The Earl of Highmott Hall: A Regency Cinderella

by Nina Clare

  The Earl of Highmott Hall

  A Regency Cinderella

  Nina Clare

  lost&foundStories

  Copyright © 2020 by Nina Clare

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.ninaclarebooks.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Free fairy tale novel

  Also by Nina Clare

  Prologue

  ‘The estate is yours, Celia. It is all yours.’

  ‘I know, Papa. But you will get well. It will not be mine for a long time yet.’

  ‘Look after your stepmother and stepsister.’

  ‘You shall be up in no time, Papa. Just rest.’

  ‘I am so sorry about the debts, Celia.’

  ‘Debts?’

  Sir Richard Asher closed his eyes for the last time. The physician stepped forward to check for signs of life, and deemed there were none. The sheet was pulled up, the hands were folded, commiserations were made, and the physician presented his bill for immediate payment, the word debts resounding in his ears.

  Lady Asher returned from town to learn that she was newly widowed for the second time. She turned on her heel and called back the carriage.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Celia called after her.

  ‘Back to my dressmaker. To order black.’

  News quickly spread through the county. Family acquaintance sent their condolences, and villagers came to pay their respects to the late master. Then came the lawyer with his sheaves of unpaid bills and promissory notes, wearing his horn-rimmed spectacles that he peered over as he informed the new mistress of Roseleat of how impoverished she now was.

  ‘You must sell,’ he whined like a bluebottle.

  ‘I will not sell,’ Celia swatted back.

  ‘It is the only way. Sell up and buy a little cottage in the country.’

  ‘This is my ancestral home. I will not leave it.’

  ‘The estate is bankrupt. You must sell. And you are but a child. You cannot work the estate.’

  ‘I am sixteen. I am not a child. I will work the estate. I will make a profit. I will repay the debts. I only need time.’

  ‘And manpower. You cannot work the estate without workers.’

  Celia could not argue this point. Since the news of the debts the estate workers had been slinking away, shortly followed by the household staff. She had paid them all on the usual quarterly payday, despite her stepmother’s outrage at the last of the coin being parted with. They had taken their wages and left, murmuring of the family curse. Only Agnes, her old nursemaid, had stayed, and Robin, Agnes’ grown-up grandson. Roseleat had been his home since his grandmother had taken him in as an orphan. He was not going anywhere.

  ‘I have Robin,’ Celia told the lawyer.

  ‘You must sell.’

  1

  THREE YEARS LATER

  It was a good thing Celia had a fairy godmother, or life would have been a little more dire than it had been the past three years. But only a little.

  It was a pity that her godmother came but once a year, never showing herself, but leaving one small gift behind, to be found in the course of the day. Still, Celia was not one to complain; she was too busy for complaining. And one fairy gift on her birthday was still to be prized, no matter what her stepmother said.

  ‘Cabbages?’ her stepmother exclaimed, on this, Celia’s nineteenth birthday. ‘She gave you cabbages?’

  ‘Cabbages are very useful,’ replied Celia, holding up the little charm, shaped as a silvery cabbage. She had found it in the hen house when she had gone to feed the chickens. One of the hens had been brooding on it. ‘With some planning, I can produce them all year round. We shall never want for winter greens again.’

  Celia’s stepsister pulled a face. ‘I do not think I care for cabbage,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent for the complexion, Lavinia,’ Celia assured her.

  ‘Is that true, Mama?’ Lavinia asked.

  ‘It is not so good as asparagus,’ said Lady Asher. ‘You would have done well to ask for asparagus, Celia. So much more refined than cabbage.’

  ‘Asparagus takes time to cultivate,’ Celia murmured, admiring the cabbage charm, which had delicate folding leaves, just as though a real cabbage had been shrunk down to the size of a coin. ‘And it only crops for a short season. That is why it is so expensive.’

  ‘Which is why it would be a good thing to grow,’ said Lady Asher. ‘Civilised people like asparagus. You would get a good price for it at the great houses.’

  ‘Madam, we are the only great house in this part of the county,’ Celia reminded her. ‘At least, the only one occupied.’

  Lady Asher gave a little groan and crossed the drawing room with its faded sofas and worn carpets to look out of the window with its tired curtain dressings.

  ‘Potatoes on your seventeenth birthday,’ Lavinia recounted in her girlish voice, using her fingers to tick the years off. ‘What was it on your eighteenth?’

  ‘Pumpkins.’

  ‘Oh yes. More peasant food. And now cabbages.’ Lavinia sighed and flung herself back against the sofa. ‘Oh, for a fairy godmother who brought beautiful gowns and jewellery and new shoes.’ Lavinia lifted the hem of her gown to examine her house slipper of thin leather with the little hole in the left shoe, through which her stocking could be glimpsed.

