God's Country

Part Seventy-Four

April 2020

'But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.'

Exodus 23:22

Miss Ford enjoyed living in London and tried to arrange as many outings as possible. There was so much to see, which she enjoyed, and all of her charges benefitted from getting out and about around the city. Even Mrs Munroe, since she was still so young herself, and the family often had guests to keep Miss Claire company, especially young Brogan Lawrence, who had become rather a favourite with the Munroe family, along with Alice. Mr Craig made a point of suggesting that Brogan enjoyed London and she started to spend more and more time with the Munroe's in their Kensington townhouse, often accompanied by Paul Craig's youngest daughter. It gave Miss Ellis a chance to help at the college, something which pleased Pastor Michael, who was keeping up the pressure to produce more guardians to meet the rising demand for their services. Miss Ford was mindful not to exhaust the girls, but she took them out to all the famous museums, regular classical concerts and operas, galleries, exhibitions and to Westminster whenever she could do so, because they all wanted, and needed, to show support for dear Mr Buckingham and Mr Munroe, with Elizabeth particularly keen to hear all of her husband's speeches.

Brogan recognised the irony of the situation, of course. She was trapped inside her own undercover character, and it seemed as if her cruel captors were doing everything they could possibly do to torment her. Brogan had always been fascinated by Westminster and by the business of politics, ever since she was first inspired to write. She had dreamed of being a political correspondent, of observing and illuminating the goings on in the corridors of power and her desire to expose the Reformists had been driven by that desire. And there she was, in the very best seats in the house, much better than the press gallery, witnessing so many key moments in the House of Commons, and often having dinner with the main protagonists. But not as a correspondent, of course. It was an exquisite torture.

Brogan had no idea what was going on, but she just could not believe that Gavin Williams would have written that letter. Something simply had to be wrong. But if something had gone wrong and her real identity had been discovered, she would surely have been arrested, or at the very least removed from Lake House, not paraded around the very upper echelons of Reformist society like an honoured guest. She had a whole series of articles in her head, the real inside track on what being a Christian Reformist really meant, but she was being denied any access to an audience. She often had nightmares in her sleeping gown, as she imagined never being free of her alter ego. Making her sit in the public gallery and watch the modern renaissance unfold was a delicious agony. During her visits, she was introduced to many old friends and colleagues, none of whom ever imagined that the new Brogan was really the old one. So she cursed her own stupidity. She had not told anyone what she was doing and how she was doing it, other than Williams. She had wanted it to be her story, her exclusive, and no one else's. Her own arrogance had left her vulnerable to the Reformists, whichever one of them it was who knew about her, discovering her duplicity and taking their revenge. She had to admire their style. She doubted if anyone would ever find out who had hacked her email accounts, if that was what had happened, but she could not think of any other answer to the whole nightmare. Someone had hacked the account, possibly changing the password to stop Gavin doing anything to help her, and was playing some sort of game with her. Mr Craig might or might not know the truth but he had a trail of correspondence supporting his side of the story and the fact that no one had listened to her mild protestations of surprise could no doubt be explained by emails from her 'father'. Miss Ellis had merely told her that her father knew best and then refused to answer her questions, eventually punishing her. In the end, she just stopped mentioning it, because she had no other choice other than to stay in character and no desire to have another meeting with her guardian's paddle.