Usually, Eleanor tried to hold herself above gossip, but today, in the early days of 1815, scandal and potential disaster hovered over the Haverford family like a wave that would wash away their safety and happiness when it fell. Listening to these acquaintances talk about the peccadilloes and peculiarities of other people was something of a relief.

“The Chevalier is so elegant, so aristocratic,” Lady Ramsunn enthused. “If I were younger, I would go to Bath myself! Lady Fortingham, your daughter Elizabeth might be just what he needs!”

“Who is the Chevalier?” Mrs Westinghouse inquired, and the other three ladies gave an enthusiastic description of his silver eyes and his perfect form. The Chevalier d’Aubusson had burst onto the London scene, and made a hit wherever he went, but now he had gone to Bath. To find a wife, rumour said. To avoid the theatre crowd, Eleanor rather thought. Those who attended to see and be seen by the fashionable crowd might not remember a certain actor who had held London in the palm of his hand before leaving to fight Napoleon. But they might. Eleanor did.

Eleanor said nothing. He would, or he would not, prove to be a bounder, but she had no profound objection to people trying to better themselves. Besides, he might have been an actor and still be entitled to an aged and defunct French title.

The conversation had moved on to the parlous state of the de Courtenay marriage. Everyone knew that Lady de Courtenay was in the country, while the earl moped around London drowning his sorrows. A forced marriage, the ladies agreed. Lady Celia, as she was then, had trapped Lord de Courtenay all unaware.

“Ridiculous,” Eleanor proclaimed. “Have you met Lady de Courtenay? Anyone less like a jade would be impossible to find. The earl is sulking, and someone should box his ears.”

That finished that conversation, but the next was even more fruitful: the dowager Countess of Wayford, and the new earl, recently returned from Italy. The poor boy was horribly scarred, and the stories about how he received his wounds only grew in the telling. Lady Wayford was not saying, but she made it clear that the new earl was a very unworthy claimant to the title formerly held by her beloved eldest son, Ulric.

“Not that anyone believes her,” Lady Fortingham declared. “He is beautifully spoken, and if his face is marred, his figure is excellent. Sad that ‘my darling Ulric’ left the estate in such disarray. Even an earl might find it hard to marry money with that face.”

Surprisingly, the reclusive mathematician Dr Hartwell was the next target of the ladies’ tongues. “Lady Ross declares he will speak at her house party,” Lady Ramsunn scoffed. “I will believe it when I see it. The man never leaves Oxford.”

Eleanor had seen some odd things happen in the vicinity of Lady Ross, but she thought even the power of the umbrella might not be sufficient to form a match for a man determined on the life of a celibate scholar. If Lady Ross found Dr Hartwell a wife, perhaps Eleanor would enlist her help with Aldridge! Certainly, he was not managing at all well on his own.

At long last, the four ladies left. The room seemed suddenly larger and lonelier. Silly though they were, they had taken her mind away from her troubles. She rang for the tea tray to be removed, and the butler entered, only to hold out a tray with a card.

Her heart lightened when she saw the name. “Show him up,” she instructed, “and bring a fresh tray.”

Chadbourn! He was her partner in a charitable venture to find places for those left broken and out-of-work by the recent war. Indeed, she hoped he had news of her latest proteges, who had been sent to Bath to work for a candle maker, a retired sergeant more lucky than most, as he’d inherited a candle works. She soon had the dear boy seated, and talking of his family, but it didn’t take him long to turn the conversation to the men she had hoped to save. “I hear good things from ‎Sergeant Marsh,” he told her, “but I intend to see him for myself in the next few days. I have been commissioned by my sisters to escort them to Bath. I will report on my return.”

She was sorry to see the young earl leave; if only she, too, could go to Bath. Meeting Sergeant Marsh, perhaps visiting Lady Ross, observing the Chevalier — that would be much more to her liking than what awaited her at Haverford Castle. Duty, however, must always come first.
The gossip was all about the heroes from Valentines from Bath. See the Bluestocking Belles’ website for more details and buy links.