Very soon she would be meeting Faro off the morning train from Edinburgh. At the railway station, they would take one of the new taxi cabs through the city’s twisting streets and down into the Irongate. To the Dower House.

  She clasped her hands delightedly, excited now at the lovely surprise she had prepared for him, now certain she had done the right thing, glad she had resisted the temptation to mention the Hardys’ offer.

  Walking down the hotel steps, she took reassurance, made confident by the sunshine, that this day promised to be the beginning of a delightful holiday for them both. Her misgivings in the dark hours of an unsettled night were banished by a surge of excitement with so many advantages to consider, certain that the Dower House’s history would gladden Faro’s heart, staying on the very site of the original Roman villa with its faded remains of that mosaic floor once walked on daily by the Emperor Severus, his family and retinue of servants.

  First of all, her day would begin with the pleasant task of seeing Kathleen again. Making her way towards the Stonegate, she told herself she would soon realise that she had been worrying unduly. There were many reasons why she had not heard from Kathleen, and Faro had assured her that letters frequently were delayed when forwarded to people moving to new addresses.

  Perhaps it would have been better to have given her Solomon’s Tower as her address, he added, which too late was not much in the way of consolation. By the time she met him off the train and took him to meet Kathleen, and introduced him to the Dower House, she would have all the answers to that one imponderable thought at the back of her mind and that refused to be banished.

  How on earth Theo, a clerk and record keeper with the archaeologists, unlikely to earn much more than a working man’s wage, could, along with his wife and a stepson who had no fixed employment, afford to live in the Dower House and employ a housekeeper, servants and run a motor car that even a professor’s income would find it difficult to maintain?

  Meanwhile, as she approached the Four Seasons, Jeremy Faro, who loved train travel, was sitting back comfortably, enjoying the morning sunshine streaming through the carriage window.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Faro laid aside the guidebook he had intended reading on the train journey in favour of the fascination of an ever-changing landscape. He sighed, thinking happily of Imogen and another new experience they were to share. Indeed, each time they were separated by even a few days, he found himself counting the hours until they would be together again.

  He had never grown used to spending long periods apart, never got used to the demands of her life as a writer of some repute traipsing across Europe, her biographies of historical figures in high demand and always the need for research taking her to yet another country. He had been glad before his retirement to accompany her but relieved that the turbulence of Irish history had brought her nearer to home.

  Home for her was in Kerry, where they had been married by her uncle, Father Seamus Crowe in St Katherine’s Church in Ventry. An almost secret marriage, more like an elopement rather than the family wedding expected to be enjoyed with an overabundance of food and drink by the Crowe family in Carasheen, an occasion both of them were keen to avoid.

  He stared out of the window as the train swept past Durham, the magnificence of its cathedral briefly holding the horizon. They must visit Durham, especially knowing that the university had asked Imogen for a lecture on her biographical series on the female Irish saints.

  Far below the railway line a car was speeding along the road, aiming to keep pace with the train, and he wondered if a day would come when the motor car would replace the railway for speedy travel. While staying with Rose in Edinburgh, he had learnt to drive Jack’s motor car. Like Rose’s first husband, once his sergeant Danny McQuinn, who had disappeared while working for Pinkerton’s Agency in America, it pleased him that Jack was also a policeman. No shopkeepers or bankers, no doctors or priests in the Scarth or Faro families, and like his own father, PC Magnus Faro, who had died on the job, it seemed that Jeremy Faro could never entirely escape from the world of violence and crime.

  As the train reached Darlington, drawing Imogen ever nearer, Faro was in a nostalgic mood. They would be going to Elrigg Castle for a wedding shortly, and as the train steamed through Berwick Station, it had reminded him of their first meeting in Northumberland − a disastrous occasion. Possibly because his male ego was insulted when she refused to share the only carriage waiting outside the station, he had taken an instant dislike to this young woman, an impossible creature, only to discover they were staying at the same hotel.

  There had been other incidents: she was one of the dreaded suffragettes from the literature she carried, as was revealed when meeting her among the standing stones at Elrigg. She had rushed off at his approach, run down the hill, tripped and sprained her ankle.

  He could not leave her there and had to carry her down to the road. Not that she was grateful for his assistance, protesting all the while, but he could remember the warmth of her, the delicate perfume, and when they met later socially, as guests at the same dinner table, he had to grudgingly admit that she was quite a beauty, clever and witty too – but with a heart of stone, he did not doubt.

  However, by the time they said goodbye at Berwick Station he had learnt a lot about her and that she was an authoress doing research. As the train steamed out of the station, he was left wishing he had kissed her goodbye instead of that mere garbled politeness in which he had talked vaguely about the possibility of their paths crossing – some day – in Edinburgh.

  Indeed, their paths did cross in Edinburgh and Faro was to discover that one should be careful what one wishes for, since the suppliant had no advance knowledge of the means by which it could be granted. This time it was near disaster: the case involved a royal scandal and Imogen’s cousin, another Crowe, hanged himself awaiting trial as an Irish terrorist in a Stirling prison. Rose Faro had been seized as hostage by the Fenians and Imogen − a member of the organisation − put her own life in danger to save Inspector Faro’s daughter, aware that by so doing she had a price on her head if she entered Britain again.

