A Cousinly Connection

by Sheila Simonson

  A Cousinly Connexion

  A Regency Romance

  By

  Sheila Simonson

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2007

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2007 by Sheila Simonson

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-004-5

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-004-2

  Cover design by Judith b. Glad

  Rose photograph by Mickey Simonson

  Publishing History: Walker, Inc. 1984, Warner, 1985, Robert Hal (UK), 1986, Chivers Press, Bath, Large Print (UK), 1986.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  Published by Uncial Press, an imprint of GCT, Inc.

  Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

  For Sarah Webb and my husband, Mick

  Chapter I

  At eighteen Jane Ash fell in love with Edward Wincanton, an ensign in the Royal Navy. The youngest son of a local squire, Wincanton did not seem to Jane's father a suitable match for his only daughter. After some thought, for he was inclined to indulge her, Mr. Ash refused his consent to the match. Jane wept. Ensign Wincanton, his leave up, returned to his ship. Life went on.

  Unlike several of her favourite heroines, Jane did not go into a decline, or join the Navy in the guise of a cabin boy, or sit mindless in a ruined tower twining jonquils into her tangled locks. As she was a sensible girl and fond of her father and brothers, she very soon entered again into their ordinary country pursuits. If she occasionally sighed without apparent cause or read the naval news with more eagerness than might have been expected in a female of tender years, her family were careful to take no notice.

  In the course of the next six years, the Nation continued their sanguinary struggle with the French, Ensign Wincanton progressed in rank and fortune, and, as might have been expected, Jane continued the even tenor of her ways. She danced and sketched and picnicked and was presented by her aunt, Lady Meriden. She even enjoyed a modestly successful London Season in her aunt's household, and received three very eligible marriage proposals and several ineligible ones. She refused the gentlemen kindly and returned to Walden Ash, older and somewhat wiser, content to play hostess in her father's house. There she was reasonably happy and, indeed, scarcely remembered her first love.

  Just after her twenty-fourth birthday, however, Ensign Wincanton--now Captain Wincanton of H.M.S Bonheur and suitably enriched with prize-money--returned to Sussex. Waterloo had brought Europe peace at last, and Captain Wincanton retired. Europe might be at peace. Jane was besieged.

  The captain, much bluffer and heartier than the lovesick lad who had vowed eternal devotion to her, had a fancy to settle down to a snug piece of land and the life of a country gentleman. If only his dear Jane--his lodestar, the figurehead of his soul's barque--could be persuaded to keep his little nest for him. At that--he was in her withdrawing room as he said it--he clasped her hand and raised it to his full lips, and Jane made an interesting discovery. He was a very silly man.

  Which, as she told her companion Miss Goodnight later, served her well for cherishing romantical daydreams.

  "Oh, Jane, do not say so," Miss Goodnight cried. "So handsome a young man and so sincerely attached to you. Six years..."

  "But, Goody, he snorts so."

  "Jane! Miss Ash!"

  "Indeed he does. And I find I don't like a red face and gooseberry eyes--if I ever did. And if he says to me one more time, 'stap me, Miss Jane, you're in high bloom today,' I'll...I'll..."

  "Jane!"

  "I'll stap him," Jane muttered. "Why Papa must change his mind now! It passes wonder. I shall have to find some means of escape soon. Perhaps I could enter a convent."

  Miss Goodnight moaned. A worthy lady--Jane's mother's remote cousin--she had little of her charge's liveliness, but she was kindhearted. Jane did not often mind explaining to her what was serious, what a jest. Now, however, Jane merely shook her head in exasperation and ran off to corner her father. If, as she suspected, he was twitting her, she meant to put a period to his levity. If not...it did not bear thinking on.

  She found him inclined to laugh at her.

  "Is he not the man you expected him to be, Jane?"

  "No! That quarterdeck voice..."

  "His manners are perhaps a trifle bluff, my dear, but I find him very good-natured and willing to learn. He was most interested in my mangel-wurzels."

