from exile last year, might I ask?’
‘Oh, here in France. I became a Swedish merchant for the duration of the troubles. I found it interfered very little with my business.’
Elinor found she was grappling with unsettling emotions. Of course, she was pleased to see her cousin. Any cousin. The Ravenhursts were a large and friendly clan. But something—the memory of that unsettling little voice in her head, perhaps?—replaced the calm contentment that was her usual internal state with a cold knot in her stomach. If she did not know better, she would think it disappointment.
‘What are you frowning about, Elinor?’ her mother enquired. ‘Nothing is more productive of lines on the forehead.’
‘A slight headache, that is all, Mama.’ She had met an intelligent, attractive man—Theo was certainly that, even if he was not exactly handsome—and he turned out not to be an intriguing stranger, but one of the Ravenhurst clan. A relative. So what was there to be disappointed about in that, other than the fact he would treat her like they all did, as Mama’s bluestocking assistant? An hour ago she would have said she wanted a man to talk to about as badly as she wanted to be back in London, sitting with the wallflowers in the chaperons’ corner through yet another hideous Season.
Whatever Cousin Theo’s business was, it appeared to be flourishing. She might not know much about fashion, but she knew quality when she saw it, and his boots, his breeches and the deceptively simple cut of his riding coat all whispered money in the most discreet manner.
‘Did you say business, Theophilus?’ Mama, as usual ignoring her own advice, was frowning at him now. ‘You are not in trade, I trust?’
‘One has to live, Aunt Louisa.’ He smiled at her. Elinor noticed her mother’s lips purse; he had almost seduced an answering smile out of her. ‘My parents, no doubt rightly, feel that at the age of twenty-seven I should be gainfully employed and cut off my allowance some time ago.’
‘But trade! There are any number of perfectly eligible professions for the grandson of the Duke of Allington.’
‘My father has informed me that I enter the church over his dead body. It is also his opinion that I was born to be hanged and therefore a career in the law is ineligible. I find I have a fixed objection to killing people unless absolutely necessary, which eliminates the army and the navy.’
‘Politics? The government?’ Elinor suggested, smiling as much at her mother’s expression as Theo’s catalogue of excuses.
‘I am also allergic to humbug.’
Lady James ignored this levity. ‘What sort of trade?’
‘Art and antiquities. I find I have a good eye. I prefer the small and the portable, of course.’
‘Why of course?’ Careless of deportment, Elinor twisted round on her seat to face him fully.
‘It is easier to get an emerald necklace or a small enamelled reliquary past a customs post or over a mountain pass than a twelve-foot canvas or six foot of marble nude on a plinth.’ The twinkle in his eyes invited her to share in his amusement at the picture he conjured up.
‘You are involved in smuggling?’ his aunt asked sharply.
‘In the aftermath of the late wars, there is a great deal of what might be loosely described as art knocking about the Continent, and not all of it has a clear title. Naturally, if it sparkles, then government officials want it.’ Theo shrugged. ‘I prefer to keep it and sell it on myself, or act as an agent for a collector.’
‘And there is a living to be made from it?’ Elinor persisted, ignoring her mother’s look that said quite clearly that ladies did not discuss money, smuggling or trade.
‘So my banker tells me; he appears moderately impressed by my endeavours.’
‘So what are you doing here?’ Lady James demanded. ‘Scavenging?’
Theo winced, but his tone was still amiable as he replied, ‘I believe there is an artefact of interest in the neighbourhood. I am investigating.’
There was more to it than that, Elinor decided with a sudden flash of insight. The smile had gone from his eyes and there was the faintest edge to the deep, lazy voice. The coolness inside her was warming up into something very like curiosity. She felt more alive than she had for months.
‘Where are you staying, Cousin Theo?’ she asked before her mother insisted upon more details of his quest, details that he was most unlikely to want to tell her. Once Mama got wind of a secret, she would worry it like a terrier with a rat.
‘I’ve lodgings down in St Père.’ Elinor had wanted to visit the village at the foot of the Vezelay hill, huddling beneath the towering spire of its elaborate church. She would have enjoyed a stroll along the river in its gentle green valley, but Lady James had dismissed the church as being of a late period and less important to her studies than the hilltop basilica. They could visit it later, she had decreed.
‘Rooms over the local dressmaker’s shop, in fact. There’s a decent enough inn in the village for meals.’
And now he is explaining too much. Why Elinor seemed to be attuned to the undertones in what he said, while her mother appeared not to be, was a mystery to her. Perhaps there was some kind of cousinly connection. She found herself watching him closely and then was disconcerted when he met her gaze and winked.
‘Well, you may as well make yourself useful while you are here, Theophilus. Elinor has a great deal to do for me and she can certainly use your assistance.’
‘But, Mama,’ Elinor interjected, horrified, ‘Cousin Theo has his own business to attend to. I can manage perfectly well without troubling him.’
Her cousin regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment, then smiled. ‘It would be a pleasure. In what way may I assist?’