He sighed aloud.
Despite what he had told George, he was going to have to put in an appearance at this infernal village hop after all, then, was he not? It would be just too ill-mannered to stay away, and he was never openly ill-mannered. No true gentleman was.
Sometimes - and more and more often these days - it was a tedious business being a gentleman.
There must now be considerably less than an hour in which to make himself presentable for the evening entertainment. It often took his man half an hour just to tie his neckcloth in a knot that satisfied his exacting valet's standards.
Elliott heaved both another sigh and his body to its feet.
In the future he was not going to venture anywhere beyond his own doors on February 14 - or beyond Anna's doors anyway.
St. Valentine's, for God's sake!
Whatever next?
But the answer was all too painfully obvious.
A village assembly was next, that was what!
2
THE Huxtable family lived in a thatched, whitewashed cottage at one end of the main village street. Viscount Lyngate and his secretary would have driven past it on their way to the inn. It is doubtful they would have noticed it, though. Picturesque as it was, it was modest in size.
Small, in other words.
Three members of the family lived there. They had inhabited the grander, more spacious vicarage until eight years ago, until the Reverend Huxtable had gone to his heavenly reward - or so the new vicar had assured his congregation at the funeral. His children had moved out the day after the funeral to make way for the Reverend Aylesford and his sister.
Margaret Huxtable was now twenty-five years old. As the eldest of the family - their mother had died six years before their father - she was the one who, at the age of seventeen, had taken charge of the home and her siblings.