The Last Earl

by Lara Blunte

  The

  Last Earl

  by Lara Blunte

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  Copyright © 2015 by Lara Blunte

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Table of Contents

  Book I. Catherine. One

  Two. Resurrection

  Three. Old Murders

  Four. Arrival

  Five. The Earl

  Six. A Meeting

  Book II. London. One

  II. Two. A Ball

  II. Three. Jealousy

  II. Four. Shame

  II. Five. Surrender

  II. Six. Desire

  II. Seven. The Difference Between Them

  II. Eight. Asunder

  II. Nine. No Other Man

  Book III. Happiness. One

  III. Two. Halford

  III. Three. A Birthday

  III. Four. Bright and Dark

  III. Five. A Departure

  III. Six. At Sea

  III. Seven. The Truth

  BOOK IV - Constantinople. One

  IV. Two. A House Asleep

  IV. Three. A Tall, Fair Man

  IV. Four. Imprisoned

  IV. Six. Rebellion

  IV. Seven. Escape

  IV. Eight. Promises

  IV. Nine. Others

  Book V. Adrian. One

  V. Two. A Thousand Lives

  V. Three. A Long Deserted Heart

  V. Four. A Love Too Late

  V. Five. Anything and Its Opposite

  V. Six. Cousins

  V. Seven. Stalker

  V. Eight. A Mortal Wound

  V. Nine. A Shadow Passes

  V. Ten.Doubt

  V. Eleven. Pera

  EPILOGUE

  Book I. Catherine. One

  ENGLAND, January 1856

  Lady Catherine Lytton had no idea how beautiful she looked in mourning.

  Her uncle, the Viscount Ware, had not been a popular man and his funeral had attracted a meager gathering. The few neighbors who had come to pay their last respects were far more interested in his niece than in his corpse.

  She was a glorious vision sitting next to her mother, her face turned up to the pulpit, the high neck of her black gown emphasizing the graceful carriage of her head.

  "Rich gal," an elderly army colonel was saying to his wife. "Got a fortune from her papa, and now another from the uncle!”

  "Hush, dear," his wife pressed his hand with a preoccupied glance towards the rest of the congregation.

  "And the Hall, of course,” the colonel continued, undaunted.

  "Please, dear!"

  " 'Course I'll wager she'll hate it," the colonel said almost to himself. "Look at that dress. Won't find anything like that here!"

  "It's a lovely dress," his wife could not help whispering back with a sigh.

  "And she looks lovely in it."

  "Too tall." The colonel's wife was not beyond jealousy.

  "Majestic," the colonel corrected her.

  "That dark hair is so hard and unfashionable," a young girl across the aisle was saying to her brother with an air of disdain.

  The brother closed his mouth with a perceptible snap and gushed, "Oh, she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen."

  The sister sniffed, and felt how bitter it was that even one's own brother should admire another woman, and one so different from her.

  Two matrons had put their heads together, "Lady Ware looks so aged!"

  "But then she has been through so much."

  "Poor woman, she was never very strong. That daughter of hers, on the other hand, looks as if she has a character."

  "Not at all like her mother. Or like her father."

  "Not at all."

  Lady Catherine, oblivious to the whisperings going on around her, opened one eye to glower at the organ player for mangling Bach and then immediately schooled her features into a look of submission, hoping to disguise the thoughts running inside her lovely head.

  How could her uncle choose to die of pneumonia just as a particularly brilliant season was about to begin in Paris? And how could he have neglected his affairs so much that she should now be forced to be at that cold Hall, looking through thousands of papers?

  Catherine had no intention of living in the countryside, yet she wanted to make sure that her fortune, which had just increased fourfold, was tidily run. So she had resigned herself to spending months at Lytton Hall in the company of a mother whom she loved more than anyone else on earth but whose endless fears, apprehensions and concern for trivial matters might yet make her want to climb to the highest point of the Hall and throw herself headfirst onto the gravel below.

  Bracing herself for a tedious winter, she wished that at least the war in the Crimea would end.

  The service and her own irritation had given her a headache, so she was thankful when the ceremony ended and she could steer Lady Ware out of the church, followed by the footmen who held up the coffin with no apparent effort. Uncle Thaddaeus had always been a parsimonious eater, and had died very slim.

  "Do not carry on so, mama," Catherine whispered as they walked out. "Anyone would think you were the widow instead of the sister-in-law."

  Her remonstration did not have the desired tonic effect, for Lady Ware's tears redoubled and she said in a garbled voice, "Oh, Kitty, how can you say so? When we have lost all the men in our family, one after another!"

  Catherine, who didn't think they were doing badly on their own, pulled the veil down over her face to hide the exasperated expression in her eyes, and proceeded with the business of burying the sixth Viscount Ware.

  

  Catherine had been thirteen years old when she lost her father.

  Edward, the fifth Viscount Ware, had left their London home one morning to run a few simple errands. He never came back. Not far from the house he had slipped on a patch of ice and, falling, had broken his neck.

