The Reluctant Widow Read online

  ‘Ay, no end to the outlandish tricks them Frenchies get up to,’ nodded Barrow. ‘Not but what I don’t believe all I hear, and I always reckoned that was a loud one.’

  ‘An émigré family! I see!’ Elinor said. ‘I should have guessed it, indeed.’

  ‘I don’t know what kind of a family it might be,’ said Barrow cautiously, ‘but what should take him to come visiting Mr Eustace at that hour of night? I never saw him above a couple of times in my life, and for all he’s a Frenchy he came in at the front door like a Christian.’

  ‘I think he said that he was visiting friends in the neighbourhood.’

  Barrow seemed inclined to cavil at this. He scratched his chin. ‘Well, he’s not visiting his lordship, that’s sure. Nor he’s not at the Priory, for old Sir Matthew he’s tedious set against all Frenchies. And he won’t be at Elm House, for a decenter couple of ladies than Miss Lynton and Miss Elizabeth you won’t find, and to be having gentlemen to stay is what they wouldn’t do. And if it’s the Hurst he meant, Mr Frinton and his lady has gone up to London, and won’t be back this se’nnight.’

  ‘Likely he came from the Hill,’ suggested Mrs Barrow comfortably. ‘I’m sure it’s no matter.’

  ‘Ay, likely he did,’ agreed Barrow. ‘There’s no saying what they’ll do, them as live on the Hill.’

  Having expressed himself suitably as a Weald man, he seemed to think the problem settled, and went off to make an inventory of all the silver in the house.

  Elinor let the subject drop, and was soon immersed in household details with Mrs Barrow. But when that lady had sailed off kitchenwards her thoughts reverted to the episode, and while she set about the several tasks that lay nearest to her hand she found herself still puzzling over it.

  At eleven o’clock the sound of hoof-beats on the carriage-drive made her look out of the window. She saw the Hon. Nicholas Carlyon trotting up to the house on a stylish bay, a cross-bred dog, half lurcher, half mastiff, bounding along beside his horse. He caught sight of her, and waved his whip, calling out: ‘How d’ye do? Ned told me I should come over to see if you were tolerably comfortable.’

  ‘I am much obliged to you both!’ she returned. ‘Do but take your horse to the stables, and I will come down and let you in!’

  By the time he had done this she was already standing in the porch. He came striding along, and at once pulled off his hat, and said: ‘Good morning, ma’am! Shall you object to Bouncer? I will leave him outside if you wish, only if I do I dare say he will be off hunting, and the thing is that Sir Matthew Kendal’s preserves abut on to this land, and he don’t above half like to have Bouncer on them.’

  ‘No, indeed, that would never do,’ she said. ‘I have not the least objection to him, for you must know I have been used to dogs all my life. Pray bring him in with you!’

  He looked gratified, and called the dog to heel. Barrow, who happened to be crossing the hall at that moment, looked with a good deal of reproach at his mistress, and gave it as his considered opinion that if Master Nicky was to bring his dogs in, spannelling the floors, there could be no sense in summoning the gardener’s wife up to scrub them. The intelligent hound, however, lifted a lip at him, and he made off, muttering.

  ‘My brother has gone off somewhere in his chaise, Mrs Cheviot,’ announced Nicky, following his hostess into the book-room. ‘Oh! You do not like it when one calls you by that name! Well, you know, I have been thinking, and if you should not dislike it excessively I believe I should call you Cousin Elinor. For you are our cousin, are you not?’

  ‘By marriage, I suppose I must be,’ acknowledged Elinor. ‘I do not dislike you to call me so, at all events – Cousin Nicholas.’

  ‘Oh, no! I wish you will not call me Nicholas!’ he protested. ‘No one ever does, except John sometimes, when he reads me one of his lectures! Ned never does so. Why, how you have changed everything here already! I declare, this is first-rate!’

  She invited him to sit down by the fire; he declined partaking of any refreshment, but was anxious to know if there was any way in which he could be of use to her. ‘For you must know that I am quite at leisure,’ he told her. ‘And Ned said I could make myself useful.’

  She did not feel that his assistance in sorting linen would be of much practical help, but it occurred to her that he might be able to throw light on the identity at least of her midnight visitor. She described the encounter to him, therefore. He listened with much interest, and at the end said that his cousin Eustace had been a very loose screw, and that any friends of his were likely to prove ugly customers. But he was less concerned with the Frenchman’s name than with the manner of his entry.

  ‘Too smoky by half, cousin!’ he said. ‘A fellow don’t go creeping into a man’s house at midnight if he’s up to any good. Depend upon it, Eustace was concerned in some devilry or other!’

  ‘I hope you may be wrong!’ she said. ‘For if you are not I dare not think of the odd persons who may seek to gain admittance here in the expectation of finding him!’

  ‘Very true. Are you quite sure there was no door left open?’

  ‘I could not find one. It is the strangest thing! I own I cannot be at my ease over it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Cousin Elinor!’ said Nicky, his eyes sparkling. ‘I should not be at all surprised if there were a secret way into the house we do not know of!’

  She regarded him in considerable dismay. ‘No, pray do not put such uncomfortable notions into my head!’ she begged.

  ‘Yes, but I dare say there is,’ he insisted. ‘You know, it was used to be said that Charles II hid in this house after Worcester. Ned says that’s all fudge, and he was never within ten miles of Highnoons, but only fancy if it were so!’

  ‘Only fancy!’ echoed Elinor in a hollow tone.

  Nicky jumped to his feet, and began to walk round the room, inspecting the walls. ‘I dare say there may be a sliding panel somewhere, just as I saw in some old house or another, with a passage into the garden.’

  ‘It is not in this room,’ said Elinor firmly. ‘He did not enter here – and I wish you will not talk in such a way! I shall not sleep a wink all night!’

  ‘No, indeed! I should think you would not!’ Nicky agreed. ‘We must find it, of course! By Jove, this is capital sport!’

  Nothing would do for him but to be allowed to search the house. Elinor went with him, torn between amusement at his enthusiasm, and a horrid fear that he might indeed discover a hidden door. The dog Bouncer accompanied them, hopeful of rats, but presently grew disgusted with the lack of sport, and lay down, yawning cavernously. Nicky tapped all the panelling in the ground-floor rooms without producing the hollow note he so ardently desired to hear, and Elinor was just beginning to breathe again, when he insisted on going upstairs. She felt that it was unlikely that a secret way into the house should be found in any of the bedrooms, but Nicky said he had seen one that started from a cheese-room at the very top of a house.

  ‘Good God, there is a large loft here which was very likely used as a cheese-room in former times!’ Elinor cried, quite aghast.

  ‘Is there, by Jupiter?’ Nicky exclaimed. ‘I’ll go up there this instant!’

  She did not accompany him, and he presently reappeared, slightly cast down at having been unable to discover even as much as a priest’s hole in the cheese-room. He put Elinor so forcibly in mind of the schoolboy brothers of several of her late pupils that she very soon abandoned all formality with him, an arrangement which seemed to suit him very well. His conviction that the large cupboard built into the wall of her bedchamber was just the place where one might reasonably expect to find a hidden trap-door provoked her into apostrophizing him as an odious boy, a form of address to which he seemed to be accustomed, for he grinned, and said: ‘I know, but what sport if it were so, Cousin Elinor! Only consider!’

  ‘I am considering it,’ she said, ‘and l