The rain continued to fall heavily the next morning, distant thunder rumbling on the moors. Eleanor sat in a window seat watching puddles spread across the drive. She would rather have been anywhere else, but a walk was impossible, even in the garden.
A blinding flare of lightning . . .
And Eleanor was walking down a deserted London street. The city was empty, the passersby as silent as shadows, so that any one of them might have been Death out for a stroll. There were few carts and no sedan chairs, and she somehow knew that all the better sort had fled or locked themselves indoors. Eleanor found the silence stony and uncaring, and felt frightened by the number of vermin swaggering out in broad daylight. Turning the corner, she found a pair of rats fighting over slops in the middle of Threadneedle Street, shrieking like scraped metal . . .
“Would you like the carriage, my dear?” Mrs. Crosby asked.
Eleanor blinked, pulled back to Goodwood. How odd. Of course, they often went to London, but she couldn’t think when she’d wandered down such an uncanny street. Nor had she ever experienced so vivid a memory, a vision, almost a hallucination. Catherine would be intrigued to hear of it. But the Mowbrays’ dinner wasn’t until Friday, and Eleanor had no hope of seeing her until then.
“The carriage?” Mrs. Crosby prompted.
“Of course,” Eleanor said, trying to find her feet. “Would you like to go out? I’d love to see Kitty.”
“I’m perfectly happy here,” her aunt replied, holding up her sewing. “But you’re so actively bored, you’re a distraction. Take the carriage and bring Catherine back in time for an early supper, perhaps to stay the night. Tell Lady Anne you’ll have her home in the morning. I entertain hopes of the rain lifting.”
Glancing at the low clouds, Eleanor didn’t see why. But she wasn’t going to argue, and was turning from the window when a rattle and splash made her turn back.
“The Mowbray carriage!”
A brief silence from her aunt.
“Of course it is,” she replied. “I presume the gentlemen aren’t in it.”
Eleanor stood on her toes to look down. “Well, it’s crowded. But I think there’s just Kitty and her sisters. Except,” she said, “only Kitty is getting out. Perhaps the rest are going on to visit the Brownes.”
“More likely the Morelands,” Mrs. Crosby said. “Isn’t Alicia the one who’s close to the Browne girls? And I don’t imagine Alicia is with them.”
“I don’t think she is,” Eleanor said, coming fully back to herself as she understood what her aunt had been planning. She said in mock severity, “You were sending me to visit Mr. Denholm, not Kitty.”
“Was I, my dear?”
“And Lady Anne has sent all the girls but Alicia away from the Close.”
“While keeping you from visiting. Yes, I should imagine so.”
Alicia was the prettiest Mowbray left at home, Catherine’s next youngest sister, not quite seventeen but well grown and fair.
“You’re playing chess with Lady Anne,” Eleanor said, too amused to be annoyed. “The two of you! Moving your pawns around the chessboard.”
“One has to do something in such a settled rain.”
“Either pawns or puppets. I had a nightmare last night about being a puppet played by the gods. According to my dream, some sort of party is starting, and Mr. Denholm seems to be the honoured guest. Although,” Eleanor said, thinking it through, “I don’t think Alicia is clever enough to marry him.”
“Don’t you, my dear?” her aunt asked. “Remember there’s a difference between getting married to him and being married to him. However, I expect you’re right. You’d do far better with Mr. Denholm. We’ll send a message to Lady Anne to say that Kitty is staying the night, and you can take her home in the morning.”
“When the rain clears.”
“You can’t really think so, my dear.”
It was easy for Catherine Mowbray’s brother to call her a mouse: she was slight and shy in company. Yet Kitty’s masses of brown hair and pale powdery skin made her look soft and sweet to Eleanor’s eye, and she was certain her friend would have come off better if there hadn’t been so many beauties in Middleford.
Now they leaned toward each other from either side of the fire in Eleanor’s sitting room, caught up in discussing the visiting gentlemen. It bothered Eleanor slightly that they were having a gossip instead of discussing a more elevated subject. Her book, perhaps. The Lady of the Lake. But Eleanor hadn’t cared for it much, and Kitty seldom read poetry.
