The LadyShip (26 page)

BOOK: The LadyShip

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Felix had been prevented from voicing his eagerness to
ask Ned for Lucy’s hand only by Ned’s temporary absence,
for which Elinor had to be grateful. She hoped to ask Ned
to make this extremely young couple wait a suitable length
of time before announcing their betrothal. Lucy might per
haps spend a little of this time under Lady Dorothea’s roof,
she thought, and with luck be able to meet other young
men before she committed herself to one. It was not that
Felix was not in every way eligible—he would indeed be
considered a “catch” for Lucy despite her connexion to a marquess—but in Elinor’s view he was far too eager to
throw up his present comfortable position to take over the
unfamiliar, if to him now highly attractive, duties of manag
ing a coaching inn.

Whenever Elinor tried to present this reasonable point of
view to her sister, however, Lucy countered with argu
ments in favour of Elinor’s accepting Marcus Allingham’s
offer, a digression that invariably threw Elinor’s mind off the advantages (to Lucy) of not marrying immediately. In
vain did Elinor protest that Mr Allingham had not actually
made her an offer, that he would not do so while he still
viewed her as the proprietress of a coaching inn, and that
she was sure she had never given anyone reason to suppose
she would welcome such an offer in any case—a patent pre
varication that made Lucy smile in a knowing way guaran
teed to provoke Elinor into added protests and to drive out
of her mind any thought of advising Lucy on a similar mat
ter.

Now it appeared—much to the further detriment of Eli
nor’s stubbornly clung-to plans for her sister—that Lucy
and Lady Dorothea were spinning plots together. This was
brought to her attention the next morning when, Lady
Dorothea having announced her intention to depart at pre
cisely eleven o’clock, she summoned Elinor to her room to
share her breakfast with her.

“I daresay you have already broken your fast hours ago,”
Lady Dorothea addressed her when she came into the pri
vate parlour where her ladyship was still reclining in her el
egant lavender dressing gown, “but have the goodness to
drink a cup of coffee with me. I will teach you later to take your breakfast in bed like a lady, but for now I suppose old
habits will not be broken. Do you rise naturally so early in the morning, by the way? I have never been able to do so,
although Marcus was always one to greet the dawn person
ally. He got it from his father.”

Elinor said nothing for a moment, unsure how to re
spond to this remarkable speech. Lady Dorothea took full
advantage of her lowered defences to launch an even more startling attack.

“Do you dislike my son, Lady Elinor—and I will call you
that in the proper circumstances, you know—or are you
merely indecisive?”

As this was put in the form of a question, Elinor was obliged to return some answer, but she had a considerable struggle to do so. “Why...neither, Lady Dorothea, I as
sure you! I hope I have not given the impression of not
knowing my own mind.”

“Then am I to assume you do not want him?”

“Want him?” Elinor echoed stupidly. She knew there
was more behind her difficulty than Lady Dorothea’s sim
ple choice indicated, but for the moment she could not
think clearly enough to enunciate it. “It is not a question
of—of wanting hi ...
”

“Do you, then?”

“The question has never arisen! That is, it has, but it is
hardly my place to—”

“Vernon says that you do,” her ladyship said, as if Elinor
had not spoken at all.

“He was not supposed to repeat that!” Elinor said, blushing furiously.

“He tells me everything,” Lady Dorothea said. “You
should perhaps be aware of that, for future reference. How
ever, I was prepared to put it down to Vernon’s incurable
sentimentalism—he is fond of you and very fond of Mar
cus, so it seems natural to him that the two of you should
make a match of it. As a general rule, I prefer not to encour
age Vernon in this attitude, but I am prepared to concede to
him that in some cases two people who may not appear made for each other are brought so forcibly together by
circumstances—or fate, as Vernon so quaintly puts it—that
it seems folly to deny those circumstances.”

Lady Dorothea sat back comfortably on her sofa and re
garded Elinor, who was sitting stiffly upright on a chair,
through her half-spectacles. “I see by your flushed
cheeks that Vernon had some basis for his assumption, but I fear he underestimated your reluctance to accept your newly discovered status. Had you really expected
to be able to continue on here indefinitely, as mistress of an inn? I cannot suppose you would think that proper—
for in your way, I believe, you are as much of a high stickler as Marcus about such things—for the sister of the Mar
quess of Redding?”

“No, I did not think it,” Elinor said helplessly, “but I can
not just abandon what has been my life for as long as I can
remember. Where should I go?”

At that, Lady Dorothea smiled in much the way Lord Ver
non might have done at such a foolish question, but unlike him, she declined to state the obvious answer. Instead, she
pronounced herself satisfied with her breakfast and ready
to go back where she belonged, if that saucy girl Petra
might be sent up to assist her again. She took a kinder leave
than Elinor had expected and kissed her affectionately on
the cheek.

“Good-bye, my dear. I trust we will meet again soon—
when you have made up your mind that what you want is
what is inevitable in any case.”

