The LadyShip (13 page)

Finally,
at the bottom of the trunk, she found the letters.

There were only a dozen or so of them, tied up with a
pale blue ribbon and written in a distinctly masculine hand
that Elinor knew immediately was not her father’s. She hes
itated for a moment, reluctant to pry into something she
suspected was best left at rest. But curiosity finally demanded to be satisfied.

They were love-letters, undated, but addressed plainly to
Mary, her mother, and signed with the initial
D.

It was a
measure of the friendship between them that Lord
Vernon Dudley and Mr Marcus Allingham did not come to
fisticuffs on their drive back to London from Brookfield a month after Allingham had gone there on his sentimental
errand to Lord Vernon’s niece. Nothing further had been settled between Marcus and Clarissa in that time, but she
had gazed meltingly at him, declared herself devastated that
he was about to leave (he did say he was leaving, did he not?), expressed the hope that he would return at Christ
mas, and gave him her dimpled cheek to kiss. Allingham went away no more certain than before of his relationship
with his betrothed, but soothed somewhat by her assur
ances that everything would soon be settled to everyone’s
satisfaction.

Lord Vernon had been in no haste to part with Lady
Dorothea Allingham and her hospitality—particularly to
wile away another month alone at Redding until he could,
without appearing over-eager, come back to Brookfield as
her guest for the holidays—but when her son invited him
to spend the time in London with him, Lady Dorothea had
as good as thrown him out of her house. Lord Vernon declared himself of two minds about ever humbling himself so far as to set foot in it again, a display of petulance that
lasted only until he decided to take his revenge by ordering
the gaudiest piece of jewellery he could find at Rundell and
Bridge’s to present to Lady Dolly as a Christmas gift. She
would see that it was not only his undeserving niece who
could command expensive baubles, he grumbled to Allingham
as they bowled through Calne at an early hour of the
morning.

The weather had turned markedly colder in the month’s
time, but as Allingham had come up to Brookfield in his town
curricle, he was resolved to drive back in it—and so he did,
comfortably wrapped in his multi-caped drab overcoat and a
fashionable beaver hat. Lord Vernon, less fashionable, envel
oped himself in two woollen vests and a heavy frieze cloak,
and continued to grumble along the road from Calne to
Marlborough that he was too old to go rollicking about the
countryside in the dead of winter in an open carriage.

“Fustian!” said Allingham unfeelingly, but with a pro
nounced twinkle in his blue eyes. “I thought I was the
slowtop of us two. What has happened to your sense of ad
venture?”

“It functions only in warm weather,” his lordship mut
tered.

“Never mind—we are almost at Newbury. The LadyShip
always has a warm fire and a hot brandy-and-water in
stantly to hand.”

The LadyShip proved as good as Mr Allingham’s recom
mendation of it, and Lord Vernon very shortly found him
self ensconced in the best parlour, his cold feet up on a
cushion facing the fire, and Miss Bennett making it her per
sonal business to provide for his comfort.

In truth, it was easier for Elinor to devote herself to Lord Vernon than to look Marcus Allingham in the eye. She had
observed him to be rather less on his dignity than usual,
and his smile of greeting was somewhat more open, but be
cause she could only suppose this to be the result of a suc
cessful outcome to his mission to Wiltshire—what young lady could reject his suit, after all?—she did not feel quite
up to treating him as if everything were quite as usual. She
greeted him with polite indifference, shook his hand briefly—causing him to raise one eyebrow quizzically—and
turned her attention to Lord Vernon.

Here she felt much
less restraint, for she had taken a liking to his lordship the
moment she was introduced to him, and although he had
not stopped complaining about the weather since he ar
rived, he had nothing but praise for the amenities of the inn
at which his friend Allingham had been perceptive enough
to call a halt. He wondered aloud why he had never hap
pened upon it before.

“Because it isn’t on the road from Redding to Brookfield,” Allingham pointed out unnecessarily.

“I do travel from Brookfield to London occasionally,
you know.”

“Fast asleep all the way, too—you couldn’t name two
landmarks on the entire Bath road without consulting your
coachman.”

Lord Vernon was, in fact, not nearly so oblivious as that
and had taken The LadyShip’s measure in a glance. He ap
proved the well-fuelled fires, the high gloss of the polished wood floors, the whiteness of the barmaid’s cap and apron,
the homey fragrance of the ubiquitous potpourri, and most
particularly the attentiveness of his hostess, whom he declared more audibly to be the most warming sight he had
come across since leaving Brookfield. For her part, Elinor
saw quickly past Lord Vernon’s gruff exterior to a merry heart and a generous nature that immediately appealed to
her own best instincts.

Furthermore, although on the surface of it, Lord Vernon
appeared to have little in common with his younger friend,
Elinor was struck by the notion that he was the first man
she had ever met who lived up to the standard she had un
consciously adopted of judging every man by comparison to
Marcus Allingham.

“Is there anything further I may do for you, my lord?”
she asked him, when she had set a kettle of hot water next
to the fire for him to replenish his toddy whenever neces
sary. She smiled at him, and their eyes met, both pairs
warm and brown, but hers questioning, his direct and sym
pathetic.

“Aye, there is,” he said, folding one hand over hers.
“You may join us for a few minutes. Your presence would
do much to take the chill off the afternoon, Miss Bennett, I
assure you.”

