Lord Somerton’s Heir

by Alison Stuart

  Lord Somerton’s Heir

  Alison Stuart

  Lord Somerton’s Heir

  Alison Stuart

  Can the love of an honourable man save her from the memory of a desolate marriage?

  From the battlefield of Waterloo to the drawing rooms of Brantstone Hall, Sebastian Alder’s elevation from penniless army captain to Viscount Somerton is the stuff of dreams. But the cold reality of an inherited estate in wretched condition, and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his cousin’s death, provide Sebastian with no time for dreams — only a mystery to solve and a murderer to bring to justice.

  Damaris, widow of the late Lord Somerton, is desperate to bury the memory of her unhappy marriage by founding the charity school she has always dreamed of. Except, her dreams are soon shattered from beyond the grave when she is not only left penniless, but once more bound to the whims of a Somerton.

  But this Somerton is unlike any man she has met. Can the love of an honourable man heal her broken heart or will suspicion tear them apart?

  About the Author

  Award winning Australian author Alison Stuart always wanted to be a writer. As a teenager she scribbled romantic historical novels in shorthand notebooks but it was only when she dislocated a shoulder in a skiing accident, leaving her stranded in a snowbound chalet in the Australian Alps with nothing for company but a notebook computer, that she dared to write the story that had been tugging at her sleeve for so long.

  Her family moved from Kenya, where she had been born, to Australia in the late 1960s. Alison studied Law and Arts (majoring in history) at university and has worked all her life as a lawyer, both in private practice and in a range of different organisations, including the military and the emergency services. A fatal attraction for men in uniform (including her husband) may explain her leaning towards soldier heroes!

  Prior to publication, Alison had been a finalist in competitions, including the shortlist of the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize. Since 2007 she has published three historical novels set in the English Civil War: By the Sword, The King’s Man and Claiming the Rebel’s Heart. By the Sword won the 2008 Eppie Award for Best Historical Romance. She has also published the multi award nominated Gather the Bones and a historical time travel story, Secrets in Time, as well as an anthology of her published short stories.

  These days Alison is officially an empty nester, with an indulgent husband (and resident military expert) and two needy cats to keep her company.

  Visit Alison Stuart at http://www.alisonstuart.com

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank everyone who helped in Lord Somerton’s journey to publication, particularly my writing group, The Saturday Ladies Bridge Club, who lived through all its ups and downs, my beta readers Sasha, Kandy and Judy and Hearts Through History, the Historical chapter of Romance Writers America, who awarded Lord Somerton’s Heir the 2012 Romance Through the Ages Award.

  This book is dedicated to my mother, MPT, my rock and my best friend.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  PROLOGUE

  Brantstone Hall

  December 11, 1814

  In the light of the lanterns held up by the stablehands, the glossy hide of the great, black horse reflected fire. The animal shivered, breaking the fire into golden sparks. The handsome head bobbed, testing the hold of Thompson, the head groom, while the huge eyes, white against the dark-fringed lashes, scanned the crowd of faces.

  Isabel, clutching her shawl around her shoulders against the cold, dark winter morning, pushed through the crowd of stablehands and servants. She stopped short of the horse, her hand going to her mouth.

  No saddle — no rider.

  ‘What’s happened?’ The words were forced through lips that refused to move.

  ‘His lordship went out on Pharaoh last evening, my lady.’ The head groom, Thompson, swallowed visibly. ‘We found the ‘orse in the stable yard this morning. We’ve no idea how long it’s been here.’

  Pharaoh pulled at the restraining reins, rearing up, his great ironclad hoofs raising sparks as they returned to the cobbles.

  ‘Get the horse inside the stable and see to him,’ Isabel ordered. ‘We must order a search party. My husband is lying out there, injured.’

  And in this cold.

  She shuddered, dismissing the thought that they may be too late.

  Thompson thrust the reins at his son. ‘See to the ‘orse, boy.’

  The boy seemed dwarfed against the enormous animal but it went meekly, its head lowered as if exhaustion had claimed it.

  Thompson looked at Lady Somerton. ‘Do you know where he was bound, my lady?’

  Isabel swallowed. ‘Lady Kendall,’ she said. ‘He was intending to visit Lady Kendall.’

  Thompson nodded. ‘Aye. We’ll take that route first. To me, all of you.’

  Thompson gathered his hands around him. The staff, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, were fetched from the house and the men of Brantstone Hall set out on foot to search for the missing Lord Somerton, leaving Isabel standing alone in the stable yard in the cold, grey light of dawn. She would have stood there all morning if Mrs Fletcher, the housekeeper, had not fetched her inside, sitting her down in the blue parlour with a tray of tea and buttered bread.

  The tea, in its delicate porcelain cup, sat undrunk and cold, the bread curled and dried as the little clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. Isabel sat unmoving, staring out at the winter landscape of the Brantstone Park as if she expected Anthony to come galloping down the carriageway. She knew even before Thompson knocked on the door and stood shifting from one foot to the other, his shapeless felt hat clutched in his hand, that Anthony was dead.