  Father and daughter had so doted on each other, and his loss was so hard to bear that Catherine had worn a locket with his miniature around her neck for seven years and never once opened it, hoping that as time went by his features would become blurry and the pain would fade.

  Now she stood in front of a six-foot portrait of him as the footman laid out the afternoon tea. She squared her shoulders and looked at the handsome, kind face that seemed to be smiling down at her. She saw that his chair, still upholstered in leather, was exactly in the same position that he had liked, at an angle to the fireplace, and that it was heartbreakingly empty.

  She felt as if a cannonball had gone clean through her, yet when Lady Ware walked in, went straight to the portrait and started wailing, Catherine took her by the hands and led her to the sofa.

  "I'll have the portrait taken away if you don't stop crying," Catherine said, pouring the tea.

  "Kitty!"

  "Enough kittying me, mama, you'll make yourself sick! Or drown ­─ I hardly know which!"

  Lady Ware opened her mouth once again but Catherine frowned at her, so she started to sip her tea quietly and did feel better. She eyed the pile of papers on the small table next to her daughter and knew that the girl would have to go through every single one of them and many, many more.

  Lady Ware was a highly anxious and timid woman who trembled before every decision. Yet she was fully aware that Catherine, with her stre
ngth of will and her intelligence, had stepped into the breach after Edward's death when she, her mother, had failed.

  The child had quickly understood how the dynamics of their life had changed once Lord Ware was buried. She had seen solicitors, servants and relatives trying to manipulate Lady Ware and she had been the one able to push them back and keep them in their place, since her mother could not, for the life of her, protect herself.

  Thaddaeus had eventually moved into Lytton Hall and most of the other properties had also become his. Though they were wealthy enough for a good life in London, Lady Ware's aunt had insisted that she and Catherine move to Paris since as a childless spinster of sixty she needed someone to take care of her.

  Capricious, lazy and weak, Great Aunt Elizabeth had seemed like the perfect relative to Catherine. It had not been long before the girl of thirteen had ruled over the old lady's house as well.

  However, being in Paris had done nothing to soften Catherine. It was a cold, gray, hard city where sympathy was never asked or given, and where good or tender feelings were mocked even if they came from a child. She was a quick learner and mastered the art of hiding her emotions until she forgot what they were.

  The girl who returned to England was headstrong and proud, but had common sense and a deep dislike of sentimentalism that served both women well. Lady Ware regretted that Catherine had lost years of her childhood, but in a world that was often merciless to the weak, she couldn't regret that her daughter had become the woman she now was. As she sifted through papers efficiently, making a sharp note here and another there with a silver pencil, Catherine seemed in full control of her destiny.

  Two. Resurrection

  "Tell me more!"

  Charles Dalton repressed a sigh and eyed his brother Jack discouragingly. Only it took much more than a severe look to put Jack off a subject on which his heart was set.

  "I have heard from Mrs. Parton that your Lady Catherine has very large feet."

  "She is not my Lady Catherine," Charles was forced to say.

  "Well, yours or not, does she have large feet?"

  Charles concentrated on taking the curricle around a curve. When the horses had quickened into a light gallop on a straight road he replied, "The last time I saw Lady Catherine she was a child."

  "On the other hand," Jack went on. "I heard from your stable boy that she is a beauty. Though, of course, any woman with eyes on either side of her nose might seem a beauty to him. What say you?"

  "I have just told you ─"

  "For heaven's sake, even a little girl can show promise of beauty!"

  "She was a pretty child," Charles deigned to say.

  "It is too bad about the end of this dratted war," Jack drawled. "With all the men coming home, I find it extremely difficult to have any reliable information about anything. I know Lady Catherine and her mama lived in Paris, but she was certainly not out as long as I was out there. And the only thing that everyone seems to agree about is her fortune."

  Charles had fallen resolutely silent and stared at the horses, frowning. Jack looked at him briefly and said, "I see that you are considering how to break the news to Lady Ware and her daughter. I might be of some use there, y'know. I am known to have some delicacy of feeling which at times like this…"

  "Really, Jack!" Charles exclaimed at last. "You must let me think! What I have to say is not easy."

  Jack raised his eyebrows, feigning extreme surprise. "I should think a word or two would do! As if you were coming to tell them that someone had died, instead of the very opposite."

  "Still," Charles insisted, "it is bound to be a shock, and I must think how to give them the news."

  "Che noia..." said Jack crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his seat.

  Now that he was not allowed to talk, which was what he liked to do best, he found himself immediately bored. To think that he had come all the way from Venice to see Charles, who had been something of a hero in the Crimea and even sported a medal and a wound!

  To think that he had left a sultry dark-eyed mistress, only to find himself in the English countryside with a brother who preferred the company of his cows and pigs and who had the bad taste (unthinkable in the continent) of answering his humorous sallies with morality! He had arrived only the day before, but it was already immensely clear to him that once his duty to dear Charles was discharged he would be rushing back to his Italian pleasures.

