A Strange Likeness (6 page)

E
leanor was delighted to discover that her great-aunt was also impressed by Alan Dilhorne.

‘If Ned is determined to be his friend, then I must launch him into good society,' Almeria said decidedly to her niece. ‘He cannot be left to wander about the
demi-monde
, which is all that Ned can introduce him to. He deserves better than that. Ned must also introduce him to a decent tailor, since he plainly does not lack money. I shall speak to Lady Liston about him. She is the hostess of the biggest reception of the season next week, and for him to be received at Liston House will give him all the social cachet he needs.'

The shrewd old woman was not thinking solely of assisting Alan. It was plain to her that he was a steadying influence on Ned, and for that reason alone the friendship ought to be encouraged.

Ned did more than introduce Alan to his tailor. A fortnight after meeting Alan he asked him to Stanton House, took him to his rooms, called for his valet, Forshaw, and said in a manner which brooked no opposition, ‘Come on, Dilhorne, if you're going to visit the best houses, and given that it will be some days before the tailors have
your new clothes ready, you might as well be outfitted in my spares. I've enough to fit you up twice over, haven't I, Forshaw?'

‘Certainly, Mr Ned, and no problem about the size, either.'

Alan began to demur, but the prospect of wearing clothes which would not raise eyebrows was too much for him. Ned and Forshaw danced around, sorting out shirts, jackets, trousers, socks, shoes and assorted underwear as assiduously as a pair of drapers in one of the new shops which were beginning to arrive in Oxford and Bond Street.

Forshaw also trimmed what he privately called young Dilhorne's ‘errant hair', and when he was togged out to their mutual satisfaction a trunk was filled with more of Ned's ‘spares' and the two of them set off to see the town.

They met Almeria and Eleanor in the hall. They had just come back from a similar expedition—ordering two more evening dresses for Eleanor to dazzle the
ton
in.

They both stared at the handsome pair. Almeria said faintly, ‘Properly dressed, Mr Dilhorne, it is quite impossible to tell which of you is which.'

Eleanor, on the other hand, had no such difficulty. She exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, Mr Dilhorne is the one on the left. I can't understand, begging your pardon, Great-Aunt, how anyone could mix them up!'

‘Alan, please, Miss Hatton. We have gone beyond Mr Dilhorne, I think,' Alan said quickly, before naughty Ned could begin to tease his sister by falsely claiming that, not at all,
he
was the man on the left. He was delighted, and a little surprised that Eleanor could immediately, and correctly, identify him. A girl of common sense as well as spirit, he decided.

Eleanor blushed charmingly, ‘Then if you are to be Alan, I must be Eleanor.'

‘And all the more so,' he returned gallantly, ‘as a reward for your good sense in distinguishing me from Ned.'

‘Dam'd odd that,' Ned told Alan, when they had made their adieux to the two women and set off together for an evening on the town. Later they were going on to a reception at the Ailesburys', to which they had both been invited and where they would later rejoin Lady Stanton and Eleanor. ‘No one else can tell us apart, even when we're wearing quite different clothes. Wonder how she does it?'

Alan could offer no convincing explanation, and nor could Eleanor, when Almeria Stanton quizzed her later.

‘Oh, it's simply a feeling I have when I look at them,' she offered hesitantly. ‘I can't explain it. It's something which goes beyond reason, I think.'

Her tough old great-aunt thought that there might be a very down-to-earth explanation which the innocent Eleanor was not yet mature enough to understand. She had already noticed that her charge sparkled whenever Mr Alan Dilhorne walked over the horizon, and that her eyes followed him around the room.

Whether his apparent attraction for her niece was a good thing or a bad thing she was not yet in a position to say. Though his influence on Ned was so beneficial that she decided to give him
carte blanche
to visit Stanton House whenever he pleased.

Others at the function were obviously ready to accept him in society: he was rapidly surrounded by a group of fascinated members of the
ton
, most of them women.

‘He's already got La Bencolin after him,' grumbled Ned to Frank Gresham, having met with a polite refusal
himself from the lady who was the merry widow of Lord Bencolin, who had left her his not inconsiderable fortune.

