1: Wales & London
Late February, 1931–
Ethan Barrow crouched behind a thicket of heather, hunting rifle in hand. Next to him hunched Lord Aberdare, in a deerstalker cap and possibly fancying himself a Sherlock Holmes. On his other side was Lord Canterbury, in a much more efficient wool cap, still as a predator.
“There!” Lord Aberdare was on his feet, aiming his rifle at the flapping duck that had just been scared up from the water by his dog. He fired, and the duck went plummeting again. Barrow could hear the dog barking and a splash as he dove in to fetch the duck.
“Good shot, Charles,” said Lord Canterbury.
Barrow said nothing. He felt a little out of place with these aristocratic men, both much older than he was, both of who had until recently sat on large estates and vast fortunes. He was here by virtue of his wife, the daughter of a Baron herself. And so far, he was the only one with no noble blood.
“I’d like to see you do better, Bertie old boy,” Lord Aberdare said with a wry wink and a grin.
“When you’ve been in the war, Charles, you do get quite good at this kind of thing.”
Lord Aberdare snorted out a laugh, then had to turn and sneeze into a handkerchief. That scared up another duck, and Lord Canterbury was following it with the muzzle of his rifle. Then he fired, hitting the duck in a spray of feathers, and the bird came spinning down in a death spiral. It made Barrow sick, frankly, to see killing so unfeelingly.
“I believe I might go back to the house,” said Barrow then.
“Everything all right, Barrow?” Lord Canterbury glanced over at him, concern in his eyes.
“Yes, I’m fine. I think I just need some more coffee.”
Barrow stood, uncocked his rifle, and handed it off to his loader. Then he slid his hands into his pockets and started the trudge back to the manor sitting up on the hill crest. The manor was Lord Aberdare’s, on a rolling moor covered with blue-green grass and grey heather, complete with private hunting grounds and extensive gardens. Barrow had no love of these noble types — he’d grown up in Birmingham, in a tiny attached row house that was so narrow the hallways only fit one person at a time and the front door opened directly onto the street. With three siblings, of course, it was more than a little crowded, especially because there was never enough space, food, or clothes for all of them. He wondered how his sister, the only girl, was faring down in Bristol. She and her business-minded husband had opened up a pub on the high street, but that was the last he’d heard of her.
“Hello, Mr Barrow,” said Aberdare’s butler. He also played the valet and the chauffeur when Aberdare required it. “You are back early.”
“I’ve got a weak stomach,” Barrow said, which was a lie. As part of the Vice squad in Birmingham, he’d seen things that would have made any other man vomit or faint.
“Of course, sir. Will you be joining the ladies now?”
“Actually, only one lady in particular, but yes,”
“They are this way, sir.”
He followed the butler through Aberdares’ massive dining room, where they would undoubtedly be eating the duck they’d just shot this evening, into the drawing room beyond it. Inside were four women: Diana, Lady Aberdare; Daphne, Marchioness Canterbury; Rowena, Baroness Crewe; and most importantly, Philippa Blakely, the Baroness’s daughter and his wife.
The four of them stood up when he entered, and both Lady Canterbury and Lady Aberdare gave him charming smiles.
“Hello, Mr Barrow,” Lady Aberdare said. Besides Pippa, she’d been the most welcoming. That was all well and good, of course. Except it made him feel even more like an outsider. “Finished shooting already?”
“The others weren’t, milady,” he said, bowing his head to her before crossing the room to join Pippa. “Your husband is a good shot. I couldn’t help noticing.”
“Yes, well…” Her smile sagged just the slightest bit. “I don’t care for it, but…”
“Exactly the reason I’m here.” He slid his arm around Pippa and kissed her temple.
“Would you like any tea, now that you’re here? Or anything to eat? You must be ravenous…” Lady Aberdare seemed a little fretful, and he had a feeling it had something to do with her children. She had Miranda, two years old now, and Horatio, going on seven months. He couldn’t blame her — all first-time mothers were.
“I’m all right, milady, thank you.”
He followed Pippa’s lead and stayed until the other women went up to change for supper. Lord Aberdare and Lord Canterbury came back just in time, also disappearing upstairs to join their wives and their children. Only Lady Crewe was left. Pippa detached herself from him to go to her, and Barrow couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. She couldn’t have been a day over forty, but she looked like a woman in her sixties, walking with hunched shoulders and back in small shuffling steps and a vacant, passive expression in her eyes. Perhaps it was because she was older than either Lady Canterbury or Lady Aberdare, and didn’t have young children to look after. Or it was because her husband, imprisoned for life, showed no desire to be repentant for his actions or maintain contact with his wife and daughter, the only family he had left.
