Escape by Moonlight Read online

  After leaving finishing school in July, she had spent the summer holiday with friends in Devon, and that morning she had been driven to Liverpool Street station by her hosts’ son, where they had been met by Annie, sent to accompany her the rest of the way home. Annie had been the girls’ nursemaid when they were children and still kept a proprietorial eye on Amy.

  Lucy knew Annie quite well. She was only a few years older than her charges and the fount of all knowledge as far as the doings at the big house were concerned. Not that Lucy would ever have repeated any of the gossip which was told to her with a great deal of hushed whispering even when there was no one within earshot, and entreaties to swear never to tell a soul. That was how Lucy had learnt that Jack had been Lady de Lacey’s son before she married his lordship and that his lordship had adopted him. ‘In spite of only being a stepson, he had high hopes of being the heir,’ Annie had said. ‘But when Edmund was born, it put an end to them. Not that he seems to mind, he is good-natured to the point of indolence.’

  ‘Goodness what a mouthful!’

  ‘That’s what I heard His Lordship telling Her Ladyship.’

  He was kissing his half-sister’s cheek and laughing with her, and then taking the portmanteau from Annie, which just went to show that he was a true gentleman, for many in his position would not even think of helping a servant. And then they were coming down the platform towards her. She left the horse and returned to the crossing because the train was drawing out and the gates would have to be opened again. There was already a brewer’s dray waiting on the other side.

  ‘Lucy, how are you?’ Amy asked, as they passed each other.

  ‘Very well, thank you, Miss de Lacey. And you?’

  ‘Glad to be home.’

  Jack put her bag in the gig, helped her and the maid into their seats and then climbed up himself and picked up the reins. He winked at Lucy as he wheeled the horse about and set off back the way he had come.

  Her day unaccountably brightened by the encounter, Lucy secured the gates and went back to see to the parcels, two crates of hens, a box of herrings and a large bundle of newspapers which had been disgorged from the guard’s van. The carrier with his horse and cart would soon arrive to deliver the goods about the village. And then there were the takings from the ticket office to be totted up and matched against the tickets that had been issued, the weeding to finish, the flower tubs to water and the platform to sweep; and, in between, the dinner to cook and the washing to be mangled and put on the line. None of it, except perhaps adding up the money, needed much thought and she was free to allow her mind to wander. She had a recurring daydream, a fantasy in which Jack de Lacey held her in his arms and declared his undying love for her, and explained he was still unmarried at twenty-three because he had been waiting for her to grow up. She imagined being kissed by him, being held and caressed, and then the vision faded because she was not at all sure she should allow him to go any further, even in a dream.

  ‘Haven’t you finished that yet?’ her father demanded, toiling up the platform pushing a trolley loaded with Miss de Lacey’s luggage which would have to be sent up to the big house on the carrier’s cart. He was thin as a rake and his uniform hung on him as if it were made for someone several sizes larger, which he had been before her mother left and he had never got around to admitting he had shrunk. Nor would he ever have admitted he was a changed man in other ways. He was irritable and never found anything to smile at and he was so demanding he made Lucy’s life a misery. ‘You’ve got your head in the clouds, as usual.’

  ‘No, Pa, I was thinking about finishing the weeding. I need to keep on top of it.’

  ‘Well, you can do it later. There isn’t another train for an hour, so you can go indoors and get my dinner now.’

  She rose, picked up her basket of weeds, and made her way along the platform to the house. If she were married to Jack de Lacey, there would be no getting of dinners, and even if there were, it would be a pleasure not a chore. For him she would cook beautiful meals and they would eat off the best china and drink wine from crystal glasses. She emptied the weeds onto the compost heap, left the basket, gloves and trowel in an outhouse and went indoors to cook stew and potatoes and jam suet pudding, in an effort to please her father and give him something that would put some weight on him.

