The LadyShip (11 page)

He hauled Teddy to his feet, but Teddy tripped on the sill
and fell against George’s leg, whereupon George boxed his
ear and Teddy set up a howl that was heard in the coffee-room. Evans looked up with a scowl at the noise and sent
Ivor, the larger of his two helpers, to investigate. Ivor, find
ing small Teddy being mauled by George—whom Ivor con
sidered a bully—yanked the ostler around by the collar and
planted a facer on him, whereupon Teddy sent up another
howl—this time from glee, but no less penetrating for that.

This brought both Lucy and Elinor running to the kitchen,
to find a scene of carnage before them. George lay on the
floor bleeding from the nose. Ivor’s boot was planted
firmly on his chest. Teddy huddled in a corner, and Flora was having hysterics on top of the table. Mrs Nash stood
over all of them wielding a soup ladle. On Elinor’s entrance
they all broke into incoherent speech at once.

“Oh, Miss Elinor, I swear I only turned my back for a
minute, and —”

“It’s my doing, ma’am, he was hurting the little fellow—”

“Too right it was your meddling, you great oaf! Let me
up!”

“Flora, do stop crying—no one’s hurt
you!”

Lucy gave a little cry and knelt down beside Teddy, who
took full advantage of her tender heart to burst into tears.
Elinor, not knowing where to turn first, was tempted to throw up her hands and dismiss them all on the spot, but
realising that another outburst would only add to the
chaos, she took a deep breath preparatory to plunging into
battle.

It was just at that moment, however, that the door from
the kitchen to the garden opened, and a cold breeze swept
over them. Rarely did anyone enter the inn by that door, so
that it was a moment before they collected their wits to
recognise the tall man standing before them. He was in uni
form, and although this was much abused by travel and
weather, it was still impressive—even apart from its being
worn by a young man of noble proportions in an establishment that had little direct contact with the military. Heavy
boots and a greatcoat, muddy at the hem from the road,
half-concealed the uniform, and a tall hat shaded the face of
this arresting stranger. But when he spoke, Elinor realised
his identity with a gasp.

“Here now!” he said, in the uncompromising accents of
a veteran officer addressing a company of johnny-raws.
“What’s all this, then?”

“
Good
heavens! Ned!”

Several minutes seemed to pass before Elinor recovered
from shock at the amazing sight of her twin brother stand
ing in—nay, filling—the kitchen doorway and assessing the
chaos in the same manner in which he might have ap
praised a battlefield after the opening cannonade. It must in
fact have been only a few seconds that they stared at each
other—during which time Teddy scrambled to his feet and
out of Lucy’s suddenly relaxed grasp, Ivor hauled George
to his feet and out of the kitchen, and Mrs Nash, sniffing the
air, exclaimed suddenly, “My sirloin!” and dropped her la
dle.

Lieutenant Edward Bennett, late of the Second Brigade
of Guards, pulled off his hat and grinned at Elinor.
“Hullo, Nell! Is this how you run your celebrated post
ing-house? I wonder that you have any guests left—let
alone any that have succeeded in getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep!”

“Oh, Ned!”

Retrieving her scattered wits, Elinor ran into her broth
er’s arms and found herself being lifted up and whirled around the kitchen between hugs. Laughing, she adjured
him to let her go instantly, for his wretched coat was
getting her wet. Ned obediently set her down on the floor
and removed his coat, but in so doing he suddenly became
aware of a small, silent figure watching him wide-eyed from
a corner.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, handing his coat to Petra,
who wasted no time in taking it away to be dried and
brushed. “Can this possibly be Lucy? Why, you were just a
slip of a girl when I saw you last!”

Ned stood staring at his pretty younger sister in some
thing bordering on awe, so that it was Lucy who found her
tongue first. “Have I really changed that much, Ned?”

“Let me see,” he said, holding his arms out again. When
Lucy came to him, he folded her tenderly into his ample
embrace and said, “No, I remember now—you feel just the
same as you did when you sat on my lap all that time ago
and recited your lessons to me.”

For a moment, big brother and little sister held each
other quietly, and Elinor, temporarily forgotten, beheld
with considerable interest the twin she had not seen for
four years. Ned seemed taller, more authoritative than she
remembered. He had been eighteen when he went away,
and fully grown, but he had left them an eager boy and
come back a man—a seasoned soldier who had seen a good
deal more in four years than his boyhood playmates would
see in a lifetime. Not quite a stranger, he was nonetheless
someone they would have to get to know all over again.

Elinor glanced around her then, remembering the scene Ned’s arrival had interrupted, and felt a strong sense of ill-
usage that he should have chosen just that moment to walk
back into their lives! It was not that she was any the less glad to see him, but he must think her totally incompetent
in her management of the business he had entrusted to her.
Not that he had in fact done so, for he had enlisted before
their father’s death—but she made up her mind just the
same to show him that such scenes were
not
common at The LadyShip and that she had not only kept it in good
order for him, but had made an admired and successful
hostelry out of it—where guests invariably, contrary to appearances, enjoyed an ex
cellent night’s repose!

This was not difficult of accomplishment, for Elinor be
gan instantly to make her brother as much at home in The LadyShip
as if he had never left it. Ned himself appeared
eager to settle in again and told both Elinor and Lucy sev
eral times how much he had looked forward, during the
more trying periods of his absence, to sleeping in a com
fortable bed again and eating his fill of Mrs Nash’s matchless
cooking.

