Jarred out of her trance, Juliana demanded, 'Where is Thomas?'
Lovell smiled sadly. 'I came here to ask you the same question.'
She panicked. 'What have you done with him?'
'He ran off. So, if he did not come here to you, the ungrateful brat could be anywhere.'
'He is just a child!' Juliana cried, as if father and son had just gone off together on a fishing trip and Lovell had lost sight of the boy accidentally. 'How could you let him go roaming the streets? Anyone may abduct him, for terrible purposes. How did you make him run away from you?'
Lovell immediately put the blame on her. 'Well, you brought him up disobedient and reckless!'
'Oh no! He inherited running away from you.' Juliana's voice hardened. They ought to have been strangers, but they fell into a quarrel like any married couple.
Lovell watched her, as she tried to gauge how to handle this situation. She was better-looking than he remembered. Her features had sharpened handsomely, while her new self-assurance made her shine. She dressed more prettily than she might have done as the wife of a Bible-scrutinising, psalm-singing, perjury-preaching puritan. Selling haberdashery demanded that she have fancies about her. Her skirt was glazed linen, over which she wore an unusual finely knitted jacket, patterned in shades of salmon and fern green; the silk came from Naples, but she had knitted the panels herself. Unadorned by jewellery — though Lovell was irritably sure he had given her plenty — she had tied up her dark hair in a neat bun, pulled straight back without a fringe nowadays, but still with bundles of side-ringlets like those she used to wear.
When he first walked in, Juliana had found that her mind cleared, the way soldiers must ignore everything except the immediate frightening emergency. She wanted to rid her premises of Lovell as quickly as possible, concentrating on that, even though she must learn what he had done with Tom and prevent his taking anything else she treasured…
'What happened to the little one?' Orlando's eyes bored into Juliana, as he instinctively sensed her anxiety.
'Valentine? His name is Valentine!' Juliana reprimanded him. 'I brought him up, as best I could, having no money or support from you. Sometimes we went hungry; often we were afraid; we were unwelcome where you had left us; and virtually homeless — '
'Don't dramatise. I know you lived in Lewisham.' Lovell glanced around, his lip curling. 'And now you have this! You have dwindled yourself into a seller of trifles — '
'This', Juliana informed him, stiffening, 'is what my father did, and my grandfather. This has put clothes on our backs and food on the table. Yesterday, for instance, we had scotch collops and tonight we shall have a chicken fricassee, which is Val's favourite.'
Wilfully missing the point, Lovell reminisced: Ah how I remember when you used to make us with your own hands a wonderful quelquechose — ' A quelquechose was a mixed pan-fried dish with many ingredients — whatever a stretched housewife could cobble together by emptying her pantry. As a bride and young mother, Juliana had certainly been stretched and she remembered it bitterly. 'So dear little Val likes a fricassee, does he?' Juliana regretted mentioning Valentine. Lovell, who probably still thought of his younger son as a toddler, was playing on her fear again. 'So where is my little lordling?'
'He goes to school.' Juliana was hiding the truth. Valentine was here. He was upstairs, kept off school with an illness, probably feigned. Val's idea of a good life was lying in bed, wrapped in a quilt, surrounded by books and toys, with the dogs Muff and Hero snuggled alongside him, tended by sympathetic women who would bear him broths or fruit juices. Now eleven years old and a master-manipulator, Val had perfected a cough that sounded as if he had only two days left on earth. It had to be taken seriously. The one time Juliana had hardened her heart and sent him to school anyway, he had been brought home in an apple cart, semi-conscious, with the worst case of croup the doctor had ever seen… 'He is good at his books and is to go to Oxford University with a generous legacy from poor Edmund Treves.' She could not help a note of pride.
Lovell burst out in loud laughter. 'Well, thank the Lord! It is a gentlemanly future! I knew there was a reason for taking up with Edmund.' His voice dropped gravely, perhaps in memory of Treves. He and Juliana shared that moment, because Edmund had been a friend of their youth, a friend of their married life… 'Where else would Thomas go, if not here?'
'He is thirteen! Where has he to go?' snapped Juliana.
'Where does your printer work?'
'In Holborn.'
'He is there now? When will he return?'
'I have no idea.'
Lovell scoffed with sarcasm, not believing her. 'Well, suppose Thomas goes to him… Will not your fellow dash straight here, to bring your darling back to you?'
Juliana thought that Gideon might very well take Thomas straight to the intelligence office.
Lovell came closer. The pain from his bullet wound was bothering him; he lurched slightly against the counter. Unaware of the reason, Juliana even wondered if he might be tipsy; his eyes glittered with enlarged pupils and his cheeks were flushed.
Lovell assumed a soft expression, calculated to remind her of old moments of tenderness and lovemaking. 'You look as you did the day I first met you in Wallingford — ' He reached out with one hand, as if to tweak her ringlets. Juliana jerked her head back, keeping away from him. '… Well, what do you think, Juley — will your man bring my boy home?'
She saw the dangers and hoped not. 'You assume Thomas can find his way to Holborn.'
'Oh he's bright.' Lovell made his tone suggest he now knew Tom better than she did.
'Tom would come to me.' Juliana, who never doubted her child's intelligence, desperately hoped he would work out that his father would come looking here.
Lovell fell silent. Once Thomas changed allegiance, he might successfully go into hiding. The past nine months had taught the boy about living undercover… 'I wonder — is that what you really think? You know how to wriggle when questioned!'
'I learned it', Juliana retorted, 'lying to the Committee for Compounding about your actions, then under interrogation from Parliament about your whereabouts!'
'Was it you who laid the information against me?'
The sudden question was crude. It shocked Juliana. 'How can you suggest it? I defended you, Orlando; I did it for years and against all comers — '
He at once became contrite. 'Oh I have been such a trouble to you! Sweetheart, I apologise — '
'You feel nothing. You never did.'
Lovell still had choices. Soon, with this wound, those choices would run out. Although he had done his best to cleanse the bullet hole and pack it, he was starting to feel drowsy. He decided that this was the best place to rest. The house was private enough. 'So Tom will come here… Let us not stand in your shop, my dear. You and I will go upstairs and seat ourselves politely. Then we shall wait.'
Juliana flinched. She had managed to endure him in her shop, which was a public place, but letting him into her home, the home she shared with Gideon, would be hideous.
Lovell saw it. He grew angry, with an acid growl in the guts. He urged Juliana towards the lobby where he knew the stairs were, though he himself stayed and began flinging open the drawers where she kept her stock. He tossed out whatever he found there — ribbon, tape, needles, embroidery scissors, skeins of wool, buttons, bright silks wrapped in paper…
'If you are searching for the carbine,' Juliana told him coldly, refusing to show her panic, 'Gideon took it away to Holborn, to find out why it did not fire.'
'He told you about that!'
She did not trouble to reply. Unable to bear the sight of her jumbled stock, she turned away and went quickly upstairs. Her mind whispered secretly, If Gideon comes home, he will see the disturbance and know who is here…