The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(136)

“Thank God you’re here, Charles!” he exclaimed, delighted to see I was unscathed. “We didn’t know what was going on out there, and we feared for your safety.”

“I’m fine, Andrew, don’t worry,” I replied, noticing with dismay that a couple of the maids were remarking to each other on the sorry state of my clothes.

“All we heard were explosions, and it was making us terribly nervous, so we came down here,” my cousin explained, raising his brandy glass to indicate the room. “Harold had even begun telling us a funny story to take our minds off what’s happening outside.”

The coachman played down my interruption with a brief wave of his hand.

“Nothing I can’t finish some other time, sir,” he said.

With an obsequious gesture, the butler hurriedly passed me a glass of brandy from a tray on a small table.

“Here, sir. You look as if you could do with a pick-me-up.”

I thanked him absentmindedly, trying to reconcile this cheerful atmosphere with the terrifying scenes I had witnessed outside.

“What’s going on, Charles?” Andrew asked, as soon as I had taken a sip of brandy. “Is this . . . an invasion?”

Everyone gazed at me expectantly.

“I’m afraid so. The Martians have marched into London and . . .” I paused, unsure how best to describe the devastation I had seen, but there was no way of telling them gently. “Well . . . they’re destroying the city. Our army has been routed, and there’s no one left to protect us, we are entirely at their mercy.”

There was a murmur of consternation all round the room. A couple of the maids began to weep. My wife and her sister clutched each other, while Mr. Peachey put his arm around his wife, who nestled her head on his chest like a scared child. Next to me, my cousin gave a sudden sigh.

Apparently, until then, Andrew had refused to believe there was an invasion, despite the series of blasts resounding in the distance, which could still be heard downstairs despite the cheery music. Seeing my cousin’s unease, I realized that deep down he wanted me to be right in thinking the invasion wouldn’t happen; he seemed more let down than afraid, as if I had somehow failed him by being mistaken in my predictions. I contemplated the others in the room; my words seemed to be the command they had been waiting for to begin trembling. “My God,” several of the servants murmured in tremulous unison, exchanging looks of despair.

“There’s nothing to fear,” I reassured them, even though I, too, had difficulty believing this after what I’d seen aboveground. “Everything will be all right, I’m sure of it.”

Victoria shook her head, and her lips set in a fold of sorrow and ridicule. When would I admit defeat?

“What makes you say that, Mr. Winslow?” Claire asked expectantly, raising her head from her husband’s chest.

I took a deep breath before replying. I knew I’d have difficulty convincing my impromptu audience, and indeed, after the latest events, even I was beginning to consider the possibility that my logic was flawed. Still, I tried to put my argument across as clearly as I could, ignoring my wife’s disapproving looks.

“As you know, Mrs. Peachey, some of those here, including yourself, have traveled to the year 2000 and have taken a stroll through a future where the only threat to the human race was the automatons. Clearly that means the invasion to which we are being subjected cannot flourish. I’m convinced something will happen soon to put an end to it, although I still don’t know what. The future tells us this.”

“I wouldn’t take much notice of the future if I were you, for as the word suggests, it’s something that hasn’t happened yet,” her husband interjected.

Annoyed by his interruption, I looked at him with curiosity, raising my eyebrows exaggeratedly, and Claire hastily introduced us.

“Charles, this is my husband, John Peachey,” she said.

Hearing my name, the man promptly offered his hand, as though fearing he might break some rule of etiquette were he to delay for a few seconds. But that didn’t prevent me from shaking it with a bored expression. I must confess that my first impressions of this Peachey fellow were less than favorable, and not only because he had the nerve to contradict me. I’ve always felt an uncontrollable dislike of men who underestimate their own potential, and who squander it as a result, and Peachey was most definitely one of those men. He was a strapping youth, whose perfectly proportioned face was endowed with a pair of fiery eyes and a noble chin, and yet he appeared to devote his morning ablutions to sabotaging these attributes, obtaining through his meticulous efforts a dull, pusillanimous individual whose lacquered hair was combed down over his brow, and who wore a pair of enormous spectacles. It was as if he lacked the personality to go with his physique, the determination needed to make full use of his formidable appearance. Everything about him was insipid, self-effacing, contrary to his nature. Although I had never met him, I knew Peachey was an honorary director of Barclay & Company, where Claire’s father was a major shareholder. One look at the man told me it was not due to his assiduous, aggressive business acumen that he was occupying that coveted office in Lombard Street.

“Good, now that we have finally been introduced, Mr. Peachey, may I ask what you were insinuating just now with your na?ve comment?” I said with thinly veiled rudeness.

“I was saying that the future hasn’t happened yet, Mr. Winslow,” he hastened to reply. “It doesn’t exist yet, it isn’t tangible. And so, basing one’s suppositions on something that hasn’t happened yet would seem to me very—”