  Jane sighed. Her father's agricultural experiments were his obsession, and Captain Wincanton had struck a shrewd blow if he had had the wit to admire them. In general Jane supported her father's efforts to improve his estate and the lot of his tenants, but it is difficult for those not directly concerned to feel enthusiasm for the more exotic root crops. Many a time had Jane's eyes glazed at the mention of mangel-wurzels. She could not help but feel that Captain Wincanton was playing unfairly.

  When her father went on to remind her of her advancing age--four-and-twenty, very nearly on the shelf--and, with a meaningful sigh, that he could not wait forever to dandle her children on his knee, she recommended that he dandle young Master Thomas Ash as much as he liked and reminded him that her sister-in-law Joanna was increasing again.

  "A daughter-in-law is not a daughter," he said with a look of reproach. Jane began to feel decidedly ill-used.

  She bore with Captain Wincanton's attentions as politely as she could--and her father's sighs and her brothers' sly looks--but several weeks of nautical ardour had begun to oppress her naturally lively spirits. One morning, she received a summons from her father to join him at once in the bookroom.

  She excused herself from a boring recital of her sister-in-law's latest symptoms and went in to him directly.

  "What is it, Papa? If Edward has called again..."

  "No. No, it is not that." He looked very grave. A much-crossed letter lay open before him. "My dear, your Aunt Louisa writes that Meriden has died and his heir also--young Harry--within a week of each other."

  Jane sat down abruptly. "Oh, my poor aunt. But, sir..."

  Her father interrupted her. "There is also some sort of scandal. I cannot have misread...that is, do see if you can decipher this word."

  "Deal?" Jane said doubtfully, studying the word at which her father was pointing. "Duet?"

  "I believe it must be duel. Harry has been killed in a duel."

  "Good God, sir, surely not." But with a sinking feeling, Jane realized that it was altogether too possible. The Honourable Henry had been as wild a buck as Society could boast, causing even his doting stepmama to deplore his rackety ways. Harry dead. Jane could not believe it possible.

  Mr. Ash peered again at the crossed lines. "Louisa speaks of the new heir--that will be the second son, the military one--as most disobliging, and she appears to think she will be cast out from Meriden Place with her children. Tsk." He set the letter down. "I do not scruple to say, Jane, that my sister is as hen-witted a woman as it has been my misfortune to know. Her marriage-portion was substantial and tied to her children, so I cannot believe the new baron, however unfeeling, has the power to do any such thing, even if he wished to make a further scandal. No doubt Louisa's nerves are a little overset."

  Jane preserved her gravity. Lord Meriden had not been a considerate spouse, but to lose one's husband and a son--even a stepson--at one blow might
overset the most stolid of females, and Aunt Louisa was far from moderate in her sensibilities.

  "I fear we should go to her at once." Mr. Ash frowned. "I do not like it, but she cannot rely on Meriden's sister."

  "Indeed not." Jane shuddered. Lady Brackhurst was parrot-faced and stone-hearted, and the two ladies cordially despised each other. Nevertheless her aunt would need counsel and comfort from some near relation. So many children, too--five in the school-room still, though Maria must soon turn eighteen, and one in leading strings. Only the Honourable Vincent, the youngest stepson, was of age. Horrible.

  "I cannot myself stay above a day or so," her father was saying, "but I am afraid your visit may extend for some time. Jane, my dear, I am sorry. Shall you dislike it too much? Perhaps Miss Goodnight..."

  "I shall certainly take her, and I shall stay as long as my aunt needs me."

  "You are a very good girl," Mr. Ash said affectionately and gave her a hearty kiss. "I don't know how we shall get on without you."

  Jane smiled. "I'm sure I don't either, sir. Joanna will order every thing you most dislike for dinner, but truly, Papa, there is nothing else to be done. I shall pack at once."

  "Jane?"

  "Yes?"

  "I had forgot." He looked genuinely troubled. "What of Edward Wincanton?"

