A Cousinly Connection

by Sheila Simonson

"How generous," the man in the bed said dryly. "Lord Bountiful, in fact."

  "Oh God, Ju. I'm sorry."

  "So you should be. I'll give you a pawn. And Will," he added as his friend rummaged in a cabinet for the chess set, "if you ever use that title to my face, I'll imitate my lamented brother and call you out."

  "Yes, my lord," Will said meekly.

  Chapter V

  Toward the end of October, it became apparent that the new baron was in no great rush to take possession of his lands and dignities. Lady Meriden received a brusque note to the effect that his lordship regretted he would be unable to leave Yorkshire before the New Year and that she was to apply to Leak and Horrocks as usual if she found herself in any difficulty. He trusted that all was well with the family and remained her ob't. servant, Meriden. No explanation, no apology. In fact, very lordly.

  Unfortunately he added a post scriptum which threw her ladyship into fresh megrims. In it he indicated his plan to close the London house. He desired her to remove anything that might serve her convenience before his agents acted. Abrupt. Lady Meriden had had no intention of appearing in London in mourning, but she was indignant nonetheless at the want of consideration.

  Jane had seen the infamous reply Lord Meriden had made to her aunt's first communication with him--the letter to which Maria had so feelingly referred on Jane's first day at Meriden--and had not been able to discern ill intent in it. It had been merely a polite message of condolence, unrevealing of its author's nature. That it contained no effusions of grief seemed to Jane reasonable in the circumstances, even perhaps evidence of good taste. Her aunt felt far otherwise.

  The fact that Lord Meriden had not inquired after any of his brothers and sisters by name was taken as proof that he must be an indifferent and unfeeling monster. Jane could not agree. She was ready to believe him as ignorant of his family as they were of him.

  They knew remarkably little. Lady Meriden guessed his age to be some six-or seven-and-twenty years, but she could not remember precisely. He was either taller or shorter than Vincent, and may or may not have been schooled at Harrow, or was it Winchester? Maria thought that he had served in one of the line regiments but did not know which--only that Harry had stigmatised it as unfashionable. She remembered the green uniform jacket because she had been expecting scarlet. How long his lordship had served in the army, and where and what his current rank might be, they had no notion. More important considerations of character and interest remained a blank. Lady Meriden did not even recall whether Julian or Harry had set fire to the drapes in the nursery, which, if laid to the infant Meriden's door, might at least have shewn a tendency to pyromania. Alas, even that clew led Jane nowhere in her cautious inquiries.

  When she pointed out to Maria that to reproach his lordship in absentia for indifference and want of family feeling must be absurd as it was clear that his family had shewn no interest at all in him, Maria bridled. "Why should we have? We had no notion Harry would die young."

  "Nor had Meriden,"' Jane said drily. She did not press the point, however, for she assumed his absent lordship must soon appear and dispel the unseemly mystery surrounding his character. The October letter indicated otherwise. Jane resigned herself to several more months of her cousins' fretful imaginings.

  His lordship's plan to close the London house drove Lady Meriden, when she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak, to utter a flurry of contradictory orders and to send at once for Vincent. Why Vincent was not clear except that her ladyship felt she required a Man's advice. Everything in the house called up affecting recollections. She could not bear to part with the portrait of Lady Sarah in the large withdrawing room. The Hepplewhite breakfront! The red lacquer screen in the bookroom! Those charming china figurines! Torn between emptying the house of its contents and nobly refusing to touch so much as a stick of That Man's possessions, Lady Meriden soon exhausted herself and every one around her. Finally Jane ventured to suggest that she herself go up to London and select for her aunt whatever should be clearly indispensable.

  Her aunt brightened. "Would you dislike it, Jane? Such a wearing task. Heartbreaking. I could not bear it, of course, but you know my tastes so exactly."

  "I should enjoy a visit to Town of all things," Jane said with fervour. "I'll take Maria and Drusilla with me, for you know, Aunt, Maria will be needing all manner of new gowns for spring."

  At that Lady Meriden wept a little. "My poor child, to be wearing black gloves on her eighteenth birthday."

