A Gamble on Love

by Blair Bancroft

  “This is not the time for humor,” Mr. Saunders grumbled, after jogging down the hall to meet his employer. “Gravenham has brought in men who are pitching tents on all the abandoned properties he owns. He’s given them snatch papers to attest their right to vote. Big Mike just sent a messenger, wanting to know what he should do.”

  “Clever devil,” Thomas murmured, rubbing his stubbled chin. “Tents, you say?”

  “Yes. ’Tis enough to show the land is occupied. Devious, but legal. Each and every one of them has papers from Gravenham stating they have the right to vote that burgage property. Temporary, of course. That’s why they’re called snatch papers.”

  “Do we not have a hundred and more votes coming down from London in the morning?”

  “We do, but I cannot like the earl’s maneuvering. ’Tis not fair to invoke old rights that have fallen into disuse for good reason. Empty land should not have a vote.”

  “Ah, Charles, you would back me into a corner.” Thomas frowned and shook his head. “I must think of Captain Fortescue and his family and the years to come when we must all live together in this borough, Whigs, Tories, and Independents alike.”

  “And I say Gravenham has gone too far,” declared Relia from over his shoulder. “You will win, Thomas, and you must begin as you mean to go on. In this borough the electors should be freemen and freemen only. Marcus Yelverton broke Gravenham’s stranglehold on the voters. You must make sure it stays that way. Is that not what the reform you want is all about?”

  “Bloodthirsty wench,” Thomas murmured, reaching behind him to draw his wife close. “Very well, Charles. Tell Big Mike that I find tents a disturbance to the fine Kentish landscape. And I also believe we should do these snatch visitors the courtesy of preventing them from freezing their— From freezing,” Mr. Lanning hastily amended, dropping his voice. “Tents, snatch papers, and men are to be gone before the polls open in the morning . . . but with as few cracked heads as possible, if you please.”

  “It’s done!” After a decisive nod, Charles Saunders made an abrupt turn and strode off down the main hallway at a rapid clip.

  Thomas closed and locked the door, then swept his wife back through her dressing room to the warmth of her large bed, where they promptly encased themselves inside the screen of peach velvet bedhangings, newly fixed in place. The bedhangings that had once been such a bone of contention. The candidate rolled onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow and leaned over the vague pale shadow that was his wife’s face. “Now that we’re awake . . .,” he said, his warm breath fanning across her cheek.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes, my dear?” He nuzzled her ear, trailed butterfly kisses over her cheek, pulled aside the stiff white cotton of her winter nightwear to press lips of fire to her neck, her shoulder—

  “Thomas!” The palms of two small hands delivered a surprisingly firm shove to his chest. “There is something I must say to you,” Relia gasped. “I attempted to do so earlier, but you . . . we were . . .um . . .”

  “Distracted?” Thomas suggested. “Like this, I believe.” And kissed her full on the lips.

  His wife pounded him on the back. “Stop it! There is something I must tell you before the votes are counted, and there is not much time left.”

  “Oh, very well, if you must.” With a great sigh, the Whig candidate subsided onto his pillow.

  “Well . . .,” his wife whispered into the darkness. “I want you to know—” She clasped her hands tightly on her chest, took a shuddering breath. “Ah . . . this is so much more difficult than I had thought! No wonder you have never told me—” She drew a deep breath, began again. “It is quite simple, really. I sought long and hard for a dragonslayer. When I finally found him, I tolerated that he was a man of City because I had need of him. At least that is what I told myself. The truth is . . . the simple truth is I took one look at you and knew that, for all the odd looks you cast my way, you would do. More than do.”

  Relia reached out, ran soft fingers down her husband’s arm. “But it was only recently,” she admitted in a rush, having gained courage from the feel of him, “that I realized I loved you. That I will love you, win or lose. That I wish to bear your children, grow old with you—”

  With a groan Thomas took his wife in his arms, his mouth devouring hers in a kiss so intense they both forgot to breathe. When, after at last gasping for air, Thomas found his voice, out tumbled all the words he had hoarded up over the long months when he had been certain his wife scorned all but his abilities as a knight errant. Among them was the admission that he, too, had fallen in love at first sight. And was almost equally blind in recognizing that tender emotion for what it was. “Do you suppose,” he said in one of those maddeningly analytical moments to which political candidates tend to be addicted, “that Westover and Miss Aldershot ever feel like this?”

  “Thomas!”

  “Your captain and Mrs. Edmundson?”

  “He’s not my captain!”

  “Good. Then he can live,” declared Mr. Lanning, expansively.

  “I pray you, Mr. Candidate, do not let the election go to your head.”

  “Unlikely, for I shall always have you to remind me of my shortcomings, Mrs. Job-with-No-Pay.”

  Relia chuckled, then instantly sobered. “Do you truly love me, Thomas, or was that just another campaign promise?”

  “You have forgotten something, my love. Women don’t have the vote.”

