what I can recall.’
What he recalled proved beyond doubt that he had a far more intimate knowledge of the garment in question than he should have. Elinor preserved a straight face as diagram followed diagram until she could resist no longer. ‘How clever of you to deduce all of that from the external appearance only, especially, as you say, the garment is designed to conceal its secrets.’
‘Ah.’ Theo put down his pencil. ‘Indeed. And I have now revealed a situation that I should most definitely not discuss with my sisters, let alone you, Cousin. How it is that I do not seem able to guard my tongue around you, I do not know.’
‘Was she one of the willing ladies I most reprehensibly referred to yesterday?’ Elinor enquired, not in the slightest bit shocked, only slightly, and inexplicably, wistful. Her newly rediscovered cousin was nothing if not a very masculine man. Doubtless he had to beat the ladies off with sticks.
‘Yes, I am afraid so. Rather a dangerous lady, and willing, very much on her own terms.’
‘Good for her,’ Elinor retorted robustly. It sounded rather a desirable state, being dangerous and dealing with men on one’s own terms. ‘May I have those?’
She reached for the little pile of sketches, but Theo held them out of reach. ‘On one condition only.’ She frowned at him. ‘That I choose the colour.’
‘Certainly not! I cannot go and discuss having gowns made with a man in attendance, it would be quite shocking.’
‘Gowns plural, is it?’ He grinned at her, still holding the papers at arm’s length. ‘I am your cousin, for goodness’ sake, Elinor, and she is my landlady. All I want to do is help you pick colours.’
‘Dictate them, more like,’ she grumbled, trying to maintain a state of indignation when truthfully she found she was rather enjoying this. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to think about clothes as anything but utilitarian necessities. ‘Very well. And, yes, gowns plural if it will save me from being nagged by you.’
‘I am forgiven for my plain speaking, then?’ He moved the sketches a little closer to her outstretched hand.
‘About my clothes or your mistress?’ Elinor leaned forwards and tweaked them from his fingers.
‘Your clothes. And she was never my mistress—a term that implies some kind of arrangement. I am too careful of my life to entangle myself with that dangerous creature.’
‘Tell me about her.’ Elinor folded the sketches safely away in her pocket and regarded him hopefully.
‘No! Good God, woman, Aunt Louisa would have my hide if she had the faintest idea what we are talking about. I don’t know what has come over me.’
‘We are becoming friends, I think,’ she suggested. ‘I find you very easy to talk to, perhaps because we are cousins. And I am not the sort of female you are used to.’
‘That,’ Theo observed with some feeling, ‘is very true. Would you like anything else to eat? No? Then let us go and consult Madame Dubois.’
After five minutes with Madame, Theo was amused to observe that Elinor stopped casting him embarrassed glances and dragged him firmly into the discussion, even when he judged it time to retreat and began to edge towards the door.
‘Come back,’ she ordered, sounding alarmingly like her mother for a moment. ‘My French is not up to this, I do not have the vocabulary for clothes.’
‘What makes you think I have?’ he countered. She slanted him a look that said she knew all to well that he had plenty of experience with French modistes and turned back to wrestling with the French for waistline.
Between them they managed well enough and Madame grasped the principles of the radical divided skirt very quickly. ‘You could start a fashion, mademoiselle,’ she remarked, spreading out the sketches and studying them. ‘Your English tailors say we French cannot produce riding habits to their standard—let us see!’
They agreed on the riding skirt with a jacket and a habit-shirt to go beneath it, a morning dress and a half-ress gown. ‘Now, this is the fun part.’ Theo began to poke about in the bales of cloth and had his hand slapped firmly away by Madame.
‘Zut! Let mademoiselle choose.’
‘No, I trust Monsieur Ravenhurst’s judgement,’ Elinor said bravely, apparently only half-convinced of the wisdom of that assertion.
‘That for the riding habit.’ Decisive, he pulled out a roll of moss-green twill. ‘And that, or that, for the morning dress.’ Elinor submitted to having a sprigged amber muslin and a garnet-red stripe held up against her. Madame favoured the amber, he the red. Elinor wrinkled her nose, apparently unhappy about pattern at all.
‘No, look.’ Theo, carried away, began to drape the cloth around her. ‘See? Pinched in here to show your waist off, and here, cut on the bias across the bosom—’ He broke off, finding himself with both arms around Elinor, his nose not eight inches from where her cleavage would be if it was not swathed in fabric.
‘It is my bosom,’ she pointed out mildly. He felt heat sweep through him, dropped the fabric and stepped back abruptly. She caught the falling cloth, plainly amused at his discomfiture. ‘I like this garnet stripe, I think, and I agree with Monsieur Ravenhurst’s suggestions about the cut.’ She tilted her head provocatively, disconcerting him by her agreement.
‘Alors.’ Madame appeared to have become resigned to her mad English clients, or perhaps she was simply used to him and inclined to be indulgent. ‘The evening gown. Amber silk I have. A nice piece.’
‘Violet,’ Theo said, pointing. ‘That one.’
‘With my hair?’ Elinor asked in alarm. He grinned at her. There would be no hiding in corners in a gown of that shimmering amethyst.
‘Definitely.’ She was not going to prevail this time. And he felt as though he had found a ruby on a rubbish tip and had delivered it to a master jeweller for cleaning and resetting. It was really rather gratifying.
A price and a startlingly short delivery time having been agreed, Elinor found herself outside with Theo, feeling somewhat as though she had been caught up in a whirlwind and deposited upside down just where she had been originally standing. ‘I came out to look at a church,’ she observed faintly, ‘and now I’ve driven a gig, had my clothes insulted, eaten at an inn and bought three outfits.’
‘You may express your gratitude when you see the effect.’ Theo placed her hand in the crook of his elbow and began to stroll. ‘A walk along the river bank before we go back?’
‘I did not say I was grateful!’ Elinor retrieved her hand, but fell into step beside him.
‘Admit that was more fun than drawing capitals all day.’ He turned off the road and began to walk upstream.
‘It was different,’ she conceded. ‘Oh, look, a kingfisher.’ They followed the flight of the jewelled bird as it fished, moving from one perch to another. The water was clear with long weed streaming like silk ribbons over the mosaic of pebbles and here and there a weir broke the smooth surface into foam and eddies.
There
