Lady of the Lock

by Bancroft, Blair

  Lady of the Lock

  by Blair Bancroft

  Published by Kone Enterprises

  at Smashwords

  Copyright 2012 by Grace Ann Kone

  For other books by Blair Bancroft,

  please see http://www.blairbancroft.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

  1Dedication

  To John Rennie and the men who built the Kennet & Avon canal (1794-1810).

  And to the 20th century volunteers who restored it to pristine condition

  for the boating pleasure of all.

  Chapter One

  Wiltshire, Autumn 1800

  Amanda Merriwether had been in this world only a scant eleven years, but she was quite certain her papa was not supposed to shout at a duke. Even the navvies, set to puddling clay in the canal below, had stopped to watch. Of course, since Mandy knew the men hated tromping the clay, “kneading” it until it would hold water, any excuse to pause would do. Before returning her attention to the shouting match between Papa and the duke, she directed a look of sympathy at the men, who were up to their knees in muck at the bottom of the cut.

  “Your papa’s mad, fit for Bedlam,” a voice taunted, nearly in her ear. “Carewe’s like to shut down the entire canal.”

  Mandy scowled. A young lordling of fifteen or sixteen gazed scornfully down at her from the superiority of a good ten inches of height. “The duke is an investor,” she asserted, chin high. “He would lose a great deal of money.”

  “Money is of little concern to a duke,” the boy replied with the airy insouciance of the ton’s finest.

  Mandy fisted her hands. “Not the money this canal is costing, which is why Papa does not want to tunnel. It will cost a fortune and take forever.”

  “I assure you, Miss Upstart, my papa has fortunes to burn. If he wants an undisturbed view, he shall have it. And, besides, High Meadows is mine. The seat of the heir,” he added with an arrogant tilt of his head.

  Inwardly, Mandy conceded she was as unlikely to win a battle of words with this scion of a great house as her father was to prevail over the Duke of Carewe. If the boy confronting her was the duke’s heir, then he must be a marquess, and quite literally entitled to his arrogance. But conceding defeat was as little a part of her character as it was of her father’s. “There are other shareholders,” she declared. “My papa is trying to protect their interests, he told me so.”

  “And my papa says there will be a tunnel under High Meadows, even if it is the longest and most expensive in the history of canals.”

  “And adds another five years before the canal can be finished!” Mandy, arms akimbo, glared up at the future Duke of Carewe. Air whistled out between the boy’s teeth. Good. She’d actually forced him to think.

  “How long has it been?” he asked, his tone now more curious than contentious.

  “I was a baby when Papa did his first survey, five when the Act passed,” Mandy informed the arrogant lordling with the smug confidence of someone quite certain her knowledge of canals far exceeded his own. “I have spent my life watching the canal grow. And Papa thinks it may take ten years more. Particularly if we have to dig a tunnel!”

  “The staircase locks at Devizes, the aqueduct near Bath, and the new pumping station will take just as long,” the young marquess returned with a stubbornness to match her own.

  “The tunnel means more men and more money,” Mandy countered swiftly. Dratted boy. He actually seemed to know something about the canal, when she would have preferred him to be as ignorant as he was arrogant.

  “I told you, foolish girl, we have all the brass we need—”

  “Amanda!”

  “Montsale!”

  Fatherly hands descended on two pairs of shoulders. “Amanda,” John Merriwether said in a steely tone he rarely used to his only child, “make your curtsey to the duke and the marquess. They are leaving.”

  Inwardly seething, Mandy offered a curtsey that wobbled only slightly. The Marquess of Montsale managed to keep his nose in the air while proffering a sketchy bow in return.

  As the duke’s carriage pulled away, trailing a cloud of dust, John Merriwether, chief architect and engineer of the Kennet and Avon canal, placed an arm around his daughter’s thin shoulders. “We lost the battle, my girl, but, praise be, I still have a position. I should have known Carewe would have his way, willy-nilly. Time, money, the possibility of lives lost—nothing seems to matter but his precious view. And it’s not even his principal seat.”

