by Mary Nichols
‘Not yet, Aunt. You did not expect me to agree on the first time of asking, did you?’
‘Oh, you naughty puss, so he is to be kept dangling, is he?’
‘He may dangle if he wishes, but I rather think he has more spine than that. Besides, I have told him he may hope.’
‘Oh, that is as good as a yes! Now, we must make plans, organise a party—’
‘Hold your horses, Aunt, I cannot see that letting Mr Allworthy hope is the same as saying yes, truly I cannot and there will be no announcement until I do. And you cannot go organising parties before the announcement, can you?’ She smiled and bent to kiss her aunt’s cheek. ‘I’m sorry to spoil your fun.’
Aunt Lane wagged a black-mittened finger at her. ‘You are a dreadful tease, Jane. It is to be hoped you will not roast him too, for I do not think he will stand for it.’
‘He understands that I must have time to consider his proposal and is prepared to wait for an answer. Are you free tomorrow afternoon? He has asked us to take a carriage ride with him.’
‘Even if I were not free I would make myself so.’ She paused. ‘Oh, Jane, I am so pleased for you. I was beginning to despair.’
‘But why should you despair, Aunt?’
‘I should have come before. I should have helped you to get over that disgraceful business sooner, but I thought no, let her come to it in her own time. I should have known you had no one to take you out and about and make sure you were seen. James always has his head in his books and hardly knows what day it is; I should not have left it to him.’
‘Oh, do not blame Papa, Aunt, I told him I wanted to live quietly. I did not want to be seen out, it was too mortifying, and I have been able to help him with the copying. Everything he writes has to be copied, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know, and I do not blame him, I blame myself. It was the Countess who pointed it out to me. “That gel needs taking out of herself, or she will end up an old maid,” she said. “It is your duty to do something about it.” And she was right.’
The Countess of Carringdale was one of the many aristocratic connections of whom her great-aunt boasted. She never tired of speaking of them. ‘All on the distaff side,’ she told anyone who would listen. ‘My mother was the Countess’s cousin, which makes her your cousin too, Jane, seeing as your mother was my niece, though I cannot work out how many times removed.’
Jane did not care a jot for aristocratic connections and she certainly did not like them interfering in her life. Her great-aunt she could tolerate because she was kind and affectionate and had comforted her when her mother died. Fourteen years old, she had been, bereft and bewildered, and Aunt Lane had wrapped her plump arms about her and let her cry on her shoulder. And when she had broken off her engagement to Harry, Aunt Lane had been on the doorstep as soon as the news broke, and told her cheerfully that she had done the right thing, no one could possibly expect her to stay engaged to that mountebank after what he had done.
Persuaded that Jane was not going into a decline, she had gone home and they had kept in touch by correspondence. Until this year, when the Countess had told her Jane was mouldering away in obscurity, though how her ladyship knew that neither Harriet nor Jane knew.
‘Aunt Lane, you must not blame yourself; besides, two years is not so long to recover…’
‘But you have recovered?’ her aunt asked, looking closely into her face.
‘Oh, yes, Aunt, I am quite myself. My hesitation has nothing to do with the past, that is dead and buried and I do not want to speak of it again. I simply want to be sure, to take time making up my mind. Mr Allworthy is fully in agreement with that.’
She was not sure that the gentleman was as complacent as he pretended, but she could not rush headlong into an engagement that might not be good for either of them. How could she be sure that old scandal would not touch him? How could he be so sure she would make him happy? She was no catch, she had no fortune and hardly any dowry because Papa had never earned a great deal with his writing and there was very little left of the money her mama had brought to their marriage. It came to her, then, that perhaps Papa might be low in the stirrups and needed to see her provided for. If that were the case, had she any right to prevaricate? If she said yes, she would make everyone happy.
‘Then I suggest you go and acquaint your papa with your decision. He has gone back to the library.’ Her aunt sighed heavily. ‘I wonder he does not take his bed in there.’