“Yesterday evening,” her friend said, “when we were called for dinner, I passed Mr. Denholm in the hallway. He was openly examining himself in a mirror.”
“I told you he was vain!”
“I was prepared to pass him by when he met my eyes in the mirror and said, ‘I’m not vain, you know. I don’t think all that highly of my looks, not with a brother like mine. But I aspire to harmony in dress, as in life.’”
“He aspires to harmony!” Eleanor cried. “And what did you say?”
“I said I understood,” I understand being one of Kitty’s frequent answers, which she always gave in such a resonant voice it was clear she understood deeply. “However, I also understood from the expression on his face that he thought my dress out of fashion.”
“No it wasn’t. It never is. I’m sure you looked quite perfect.”
When Kitty’s elder sister Elizabeth had married—very well, to the grandson of a duke—her dresses had been divided up among her sisters. Kitty had made the most of hers, Mrs. Crosby having taught her to sew at the same time she’d taught Eleanor.
“You’re right. He’s a dandy,” Kitty said. “I think he might even be a follower of Beau Brummell. It’s not just the trousers and cravat. He’s called for pails of hot water each morning for a bath, which looks to be a daily occurrence. He takes hours to dress, then comes downstairs late for breakfast, wanting a fresh chop.”
“Your mother must be furious.”
“Well . . . ten thousand a year. But given the expense of entertaining an heir, I think the tradesmen will have to wait a little longer than usual to be paid.”
Lady Anne was infamous for her overdue bills, even though the Mowbrays were rich. She was a tall, commanding lady, as forthright as Eleanor’s aunt was subtle, and as irritable as a mastiff. Of course, the two ladies were the greatest of friends and wouldn’t let three days pass without visiting, each intent on finding out what the other was up to.
“Maybe he would do for Alicia,” Eleanor said. “She’s remarkably indulgent.”
“I liked his honesty,” Kitty said, and smiled. “Just not what he was being honest about.”
“Kitty, have you ever met a man you truly admired?”
“I like his brother, although not in that way. The captain is a much more amiable gentleman. He’s not at all shy, but he only speaks when he’s got something to say.”
“A steady aim being more useful than sermons. Yes, we heard. Presumably he’s on leave from fighting Napoleon in the Peninsula.”
“I heard his brother say that Captain Denholm is aide-de-camp to a general who’s been terribly ill of a fever. The general has been home all winter, and Captain Denholm has been with him. But when the general returns to Spain—which will be soon—the captain goes with him.”
“And in the meantime he’s at loose ends,” Eleanor said. “A good time for a young lady to set her cap at him. Although I suppose that’s the captain’s task, to set his cap at an heiress. Then he can avoid going back to Spain.”
“I don’t think he wants to avoid it. He seems very brave, as well as being so handsome.”
So Kitty had met a man she admired. Eleanor raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
“Stop it!” her friend said, blushing her easy blush, and growing so earnest and alarmed as Eleanor kept her eyebrows raised—“You mustn’t, Nell, please”—that Eleanor allowed herself to be distracted by the rain.
Yet once she started down the road, Eleanor couldn’t help but picture a romance between her friend and the captain. Kitty was right. Captain Denholm was as handsome as a young man ought to be. He had a sense of humour, and didn’t appear to think too highly of himself. But from what Kitty said, he thought highly of his profession, and that was an important distinction. Really, they knew very little about him, and in any case, he probably couldn’t afford to marry until he was promoted. Yet that was in his favour as well, since a long engagement meant that Kitty wouldn’t be taken from her any time soon.
