They stopped in a hiss of steam and the door of their carriage was opened by a porter. Myles stepped down, then turned to help her. She remembered just in time that she was supposed to be a decorous young lady and resisted the temptation to jump down on to the platform and allowed him to hand her down. Miss Bannister followed while he was giving instructions to the porter about the delivery of their luggage.
Esme felt firm ground beneath her feet; she was here at last, in the great metropolis. The excitement bubbling up in her was hard to contain, but overexuberance was one of the things Mama had warned her against, so she walked sedately beside Myles as they left the station and he hailed a cab to take them to Kensington. Familiar only with Leicester and Peterborough, the two towns nearest her home, the city seemed never ending: warehouses, shops, poky little houses and grand mansions in juxtaposition lined their route, and then a long wide avenue running alongside a park.
‘That’s Green Park,’ Myles told her. ‘Buckingham Palace is on the far side of it. We’ll come to Hyde Park soon. That’s where the Exhibition is going to be held next year.’ He leaned forward and pointed. ‘That’s the Duke of Wellington’s house.’
‘Shall I meet him?’
‘I don’t know. You might.’
‘But he is your friend?’
‘He is certainly an acquaintance, I would not be so presumptuous as to claim him for a friend.’
‘Shall I meet Prince Albert? Will he be present when I make my curtsy?’
‘Goodness, child, I don’t know.’
‘I am not a child, Myles. You sound just like Banny.’
He grinned ruefully at Miss Bannister while addressing Esme. ‘Then I beg your pardon. I shall remember in future to address you as my lady.’
‘Now you are being silly.’
Nothing could repress her for long and she was soon smiling again. A few minutes more and the cab driver turned into a wide street lined with imposing town villas and pulled up outside one of them. ‘Trent House,’ he announced.
Myles got out, handed Esme down and then her companion. He was always courteous and polite to Miss Bannister and treated her like a lady, for which he received her undying support.
Esme was standing uncertainly, looking about her, when the front door of the nearest house was opened and her sister, in a dove-grey dress and white cap, stood waiting to greet her. Esme started to run to meet her, but remembered in time that running was not ladylike and walked to the door.
‘Here at last.’ Rosemary offered her cheek to be kissed. ‘Did you have a good journey?’
‘Yes, very good, but I’m so glad to be here.’
‘You are very welcome, sister dear.’ And to Myles, offering her hand, ‘Myles, welcome. Come along in. I’ll take you to your rooms, then when you have settled in, we shall have some refreshments and you shall tell me all the news from home.’
Ignoring Miss Bannister, she led the way into an imposing entrance hall and up a flight of stairs. ‘The drawing room,’ she said, waving at a closed door. ‘And that’s the dining room. The door farther along is the small parlour where we sit when we are alone. That’s where I shall be, so come there when you are ready.’ On she went up a second flight of stairs. ‘Bedrooms on this floor,’ she said, flinging open a door. ‘This one is yours, Esme. I have put Miss Bannister next door, for your convenience. Myles, a room has been prepared for you at the far end of the corridor.’ She pointed at a farther flight of stairs. ‘Nursery suite and servants’ quarters up there, though they have their own staircase. That’s it, except for the ground floor, which contains anterooms, a large room we use for dancing, soirées and suchlike, the library and Rowan’s study. I’ll show you those later.’
Miss Bannister and Myles left them and Rosemary followed Esme into her room and sat on the end of the bed to watch as her sister removed her gloves, cloak and bonnet to reveal a tiered skirt in a soft blue wool. It was not new. Nothing she had was brand-new. ‘Esme, did you have to wear that dress?’
Esme smoothed her hands over her waist. ‘What’s wrong with it? Mama said it was perfectly adequate for travelling.’
‘It’s years old. I remember you having that when I was still at home.’ She stopped speaking to answer a knock at the door. Two footmen had arrived with Esme’s trunk. They were waved inside and told to put it on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had no sooner gone than Rosemary had it open and was pulling out the contents. ‘Esme, I could swear this was Lucy’s jacket. And this skirt.’ She delved deeper into it. ‘And this gown…’
‘So they are—Mama said no one would ever know.’
‘Haven’t you brought any clothes of your own?’
‘Not many,’ Esme confessed. ‘They are all so old and some of them are too short for a young lady and Lucy said I could have these. She has grown a little plumper since she had Vicky and they are the very best materials. We hardly had to alter anything, except to shorten them. Lucy is inches taller than I am.’
‘Whatever was Mama thinking of, to send you with nothing but hand-me-downs? You’ll never find a husband that way.’
‘No one knows they are hand-me-downs.’
‘Myles knows.’
‘Of course he does, but he’s family, and Lucy asked him if he thought it was all right for me to have them and he said they were her clothes and she could give them to whomever she pleased.’
‘He would.’ There was a deal of meaning in those two words and conveyed perfectly what Rosemary thought of her brother-in-law. He was an upstart, a nobody, for all he was Lord Moor-croft’s heir; it was a new peerage and meant nothing at all, except that the working classes were aspiring to become nobility, which they never could do. They did not have the breeding. She tolerated him, even managed to be polite and treat him like an equal, but that was for Lucy’s sake, not his. ‘I can’t take you out and about unless you are dressed appropriately. Whatever will people think of me?’
‘I shouldn’t think they will think anything of it.’ Esme had forgotten how repressing Rosie could be. Nothing and nobody was good enough; even her poor husband was bullied into conforming to her ways.
‘Nevertheless, you shall have a new wardrobe. Thank goodness the Season hasn’t started yet and there will be plenty of choice in the shops and dressmakers with little enough to do.’
‘I am sure Papa cannot afford it. He has been lecturing us for years about not being extravagant and it’s got worse since he lost money investing in the Eastern Counties railway.’
‘More fool him for doing it. No doubt he listened to Myles.’
‘It wasn’t Myles’s fault, he advised against it. I believe it was Viscount Gorridge, though his lordship cannot have taken his own advice because he is richer than ever.’
‘Well, whatever it was, you are going to have new clothes. Rowan will pay. He always gives me whatever I ask for.’
‘Aren’t you lucky,’ Esme said, which made her sister look sharply at her, but there was no malice in Esme’s expression.
‘Yes, I am.’ She went to the door to the adjoining room. ‘Miss Bannister, Esme requires your help changing her dress.’ To Esme she said, ‘Hurry up. I’ve lots to tell you. And I want to hear how Mama is.’ And with that she took her leave.
Esme turned to look at the room. It had a large canopied bed, a huge walnut wardrobe, a table and two upright chairs, a little desk with another chair, a chest of drawers and, beside the bed, a bookcase containing several matching books. She went over to the window, which had view of a park, neat gardens and a stretch of water.
‘Did you hear all that?’ she asked Banny, who had joined her.
‘Yes.’