  Here, in this small cottage full of reminders of her mother, the dreams stopped; here was reality, the day-to-day grind of work in a house where love had died on the day her mother disappeared, perhaps even before that. Pa said she had upped and left them, but Lucy found that hard to believe. Her mother had been sweet and gentle and loving, even in the face of Pa’s unkindness towards her. She had no idea what had caused her to leave and he wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t talk about his wife at all and he forbade Lucy to mention her name. ‘She’s gone,’ he had said the evening Ma was no longer in the house to put her to bed. ‘An’ she ain’t a-comin’ back. And it’s no good you snivellin’,’ he had added, when her lip trembled and tears filled her eyes. ‘We shall just hev to rub along as best we may.’ Over ten years ago that had been and never a word had they heard from her ma since. Sometimes Lucy thought she would leave home and try to trace her, but she had no idea where to start. Besides, her pa would never let her go.

  ‘Well, how was your holiday?’ Jack asked as they bowled along the familiar lanes, past farms and cottages.

  ‘Fine. Lazy days walking and swimming and playing tennis.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone new?’ He turned in at the gates of Nayton Manor, past the hexagonal gatehouse and up the long curving drive lined with chestnut trees.

  ‘One or two, no one special.’

  ‘No young men to make your heart beat faster?’

  ‘Course not. There was only James and he thinks he’s so superior, always teasing me about my hair and tweaking it with his fingers. Belinda’s all right, though.’

  ‘And how was finishing school?’

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘Boring? How can learning to be a lady be boring?’

  ‘You cannot learn to be a lady. Either you are one or you are not.’

  ‘Mama might not agree with you.’

  ‘Mama is different.’

  He made no reply to that because both knew their mother was not of aristocratic birth. She was French, her father farmed a few acres in the Haute Savoie, and she had been brought up to do her share of the work, something that real ladies never did. And yet there was no one more ladylike, more diplomatic, or more beloved, especially by her husband. The children knew the tale of how they had met and married and as far as the girls, Elizabeth and Amy, were concerned it was a true love story, but Jack, who had never known his real father, tried to expunge it from his memory. His shameful birth, his feeling that he did not belong, was a chip he carried on his shoulder, though to see him and hear him, you would never know it.

  ‘I only went to please Papa, you know.’

  ‘So you were telling the truth when you told Lucy you were glad to be home.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She sighed. ‘In some ways, I envy her.’

  ‘Envy her?’ He ignored the stifled choking sound Annie made. ‘What is there to envy?’

  ‘I envy her her freedom. She may work if she chooses to. She is not tied by convention.’

  ‘My dear sis, it is not a question of choosing to work, it is a matter of having to and she is just as tied to convention as you are, surely you can see that? And in the fullness of time she will be expected to marry someone of her own kind, probably chosen for her by her father …’ He paused a moment, thinking about that and suddenly felt very sorry for poor Lucy Storey.

  ‘So will I, though that’s not to say I will.’

  He laughed. ‘Not ever?’

  ‘Oh, well perhaps one day, if I meet the right man, but not before I have done something with my life.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Earning a living, doing something worthwhile.’

  ‘Oh dear, not home five
minutes and already I can see squalls on the horizon. You know Father will never allow it. And there is no need; everything you want you can have within reason.’

  ‘Except my independence.’

  ‘What can you do, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. A doctor perhaps, or a lawyer or a politician.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, Amy dear, you will make Papa throw up his hands in horror at the thought. And you aren’t brainy enough in any case.’

  ‘Thanks for that, brother dear.’ She sighed, realising he was probably right. ‘But if there’s a war …’

  ‘And that will happen, you may depend on it, but I don’t see how it will affect you.’

  ‘Of course it will. I could work then, do something useful, perhaps in Papa’s railway business.’

  The first Lord de Lacey had been one of the first to recognise the revolution the railways would bring about, and besides involving himself in the construction of the railways, he had built up a large herd on the home farm, whose milk was sent in churns to London in the early hours of every morning, some of it destined to be canned. All these enterprises needed labourers and supporting industries like horsemen, farriers, harness-makers, basket-makers, shops, breweries and alehouses, carriers to take produce from the farms to the station and railwaymen to run the trains. His son and then his grandson, Amy’s father, had carried on where he left off. When other aristocrats were having to sell their estates because they could not afford to keep them up, nor employ the army of servants needed to run them, he had prospered.

