Читать книгу The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst - Louise Allen - Страница 6

Chapter Three

‘Yes, you do,’ Theo persisted, seemingly forced to speak. He did not appear to be deriving much satisfaction from insulting her dress sense. ‘Look at this thing, and the one you wore yesterday. They might have been designed to make you look a fright.’

‘Well, really!’ A fright indeed! ‘They are suitable.’

‘For what?’ he demanded irritably. ‘Prison visiting?’ Although what he had to be irritable about she had no idea. She was the one being insulted.

‘Suitable for the sort of life I lead. They are practical. I alter them from old ones of Mama’s.’

‘A well-tailored gown in a colour that suits you would be equally practical. Green or garnet red or amber.’

‘What business have you to be lecturing me about clothes?’ Elinor demanded hotly. Theo looked equally heated. Two redheads quarrelling, she thought with a sudden flash of amusement that cut through the chagrin. She was not ready to forgive him, though. He might think her a dowd—he had no need to say so.

‘If you were my sister, I would—’

‘I am not your sister, I am thankful to say.’

‘You are my cousin, and it irritates me to see you dressing so badly, just as it would irritate me to see a fine gemstone badly set.’

‘A fine gemstone?’ she said rather blankly. Theo was comparing her to a gemstone? Some of the indignation ebbed away to be replaced with resignation. He was quite right, her gowns were drab beyond description—even tactful Bel had told her so.

‘As it happens, I have a couple of walking dresses that Bel bullied me into having made. I will wear one of those if we call at the chateau; I would not wish to embarrass you in front of your friends.’ She was willing to concede he had a point, although she could not imbue much warmth into her agreement.

‘That was not what concerned me—I am sorry if I gave you the impression that it was.’ He regarded her frowningly for a moment, then smiled, spreading his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘I truly am sorry. I spoke as I would to an old friend, out of bafflement that a handsome woman would diminish her looks so. But you rightly tell me to mind my own business; a chance-met cousin has no right to speak in such a way. I did not intend to hurt your feelings.’

And he had not, she realised, disregarding the blatant flattery of him calling her handsome. If she was honest with herself, she recognised in his outburst the same exasperation that sometimes led her to blurt out frank, or downright tactless, comments. She could remember demanding outright of a drooping Bel if she and Ashe were lovers. In comparison with that, a blunt remark about clothes was nothing.

‘I know you did not. Let us go and have our luncheon,’ she suggested. ‘I am starving.’

Theo ducked his head in acknowledgement of her gesture. ‘I will take the gig and our painting gear round to my lodgings first. It is on the way.’

A gangling youth came to take the reins as they led the horse up to a substantial village house. Theo lifted down the pile of easels and stools and opened the door while Elinor waited. From the exchange of words, it seemed his landlady was at home and after a minute she came out, a piece of sewing draped over her arm, a needle and thread trailing from the bodice of her crisp white apron.

‘Bonjour, madame.’ Elinor inclined her head and was rewarded by a flashing smile and an equally punctilious acknowledgement. Theo’s landlady was a handsome woman in her late thirties. Her abundant brown hair was coiled on top of her head and her simple gown showed off a fine figure. It could not, Elinor reflected wryly, be much of a hardship for him to lodge there. She was also, if the cut of her own gown and the fine pleating around the hem of the sewing she was holding were anything to judge by, a fine sempstress.

‘The inn is over here.’ Theo took Elinor’s arm and guided her towards the bridge. ‘We can sit under that tree if you like.’

The food was good. Plain country fare, and all the better for it in Elinor’s opinion, which she expressed as she passed the coarse game pâté across the table to Theo. ‘Do you keep house for Aunt Louisa?’ he asked, cutting them both bread.

‘Me? Goodness, no! I am quite hopelessly undomesticated. I do not have any of the proper accomplishments for a young lady.’ She glanced down at the lumpily-hemmed skirts of her offending gown and added, ‘As you have already noticed.’

‘Why should you, if your inclination is not in that direction?’ Theo took a long swallow of ale. ‘I have no inclination for any of the things I ought—I know nothing of estate management, my knowledge of politics is limited to keeping a wary eye on the international situation, it must be years since I went to a play…’

‘But I am a lady and for me not to have accomplishments is disgraceful, whether I want them or not. You are a man and may do as you please.’