  She followed the head groom out into the stable yard again, where a farmer’s cart now stood. She looked at the cart and with her head held high; she walked across it. Thompson interposed himself between her and the inanimate object that lay in the filthy dray.

  ‘Are you sure, my lady?’ he asked.

  She nodded and Thompson flicked back the sacking that covered the shapeless lump in the back of the cart. Isabel stared down into her husband’s face, into his open, staring eyes, already opaque in death. Anthony lay, stiff with rigor mortis, in the filth of a cart that had last been used to shift manure, from the smell. An ignominious end to his life, she thought.

  ‘We found him over by Lovett’s Bridge. He’d taken the hedge intending the shortcut across the Home Farm fields,’ Thompson was saying. He jerked his head at the saddle, the beautiful, hand tooled saddle that had been tossed into the cart with its owner. ‘Looks like the girth strap broke and he came off. Broke his neck in the fall. He’d not have known anything about it, my lady.’

  Aware of the anxious faces that surrounded her, Isabel swallo
wed. They expected her to break down. They wanted her tears but she had none to give. She had expended too many tears over Anthony, Lord Somerton, while he lived to spare any for him now that he was dead.

  Her gaze rested on the saddle. It had been her gift to Anthony on his birthday only a few months earlier. Now it was the cause of his death. It stood as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong between herself and her husband.

  She turned on her heel and walked back to the house with her head held high. With every step, the enormity of Anthony’s death sank in.

  She was free, but at what price came that freedom?

  Her back straightened and her lips tightened.

  To attain freedom, first she had to find Lord Somerton’s heir.

  Chapter 1

  London

  June 28, 1815

  ‘Are you certain he’s here?’ Isabel — Lady Somerton — asked, her voice muffled by the lavender scented kerchief she had pressed to her nose and mouth.

  The pathetic piece of muslin did little to conceal the stench of unwashed bodies, blood, corrupted wounds and worse that pervaded the makeshift hospital. The price Wellington had paid for the victory lay crowded on filthy straw mattresses on the makeshift hospital floor of an old warehouse in Battersea.

  Everywhere she turned the wounded had been crowded together, so many of them that only a curtain separated the officers from the other ranks. Pushing aside the curtain, the conditions for the officers was little better. At least they had cots, not straw-filled bags, but those who had survived the rapid evacuation to England were in a poor state. Most still wore the tattered remnants of the uniform they had worn in battle over ten days ago and it looked to Isabel as if the rough bandages over their wounds had not been changed in days.

  A young boy, hardly older than Peter Thompson, the stable boy at Brantstone, screamed for his mother. Her heart stopped at the heartrending sound and she turned and knelt down beside him, smoothing the hair back from his burning forehead. He clutched her hand, looking at her with unseeing eyes.

  She murmured to him, the sort of platitudes she imagined a mother would use with an ailing child and his breathing steadied and then stilled; the hand clutching hers fell away.

  Her companion, Bragge, the Somerton man of business, touched her shoulder.

  ‘Come away, my lady.’

  She stared down at the child on the cot. ‘But…’

  ‘He’s dead, my lady.’

  Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it down. She could not show weakness, not now. She needed all her strength.

  She rose slowly to her feet and cast the dead boy one last look, her lips moving in silent prayer for his soul and the mother who would grieve for her son.

  ‘The orderly over there said he’s in that corner, Lady Somerton.’ Bragge’s voice carried no conviction and he looked as green and sickly as she felt.

  He held the lantern higher to illuminate the man they had sought for so many months. He lay on his left side with his back to them. A torn and stained scarlet jacket with a Captain’s epaulettes had been thrown across his shoulders and a ragged blanket covered his torso and legs. All Isabel could see of the man was dark matted hair.

  Isabel held back for a moment, wondering what she would say. She had rehearsed a pretty little speech in the coach but now as she looked down at the man known to the world as Sebastian Alder, the words deserted her. How would he take the news? It could not be every day that the humble son of a country parson found himself elevated to the peerage. Would he rejoice or rail against his mother who had kept the secret of his parentage from him?

  Doubt seized her. What manner of man would he turn out to be? Surely a parson’s son would have some education, but would he be capable of running the Somerton estates? For the first time since hearing the news that they had found an heir to the Somerton estates, a niggling doubt caught her.

  ‘My lady?’ Bragge’s voice broke through her musing and she took a deep breath.

  Steeling her nerves, she reached out a gloved hand, touching the man on the shoulder.

  ‘Captain Alder?’ she ventured in an uncertain voice.

  When he did not stir, she looked up at Bragge, her heart sinking.

  ‘Are we too late?’ she ventured.

  ‘Try again, my lady.’

  She bent down and closed her fingers on his shoulder, shaking him.

  With a speed that took her completely by surprise, a hand grasped her wrist as the man rolled onto his back, hot, angry, feverish eyes seeking out the person who had disturbed him.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.

  Isabel gasped, taking a step back, but he did not release her wrist. ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you…or hurt you,’ she added, seeing pain in the tightened lips and sunken eyes.

