But then, after working for Lady Bradbury for only a few weeks, Eleanor had learned to take everything she said with a pinch of salt. The poor old lady was often in great pain from the arthritis which also prevented her from doing many of the activities she had enjoyed. Consequently, on some days, she didn’t have a good word to say about anyone or anything. Besides which, Lady Bradbury had let it slip that she resented the fact that her late husband had left her so poorly provided for that she was obliged to accept the charity of a great-nephew by marriage. That nobody more closely related had been willing to do anything for her.
‘I will tell you where you would be,’ said Lady Bradbury, answering a question Eleanor had assumed was rhetorical. ‘Ruined, that’s where. And then I’d be obliged to turn you off without a character.’
‘I am sure it won’t come to that,’ said Eleanor, since she couldn’t see Lord Lavenham doing anything so dastardly.
‘It will if you continue setting your cap at him, the way you did last time he was here.’
She hadn’t set her cap at him. Had she? It was just, well, he was so easy to talk to. Though anyone would be easy to talk to after Lady Bradbury. And she’d grown rather lonely, since working here in a house so far from the nearest village and any sort of social life. Of course she looked forward to his visits and the chance to talk to someone who’d been in the thick of London society, and who had also gone to all sorts of interesting lectures.
But it was more than that. During that very first visit, he’d taken pains to put her at ease after she’d been struck dumb by the physical effect he’d had on her. He’d patiently drawn her out of her shell, until she became comfortable discussing a variety of topics with him. She soon discovered he was extremely intelligent and well read, which had been like finding an oasis in a desert. She’d been so starved of intelligent company since her parents had died. Witty company, at that. His dry comments often made her chuckle. Mealtimes became the main time when they conversed about all sorts of things that didn’t interest Lady Bradbury. And afterwards, in the drawing room, they would occasionally carry on those conversations, particularly if he’d brought her a book or a pamphlet he thought might interest her. They talked, that was all. She had never, ever, done anything that could warrant this accusation of ‘setting her cap’ at him.
She wouldn’t know how! She had never been the kind of female who dressed to attract a man’s eye and fluttered her eyelashes. She had never simpered or cast out any lures. Plain, practical Eleanor, that was her.
Which was one of the reasons she’d ended up a spinster, working for her living, out in the middle of nowhere.
‘That boy,’ said Lady Bradbury with feeling, ‘is just like his father, you mark my words. He had no conscience whatsoever. Lethal to virtue, he was, no matter how carefully a chaperon attempted to guard it.’
Ah. So that explained some of Lady Bradbury’s animosity to Lord Lavenham. The way his father had behaved. She had heard rumours, since working here, and, to her shame, was always ready to listen to any gossip that had anything to do with Lord Lavenham, or his family. But this was new. And it helped her to understand why Lady Bradbury was so prejudiced against a man who never seemed to have done her any harm. She’d known she’d find out, if she waited long enough. There was always a logical reason, her father used to say, why people behaved in ways that appeared irrational.
‘And as for you,’ Lady Bradbury said, ‘I would have sent you packing straight after his last visit here, after the shockingly unbecoming way you behaved, if it wasn’t for the inconvenience of securing another companion, since so few are willing to work in such a secluded spot. Not that I can blame them. If there was only something to see out of the windows apart from...hills and trees, and sheep. People, that’s what I want to see when I look outside, doing things. Not all this barren wilderness.’
Eleanor felt very sorry for Lady Bradbury. Of course she did. Since she was no longer able to do the things she’d once enjoyed, such as playing the piano, or embroidery, it would have helped to fill her days if she had a bustling scene upon which to look from her window. She’d probably be far less bad-tempered if she could live somewhere like Bath, for instance, where there would be plenty of other invalidish ladies with whom she could gossip. But when it came to the accusation of behaving in a shockingly unbecoming way, surely, that was going too far.
‘And then again, I didn’t think he’d be back so soon. Only ever used to visit me, or rather his property,’ she said with a screwed-up face ‘to go over the account books, once a year, before I hired you on.’
Really? Golly. He must like her, a bit, then...
‘And never at this time of year. House parties where he can carouse with loose women—that’s where he generally goes for Christmas.’
Eleanor’s spirits plunged as she experienced a vivid image of him carousing with loose women, who would, naturally, also be extremely beautiful. Of course he wouldn’t give up that sort of pastime merely to spend time with a plain, impoverished spinster. What on earth had Lady Bradbury been thinking?
‘I am sure there must be some perfectly good reason for him coming to Chervil House just before Christmas,’ Eleanor began to reason out loud, ‘rather than—’
Lady Bradbury banged on the floor with her ebony cane. ‘Well, I am not going to permit him