‘True. A gratifying circumstance I must remind myself of next time Aunt Louisa is informing me that I am a scapegrace or Papa is practising one of his better hellfire sermons on me. Do you ride?’

‘Papa taught me when I was little, but I could never keep my seat on a side saddle. When I reached the age when I could not possibly continue to ride astride, I had to stop.’ Elinor sighed with regret. ‘Perhaps I will persevere with trying to drive instead.’

‘I knew a lady who rides astride,’ Theo remarked. ‘She has designed a most ingenious divided garment that looks like a pleated skirt when she is standing or walking. It was necessary to have the waistline made unfashionably low, of course, near the natural line. But it would be more suitable for your activities in the ruins, I imagine. It certainly appeared to give her considerable freedom.’

There was a faint air of masculine nostalgia about Theo as he spoke. Elinor bit the inside of her lip to repress a smile—or, worse, an indiscreet question. She would hazard a guess that the lady in question enjoyed more freedoms than simply unconventional dressing and that her cousin had enjoyed them with her.

‘That sounds extremely sensible,’ she observed, visited by an idea. ‘Do you think your landlady could make me such a garment if you were to draw it for her?’

‘But of course. From what I have seen on her worktable and her stocks of fabrics, she makes clothes for most of the ladies in the area, including those at the Chateau de Beaumartin, I imagine.’ Theo set down his glass and sat up straighter, reaching into his pocket for the big notebook he seemed to take everywhere. ‘Let me see what I can recall.’

What he recalled proved beyond doubt that he had a far more intimate knowledge of the garment in question than he should have. Elinor preserved a straight face as diagram followed diagram until she could resist no longer. ‘How clever of you to deduce all of that from the external appearance only, especially, as you say, the garment is designed to conceal its secrets.’

‘Ah.’ Theo put down his pencil. ‘Indeed. And I have now revealed a situation that I should most definitely not discuss with my sisters, let alone you, Cousin. How it is that I do not seem able to guard my tongue around you, I do not know.’

‘Was she one of the willing ladies I most reprehensibly referred to yesterday?’ Elinor enquired, not in the slightest bit shocked, only slightly, and inexplicably, wistful. Her newly rediscovered cousin was nothing if not a very masculine man. Doubtless he had to beat the ladies off with sticks.

‘Yes, I am afraid so. Rather a dangerous lady, and willing, very much on her own terms.’

‘Good for her,’ Elinor retorted robustly. It sounded rather a desirable state, being dangerous and dealing with men on one’s own terms. ‘May I have those?’

She reached for the little pile of sketches, but Theo held them out of reach. ‘On one condition only.’ She frowned at him. ‘That I choose the colour.’

‘Certainly not! I cannot go and discuss having gowns made with a man in attendance, it would be quite shocking.’

‘Gowns plural, is it?’ He grinned at her, still holding the papers at arm’s length. ‘I am your cousin, for goodness’ sake, Elinor, and she is my landlady. All I want to do is help you pick colours.’

‘Dictate them, more like,’ she grumbled, trying to maintain a state of indignation when truthfully she found she was rather enjoying this. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to think about clothes as anything but utilitarian necessities. ‘Very well. And, yes, gowns plural if it will save me from being nagged by you.’

‘I am forgiven for my plain speaking, then?’ He moved the sketches a little closer to her outstretched hand.

‘About my clothes or your mistress?’ Elinor leaned forwards and tweaked them from his fingers.

‘Your clothes. And she was never my mistress—a term that implies some kind of arrangement. I am too careful of my life to entangle myself with that dangerous creature.’

‘Tell me about her.’ Elinor folded the sketches safely away in her pocket and regarded him hopefully.

‘No! Good God, woman, Aunt Louisa would have my hide if she had the faintest idea what we are talking about. I don’t know what has come over me.’

‘We are becoming friends, I think,’ she suggested. ‘I find you very easy to talk to, perhaps because we are cousins. And I am not the sort of female you are used to.’

