“He called me ‘Mama’,” Henrietta said softly.
Melody could tell that her lover like that, a lot.
It still bothered her that she did not know what she had heard to wake her up. Or at least, it did not for about another minute.
And then she realised that what she had heard was Consuela, or another woman in a house nearby, having sex, periodically giggling very loudly and, or whispering, very loudly, advice and encouragement to her partner.
Henrietta laughed, too late clapping a hand over her mouth.
Melody collapsed back onto the palliasse with a heartfelt, somewhat rueful sigh of relief.
Together, the women strained their ears to listen.
“It’s weird,” Melody observed, completely awake now and mildly aroused, “I’ve never actually watched two people having sex, not for real, that is, but listening is just so…”
“Horny,” Henrietta agreed.
Melody snuggled closer, and while Pedro happily burrowed deeper between the women, kissed Henrietta.
Now I’ll never get back to sleep again!
Except Melody knew she was so tired that nature would eventually take its course.
Meanwhile, Brother Mariano, she suspected, with his holy work for the day done was doing his very best to enthusiastically elevate his ‘niece’, Consuela, that little bit closer to Heaven!
The village fell quiet a few minutes later and Melody was left alone in the dark with her thoughts and, although she could not put a finger on why, premonitions.
She found herself staring into the darkness trying to put not just the last few hours and days into perspective but everything which had happened to her since the traumas of Empire Day two years ago.
Like many New Englanders the whole affair of the atrocities in New York’s Upper Bay and at the Admiralty Dockyards at Brooklyn, not to mention the subsequent hysteria in which countless innocent people had had their lives and careers, in some cases, forever blighted, had been a thoroughly unsettling experience. That such outrages could happen at all was bad enough; that such injustices could be allowed to go on in its aftermath, sanctioned by the Colonial authorities, with the Police being in effect, egged on, by people who really should have known better, had shaken many New Englander’s faith in the judiciary, and cruelly exposed the inadequacies of several of the colonial constabularies.
For Melody, abruptly removed from the initial investigation within hours of being the only New York detective to actually gain access to an apparent survivor of one of the aerial attacks on the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron, Alexander Fielding, Empire Day had signalled a minor, albeit sideways deflection of her by then already stalled career as a detective. Not that she could honestly claim she had not been thinking of moving on, seriously considering her options, at that time. She had wanted to travel, to use her languages, possibly go back to the law although probably not in New England where the glass ceiling in the professions was barely cracked, her head already turned by the opportunities she confidently expected might open up for her back in the Old Country.
Thinking about it, she had definitely been considering her options that night last year that she had been summoned to meet Henrietta’s father at the Lieutenant Governor of New York’s residence. She had ceased, for all practical purposes, to be a police officer in the employ of the Colony of New York that night; and that night she had met Henrietta. In retrospect, her life had changed in the blink of an eye without her having to lift so much as her little finger.
I used to be in control of my life…
The investigation of the real story of the Empire Day conspiracy had been just the first step into chaos. The mission to Spain a blind leap into a quagmire of politics and intrigue in which she and Henrietta had been mere window-dressing. It had been as if she was simply marking time before she returned to whatever awaited her in New England. Subsequently, her slow downward spiral into confusion had quickened a step or two when she fell into bed with Alonso, and from then on, everything had been madness, sweeping she and Henrietta along as if they had fallen into some irresistible millrace. Their lives had not been their own for the last month, their fates at the command and in the hands of others; tonight, they were as powerless, helpless as ever they had been…
Melody suddenly sat up with an electric angst.
Henrietta groaned.
“Wake up!” Melody whispered urgently, rolling away and rising to her feet.
Belatedly, she realised that what had awakened her was the sound of the bolt to the door of the outbuilding being quietly clicked home.
They had been locked in.
“What…”
“We have to get out of here, now!”
Chapter 8
Saturday 8th April
Government House, Philadelphia
The sixty-one-year-old Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, found himself in the blissful interregnum between two of that afternoon’s scheduled meetings, interviews and ‘standing conferences’ when his Chief of Staff, Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson – an old soldier who, due to the current emergency, had resumed the usage of his military rank – entered his office and approached wearing an unusually thoughtful expression.
“Forgive me,” he apologised. “Miss Daventry-Jones has called again. This time she has taken the liberty of presenting herself at the door of Government House.”
The Governor of New England’s frown mellowed in a moment.
“Refresh my memory please, Henry?”
“She is affianced, or as good as, to that fellow Stanton, of the Manhattan Globe, who seems to have got himself lost in Spain…”
“Yes, of course.” Among the rumours flashing around the New England press were several improbable stories of private and official – that is, mounted by London – attempts to rescue British and colonial citizens caught up in the civil war raging in parts of the Iberian Peninsula. De L’Isle did not discount the possibility, indeed, the probability that the British Government might have set in train any number of ‘rescue missions’, including one searching for his daughter and her companion, Melody Danson; unfortunately, thus far, he had heard nothing from Spain other than the unlikely gossip that Albert Stanton might, in some way have been involved in just such an adventure.
He glanced at the clock.
There were a few minutes before the C-in-C- Atlantic Fleet, Lord Collingwood was due at Government House.
“Wheel the young lady in please, Henry.”
De L’Isle’s right-hand man blinked, hesitated.
The Governor of the Commonwealth of New England quirked a rueful grimace.
“Look, if she’s got the pluck to come all the way down to Philadelphia to knock on my door, the least I can do is give the young lady the time of day.”
Sir Henry Rawlinson nodded.
To actually be ushered into the presence of the Governor of the Commonwealth was pretty much the last thing Maud Daventry-Jones had anticipated.
De L’Isle welcomed her with a paternal smile and adroitly ushered her towards the comfortable chairs arranged away from his broad, gleaming pro-consul’s desk, beneath a recently hung portrait of the King and Queen. Previously, there had been a rather dusty, gloriously executed, somewhat uninspiring daubing of one of his venerable, nineteenth century predecessors.
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Excellency!” The diminutive, prim young woman blurted.
De L’Isle tried to put her at her ease.
“Sir is quite sufficient, Miss Daventry-Jones,” he pointed out gently. “I gather that you are concerned for the safety of a Mr Albert Stanton?”