  ‘Like Lucy?’

  ‘No, silly, in the offices, like you do. Or you are supposed to do; I haven’t seen much evidence of it. You’d rather live the idle life of a gentleman.’

  ‘I haven’t yet found my niche.’

  ‘You are certainly taking your time about it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s quarrel about it. I have enough of that from Father and Mama. And you will need all your wits about you if you mean to go toe to toe with them over your plans.’

  ‘I shan’t go toe to toe, I shall be more subtle than that. I’ll get Mama on my side.’

  ‘She won’t go against Father, you know that.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  She sat forward to have her first glimpse of the house through the trees. It was a magnificent building, its brick and stone weathered by three hundred years of wind and rain, its rows of windows gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. Whenever she came home from a journey, be it short or long, she breathed in the essence of it; it was almost like meeting a lover after a long absence. It was home and she could not imagine living anywhere else. If she married, she would have to leave it and go wherever her husband chose to live and he would have to be a very special man to persuade her to that.

  He drew up at the front door, which was flung open almost before the wheels had stopped turning, and Annelise de Lacey ran down the front steps to greet her younger daughter, her arms wide, ready to embrace her as she stepped down onto the gravel. It was typical of their mother to forget or ignore her position as his lordship’s wife and allow her exuberance and joy to show. Not for her the stiff hauteur of the born aristocrat.

  ‘Amy, darling, let me look at you.’ She held her at arm’s length. ‘Why, how grown up you look. Don’t you think so, Jack?’ At forty-four she was still beautiful, her figure only slightly thicker than it had been twenty-odd years before. Her lustrous hair, with no hint of grey in it, was wound in a heavy coil at the back of her neck.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Quite the lady.’

  Annelise put her arm about Amy’s shoulders and together they went indoors, followed by Annie, leaving Jack to drive the gig round the house to the stables. ‘Did you have a good journey?’

  ‘Yes, but the trains are as smutty as ever and I feel filthy. I’ll have a bath and change before I do anything.’

  ‘Of course. Papa is out riding with Edmund but they know what time the train was due in, so they will be back soon. Peters will take your portmanteau up. What have you done about your trunk?’

  ‘Mr Storey is sending it up from the station on the carrier’s cart.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have it taken up to your room as soon as it arrives.’

  The hall was big and cool and smelt of polish and roses because a huge bowl of them stood on the table beside a silver tray. Amy breathed deeply, looking round at the portraits of earlier de Laceys that lined the walls and marched up the stairs to the top, where a gallery went round the upper level and where, as a child, she had peered through to look at the guests whenever her parents had company. ‘Oh, it is so good to be home.’

  She ran lightly up to her room and an hour later, bathed and dressed in a gown of blue silk, went downstairs again to be greeted in the small parlour by her father and her eleven-year-old brother, Edmund, still dressed in their riding clothes. She hugged Edmund, who bore it stoically, and went forward to be kissed by her father. He was a tall, well-built man who, at fifty-six, was still a handsome man. ‘Well, Amy?’ he said. ‘Home for good, this time.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ She had meant what she said when she told Jack she wanted to earn her living, but she was not going to spoil her homecoming by saying anything too soon. She would bring up the subject in her own time. ‘I am just going to explore everywhere before dinner, see what’s new.’

  ‘Oh, nothing is new. Everything is just as it was when you first went away, but off you go. You’ll find Patch in his stable.’

  Her father knew, as everyone else in the family knew, that her first port of call when she had been away was the stable to visit her horse and the first opportunity after that, she would be off riding him. But not today; it was already late and she must not keep dinner waiting

  They dined en famille at seven o’clock. Everything operated like clockwork, as it had always done, and the conversation was lively. Amy recounted tales of her finishing school and her holiday and reiterated her pleasure at being home. She heard about Edmund’s adventures at Gresham’s, the boarding school he attended, and her parents’ worries about the prospect of war.