  No. It was his son’s. Later that night, Mandy looked him up. Bourne Granville Hayden Challenor, Marquess of Montsale, born 1784, heir to the Duke of Carewe.

  A great deal of consequence for a boy of sixteen.

  He was arrogant, argumentative, boastful, and highly annoying.

  And quite the handsomest young man she had ever seen.

  Five years later

  Miss Amanda Merriwether stood on the bank of the River Avon and gazed at the three great arches of Bath stone, supporting the massive aqueduct towering above her head. Tears misted her eyes. She had lived with this great aqueduct from its first discarded sketches, through detailed architectural drawings and four years of construction, only to watch it sit idle for another four years while the canal inched its way toward completion. And now, at last, this very special day had come. Water was running freely through the channel along its top. With the exception of the flight of twenty-nine locks needed to conquer Caen Hill near Devizes and the Duke of Carewe’s tunnel (not yet begun), the Kennet and Avon canal was navigable from the Thames to the Severn, from London to the Bristol Channel. Narrowboats and barges, hauled by sturdy horses were already extending their reach past Newbury to Kintbury, Hungerford, the Bedwyns, Pewsey, and Bradford-on-Avon. And now . . . to Bath itself.

  “It is glorious, Papa,” she said to the tall man standing beside her, his wavy blond hair gleaming gold in the sun. “But it should be the Merriwether Aqueduct, not Dundas.” Her father’s sudden laugh was close to a snort, but Mandy could feel his pleasure.

  “Ah, my dear, but I am not chairman of the Kennet & Avon Canal Company. I am merely the poor soul who must design it and make certain all is accomplished as planned.” He turned back to another examination of the aqueduct. “It would be nice to think,” he said slowly, “that a hundred years from now it would still be in use but, truth to tell, some other means of transportation will come along and canals will be left to silt and weeds—”

  “Papa, how can you say so?” Mandy cried.

  “It’s the way of the world, child. Look at the tramway we’ve built down Caen Hill while the locks are being constructed. It takes little imagination to see carriages running on tracks—better tracks, mind you—over even longer distances. And do you recall my telling you about the steam locomotive built by Trevithick this past year? At the rate we’re going, we will have been building for sixteen years by the time the Caen Hill locks are finished. Enough time for the world around us to grow and change.”

  “You cannot possibly be saying the canal is o
bsolete before it is finished!”

  “My apologies, my dear.” John Merriwether gave his daughter his full attention. A little beauty she was. So much so, the navvies had begun to call her Lady of the Lock when she had not yet celebrated her thirteenth birthday. Petite like her mother, she had hair darker than his own, more like polished bronze. And her mother’s oval face, green eyes, and a figure . . . well, all a father could say was that the skimpy fashions of the day did not suit his daughter’s, ah, proportions. Which was why he insisted on fichus with all gowns that did not button up to the neck. He had already refused three marriage offers, two from young engineers working on the canal and one from the besotted son of a Berkshire squire. All perfectly respectable. And unthinkable. She was too young. And, besides, although surrounded by men day in and day out as she traveled with him from town to town along the canal, Amanda had shown surprisingly little interest in the open admiration cast in her direction.

  Too young, definitely too young.

  She was staring at him. No, glaring was closer to the mark. Eyes narrowed, hands on her hips. “Papa, I asked you a serious question, and you’re woolgathering! Canal. Obsolete?” she demanded.

  “No, no, my dear. I was merely thinking ahead. This canal and others will be with us for my lifetime, perhaps yours as well. Bringing goods from the far reaches of the world into the heart of England. I’ll build others, I suppose, but not another like the K&A. The Dundas Aqueduct is my greatest achievement, but there’s sadness with its completion as I doubt any other challenge will ever match it.”