  Exiled for ever it seemed, only in recent years had she been granted a royal pardon by HM King Edward, based, Faro had assumed, upon a meeting while still Prince of Wales on a visit to mutual friends in County Cork. He had been captivated by this cultured lovely young woman with her red hair and green eyes.

  Despite it all and the dour face of destiny, Faro never forgot Imogen Crowe or the fact that she was the enemy and he was a policeman, his life dedicated to defending the Queen’s Empire, destroying criminals and all they stood for, with Irish terrorists high in that category. Her face remained to haunt his dreams, occasionally one where he woke up feeling as if she too remembered and he had held her willingly in his arms. But what was there to remember really, merely a kiss blown across from a departing ship to Ireland and the possibility that they would never meet again.

  He read about her sometimes, saw reviews of her books, in bookshops picked up a copy and bought it, not to read, its content of little interest to him, but because it had her photograph on the book jacket, which never did justice to her beauty.

  One or two books was all he ever had, all that he could expect. Except that fate had one more card to play. The years passed, and Faro was invited to a police conference in Dublin, where desperate measures had been taken by the patriot Daniel O’Connell in the last century to seal centuries of wounds inflicted by the British.

  Chief Inspector Faro was already well known for his integrity, his sense of justice and admiration for men like O’Connell and Henry Parnell, regarded as traitors by the English. He was pleased and indeed flattered to be asked; also taking part in the meeting that evening was Arthur Griffith, editor of an Irish newspaper who went on to found Sinn Fein in 1905.

  As Faro went to the lectern to give his talk, lecture notes in hand, he found himself face-to-face with a smiling woman: Imogen Crowe was seated in the front row of the waiting audience. He was never sure how he got through the rest of the evening, what he said, only that it went well.

  Arthur Griffith and the officials were ushered from the stage amid tumultuous applause. With the flimsiest of excuses, Faro politely declined to join the platform party for a drink afterwards. He rushed downstairs in time to see the hall emptying. He panicked, realising Imogen was gone, would have left after the applause died down. He stood there, feeling a cold chill that he had lost her once again, without even a word or a smile of greeting.

  But this time he was wrong. As he left the hall, outside she was waiting by the carriage that was to carry him to his hotel. She smiled, and he took her hand, held it a moment too long and smiled back. ‘May I drop you off somewhere?’

  ‘Where are you staying?’ she asked. He told her, and she nodded. ‘Sure now, me too.’

  They sat side by side in the carriage, silent in the short distance, and at the hotel took their keys from reception and climbed the stairs. Reaching her door, she held it open. Following her, Faro closed the door, and without a word being spoken, both aware that destiny had held this moment in wait for a very long time, they fell into each other’s arms, the massive four-poster bed an invitation not to be denied. There fulfilment awaited, a bridge across the years. Tonight they belonged to each other and they would never be parted again.

  Through those missing years before they found each other, Imogen had known many brief loves and each time she stayed at a hotel, when her door opened she had hoped that it would be Faro who would appear, the imagined magic of a kiss repeated on each occasion. She had fled from Scotland, forever an exile, but always aware that tonight it would be his face, his mouth she kissed, his body that fitted so well into her own, rather than the man she had invited, a passing love, an attractive man, a fleeting acquaintance soon to be forgotten.

  Faro had not been so fortunate. He had met women who attracted him too, but the only great loves of his life had been Inga St Ola, his first love at seventeen in Orkney. They had met over the years when he returned home, and the flame had rekindled but Inga had steadfastly refused to follow him to Edinburgh. In many ways she was Imogen’s only predecessor. They would have got on well together these two women, he often thought, for the qualities of Inga were also recognisable in Imogen. Both were independent, both demanded more of life than the conventional image society provided of women’s role as little more than a breeding machine and a slave to man’s bodily requirements, with scant regard to any spiritual qualities, regarded by society and even by the Church as definitely lower than man God had created in his own image.

  As well as Inga there had been Amelie, Grand Duchess of Luxoria, goddaughter of Queen Victoria. That sad, brief passion and her love for Faro ended with her returning to a cruel tyrannical husband and a childless marriage; then came a short cryptic message: WE have a son. The boy prince George had ruled over Luxoria since his mother’s early death, the son Faro could never acknowledge.

  They were the only loves, apart from his wife Lizzie, to whom he was grateful for his two daughters Rose and Emily, both seen recently. Emily having lost Erland was now widowed but remained in Orkney with their only child Magnus, of a similar age to Meg Macmerry, Jack’s daughter from his brief unhappy marriage on the rebound from Rose McQuinn’s rejection.

  And in Faro’s life, there was his stepson, an eleven-year-old who grew up to become Dr Vincent Beaumarcher Laurie, now junior physician to the royal household. Vince had been of assistance in solving some of his early cases and Faro felt fortunate indeed to have been loved at all with a life so dedicated to the demands of being a chief detective inspector.

  The train was approaching York. Imogen would be waiting.

