‘No one who witnessed what we did would ever want to marry.’ Phoebe clasped her twin’s hand. ‘Do you remember, Estelle, how we used to pretend we had been adopted, and that one day our real parents would arrive to claim us?’
‘And how we vowed we wouldn’t leave unless they promised to take Eloise too?’
‘We did. We vowed we would never, ever leave you behind.’
Phoebe’s tragic little smile touched Eloise’s heart. She had tried so hard to protect the twins from the worst of her parents’ vicious bickering and confrontations, and in turn they had tried to protect her, pretending that she’d succeeded. They almost never talked of those days, but they all three of them bore the scars, buried deep. She thought she knew everything about her sisters, but she hadn’t heard this sad little story before. ‘Thank you,’ she said, swallowing the large lump which had risen in her throat and trying for a watery smile. ‘I am touched that you were so intent on keeping me with you, though you were by implication disowning me as your sister.’
‘No!’ the twins called in unison.
‘And to think that just a moment ago, you were telling me that no one would ever mistake us for anything but sisters too.’
‘We didn’t mean...’
‘She’s teasing,’ Estelle said sheepishly. ‘Anyway, Phoebe, we knew at the time it was just a pipe dream.’
‘Yes. Though we also knew that if someone did come along to claim us, our actual real parents would probably have handed us over gladly,’ Phoebe said bitterly.
‘Or they wouldn’t have noticed we’d gone.’
There was no denying the truth of this, and Eloise felt no inclination to defend the indefensible as she inspected the stocking she had been darning before snipping the cotton and tying it off. But nor was she about to let those skeletons creep back out of the closet and colour the present. ‘I think that’s enough talk of those times.’
‘I agree. Let’s talk instead about what it will be like when you are rich beyond our wildest dreams,’ Estelle said, taking her cue and rubbing her hands together gleefully.
Phoebe giggled. ‘You will be able to buy up a whole warehouse of silks to make gowns.’
‘She’ll be far too much a lady of leisure to sew. Besides, I’m not sure it’s the done thing for a countess to make her own gowns. Do you know how to attach a sprinkling of diamonds to a décolleté, Eloise?’
‘Oh, I’ll have a maid for that sort of thing. I shall be too busy, just like Cleopatra, bathing in asses’ milk.’
‘A rather rare commodity in London, I should think,’ Kate interjected wryly.
‘London!’ Phoebe clapped her hands together, her eyes shining. ‘And you’ll be a countess. To think of our big sister being a countess! Will you go to lots of parties, do you think? And will you live in a palace?’
‘A town house,’ Estelle said reprovingly. ‘Though a very large town house. With—oh, I should think at least a hundred bedchambers, and a thousand servants, and a French chef.’
‘Who will never be able to bake a cake as delicious as Phoebe can,’ Eloise said. She stuck her darning needle into the pin cushion and closed the lid of her sewing box. ‘One thing is certain, I will never have to darn another stocking. As for the rest—I am not particularly interested in draping myself in ermine and diamonds.’
‘No,’ Estelle agreed, ‘you’re more likely to spend a portion of your immense fortune on your own loom.’
‘I don’t see me taking up weaving, not even if Lord Fearnoch turns out to be as life-threateningly tedious as his title of Victualling Commissioner suggests,’ Eloise said tartly. ‘But it is no exaggeration to say that the settlement he is proposing is life-changing, for all of us. If this marriage works out, I will be able to provide Estelle with the funds for her own private orchestra if she likes, and you, Phoebe, could set up in competition to the legendary Gunter’s tea rooms. We could travel. We could do anything we want, or nothing at all if we choose to. The future will be considerably brighter than any of us ever imagined.’
‘And all you have to do is put up with a toothless, tedious earl,’ Estelle said, chuckling.
‘Heavens though, what if he turns out not to be toothless but cut from the same cloth as our neighbour, Squire Mytton?’
Kate, Eloise and Estelle gazed at Phoebe in horror. ‘Surely there is only one such. I heard from one of our tenants, who heard from his sister in Leamington Spa, that the squire rode his horse into a hotel there. Right up the grand staircase Mad Jack went,’ Kate said in a hushed tone, ‘and from the balcony he actually jumped down into the restaurant below, then back out of the window.’
‘I heard,’ Eloise said, ‘that he likes to ride a bear around his drawing room to alarm his house guests.’
‘He supposedly set fire to his nightshirt in an effort to stop a bout of hiccups,’ Estelle added, stifling a giggle. ‘Surely that cannot be true?’
‘Nothing about that man would surprise me,’ Kate said drily. ‘But what would surprise me very much would be your uncle suggesting such a man as a suitable husband for Eloise. And although I don’t know what a Victualling Commissioner for the Admiralty actually does, I think he’d have to be of sound mind to do it, don’t you?’
‘That’s true,’ Phoebe said, heaving an exaggerated sigh of relief.
‘I promise you that if I find I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of living under the same roof as Lord Fearnoch, if I consider his nature unkind or in any way brutish, or if I feel that I cannot trust him, our first meeting will be the last. I will not be a sacrificial lamb.’ Eloise got to her feet. ‘But I will not rule him out as a husband if he has wooden teeth, or a wooden leg, or even if he is simply a stranger to the bathtub. If we find we suit—and let us not forget that, astonishing as it may sound to you, he may not take to me—but if we do find we suit, this is the chance of a lifetime for us. I have to embrace it.’
‘Yes.’ Estelle grinned. ‘Luckily, if he is averse to bathing, that’s the only thing you’ll have to embrace.’
‘That’s more than enough speculation for now,’ Kate said, biting back her own laughter. ‘We will discover the cut of Lord Fearnoch’s jib soon enough.’
‘Kate is, as always, quite right,’ Eloise said briskly. ‘You two, change out of those dresses and let me sew the hems before I become too hoity-toity for such menial tasks.’
As the ormolu clock on the mantel chimed the hour, a carriage could be heard coming to a halt on the gravel drive outside the drawing room. A cloud of butterflies fluttered to life in Eloise’s tummy, intensifying the faint feeling of nausea she’d woken up with. Today could prove to be life-changing.
A cold sweat prickled at the back of her neck. What if Lord Fearnoch really did turn out to be loathsome? What if he found her repugnant? Now that everyone in the household was reconciled to the idea of her marrying, now that they had all agreed that the benefits by far outweighed the fact that the groom would be a complete stranger, Eloise couldn’t bear the thought of the match falling through.
What would it be like to be married? How much time would they be required to spend together? Would they be expected to have breakfast and dinner at the same table? What would Lord Fearnoch tell his friends, his colleagues at the Admiralty? She had a hundred questions. And right now, bracing herself for the coming introduction and feeling quite sick with nerves, Eloise was discovering that there was a very big difference between the idea of