‘Oh, Marguerite's always after the latest sensation,' drawled Frank, who had once scored with the lady himself, ‘and Dilhorne's certainly that.' He admired Ned's look-alike: talking to him was always refreshing. One never knew what he was going to say next.

Frank had found Alan a body-servant, Gurney, who had been a professional boxer, with whom he sparred in a gymnasium off the Strand—much to Frank's amused admiration.

‘How the devil did a great bruiser like you, Dilhorne, acquire such a head for figures? You certainly don't resemble Ned: he possesses neither talent,' Frank had said after watching Alan work out one afternoon. ‘Ned tells me you spend the morning grinding away in the City. He says that the rumour is that your father's rich enough for you never to work again.'

Alan, towelling himself off, had stared at young Gresham, armoured in idleness like all the young men whom he had met through Ned.

‘Now where would be the fun in that? Look at the trouble that fellows like you and Ned have in filling your days. Some useful occupation would certainly do
him
a world of good.'

‘Ned? Useful occupation!' Frank had snorted. ‘You're light in the attic. He hasn't the brains of a flea, poor fellow.'

‘Now, how do you know that?' Alan had queried. ‘I doubt whether anyone ever troubled to find out.'

‘Well, he made a dam'd poor fist of it at Oxford, I can tell you, and I was there with him.'

Alan raised his eyebrows. ‘Now, what do you think
that proves? That he can't construe, or write Latin verses. What in God's name has that got to do with anything?'

‘Better than nothing,' Frank drawled. ‘Though I confess that my ability to recite pages of Livy isn't exactly helpful—though it'll be pretty impressive when I do choose to sit in the Lords, even though half my audience won't know what on earth I'm spouting about. Be off with you, then. If you aren't going to be a bruiser you can concentrate on making yourself even richer than you are. Better than being like Victor Loring, perpetually strapped.'

Alan asked, apparently idly, ‘The Lorings? Poor, are they?'

‘Church mice,' agreed Frank cheerfully. ‘And there's you, you devious devil, filthy with it, doing them out of that, too. Life isn't fair, else I shouldn't be ready to take my seat in the Lords and live on milk and honey.'

Alan thought that Frank was a little devious himself. He might be living a rackety life around town, but he possessed a good brain beneath his idly cheerful façade. He suspected that it would not be long before his wild life palled, and Frank, Lord Gresham, would place his obligations and duties first, and not second.

Meantime he was a jolly companion, and it was he who had introduced Alan to La Bencolin at the Ailesburys': a kindness which Alan had already begun to appreciate before Eleanor and her great-aunt arrived.

‘So that's Ned's discovery and his improbable look-alike,' said George Johnstone's older brother, Sir Richard, who was a great friend of Lady Stanton's. He was amusedly watching Alan charm the ladies before taking La Bencolin off to supper. She was hanging on to his arm as though she never meant to let go of it.

‘You know that my brother George is working in the
City, Father having left him nothing. He's been entertaining us all with the goings-on at Dilhorne's ever since young Master Alan arrived there one fine morning.

‘He entered the office like a whirlwind and frightened everyone to death. Told 'em they were all slackers,' Sir Richard continued cheerfully, ‘which wasn't surprising considering George's attitude to life. He got the job by accident, and being George, didn't even try to do it properly. Young Dilhorne made 'em work all night, not once, but twice—took off his coat and worked with 'em in his shirtsleeves. He made George do the same—now, that I would like to have seen. Then he sent them all home, and worked most of the next day himself—God knows when he slept, because he was on the town with Ned Hatton the same night!

‘When he'd got everything straight again, after making them work like coolies for the rest of the week, they arrived one day to find that at lunchtime he'd arranged a dam'd fine meal for them all, with enough drink to stun several horses, never mind some half-starved City clerks.

‘He told them afterwards he'd put their pay up if they carried on as devotedly as they had been doing. George thinks he's God, and has begun to work for his money. What's more, some whippersnapper of a clerk he'd assaulted on the first day got up and made a drunken speech on Mr Alan, thanking heaven for the day he'd arrived—seems he'd grasped that young Master D had saved the London branch from bankruptcy, and all their jobs into the bargain.

