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She was spared answering by the porter who swept up to take their baggage.

She paid off the postilions and outriders, adjured them to arrange help for the young couple’s stranded equipage on the road, and led the way into the hotel behind a young woman wearing a dampened and far-too-low-cut a gown for safety.

Fortunately, a liveried hotel servant ushered the travelers straight to the reception desk, well away from the double doors at the back of the foyer, where everyone else seemed to be going.

“Welcome, Miss Talbot.” The reception clerk bowed obsequiously. “A pleasure to see you back again. How is his lordship?”

“Thank you. He is in excellent health. My goddaughter will stay with me in my suite, but could you possibly find a room for Mr. Knight here? Close to ours would be best.”

“Of course.” The clerk snapped his fingers, and they were accompanied up the staircase by the porter and the liveried footman.

Miss Smith looked about her with some awe, for the hotel was rather grand by the standards of a country vicarage, which had apparently been her home. Mr. Knight took it all in stride.

“Perhaps a quiet supper in our sitting room,” Elaine suggested, as the porter, panting slightly under the weight of Elaines’s portmanteau, eased everything down on the floor.

“That one is Mr. Knight’s,” said Miss Smith, and the porter departed with the last bag and Mr. Knight himself.

“We shall manage our own unpacking,” Elaine said comfortably.

Miss Smith’s regard was very direct. “Should Lord Linfield’s sister not have a maid?”

“She does, but I left her behind. You see, I grew too used to traveling in awkward places with my brother, and found a well-chosen companion to be much more useful than a servant. Old habits, as they say, die hard. Sadly, I no longer have a companion, since she married one of my many brothers-in-law. Would you be happy in this bedchamber, Miss Smith?”

The girl followed her through to the second, well-appointed bedchamber. “Very,” she said in awe.

“I reserved the accommodation at short notice,” Elaine explained, “and these were the only rooms with a sitting room still available. An extravagance, perhaps, but it has proved useful. Shall we unpack?”

It did not take Miss Smith long, and she soon tapped at the larger bedchamber door, asking if she could be of use. She turned out to be neat and efficient, shaking out and hanging gowns, arranging perfume bottles and skin creams on the dressing table beside the hairbrushes.

Poor relation, thought Elaine, used to looking after her family . Without the sad cloak, the girl’s dress was even more deplorable. But her figure was trim without being undernourished, her movements quick, and her complexion healthy. And she had that rare combination of beauty and character.

“Perhaps, if you still mean to be my godmother, you should call me Jenny,” she suggested. “My name is Jane, but no one but my aunt ever calls me that.”

“Then Jenny it is. Are you willing to confide your surname?”

“Smith,” Jenny said in surprise. She laughed.

“You thought it a ruse? Sadly not. My mother insisted on marrying a penniless nobody, you see—called Smith—against her family’s wishes, and I know my aunt and uncle are comparing me to her now.

But honestly, there is no comparison between my father’s status and Joe’s. ”

“How long have you known Mr. Knight?”

“Most of my life. Since I first came to live with my uncle and aunt at the vicarage.”

“Then you are neighbors?”

“Yes. And always friends. We understood each other, you see, and when he came back from his tour of Europe—I think he might even have been sent away on my account—he came home a red-hot radical and wanted to marry me.”

Elaine blinked. “To prove his radical credentials? Or his love?”

“Oh, he loves me,” Jenny said, her eyes soft. She smiled. “But both, probably! He rather likes stirring things up.”

“And you? Do you love him?”

“I always have,” she said simply. She shrugged. “It’s frustration with his bonds, with being forbidden to marry me, that make him angry and quite so prone to stirring.”

“And you think you can calm him down?”

“I can make him happy. I don’t want to change who he is or what he believes. For the most part he is right. Though my uncle regards him as the Antichrist and dreads the day he will inherit.”

“Inherit what?”

Jenny closed the wardrobe door. “He is heir to his guardian’s wealth. Joe is his nephew, you see.”

Elaine sat down on the bed and regarded her. “Have you considered what will happen when you go back?”

“We won’t go back. Not for a time, at least. Joe wants to try to make his living as a writer and eventually go into politics.”

“And what do you want?”

“To be with Joe.”

“He is very young,” Elaine said delicately, “to pin your whole life on him.”

“You think he will change,” Jenny said. “Perhaps abandon me or at least be unfaithful. He won’t.”

Oh, my poor, deluded child …

Jenny met her gaze candidly. “It is not in his nature.”

“With respect, my dear, I doubt a man’s nature is fully formed at the age of…what? One and twenty?”

“He is two and twenty, and I have no doubt we will both change and mature, but not from each other. Do you regret helping us?”

Elaine, who rather looked on it as rescuing them, at least temporarily, assured her that she regretted nothing. Although, enjoying an unexpectedly amusing supper with the pair, she began to think she had bitten off rather more than she could chew.

When Joe left them again and they had all retired to their respective beds, Elaine lay awake, her window open a mere crack to let in the sounds and scents of the sea and the muffled echo of revelry from the Gaming Club.

She racked her brains for a solution to their problem, for all she had managed to achieve so far was a promise from the couple that they would not leave without saying goodbye to her in person.