She sent Alma off to her own dinner in the kitchen and went downstairs, smiling inwardly at the flutter of nervousness she was feeling, as though she were on her way to keep a romantic tryst. Thank heaven no one could read her thoughts. The innkeeper was hovering at the bottom of the stairs, and it was obvious he had been waiting for her. He bowed, led the way to the private parlor, tapped on the door, and opened it.
"Miss Thompson, your lordship," he announced.
Your lordship? The gentleman was not simply Mr. Benning, then? He was not alone, either. The children were with him, Georgette all flushed and eager as she jumped to her feet, the little boy clearly alarmed as he scrambled up from his chair to press against her side and clutch one of her puffed sleeves, one eye hidden behind it. He did indeed look younger than his five years. He was a thin-faced, mop-haired, big-eyed child—the hair very blond, the eyes dark brown—and purely adorable. The remains of a meal were spread on the table.
"Oh," Eleanor said, "am I early?"
"You are not," the gentleman assured her, getting to his feet and making her an elegant bow. "We are late. Bedtime is never actually bedtime in our house or wherever we happen to be. It is always half an hour or so later. My children are experts at delaying the inevitable. True, Georgette?"
"But it was not me this time, Papa," she protested. "Robbie wanted to have a look at Miss Thompson. He had only the merest peep when we arrived here."
The little boy's second eye disappeared behind her sleeve as though to give the lie to her words, but it reappeared almost instantly and gazed unblinkingly upon Eleanor.
"My son and heir, Robert Benning," his father said. "Miss Thompson, Robert. Now would be a good time to make your bow."
The eye disappeared again and his father sighed.
"He is shy," Georgette explained. "There is nothing wrong with shyness, is there, Miss Thompson? If there were no quiet people in the world, there would be no one to listen to those who have not a shy bone in their bodies. Like me. It takes all sorts to make a world, do you not think?"
"I do indeed," Eleanor said. "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Robert, and I shall assume that in your mind you have bowed to me. Are we not fortunate that the storm is over and seems to have no intention of returning? We must hope for sunshine tomorrow morning to dry the roads."
The child peeped again.
"Nurse will be very cross with me if I do not send you up immediately or sooner," Mr. Benning said, addressing his children. "Say good night to Miss Thompson."
Georgette said it at some length, and the little boy spoke for the first time.
"Will you come up to kiss us, Papa?" he whispered.
"Wild horses would not stop me," his father said. "But it will be after I have dined with Miss Thompson, and by then you will both be fast asleep. In the meanwhile, I will kiss you now."
The little boy scurried over to him, clutched the outsides of his breeches, and raised his face, his lips puckered. Mr. Benning bent to cup his face and kiss him and then tousle his hair, which actually looked more like soft blond down than hair.
"Good night, son," he said.
"Good night, Papa," the child said. He darted a look at Eleanor before tucking his chin against his chest and muttering something that might have been good night.
"Good night, Robert," Eleanor said while Georgette was claiming her kiss from her father. "Good night, Georgette."
The little girl took her brother's hand as they left the room.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting for your dinner," Mr. Benning said. "Please have a seat."
"Your lordship?" She raised her eyebrows as she sat and he moved to a small side table to pour them each a glass of wine.
"The Earl of Staunton," he explained, handing her a glass. "You need not my lord me, however. I am quite content to be Michael Benning."
Why was it, Eleanor wondered, that handsome men seemed to become even more good-looking as they aged while the opposite was true of women? He was solid of build with an elegant figure and dark hair beginning to recede at the temples but looking strangely attractive as it did so. His face, which had probably been purely gorgeous when he was twenty, now had the firmness of character and experience to make it all the more worth looking at. Or so it seemed to her. She had not known him when he was twenty. And she was not usually given to such analysis of a man's charms. She did not usually dine alone with single gentlemen either. The room seemed suddenly very quiet.
"To storms and the unexpected pleasures they sometimes bring," he said, seating himself and raising his glass.
"Indeed," she agreed, raising hers. Was he saying she was an unexpected pleasure brought by the storm? What a very nice compliment!
* * * * *
Georgette, her brother's hand still clasped in her own, paused at the top of the stairs before proceeding to the room where their nurse would be awaiting them. "Well?" she asked him in an urgent whisper. "What did you think?"
"You really believe she is the one, Georgie?" he asked.
"Oh, I do," she said with passionate conviction. "I really, really do, Robbie. Did you notice her eyes? They seem to smile all the time. And did you notice that she did not wait for you to make your bow to her? Instead, she agreed with me that it takes all sorts to make a world and said that funny thing about believing you had made your bow in your head. Then she went on to talk about sunshine tomorrow before Papa had a chance to insist that you bow outside your head as well as just in it. I really, really, really think she is the one."
"Our new mama," Robert whispered, his eyes wide and dreamy, as though he were testing the thought in his mind. "But does Papa know? And does she know? And what about Miss Everly?"