  ‘I’ve sent Lizzie a wire and told her to come home,’ her father said. ‘I don’t suppose anything will happen immediately, but I would rather she was safely back here.’

  ‘She hasn’t got herself engaged yet, then?’ Amy asked. ‘I gather Max went out to spend some leave with her.’

  ‘If she has, she’s keeping it pretty quiet,’ Jack said.

  ‘There’s plenty of time to think about things like that,’ their mother put in. ‘He’s a soldier, who knows what will happen if there’s a war …’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Amy said. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. I saw hundreds and hundreds of children on Liverpool Street station when I came through. They were all labelled like parcels with gas masks in cardboard boxes hanging round their necks. Many of them were crying. And their mothers weren’t allowed past the barriers and they were crying too. It brought home to me what going to war will mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ her mother said. ‘Mrs Hutchins came to see me today. She has been appointed welfare officer for the evacuees coming to this area. She asked me to give one or two of them a home.’

  ‘You never said yes?’ Jack queried in surprise.

  ‘Of course I did. Poor things, dragged from their homes to live in strange places with strange people, you can’t help feeling sorry for them. We’ve got plenty of room, the whole of the nursery suite. I’ve given instructions to Mrs Baxter to have the rooms made ready. They’ll be here tomorrow.’

  ‘I do hope they’re house-trained,’ Jack said.

  Edmund stifled a giggle. He was allowed to have his meals with the rest of the family on sufferance and was expected to be seen and not heard. But it might be fun to have a pal or two he could boss around, at least until it was time to return to Gresham’s. It was a great pity he would have to go back to school. It didn’t seem fair when all the fun would be here at Nayton. The prospect of war d
idn’t frighten him.

  ‘I wonder how long it’ll be before we start losing some of the staff,’ Charles said, when they retired to the drawing room, leaving the servants to clear the table of the dinner things. The room was decorated in a delicate light green and cream, with a thick Brussels carpet whose rose pattern was echoed in the curtains at the long windows. It was furnished with two or three mahogany tables, a large glass-fronted cabinet containing a collection of porcelain figurines, two green-covered sofas, several armchairs and a grand piano. There were vases of flowers in the hearth, an ormolu clock on the marble mantel, flanked by two bronze sculptures of horses, a couple of busts and several papier mâché boxes with oriental designs on them, above which hung a heavy gilded mirror. The walls were covered in pictures, some very valuable, one or two painted by Jack who had discovered a talent for art at school. It was an elegant room, but it had a comfortable lived-in feel about it.

  ‘I suppose some of the men will go,’ Annelise said. ‘But I don’t know about the women.’

  ‘Women did war work in the last war,’ Amy said. ‘They did all sorts of jobs normally done by men, driving buses and ambulances, working in factories, nursing. I want to do something like that.’

  ‘Good heavens, child, why?’ her father exclaimed. ‘You do not need to …’

  ‘I may not need to, but I want to. I want to be useful. I was never born to be an ornament.’

  Charles smiled. ‘And a very pretty ornament you are too.’

  ‘You won’t put me off by paying me compliments,’ she said.

  ‘You are too young, not yet nineteen.’

  ‘Men died at nineteen in the last war and no doubt they will again.’

  ‘You are not a man, Amy.’

  Jack could see an argument developing and he did not want his sister calling on him for support; it might lead to questions about what he intended to do with his own life and he was not prepared to answer them, simply because he had no answers. His mother had had two miscarriages between Amy and Edmund, both boys, and by the time Edmund had come along Jack was thirteen and had become used to being considered Lord de Lacey’s heir. It was his only ambition; he needed to be recognised as a gentleman, not the grandson of a French farmer. The fact that his mother had married an English nobleman did not mitigate his shameful origins and his feeling of inferiority. It was irrational, he knew. His mother adored him and Lord de Lacey treated him as if he were truly his son, except in the matter of the inheritance. He could hardly expect anything else, but it made him feel like a rudderless ship, tossed by every wave that came along. He excused himself and left them to it.