan Doyle. As a writer, she found it best to work from her own experience, although that sometimes got her into trouble with acquaintances who did not fancy meeting their own fictional counterparts in one of her books. Just now, she was at work on a book set at Glamis Castle in Scotland, where Charles had been summoned to find one of the Royal Family’s lost black sheep. [4] Of course, she didn’t dare reveal the details of what had happened while they were there-the whole episode was, as Charles kept reminding her, a State Secret. But Glamis Castle had proved a splendid setting for a ghost story, with echoes of Macbeth and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and she would be taking the finished manuscript to her publisher in a few weeks.