  Slow comprehension softened the unshaven face and he released her wrist. His eyes closed and he let out a softly aspirated breath.

  ‘My apologies to you, lady. I did not mean to scare you. Just a soldier’s instincts,’ he said.

  Rubbing her wrist, she looked down at the man and caught her breath. There could be no denying he was a Somerton. He had his cousin’s finely chiselled cheekbones and well-shaped mouth, but his jaw had a strength to it that Anthony had lacked.

  ‘Are you…’ she ventured. ‘Are you Captain Sebastian Alder, son of the late Marjory Alder of Little Benning in Cheshire?’

  His eyes opened again but all the fight had gone from him. Beneath the stubble on his chin, his face looked grey, the eyes feverish and sunken in his skull.

  ‘My mother is eighteen years in the grave. Why do you want to know about her?’ The man frowned as if he were trying to bring them both into focus. ‘Who are you?’ His voice rasped with the effort of speech.

  ‘I am the dowager Viscountess Somerton and this is my late husband’s man of business, Bragge. We have been looking for you for over six months now.’

  He frowned. ‘Looking for me? What do you mean? What is your business with me?’

  ‘We’ve come to take you home,’ Isabel said.

  His mouth quirked into a humourless smile. ‘Well that is a nice sentiment, Lady Somerton, but I very much doubt I would survive such a trip. It’s nigh on two hundred miles to Cheshire.’

  ‘Oh, not to Cheshire. We are taking you to your new home: Somerton House in Hanover Square.’

  The man ran a hand across his eyes. ‘This is a jest or some strange fever dream that I’m going to wake from. Lady Somerton, or whoever you are, I do not live in Hanover Square. I told you, my home is in Cheshire.’

  ‘It’s no jest, Captain Alder. You are now the Viscount Somerton of Brantstone, first cousin to my late husband and as such, the heir to his estates.’

  To her surprise, Alder covered his face with his hands and laughed.

  Ignoring him, she continued, ‘The doctors said you would be all right to be moved such a short distance and I have arranged the best doctor to see to you.’ She glanced at Bragge. ‘Bragge, go and fetch the coachmen.’

  Bragge inclined his head and scurried out, leaving Isabel alone with the new Lord Somerton.

  Alder removed his hands from his face and watched her with puzzlement in his eyes — brown eyes, she noted, a soft, warm brown, not the cold grey of Anthony’s.

  She looked around the ward and shuddered. ‘This is a terrible place,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘I’m surprised anyone survives it.’

  ‘They don’t.’ The man on the pallet tried to sit up, falling back with a groan.

  ‘’Ere! Who are you then?’ A strident cockney voice caused Isabel to turn on her heel to be confronted by a soldier of Alder’s regiment, judging by the yellow facings of his jacket. He carried a bowl of water and some cloths, and he looked at Isabel as if she were some ill-intentioned assassin.

  Isabel straightened. ‘I’m Lady Somerton. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Bennet, Corporal Obadiah Bennet and you ain’t got no business with my captain. He ain�
��t strong enough for visitors.’

  Alder’s hand clutched at his corporal’s jacket. ‘Lady Somerton is just leaving, Bennet,’ he croaked.

  Isabel glanced down at the sick man. He had to come with her. Without him she would be lost. It was not his choice. He had obligations and responsibilities to assume. Didn’t he understand that?

  ‘Why do you want to take him away? I can take perfectly good care of him ‘ere,’ Bennet said.

  Isabel looked around the stinking ward. The dead boy still lay unregarded on his mattress, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling.

  ‘No! I cannot leave without him.’ She heard the rising hysteria in her voice. ‘He will die here. At Somerton House we can look after you properly. I can get the best doctors… A nurse…’

  ‘And why would a grand lady like you want to do that?’ Bennet sounded derisive.

  ‘Because,’ she lowered her voice, aware that their little contretemps was attracting attention, ‘your captain is the new Lord Somerton and he should be taken home where he can be looked after properly.’

  ‘What?’ Corporal Bennet stared at her and then down at his officer. ‘Is this lady stark, staring mad? I’ve known you since you was sixteen years old and you may be many things, but you ain’t no lord.’

  Alder waved a hand. ‘Explain it to him, or I’ll have no peace.’

  Isabel looked down at the wounded man. ‘It’s true. Your father was James Kingsley, my late husband’s uncle.’

  Bennet scoffed. ‘’is father was the Reverend Alder of Little Benning in Cheshire and a right decent gentleman too.’

  Isabel glared at the little man, tempted to rebuke him for his insolence.

  ‘The Reverend Alder was his stepfather.’ She looked down at Sebastian Alder. His eyes were open but unfocussed and she wondered if he could even hear what she was saying. ‘According to my information, Captain Alder, your mother married him when you were two years old. How many times must I repeat it? You are Lord Somerton’s heir.’

  Alder frowned as if trying to reconcile what she was saying. He raised a hand and ran it across his eyes. ‘It sounds an incredible tale but, Lady Somerton, I don’t have the strength to argue with you. If it means that you are intent on removing me to somewhere more pleasant than this charnel house, I can do no more than be much obliged.’