Her father spent nearly all his waking hours in the library and only came out to eat and sleep and consult books and manuscripts in other libraries. Since her mother had died, his writing was all he cared for. Jane suspected that only while immersed in work could he forget the wife he had lost. As a fourteen-year-old and now as a fully grown woman, she had never been able to fill the gap in his life left by his wife. Oh, he was not unkind to her, far from it; he loved her in his way.
He had given her an education to rival that of many a young gentleman and an independent mind which those same young gentlemen might find an encumbrance rather than a virtue, but it was his great work, a huge treatise comparing the different religions of the world, which came first. She dreaded to think what would happen to him when it was finished. But she did not think it ever would be; the writing of it had become an end in itself. He did not want to finish it and therefore was constantly correcting and rewriting it, adding new information as he discovered it until it was now large enough to fill several volumes.
When she knocked and entered he was sitting at his desk, which was so covered with papers and open books the top of it was quite obliterated. He looked up at her over the steel rim of his spectacles. He looked tired. ‘Well, child? Has he gone?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘And?’
‘I am not sure how I feel about him, Papa. I told him I would think about it.’
‘You are not still wearing the willow for that rakeshame cousin, are you?’
‘No, Papa, of course not.’
‘What have you got to think about then? Mr Allworthy comes of good stock and he is a scholar like myself and not a poseur, nor, for all he likes to live in the country, is he a mushroom. There is not a breath of scandal attached to him and he seems not to mind that you have no dowry to speak of.’
‘That is something I cannot understand, Papa. Why offer for me when I have nothing to bring to the marriage? He does not seem the kind of man to fall headlong in love; he is too controlled. So what is behind it?’
‘You are too modest, Jane. And what has falling in love done for you, except make you unhappy? Better make a good match and let the affection come later as you grow towards each other. That is what happened with me and your dear mama.’
‘I know, Papa,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I will give Mr Allworthy an answer soon.’
‘See that you do, it is not fair to keep him dangling. Now, if you have no pressing engagement for the rest of this morning, I need some new pages copying.’ He held out a handful of sheets covered with his untidy scrawl, much of which had been crossed out and altered between the lines and up and down the margins. He had once had a secretary, but the poor man had been unable to make head or tail of the way Mr Hemingford worked and did not stay long. Only Jane could understand it because she had taken the trouble to do so.
‘Of course, Papa.’ She took the sheets to a table on the other side of the room and sat down to work, just as if she had not, only a few minutes before, received a proposal that could alter her whole life. Aunt Lane was busy making extravagant plans and her father had dismissed it as of little consequence. Both were wide of the mark. She needed to talk to Anne.
Anne was Harry’s twin, but that made no difference; she was Jane’s oldest and dearest friend. Anne had been overjoyed when Harry and Jane announced their engagement and bitterly disappointed when Jane called it off. Several times she had tried to plead on Harry’s behalf. He had been foolish, she said, and it had cost him his reputation and his commission and caused an irreparable rift b
etween him and their grandfather, the Earl of Bostock, whose heir he was, but it was unfair that it should also cost him Jane’s love, especially when he had only been thinking of their future together. Jane’s reaction was to quarrel with her friend so violently they had not spoken to each other for months.
They had been rigidly polite when they met in company and that had been unbearable until one day, finding themselves in the same room and no one else present to carry on a conversation, they had felt obliged to speak to each other. And talking eased the tension. Having few other friends and certainly none that was close, Jane had missed Anne, and it was not long before they had buried the hatchet, but only on Anne’s promise never again to mention Harry and what had happened.
When she told Mr Allworthy that she had an engagement that afternoon, nothing had been arranged, but she must have known, in the back of her mind, that she would go to see Anne. News as stupendous as this needed sharing.
Although she could have borrowed her aunt’s carriage the Earl of Bostock’s London mansion was just off Cavendish Square, near enough for her to reach it on foot. The Earl was extremely old and rarely left Sutton Park, his country home in Lincolnshire, but Anne, who had made her home with him ever since both parents had been killed in a coaching accident when she and Harry were very young, had come up for the Season, as she did every year. The amusements on offer afforded her a little light relief from being at her grandfather’s beck and call, gave her the opportunity to renew her wardrobe and spend some time with Jane. His lordship did not deem it necessary to surround her with retainers and so, apart from the usual household servants, she lived with her maid-companion, a middle-aged sycophant called Amelia Parker.
