James laughed shortly. “Your impulsive curiosity has served us well in the past.”
“Precisely.” Cecilia turned to the innkeeper. “Please conduct us to the parlor.”
“Yes, my lady, right this way.” He turned to climb an inside stairway to the first floor. He knocked at a door at the back of the tavern, then pushed it open.
Inside, a young man with disheveled brown hair and round wire spectacles wearing a several-sizes-too-large tobacco-brown-edged-with-gold-braid banyan, sat slouched on a bench near the fireplace where a coal fire burned hot. He straightened and shot to his feet when he saw the innkeeper was not alone.
“These be the folks as reserved the parlor,” the innkeeper told him as he escorted the Branstokes into the room.
“Oh! Yes—then I should go…,” said the young man, trailing off uncertainly. “Where should I go?” he asked the innkeeper as he took a step toward the door.
“Nowhere,” Cecilia put in. “We shall share the room with you through dinner,” she declared. “Sit. We are the Branstokes. Sir James and Lady Branstoke.”
The young man looked startled. He blinked owlishly behind his glasses. “Aileen said her mother would write to you.”
“Miss Aileen Montgomery?” James asked.
“Yes, my fiancée.”
“And you are Mr. Stackpoole?” James confirmed.
“Yes, Benjamin Stackpoole, at your service, sir,” the young man said, bowing.
James laughed. He looked down at his wife. “You were correct in your impulses, quite again.”
She smiled cheekily up at him.
“I’ll send the barmaid up to you directly,” the innkeeper said as he sidled toward the door, looking bemused at the exchange between his guests.
“Just have her bring up a pitcher of your ale and mugs for all,” James instructed.
“As you wish, sar. Your dinner will be ready in a thrice as well, that I promise,” the innkeeper said. “And thank you, sar, fer yur understanding.”
“I don’t know many innkeepers who would cater to a young man who has met with an accident as you have. You are to be commended.”
“Well, we’ve knowed Master Stackpoole since he were a tyke in short pants,” the man said with a small laugh as he backed to the door. He bowed to them and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
“You are local?” Cecilia asked as she untied the ribbons at the neck of her traveling cloak. James slid it from her shoulders. Cecilia murmured her thanks as she took the heavy, damp cloak from him.
“Yes,” the young man said. “The Stackpooles have been in this area for three hundred years.”
“So why did you come here and not to your family home?”
“It’s complicated,” he said, his shoulders slumping.
Cecilia sat down in a wing chair at right angles to his bench. “I understand from Mrs. Montgomery that your father wished you to call off your engagement,” she gently said.
“Yes. But I will not,” he said emphatically. “I love Aileen. She is the sweetest woman of my acquaintance and is not troubled by my poor eyesight or my desire to enter the diplomatic corps—which my father emphatically opposes.”
“Why is that? Does he wish you to pay more attention to your patrimony?”
“No, he is one of those that believes England should only cater to England and not to other countries." He shook his head. “To hear him talk today, you’d not believe he made the grand tour in his youth. Visited places like Athens, Constantinople, and Medina, places I’d love to go to! And so would Aileen.”
“She wishes to travel?”
“Oh, yes. Her grandfather traveled in his youth and used to tell her all manner of stories of exotic places. Not at all like my father who never talks about his travels and frowns on everyone and anything foreign.”
“Did something happen on his travels that caused him to develop his dislike of foreigners?”
