After that, she’d spoon up everything else.
Then, when she had nearly finished the bowl, she would use some more bread to mop up the last of the broth, wiping her bowl clean.
Of course, there would be plenty more soup and bread, and it would be perfectly all right for her to have seconds, so—
Jane realized that she was salivating, and that drool was just about to start spooling out of the side of her mouth. Quickly she swallowed. As she did, she heard, from within a corridor off the hall, a man say, in a deep, cool, aristocratic-sounding voice tinged with faint amusement:
“Cremwell’s been telling me that Johns—the Hastings pigman—has been grossly insulting him in the Riverton pubs, denigrating his professional expertise, mocking his appearance, and casting aspersions on his mother’s fidelity.”
“Dear me,” said another voice, a woman’s, also very cool and aristocratic. “The passions of these pigmen! You ought, perhaps, to speak with Radcliffe, before they come to actual blows.”
Nervously Jane turned toward these new voices and, her fingers clenched tight on the handle of her valise, watched as from the corridor came two people walking side by side.
One was a tall, broad-shouldered, excessively good-looking man in his early thirties, with neatly cropped brown hair and penetrating dark eyes, and dressed very fine in a dark blue jacket, dark breeches, and tall glossy boots.
The other person was a handsome, slender old lady, very straight and graceful, with silvery curls and sharp blue eyes, and clad in a soft dove-gray gown of marvelous elegance and simplicity.
Jane stared at her, her heart thumping hard within her chest, hearing in her mind once again Mrs. Roger’s firm voice:
You’re to ask for old Mrs. Penhallow.
She took a few tentative steps forward. “Please, ma’am—are you—may I speak with you, please?” Her voice felt to her as if it were being swallowed up in this enormous hall, but apparently it was loud enough to attract the attention of the handsome man and the elegant old lady, for they both paused and turned to look at her.
The old lady’s reaction was more intense—far, far more intense—than Jane could ever have anticipated.
At first moving over Jane with mild curiosity, those sharp blue eyes suddenly widened, her mouth went slack, and the old lady gasped out:
“Titus!”
Her face gone white as snow, she staggered back and would have fallen if not for the swift action of the man beside her, who wrapped his arm around her to keep her upright.
The old lady didn’t faint, but she certainly looked as if she had seen a ghost.
Chapter 2
Tugging her skirt down to cover her exposed ankles as best she could, Jane sat gingerly on the edge of a sofa which was upholstered in soft pink and embroidered in a repeating motif of roses, from buds to blooms. It was a very charming and elegant sofa, which was why she was trying to occupy as little of it as possible, all too conscious of how grubby her gown was. Nervous tension was skittering up and down her spine in a very uncomfortable way, and she felt like a gray bedraggled sparrow which had somehow landed amidst a family of sleek, shining swans.
Grouped around her in this cozy and comfortable saloon was the old lady, Mrs. Henrietta Penhallow, who had rallied and was now sitting bolt upright with her blue eyes fixed on Jane with a painful intensity; her grandson, the handsome, aristocratic Mr. Gabriel Penhallow, whose manner was civil, but reserved and watchful; and his pretty wife, Livia, who had come from the nursery where she had been with their children and now sat next to Jane on the flowery pink sofa, her forest-green eyes wide and wondering.
Maybe, Jane thought rather miserably, she should have simply gone around to the back of the house, begged for a bowl of soup, and crept away. What on earth was she doing here? She glanced over to the doorway, half-wondering if she should make a dash for it.
“You say you have a letter, Miss Kent?” said the old lady.
“Yes, ma’am.” Abandoning the idea of a hasty retreat, however appealing, Jane reached down to the valise which she had set next to her feet, opened it, and pulled from it an old, crumbling chapbook entitled Four Hundred Practical Aspects of Vinegar As Used to Reduce Corpulence, Purify the Humours, Improve the Complexion, and Attract a Most Desirable Spouse.
Carefully she opened the little book; between the first pages was the old yellowed letter. She took hold of it and leaned across the low table that separated her and the old lady. “Here it is.”
With equal carefulness Henrietta Penhallow took the letter, and Jane, rigid with anxiety, watched as her eyes moved rapidly across the lines and down the page, then did it twice more.
“Well, Grandmama?” said Gabriel Penhallow.
The old lady gave him the letter to read, and when he was finished, he silently passed it along to his wife Livia. Jane didn’t need to look at it again to know its contents; she had read it so many times she knew it all by heart.
4 October 1780
My darling Charity,
I long to see you—to hold you in my arms again—to put an end to this curst sneaking about. First I’ve got this curricle race against Calthrop—I’m honor-bound to it, you know, I can’t back out—which of course I shall win as he is a ham-handed ass despite his claims of being a superior whip—but it will take me to Brighton and back, which means the soonest I can come for you will be Thursday next. Hey ho! Be packed and ready, my dearest girl—meet me at the church on Decker Street, I’ll be waiting for you at noon with the parson standing by and a special license in my pocket. Man and wife at last! We’ll dash to France for a bit, till the flap of our elopement dies down, and then I’ll take you to Surmont Hall to meet my family. I know they will come to love you as I do. And Somerset is beautiful country, you’ll enjoy it very much, I’m sure.
We shall be the happiest couple in the world, you and I.
Yours forever,
Titus
Gently Livia gave the letter back to Jane, and she slid it between the pages of the old chapbook, then put it on the table.
Gabriel Penhallow said, “Is that Titus’ handwriting, Grandmama?”
“Yes. I’ve no doubt it’s genuine.” Old Mrs. Penhallow looked to Jane, studying her all over again with that same eager, painful curiosity. “Charity was your grandmother, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But why this delay? It’s been nearly forty years since—” The shadow of old grief, freshly renewed, passed across Mrs. Penhallow’s face, but somehow she sat up even straighter. “It’s been nearly forty years since my son Titus died.”
Jane leaned forward again. “He died, ma’am? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Yes. He perished in that race. Apparently his opponent—Edmund Calthrop—rammed his curricle against Titus’, which sent Titus and his team off an embankment. Richard—my husband—well, I had to restrain him from going after Calthrop, who, in any event, fled to the Netherlands where he was shortly killed himself, in some kind of vulgar barroom quarrel. As for my poor impetuous Titus—they found a special license in a pocket of his waistcoat, though it hadn’t yet been filled out with names.”
“So he never came for Charity,” Livia said softly. “He meant to, though, didn’t he? How very sad. What happened to her, Miss Kent?”