Jane had no qualms about coming across Harry while visiting her friend because he had left the country almost immediately after the scandal. If Anne knew where he was, she had never told Jane, perhaps because Jane had assured her she did not want to know and would not even speak of him.
She was admitted by a footman and conducted to the drawing room where Anne was dispensing tea to a bevy of matrons who seemed to think that just because she had no mother, it was their duty to call on her and give her the benefit of their advice, notwithstanding she was twenty-four years old and perfectly able to conduct her own affairs. ‘Such a dutiful gel,’ they murmured among themselves. ‘She is devoted to that old man and stayed in the country to look after him when that scapegrace shamed him and ruined her own chances doing it. Now she is too old. We must go and bear her company.’ Anne knew perfectly well what they said and often laughed about it to Jane, but there was a little hollowness in the laughter.
She came forward when Jane was announced and held out both her hands. ‘Jane, my dear, how lovely to see you.’ She reached forward to kiss her cheek and added in a whisper, ‘Give me a few minutes to get rid of these antidotes and I shall be free to talk.’ She drew Jane forward. ‘Do you know everyone? Lady Grant, Lady Cowper, Mrs Archibald and her daughter, Fanny?’
‘Indeed, yes.’ Jane bent her knee to each of them and asked them how they did, but though they were polite and asked after her father, they had no real interest in her doings and the conversation ground to a halt. Not long after that, they gathered up parasols, gloves and reticules and departed.
‘Now,’ Anne said, as soon as the door had closed on them. ‘I shall order more tea and we may sit down for a comfortable coze.’ She turned to ring the bell for the maid, then took Jane’s hand and drew her to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘You look a trifle agitated, my dear, has something happened to upset you?’
‘Not upset exactly. I have received an offer of marriage.’
‘Oh.’ There was a little silence after that, as if Anne was cogitating how to answer her. ‘Who is the lucky man?’
‘Mr Donald Allworthy.’
‘Goodness, not that sti—’ She stopped suddenly.
Jane laughed. ‘That stiff-rump, is that what you were going to say?’
‘Well, he is a little pompous.’
‘Only if you count good manners and courtesy as pomposity. And I am sure he is very sincere when he says he has a high regard for me.’
‘Oh, Jane, you are never thinking of accepting him?’
‘I have said I will consider it.’
‘But, my dear, you can’t, you simply cannot.’
‘Why not? I should like very much to be married.’
‘But not to Donald Allworthy.’
‘No one else has offered.’
‘You know that is not true. You would have been married by now, if—’
‘Please, Anne, do not speak of the past. It is dead and buried, along with my dreams. I must be practical. Papa is becoming tired and increasingly frail and I know I must be a great burden to him. Besides, Aunt Lane has taken so much trouble.’
‘You surely would not agree to marry someone you do not love simply not to disappoint your aunt. That is the very worst reason I can think of for marrying anyone.’
‘Of course it is not that, or not only that. I do not want to be an old maid, Anne.’
‘You are four years younger than me, there is still time for you.’
‘Oh, I am sorry, I did not mean—’ Jane broke off in confusion.
Anne laughed. ‘No, I know you did not, but it is true, isn’t it? I am past my last prayers and resigned to it—more than resigned, I am happy. I do not think I would make anyone a good wife, I am too independent and outspoken and I value my freedom.’
‘You think I should be like you?’ They had had this conversation before, but then she had not just had a proposal and that made the argument so much more cogent.
‘Not at all. I have never said that. You were born to be a wife and mother. I am only sorry—’
‘Do not be,’ Jane put in sharply. ‘We are not talking of that, but what I should do about Donald Allworthy.’
‘What do you want to do about him?’
‘I do not know. I have asked him for time to think about it, but I cannot keep him waiting, can I? It would not be fair.’