  Jane's eyes widened, and she was hard put not to burst into laughter. Of course. To be set down in Dorset must put her beyond her importunate suitor's reach.

  "Dear Papa, only shew him your new seed drill and I'm sure he will forget that his heart is broken."

  Chapter II

  Somewhat earlier in the same month William Tarrant, lately Captain Tarrant of the Fighting 95th, rode out from his windswept East Riding manor to pay a call on his friend, Julian Stretton, also late of the Rifles.

  Tarrant, a Peninsular veteran, had sold out at the beginning of the short-lived Peace, prospects for promotion then seeming dim, and had returned to his native Yorkshire to take up life on the small estate left him by his father and, not incidentally, to resume enjoyment of his interrupted marriage.

  Julian Stretton had not sold out and might, but for the luck of a minor wound taken at Toulouse, have ended up in North America with so many of the other Peninsular soldiers. Instead he had spent his convalescence with Will and Margaret Tarrant. He had liked the country and the company so well that he had invested his prize-money and a small inheritance in the adjoining estate with an eye to settling there when he, too, decided to sell out. Will thought he was mad. With the sum Julian had expended on the small bankrupted estate, his friend could easily have purchased the majority he had been brevetted to before Orthez. It was all very well for Will, still a captain at thirty-five, to be settling down at home, but Julian was only six-and-twenty and his friends looked for Great Things from him.

  What Julian lacked was ambition. And possibly connexions, although he had certainly had his lieutenancy by purchase. What maddened Will, resigned to his own mere competence, was that Julian's military talents would surely be wasted on a farmer. If his friend was not ambitious, he did possess in generous sum the magic combination of cool intelligence and raw luck that took him, repeatedly, to the right place at the right time. Will confidently expected to see him a general officer at forty, like the Peer.

  But dreams of glory, however vicarious, do not always lead where one wishes them to lead, and Will's prophecy was destined to fail.

  Pronounced fit by the army surgeons, Julian had rejoined his regiment in Kent just as the news came of Bonaparte's escape from Elba, and Julian had been sent directly to Belgium, where the 95th was one of the few Peninsular regiments to fight in the sanguinary battle of Waterloo. Waterloo had finished the Corsican monster forever, but it also put paid to Julian Stretton's brilliant prospects and very nearly to Julian as well.

  The rumours and counterrumours of the Hundred Days had driven Will in his Yorkshire retreat to pacing restlessly back and forth, biting the heads off his servants, his friends, his infant son, and even his gentle wife, so that finally, in exasperation, she suggested that he see for himself what was happening. Thus it was that he joined the hundreds of English civilians in Brussels.

  Unlike so many of them, he did not fly to Antwerp at the first rumour of cannonfire. He watched grimly as the baggage trains, the first deserters, the first of the wounded entered the city. He was there when the Duke of Brunswick's body was brought in by his black-clad dragoons after Quatre Bras, and there the next afternoon when the first wounded survivors of the Scots Greys straggled past, then more wounded, an unending parade. Though his heart sank, he held fiercely to his faith in the Duke, but when it became clear at last that Wellington had done the trick, that even the splendid Imperial Guard were in full retreat before Blücher's Prussians, Will had no time or thought for celebration. He had found Julian.

  His friend lay in one of the hastily-rigged field hospitals in immediate peril of losing one leg and very probably both, if he should survive the loss of a great deal of blood. Will and Julian's bâtman Thorpe formed an instant alliance against the weary army surgeons, for both were certain that Julian would prefer death to the half-life of a legless cripple. Spiriting him off to Will's quarters in a quiet Bruxellois household, they had, by dint of round-the-clock care and Thorpe's highly unorthodox remedies, nursed him through the worst dangers of infection. Why he had not developed gangrene in the terrible wounds on his left leg Will did not know. Julian had lain in the field through the first night after the battle with only the sketchiest of treatment. The fact that Julian lived and kept both limbs amazed Will afterwards. At the time he was far too busy and tired, and melancholy from the deaths of other friends he could not help, to feel anything but a desire to leave Belgium as soon as possible. Within the month. Julian was pronounced strong enough to risk the sea voyage home. They sailed direct to Scarborough, for Will would not subject the sick man to more jolting on the rough roads than necessary. Even so, the wounds tore open again, and Julian Stretton returned to Yorkshire in a very sorry state.