Once relieved of his travel dirt and refreshed by a long
sleep in the inn’s most spacious bedroom—quickly con
verted to his exclusive use—Ned was revealed as a remark
ably handsome young man of two and twenty, with a head
of dark curls the same shade as Elinor’s but less accustomed
to comb and shears, and brown eyes very much like hers but set in a sun-bronzed complexion. He also sported an
impressive moustache—newly acquired, he confessed,
since his posting to Paris, where the natives appeared to ex
pect Englishmen to display such adornments, if not side-
whiskers and full beards as well. Lucy teased him that he had more likely grown it to impress some French
demoi
selle,
but Ned only smiled at that and did not reply.

Ned had also, Elinor noted over the next days, acquired a
more reflective cast of mind since he went away, and his evident pleasure at being home again was tempered by a
certain restiveness, which at first Elinor ascribed to the sud
den severe change in his circumstances. His habitual unaf
fected, easy manners remained, but now reinforced
by a decisiveness in all his movements that bespoke years
of military discipline. He discarded his elegant scarlet
uniform—declaring that it made him feel a popinjay—as soon as
some of his old clothes could be aired out for him, and dis
claimed any lasting effects from his years of service. But
when Elinor caught him rubbing his shoulder absently, he
confessed to a slight wound that he had not seen fit to write
them about.

“Blast it, Nell!” he protested, when she insisted on rub
bing liniment into his shoulder every night. “I’m not a
bloody horse! It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t know why
it should you.”

“Well, don’t come complaining to me in twenty years
when you start getting rheumatic twinges in it!” Elinor
scolded. “And do stop using such vulgar army expressions.
You’ve got the ostlers and messengers imitating them in
earnest—and Lucy in jest!—already.”

Ned grinned and let her massage the afflicted joint. “Set
ting them a bad example, am I?”

“Yes, and your fables about your exploits in the Penin
sula don’t help. No one will do any work when they can get
you to sit down and spin them Canterbury tales.”

“Canterbury tales, indeed! I’ll have you know every one
of those things really happened, my girl—maybe not to me,
but you may be sure my fine fellow officers are going about
borrowing my adventures as their own, just as I appropri
ate theirs!”

“Then it appears we will have to hunt down these friends
of yours if we are ever to hear a true account of your illustri
ous career.”

Ned did not deny the truth of this, but he was reluctant to
give his family his own account of himself. Elinor did not
press him, for she knew that it was a point of honour with
the Guards not to speak directly of what they had done.
They were expected to be heroic, and they had done what was expected of them in the long conflict so recently con
cluded. If people who knew nothing about it wanted to tell romantic stories about them, that was their foolishness. All
that the men who knew the truth talked about was what
went on off the battlefield and away from the smoke and noise—how one had fallen off his horse into a stream, or
another had stolen a half-dozen chickens from a convent
garden and had later been made to pay for them by whitewashing the chapel walls—and the minor discomforts of battle, such as having to pitch tents made of blankets and hung on muskets in the pouring rain, and dodging cannon
balls that had overshot their targets.

They never spoke of their fears, the danger, or their deaths. Elinor knew Ned must have lost friends in battle, but he did not talk about them, either; he talked about the ones who survived, but
even then only in anecdotes meant to amuse, about the out
rageous things they had done on the march or in bivouac
around Spanish villages and Belgian fields.

Apart from these campaign stories, Ned had, much to his
sisters’ disappointment, very little to say about himself. He
greeted the neighbours who came to welcome him home in
an easy, courteous fashion, and he seemed to have devel
oped a considerable talent for charming elderly ladies with
his deferential manner and engaging, not-quite-wicked
conversation. He was soon on excellent terms with the inn
staff, particularly—Elinor noted with a sigh for her care
fully drilled lessons in attentiveness to clients—with the younger females, who could scarcely tear their eyes from Ned’s fine figure to pour a glass of sherry.

Fortunately for the efficiency of the inside staff, how
ever, Ned spent most of his time in the stables with Nash,
spinning tales to the postilions of charges up impossible
heights and squares being held in the face of enemy
pounding, but more often simply because this had al
ways been his own corner of The LadyShip, just as Elinor’s front parlour was hers and the garden was Lucy’s.

Nash, who welcomed his master home with as much
pleasure as anyone else but with far fewer words, one
day shortly after Ned’s arrival solemnly invited him to in
spect some work he had done. Ned was led into the rear storage area where, with a proud flourish, Nash stripped
the canvas covering off a large object suspended by
heavy ropes from the roof beams.

“Good God!” Ned exclaimed, staring up at the wheelless
bulk of a large travelling carriage. “It’s Her Ladyship! I’d for
gotten about her, Nash. Have you been working on her?”

“Nothing but keeping her neat and clean, Mr Edward,”
Nash explained modestly, as Ned ran his hands over the
smooth curve of the spring supporting the enclosed body
of the carriage.

The year before enlisting, having taken a
notion to go into the manufacture of travelling coaches, Ned had designed a special long-distance vehicle which
was to be outfitted with spring cots, comfortable hair-
cushioned seats, reading lamps, compartments for storing foodstuffs, and any number of innovative conveniences in addition to an extra-wide body and a specially constructed
perch designed to lessen the discomforts of rough roads
over a long journey. He had named his creation
The Lady-Ship
—a name already pencilled in proudly to be traced in
elegant gold letters over the ash-wood door panel, to
which had been lovingly applied no fewer than ten coats of paint and three of varnish. Between them, he and Nash had
worked out nearly every aspect of the conversion of this
wonder carriage from drawings to reality. To be sure, it
lacked the inside finishings—several coats of lead, hessian,
and paint—and Nash had removed the wheels in order to store the body safely in the driest part of the stables.