If Anne was tempted to say Jane had not been fair to her brother, she resisted it. ‘I cannot help you make up your mind, Jane. It is your decision. I wish you happy, whatever you decide.’
‘Then I shall tell him to expect an answer at the end of the Season.’
‘You might have a better offer by then.’
Jane laughed. ‘And pigs might fly.’
‘Jane, it is not the end, you know. It is not a case of Mr Allworthy or nobody.’
‘Anne, if you are nursing the hope that you can bring Harry and me back together, you are wasting your time.’
The maid brought in the tea tray and Anne busied herself with the teapot and cups before speaking again. ‘They have forgiven the Duke of York, you know. He has been restored as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. It was in the newspaper today.’
‘What does that signify? The Prince of Wales was always close to him, closer than to any others of his family, so it is only natural that when he was made Regent, he would reinstate his brother. They are as bad as one another with their infidelities and their mistresses.’
‘Harry wasn’t like that, you know he wasn’t.’
As she sipped the tea Anne had given her, the memories were crowding back, memories she had been pushing away from her for more than two years, memories resurrected by the day’s events. The newly commissioned Lieutenant Harry Hemingford in the magnificent blue-and-gold uniform of the 10th Hussars was proud as a peacock, grateful to his grandfather for buying him the commission, sure that he would make his mark on history.
‘Of course a lieutenant’s pay is little enough,’ he had told her. ‘But I shall soon make my way. In wartime, promotion comes fast. We shall not have so long to wait and then, my darling Jane, you will be my wife.’ And he had whirled her round and round until she was dizzy and begged him to stop.
But she had been so proud of him. He swore he had put his wild youth behind him and had eschewed the excesse
s of drinking and gambling that had led him into trouble and was the reason his grandfather had packed him off into the army. ‘I have turned over a new leaf, Jane.’ For a time it seemed he had; he worked hard and waited for the call to arms. The 10th Hussars, the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment, had been in the Peninsula at the time and he was expecting hourly to be sent out to join them.
‘There will be no time to arrange a wedding before I go,’ he had told her. ‘And to tell the truth, I cannot afford it. You don’t mind waiting, do you? When I come back I shall be a colonel.’ He had laughed his boyish laugh and made her smile. ‘Or even a general. Then you shall be able to lord it over all the other officers’ wives.’
She had agreed it would be better to delay. Her father still needed her to help him with his work and she could start collecting her trousseau and thinking of her future home. But Harry’s plans had been thwarted when, in 1809, the regiment was brought back to England after a series of setbacks that resulted in the army being withdrawn from Spain and, instead of seeing action, he was left kicking his heels. It was then that everything went wrong. Jane shuddered with shame even now.
Harry could not afford to marry her on a lieutenant’s pay and his grandfather, who had stood buff for his previous debts, would not increase his allowance. He needed promotion and in London the chances of that were slim. It was one of his fellow officers who told him that preferment could be gained through Mrs Mary Anne Clarke, the Duke of York’s mistress, and suggested he try that avenue to promotion, offering to take him to one of the many social gatherings that Mrs Clarke liked to organise. As a mere lieutenant he would not normally have been accepted in those circles, but the heir to the Earl of Bostock was a different matter. He was told to find four hundred guineas and the lady would put his name on a list she would give to the Duke, who would expedite the promotion. She pretended she could give no guarantee, though she intimated that the Duke never refused her anything.
Harry and Anne had both been left a little money by their maternal grandfather, but Harry had very little of his left, he had told Anne. Living the life of an army officer was an expensive business and his pay and allowance from their grandfather nowhere near covered it. And he liked to give Jane little presents, and outings. Anne had given him the money without a second’s hesitation, something Jane found hard to forgive. ‘If you hadn’t let him have it, he would not have got himself into such a scrape,’ she had told her friend when the scandal came to light. ‘I did not need or expect expensive presents and if he had been honest with me I should have told him so. And I was content to wait to be married. It is ungentlemanly of him to lay the blame for his disgrace at my door.’ But Anne adored her twin and had never been able to refuse him anything it was in her power to give him and she defended not only her actions, but his as well.
