Page 38 of A Sense of Paradise
‘I know you have given up your time for me, and perhaps I have not expressed my gratitude enough, but never doubt that I value your friendship above everything.’
Louis ground his jaw. ‘It is not your gratitude that I want.’
‘Then what…Oh, you are worried about me remaining in this country alone, but you need not be. Miss Latimer seems very capable, and since she is a close friend of Archie’s I am sure she will be able to make him tell us everything he finds out about Maurice. Gentlemen can be horribly protective, which is the last thing I need. If Maurice is involved in something unsavoury then I need to be made aware of the particulars so that I can extricate him from it.’
Louis blew out a long breath, shook his head and continued to concentrate on the road. The rest of the short journey was made in brittle silence, during the course of which Eloise struggled to decide what she had done to offend him.
‘This is it,’ Eloise said, grateful for an excuse to speak when the cottage that Miss Latimer had described to her on the outskirts of the village came into view. ‘How pretty! It is much larger than I imagined. I wonder how a young single woman can afford it.’ She grinned. ‘Do you suppose that she is a kept woman?’
Louis drew the curricle to a halt without comment. A middle-aged man materialised, nodded and unloaded Eloise’s luggage from the trunk without saying a word.
Louis himself alighted and helped Eloise down. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said gruffly.
‘I shall be home very soon. A week at the most. That will be enough time for me to know…Miss Latimer!’ Eloise raised a hand when the young lady emerged from the cottage and smiled at her.
‘You found me without any trouble.’
‘Your directions were most precise, miss,’ Louis replied courteously.
‘Excellent. Come along inside and have some tea.’
‘Alas, I cannot stay above a minute or two,’ Louis replied with a charming smile, the likes of which he had not bestowed upon Eloise recently, she realised with a jolt. ‘I have a passage back to France this evening and must catch the midday train if I am to make it on time.’
‘Then you can spare us ten minutes.’
Eloise was curious to see Miss Latimer’s living arrangements and was enchanted by the pretty salon she stepped into, where a young lady sat working industriously at her embroidery. She set it aside with a speed that belied any true dedication when Eloise and Louis entered. Her eyes widened when her gaze rested upon Louis, and Eloise tried to see her old friend through fresh eyes. He was indeed a very handsome man, she conceded, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her to appreciate his stark masculinity before now. Perhaps familiarity was to blame. She looked upon Louis as a surrogate older brother rather than an eligible man. She always had thought of him that way. She confided in him unreservedly in a fashion that she never would if she had designs upon him as a husband or lover.
‘This is my sister, Melanie,’ Miss Latimer said, recalling Eloise’s attention. ‘Melanie, this is our guest, Miss Garnier and M. Foucher.’
‘Mademoiselle.’ Melanie giggled when Louis bowed over her hand.
‘Polly, some tea, if you please, and have Miss Garnier’s bags taken up to her room.’
‘Yes, miss.’
Tea and cake fresh from the oven were delivered promptly and distributed by the younger Miss Latimer. Eloise glanced out at the gardens and exclaimed over the thriving herbs that she observed in the closest bed.
‘Flora is an expert. She makes all sorts of cures for people in the village and they are ever so grateful to her,’ Melanie said in a rush. ‘She helped Lord Felsham too. He moves that much better now. Everyone says as much.’
Eloise withheld an angry hiss, aware of Louis watching her closely as Melanie made that admission.
‘Our grandmother was an expert herbalist and passed her remedies down to me,’ Miss Latimer replied modestly. ‘So I can take little credit for the small amount of difference I make.’
‘I am too young to recall Grandmama,’ Melanie added, ‘which is a very great pity. Everything I hear about her tells me that she was a wise and wonderful woman. I wish I’d had the opportunity to know her.’
Miss Latimer ruffled her sister’s hair. ‘You will have to make do with me, but I am not nearly so wise, I’m afraid.’
‘Nonsense, Flora. You are the cleverest person I know. Far better read than Papa, who only reads Christian literature, which is very narrow-minded of him. How can one express a balanced opinion if one only studies one side of an argument?’
Miss Latimer smiled. ‘Let us not spoil the day by talking about Papa.’
‘Indeed, let us not. I think about him as little as I possibly can as a general rule.’
Eloise glanced at Louis, interested in his reaction to these most unusual sisters. Neither was especially pretty in the recognised sense, but there was a vibrancy about them, a spark of independence that Eloise reluctantly conceded might seem captivating, especially in respect of the younger Miss Latimer, from whose mouth words tumbled in a haphazard jumble in their anxiety to be spoken. Unlike her older sister, she didn’t pause to temper her remarks, which meant that she would hopefully prove a useful source of information.
Eloise hadn’t made the admission to Louis, but she fully intended to use her time here in this cottage to find out more about Miss Latimer’s close friendship with Archie; a friendship that seemed implausible, unless she was his mistress and he the owner of this cottage. Archie was an aristocrat and Eloise knew that English society jealously guarded both its members and its boundaries. They would disapprove of a marquess consorting with a mere vicar’s daughter. She chose not to dwell upon the fact that her own roots were even less auspicious.
Miss Latimer’s intimacy with her former lover was a mystery that caused acute jealousy to grip her whenever she thought about it, which was frequently. She had sensed a closeness between them that had never existed between Archie and herself, even at the height of their affair, causing doubts to flood Eloise’s mind regarding her ability to regain his affections.
