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‘Lord, yes. I was forgetting, she wanted me to measure something high up—string courses, I think. Come on.’
At two in the morning Theo watched Elinor as she walked softly along the passageway in front of him, a lantern in her hand. They had decided to go the longer way to the chamber, the way she had gone with Leon in the afternoon, rather than risk opening an external door into the courtyard in the dark.
He had spent the rest of the afternoon balancing on stepladders holding measuring rods, while his aunt tried to make the dimensions of the chapel fit some mathematical formula dreamt up by a scholar whom Theo had no trouble stigmatising as being as daft as a coot. She had failed, something that appeared to give her great satisfaction, and had dismissed him until dinner, leaving him ample time to brood over what, exactly, was the right word to describe Elinor now.
She never had been plain, he had realised, his soup spoon halfway to his mouth during the first course, just smothered by drab colours and scraped-back hair and a life of dull regularity. Like the uncut gemstone he had likened her to, or perhaps a painting, languishing under layer after layer of ancient varnish.
The countess addressed a question to him and he answered her, half of his mind still on Elinor. Then it came to him as he saw her turn, laughing at something Sir Ian had said, her face lit up with amusement and intelligence and the lovely line of her upper body silhouetted against the baronet’s dark evening coat. Comely, that was the word. And she always would be, even in old age, he realised, finding he was smiling.
He was still thinking about that revelation as he followed her into the hall, his eyes on the pool of light cast at her feet by the dark lantern. Distracted, he bumped into a chest. The sharp edge dug into his thigh, the lid lifted and banged down with a loud thud that seemed to echo round the great hall. He stopped, cursing under his breath and rubbing his leg.
‘Does it hurt?’ Elinor came back and held up the light to see.
‘Damned chest.’ The long-case clock they were standing next to chimed the half-hour, making her jump. ‘We had better get a move on.’ Elinor nodded, lifted the light and turned. ‘Wait!’
‘What?’ She came back and looked where he was pointing. The great tapestry hung from floor to ceiling. It was in poor condition, moth-eaten and dusty from long years hanging close to the fireplace, but it was possible to make out that it showed the Chateau of Beaumartin in an earlier age. Around the borders were trails of vines, hunting scenes, vignettes of harvest and feasting. And in the middle of the left-hand border, the image of a chalice, half-hidden by a drapery.
‘Is that it?’ Elinor put the lantern on a side table by the sofa that stood in front of the tapestry and climbed up onto the upholstered seat. ‘I can’t see very clearly.’
‘It is the right general outline. It doesn’t show the detail, of course—that would probably scorch a hole in the fabric.’ He could remember the effort it had taken not to react when the late count had finally taken the thing out of its case and handed it to him and he was able to study it for the first time. He had thought himself sophisticated and had been astonished to find himself shocked, enlightened and shamefully aroused, all at once.
Theo joined Elinor on the sofa seat, making it dip and forcing her to clutch at his sleeve to steady herself. ‘If I lift this edge away from the wall, can you shine the light behind and see if you can see any kind of wall cupboard or opening?’
It took some doing. The tapestry was heavy, and without moving the weighty sofa, it was difficult to pull away from the wall. Sneezing from the dust, Elinor managed to get both the lantern and her head into the gap he created.
‘Nothing, just smooth wall.’
‘Good—I did not relish trying to drag this sofa out and then get it back in the right spot,’ he said with some relief, helping her tuck the rucked tapestry back down behind the high upholstered back again.
It was smooth at last, and the two of them panting with the effort of doing it while balancing on the squashy and rather mobile cushions, when Theo froze. ‘Someone’s coming.’
It was just on the edge of his hearing, but it was definitely movement, the sound of someone trying to be quiet, and coming from the direction they had entered from. ‘Hell, where can we hide?’
The heavily shadowed hall stretched out before them, singularly free of tables with heavy cloths over, cupboards or windows with floor-length curtains. It was quiet again. Theo had just decided he was imagining things when the door at the far end burst open.
It was too late to run—there was nowhere to conceal themselves. Theo fell on to the sofa, pulling Elinor down into his arms. ‘Kiss me.’
He saw her grasp his intentions as fast as he spoke. With a ruthless hand she pulled open the top three buttons on her old gown, scattering them, then attacked the neck of his shirt. By the time he had her flat on her back his shirt was open to the waist and her hair was tumbling out of its pins.
It sounded as though half the village had erupted into the room. Theo sat up, pulled Elinor protectively against his chest and demanded, ‘What the hell is going on?’
It might not have been the village, but it was certainly the entire house party, hastily bundled into night robes, candles in hand. ‘I might ask you the same thing, Ravenhurst,’ the count retorted, stepping in front of his mother and Julie as though to shield them from the shocking sight.
To one side Lady Tracey put her hands over her mouth and her husband appeared to be fighting the desire to laugh. Laure and Antoinette were agog, their hair in curling papers, their eyes wide at the sheer, wonderful, horror of what was occurring. From the shadows Ana looked on, smiling. When he caught her eye, she licked her lips like a cat delicately relishing a mouse she had just eaten
‘Theophilus!’ It had been too much to hope that Aunt Louisa was absent from this mob. ‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘I should have thought that all too obvious, madame,’ the countess interjected in freezing tones.
‘We were going outside. For a walk. But I am afraid our passion got the better of us before we got to the door,’ Theo said, improvising rapidly in an attempt to come up with a convincing story. Crushed beneath him, he could feel Elinor shift. He tried to take some his weight off her without standing up. The image he wanted firmly in everyone’s mind was one of lovers caught in flagrante, not of two people dressed to be creeping about the chateau on some clandestine errand. And the warm curves pressed against him were decidedly inspiring. ‘Aunt Louisa, I had hoped to speak to you about this before now, but I fully intend—’
‘You most certainly do,’ she said. There was something in her tone that alerted him. She was not reacting as he expected her to. The others would not notice, they did not know her. But Theo knew that he could have expected to have been hauled off the sofa by his ear while she sent for a pair of blunt scissors, not subjected to a quelling stare down her imposing nose and utter, chilly, calm. ‘You will attend me in my room at once. Both of you.’ She turned to regard the others. ‘Thank you, Count. I am sure there is nothing here to keep anyone else from their beds.’
Theo stood up and turned his back on the room, giving Elinor time to compose herself a little while the sounds of the retreating party diminished. Finally the door shut. She looked up at him, her face white. ‘Theo, she is going to say I am compromised and insist—’ Her fingers fumbled with the bodice of her gown and she looked up again. ‘I do not want to marry you, Theo.’
‘You don’t?’ He did not want to marry her, either, of course he didn’t. The last thing he needed was a wife. But it shook him to realise his spinster cousin was just as adamantly unwilling to wed him. Coxcomb he jeered a himself for his reaction. You are hardly God’s gift as a husband, are you? A red-headed adventurer in disgrace with his family? Sensible woman. ‘All right, we will tell her the truth.’ And that would be an act as courageous as any he had ever performed, explaining to his formidable aunt that he was involving her daughter in a perilous search for a pornographic artefact.
Chapter Thirteen