“Are you all right, Mama?” Pippa asked as they made their slow progress up the stairs, Pippa’s arm around Lady Crewe’s shoulders. “Do you need to lie down?”
“I may,” Lady Crewe said. “Perhaps I will have supper in my room tonight.”
Pippa’s gaze, dark with worry, darted up to his. “Are you sure, Mama?”
“Quite sure, my dear.”
Back in their own room, once Lady Crewe had retreated to hers, Pippa spoke.
“I’m worried about her, Ethan. She seemed fine at our wedding. But ever since then, she’s been…like this. Just listless, drifting…empty.”
“Understandably,” he said, going to Pippa sitting at the vanity and rubbing her shoulders. “Have you thought of what we might do if it continues?”
Pippa sighed, a heavy, weary sound. “I suppose we could consider moving her in with us. But we don’t have the room or the means…we would have to tighten our finances even more than we already have…”
“Perhaps I may ask my mother.” Barrow kissed Pippa’s cheek, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “She is near about the same age. Perhaps, with no husbands in the mix, we could find a suitable arrangement.”
Pippa seemed surprised. “But they hate each other, don’t they? Your mother doesn’t like…”
“That will have to be a bridge we cross when we come to it. I promise you, Pippa, we will find a way to take care of her. She will be in good hands.”
Faintly, Pippa smiled, and took his hand to kiss his knuckles. He kissed the top of her head, taking in the rosewater scent of her hair, and hoped he would be able to keep that promise.
Despite his words, Pippa couldn’t sleep that night. She’d felt his confidence that it would work, whatever plan he had in mind, in the way he’d grasped her shoulder and kissed her cheek and her hair. So after he’d fallen asleep, his arm draped loosely over her, she slid out from under it and slipped out of their bedroom.The Aberdare manor was large, old, and creaky — something out of the last century. She half-expected a woman dressed in a white nightgown and carrying a candelabra to come gliding down the hallway.
She almost found that too, in the now-silent dining room. Lady Aberdare sat alone at the head of the table, her blonde hair — cut short now, shoulder length — in a wild halo around her face and a lantern at her elbow, making her face appear to be floating in the darkness. She was turning a squat glass of something between her fingers.
Pippa knocked. Lady Aberdare’s head popped up suddenly, visible surprise on her face.
“Lady Aberdare?” she said, her own surprise in her voice. “You were sleepless too?”
Lady Aberdare sighed and nodded. “I have been for a while now.”
Pippa entered cautiously and sat down with some hesitation, leaving a chair in between. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, milady, I just…”
“Please, call me Diana,” she said. “I don’t much care for the ‘milady’ title.”
“Diana,” said Pippa, and Lady Aberdare smiled just faintly. “I never knew that was your name. It suits you.”
“Does it?” Lady Aberdare raised an eyebrow. “It was my father’s idea. Our family has a tradition of naming their children for characters in Shakespearian plays. It was only mine that has a double meaning.”
Pippa nodded. She knew what Lady Aberdare referred to — there was the huntress Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity, said to be both virginal and beautiful.
Lady Aberdare took a sip from her glass. “You must know…I am glad you decided to come. Lady Canterbury…I see her a bit like my mother, when what I really need is a friend.”
“I’ll be a friend to you. As long as you need me.”
Lady Aberdare smiled, a little more visibly this time. The two of them were closest in age, only two years and ten months apart. Still, Lady Aberdare seemed older, wearier.
“It is good to see you and Mr Barrow together — for once, a marriage of love rather than convenience.” Lady Aberdare sighed deeply and drained her glass. “I miss having a man I could love.”
Pippa said nothing. Lord Canterbury hadn’t told her much about how Lady Aberdare came to be married to a man nearly twenty years her senior, although she did remember something about an illegitimate child with another — a servant, she could hear her mother saying now, in a scandalised whisper — who she truly loved. He was away in America now, undoubtedly feeling the crush of the Depression.
“Of course Charles is kind to me,” Lady Aberdare went on, somewhat absently. “He never shouts. Never raises a hand against me. I know he loves our children dearly. But I know he feels something like affection for me. As if I’m one of them.”
Still, Pippa didn’t speak. Of course a man like that would naturally feel that way. How he would somehow feel responsible for a young wife, still beautiful and in her prime. Pippa had seen him when they’d first driven up. If she hadn’t been told beforehand that they were married, she would have thought he was her father.
“And now I have done my duty,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I have given my husband an heir. I believe we may go on this way now indefinitely. We do not even share a bed anymore.”
“Diana…”
“Do not feel sorry for me, please.” Lady Aberdare shook her head. “I cannot bear thinking someone pities me. There is nothing I can do to change this…this…whatever you want to call it. Certainly not a marriage.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Pippa said. “I only want you to know…we’ve got things in common. Things that can bind us together…help us cope. It isn’t all bliss for me, believe me. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage.”
