The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [292]
As is often done when a very aged person is in a room, people took turns to come and speak to him. Martell, as the visitor, went first. After the usual compliments, which were well enough received, he remarked that they had all enjoyed his daughter’s company in Oxford that spring. It was hard to be sure, but this seemed to please the old man less. Martell then remarked that he was come recently from Dorset and was planning to proceed to Kent, since this sort of geographical information usually opened up a conversational response of some kind.
‘Dorset?’ Mr Albion enquired, then looked thoughtful. ‘I’m afraid’, he confessed regretfully, ‘I never liked it much.’
‘Too many long hills, Sir?’ Martell offered.
‘I never leave here now.’
‘I understand you travelled to America,’ Martell attempted, still in hope.
The old blue eyes looked up at him sharply. ‘Yes. That’s right.’ Mr Albion now appeared to be considering something and Martell supposed he might be about to make some reflection upon the subject. But after a few moments it seemed that if he had been going to, he had thought better of it, for his eyes wandered to Louisa instead and, raising his silver-topped stick he pointed to her. ‘Very pretty, isn’t she?’
‘Indeed, Sir.’
Mr Albion seemed rather to have lost interest in Martell now for he pointed at Louisa again. ‘You’re looking very pretty today,’ he addressed her.
She bobbed a curtsy and, smiling, took this as a cue to come to his side, where she knelt down very charmingly by his arm.
‘Are you comfortable down there?’ the old man asked.
‘I’m always comfortable’, she said, ‘when I come to talk to you.’
It being plain that the old man had no further use for his company, Martell withdrew while Fanny went to make sure there was nothing her father needed.
‘I feel sorry for Miss Albion,’ he murmured to Edward. ‘Where did you intend we should go tomorrow?’
‘To Beaulieu, if the weather’s fine,’ said Edward.
‘Could we not ask your cousin to accompany us?’ Martell suggested. ‘It must be grim for her being in this house with her father all the time.’
Edward agreed and thought the plan a good one. ‘I shall do my best,’ he promised.
After this, Fanny returned and Martell had the opportunity to talk to her for several minutes. She seemed to recover her former cheerfulness somewhat and they enjoyed a little of the pleasant conversational intimacy they had experienced at Oxford, but as well as appearing rather older, there was, he thought, a hint of sadness, even tragedy in her person, now that he saw her in the setting of her home. She must get away from here, he decided. Someone must save her from this. But he could quite see that such an escape would not be easy. Perhaps the visit to Beaulieu might raise her spirits. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Edward approaching the old man. Young Totton’s affable manner, he supposed, would do the trick nicely.
‘I think, Sir,’ Edward addressed Mr Albion with a charming smile, ‘that Louisa and I shall beg you, if the weather is fine, to let us steal our cousin Fanny from you for an hour or two tomorrow.’
‘Oh?’ Mr Albion looked up quite sharply. ‘What for?’
‘We mean to visit Beaulieu.’
For a second, not even that, a tiny shadow might have appeared on Louisa’s face, but in an instant it was gone. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried. ‘Do let Fanny join us. We shall not, I’m sure,’ she declared, ‘be gone for more than half the day.’ And she gave Mr Albion a smile that really should have melted him, had he not looked away.
‘Beaulieu?’ They might have announced an intention to travel up to Scotland. ‘Beaulieu? That’s a long way.’
No one quite liked to point out that it was scarcely more than four miles from where they were, but Edward, to his credit and with a pleasant laugh, remarked: ‘Scarcely further than we have come to see you today. We’ll be there and back in no time.’
Mr Albion looked doubtful. ‘With my sister away and in my state of health …’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘There’s no one else to take