‘That,’ Theo observed with some feeling, ‘is very true. Would you like anything else to eat? No? Then let us go and consult Madame Dubois.’

After five minutes with Madame, Theo was amused to observe that Elinor stopped casting him embarrassed glances and dragged him firmly into the discussion, even when he judged it time to retreat and began to edge towards the door.

‘Come back,’ she ordered, sounding alarmingly like her mother for a moment. ‘My French is not up to this, I do not have the vocabulary for clothes.’

‘What makes you think I have?’ he countered. She slanted him a look that said she knew all to well that he had plenty of experience with French modistes and turned back to wrestling with the French for waistline.

Between them they managed well enough and Madame grasped the principles of the radical divided skirt very quickly. ‘You could start a fashion, mademoiselle,’ she remarked, spreading out the sketches and studying them. ‘Your English tailors say we French cannot produce riding habits to their standard—let us see!’

They agreed on the riding skirt with a jacket and a habit-shirt to go beneath it, a morning dress and a half-ress gown. ‘Now, this is the fun part.’ Theo began to poke about in the bales of cloth and had his hand slapped firmly away by Madame.

‘Zut! Let mademoiselle choose.’

‘No, I trust Monsieur Ravenhurst’s judgement,’ Elinor said bravely, apparently only half-convinced of the wisdom of that assertion.

‘That for the riding habit.’ Decisive, he pulled out a roll of moss-green twill. ‘And that, or that, for the morning dress.’ Elinor submitted to having a sprigged amber muslin and a garnet-red stripe held up against her. Madame favoured the amber, he the red. Elinor wrinkled her nose, apparently unhappy about pattern at all.

‘No, look.’ Theo, carried away, began to drape the cloth around her. ‘See? Pinched in here to show your waist off, and here, cut on the bias across the bosom—’ He broke off, finding himself with both arms around Elinor, his nose not eight inches from where her cleavage would be if it was not swathed in fabric.

‘It is my bosom,’ she pointed out mildly. He felt heat sweep through him, dropped the fabric and stepped back abruptly. She caught the falling cloth, plainly amused at his discomfiture. ‘I like this garnet stripe, I think, and I agree with Monsieur Ravenhurst’s suggestions about the cut.’ She tilted her head provocatively, disconcerting him by her agreement.

‘Alors.’ Madame appeared to have become resigned to her mad English clients, or perhaps she was simply used to him and inclined to be indulgent. ‘The evening gown. Amber silk I have. A nice piece.’

‘Violet,’ Theo said, pointing. ‘That one.’

‘With my hair?’ Elinor asked in alarm. He grinned at her. There would be no hiding in corners in a gown of that shimmering amethyst.

‘Definitely.’ She was not going to prevail this time. And he felt as though he had found a ruby on a rubbish tip and had delivered it to a master jeweller for cleaning and resetting. It was really rather gratifying.

A price and a startlingly short delivery time having been agreed, Elinor found herself outside with Theo, feeling somewhat as though she had been caught up in a whirlwind and deposited upside down just where she had been originally standing. ‘I came out to look at a church,’ she observed faintly, ‘and now I’ve driven a gig, had my clothes insulted, eaten at an inn and bought three outfits.’

‘You may express your gratitude when you see the effect.’ Theo placed her hand in the crook of his elbow and began to stroll. ‘A walk along the river bank before we go back?’

‘I did not say I was grateful!’ Elinor retrieved her hand, but fell into step beside him.

‘Admit that was more fun than drawing capitals all day.’ He turned off the road and began to walk upstream.

‘It was different,’ she conceded. ‘Oh, look, a kingfisher.’ They followed the flight of the jewelled bird as it fished, moving from one perch to another. The water was clear with long weed streaming like silk ribbons over the mosaic of pebbles and here and there a weir broke the smooth surface into foam and eddies.

There did not seem to be any need to speak. Sometimes Theo would reach out and touch her arm and point and she would follow the line of the long brown finger up to where a buzzard soared overhead or down to a yellow butterfly, unnoticed almost at her feet.

She picked a tiny bunch of wild flowers—one sprig of cow parsley, one long-stemmed buttercup, a spray of a blue creeping thing she had never seen before—and tucked them into his button hole. He retaliated by capturing her straw hat, which she had been swinging by its ribbons, unheeding of the effect on her complexion, and filling it with dog roses, won at the expense of badly pricked fingers.

