Page 82 of Threads that Remain

“And I think we shall stay with Cecilia and have Mamma with us. We must at least fill her house up part way.”

The candle was down to its last inch by the time Edward came in from the dressing-room, and Elinor was already sitting up against the pillows with her hair let down and a shawl about her shoulders, not reading, only sitting. He got into bed beside her with the small, familiar creak of a bed frame.

“They talked of nothing but gowns at supper,” said Edward, at last, into the dark. “Sarah and Anne both. I do not think I heard either of them use a sentence that did not contain the word muslin somewhere in the middle of it. And when talking of colours, I understand the matter is not yet considered settled.”

“It will be settled at least six more times before they reach London,” said Elinor, “and altered again the moment they arrive and see what everybody else is wearing.”

She turned her head against the pillow. “How are you taking it all? Sarah, and the Season, and all the muslin in the world?”

He said quickly, and rather too enthusiastically, with an unnaturally broad smile, “I am very glad of it.”

Elinor grinned, waiting for more.

“I gave Mary away but two days ago,” said he. “And now here is Sarah, packing muslin, and talking of London as though it were the whole of the world, and looking, if I am honest with myself, very nearly as happy about it as her sister looked in the weeks before her own wedding; and I find I cannot decide whether I am watching a daughter go off to enjoy herself for a season, or watching the whole business begin again from the very start.”

“And which do you think it is?”

“I think,” said Edward, with the careful hopefulness of a man talking himself into the more comfortable of two possibilities, “that it is very likely nothing at all. A great many young ladies go to London and dance a great many dances and come home again exactly as they left, only tireder, and with a quantity of new gowns to be packed away for the following year. I think it is entirely possible that Sarah will enjoy herself enormously, and that we shall have a noisy house again by September, and no wedding to prepare for, for a good long while yet.”

Elinor was quiet for a moment. “Edward,” said she, at last, gently. “I think you had better prepare yourself.”

He raised himself a little on the pillow. “Prepare myself for what?”

“For the possibility that it will not be nothing.” She took his hand, and held it, in the way she had of delivering an unwelcome truth as though it were a kindness, which, from her, it generally was. “I have watched that girl since she was thirteen years old, and I have known, a great deal longer than I have ever said aloud to you, or to anybody, exactly where her heart has been fixed the whole of that time. And I watched Henry, at Mary’s wedding, look at her across the room in a manner I do not think he is yet aware of having done, and I have a very strong suspicion, my dear, that whatever muslin she packs, and whatever balls she attends, she will come home from this Season a great deal more settled in her own mind than she left it, if the two of them are given three months in the same house and the smallest excuse to be private together.”

There was a long silence as Edward stared blankly at her. “Henry? The house in Berkeley Square?”

“Yes.”

“He offered us his house, Elinor.”

“Yes, my dear. He did.”

“I thought it very generous of him.”

“It was very generous of him,” said Elinor, and he could hear, quite plainly, the smile in her voice.

“Does Brandon know?”

“I believe so. It was, according to Marianne, the least subtle thing she ever watched a member of this family do in a very great many years.”

“That says something, coming from Marianne,” Edward grinned.

Elinor tightened her hand in his, and moved a little closer, so that her head came to rest against his shoulder in the old, accustomed place it had occupied for so many years.

“Since she was thirteen?” Edward asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

Chapter XLI.

They arrived in the first week of March, in a train of three carriages that drew the attention of the whole square before the horses had properly stopped; and it was generally agreed, by the time the last trunk had been carried in and the last small crisis over a mislaid dressing-case resolved, that the house in Berkeley Square had not seen such a quantity of life pass through its doors in a great many years.

It was a handsome house, and Henry got the sense of being a rather small tenant in a rather large coat. The hall was black and white marble, with a staircase that turned twice before it reached the first landing.

There was, on the first floor, Henry’s favourite room in all his acquired properties, a library of which Mr. Smith, a great-uncle Henry had never met, was said to have been very proud of its collection of carefully chosen books of the highest quality. The jewel of the room was a massive pedestal desk, which was an established part of the library when Mr. Smith inherited it. It was crafted from deep, polished Honduras mahogany, the wood gleaming with a hand-rubbed beeswax finish.

The desk surface had at its centrepiece a sloped, inset panel of rich Morocco leather, a deep hunter green colour, with intricate real gold leaf borders and showing faint, dark stains of blue-black ink from years of correspondence. The desk proved to be a marvel of joinery, featuring secret compartments. Henry had spent considerable time on his earlier visit discovering hidden drawers, concealing private letters, bank notes, or family signets. He was certain there were more secrets awaiting discovery.

It occurred to him that since leaving University, he had only read books concerning various subjects relating to estate management and upkeep. He could now take a book only for the enjoyment of reading, and this realisation he could only describe as evident relief.