Elinor closed her eyes. She mustn’t panic. She mustn’t. There would be a way to make this work; there had to be. Perhaps she could appeal to Sir John, perhaps he had already guessed, perhaps he … Her eye was caught by a movement outside the kitchen window. It was Thomas carrying planks of wood towards Margaret’s communications tree. Already! They had been in the cottage one night and a tree house was under way. Elinor seized a saucepan lid out of the open box in front of her and flung it wildly in frustration across the kitchen. Who was going to pay for a tree house, please?
‘Wonderful,’ Sir John said. He was standing holding open the immense front door to Barton Park and beaming at them all. ‘Come in, come in. I wanted you for supper last night, you know, but Mary wouldn’t let me. Said you’d be exhausted. Probably right. Usually is.’ He plunged forward, bent on heartily kissing all of them. ‘She’s upstairs now with the rug rats. Bedtime. Complete mayhem, every night, goes on for hours. And then they trickle down all evening under one transparent pretext or another. Nil discipline. Nil. Bless them. Fantastic children.’
Belle said, emerging from his embrace, ‘Don’t you get involved?’
‘With bedtime? No fear. I do Tintin on Saturdays with the boys. I’m a wholly unreconstructed male, I’m happy to say. Now then.’ He swung round, closing the door and gesturing lavishly with his free hand. ‘What do you think of my old gaff?’
The girls gazed about them in silence. The hall was huge, larger than Norland, with niches for statues and an elaborate plaster frieze of gilded swags. It was as grandly chilly and unlike Norland in spirit or appearance as it possibly could have been. It resembled some kind of museum, a public space dedicated to the formal past. Elinor saw Marianne give an involuntary little shiver.
‘Frightful, isn’t it?’ Sir John said jovially. ‘Tarted up for a visit from Queen Victoria, all this marble nonsense. It’s an idiotic house. Dining room seats thirty-six. Thirty-six!’
Margaret stopped swivelling her head in amazement. She said, ‘Well, why do you live here, then?’
Sir John gave a gust of laughter. ‘It’s in my bones. Inheritance and all that. Can’t live with it or without it.’
Marianne said tightly, ‘We know about all that.’
‘Course you do. Course you do. Just consider yourselves lucky to be well out of it, tucked up in the cottage with all mod cons. Now come on in and have a drink.’ He paused in the doorway to an immense, bright room full of sofas and said, conspiratorially, ‘And meet the mother-in-law.’
‘Well,’ Abigail Jennings said, rising from one of the sofas in a flurry of scarves and small dogs, ‘if it isn’t the famous Dashwood girls!’ She flung her arms wide and laughed merrily. ‘Jonno said you were all gorgeous and he isn’t wrong! He’s wrong about most things, bless him, being only a man and therefore by definition in the wrong, but he said you were gorgeous and you are. My goodness, you are.’ She turned to a tall, lean man beside her and dug her elbow playfully into his ribs. ‘Don’t you think so, Bill?’
The tall man smiled, but said nothing. The girls stood in a row, just inside the door, with Belle slightly ahead of them, and looked at the floor.
‘Can’t stand this,’ Marianne said to Elinor between clenched teeth.
‘Sh.’
‘She’s fat,’ Margaret hissed vengefully, ‘as well as obviously being a sick bitch—’
‘Mags!’
‘I didn’t want to come out to supper, I wanted to watch—’
Elinor lifted her head. ‘Sorry.’
The tall man was looking at her sympathetically. Then his gaze shifted to Marianne, and Elinor saw something familiar happen, a startled arrested something that had everything to do with the arrangement of Marianne’s extraordinary features, and nothing whatsoever to do with her current expression of pure mulishness.
Sir John was pulling his mother-in-law forward like a prize exhibit, the dogs yapping round their feet. ‘Belle. Meet Abigail, my monster-in-law. Bane of my life, who, as you see, I adore. Mrs Jennings to you, girls. She’s pretty well a fixture here, I can tell you. The nippers adore her too. When she’s here, the gin goes down like bath water.’ He put an arm affectionately round Abigail’s shoulders. ‘Isn’t that true, Abi?’
‘If you left any, it would be!’ Abigail cried.
She extricated herself and came forward to kiss them all warmly. ‘Belle, welcome, dear. And girls. Lovely girls. Now, let me get you sorted. Elinor, you must be Elinor. And Marianne of the famous guitar? Oh, it is famous, dear, it is. Bill over there plays it, too. We know all about guitars at Barton – you’ll see! And this is Margaret. Don’t scowl, dear, I’m not a witch. Far too fat for any self-respecting broomstick. Now, Jonno, aren’t you going to introduce Bill?’
Sir John flung out an arm in the direction of the tall man, who had stood quietly by the immense marble fireplace without moving or uttering a word since they came in. ‘Meet my old mucker, girls. Belle, this is William Brandon. Late of the Light Dragoons. My regiment. My old dad’s regiment.’ He glanced at the tall man with sudden seriousness. ‘We were in Bosnia together, Bill and me. Weren’t we?’ He turned back to Belle. ‘And then he stayed in, and rose to command the regiment and now he devotes himself to good works, God help us, and comes here for a bit of normality and a decent claret. It’s his second home, eh Bill?’ He gestured to the tall man to come forward. ‘Come on, Bill, come on. That’s better. Now then, this is Colonel Brandon, Belle.’
She held out her hand, smiling. William Brandon stepped forward and took it, bowing a little. ‘Welcome to Devon.’
‘He’s so old,’ Marianne muttered to Elinor.
‘No, he isn’t, he looks—’
‘They’re all old. Old and old-fashioned and—’
‘Boring,’ Margaret said.
Mrs Jennings turned towards them. She looked at Margaret. She was laughing again. ‘What wouldn’t bore you, dear? Boys?’
Margaret went scarlet. Marianne put an arm round her.
‘Come on now,’ Abigail said. ‘There must be boys in your lives!’
Marianne stared at her. ‘None,’ she said.
‘One!’ Margaret blurted out.
‘Oh? Oh?’
‘Shut up, Mags.’
Colonel Brandon stepped forward and put a restraining hand on Abigail’s arm. He said to everyone else, soothingly, ‘How about I get everyone a drink?’
Belle looked at him gratefully. ‘I’d love one. And – and you play the guitar?’