Page 16 of Scales and Sensibility
“Oh, was it?” Still beaming with relief, Sir John waved an expansive invitation. “You said you’d heard of my daughter, young man, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, I have.” Mr. Hawkins nodded. “Her praise has reached across the country—even as far as my own estate near Cambridge.”
“Of course. Beautiful girl, Penelope,” said Sir John. “An angel. That’s what everybody calls her, you know!”
Elinor bit her lip and fixed her gaze purposefully on the wall beyond.
“I had heard something of the sort,” Benedict agreed. “But in fact, it was you I’ve heard most about.”
“Oh?” Sir John frowned. “I haven’t heard your name before, Mr. Hawkins.”
“No, but I know an old friend of yours.” Benedict reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a sealed letter. “Mr. Edmund Crawford was kind enough to write me a note of introduction. He hoped you might be willing to give me some advice on the running of estates and so forth, as I’ve so recently come into my own. I’ll be staying here at this inn for the next week or two, and I’d be grateful if you could spare any time to take me in hand for his sake.”
“Hrmm.” Frowning, Sir John broke open the seal and began to read.
Elinor’s uncle had never been a speedy reader. As the moments stretched on, Sir Jessamyn uncoiled himself enough to peer over her shoulder towards the table of food. He nudged her cheek with his snout, then looked pointedly back at the waiting table.
“Oh, very well,” Elinor whispered. “Greedy monster.” Still, she reached up to stroke his neck affectionately as she moved back to the table and resumed her seat...and she reached for the teapot, too.
With hysteria looming high on her emotional horizon, tea—even sadly cooled tea—had become a true medical necessity.
The two men took their own seats at the table a moment later, but she didn’t raise her eyes to look at either of them. Instead, she focused on feeding Sir Jessamyn and taking restorative sips from her cup. Her own stomach was knotted far too tightly to consider any of the vast quantities of food on offer anymore.
Fortunately, that could never be a problem for Sir Jessamyn. From the voracious way he snapped up every bite, any new observer might well have imagined that he’d spent the last month subsisting on nothing but stale bread and water. Feeding him a steady stream of food—and stopping him from taking more at a time than was good for him—was the perfect excuse for Elinor not to meet the gazes of either gentleman at the table.
She badly needed that time to think, because the words she had spoken on desperate impulse were resonating throughout her body now...and flooding her with a cascade of increasingly horrifying realizations.
She had no carriage or horses. She had no maid. She had no piles of expensive luggage, nor clothing that was fit for anything but the poor relation she was.
What was I thinking?Illusion or no, she could never fool everyone at Hathergill Hall—not for five full days, the length of time that she would have to wait for Penelope’s début to take place. Perhaps Rose could have managed it in these circumstances;shehad the confidence and strength of will to carry off any daring masquerade. Harry was quieter but so clever that she could have planned all sorts of persuasive details.
Elinor, though? As everyone knew, she was plain and sensible; the polar opposite of the dashing Mrs. De Lacey and her set.A crow, trying to pass herself off as a peacock?It was laughable.
“Ha!” said Sir John.
Elinor gave an involuntary start. Sir Jessamyn missed his next bite, and cold scrambled eggs fell across her bare hands.
Fortunately, Sir John wasn’t looking at her. “I haven’t seen old Crawford for years,” he told Mr. Hawkins, leaning back in his seat. “Not since our university days. Dab hand at billiards, that man—or at any rate, he was thirty years ago.”
“He still is,” said Mr. Hawkins. “He played against my late father several times.”
“Yes, he says so in the letter. Says your father was a fine fellow, too.”
“He was.” This time, Mr. Hawkins’s voice was low. “Without him, I wouldn’t be here.”
Still wiping the greasy remnants of eggs off her fingers, Elinor slid him a glance and found his handsome face looking startlingly grim…or, perhaps, haunted.
With a visceral twist of pain, she suddenly remembered the night after her parents’ death, when she’d made her own discovery of the disaster left behind them in the wake of that terrible, fraudulent investment scheme, the one that—according to her father’s earnest correspondence—“could not fail.”
She would never stop loving her kind and hopeful father. She simply couldn’t do it. A childhood of love and warmth and safety would never be canceled out by a single mistake and a too-trusting nature.
But there had been times, as she and her sisters had sat in the empty vicarage, their bellies growling with audible hunger as they’d waited to hear which unknown relatives would agree to take them in and separate the three of them forever…
Oh, yes. Elinor took a slow, deep breath as she admitted the bitter truth to herself.
She was still absolutely furious at her father for what he had done to all of them.
It would have helped to share that tangled feeling with Mr. Hawkins now; or at least, to give him any sign of the empathy she felt. But Mrs. De Lacey, of course, could know nothing of his father’s losses. Mr. Hawkins had worked too hard to keep those secret…and if he was to save his younger brothers, his niece, and all those dependent workers on his estate, it was vital that Sir John, of all people, not be allowed to ever guess that he was penniless.