  "Her come-out must certainly be postponed," Jane murmured, "but she cannot go about dressed like a schoolgirl after she has put up her hair."

  Jane had every intention of seeing that the girls put off their blacks at the first decent moment, February at the latest. She was heartily glad not to be forced to wear black herself, for she looked very ill in mourning.

  "I do not think the girls should be frolicking off to London," Lady Meriden commented.

  "Not frolicking," Jane said in shocked tones. "Nothing of the sort, Aunt. We shall visit museums and perhaps an exhibition of paintings. Unexceptionable, I think. We'll buy up a few gown lengths, and make our sad selections in the London house, and take care that they are bestowed safely. Then I shall take my cousins to see how my father does..."

  "You will return, Jane!"

  "Certainly." Jane patted her aunt's hand. "Only my father, you know, insists that I come to Sussex. Do you not think that if I explain to him myself why you need me he is more likely to allow me to remain at Meriden?"

  Much struck, Lady Meriden at last agreed to the scheme.

  * * * *

  At one-and-twenty Vincent Stretton bade fair to rival the late Harry in good looks and dash. His eyes were brilliantly blue. His hair, so dark a brown as to be almost black, tumbled fashionably over his creamy brow. His figure was solid and well muscled, and he moved with the grace of a born athlete. Already an excellent whip, he wore even the absurd rig of the F.H.C. with an air. In more conventional dress, he looked so much like a young girl's dream of manhood that it was no wonder his sisters hung upon his lips.

  He was inclined to indulge them, for he was kindhearted as well as beautiful and ready enough to give his sisters his escort, so long as they should not seriously interfere with his pleasures. At present, he alternated between his usual high spirits and the gloom occasioned by grief over his brother Harry's demise and by his own uncertain circumstances. He seemed to Jane, accustomed to her beloved but woefully unfashionable brothers, to be destined for great things in the haut ton. It was a pity he had not come into a handsome fortune. If ever a young man deserved the privilege of running through ten thousand a year, it was Vincent Stretton.

  He arrived at Meriden as Jane laid her last preparations for the journey. She had decided to leave Miss Goodnight to keep her aunt in spirits, and when she saw how taken her companion was with Vincent, she did not repent her decision. To listen forever to Miss Goodnight's raptures over yet another handsome young man was what Jane least desired. Miss Goodnight, fortunately, had made herself indispensable to the household as Lady Meriden's confidante and as reader to the next Stretton son, Felix.

  Felix was blind. He had lost his sight some eight years previously in a terrible illness. Though otherwise recovered, he had never regained his vision. Tall for fourteen and rather plump, he had been so much petted by everyone, and so much pitied by his mama, that he had grown into something of a despot. Jane could have disliked him heartily had he not, now and then, shewn rather more intelligence than anyone else in the family.

  Musical and, unfortunately, gifted with perfect pitch, Felix bore very ill the less than perfect efforts of others to sing or play at the pianoforte. Miss Goodnight had great patience, however. She listened for hours to Felix's playing, helped him with his lessons, and was content to read to him until her voice failed. Felix should not be deprived of Miss Goodnight, as even Miss Goodnight agreed, though she could not like Jane's gallivanting about town without her stout self.


  Jane overcame her objections by promising to stay with her maternal Aunt Hervey, though she said, teazing, "I am four-and-twenty now, Goody. Not a green girl."

  Miss Goodnight sniffed.

  Jane considered what dispositions could be made for the rest of the children. Young Thomas at two presented no difficulties, for he was entirely in the charge of his nurse. There remained the twins, Horatio and Arthur.

  Horatio and Arthur--Jane was not yet sure which was which although she thought Arthur talked more--figured as imps of Satan, hellborn brats, and other, less genteel epithets bestowed upon them by tormented servants--and by Felix when he found they had put frogs in his boots. Jane did not think the twins hardened in sin but they were, at eleven, entirely beyond control.

  Lady Meriden doted on them on the rare occasions when, scrubbed and angelic, they were brought before her by their suffering governess, Miss Winchell. As her ladyship never saw them in their natural savage state, all representations that they must be broken to bridle fell on deaf ears.

