the pleasure of descending the stairs at Morancourt and finding Mr. Hatton waiting for her in the hall also wearing his best hinted at the delights to come.
Her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and her golden-brown hair was complemented by the colour of her new dress and the handsome necklace that Aunt Lucy had suggested that she should borrow for the evening.
“May I say, Miss Maitland, that you are looking particularly fine this evening?”
“Not ‘very overdressed,’ as you once remarked about some young ladies in Bath, sir?”
He laughed at the recollection, and said, “No, definitely not, Miss Maitland!”
The journey to Beaminster did not seem to take very long, and there they found Lady Lindsay and the rest of her party waiting for them. They ascended to the upper rooms, where a local band was playing a lively jig for the assembled company. Sir James immediately invited Julia to take the floor with him, and he proved to be a good dancer, with a light step and amusing conversation.
“My cousin Patrick often comes to this kind of assembly when he is at home, but he sent a message to my aunt to say that he had been detained.”
“What does your cousin do, Sir James?” Julia said. “Does he manage the family estate, or is he in the army?”
“Neither, Miss Maitland. His father, my uncle by marriage, is still alive and well and in charge of his estate, but he does not often travel to visit us; Mrs. Jepson comes on her own. I’m not sure where my cousin goes. I know that he gets a reasonable allowance from his father, but he was not particularly interested in book learning at school, so did not go to university. I assume that he spends a good part of his time in town.”
All that accords, thought Julia, with what I know already about Mr. Jepson. And maybe he is getting short of money for the same reasons as Dominic Brandon is, too much gambling and high living. That reminded her to ask another question.
“Have you heard of the Brandon family, Sir James? I am friendly with their cousin Emily, who lives with them in Derbyshire.”
“No, I believe not, but Derbyshire is a long way from here, as you will agree. How is my friend Kit finding his new role as Master of Morancourt? He has seemed very contented since he came into his inheritance last month.”
“You know him so much better than I, sir, but it must be a pleasure to find yourself in a situation that you might only have dreamt of previously.”
She then asked Sir James whether he was keen on hunting, for she had heard mention of the South Dorset and the Cattistock as being famous packs of foxhounds in South Dorset.
“That’s true, Miss Maitland. You are well informed. Both hunts are currently led by Squire Farquharson. I do hunt, when I have time, but I’m not so sure that Kit will do so, since he would be better to avoid injuring his leg again. From what he has told me, it is his brother Jack who prefers hunting.”
Julia was about to agree when she remembered that Sir James did not know that she had ever met Jack Douglas, or indeed his father.
“Does anyone in your family hunt in Derbyshire, Miss Maitland?”
“No. My father used to, with my elder brother. But Papa is not well enough now.” She could not go on, but found that she did not need to.
“I was very sorry to hear from Kit that your brother was killed at Badajoz,” he said gravely.
She thanked him for his sentiments, but by this time the dance was coming to an end, and Mr. Hatton came forward to claim her hand for the next.
He was regarding her with an amused expression and, sure enough, he wanted to know why Julia had been questioning his friend with such persistence. She told him what Sir James had said about his cousin Patrick.
“I didn’t think, Miss Maitland, that Mrs. Jepson seemed to be a particularly alert person. Although I had visited the Lindsays several times whilst I was at school with James, I had not met her before. If Patrick Jepson is like her, he may not be very exciting company.”
Whilst they had been having this conversation, Julia had noticed that Mr. Hatton had been looking intently across the room at a swarthy gentleman who was standing by the wall in deep conversation with another man.
“Who is that, Mr. Hatton?” said Julia. “Do you know him?”
“No, or at least I don’t know what his name is. He was pointed out to me earlier as having some involvement in the local smuggling ring. Apparently, he has a finger in every pie, especially where there is money to be made, and anything to do with obtaining scarce goods in Bridport or in the Marshwood Vale is known to him.”
For the rest of the dance, when an opportunity came, Julia tried to look discreetly at this mysterious man who certainly seemed to have little interest in joining in the dance or in circulating to meet any of the other people in the room. There was something familiar about him, despite the fact that she was sure that she had never met him before. What was it? It was only as the music drew to a close that she realised—the man had the same unusually shaped ears as she had noticed on Patrick Jepson.
She ventured to mention this to Mr. Hatton, thinking that he would dismiss it as being fanciful.
But to her surprise he said, “That would explain something that James once told me about his cousin. Apparently Patrick has an older half brother, Frank, who lives near here, the result of a youthful liaison between his father and a local girl. That was before Mr. Jepson met and married my mother’s sister. I understand that Patrick meets up with Frank Jepson from time to time. That may be one reason why the father keeps away from the area —not too anxious to be reminded about his follies as a young man, I imagine.”
“Oh, really, and you think that’s who that gentleman might be?”
“Yes, if you are correct about a family resemblance, although maybe not a ‘gentle’ man!”
“Do you think that Mrs. Jepson knows anything about him?”
Mr. Hatton said that he thought not, but that Sir James Lindsay might able to obtain more information.
With several pleasant young men in Lady Lindsay’s party, Julia found herself dancing every dance, and it was almost midnight before she and Mr. Hatton said good-bye to their new friends and his carriage took them home to Morancourt.
Julia slept late the following morning after all her exertions, and it was well past the time for breakfast before she dressed and descended the stairs. Rather than go into the dining room, she went across the hall and out of the front door. As she did so, Mr. Hatton came into view along the drive with Mr. Whitaker and an older man whom Julia had not seen before. The two other men stopped some distance short of the front door, deep in conversation, but Mr. Hatton continued and greeted her warmly.
“Who is that talking with Mr. Whitaker, Mr. Hatton?”
He looked surprised, then said, “Of course, I had forgotten that you had not met Mr. Jones. I have known him since I first visited my godmother and her husband, Henry, at Morancourt with my mother when I was quite young. As you can see, he is getting on in years now, and so my godmother hired Mr. Whitaker some two years ago to run the farm, and she transferred Mr. Jones to lighter duties, caring only for the park.”
“I am a little surprised that Mrs. Jones has never talked about him.”
“They have a house in the village, which is owned by the estate. He does not often come up to the manor house nowadays, at least I haven’t seen him here recently.”
Julia took this opportunity to ask Mr. Hatton another question. “I imagine that your father, Mr. Douglas, must have been delighted at the news of your inheritance?”
Mr. Hatton hesitated, then said, “At this present moment, he knows nothing at all about my inheritance.”
Julia looked at him blankly. “He knows nothing about it?”
“I was going to write to Norton Place last month, to invite my father to come down to Dorset. I favoured the notion of breaking the good news to him in person, once he had arrived and could see the estate for himself. But it was at that same time that I wrote to the several legatees named in my godmother’s will. As a consequence, I made my visit to Bath, and met Mrs. Harrison, and you.”
Julia looked at him intently and waited for him to continue.
“When I thought it through, I realised that there was a serious conflict. In my father’s eyes, at least in principle, my brother is a potential suitor for you. Therefore, I could see no way in which my father could be here at the same time as you without all sorts of problems arising.”
“I see,” said Julia. “I had not thought of that.”