“Yes, but you…you and your husband…you get along. You seem close. You seem to know each other well. I’ve been married for nearly five years and I hardly even know my husband.”
“Trust me, I probably know just as much about Ethan as you do about Lord Aberdare. He doesn’t share much with me.” As she said it, Pippa knew it was true. Ethan was a need-to-know basis kind of man, keeping things to himself unless it was absolutely necessary that he didn’t. She knew nothing about his family, except for his mother, and less than nothing about his upbringing.
“I suppose we do have that in common, then,” said Lady Aberdare. Her hand clenched on the tabletop, and Pippa reached out and laid her own hand over it.
That put things into perspective the next morning at breakfast, after both of them had gone back to bed. With a small twinge of sadness Pippa realised the magnitude of Lady Aberdare’s words — We do not even share a bed anymore. She would sleep alone for the remainder of her marriage, while she, Pippa, would have Ethan next to her for the rest of their days together.
There was the affection Lady Aberdare mentioned — the nanny brought their children, carrying little Horatio on her hip and holding Miranda by the hand as she toddled beside her up to her mother. Behind the nanny came Lord Aberdare, and once Miranda had settled on her mother’s lap, he gave his children and his wife the same perfunctory kiss on the forehead.
“Everything all right, Pippa?” Ethan, sitting next to her, took her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “You’re quiet.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” She kissed his hand. She watched Lady Aberdare as she did, now occupied with the two children. “Don’t worry about me.”
He didn’t, as long as it took for them to pack their things, say their goodbyes to Lord and Lady Canterbury and Aberdare, nestle Lady Crewe in the car for the ride to the train station, and be on their way. She turned around and watched their figures recede out the back window, four people whose roles had been determined for them at birth and the ones they would play their entire lives. It had only been Lady Aberdare who’d seemed to realise — even resent — that it was a prison, one of their own making.
Once back in London, after settling Lady Crewe back at home and then returning to their own home, Pippa knew the real work was just starting. Since they’d started their P.I. firm, they’d only taken on a single client, a man who’d believed his wife had been cheating on him. She had, which was the conclusion he’d wanted. But his money hadn’t been worth enough to keep the firm running. Funds were tight, and it was only a matter of time, it appeared, before it would be in the red and costing more than it made.
“We can’t keep going on like this, Ethan,” she said the next workday, two days after they’d returned from Wales. “I mean…look at this place.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, saying nothing as he looked around. Their so-called office took up a single floor of a storefront in Mayfair. It was safe, certainly, and their potential clients were very well-off — bankers, businessmen, members of Parliament. But the rent was ridiculously high, and fixing anything that broke took more time and money that they didn’t have. Even now she noted the crooked ceiling fan, the wobbling leg on Ethan’s desk, the swivel chair that Philomena usually occupied spinning a little off-kilter. Little things. But those little things added up to big things in no time.
“What would you suggest, Philippa?” He raised an eyebrow. He liked calling her by her full name when he was feeling playful, or when he was patronising her. She suspected it was the second choice.
“We need a way to market ourselves. A better way to bring people in.” She crossed her arms and scowled, perching herself on the edge of her desk opposite his. “Or we’ll have to shut it down and find something else to do with our lives.”
“You make a good point,” he said, his attitude suddenly dropping. “And I don’t want to go back to the Met.”
“I don’t want you going back there,” she said. That’d been the only way her mother ever let Pippa marry him, if he quit. And even then that hadn’t fully satisfied her.
Ethan looked away, drumming his fingers on his desk top. “It’s not all I thought it’d be.”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “That’s an understatement.”
That was when the bell above the door tinkled as it opened. Pippa straightened, and Ethan sat up. A man had entered — a younger one, possibly late thirties, his intelligent green eyes flicking between them and his chestnut-brown hair windblown from the breeze outside.
“I’m looking for Ethan Barrow?” he said.
“Here,” said Ethan, standing and putting his hand out over the desk. “May we ask who you are?”
“My name is Webley Hounslow,” said the man, shaking Ethan’s hand, then turning to Pippa to take her offered hand. Not for a shake, like a man’s, but a kiss, for a lady’s. “And who is this beautiful lady?”
“My wife,” said Ethan, at the same moment Pippa said, “Philippa.”
“A husband and wife team,” said Hounslow, with a smile. “Exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Really,” said Pippa. She didn’t know what to make of this man, truthfully. And what sort of name was Webley anyway? “Why is that?”
“I came to you because of my own wife,” said Hounslow. “I believe she is cheating on me.”
“Well, then,” Ethan said, motioning Hounslow to the back, where they had walled off an area as their meeting room. “You’ve come to the right place.”