  Horatio had been named for Lord Nelson in anticipation of Trafalgar, as it were, for the twins were born in 1804--but the choice of Arthur for his twin was a fortuitous bit of bad taste, his grace of Wellington's Christian name not then being upon everyone's lips. Jane thought the twins should be packed off to school or, when their antics drove her to despair, packed off as cabin boys in some ship bound for Botany Bay. She charged Miss Winchell to watch them narrowly and hoped that the removal of Drusilla and Maria from the governess's charge might allow that unfortunate woman time to deal with the heavenly twins as they deserved.

  As for Lady Meriden, she made the departure of the London-bound party the occasion of high drama, but she did not wish to be deprived of her London gewgaws. She moderated the last farewells so as to allow the girls and Jane's abigail to leave in tolerably good spirits and not above an hour late.

  Vincent posted along good-naturedly beside the carriage. Once out of sight of the melancholic rhododendron drive, the two sisters in Jane's charge began to chatter excitedly about the sights they would see in London and the treats they would enjoy. Jane listened, smiling, and made no attempt to dampen their ardours.

  She listened and smiled, but her thoughts kept wandering back to Meriden Place. It was odd how in a few short weeks she had become so entangled in the fears, wishes, and anxieties of her aunt's young family. Jane felt almost as if she were responsible for their well-being. Nonsense, of course, but so many of the disorders they suffered were remediable.

  What ills she could remedy, she had. Thus she found herself become a figure of authority not only to the children but also to the servants. It was so much easier to settle a minor dispute herself or make a small decision about the household than to explain the matter to her aunt and coax her into exerting her authority.

  Jane had not been used to think of herself as a managing sort of female, but her sojourn at Meriden had taught her to reflect upon her own character and to recognize that, even in her father's house, she had been inclined to take up the reins. A lowering reflexion. She could only hope that her hand lay easy and that the horse would not bolt.

  She had also come to recognize that her Aunt Louisa had changed sadly in the years since that memorable London Season in which her ladyship had figured as Jane's fairy godmother. Now Lady Meriden would or could not have summoned the energy to perform so arduous and disinterested an office. It was doubtful that she would bestir herself to present her own daughters to the ton, for she had turned inward to phantasy that fed on her real and imagined ills and that did not require her to exert herself very much. In her mind she had reduced her children to cliché figures. She created fictional needs for them, while ignoring their real requirements of counsel and constant affection.

  Jane could not condemn her aunt. To have borne for so many years with so selfish a husband as Lord Meriden, so indifferent a father to her children, must turn all but the most resolute intellect to phantasy, and Aunt Louisa's understanding had never been more than moderate.

  Briefly Jane indulged the hope that the new Lord Meriden would remedy his family's ills, but his delay in coming argued indifference. The carriage jolted and righted itself. Drusilla and Maria chattered on. Jane drifted.

  That evening as they supped in the private dining room of an inn, Maria made a comment that set Vincent to talking of his elder brother. As Vincent, however unreliable a judge, had at least met and spoken with his lordship, Jane listened with interest.

  The fateful first meeting had occurred in Hyde Park early in the Easter holidays of the previous year. Vincent and a friend, down from Oxford, were sauntering through the park--hoping to be taken for pinks of the ton, Jane thought, amused--when they had bumped into the friend's elder brother, a military man, in a knot of officers discussing Bonaparte's progress through France. The older men had allowed the two sprigs in on the conversation. In the course of the obligatory introductions, Vincent had found himself being made known to his brother, Julian.

  "It was dashed embarrassing, I can tell you," Vincent said feelingly. "Other chaps don't have to be introduced to their brothers."

  Drusilla snickered.

  "Well, it was. Pipe down, Dru."

  "Did he wear a green jacket?" Maria asked, her own glimpse of the prodigal recalled to mind.

  "Of course not. Buff pantaloons. Hessians. Blue coat. It was outdated, wrong in the lapels. He puffed a great black seegar and laughed at me and said I must be his little brother. Little brother," Vincent repeated in repellent accents. "I can tell you I was ready to sink."

