Benny said it in his usual irritated manner. Tattleton did not suppose Benny liked the dead count any better than Lord Van Doren did. He seemed to take umbrage with Fleur’s admiration of the fellow.
Of course, Benny also took umbrage with Fleur throwing French phrases around, as everybody knew she’d been born in Pucklechurch, christened Flora, and there was not a drop of French blood in her. Rather, when she’d begun working for Miss Mayton, she’d learned some of the language from her mistress and suddenly insisted on being called Fleur.
Tattleton was just as irritated by it, though he never said so. As a butler, if he is to be of any use at all, he must carefully choose his battles. Flora/Fleur could rename herself Flambé next, with no complaint from him.
“And what if I would have married Hans?” Fleur asked defiantly. “I suppose I could have made Hans very happy. Had he lived.”
“Heneverlived,” Johnny said. “That’s the real point. You won’t get me to believe that some fellow flung himself off the side of a mountain for love of Miss Mayton. Not unless he was only trying to get away from her.”
“She was younger, then,” Fleur said. “She says she was quite beautiful.”
“I bet she does,” Johnny said with a snort.
Tattleton suppressed the urge to sigh—to sigh loudly. He agreed with Johnny that Hans had never lived. Nor had all the other unfortunate gentlemen who’d allegedly met bad ends simply by running into Miss Mayton in some foreign locale.
He had wondered for years why the lady went on with such stories. At first, when the earl’s daughters had been very young, it had seemed to give them some comfort. Who could deny them comfort when they’d lost their mother? If they wished to believe in fairy tales, grim as they always seemed to end, then what harm done?
But Miss Mayton had kept on with it. Her stories had become something the young ladies measured the world by.
Tattleton had been certain they’d all grow out of it and quite naturally leave such nonsense behind.
He had been hoping Miss Mayton, herself, would grow out of it, as that lady must be forty by now. He had several times attempted to address her asMrs.Mayton, as a sign of respect for her age, but she would have none of it.
He was certain she was secretly hopeful that she would meet some gentleman who would fall madly in love with her and, unlike all the dead gentlemen of her imagination, somehow stay alive.
That had not happened so far, and he had his doubts that it ever would. Whathadhappened, though, was her young charges had developed an unwavering belief in a magical world of gentlemen as compelling as Greek gods. Those unrealistic ideas seemed very much cemented.
Where would it lead them? He had the rather uncomfortable feeling that Lady Beatrice was on the precipice of a grave disappointment.
*
Beatrice surveyed thechaos on the drive as trunks were loaded. The lady’s maids fluttered this way and that, scolding Benny and Johnny about this hatbox and that trunk, while Tattleton chased them away so the footmen could get on with it.
Were a gentleman traveling alone to change horses often, he might make the trip from Somerset to London in two days’ time. Nobody in the Bennington household was so delusional as to imagine they could move one earl, one matron, five daughters, and the various servants accompanying them with such speed.
They were to attempt a more reasonable three days, stopping at The Lamb at Hindon, and then again at The Angel at Basingstoke. From there, they would proceed to Portland Place and discover what their brother, Viscount Darden, had been up to these many months.
A sudden clatter sought her attention. Beatrice turned and saw Van Doren cantering up the drive.
He reined in his horse. “Beatrice,” he said, bowing as well as one could bow from a saddle.
“Van Doren,” she said. “What do you do here?”
“I am to accompany you to Town. Did not your father say?”
Cordelia ran down the steps. “Van Doren. What do you do here?”
“I am here to—”
“Lord Van Doren. What do you do here?” Miss Mayton asked, coming out the door.
Rosalind was on the heels of Miss Mayton. She looked back over her shoulder and called into the house. “Juliet, you will just die to know it. Van Doren has turned up.”
“Why?” came the faraway voice of their youngest sister.
“I am here because your father requested that I accompany this caravan of lunatics to London,” Van Doren said through gritted teeth.
Rosalind shrugged and said, “It is no matter, Bea. He cannot scold us if we are in a carriage and he is on horseback. We will shut the windows if he tries it from atop his horse.”
