The new Countess of Ashbury was the Duchess of Haverford’s only guest today. She was shown out to the terrace where her grace sat taking the sunshine while looking over the gardens that sloped to the river. Her curtsey was gracefulness incarnate, and her looks not at all in the common way, but stunning.
“Your Grace, thank you for your invitation,” she said.
Eleanor waved to the chair that had been placed next to her own, and at an angle to it so that she could keep her eyes on her visitor’s face. “My goddaughter Sophia encouraged me to do so, Lady Ashbury. She tells me you have a charitable project that I might be interested in supporting. But first, let us have tea and talk about our families and the weather.”
Lady Ashbury’s amused smile flashed. “I shall feel very English,” she said.
She stated her preferences—black, with a slice of lemon and one lump of sugar–and accepted the cup Eleanor poured. “I have not thanked you in person for your influence in the matter of my sister-in-law, and the scandal she tried to raise,” she said.
Eleanor never did anything so crass as shrugging her shoulders, but she allowed her eyebrows to do so. “You blunted the worst of the rumours when you married Lord Ashbury,” she pointed out. “You are happy, I hope? Sophia tells me it is a love match.”
The glow in Lady Ashbury’s eyes, the softening of her voice, all confirmed the diagnosis. “Yes, Your Grace. I love Val, and I love his–our daughters. We would have come to it in the end, I believe. Elspeth Ashbury did us a favour by forcing us to decide sooner, rather than later.”
“Tell me about your daughters,” Eleanor encouraged. “Lady Mirabelle and Lady Genevieve, are they not?”
Ruth needed no further encouragement, extolling the talents and characters of her girls while they drank their tea. However, when Eleanor put her cup aside, she brought her current anecdote to a close, and commented, “But I have been rattling on about my family, which is hardly good manners, Your Grace. Will you further extend your kindness to me by allowing me to rattle on about my cottage hospital instead?”
“A cottage hospital! How interesting. Please tell me more.”
***
Ruth is the heroine of To Mend the Broken Hearted. She meets the Earl of Ashbury when she delivers his two daughters to him after they are sent home from school during a smallpox epidemic. By To Claim the Long-Lost Lover, she is running the cottage hospital mentioned above.