  "How reprehensible." Jane directed a quelling glance at Drusilla.

  "And what's more," Vincent went on in an aggrieved tone, "when I offered to shew him some lively gaming at one of the houses Ned was taking me to that evening, he just said it was above his touch, thank you, and that he was off in the morning anyway."

  Gaming hells, Jane thought. Oh, Vincent.

  "Was he off to Belgium?" Maria asked breathlessly.

  "No, daff-head, Kent."

  "Oh."

  "Is that all?" Drusilla demanded.

  "Well, nearly. They were all prosing on about what this regiment or that colonel would do and who was posted where and had they seen so-and-so. It was devilish dull, so Ned and I took ourselves off as soon as we decently could."

  His sisters expressed their disappointment in unflattering terms.

  Jane intervened. "It was merely a chance meeting. Vincent cannot have foreseen how much you would wish to know. I daresay he observed a great deal."

  "No, I didn't," Vincent said crossly. "Too dashed embarrassed."

  Drusilla giggled.

  "Did you ascertain which regiment your brother served in?" Jane asked.

  "Not then. Asked m'brother...that is, Harry." His brow darkened as it always did when he thought of Harry, for Vincent, more than any of them, had idolised the heir. However, he sighed and went on, "Harry said he didn't perfectly remember, though he knew it wasn't one of the crack cavalry regiments. Not the Life Guards. I daresay it couldn't be the Highlanders either."

  "Why?" Clearly Maria was disappointed. She had a passion for Mr. Scott's novels.

  "No kilt," Vincent said simply. "I must say that relieved my mind. I didn't half fancy a brother of mine going about with his knees hanging out like a dashed sans-culotte." Apparently there was in Vincent's mind some dim connexion between Jacobites and Jacobins.

  Maria animadverted at indignant length in defence of the plaid.

  "That will do, Maria," Jane interposed and caught herself. How like a governess.

  Vincent helped himself to an apple and began to pare it carefully so that the peel came off in a perfect spiral. He admired his handiwork and took an enormous bite. "Mmench."

  "What?"

  "Beg pardon. Harry said Julian was in Portugal. Thought he was with the 59th or 65th or some such outfit." He took another bite.

  "I collect your brother Julian must be a junior officer," Jane said whe
n she thought he might be able to articulate. "He is not very old."

  "I don't know. Ned's brother was a light colonel. Must've been about the same age as Julian. Aide-de-camp to the Irish viceroy."

  "That argues influence."

  "Well, it must. Dashed stupid fellow, Ned's brother." He took thought. "Harry said my grandfather--Carteret, you know--bought Julian a pair of colours when he was seventeen. Julian, not m'grandfather. Then, after Carteret died, my father procured advancement for Julian. Harry said just in time for the Denmark campaign, but I thought he couldn't have had it right. Wasn't fighting the Danes, was we?"

  "After the Battle of Friedland," Jane said patiently.

  Vincent looked blank.

  "I daresay you were in short coats, so it may just have escaped your notice."

  Vincent frowned, "Can't have been that far back." His brow cleared. "Eight or nine years ago when Carteret stuck his spoon in the wall. Must've been after that." He laughed indulgently. "No head for figures, females. I daresay I must've been at Eton by that time. Short coats indeed."

  It surprized Jane very much to hear that her uncle had exerted himself in his son's behalf.

  "Lieutenant's commission," Vincent said suddenly. "Harry said it must've cost the old man the earth, but Carteret cut him such a wheedle before he died that my father felt obliged to. Shouldn't have thought m'father would've known how to go about it. Not his sort of thing."

  "Perhaps he directed his man of business to buy the commission," Jane said in a suffocated voice.

  "Now why are you laughing?"

  Jane shook her head. She did not in general approve the army practice of buying promotions. It seemed probable that such a system must place men of few natural gifts in positions of gravity. The Navy, Edward Wincanton notwithstanding, were much better ordered. However, the picture of her indolent uncle pulling political strings and dropping judicious bribes in judicious places struck her as vastly comic. It was some time before she could swallow her mirth.

  "Very handsome of my father," Vincent said, hurt.