With that she shooed Elinor off to send Petra to her and
to order her coach brought around. But Elinor had no
sooner seen her ladyship off in it, than she was presented
with what appeared to be the next phase of Lady Doro
thea’s plans for her future. Shortly after noon, Marcus Al
lingham’s curricle pulled into the yard of The LadyShip.

Elinor was in the front of the building at the time and un
aware of this arrival. It was only when she came into her
private parlour off the lobby—to find him standing by the fireplace in front of a log nearly the size of the one now in
place in the dining-room and awaiting the ceremonial light
ing later that evening—that she was made aware of it.

“Good heavens! Mr Allingham!”

He turned around and smiled at her. “My mother appears
not to have done her work very well, if you are still ad
dressing me by that name.”

She laughed, a little hollowly. “Your mother, sir, if I may
say so, took a great deal for granted!”

“I expect she did. Vernon told her that the only way to
bring you around was to order you to comply.”

“Then perhaps my quarrel is with Lord Vernon, after all.
I had thought him my friend.”

“Are you going to stand in that doorway much longer?”
he asked, irrelevantly.

“I beg your pardon? No, forgive me—I shall send some
one to wait on you—”

He stepped forward, saying, “That is not what I meant.” Then, before Elinor knew what he was about, he had taken her in his arms and was kissing her soundly. For an instant only, she resisted, and then, as if weary of resistance, gave in to the deliciously warm sensation that flooded over her.
When at last he released her mouth and she looked up at
him with a wondering question in her eyes, he only smiled
and pointed upwards. Following his gaze, she became
aware of the “kissing basket” suspended temptingly from the lintel.

“Oh, you are devious!” she said, laughing.

“Not at all. You hung it there, did you not?”

“No. In fact, it was Lucy’s idea—and where
is
Lucy?” she
demanded indignantly. “I do not see her all morning, and
now she leaves me open to improper advances by guests of the inn. I shall have a sharp word with her presently! Do let
me go, Mr—Marcus!”

He seemed to find endless amusement in her futile efforts
to thrust him away, and held her so much the tighter. “To
answer your observations in order,” he said, “Lucy is very
obligingly keeping the servants temporarily away from this room; my intentions are entirely honourable; you must not
blame your sister for my actions, which are my own re
sponsibility; and no, I will not let you go until you say you
will marry me.”

She looked down, fixing her eyes on the folds of his cra
vat, but made no further effort to free herself. “Is that why
you sent your mother here—to see if I had changed my
mind about that?”

“I did not send her, you know. Vernon prompted the
visit, I believe, by advising me—as you might expect of him—to abduct you and carry you off to the border. My
mother thought the thing could be accomplished by more
orthodox means. She came only to see if you were firm
ly fixed in your refusal to accept your new status—and me—or whether you might yet be brought around.”

“Apparently she thought that.”

“No, she advised me to wait until your brother and Cla
rissa were married, when you would become a Dudley con
nexion, like it or no. But I have an absurd wish to marry you before that—as soon as possible, in fact. You see, I
have my scruples, too, and do not wish you to feel one day
that you were coerced into accepting me.”

She smiled tremulously. “And you do not consider this
to be coercion?”

“No, my love—because I believe also that once you have
made up your mind that you love me more than you re
spect your own scruples, you are too generous to dwell fur
ther on what is past, and we may get on with our future.
That is—if you love me at all.”

She raised her eyes again to his, as if to find the courage
there to say the words she had yearned to for so long. He said, “I love you very much, Nell.”

“I have always loved you,” she said simply, and her
doubts vanished forever.

A few minutes later, Lucy peered curiously around the doorway into the parlour to see if it was all right to inter
rupt, but quickly ascertaining that it was not, she turned back to Felix, a light blush colouring her cheeks. “I sup
pose they have lost track of the time,” she said.

“It must be something in the air,” Felix said, close to her
ear. “Could it be Christmas?”

Lucy smiled. “Don’t be absurd. I’m sure they have no
more idea of the season than of the time. Shall we inter
rupt?”

“Let’s not—I have a better idea.”

Shortly thereafter, Mr Evans ventured into the hall from
the taproom, where he had obligingly hidden himself,
only to discover that he was, by default, temporarily in
charge of The LadyShip. All of the younger staff, in neglect
of their sundry duties, were in the servants’ pantry playing
Forfeits (in the course of which shy Willy would doubtless
be tricked into forfeiting a kiss to Rose’s pretty cheek); Miss
Lucinda and that Mr Dudley (who got underfoot more than
the greenest stable-boy) were walking hand-in-hand in the
back garden in plain view of the guests’ windows; and Miss
Bennett, who never set a foot out of place, was alone with
Mr Allingham behind a closed door, doing who knew what
sort of carousing.

Evans went off to complain to Mrs Nash—who could at
least be depended upon not to desert her mince pies for a
whim—about the deplorable state of affairs at the once-
proud LadyShip. Had anyone been listening, he could have
been heard to murmur on the stairs, “Now, is this any way to run a respectable inn? I ask you, sirs—what next?”