The Uncatchable Miss Faversham by Elizabeth Moss Page B

family had been right to consider the arrangement a suspicious one, and that was why they had shunned their mother even in her final sickness.
        Both soberly attired in black mourning dress, the two gentlemen stood up as she entered the room.
        ‘Please,’ she waved them to sit down again, ‘pray do not disturb your breakfast. I am so sorry to be downstairs so late – what a poor hostess I am. But Foster has been attending to your needs, I trust?’
        ‘Cooked meats, fresh eggs and soda bread, strong hot tea. Nothing has been missed,’ the younger Lovett insisted, smiling as he pulled out a chair for her at the head of the table. ‘Allow me to serve you from the sideboard. If you would you care to sit, Miss Faversham?’
        ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, seating herself.
        His name was Thomas, and he seemed a personable young man of about eighteen, with casual manners of the sort she was familiar with from London circles. His dress was perhaps not all it should be, but that was only to be expected from a regional tailor. Despite his countrified origins, Thomas had a certain air about him and such twinkling, flirtatious eyes, she knew he would be a great hit if he ever came to Town.
        With his light blondish hair, cut very much à la mode , Thomas was quite handsome too – though in a smooth, youthful way, nothing like Sallinger’s rugged looks.
        By contrast, the older brother Bernard was sombre and conservative in his manner, despite not being much older than herself, an unsmiling gentleman of some five and twenty years of age. His wife Matilda was slightly older and German, though her English was very fair. They both greeted her with deep seriousness, frowning at Thomas’s inappropriate levity as the young man continued to talk of the weather and the attractiveness of the grounds.
        Matilda was a large but handsome woman, her skin fashionably pale against the black lace mourning dress. She waved away the tea, preferring to drink coffee at breakfast instead, much to Foster’s disapproval. Considering they were the deceased’s children, they were not much given over to grief. It was clear they would never have attended the funeral if it had not been for Thomas’s desire to travel on to London afterwards for his first season.   
        Though knowing that her father had pursued an affair with the widowed Dora Lovett, installing her at the Hall and visiting her whenever he was in England, Eleanor found it hard to feel too much sympathy for her. Such an outrageously open arrangement must have deeply hurt her mother – assuming that word of it had ever reached her ears in Jamaica.
        Her own mother had died when Eleanor was twelve, and it would have been remarkable indeed if her father had not been lonely after that. But her mother had still been very much alive when Dora Lovett had moved into Faversham Hall. Why, she had even taken on the chaperonage of the eighteen year old Eleanor when she arrived here alone from Jamaica. Eleanor had barely given that unusual situation any thought at the time, never having grown close to Dora Lovett, whose somewhat cold countenance she had always avoided. But it would certainly explain some of the whispers and sympathetic glances thrown in her direction soon after settling in London, and why the lady herself had stubbornly refused to follow her there as a chaperone.
        Eleanor blushed, looking down without much appetite at her plate of cooling eggs.
        However reprehensible, her father’s behaviour was not equitable to Sallinger’s position – visiting his mistress with the woman’s unfortunate husband still alive and on the premises!
        ‘You are not hungry, Miss Faversham?’ Matilda demanded, watching her with interest.
        ‘Not particularly,’ she admitted, putting down her fork. ‘I have never been a great one for breakfast.’
        ‘Small wonder you cannot eat this morning, Miss