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He took a more direct route than he had that afternoon, and although there was some distance between his father’s townhouse and the crescent, Philip soon found himself standing outside Lord Balfour’s residence. All the windows were in darkness, save one.
Removing his pocket watch, struggling to see the time by the half-moon’s light, Philip saw that it was well past eleven. It was highly likely that many of the house residents were fast asleep. He could not well knock on the front door, at least not without worrying half the people inside to death.
They might even believe there was some kind of emergency, that some dreadful accident had befallen a close friend, or even that someone might have passed away.
Instead, thinking quickly and seeing that Lady Lockhart’s bedroom window was the only one lit by candlelight, Philip dropped down into a crouch and felt with his fingers for several stones. Feeling slightly ridiculous for even considering what he was about to do, the earl’s son held his breath and prepared to throw.
Just seconds after releasing the first stone, Philip gasped. The sound of the pebble hitting the glass windowpane was far louder than he had anticipated. Holding his breath, he listened as hard as he could for any signs of movement inside the house, glancing at the other windows for fear that he might have accidentally woken someone else up. He was prepared to run if Lady Balfour appeared at one of the windows, or God forbid, the duke himself.
Quickly anticipating that they might, he stepped back into the shadows of the rosebush that he had been standing in that afternoon and hurriedly pulled up the hood of his coat to at least shield his face from view. He could only hope that the Balfours would not recognise his stature enough to identify him.
When there was no movement, Philip held his breath and threw a second stone, this time glancing over his shoulder to be sure that nobody might be passing in the street or even watching him from across the crescent. He could only begin to imagine how much trouble he would get in not only with the crescent’s residents but also with his father for being a lurker and making a nuisance of himself.
It wasn’t until the third stone clinked off the windowpane and he was preparing to throw another that darkness fell across the window. Darting back into the shadows once more, Philip peered around the edge of the bush to be sure that it was indeed Lady Lockhart. He was almost entirely sure that he had got the right window, the one she had been leaning out of earlier that day.
To his relief, he saw the familiar outline of her heart-shaped face as she unlatched the window and leaned out, gripping the edge of the windowsill with her delicate fingertips.
“Hello?” she called in a hissed whisper, “Is someone there?”
The moment he heard her voice, Philip’s heart began to race, and instinctively he stepped out of the shadows. Even in the near darkness, he saw her eyes light up the moment she saw him. Within seconds, her face was twisting with sheer astonishment, and she gasped, “Mr Radcliffe, what are you doing here?”
“Hush, you’ll wake the entire crescent,” he hissed back up to her, pressing his index finger to his lips and glancing this way and that to be sure he still wasn’t being watched.
As if she sensed his urgency, Lady Lockhart hissed down to him, “Come to the side gate. I shall meet you there.”
Is this truly happening?Philip asked himself as he watched Lady Lockhart gently close her window. He waited until her shadow had receded from the window and then began to slip around the side of the house, relieved that the alleyway’s darkness swallowed him from the view of the rest of the street.
The harsh and raucous sound of squeaking and scuffling alerted him to the fact that he had disturbed some small creature hiding in the leaf litter at the edge of the alleyway, and he paused a moment to be sure it was gone before he continued, unwilling to stand on whatever it was.
Perhaps it was merely an excuse to prolong his meeting Lady Lockhart; perhaps it was merely who he was; either way, he felt his anxiety growing the moment he began to move once more down the alleyway.
Chapter 14
The clinking of something upon her bedroom window awakened Daisy with a start. The thudding of something knocked off the bed by her startlement also made her jump followed by the clinking of something else upon her window. Disoriented, Daisy glanced around for a moment, confused by the still flickering candle lit on her bedside table.
It wasn’t until she glanced over the side of her bed at the book that had fallen from beside her that she realised she must have fallen asleep while reading. She couldn’t have said that she was surprised after all the sleepless and restless nights she had been having of late.
But she was surprised by the sound of something clinking against the windowpane across the room once more. It was an odd yet familiar sound, and she couldn’t help feeling as though she had heard it somewhere before, perhaps in a dream.
Am I dreaming right now?she asked herself as she clambered from her bed and brushed back her hair from her face, moving swiftly towards the window.
Heart hammering in her chest, she unlatched the window and shoved it open, cringing at the creaking sound it made when it had half-opened. She forced it further still and leaned out with her fingers clasping the windowsill to steady herself.
“Hello?” she called beneath her breath, hoping that whoever or whatever was around making such a racket would hear her and either be frightened off or explain themselves. “Is someone there?”
Movement caught her attention at the corner of her eye, and she glanced down at the rosebushes growing along the fence of the front garden below. Her heart skipped a beat the moment she saw the hooded figure standing there. Momentarily, she thought to scream, but then almost immediately, she somehow recognised the broad shoulders and tall frame of the man standing below her.
“Mr Radcliffe,” she gasped, “What are you doing here?”
“Hush, you’ll wake the entire crescent!” came his immediate response, and as his hood began to fall away from his face, she saw that he had pressed his index finger to his lips, signalling for her to be quiet.
Yet she could not help herself. She called down to him, “Come to the side gate. I shall meet you there.”
Before he could respond, she closed the window, careful not to let it slam before she latched it into place and hurried back across the room to grab her robe from where it was hanging over the back of her vanity table chair.
Having not seen him for well over a week, debating and talking herself out of writing to him more than once, Daisy felt as though she hadn’t seen Mr Radcliffe in near on a lifetime. Just having seen him standing below her, looking up at her in the moonlight with his brilliant blue gaze, she couldn’t resist the urge to see him and be close to him again.
Though she had been angry with him for not having shown at their last tutoring session, she couldn’t help feeling that she had tortured herself for long enough. Whether it had been a painful separation for him or not, she was determined to put an end to it the moment she saw him standing there beside that rosebush.