  Faro closed his guidebook that provided all the necessary information for someone visiting a city for the first time. Before leaving Edinburgh, he had purchased this important part of any journey, for it was essential that he knew in advance exactly where he was going and what to expect. In their new flat he had already a stack of similar guides to every city he had visited with Imogen during their years together.

  Already he had a rough plan of York’s city centre so that he would not get lost and embarrassingly have to ask for directions. He also had a pretty good idea of the main places of attraction, and most importantly he had to know where and why each city began from a bleak wilderness that existed through the centuries before man had discovered that this was a place to build, a place to expand. In York’s case, man had been signified by the Romans who had set down Eboracum, and when they moved on it became Christian when Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor in 306 AD. It had been a garrison town ever since, captured and burnt by the Danes in 867 AD, becoming their capital of England for one hundred years.

  Renamed Jorvik, York’s original name, the use of ‘gate’ a reminder that they had settled here. When the Normans invaded in 1069 they found a thriving little trading centre, burnt it and proceeded to rebuild the walls and two castles that saw the founding of most institutions that flourished during the Middle Ages, although little had survived apart from the ruin of a partial Norman house.

  Seizing his luggage and thrusting his guidebook inside, he was satisfied to have absorbed the details and information that would mean not always being recognised as a stranger.

  Imogen would be well ahead of him regarding places to visit and he needed to keep up with her, realising that he probably would not have come at all if this return visit was intended mainly to see again another Crowe relative from Carasheen. As always, he would be surplus to this family reunion, and he was thankful that the two stranger cousins would have met by now and the funeral in Edinburgh had provided a solemn if useful excuse to let her come alone.

  As the train slid to a standstill at the platform and the steam cleared, he looked round eagerly. Expecting to see Imogen, she wasn’t there.

  The platform emptied of departing passengers and he made his way to the entrance. A line of taxicabs waited, the sun shone, but Imogen was nowhere to be seen. He had only the name of the hotel where they were staying.

  With a weary sigh he boarded a cab, fighting off vague feelings of anxiety new to him. In the weeks since Imogen’s first visit, apart from worries about not hearing from Kathleen, she had been deliberately vague about York, hiding something else, some other concern.

  And that was not like her, nor was this failure to meet the train; Imogen was meticulous about such things, checking arrangements had always been part of her way of life.

  As the cab rattled across the bridge and made its way past the Minster, the bells were ringing. Bells of another kind – of warning – were ringing for him. He had a gnawing sense of fear that something had happened to Imogen.

  He was right.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Six o’clock was already booming out on clocks across the city and shop doors were closing as Imogen left the Dower House, hurrying down the Stonegate full of apologies for Kathleen who would still be waiting in the flower shop, only to find a ‘Closed’ notice was already on the door.

  There had been no sign of Kathleen. Had she mentioned in her letter from Edinburgh or in that previous brief conversation where she was staying, given the hotel a name? Yes, she was sure she had done so and said they would go there for supper. Hope renewed, she decided that might be the answer and that Kathleen was there already waiting for her as she hurried to the hotel. At the restaurant tables already filling up with diners. No sign of Kathleen. At the desk she asked if any message had been left for her. Giving both names as Mrs Faro and Imogen Crowe, she watched anxiously as the receptionist inspected the boxes where the room keys were kept.

  ‘No, madam, there are no messages or letters for you.’ She gave Imogen a strange look as she added in response to her question: ‘No, madam, your husband has not yet arrived. We are not expecting Mr Faro until tomorrow.’

  Did that slightly knowing look indicate that the girl thought she was having an illicit meeting Imogen wondered, as wearily she took her key and climbed the stairs to their room. What to do next? Go to the restaurant? But she had guessed wrongly hoping that Kathleen might have assumed there had been travel complications and worked out that Imogen would be waiting here at the hotel.

  She looked round the empty unwelcoming room. Realising she was hungry and hadn’t eaten since lunch at the Hardys’, she went back down to the restaurant and ordered a light meal. As she ate, always keeping an eye on the door of the hotel, she tried to reason out what had happened.

  Kathleen had waited for her and, disappointed, had gone home. Or, the letter she had written from Edinburgh had never reached her. She wished Faro had not had to change his plans for that funeral and had travelled with her. She needed more than ever his practical logical mind in this crisis, his consoling presence and soothing words.

  By eight o clock she knew waiting any longer for Kathleen to appear was useless, and back in her room she read for a while and went to bed, telling herself that all was not lost. There was one sure solution to seeing Kathleen again. She would be at work at the flower shop when it opened next morning.

  Next morning after a quick breakfast, she went once more to the Stonegate where her enthusiasm was greater than their opening hours. The ‘Closed’ notice told her that she was perhaps too early, although a group of men in overalls were unloading a van of containers that looked like flower boxes. A tall, well-dressed man, obviously the boss, was giving them directions in what she realised was a foreign language, probably Dutch.

  Seeing her standing outside the shop, the man stared across at her. Pointing at the shop, she smiled and asked him when it would open. He was watching her with the intent look she was used to from strange men. It told of admiration and more that she didn’t want to know about. In answer he shrugged, gesticulating, obviously not understanding her question.