Belvoir, and a sixth to be had with the Fernie in South Leicestershire. There were ten hunters in the boxes in the yard at Holborough for Sir Hubert and his friends, and a bevy of grooms to tend them and to ride the second horses out to meet the hunt at the beginning of the afternoon’s sport.
The hall filled up with red-faced gentlemen whose conversation did not extend beyond horses and hunting. They rode out during the day, and in the evenings they ate and drank, played billiards, and gambled heavily.
Now that they were out, Blanche and Eleanor were expected to join the parties for dinner. They listened dutifully to the hunting talk, and kept their mother company after dinner in the drawing room, while the men sat over their port or adjourned to the card tables in the smoking room.
‘Is this what it will be like when we are married?’ Blanche whispered, trying to press a yawn back between her lips.
‘It depends upon whom we marry, doesn’t it?’ Eleanor said, with a touch of grimness that was new to her.
Then one night there was a new guest at dinner, a little younger and less red-faced than Sir Hubert’s usual companions. He was introduced to the Holborough ladies as the Earl of Leominster.
They learnt that Lord Leominster lived at Stretton, in Shropshire, and that he also owned a small hunting box near Melton. The house was usually let for the season, but this year the owner was occupying it himself with a small party of friends. Sir Hubert and his lordship had met when they enjoyed a particularly good day out with the Quorn and, both of them having failed to meet their grooms at dusk, they had hacked part of the way home together.
Lord Leominster had accepted his new friend’s invitation to dine.
On the first evening, Eleanor and Blanche regarded him without much favour. John Leominster was a thin, fair-skinned man in his early thirties. He had a dry, careful manner that made an odd contrast with the rest of Sir Hubert’s vociferous friends.
‘Quiet sort of fellow,’ Sir Hubert judged. ‘Can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he goes well. Keen as mustard over the fences, you should see him.’
Lady Holborough quickly established that his lordship was unmarried.
‘Just think, girls,’ she whispered. ‘What a chance for one of you. Stop smirking, Eleanor, do. It isn’t funny at all.’
The girls rolled their eyes at each other. Lord Leominster seemed very old and hopelessly shrivelled from their eighteen-year-old standpoint. They were much more interested in the cavalry officers from the army remount depot in Melton.
But it soon became clear that the twins had attracted his attention, as they drew everyone else’s that winter. Against the brown setting of Holborough they were as exotic and surprising as a pair of pink camellias on a February morning. After the first dinner he called again, and then became a regular visitor.
It was also evident, from the very beginning, that he could tell the two of them apart as easily as their mother could. There were no mischievous games of substitution. Eleanor was Eleanor, and Blanche was the favoured one.
John Leominster became the first event in their lives that they did not share, did not dissect between them.
Eleanor was startled and hurt, and she took refuge in mockery. She called him Sticks for his thin legs, and before she spoke she cleared her throat affectedly in the way that Leominster did before making one of his considered pronouncements. She made sure that Blanche saw his finicky ways with gloves and handkerchiefs, and waited for her sister to join her in the mild ridicule. But Blanche did not, and they became aware that a tiny distance was opening between them.
Blanche was torn. After the first evening she felt guilty in not responding to Eleanor’s overtures, but she began to feel flattered by the Earl of Leominster’s attention. She was also surprised to discover how pleasant it was to be singled out for herself alone, instead of always as one half of another whole. As the days and then the weeks passed, she was aware of everyone in the household watching and waiting to see what would happen, and of Constance almost holding her breath. She saw her suitor’s thin legs and fussy manners as clearly as her sister did, but then she thought, The Countess of Leominster …
One night Eleanor asked impulsively, ‘What are you going to do, Blanche? About Sticks, I mean?’
‘Don’t call him that. I can’t do anything. I have to wait for him to offer, don’t I?’
Eleanor stared at her. Until that moment she had not fully understood that her sister meant to accept him if he did propose marriage.
‘Oh, Blanchie. You can’t marry him. You don’t love him, do you?’
Blanche pulled out a long ringlet of hair and wound it round her forefinger. It was a characteristic mannerism, familiar to Eleanor from their earliest years. ‘I love you,’ Eleanor shouted. ‘I won’t let him take you away.’
‘Shh, Ellie.’ Blanche was deeply troubled. ‘We both have to marry somebody, someday, don’t we? If I don’t love him now, I can learn to. He’s a kind man. And there’s the title, and Stretton, and everything else. I can’t turn him down, can I?’
Eleanor shouted again. ‘Yes, you can. Neither of us will marry anyone. We’ll live together. Who needs a husband?’
Slowly, Blanche shook her head. ‘We do. Women do,’ she whispered.
Eleanor saw that her sister was crying. There were tears in her own eyes, and she stood up and put her arms round Blanche. ‘Go on, go on then. Make yourself a Countess. Just have me to stay in your house. Let me be aunt to all the little Strettons. Just try to stop me being there.’
Blanche answered, ‘I won’t. I never would.’
They cried a little, shedding tears for the end of their childhood. And then, with a not completely disagreeable sense of melancholy, they agreed that they had better sleep or else look like witches in the morning.
There came the evening of an informal dance held in the wooden hall of the village next to Holborough. The twins dressed in their rose pink and silver, and sighed that Beecham village hall was a long way from Norfolk House. But there was a large contingent of whooping army officers at Beecham, and there was also John Leominster. While Eleanor was passed from arm to arm in the energetic dancing, Blanche agreed that she would take a respite from the heat and noise, and stroll outside the hall with her partner.
Lady Holborough inclined her head to give permission as they passed the row of chaperones, and Blanche knew that all their eyes were on them as they passed out into the night. It was a mild evening, but she drew her fur wrap tightly around her shoulders like a protective skin. She was ready, but she was also afraid. They walked, treading carefully over the rough ground.
‘Blanche, you know that I would very much like you to see Stretton, and to introduce you to my mother.’
Blanche inclined her head, but she said nothing.
John cleared his throat. She was irresistibly reminded of Eleanor’s mimicry, but she made herself put Eleanor out of her mind, and concentrate on what was coming. It was, she knew, the most important moment of her life. If it seemed disappointing that it should have come now, outside the barn-like hall at the end of a rutted country lane, then she put her disappointment aside and waited.
‘I think you know what I want to say
