‘We’ll come by boat one day,’ said Lord Elyot as the coach turned through the gates of Elwick Lodge. ‘It’ll take longer, but the approach is spectacular from the river steps.’
But Caterina’s description of the house as ‘white and enormous’ had not done justice to the groups of limes and elms, the green sloping lawns, rose-covered walls and the sparkling boat-studded river beyond. And it was enormous, three-tiered and grand with wide steps leading up to a porti-coed entrance even now swarming with liveried men and a bouncing rash of black labrador puppies followed by two small children dragging their nurse behind them.
It was as if the house had suddenly had its cork drawn, spilling its contents around the coach and fizzing with welcomes. If Amelie had had any reservations about her acceptance, they were dispelled at once by the extended Elwick family who absorbed her like a sponge into their continuous embrace as if she had always been one of them. Caterina was greeted like a long-lost cousin, narrowly rescued from four eager hands by nurse and paternal grandmother. With hardly a coherent introduction to penetrate the general hub-bub, the frothy company then reversed its flow through the double doors into a cavernous hall, marble-floored, columned, and spiralling upwards in a coil of delicate ironwork from which coloured paper streamers fluttered in the breeze.
‘Mama’s birfday,’ the fair-haired little angel lisped, pointing upwards. ‘Look…steamers…look, Unca Nick!’
Having conserved a kind of distance until now, Amelie was obliged to revise her assumptions about Lord Elyot’s judgemental relatives, for this scene certainly did not fit her previous images of them. Whether Adorna Elwick was used to receiving her brothers’ current partners or whether Amelie was an exception, there was no way of knowing, but her smiles seemed as genuine as the children’s. ‘You must call me Dorna as everyone else does,’ she said. ‘Our names go back for generations. We can’t escape them.’
‘Dorna, may I wish you a happy birthday?’ said Amelie.
‘Certainly you may. Thank you.’ She eyed the large box that one of the footmen had carried in. ‘If that’s from you two,’ she said to her brothers, ‘it will be the first ever to have arrived on the right day.’ There was laughter and warmth in her cultured voice, and a sisterly tenderness in her blue-grey eyes that made her sparkling smile even more remarkable. Unlike her siblings, she was fair-haired and fair-skinned, still girlishly slender and so modish that she could wear with self-confidence an unlined white-spotted muslin of such fineness that no detail of her dainty breasts inside the minuscule bodice was left to the imagination. Tied beneath with a wide pale-blue satin ribbon, the long ends were left to trail over her train, which the black puppies were convinced was one of the latest games and which concerned the wearer not at all.
For her part, Amelie saw an appealing insouciance in her hostess’s manner that would be able to take an ugly tea urn in its stride, even to flaunt it before her friends as good for a laugh. All the same, Amelie wished now that she had not taken her anger out on Dorna, of all people, for she was sure she was going to like her.
There was nothing not to like about the Elwick family or their spacious lived-in house by the river, or easy-going Sir Chad and his gentle parents, or Dorna’s aged godparents and her various brothers and sisters-in-law.
However, Colonel Tate, an old family friend and neighbour, fell into rather a different category. He had an annoying habit of saying whatever came into his head, often causing laughter, but sometimes irritation. Nudging his old-fashioned powdered wig into position, he lifted his quizzing-glass to examine the single row of pearls around Amelie’s neck and, convinced of their value, dropped it with a squeak of surprise. ‘Well, m’boy,’ he said, swivelling round to fix Lord Rayne with his bloodshot eyes, ‘you’ve found yourself a flush mort here and no mistake. What’s she worth, eh? This one’ll put you back in funds, if you can keep her, eh, m’lad? What?’
‘You’ve got it wrong, Colonel,’ said Lord Rayne, wincing visibly. ‘Unfortunately, Lady Chester is engaged to my brother, not to me.’
‘To Elyot? Eh?’ The quizzing-glass was picked up again to find the elder brother. ‘What does Elyot want with that kind of money? He’s not in queer streets too, is he? Looking for a golden dolly, m’boy? When I was your age—’
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Lord Elyot, taking Amelie’s hand and threading it through his arm, ‘for your advice on our financial affairs, but I can assure you it isn’t in the least necessary. Lady Chester’s financial affairs are of no one’s concern but her own. Shall we go through? Lord, Dorna,’ he whispered to his embarrassed sister, ‘why the devil did you invite that garrulous old turnip? You know what he’s like.’
‘I had no choice,’ she replied. ‘He invited himself. Please.’ she leaned towards Amelie ‘.take no notice of him, will you? He means no offence.’
Amelie smiled. She had met the Colonel’s type before. ‘I am not in the least offended,’ she said. ‘One could be called worse names than a golden dolly.’ She felt the quick squeeze of the arm over her wrist, but what had concerned her more than the old man’s indiscretion was Lord Rayne’s use of the word ‘unfortunately'. Could it mean that he did not approve?’
She looked to see if Caterina had heard, but her attention was being held by a tall good-looking dandy with shirt-points up to his ears and a curly mop of light brown hair worn in fashionable disarray.
‘That’s Tam,’ said Lord Elyot. ‘Short for Tamworth. Sir Chad’s younger brother. He and his sister live with their parents next door. That’s Hannah over there.’ Looking across the room, he indicated a petite lady of about Amelie’s own age, quietly attractive but not conventionally pretty. ‘She’s the sedate one,’ he said. ‘Not a bit like her brother.’
‘I’d like to meet her.’
But there were other more pressing introductions, first to Lord and Lady Appleton, another of Sir Chad’s sisters and her supercilious husband for whom the whole event was a tedium to be endured with a minimum of effort. Kitty, his chattery wife, was happy to hear that her brother-in-law had begun to think more seriously about his relationships, but her intrusive queries were too much for Amelie, who was glad to leave all explanations to the man himself. Listening to him, she realised that there was no incident or remark that he could not deal with politely while giving away very little real information. She need not have been concerned about anything, not then or during dinner.
The giving of gifts, to which Amelie had not been looking forward, passed off with the same noisy good humour as the greetings. The controversial tea urn was exclaimed over and, after various impertinent suggestions as to its role in laundry or cellar, a place was found for it in a mirrored alcove where its ugliness, to Dorna’s delight, was doubled. ‘Pride of place,’ she exclaimed, ‘to show that my brothers do remember!’
Lord Elyot’s shapely brows lifted a notch as he caught Amelie’s sheepish expression across the table, and she was reminded that he had understood. But her eyes had wandered towards the lady who sat on his left, to Hannah, his sister-in-law, who was looking at him with such poorly concealed adoration that Amelie could see how her heart was aching with the pain of love.
Like Amelie, Hannah was no longer a young girl. She was fair haired and possessed of a serene expression that bluff Colonel Tate mistook for an un-natural lack of animation, and the remarks he made from the opposite side of the table brought flames to her pale cheeks. Amelie’s heart went out to her, but she held back the invitation that was on the tip of her tongue until she’d had a chance to talk with her. If she was as in love with Lord Elyot as Amelie believed, an invitation to stay at Richmond might make matters more complicated than they were already.
To Amelie’s relief, Caterina had accepted the new situation with remarkably little surprise, as if she had foreseen the event and was pleased to have her own future placed on a surer footing. Her only disappointment was that, as yet, there was no ring to show for it, and no celebrations planned.
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