Jack almost smiled as he realised Stacey thought he was paying court to Grace. “Do you have any advice for me, Mr Stacey?”
Stacey’s eyes wandered upwards, as if he could see Grace through all the intervening layers of concrete and marble. Then he looked at Jack, his gaze flinty. “She is a very special young lady, Major. None of us here would like to see her hurt.”
“Then I will take care, Mr Stacey.” Jack tipped his cap at the concierge, then made for the lifts.
“Major?”
Jack turned, then drew a sharp intake of breath. Stacey’s form shimmered, and suddenly there was not a man standing there, but a Sidlesaghe.
“None of us,” said the Sidlesaghe, his mournful face drawn in long lines, half raising his long arms, “would like to see her hurt.”
Jack wondered at this special protection afforded Grace, and became even more determined to discover her secrets. “Then, as I said, Sidlesaghe, I will take care.”
The Sidlesaghe’s form shimmered, and Robert Stacey, staid and nondescript, once more stood before Jack. “Have a good visit, Major,” he said.
Jack nodded, and turned back to the lifts.
Grace was clearly disconcerted by Jack’s visit. She opened the door slowly, and stood, looking at him. “Yes?”
“Your mother told me you would be in. I wanted to see you, so I came to visit.” He paused. “May I come in?”
She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded and opened the door wide, standing back to let him through and close the door, before walking past him to lead him into the apartment’s drawing room.
Grace was dressed in clothes different to anything Jack had seen her wearing before—another change, and definitely for the better. Whereas Grace had earlier worn very demure, and often downright shapeless, skirts and blouses, now she wore a closefitted blue linen dress that suited both her colouring and figure. She was wearing high heels, too, and Jack suddenly realised that Grace’s legs were almost as lovely as Ariadne’s.
The entire ensemble, Jack decided, was a remarkable improvement.
“Yes?” Grace said again as they sat down in opposite chairs in the drawing room.
“I won’t bite, Grace.”
She coloured a little. “I’m sorry. I’m just surprised to see you. I thought you preferred my mother.”
Jack ignored the remark about Noah and decided to waste no time on preliminaries about the weather. “I wanted to talk to you about the shadow I feel about London. It is labyrinthine, it somehow concerns the Troy Game, I can feel that—” he tapped at his chest “—and yet only I, and you, I suspect, can sense it. Grace, talk to me.”
Grace fiddled with a fold of loose material over her stomach, her eyes turned to the view out the window. “My mother has told me that you’ve been exploring.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes finally came back to him. “What have you discovered?”
“More questions than answers. As I said, it has a labyrinthine quality, but I have not been able to trace its entire extent, or anything like its true nature or purpose. Because it touches my Kingman blood, calls to it,” Jack tapped his chest again, “then everyone else with training in the skills of the labyrinth should be able to sense something of it, too. But your parents can’t. Stella can’t. Ariadne and my father likewise. But I think that you can…Grace, can you sense it?”
Her fingers had stilled, and she watched him with wary eyes.
“Grace?”
Finally Grace nodded.
“But why you,” Jack said, “and not your mother, or Stella? They are the two Mistresses of the Labyrinth most intimately connected with the Troy Game, and there’s no other Game that—”
Jack stopped abruptly, and at the same moment Grace tensed and looked to the window.
Something had shifted outside, something in the Embankment along the Thames beyond the Savoy’s windows, but it was so fleeting, and so ethereal, that Jack would have put it down to his imagination.
Save that Grace had clearly felt it as well.
“Grace?” He leaned forward in his chair, concerned. Grace was still staring at the window, her face drawn and pale, her hands clutching at the arms of her chair. “Grace? Are you all right? What was that?”
She didn’t move, and Jack slid forward on his own chair, enough that he could reach out and put a hand on her knee. “Grace?”
She jumped as he touched her, and jerked her face back to his. “Nothing. There was nothing.” She gave a forced laugh. “Aren’t most women in London seeing the Penitent Ripper behind every shadow these days?”
Jack winced. “Grace—”
“It was nothing, Jack.”
“Grace—”
“Whatever this shadow is,” Grace said, “I am certain it is a trap. I know it.”
“And what if it is not?” he said. “It doesn’t feel like a trap to me.”
“What does it feel like to you, then?”
He hesitated, unsure about voicing the conviction that had been growing over the past few weeks. “I think it is a weakness within the Troy Game,” he said finally.
“If it was a weakness, then my mother and Stella would feel it.”
“I don’t know why they can’t. It just doesn’t feel like a trap to me.”
“Jack—”
“Grace, I know you don’t agree with me, but is it possible that you could help me?”
Grace retreated into stillness.
“You can feel it. I can feel it. We’re the only two. Grace, I need your help to trace out the extent of this strange shadow. I can’t do it on my own, and Catling watches me too closely. You have a little more freedom.”
Grace’s mouth twisted at that last, but she gave a small nod. “What do you want me to do?”
THIRTEEN
Autumn-Winter 1939
GRACE SPEAKS
I didn’t trust Jack. I still thought he was likely to precipitate the circumstances that would destroy me, and I thought he was likely to tear my parents apart, but, nonetheless, I agreed to help him.
I had two reasons for this. I wasn’t sure of the how of it, but I thought he was primarily responsible for the difference in the way my mother treated me. I had thought she would rail at me, or demand explanations, or, worse, fuss, when she discovered that I had trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, that I had been entertaining Catling for years within my bedchamber, and, not the least, had been the lover of her former lover…but all Noah had done was walk into my room, kiss me once, and then again, and say, “I am so proud of you.”
And walk out.
I was doubly stunned by that: by her words and by the sheer simplicity of her actions. It broke down barriers as nothing else could have done. We didn’t exactly become bosom friends overnight, but, after so many years of distance, we began to talk again. She asked me, one day, about my Great Ordeal and I found myself telling her in more detail than I’d originally intended, and then, most remarkable of all, we ended up laughing over some silly matter.
So I was grateful to Jack for that. I didn’t know how he’d done it, or if he had consciously done anything, but he had certainly been the catalyst to the thawing in relations between me and my mother.
The second reason I had agreed to help Jack was because no one had ever asked for my help before. Here was something that my mother, or Ariadne, or Stella could not do…but I could. It gave me a sense of purpose, of usefulness, that I’d never had previously. I thought Jack was very, very wrong when he said he thought this difference was a weakness, but I thought that if I helped, then perhaps I would be able to show him that he was wrong, and I right.
Grace had a job, finally. My own contribution to the “war effort”.
That night, after Jack had come to see me, Catling did not appear beside my bed.
I took that for a good sign.
The next morning we met at a Lyons teashop just off the Strand.
“Catling watches me,” said Jack, stirring his cup of tea and ignoring the stares of the women in the shop.
Although I’d realised Jack was a handsome man, I hadn’t realised the full extent of his attractiveness until I saw the other women unable to keep their eyes off him for any longer than five seconds.
I’d never had tea with such a striking man before, and was a little bit surprised to find that I was basking in the envy of every other woman present.
“She watches me, also,” I said.
“Ah,” said Jack, smiling, and looking up from his tea, “but she only enjoys tormenting you. Me she expects to try and murder her at any moment. Her eyes are always keener when turned my way.”
I inclined my head, conceding the point, and wondering what the other women thought of me—a younger sister to the American major? His girl? “And so that’s why you need my help?”