  In the meantime, the only amusing thing to do was to visit young Lady Catherine, the beauty with large feet, and be present when his brother gave the news he had for her. It was not the most exciting intrigue in which he had ever been involved, but it was the only one available.

  Charles, on the other hand, already regretted his lack of foresight in letting Jack accompany him on this delicate mission.

  The Daltons were landowning gentry with a quite beautiful and very profitable estate called Longseat some ten miles away from Lytton Hall.

  It was unfortunate that Charles should have been born after Jack, because he did have an enthusiastic love of the countryside, where he had spent most of his life, whereas Jack looked at animals with great alarm and at anything leafy with profound tedium, unless it were a bouquet he was handing to a lovely woman.

  Warm neighborly ties had bound Charles's father to the late Lord Ware and to his wife, and he expected to be welcomed at Lytton Hall, but he did not wonder about Lady Catherine for, unlike his brother, he was not much given to idle imaginings. He had a purpose in coming to see them and he must fulfill it in the best possible way.

  When the curricle went round the next bend and he saw the Hall, he felt oddly moved. He hadn't visited it much while Thaddaeus lived there, but he vividly remembered the times when his parents had taken him to see Lord Edward Lytton and his wife Helen.

  They stepped down from the curricle and were ushered into the house by eager footmen. Inside, Jack handed another footman his hat, gloves and card and, ignoring his brother's angry frown, he put up his quizzing glass and began inspecting the interior of the Hall with unrestrained curiosity.

  "I should not have brought you," Charles said, showing as much temper as his placid nature would allow. "Will you be civil, for God’s sake?"

  Jack turned the quizzing glass on his brother, his eye huge behind it. "Dear Charles, I am nothing else!"

  The footman was bowing, "Lady Catherine will receive you in the winter room, gentlemen. Will you follow me?"

  Charles and Jack did so, the former surprised that an unmarried girl should receive them without her mother, the latter inspecting the corridors they went through and the different rooms they passed. Jack wondered how much money the Lyttons had, though he made faces of distaste to annoy his brother.

  They heard a spinet being played and a woman's voice singing:

  Vedrò con mio diletto

  L'alma dell'alma mia

  Il core del mio cor pien di contento.

  E se dal caro oggetto...

  The song was suddenly abandoned. Charles thought it had sounded lovely, though he could not have said what it was.

  His brother translated pedantically. "'I will see with joy the soul of my soul, heart of my heart'...Well, if this is Lady Catherine her voice, at least, is pretty. Is she in love already, though she hasn't met me yet?"

  Charles was tired of trying to repress Jack, and they had finally arrived at the winter room. The footman opened the doors, stepped to one side to let them pass and announced solemnly, "Captain Dalton and Mr. John Dalton, your ladyship."

  Then he was gone, the doors behind them were closed, and they found themselves in a large circular room with a glass roof through which the gray light of February penetrated. Charles remembered this room, but saw that it had been rearranged in a more tasteful style than during Thaddaeus’ lifetime. They stood on the large Axminster carpet as a voice with a smile in it said, "If it isn't Mr. Dalton! Or Captain Dalton, I should say!"

  They turned to see Catherine get up from the handsome p
ainted spinet in the corner and move towards them.

  As she approached them in her deep blue velvet gown, her hands outstretched to take Charles', Jack thought that he would need to compose some sort of poem for her. Don't say her hair is like midnight and her eyes like moonlight, think of something much, much better, he told himself.

  Lady Catherine pretended not to notice that her two visitors were staring. She walked to Charles, the crinoline beneath her skirt swaying gently, and took his hands in both of hers. "I'm so glad to see you again!" she said warmly.

  She gave her white hand to Jack and he hardly had time to kiss it before she turned away and invited them to sit down. Charles moved a little blindly and sat where she had told him to, but Jack stood awhile staring at her as if she were a masterpiece in a gallery.

  Finally, with a visible effort, he took a chair across from her, crossing his legs. Catherine noted all this out of the corner of her eyes, which made the smile she directed at Charles all the brighter.

  But Charles had been robbed of all speech, for in the course of the few minutes since he had seen Catherine, he had done something completely out of character: he had allowed himself to be dazzled.

  Charles was not a man of weak character or unsound ideas and it was not easy to dazzle him, but beauty had performed its miracle, taking him completely by surprise. He remembered Catherine as a pretty child, and he also remembered the last time he had seen her, sitting in the carriage that would take her and her mama away from Lytton Hall after her father's death. She had been sad and silent then, and he had pitied her.

  When had she achieved this transformation?

  Jack watched his brother’s open mouth, and he was sympathetic. Beauty had great power over men, and it was obvious that Charles was going to require his assistance in handling Lady Catherine ─ even if he did have the advantage of the war wound.

  "Lady Catherine, forgive us for intruding on you," he said smoothly as an opening.

  "Not at all, I am very pleased to see Captain Dalton. Mama will be delighted too, for she often speaks of him."