Louise Allen - The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst

‘My father has informed me that I enter the church over his dead body. It is also his opinion that I was born to be hanged and therefore a career in the law is ineligible. I find I have a fixed objection to killing people unless absolutely necessary, which eliminates the army and the navy.’

‘Politics? The government?’ Elinor suggested, smiling as much at her mother’s expression as Theo’s catalogue of excuses.

‘I am also allergic to humbug.’

Lady James ignored this levity. ‘What sort of trade?’

‘Art and antiquities. I find I have a good eye. I prefer the small and the portable, of course.’

‘Why of course?’ Careless of deportment, Elinor twisted round on her seat to face him fully.

‘It is easier to get an emerald necklace or a small enamelled reliquary past a customs post or over a mountain pass than a twelve-foot canvas or six foot of marble nude on a plinth.’ The twinkle in his eyes invited her to share in his amusement at the picture he conjured up.

‘You are involved in smuggling?’ his aunt asked sharply.

‘In the aftermath of the late wars, there is a great deal of what might be loosely described as art knocking about the Continent, and not all of it has a clear title. Naturally, if it sparkles, then government officials want it.’ Theo shrugged. ‘I prefer to keep it and sell it on myself, or act as an agent for a collector.’

‘And there is a living to be made from it?’ Elinor persisted, ignoring her mother’s look that said quite clearly that ladies did not discuss money, smuggling or trade.

‘So my banker tells me; he appears moderately impressed by my endeavours.’

‘So what are you doing here?’ Lady James demanded. ‘Scavenging?’

Theo winced, but his tone was still amiable as he replied, ‘I believe there is an artefact of interest in the neighbourhood. I am investigating.’

There was more to it than that, Elinor decided with a sudden flash of insight. The smile had gone from his eyes and there was the faintest edge to the deep, lazy voice. The coolness inside her was warming up into something very like curiosity. She felt more alive than she had for months.

‘Where are you staying, Cousin Theo?’ she asked before her mother insisted upon more details of his quest, details that he was most unlikely to want to tell her. Once Mama got wind of a secret, she would worry it like a terrier with a rat.

‘I’ve lodgings down in St Père.’ Elinor had wanted to visit the village at the foot of the Vezelay hill, huddling beneath the towering spire of its elaborate church. She would have enjoyed a stroll along the river in its gentle green valley, but Lady James had dismissed the church as being of a late period and less important to her studies than the hilltop basilica. They could visit it later, she had decreed.

‘Rooms over the local dressmaker’s shop, in fact. There’s a decent enough inn in the village for meals.’

And now he is explaining too much . Why Elinor seemed to be attuned to the undertones in what he said, while her mother appeared not to be, was a mystery to her. Perhaps there was some kind of cousinly connection. She found herself watching him closely and then was disconcerted when he met her gaze and winked.

‘Well, you may as well make yourself useful while you are here, Theophilus. Elinor has a great deal to do for me and she can certainly use your assistance.’

‘But, Mama,’ Elinor interjected, horrified, ‘Cousin Theo has his own business to attend to. I can manage perfectly well without troubling him.’

Her cousin regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment, then smiled. ‘It would be a pleasure. In what way may I assist?’

‘You may escort her to St Père to make some sketches in the church there. I will review your preliminary drawings of the capitals tomorrow, Elinor, and see what needs further detailed work. I doubt St Père will prove of interest, but you may as well eliminate it rather than waste a day.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

Theo watched Elinor, puzzled. Where was the assertive young woman from the basilica? It was as though the presence of her mother sucked all the individuality and spark out of his cousin. Sitting there, hands neatly folded in her lap, clad in a slate-grey gown that might have been designed to remove all the colour from her face and disguise whatever figure she might possess, she looked like the model for a picture of a dowdy spinster. He had been flattering her when he made the remark about her age when they last met; she looked every bit the twenty-five she admitted to.

He reviewed his agreement to take her to St Père. Was there any danger? No, not yet. It was probably too early for his client to have become restless over the non-appearance of his goods and, so far as he was aware, none of the opposition had yet appeared on the scene. If they had and he was being watched, escorting his cousin would be a useful smokescreen.

‘At what time would you like me to collect you and your maid?’ he enquired.

‘Maid? There is no need for that,’ his aunt rejoined briskly. ‘We are in the middle of the French countryside and you are her cousin. Why should Elinor require chaperonage?’

He saw the faintest tightening of Elinor’s lips and realised that she was sensitive to the unspoken assumption behind that assertion—that she was not attractive enough to attract undesirable attention.

‘I will walk down the hill, Cousin, at whatever time suits you,’ she offered. ‘There is no need for you to toil all the way up, simply to escort me.’

That was probably true; she seemed to know her way around the large village well enough, and it was a respectable and safe place. But he felt an impulse to treat her with more regard than she obviously expected to receive.

‘I will collect you here at ten, if that is not too early. The weather is fine; I have no doubt the inn can provide a luncheon we can eat outside. The interior is not really fit for a lady.’

‘Thank you.’ Her smile lit up her face and Theo found himself smiling back. Those freckles dancing across her nose really were rather endearing. If only her hair was not scraped back into that hideous snood or whatever it was called. ‘You will not mind if I am out all day, Mama?’

‘No, I will not need you,’ Lady James said, confirming Theo’s opinion that she regarded her daughter in the light of an unpaid skivvy. Her other children, his cousins Simon and Anne, had escaped their mother’s eccentricities by early and good marriages. His late uncle, Lord James, had been a quiet and unassuming man. Theo’s father, the Bishop, had been heard to remark at the funeral that his brother could have been dead for days before anyone noticed the difference.

Elinor was obviously fated to become the typical unwed daughter, dwindling into middle age at her mother’s side. Although not many mothers were scholars of international repute as well as selfish old bats, he reflected.

She might be a dowdy young woman, and have a sharp tongue on the subject of male failings, but he found he was pleased to have come across her. Sometimes life was a little lonely—when no one was trying to kill him, rob him or swindle him—and contact with the family was pleasant.

‘Is there any news from home?’ he enquired.

‘When did you last hear? I suppose you know about Sebastian and his Grand Duchess?’ He nodded. He had been in Venice at the time, pleasurably negotiating the purchase of a diamond necklace from a beautiful and highly unprincipled contessa. But even on the Rialto the gossip about his cousin Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst’s improbable marriage to the Grand Duchess of Maubourg was common currency. He had even glimpsed them together on one of his fleeting and rare visits to London, while their stormy courtship was still a secret.