"If Papa marries Miss Everly," Georgette said, "I shall run away from home. I swear I will. I'll go to America and ride across it on a horse until I am so far away no one will find me. Ever. It's huge, America is, Robbie. If you were to put England down inside it somewhere and Scotland and Wales and Ireland too, no one would ever find them either."
"Will you take me with you, Georgie?" he asked wistfully. "And can Papa come too?"
"Not if he is married to Miss Everly," she said. "Though it would be horrid to go without him and never see him again, would it not? We will just have to see that it never happens. She does not like us any more than we like her. At least, she does not like me. And that mother of hers detests us both, even you, probably because you are the heir. Oh, Robbie, Miss Thompson is the one. I just know it. I feel it here." She smote the left side of her breast with one closed fist. "I think she likes us. Even me, though I talked her head off this afternoon and ate her cakes."
"But how is it ever going to happen?" he asked, more practical than his sister. "If the sun shines tomorrow, she will go on her way to wherever she is going and we will go on our way to where we are going, and we will never ever see her again. Even England is big, Georgie. I think."
"I will make a plan," she promised.
"But what?" he asked.
"I just will," she said. "I will think hard before I go to sleep. But do you agree with me, Robbie? For it is no good at all if only I want her. I might as well sleep instead of thinking if that is so. We both have to want her more than anyone or anything else in the whole world. Is she the one?"
"Yes," he said. "She is."
Chapter 3
* * *
Michael had been wondering if he had acted too impulsively in inviting Miss Thompson to dine with him. She was, after all, very clearly a gentlewoman of some refinement. Now, however, he was reassured. She had been kind to the children, and a smile still lurked in her eyes. He felt instantly comfortable with her and found himself wondering why when he had decided to look about him during the Season for a new wife, it was the young ladies upon whom he had turned his attention. He had not considered an older lady, someone closer to him in age and experience. It was not as if he needed more children, though some people might say it was his duty to produce a spare or two to go with h
is heir.
"You have delightful children, Lord Staunton," Miss Thompson said after the innkeeper and a maid had cleared the table and set it again for two.
"It is kind of you to say so," he said. "Georgette is too loud and Robert is too quiet. One would have thought the Creator in his wisdom might have balanced them out a little more evenly."
"Perhaps," she said, "the Creator in his wisdom knew exactly what he was doing."
Ah. He must remember that.
"Robert's extreme shyness was sweet when he was two," he said, "and endearing when he was three. It is worrisome now that he is almost six."
The innkeeper opened the door again, and his wife and the maid came past him, the former carrying a covered tureen of soup, the latter bearing a basket of bread. The older woman ladled out their soup, which had smelled so appetizing when the children ate earlier, and all three withdrew and shut the door behind them.
"It is altogether possible," Miss Thompson said as she picked up her spoon, "that your son's shyness would grow worse if he were forced to try to overcome it. He will probably always be quiet. It is unlikely, though, that he will always hide his face from strangers. He will no doubt find a way to balance his shyness with basic good breeding if he is allowed to develop at his own pace and learn to be comfortable in his world."
"His nurse, who loves him quite fiercely, I might add," he said, "sometimes sends him to bed if he refuses to greet a visitor. It is not a huge punishment, of course, for more often than not he simply falls asleep. But it is a punishment, nevertheless. It implies rejection, which she tells him can be avoided with just a little sociability and courteous behavior."
"And it is not for me to question either his nurse's method of bringing up her charges or yours," she said. "I do beg your pardon. There is no single right way of raising a child, is there, and those who have none of their own are invariably the very best parents in the world." Her eyes were twinkling.
"No, I beg your pardon," he said. "I did not invite you to dine in order to bore you to tears with my concerns over my children."
"Children are never boring," she said. "Oh, sometimes one would like nothing better than to run screaming from them and not stop for the next hundred miles or so, but it is never because of boredom."
"You have personal experience?" he asked.
"Only as an aunt as far as young children are concerned," she said, "and that is a remarkably easy task, for one can spend time with them when one wishes and walk away when one has had enough. One can ignore their mischief and whining and tantrums with the certain assurance that one is not responsible for dealing with them. I had a small taste of being solely in charge of a class of young ones, however, when I substituted a couple of times for my sister at the village school where she taught. Each time I was exhausted by the end of the day and quite feared I might never recover."
He laughed. "You were never tempted to be a teacher yourself, then?" he asked.
"Actually I was," she told him, "and gave in to temptation. But I teach older girls at a school in Bath—the youngest of them are eleven. I find the work both pleasant and rewarding, though at present, I must confess, I am in the process of escaping gleefully for a summer holiday of peace and quiet and sanity."
She needed to work for a living, then, though she was certainly a gentlewoman.
"And your very first day of peace and sanity brought you via a vicious thunderstorm into the company of my daughter," he said. "You must be wondering what you have done to deserve such punishment."
"Not at all," she said. "I know the answer. I lost my patience with one of my girls last term and needed the reproof. But what is one to do when a girl one has been shaping into a genteel young lady for two whole years shows her disapproval of another girl's actions by crossing her eyes, poking out her tongue, sticking her thumbs in her ears, and waggling her fingers—all after she has invited the other girl to shut her face? Such behavior would try the patience of a saint, and I have never come close to sainthood."