There was also the fact that if Eleanor married the captain’s brother, she and Kitty would never be parted. The idea arrived uninvited, and Eleanor rejected it just as quickly. Mr. Denholm was precisely the sort of man she would never marry: self-satisfied and unreliable. Once she and Kitty were tucked into bed, the candle snuffed, Kitty’s breathing gone regular, Eleanor pictured Mr. Denholm in the Mowbray mirror, his face half lost in the darkness. His brother seemed a more well-lit figure, honest and open. Eleanor fell asleep planning to put off Mr. Denholm while forwarding his brother’s match with Kitty, trying to decide on her first move when they arrived at Mowbray Close in the morning.
They were still at breakfast when the door flew open.
“This weather! Mrs. Crosby, I’ve saved your coachman!”
Lady Anne burst into the room. She knew, of course, where Mrs. Crosby breakfasted. Knew just as well that she kept later hours than many—herself, for instance—which allowed her to sail toward the table like a frigate, the housekeeper wringing her hands behind her.
“Just a brief stop for Catherine before we fetch the other girls. Kitty, call for your things. Eleanor, I’m desolate. There’s no room in the carriage for even so thin a figure as yours. (I’m glad, by the way, to see you making such a good breakfast.)”
“My dear,” Mrs. Crosby said, sounding unperturbed. “Have you a moment to take off your cloak?”
“Oh! Scarcely a moment,” Lady Anne said, allowing the housekeeper to remove her wrap before throwing herself in a chair. Lady Anne was still a handsome woman, although not dressed with the care of Mrs. Crosby, her clothing usually called countrified (dog hairs), even though she was the daughter of a Navy man and had travelled the world as a girl. She was often described in Middleford by the useful phrase, as jolly as an admiral’s daughter, although it failed to take into account the avid curiosity in her dark brown eyes.
“You must tell me how you’re surviving the deluge,” she said, accepting a cup of her friend’s tea. “Of course, Kitty will know. But it’s always better to get it from the horse’s mouth.”
“Mama, Mrs. Crosby isn’t a horse.”
“No, she’s a lapdog,” her mother said. “I’m the horse. I’d like to say thoroughbred, but Clydesdale is no doubt more accurate. Sir Waldo is a saint to put up with me; anyone will tell you. Of course, I don’t deserve him.”
Lady Anne squinted into the corner, saying hmm and hum as she contemplated the perfection of her husband. Sir Waldo had been a close friend of Eleanor’s father, a model gentleman with his measured phrases and air of intelligent courtesy. After periwigs and powder grew unfashionable, most men looked less authoritative. But Sir Waldo had taken off his curled white wig to reveal a head of perfectly curled white hair and carried on much as usual.
Eleanor found the Mowbray marriage a mystery. She had no idea why a gentleman like Sir Waldo would marry such an embarrassing wife: embarrassing, certainly, to her daughters. Lady Anne squinted harder at her good fortune, which by now was almost visible in the corner, before shaking her head and ordering Kitty to her feet. These occasional moments of humility endeared her to much of the neighbourhood, and Eleanor exchanged an amused glance with her aunt—which changed, after Lady Anne bustled out, into shared laughter.
“But here it is, Aunt,” Eleanor said, as the Mowbray carriage rattled off outside. “I think Kitty quite likes Captain Denholm. She’s taken care to listen when he’s talked about, and finds him very handsome.”
“And what does she report of the heir?”
Eleanor gave her aunt a look, but couldn’t resist telling her about Kitty’s encounter with Mr. Denholm and the mirror, embellishing the elements of darkness and doubling to paint what she thought was a usefully off-putting picture of Mr. Denholm’s vanity, as he “aspired to elegance in fashion as in life.”
“Oh, he sounds so young!” her aunt cried, breaking into her surprisingly raucous laugh. “For all his airs—doesn’t he sound so charmingly young!”
“It isn’t that funny!” Eleanor said.
Her aunt made a show of repentance. “Such a very young man, my dear,” she added, shaking her head. “I know you can’t think so, but to me he sounds like a schoolboy. Young men take themselves so very seriously these days.”
“I thought you wanted me to take him seriously.”
“Oh, not him, my dear. His money,” her aunt said comfortably, and poured herself another cup of her son-in-law’s excellent tea.