life in the country. Worst of all had been to be told to forget notions of educating herself beyond the mere demands of most fashionable women’s lives.
Finally she had confronted her great-aunt with an ultimatum. ‘If you will allow me to spend a few hours each week with Charles and his tutor, Mr Dudley, then I will agree to be groomed for the life of a fine young lady. Otherwise…’ And she had shrugged.
Almeria Stanton, faced with a will as strong as her own, had capitulated.
‘A bargain then,’ her aunt had agreed, amused by Eleanor’s strange mixture of learning, and athleticism, both qualities totally unsuitable for the lady of fashion which she was destined to be.
Charles was Lady Stanton’s grandson, a lively twelve-year-old who had been left behind in England when his soldier father had been ordered to India. His tutor, an earnest young man, had been pleased to teach her once Eleanor had proved that her interest in learning was genuine. He had also, much against his will, fallen in love with the lively young woman who was so far beyond his reach.
Eleanor kept her promise. Ned, meeting her again after nearly two years, had barely recognised her. She had entered the room where he’d been reading the Morning Post, stripped off her gloves, pulled off her poke-bonnet to reveal her fashionably dressed hair, and smiled at him in the cool, impersonal way she had learned from her great-aunt.
‘Oh, Ned, how nice to see you,’ she’d murmured, graciously offering him two fingers and her cheek.
Ned had been lost between admiration and horror. Where had tomboy Nell gone to?
‘Good God, sister, what have they done to you?’
‘I’m a lady now, Ned. I’ve had my come-out and two proposals of marriage. Both unsuitable, I hasten to add. I’ve also got a marquess dangling after me. Not that I care about him; he’s as old as the hills.’
Almeria had surveyed her transformed charge approvingly. ‘Well done, my dear—although we could have done without the bit about the Marquess.’
‘Well done?’ Ned had exclaimed scornfully. ‘What do you think that Stacy will have to say about this?’ He had flipped his hand derisively in his sister’s direction. ‘I thought that you, at least, were a girl of sense. Never thought that propriety would overtake you, Nell.’
‘Eleanor,’ she’d said automatically, colouring faintly and moving away from him. ‘Nell’s days are over. Sir Hart was right. My behaviour was not proper. In any case, I have to leave now. I need to change for Lady Lyttelton’s soirée.’
‘Oh, you’ll come about, I’m sure,’ Ned had said uneasily, but she hadn’t. Some of their old rapport had returned, but the Nell who had romped with Ned, Nat and Stacy had gone for ever.
Now, sitting opposite to her, months later, drinking coffee and nursing a thick head after the previous evening’s debauchery, he asked, somewhat blearily, ‘Going to be in this afternoon, Eleanor?’
She looked up from her plate. ‘I shall be with Charles and his tutor until four-thirty, and then I’m free. Why?’
‘I’ve invited an Australian friend I made last night to meet me here around half past four. I promised to take him to Cremorne Gardens this evening. Thought that you might like to meet him before we go.’
He did not say so, but Ned was hoping to play a jolly jape—his words—on his sister when Alan arrived. It was all that she deserved for turning herself into such a fashionable prig.
‘An Australian?’ said Almeria Stanton doubtfully. ‘Is he a gentleman, Ned?’
‘As much as I am,’ returned Ned ambiguously. ‘Which isn’t saying much, I know. But I think that you’ll like the look of him.’
He laughed to himself when he said this, and watched Nell rise gracefully from the table. She and Great-Aunt Almeria were about to spend the morning shopping in Bond Street, an occupation which the Nell who had once been Ned’s boon companion would have rejected completely.
Never mind that, though. Ned nearly choked over his coffee when he thought of the shock she would get when she met Alan Dilhorne. He wondered idly what his new friend might be doing on this bright and shining early summer morning.
Alan was enjoying himself by combining business with pleasure. He rose early, ate a large breakfast and arrived at Dilhorne and Sons’ London office promptly at ten. They were situated in one of the rabbit warren of streets in the City, at the far end of a filthy alley. This appeared to signify nothing, since several of the dingy offices sported brass plates bearing the names of businesses equally if not more famous than Dilhorne’s.
He still wore his disgraceful clothes, and the clerk in the outer office gave him a look which could only be called insolent.
‘Yes?’ he drawled, not even putting down his quill pen. His contemptuous look dismissed this poorly dressed anonymous young man.
‘I have an appointment with Mr George Johnstone at ten of the clock,’ Alan announced without preamble.
‘Doubt it.’ The clerk’s drawl was more insolent than ever. ‘He never gets in before ten thirty, mostly not until eleven.’
‘Indeed.’
Alan looked around the untidy, disordered room, and listened to the staff chattering together instead of working. He noted the clerk’s languid manner and the idle way in which he entered figures into a dog-eared ledger. He reminded himself that his father, always known to his family as the Patriarch, had sent him to England with instructions to find out what was going wrong with the London end of the business.
He wondered grimly what the Patriarch would do in this situation. Something devious, probably, like not announcing who he was in order to discover exactly how inefficient the business had become. Yes, that was it. They could hang themselves, so to speak, in front of him. Yes, deviousness was the order of the day.
‘I’ll wait,’ he offered, a trifle timidly.
‘I shouldn’t,’ said the clerk, grinning at Alan’s deplorable trousers. ‘He won’t see you without an appointment—and I’ve no note of one here.’
Alan forbore to say that, judging by the mismanagement he could see in the office and its slovenly appearance, the clerk’s list might be neither accurate nor reliable.
Time crawled by. When the clock struck eleven the clerk looked at Alan and said, ‘Still with us, then?’
‘Nothing better to do.’ Alan was all shy, juvenile charm, which the clerk treated as shy, juvenile charm should be treated by a man of the world: with contempt.
‘Pity.’ The clerk’s sympathy was non-existent.
Everyone stopped work at eleven-thirty. One of the junior clerks was sent out for porter. Alan looked around, identified where the privy might be, used it, and came back again to take up his post before the clerk’s desk.
‘Thought you’d gone,’ tittered one of the younger men, currying favour with the older ones, waving his pot of porter at him.
No one offered Alan porter. He resisted the urge to give the jeering young man a good kick and sat back in his uncomfortable chair.