  Mandy heaved a sigh, deciding not to spoil the moment by mentioning the Challenor Tunnel. “Come, Papa,” she said gently, placing a hand on his arm. “The first narrowboat is about to cross the aqueduct. We mustn’t miss Mr. Dundas cutting the ribbon.”

  “Of course, my dear.” The Merriwethers, father and daughter, slowly climbed the steep hill to the level of the canal far above.

  If the Marquess of Montsale had learned nothing else in his years at Eton and Oxford, he had perfected the pose of utter boredom. He might have friends who displayed a burst of enthusiasm for a horse race, a capital run by a fox, the many bloody rounds in a rousing mill. Or for pungent hot punch on a cold winter night, the turn of an ankle in the corps de ballet. But Bourne Granville Hayden Challenor had put away such nonsense, as befitted a young man who would one day ascend to one of the highest titles in the land. It was not that he never experienced joy, anger, pleasure, disgust, or surges of passion. He simply made certain others saw only the mask he kept firmly in place at all times, a nice mix of disinterest and hauteur.

  A mask he kept in place, even for the opening of the Dundas Aqueduct. An engineering marvel, he had to admit. Yet the hill at High Meadows remained undisturbed. Although Merriwether had the excuse of being fully occupied by other projects on the canal, Bourne suspected Merriwether was still hoping the duke would change his mind and allow a cut through High Meadows.

  It was not going to happen. A few weeks after reaching his majority, Bourne had broached the subject with his father and received an explosive reprimand. Challenor land was a trust to be handed intact from one generation to the next. It was not going to be hacked away for some demmed canal.

  And yet, if it was up to Bourne . . .

  He had never forgotten the bright-eyed child, hands fisted at her sides, who had no more respect for his consequence than her father had for the duke. Amazing effrontery. But look what Merriwether had done. Every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, the whole golden structure of the Dundas Aqueduct glowed, as if to say, Look at me. How beautiful I am!

  Lord! It wasn’t like him to be fanciful, but today he was facing some home truths. Except for investing in the Kennet and Avon canal, what had his father ever accomplished in his life? And what had the Marquess of Montsale accomplished beyond learning Latin and Greek, how to dress, drive to an inch, gamble like a gentleman, and how to set up a mistress. John Merriwether had built a canal 87 miles long, with 105 locks. A canal that would bring goods from the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa directly into the heart of England. A living memorial that would outlast them all.

  Once again, Bourne’s gaze ranged over the four hundred and fifty foot aqueduct, a structure sturdy enough to support the shining arrow-straight ribbon of blue water running down its length. Would it last a thousand years or more, like the Roman aqueducts that still stood in some places in the world?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement, a man and a woman climbing the last few feet of the steep hill to the level of the canal. For a moment a flash of admiration cracked the ennui of his façade. Merriwether himself, by God. And . . .

  Bourne gaped. There was no other word for it. That could not possibly be the stubborn little minx who . . .

  In the nick of time, he snapped his mask back in place as Merriwether and the bronze-haired little beauty made straight for the knot of men near the scarlet ribbon which had been strung from one side of the aqueduct to the other. The group included Carewe, Dundas, Portchester, Pulteney, Humphries, and several other committeemen whose names he did not know. No arguments from Merriwether today, Bourne noted, as he joined the others. Even the little minx seemed to have developed caution, as she curtseyed prettily to all the gentlemen before stepping back a few feet and allowing the men to talk.

  How opportune.

  Maneuvering with all the ease of a young man who had been on the town for several years, Bourne soon found himself standing at the young beauty’s side. “Miss Merriwether, we meet again.” A tilt of her bonnet, and a pair of sharp green eyes stared up at him. Devil a bit! After five years, still defiant.

  “Has your father changed his mind about the tunnel?” she demanded without so much as a “Good morning” or a proper curtsey.

  “I fear not.” He was mumbling. The Marquess of Montsale mumbling. Inwardly, he cursed.

