The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [281]
Mr Martell turned. ‘You draw, Miss Albion?’
‘A little.’ Fanny replied.
‘Do you draw, Mr Martell?’ Louisa asked; but he did not turn back to her.
‘Badly, I fear. But I have the highest admiration for those who do.’ And looking, now, straight at Fanny, he smiled.
‘My cousin Louisa draws quite as well as I do, Mr Martell,’ said Fanny with a slight blush.
‘I do not doubt it,’ he said politely and faced round again to resume his conversation.
Having walked some distance, they turned to look back at the palace of the Churchills and, by way of making conversation, she asked what was the origin of the family.
‘Royalists in the Civil War, certainly,’ said Gilpin. ‘A West Country family. Not one of the oldest or noblest, though, I think.’
‘Not like you, Martell,’ Edward laughed. ‘He’s a Norman. The Martells came with William the Conqueror, didn’t they?’
‘So’, replied Martell with a slight smile, ‘I have always been told.’
‘There you are,’ said Edward cheerfully. ‘No drop of lowly blood pollutes his veins; no contact with trade has ever blotted his escutcheon. Confess it, Martell. It’s very good of you to talk to us.’
Martell greeted this with an amused shake of the head.
Fanny was a little surprised to hear Edward raise the subject in this way when, as a Totton and undoubtedly still in trade, it might have seemed to place him at a disadvantage. But watching Martell’s amused reaction, she realized there was an element of calculation in her cousin’s boyish candour. With his own mother, she realized, belonging to a minor gentry family, his links to the Burrards – his close relationship, come to that, with herself, an Albion – young Edward Totton was already within the circle of relationship of the gentry. His oblique reference to his own family being in trade was therefore a subtle invitation to the aristocrat to tell him it didn’t matter.
‘I amaze myself sometimes,’ Martell finally remarked, rising very creditably to the occasion, ‘that I talk to anyone at all.’
At which Edward grinned and Louisa laughed; and Fanny, if the truth were told, could not help being secretly pleased that she was an Albion.
They walked back to their carriage after that, the two girls together with Mr Gilpin, Edward and his friend talking to each other. Everyone seemed in high spirits, except for Mr Gilpin, who had fallen rather silent.
Before they got into their carriage, however, it was time to bid farewell to Mr Martell, who had to ride on to another house in the neighbourhood.
‘But we are not parting for very long,’ Edward announced, ‘for Martell has agreed to come and stay with us, in Lymington. Quite soon, he says. It’s all agreed.’
This was a surprise indeed: yet not, Fanny had to confess, entirely unwelcome. After all, if he were at the Tottons’ house, she should not be obliged to see him more than she wished.
So they all said goodbye and watched him ride off, and then returned to Oxford for their final dinner before their departure with Mr Gilpin, whom they did not forget, at dinner, all to thank.
Fanny found as, with the help of the inn’s maid, she packed her clothes, that she was in a very cheerful mood.
She was somewhat taken aback, therefore, when Louisa suddenly declared: ‘Are you sure, Fanny, that you do not like Mr Martell.’
‘I? I do not think so Louisa. Not really.’
‘Oh,’ returned Louisa, giving her a strange little look. ‘Well, I do.’
Puckle set out soon after dawn. Nobody took any special notice. You didn’t ask where Puckle was going. He was a man of secrets.
Only a handful of the men who worked at Buckler’s Hard actually lived there; and although there was a village just outside the gateway to Beaulieu Abbey, not many of the labourers and carpenters lodged there either, since neither the owners of Beaulieu nor the villagers wanted them.
The reason was simple. If a labourer lived in Beaulieu parish and fell