The path began to meander away from the riverside. Then Theo pointed through a tangle of bushes to where a shelving stretch of close-cropped grass ran down to the water. ‘Rest there a while, then walk back?’ he suggested.

Elinor nodded. ‘I could wander along here all afternoon in a trance, but I suppose we had best go no further.’ It was the most curious sort of holiday, this day out of time with the almost-stranger she could recall from her childhood. Restful, companionable and yet with an edge of something that made her not uncomfortable exactly…

‘You’ll have to duck.’ He was holding up a bramble. Elinor stopped pondering just how she was feeling and crouched down under a hawthorn bush, crept under the bramble and straightened up. ‘Careful—too late, stand still.’

Something was grasping her very firmly by the net full of hair at her nape. Impatient, she shook her head and felt the whole thing pull free. ‘Bother!’ She swung round, her hair spilling out over her shoulders, only to find Theo disentangling the net from a blackthorn twig. ‘Thank you.’ Elinor held out a hand.

‘Torn beyond repair, I fear.’ Theo scrunched it up in his hand and tossed it into the river where it bobbed, forlorn, for a while, then sank, soggily.

‘Liar!’ Elinor marched up until she was toe to toe with him. ‘It was fine. It is just like my gowns.’

Theo dropped to the ground, disconcerting her as she stood there trying to rant at him. ‘I wanted to see your hair. Would you like a drink?’

‘Yes, I would, but I’m not drinking river water—look, cows. And you did not have to throw my hairnet away.’

Theo was fishing in the satchel she had thought contained only sketching equipment, emerging with a bottle, a corkscrew and two horn beakers. ‘I did. What would you have said if I’d asked you to let your hair down?’

‘No, of course.’ Exasperated Elinor sat down too, hugging her knees. Hair was in her eyes and she blew at it.

‘I rest my case. Here, try this. It really ought to be cooler, but never mind.’

‘Do you always get what you want?’ Elinor took the beaker resentfully. The first mouthful of wine slid down, fruity and thirst quenching. She took another, her irritation ebbing away. It seemed impossible to be cross with Theo for very long.

‘I try to.’ He was lying back, his beaker balanced on his chest, hat tipped over his eyes. ‘There’s a leather lace in my bag somewhere if you want to plait it.’

‘And a comb, no doubt.’ Elinor began to rummage. ‘Honestly! And men complain about all the things women keep in their reticules. You could survive for a week in the wilds on what you have in here.’

‘That’s the idea.’ Theo sounded as though he was dropping off to sleep.

Notebook and pencils were the least of it. There was rye bread folded in greased paper, a water bottle, a red spotted handkerchief, a fearsome clasp knife, some coiled wire she suspected was for rabbit snares, the comb, a tangle of leather laces, some loose coins… ‘Ouch!’

‘That’ll be the paper of pins. Have you found what you need?’

‘Thank you, yes.’ Sucking a pricked finger, Elinor bundled everything back into the satchel and began to comb out her hair. Thanks to the careless way she had stuffed it into the net that morning it was full of tangles now and the task took a good ten minutes.

Finally she had it smooth. Her arms ached. Plaiting it seemed like too much trouble. She reached for the beaker of wine, found it empty and refilled it. As though she had called to him, Theo picked the beaker off his chest, sat up and pushed the hat back out of his eyes. ‘Finished?’

‘I have to plait it yet.’ The late afternoon sun was warm and the burgundy, unaccustomed at this hour, ran heavy in her veins. Sleep seemed tempting; Elinor straightened her spine and tipped the unfinished half of her wine out on the grass.

‘I’ll do that.’ Theo was behind her before she could protest, the weight of her hair lifting to lie heavy in his hands. ‘Give me the comb.’

He seemed to know what he was doing. Elinor reached up and passed the comb back over her shoulder, then wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees and rested her forehead on them. It was curiously soothing, the sweep of the comb through her hair from crown to almost her waist. Soothing to sit there in the warmth with the birds chattering and the river splashing and her own pulse beating…