He laughed and relaxed further. He liked her.
"The thunderstorm was an annoyance," she continued, setting her spoon down in her empty bowl. "Your daughter was not, however. I hope—oh, I do hope, at the risk of interfering again, that you never think to deal with her by squashing her spirit. She needs a thoroughly stimulating education as well as many and varied and vigorous activities. And she does not need to be told that little girls are to be seen but not heard. There. Now I have become definitely obnoxious."
The door opened again and the innkeeper removed the empty dishes while his wife and the maid brought in the main course.
"Not obnoxious," he said when they were alone again. "I appreciate your comments. They reassure me. I am aware that I have a very precious child in keeping, but many people of my acquaintance would add a couple of letters to the description and call her precocious."
She smiled as she helped herself to vegetables. "She told me you were thinking of sending her to a boarding school," she said.
"Poor Miss Thompson," he said. "You cannot escape from your everyday life, can you? A lady of my acquaintance believes school would be good for Georgette, that it would t— Well, that it would tame her. Actually it was the lady's mother who made the suggestion, but Miss Everly agreed wholeheartedly with her, as she always does. Lady Connaught is a strong-willed woman."
Miss Everly was a sweet-tempered young lady as well as a very lovely one. Unfortunately she was also ruled by an overbearing mother.
"School may well be the very thing for your daughter," Miss Thompson said. "Or it may well not be. The school itself would need to be chosen with care, and her own wishes would need to be consulted even though she is only ten years old. In my school, no girl is accepted as a boarder unless she has given her free consent. School is not a jail but rather a portal to freedom, or at least it ought to be in an ideal world. It was my understanding this afternoon and my observation earlier this evening that Georgette is strongly attached to her brother. Do you see her as a bad influence on him? Do you perhaps blame his shyness upon her willingness to shield him and speak for him? Do you believe they need to be separated?"
He considered. And he could hear that very concern being expressed in the gentle, sweet voice of Miss Everly. She had said it in London a month or two ago the evening after he had taken her and his children to Gunter's for ices. He had feared that perhaps she was right.
"No." He frowned as he cut into his steak and kidney pudding. "No, I do not, Miss Thompson. Robert will be devastated if Georgette goes away for weeks at a time, and she will be devastated to leave him. But…is it the best thing anyway? Why does no one warn prospective parents of the momentous and torment-provoking decisions that lie ahead of them? But this is most definitely not your problem, and I do apologize again. Tell me about your family. You are going to see them tomorrow?"
"Yes," she said. "I lived in a village in Gloucestershire with my mother until a few years ago. Both my sisters married, one of them to the local vicar. She is still there. They have three children, two boys and a girl. My other sister returned home after she was widowed. That was when she taught part time at the village school. She was very good at it. The children adored her. Then she remarried and her new husband invited both my mother and me to live with them. My mother was keen to go. I was less so. Being a spinster of very moderate means suited me fine, but only provided it came with independence. Luxury and dependence in my brother-in-law's very lavish home did not appeal to me at all even though they were offered with graciousness and love. I might have remained alone at the cottage and eked out an even more frugal existence, but it would have upset my mother and my sisters and I do believe I might have been lonely. So I chose to teach—but older girls, whom I dearly love."
She was a woman of courage, then. How many ladies in her position would have chosen to teach when they might have lived in luxury with relatives who loved them?
"And you?" she asked. "Tell me about your family."
&n
bsp; "My home is in Devonshire," he said, "not far from the northern coast. My father died suddenly when I was twenty-three, an event that put an abrupt end to my post-Oxford years of sowing wild oats. My mother remarried three years later and now lives in the north of England. I have no brothers or sisters, alas, but I do have aunts and uncles and cousins, almost all of whom live not very far from me. I married Annette when I was twenty-seven, and Georgette was born two years later, Robert almost five years after that. He looks like his mother, though she was not quite as blond or as curly-haired. There were complications after his birth. She never recovered her health and died six months later. I was fond of her. No, that is by far too bland. I was deeply attached to her and did not believe I would ever wish to replace her. It is only recently that I have come to two conclusions. One is that of course she cannot be replaced. It would be out of the question. However, that fact does not preclude my marrying again and having a quite different relationship with an entirely different woman."
"And the other conclusion?" she asked, setting her knife and fork side by side across her empty plate and picking up her wine glass.
"That perhaps it has been selfish of me to carry my mourning to the extreme of not providing my children with a new mother sooner," he said. "Georgette does not remember Annette very clearly, more is the pity, and Robert, of course, has no memory at all of her. I tell them stories about her and I hope I always will, but I do believe they have the need of a live woman to love and nurture them. I can give them a father's love, but I cannot be a mother too. I have tried and have felt my inadequacy."
"It must be difficult," she said, kindness softening her smile, "to choose someone who will suit both you and your children."
Once Upon A Dream Page 3
