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It would be easy enoug
h to lie. Elinor found she was tired of dissembling. ‘Yes. That and the fact that I find I cannot contemplate going back to the way things were.’
‘Very well, I will help you find a companion. There is a very pleasant and cultivated widow in her forties living in the town. She dines here occasionally—her husband was one of the court physicians. She may be a possibility. But why don’t you do the obvious thing?’
‘What is that?’ Elinor plumped down beside Eva. Something obvious would be rather a pleasant change.
‘Why, marry Theo, of course.’
‘But he doesn’t love me, that’s what I meant at dinner.’
‘He doesn’t?’
‘No, he says he will never marry. The way he told me, I am sure there is someone he loves, but whom he cannot have. He keeps proposing, of course—but I think that’s a mixture of loneliness and guilt and this maddening male honour.’ Eva looked decidedly puzzled. ‘He is by himself so much, except for lovers, of course, and I don’t think he has become attached to anyone other than this woman he cannot have. And we get on very well, most of the time, so I expect he thinks I would be pleasant company. And the guilt—well, he knows he has compromised me and we were rather, er…’
‘Was he good?’ Eva enquired, ignoring Elinor’s gasp.
‘Very. He made me feel wonderful. And special,’ she admitted finally ‘Not that I have any basis for comparison. Eva, men don’t talk about—I mean, Theo and Sebastian?’
‘Theo is far too much the gentleman, and Sebastian would never ask. Women are far less inhibited about these things.’ Eva smiled her wicked smile. ‘But who is this woman he is in love with, I wonder? Not the marquesa, surely?’
‘Lord no. He threw her out of his bedchamber at Beaumartin. She’s like a cat, she whisked her tail and stalked off to find another mouse to play with.’
‘Pretending she wasn’t at all put out? The lady has style, that is obvious. But Elinor, my dear, you love Theo, don’t you?’
The quiet question caught her unawares, still smiling at the thought of Theo’s rejection of Ana and the way she had reacted. ‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured, then caught herself. ‘Far too much to marry him like this,’ she added firmly.
‘Oh, dear.’ Eva put an arm around Elinor’s shoulders and hugged. ‘And you don’t want to tell him and the idiot can’t see it.’
‘He isn’t an idiot—’
‘They all are when it comes to love,’ Eva said with authority. ‘Mind you, women are too. I proposed to Sebastian, and a complete mull I made of it. Then Bel put her oar in and that made it worse. Too much pride on both sides, of course, but we came to our senses in the end, thank goodness.’
‘You are so happy. And Bel and Ashe, and Gareth and Jessica. Perhaps I am just infected by the Ravenhurst fashion for marriages and I’m pining for something I don’t really want,’ Elinor said, trying hard to sound light-hearted about it.
‘You sleep on it.’ Eva slid off the bed. ‘Ring if you want anything, Annette will come. I must go and look in on the nursery. Theo’s good with children, isn’t he? Goodnight.’
Elinor sat looking at the closed door for some minutes after Eva had taken herself off with that airy observation, seeing not the solid wood panels, but the image of Theo with the gurgling baby in his arms.
Chapter Twenty-One
To Theo’s decidedly jaundiced eye Eva was up to something. His mood, he readily acknowledged, was considerably depressed by a crashing hangover. Sebastian had rung for a second bottle of port, declaring that they were both in need of an exclusively masculine evening and somehow that had emptied in short order, only to be replaced with brandy.
Quite why Sebastian, who appeared to be in the best of spirits, should need to indulge in what turned out to be a solid evening’s drinking, Theo had no idea. In the end he knew himself to be so disguised that he took considerable care to hug the inner wall when he came out of the spiral stairs on to the battlements and Bachelors’ Walk.
He was aware of the conversation turning to women and the problems they caused a man, and could remember wondering if Sebastian was trying to pump him about Nell. But he had quite as hard a head as his cousin, and probably almost as much experience keeping his mouth shut. So why, this morning, he had the uneasy feeling that he had given away more than he intended, he was not sure. A guilty conscience, probably.
His mood was not improved by the presence at the breakfast table of the castle’s librarian, a slender young Englishman with blue eyes, blond hair, a classical profile and considerable address. Theo wanted to strangle him, if only to stop him discussing, with every appearance of interest, Gothic architecture in Italy with Nell.
‘He is such an intelligent young man,’ Eva murmured in Theo’s ear. ‘Lord Finchingfield mentioned him to us when we were last in England—Phillip is the third son, you know—and he is working wonders in the library. It had been dreadfully neglected. I was sure Elinor would find him entertaining, and I appear to have been correct.’
‘Indeed?’ Theo applied himself to his ham and eggs, trying not to glare at Mr Finchingfield, who was making Nell laugh now. Nell never laughed at breakfast. And why did she have to look so damnably lovely this morning?
‘If you have finished, Elinor and Phillip, there was something I wanted to discuss in the library.’ Eva gestured to the footman who sprang to pull back her chair and left with the others behind her, still laughing over some shared joke.
Nell had hardly spared him more than a polite good morning when he had come in and had then pertly enquired whether he would like her to ring for a powder for his head. When he had growled at her, he had seen her bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at him. Did he look that bad? A glance in the mirror opposite confirmed that he did. His skin was pale under the tan, there were shadows under his eyes and he had made a hash of shaving that morning.
Sebastian, to be fair, did not look much better, but at least he had the decency to eat his breakfast in silence.