  ‘It would be nice to have new shoes.’ Even Celia could not deny that. She wore the wooden clogs left behind by one of the dairy maids when the staff had decamped three years ago. They were sturdy, but she had outgrown them at seventeen, and they pinched. She went barefoot when it was not too cold. ‘But I have a very practical fairy godmother. Look how well the crops have done these past years. Fairy-blessed crops. They have helped keep a roof over our head and put food on the table. So we will be thankful.’

  Lavinia regarded her doubtfully out of her big, brown eyes, and Lady Asher remained as a statue in the window alcove.

  ‘Well,’ said Celia, raising the charm to her eye level. ‘I suppose I had better get you planted before the frosts come.’ She frowned. ‘I will have to plough the east meadow first.’ She grimaced. ‘Which is full of rocks. I shall need help.’ She glanced at her stepmother and stepsister.

  Lavinia saw the look and sank deeper into the sofa. ‘I wish I could help,’ she sighed, ‘but I really am absolutely fatigued. I had such an awful night. I barely slept a wink.’

  Celia looked at her stepmother’s tall, straight back. Her stepmother did not look round, but said, ‘Get the boy to do it.’

  ‘Not even Robin can clear a whole field on his own,’ said Celia.

  ‘He managed it last year. For the pumpkins.’

  ‘Last year I traded the
last of the Chinese urns to borrow Farmer Blythe’s shire.’

  ‘So you did. I imagine Mistress Blythe has that urn as her parlour centrepiece,’ said Lady Asher with a sour tang to her voice. ‘And the roofer has the portrait of Lady Maria and her lapdog hanging in his dining room, while the miller has the delightful pair of bronze bookends, the ones shaped as ships, were they not? No doubt propping up his account ledgers. Meanwhile the seamstress has a marble bust of Admiral Asher watching over her endeavours.’

  ‘The roof had to be mended,’ said Celia, ‘and sacks of flour do not grow on trees, and as for the seamstress’s bill—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Asher lifting one pale hand. ‘You are going to remind me that the seamstress’s bill was not your own. But a widow must have her weeds. Even if it is all she has.‘

  Celia took a deep breath. ‘I have no wish to go over the past, madam, that will not help us. My only concern is to get a new crop in the ground. The more the estate can produce, the more income can be generated.’

  ‘Tell me, Celia,’ said Lady Asher. ‘How much does a cabbage cost in the marketplace?’

  Celia hesitated. ‘Fourpence. For a large one.’

  ‘Fourpence. Upon my word. How rich we shall be.’

  Celia knew where this conversation was heading. ‘I do not want to talk about money,’ she said.

  ‘Then shall we talk about not having any money?’ said Lady Asher.

  ‘It is not my fault everything keeps going wrong.’ Celia felt her temper rising. ‘My luck has got to turn sometime soon. Next year—’

  ‘Next year, next year,’ mimicked her stepmother. ‘Next year will always be better. Except it never is. It gets worse.’

  Celia clenched her hands into fists. The silver cabbage charm dug into her palm.

  ‘Mr Dankworth called again this morning,’ said her stepmother, turning her long neck to speak over her shoulder.

  ‘I will not sell,’ Celia said firmly.

  She caught the sneer on her stepmother’s face as she turned her head back to the window.

  ‘Then we shall continue to live in increasing poverty until the cursed place falls down about us. But what does that matter? As long as you get to keep your precious fields of stones and thistles and your beloved empty stables, your burned down barns, and your cold, damp house.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, I cannot bear it when you talk so dolefully!’ cried Lavinia. She jumped up from the sofa and pressed a hand to her brow. ‘It brings the headache on so awfully. I shall have to go and lie down.’

  ‘Now look what you have done,’ said Lady Asher. ‘You have made Lavinia ill again.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, I do wish she would sell,’ moaned Lavinia as her mother escorted her from the room. ‘A smart little town house would be just the thing for us, wouldn’t it? A phaeton and ponies. Clothes that fit. Is it too much to ask?’

  The room emptied with a rustle of skirts, and Celia stared after them, waiting for her heart to stop hammering with anger.

  She turned in a slow circle, scanning every inch of the drawing room, the only reception room that remained furnished. She was looking in vain for something she might sell for the hire of a plough horse. But there was nothing left. The portrait of her late mother still hung in pride of place over the mantelpiece; Celia would rather starve than sell that.

  On the opposite wall hung the portrait of Lady Violet. It had evaded being sold – no one would take her into their house. The old stories of the famous Yuletide curse were still believed among the folk of the county.

  Celia looked up at the sneer of her ancestor, Lady Violet Asher, with her flame-red hair and her blazing green eyes, defying Celia to be weak while she had such ancestral blood in her veins.

  Celia straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. ‘I shall get the hoe and barrow,’ she said. ‘December frosts and rocks and tight clogs be damned,’ she said fiercely, as she gazed at Lady Violet. Immediately she felt a pang of remorse, and looked back at the portrait of her mother, with her serene grey eyes and smooth strawberry-blonde hair. Her mother would have hated to hear such a coarse expression. Suddenly she felt tired. It was exhausting feeling so many conflicting things.

