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“Yes, he is,” Trenton declared smoothly and threw Ursula a meaningful look as he took a sip of his wine.
“He is a long standing acquaintance,” Adelaide added and threw a cautionary look across the table at her niece.
Ursula looked from Trenton to Adelaide and shook her head. She hadn’t a clue what everyone was talking about. It was on the tip of her tongue to announce that she wasn’t engaged to anyone, but her father’s declaration on her last day in Yorkshire hovered over her. She couldn’t deny being engaged now without the risk of lying, just in case her father had accepted the offer he had received for her.
“Do we have a name for this long standing acquaintance?” Mrs Sinnerton asked. “I take it he is from Agglethorpe too?”
“I am sure that Miss Proctor will tell us who he is in her own good time, won’t you dear?” Frederick Beldrum declared quietly, although the curious look in his eye assured her that he wasn’t going to wait too patiently either.
“There will be a formal announcement in due course,” Trenton reported smoothly.
“Has anybody seen the new play at the Apollo yet? I have heard that it is the most frightful bore,” Adelaide announced to the table at large before anybody could probe further.
Thankfully, the hostess picked up the desperate need for a change of subject. She immediately reported the gossip she had heard about the lack of ability of the actors and the rather confusing storyline. When the other diners began to add their opinions, Ursula tuned out and focused on trying not to spill any of her soup. Her hands were trembling so much she was lucky she didn’t pour the watery substance all over herself.
Confused about what had just happened, she looked up at Trenton who was deep in conversation with the hostess, then turned her gaze toward her aunt, who was paying far too much attention to her soup to be convincing. Was Adelaide avoiding her gaze?
What was that all about? She mused with a frown. Why had he and Adelaide led everyone at the table to believe that she was to be married?
She winced as she thought about the letter she had received from her father last week informing her that she couldn’t remain in London beyond the end of the month. She had torn it up and tossed it into the fire, but knew she hadn’t heard the last of it from him.
Had Adelaide received a letter from her father too only not told her yet that her father had accepted an offer for her without her permission? That thought filled her with horror. She turned to look at her aunt, but found her gaze captured by Babarella instead. The woman’s baleful glare was so full of venom that Ursula immediately wondered if she had been the one to accost her on the towpath.
Determined not to allow the woman to upset her, she ran her gaze over the other guests until she came to rest upon Mrs Sinnerton, who was attempting to charm the man seated beside her. The people seated on either side of her were clearly trying to avoid conversing with the woman, but were drawn back to her time and time again by her loud manner and snorting laughter.
Bored, Ursula’s gaze turned toward Alfred Sinnerton. Her stomach dropped to find him staring straight at her. Their eyes met and held. She nodded amiably, but he didn’t blink or move; just continued to stare at her with those dark eyes of his that seemed almost soulless. She waited for several moments to see if he would smile or speak but, when he continued to stare at her, she turned her attention to the person seated beside her. She made no attempt to speak to him again, but was uncomfortably aware that his stare remained unbroken.
“So what do you do with your time, Sinnerton? I take it that you don’t work in your father’s practice in - Somerset, was it?” Trenton asked when Alfred’s staring began to make several people, not least Ursula, uncomfortable.
“Alas, I am afraid that poor Mr Sinnerton passed away last year,” Eunice Sinnerton piped up before her son could even draw breath.
Trenton glared at her and nearly told her to shut up. It had become apparent to anyone with a pair of eyes in their head that Alfred was staring almost longingly at Ursula, and for far longer than was polite. If Alfred hadn’t been taller than Ursula’s attacker on the towpath the other day, Trenton would have considered that Sinnerton had a rather dangerous attraction toward Ursula that needed to be dealt with.
He would have made a point of saying something to the man too, if Alfred’s manners hadn’t been better than his mother’s. As it was, besides staring, Alfred Sinnerton had not done, or said, anything that would cause anyone any offense. Engaging him in conversation was Trenton’s polite attempt to get him to focus on something other than Ursula for a while.
“So, have you taken over your father’s practice, Alfred?” Adelaide asked, and glared at Eunice in silent warning to let the man speak for himself. “Come now, Mr Sinnerton. We have heard a lot from your mother, but we have yet to hear from you. Do you work at the moment?”
“No. Not at the moment. The partners took over father’s practice last year,” Alfred replied, clearly uncomfortable at being the centre of attention.
Good, Ursula mused waspishly, relieved that he had turned his attention to his plate at last. See how he likes being stared at.
“What is it you do?” Adelaide prompted when the table fell into silence.
“He is working with me for a while,” Mrs Sinnerton replied. “We have Mr Sinnerton’s papers to go through and are working through that before we undertake a more permanent move to London.”
Ursula sighed when Alfred chose that moment to resume his staring. When she couldn’t stand it a moment longer, she threw him a dark look and turned her attention to the person seated to her right. Unfortunately, that turned out to be Sinnerton’s sister; Hyacinth, the studiously quiet one.
“It’s Hyacinth, isn’t it?” Ursula asked quietly. She felt a pang of sympathy toward the younger woman, who resembled a frightened rabbit as her head nodded jerkily in acknowledgement. It bothered her to note just how strange the Sinnertons were, but persisted in trying to lure the young woman into conversation anyway.
“How do you like London? If you hail from Somerset, I suppose you also find it considerably different to everything you are used to.”
“Not really,” the younger woman replied briskly. She turned eyes on Ursula that were so cold, so dark, that Ursula immediately leaned back in her seat. If she didn’t know better, she would think that Mrs Sinnerton’s daughter really didn’t like her.
Unsure of what else she could say, Ursula turned her attention to her soup.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Trenton sat on the edge of his bed and ran a weary hand through his hair. Frustration had remained with him throughout the night and rendered sleep impossible. His broad shoulders were naked in the chill of the bedroom, but it paid the cold no attention. Thoughts of Ursula, her attacker, the Sinnertons’ strange behaviour, and the strange goings on around Ursula, kept troubling him, leaving him oblivious to everything but the cloud of confusion that brought him more questions than answers.