  “Papa was hoping to talk to him about it today,” she added, a spark of hope lighting her remarkable green eyes.

  Somehow Bourne managed a smooth reply. “As Carewe hopes to receive an exact date of when the tunnel will begin.”

  “The entire project will be done a great deal faster if we cut, rather than tunnel,” she responded just as smoothly.

  Her outward appearance might have changed, but clearly her mindset had not. “The tunnel is inevitable, Miss Merriwether. Carewe will not budge.”

  “You are of age, are you not? And High Meadows is yours. Surely—”

  “Challenor land will not be hacked to bits, Miss Merriwether. Not for the convenience of your father or for all the goods in China.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, how can you be so stubborn?”

  “I?” Bourne choked, now thoroughly incensed. “You’re mad, girl, fit for Bedlam.”

  “I believe we’ve already gone that route, my lord. You repeat yourself.”

  She remembered his words from five years past? At least he’d made an impression. A pity she’d never have a Season. Bourne’s lips curled as he pictured the faces of the patronesses at Almack’s if asked to produce a voucher for the daughter of someone they would consider but a notch up from a tradesman.

  “My apologies for my existence, Miss Merriwether. Good day.” With a slight tip of his hat, he moved back to his father’s side. From which vantage point Bourne watched Charles Dundas cut the ribbon that was a bright red line above blue water and the golden Bath stone of the aqueduct. Cheers went up from Merriwether’s young cadre of engineers; applause and sounds of satisfaction from the fashionably dressed gentlemen who had paid for it. Miss Merriwether bounced at her father’s side like the hoyden she was as a gaily decorated narrowboat, strings of pennants flying, entered the aqueduct from the Limpley Stoke side, carrying a cargo of fine silks, tableware, vases, fans, and objects d’arts from the Orient to Bath.

  Bourne sneaked a look at the portion of Miss Merriwether’s face that was not hidden by her bonnet. She was transformed. Not the stubborn little wench who cl
ung to an argument like a limpet, but a girl filled with joy by her father’s grand creation. She was going to haunt him, he knew it. Bad enough that he clearly remembered their encounter in the past, but now . . . now more than her sharp words would haunt him. The chit might not be marriage quality, at least not for the heir to a dukedom, yet she was far too respectable for offers of another kind.

  Or was she?

  An hour later, a few well-chosen questions had elicited the information that Miss Merriwether had for some years traveled with her father, acting as his secretary, and spending her days surrounded by men. A most unconventional upbringing.

  Bourne also learned that Merriwether estimated it would take three or four years to tunnel beneath High Meadows. And for such a dangerous operation, Bourne knew the chief engineer would never be far away. So this was not good-bye. He would see the little termagant again in the not-so-distant future.

  The Marquess of Montsale allowed himself a smile.

  Chapter Two

  Wiltshire, Spring 1806

  The Lady of the Lock would have preferred accommodations at the sprawling Bear Inn in Hungerford, where she and her papa had spent many comfortable months during the building of that phase of the canal. But the extra miles between Hungerford and the Challenor Tunnel were wasteful, Papa said, so Great Bedwyn it was. And, truthfully, the garden at the Cross Keys Inn was delightful and the accommodations charming. Built in Tudor times, the inn boasted dark beamed ceilings, polished wood floors, cheerfully burning fireplaces, good food, and a good-natured innkeeper, particularly after Papa bespoke the rooms for the better part of the year.

  Mandy, perched on a narrow windowseat in her bedchamber, peered at the garden below, where daffodils and tulips were just beginning to show their color, signaling that the ground, no longer frozen, was ready for digging. Now that the Dundas Aqueduct was opened and work finished on all but the last two demanding projects, her papa had reassigned the navvies. Some to building a bigger and more efficient pumping station at Crofton, some to the Caen Hill locks, which were so pressed for workers they had even conscripted French prisoners of war. But the best of the navvies he kept for himself—for the construction of what they now referred to as the Challenor Tunnel