  ‘I do not have time to be tired,’ she scolded herself. ‘There is work to be done.’

  The east meadow was separated from Roseleat by a bridle track, with hawthorn hedges on either side. Celia had reluctantly sold all their horses in the first year of bankruptcy, and the only other persons with lawful access to the path were the owners of the neighbouring estate; an estate that sat empty of family since the demise of the late countess, her nephew and heir being abroad on his studies until he came of age.

  Celia was used to seeing the Highmott Hall workers, who occasionally used the track when they wanted to take the short route from the Hall to the east road, so it was no surprise to hear the sound of horse hooves behind her that morning. She looked over her shoulder to see a gentleman on a black thoroughbred. He was not one of the estate workers. ‘Who is that?’ she wondered aloud, stopping a moment and turning round, shielding her eyes that she might better see the stranger who had the late morning sun behind him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Robin echoed in his slow voice. He had been trudging ahead, with the heavy hand plough on his shoulders. He stopped and turned, squinting against the sun.

  Whoever it was, they were coming on at a fast pace; Celia had expected the rider to slow down on spying herself and Robin, but the rider’s pace only increased, and she had just time to jump out of the grassy path, and press herself up against the hawthorn hedge as the rider shot past.

  Robin was not one for moving quickly, and he had barely made it out of the way. His sudden movement caused him to stumble under the weight of the plough, a horrible crack sounded, and he lay sprawled on the ground looking skyward.

  Celia dropped her hoe, and rushed to Robin’s side. ‘Are you hurt, Robin? What was that dreadful crack?’ She was terrified lest it had been one of Robin’s limbs, and cried with relief to see that it was only the wooden handles of the plough. ‘Imbecile!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ Robin said as he struggled to get up. ‘Didn’t mean to break it.’

  ‘Not you, Robin, I wasn’t calling you an imbecile – it was that ignorant brute I was talking of! Who was he? Wait till I find out. I shall tell him what I think of him running down people on their own land!’

  Celia tried to pull Robin to his feet, but the weight of his six-foot-four frame was too much for her, and her hands slipped out of his; she staggered backwards, catching her coat on the hawthorn branches behind her. A soft rip of worn wool sounded.

  A broken plough and her only warm coat ruined. This was not turning out to be an enjoyable birthday.

  2

  ‘Welcome home, my lord,’ greeted the butler. Only a slight lift of his eyebrows showed his surprise. ‘We did not expect you till tomorrow.’

  ‘I had a letter from the lawyers telling me I had to be here this very day, or it was all up, whatever cryptic lawing nonsense that means,’ said Lord Marbury. ‘I trust my trunks have arrived?’

  ‘They came yesterday, my lord. And Mr Morris, the new valet has arrived.’ The butler peered through the open door of the manor, looking for his lordship’s attendants.

  ‘My grooms will be along with my horse. It threw a shoe. Had to hire a mount, and a badly-trained beast of a thing it was – nearly trampled a pair of servants on the way here. Thought I was going to end up thrown in a hedge myself. I have a guest arriving tomorrow, give him the best of the guest rooms. Well, so here I am.’ Lord Marbury looked about him at the expanse of stone floors, dark panelling and the great family crest on the door to the great hall. Haven’t seen this place since I was…how old was I?’

  ‘You were ten, my lord, when last I had the honour of waiting upon you.’

  ‘Eleven years ago,’ said the earl, looking round as though memories were floating like ghosts about the hall. ‘Poor old aunt,’ he murmured. ‘Shut
up alone here all those years.’

  ‘May I show you to the drawing room, my lord. The fire shall be lit directly and refreshment ordered. Hot water shall be sent up to your chambers.’

  ‘Very good,’ the earl answered mildly, distracted in looking about him.

  ‘Did you get much ground cleared, Robin-me-lad?’ Agnes asked. Her lined cheeks were red from the exertions of laundry.

  Robin shook his big, shaggy-haired head, like a great water hound. He lifted his hand to show a swollen finger.

  ‘What happened, Sweet-Robin?’ said Agnes, dropping her scrubbing brush to examine his hand.

  ‘He fell,’ said Celia, following Robin through the kitchen door. ‘Likely his finger is broke. The plough is broken too.’ She sank down on the bench at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. ‘Wretched imbecile!’

  ‘Who’s an imbecile?’ said Agnes.

  ‘The man who charged into us. If I could see him, I would—’ She lifted her head. ‘He rode to the manor.’ She stood up.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Agnes in a warning tone. ‘I know that look, Miss Celia. Don’t you be going up there—’

  But Celia had already reached the kitchen door. ‘I won’t have it,’ were her parting words. ‘He could have killed him.’

  Celia marched along the bridle path; it had been a long time since she had walked as far as Highmott Hall. When the countess was alive she had often walked up to the manor to borrow a book from the countess, whom she had known all her life. In Lady Marbury’s latter years, when she was too weak to leave the house, Celia would visit every day and read to her.