  In all this travail it had not occurred to either Will or Thorpe to ask the help of the Stretton family, nor had Julian's father made inquiries after his son. Will was not surprized. Julian had never spoken of his connexions, and Will could only assume there had been a falling out. There was certainly indifference. So Will did not apply for help though he could have used it.

  The expedition, especially the sea voyage home, had cost Will a pretty sum, more than a small landowner could easily afford. But, as he told his Margaret, "I'd have sold the house and the lands if I had to. I should've been with them, Peggy. Such losses! It is worse even than Badajoz. There has never been anything like it. My poor friends--not one in five of them left!"

  If Margaret rejoiced that her husband had escaped such universal slaughter, she was too wise to say so. Indeed, when she saw Julian transformed from the vigorous young man who had left them to a gaunt, pain-racked ghost, she felt only appalled relief that Will was with her and whole and sound.

  "For, my dear," she said to Will, tears in her eyes, "Even if Julian regains some of his former strength, there is no saying he will ever have the use of his legs."

  "No, no," Will had replied with forced heartiness. "He'll come about. Always has before. Wiry devil. He don't look it now, Peggy, but he'll rally." He refused to meet her eyes.

  Despite their doubts--expressed and denied--the patient did rally and was so much improved in another month, at least in his own mind, as to remove to his own house. Will could not like it. Julian was not able to walk, but Thorpe had somewhere unearthed a wheeled invalid chair, and Julian got about in that. When Will had last visited him early in the week, he had been trying to walk on crutches, amid much grumbling from Thorpe who did not think he was ready. The attempt had not met with notable success. Now Will rode to Whitethorn--for so Julian's house was called--with some misgivings as to his friend's progress.

  The housekeeper, a brisk, plump woman of middle age who kept the hous
e and its sparse furnishings in sparkling order, led Will out to the garden that lay beyond a low terrace.

  "He's been there all morning." She sniffed. "Foolishness. He'll fall in the rosebushes, and then where'll we be? Talk sense to him, Mr. Tarrant."

  Will promised meekly to do so and ventured down the neat graveled path which led to the rose garden. Most of the roses were overblown brown cabbageheads, but here and there late bloomers thrust their brave colours into the breeze. Will did not spare a glance for the flowers. Round a turn in the path he stopped short. Perhaps fifty paces ahead, his back to Will, Julian was walking. True, he leaned heavily on the crutches, but he was making his legs work for him.

  Slow, even steps. So great was his concentration he had apparently not heard Will's crunching tread at all, for he continued without hesitation. Step, step, lurch, as the crutches came forward. Step, step, lurch. He had shed his coat and waistcoat on a stone bench, and in spite of a brisk east wind, sweat moulded the thin cambric shirt to his back. Will's jaws ached. He found he had been gritting his teeth against what must have been an excruciatingly painful exercise. He let out his breath harshly.

  Julian's head snapped up. "Thorpe, I told you to go away. By God..." He turned and, wobbling toward the nearest rosebush, nearly fulfilled the housekeeper's prophecy. Will was beside him in three strides.

  "You damned fool, you'll fall and break that leg!"

  Julian shook his head and laughed, gasping from his efforts. "Don't nag, Granny," he said after a moment.

  Grim-faced, Will steered him to the bench and sat him down. "How long have you been at it?"

  "An hour." He took an unsteady breath. "What time is it?"

  "Noon."

  "Oh."

  "Nearer three hours, I'll lay odds," Will said, resigned. "At least put your coat on, man. You're shivering, and don't trouble to think up a sharp answer."

  Julian closed his mouth.