  “Oh. Then kiss me again, my princely Cit. We’ll work on the rights of women another day.”

  In the By-Election for the seat held by Mr. Marcus Yelverton, the Whig MP, Thomas Lanning, won by a decisive margin. He endured the “chairing” with right good will, carried through the streets of Lower Peven in a chair festooned with blue and red streamers behind an honor guard of equally gaudily attired horses and riders. Fortunately, the occasional brick and roof slate, thrown by die-hard adherents of Mr. Twyford Trevor, missed.

  ~ * ~

  Epilogue

  Aurelia Trevor Lanning sat on the marble bench in the rotunda and gazed out over Pevensey Park in near perfect contentment. It was mid July, and the countryside was so breathtakingly lovely that it might have been the product of some beatific dream. But, in spite of the verdant landscape, the soft warmth of the breeze whiffling around her face, and memories of countless political picnics over the last twelve years, one long-ago Winter Festival captured her thoughts. Those horrifying moments when she had thought Thomas lost beneath the icy black water. The look on his face—hopeful but wary—when he had lifted his bedcovers, inviting her in. The moment, a few nights later, when they had each shed the last barriers between them and admitted—

  “Mama, mama, mama!” cried Miss Rosalind Lanning, dashing across the width of the rotunda and skidding to a halt before her mother. Arms crossed over her boyishly flat ten-year-old chest, she declared, “Trevor says I cannot be the pirate captain because I’m a girl. That’s not fair. It’s my turn. He says I must be a wench,” she added on a sniff of great disdain.

  Relia turned solemn eyes on her eldest. “A wench? Is this true, Trevor?”

  “I’ll be a wench,” Julia Lanning piped up from the floor of the rotunda where she had been building a village of sticks and stones, framed by a carefully placed border of wilting wildflowers.

  “You don’t know what a wench is,” declared Master Geoffrey Lanning, nearly nine, whose first year at Eton had, unfortunately, convinced him that he now knew everything there was to know.

  “Do too,” his little sister retorted.

  “Trevor and Rosalind will both be pirate captains,” their mother pronounced, neatly side-stepping the issue of wenches. “And Geoffrey and Julia may be your lieutenants. You may then see who is first to find the treasure.”

  “What treasure?” Julia demanded.

  “A pretend treasure, silly,” said Geoffrey.

  “Oh, very well,” Trevor sighed. “Come on then.” The three older children set off across the ol
d wooden bridge toward the pond, with Julia doing a run-run-hop-hitch in a valiant effort to keep up.

  Relia followed their progress, her emotion best described as awe. These four absolutely astonishing children were hers. Hers and Thomas’s. They were real—every one a miracle. There had been no squabbles in her childhood. Except for occasional visits from The Terrible Twyford, she had been able to imagine herself as anyone she wanted to be, for there was no one to gainsay her.

  She had not learned to share. To compromise. To think of someone other than herself.

  Until she met Thomas Lanning. Who, truth be told, was nearly as spoiled as herself. A hard lesson had suddenly loomed before them—learning that the sun did not rise and set for their exclusive benefit. And yet . . . if she had not been so headstrong, so determined to save Pevensey Park, she would have settled for so much less. She would never have met Thomas. Never learned to love a Cit. Be proud of a Cit. Treasure a Cit.

  And there he was at last! Bounding across the park at a far greater speed than a man well past his fortieth birthday should ever—

  Relia came to her feet, her breath catching in her throat as she watched the precipitate arrival of that anomaly, a Whig cabinet minister in a Tory government run by His Grace, the Duke of Wellington. Though they had been separated only for a fortnight—since Relia had left their townhouse on Berkeley Square in order to be at Pevensey Park when the boys returned from school—she was, as always, breathless at the sight of him.

  Thomas striding over the wooden bridge, up the marble steps to the rotunda . . . sweeping her into his arms. His lips meeting hers.

  “Thomas,” Relia sputtered when he finally let her go, “the children!”

  Mr. Lanning lifted his head, eyed his distant, still-squabbling children with a considering gaze. “Are you quite sure we’ve managed the business correctly?” he asked his wife with a perfectly straight face. “Perhaps we should try for Number Five?”

  After twelve years of marriage, Mrs. Lanning demonstrated that she could still blush. But her contentment was complete. Her Cit was home, and all was right with the world.

  ~ * * * ~

  Author’s Note: The varied and often bizarre election practices mentioned in A Gamble on Love are all true, continuing until the Reforms of 1832. (I like to think Thomas had a hand in those reforms!)

  About the Author:

  Although Blair Bancroft is best known as the author of numerous Regency novels, she has also been published in romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and young adult medieval. Under her alter ego, Daryn Parke, she is the author of a mystery set at the Ringling Museum complex in Sarasota, Florida. For more details, please see her websites at www.blairbancroft.com and www.darynparke.com. She also invites you to visit her blog at http://mosaicmoments.blogspot.com.