‘I want to meet this paragon, Almeria, and soon. Anyone who is the spit image of Ned Hatton and can make George work must be worth seeing. Tonight he's walked off with La Bencolin after five minutes' conversation with her! What will he get up to next?'

‘He can tame Ned, too,' Almeria said quietly. ‘The only question is, how soon will it be before he leaves Ned behind, or Ned begins to resent him?'

She said nothing of her suspicions that Eleanor had fallen in love—and at first sight, too—with Sir Richard's paragon. It was perhaps fortunate that Eleanor had missed his encounter with La Bencolin, nor did she see him leave with her later, having been cornered by Victor and Caroline Loring.

Sooner or later the gossip would reach her. Later would be better, when the first gloss of Mr Alan Dilhorne's arrival had worn off—or so Almeria hoped.

 

The gloss was not wearing off for Alan. His days were full and he had begun to discover that there were opportunities in London which did not exist in Sydney. And they were not all to do with getting into bed with one of society's most famous beauties.

His brother, Thomas, had commented shortly before he had left home that a buccaneer like Alan would be able to pillage the pillagers, and he was rapidly beginning to see ways of accomplishing this!

One duty, rather than pleasure, saw him making his way to the Waring family lawyers, who had their offices in Lincoln's Inns Fields. He dressed with some care, not in Ned's presents, but in the new suit which his tailor had made for him. Gurney had even tamed his unruly sandy hair, so like his father's. Thus respectable, he was ushered into the rooms of Hallowes, Bunthorne and Thring.

There were three people waiting for him, and two of them were obviously lawyers. One was sitting at a large desk, the other, holding a pile of papers, was perched on a high stool next to an over-full bookcase, and was obviously the junior of the pair.

The third man was tall and silver-haired. He was in his late fifties or early sixties and the expression on his handsome face could best be described as sardonic when he saw Alan come through the door.

All present rose to their feet.

‘Mr Alan Dilhorne, I believe?' the senior lawyer said. Alan nodded agreement. He continued, ‘May I present myself? I am Mr John Bunthorne, at your service, and this is Lewis Thring, my junior partner.'

Alan bowed and acknowledged them both.

Bunthorne turned and identified the third man in the room. ‘May I have the honour of presenting you to Sir Patrick Ramsey, KB, once of the 73rd Foot, the Royal Highlanders, stationed in Sydney when Lachlan Macquarie was Governor there. He has come to help us in our duties.'

Sir Patrick bowed gracefully to Alan. Alan responded; the lawyer waved him to a chair before his desk.

‘Being a businessman yourself, Mr Dilhorne, you will, of course, understand that we have a duty to protect the Waring estate from possible impostors.'

He paused, and Alan said, ‘Of course,' and tried not to look at Sir Patrick who appeared vaguely amused by the whole business.

‘Since we discovered your mother's existence—Sir John having left her everything without ascertaining whether she was alive or dead—we have taken a number of affidavits from persons resident in Sydney at the time of her marriage but who have now returned to England. These appear to be satisfactory on the face of it.

‘I am sure, though, that you will understand that it seemed wise to ask Sir Patrick Ramsey to meet you as further confirmation, since Colonel Wright left for service
in India some six months ago. That is correct, is it not, Sir Patrick?'

Sir Patrick flapped a hand in agreement.

‘Now, as I understand it, Mr Dilhorne, you are here on behalf of your father, Thomas Dilhorne Esquire.'

‘No,' said Alan, throwing both lawyers into a temporary fluster. ‘My father is Tom, not Thomas, and I am not here on his behalf. It is my mother who inherits the estate, and I represent her.'

Sir Patrick gave a short laugh on hearing this.

Bunthorne favoured Alan with a patronising smile.

‘Not so, Mr Dilhorne. But your mistake is quite understandable, since you may be unaware that under English law your mother's rights are subsumed under your father's.'

‘It is you who mistake,' said Alan gently. ‘At home my mother's possessions have been contractually reverted back to her. She is a free agent, and, as such, is as full a partner in my father's firm as myself or my brother Tom.'

Sir Patrick's laugh was not stifled this time. Memory moved in him when he surveyed Tom Dilhorne's son.