Elinor thanked him, smiled, and said that she had her duties to attend to, but that she would come and sit with
them for a little after they had their nuncheon. Allingham,
who had observed this exchange in silence, spoke up to en
dorse Lord Vernon’s entreaties that she join them for this
meal, but Elinor remained firm in her refusals, certain that,
however sincere Lord Vernon may have been, Mr Alling
ham was only being civil. Having his friend to converse
with, he could have no need of her.

Fortunately for Elinor’s composure, Boney chose just that moment to put in an appearance—the parlour door
having been left just enough ajar to reveal the presence of a
roaring fire to a comfort-loving feline. He strolled into the room, observed that all the chairs in it were occupied, and
announced with an authoritative
miau
that he would sit in
one just the same. He thereupon jumped up on Allingham’s
blue-clad knee, made three circles around his watch fob,
and settled himself firmly in his lap.

Lord Vernon laughed and declared that here was a cat
who knew a soft touch when he saw one. Miss Bennett did
not offer to take Mr Allingham’s burden from him, since he
had not rejected it outright, and said only, “You see, my lord, that you will be well looked after even without me,
for no one will dare to disturb you while Boney keeps
watch.”

“Miss Bennett,” Allingham begged to inform her, “you
are entirely without scruples!”

Elinor smiled, a little more easily, and went away then,
leaving the gentlemen to warm themselves within and
without. No conversation was exchanged between them
until Evans had arrived with a generous nuncheon, consist
ing of soup, roast pigeons accompanied by mushrooms and
French beans, and a large apple pie, which he laid out me
ticulously before them, then bowed his way out again.
Lord Vernon, eying the pigeons appreciatively, remarked
that he could quite easily become accustomed to taking his
meals on the road.

“I imagine Miss Bennett would be happy to accommo
date you any time—since you seem to have hit it off so well
together—or even to pack a dinner for you to take home, should your chef not be up to her standards,” said Allingham
, as he carefully shifted Boney from his lap to his chair
and rose to join Lord Vernon at the table in front of the
fire.

“She is a most accommodating young woman,” his lord
ship said, and then, glancing sideways at Allingham, added,
“a dashed handsome one, too.”

“Yes, I suppose she is,” Allingham agreed, helping him
self to half a pigeon.

Lord Vernon made a rude noise. “I’d be amazed, my lad,
to hear you’d ever given her a second look!”

“But I have. We are old friends, Miss Bennett and I.”

“Most unobservant man I’ve ever known,”
Lord Vernon
grumbled
, as if Allingham had not spoken. “Apart from
having no address whatever with the ladies.”

“I do not go out of my way to ingratiate myself with strangers, if that is what you mean.”

“You just told me Miss Bennett is no stranger. Does that
mean she is beneath your consideration because of her position?”

Allingham’s good humour deserted him at that. “I hope I
am not such a coxcomb!”

“All right, don’t stiffen up. I don’t mean to say you’d cut
her if you met her on the street, but I don’t suppose you’d
cross to the other side of it to speak to her, either. Of
course, she may only be pleasant to
you
because it’s her
job—did you ever think of that, eh?”

“Drink your soup, Vernon.”

His lordship subsided into a general grumble, but even
this was soon silenced by the comfortable feeling that crept
over him as a result of a good meal and a warm fire. If, hav
ing once latched onto a notion, he worried at it like a dog
with a bone, he at least refrained from berating his friend
about it any further. Rather, he sat back and watched as Al
lingham made himself at home—almost as if, Lord Vernon
observed with interest, this really were his home. He wondered if Allingham would maintain that ease when Miss
Bennett rejoined them.

Miss Bennett, meanwhile, having composed herself after the initial agitation of this meeting with Mr Allingham, was
coolly considering how best to take advantage of it—or at
any rate, she was doing so when her mind did not wander
instead to the puzzle of Lord Vernon. Mr Allingham had never brought any of his friends with him to The LadyShip
before, although he had apparently spoken highly of the inn
to others of them besides Lord Vernon, for they had told her
of it when they subsequently broke their journeys there.

Nevertheless, the circumstance of his having brought Lord
Vernon was less surprising than Lord Vernon himself. Even
the differences she perceived at once between the two men
could not account for the sensation she had of having
known Lord Vernon before, and of feeling almost instantly at ease with him. She had not intended to rejoin the gentle
men in the parlour, but then a notion came to her that Lord
Vernon might help her find the answer to another puzzle.

She went up to her bedroom and from under the cano
pied bed pulled out the little brassbound chest that contained the letters she had discovered in Ned’s room. She
had not read them over since, having been rendered acute
ly uncomfortable by their intimate nature, but she had
woven a kind of fantasy around them, and now she had to
read them again to be certain that she had not misunderstood their meaning.

What she had derived from the fragmentary contents of
those letters was the story of what must have been her
mother’s love for a young nobleman, whose name began
with
D.
By means not touched on in their letters, she had
come to his notice and fallen in love with him; the couple
had met secretly and, it seemed, briefly—but long enough,
Elinor began to imagine, for a child to have been born of
the affair. That child must have been Lucinda. James Ben
nett had apparently recognised the child as his own, with
or without knowledge of the affair, and Lucy had grown up
believing herself Edward and Elinor’s sister, a member of a respectable, if scarcely aristocratic, family.