Earl of Shadows: A moving historical novel about two brothers in 18th century England

by Jacqueline Reiter

  ‘I do not understand.’ William watched John warily. John curled a hand round his shield-backed chair.

  ‘I had two reasons for coming to London. My first I fulfilled this morning. I called on Mr Addington and informed him I would remain in office under him.’ It was a calculated blow, and it struck home. William’s face drained of colour. John had expected the reaction, but the confirmation of his suspicions still infuriated him. ‘You seem surprised. I do not know why, for I thought you had been encouraging all your followers to stay on under Addington. Did I misunderstand you? Is it possible you never imagined I would act on your instructions?’

  William was fast recovering from the shock. Shaken his nerves might be, but he still had something of the dignity he had always shown in a crisis. ‘That was your first reason. You have yet to tell me your second.’

  ‘My second reason,’ John said, ‘is why I accepted your invitation to dine tonight. I wish to bid you farewell.’

  William’s haughty expression dropped from his face. His red-rimmed eyes burned with sudden intensity. ‘Farewell? Are you going back to Winchester?’

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘I am staying in London.’

  ‘Then why …?’

  ‘Because we have so little to say to each other I feel we ought to stop trying.’

  William started back as though John had struck him, then fury filled his face. His response, when it came, was cold. ‘I brought you to my Cabinet. I kept you in it against the advice of my closest friends. You may still blame me for taking you from the Admiralty, but I have nothing to reproach myself for. I made you what you are.’

  ‘What you say is true,’ John replied. ‘And yet you still abandoned me to my enemies without a qualm.’

  ‘What do you expect me to say?’ William said. John closed his eyes.

  ‘Nothing, Will. I expect you to say nothing, as you have done for the past six years.’

  William set his lips, but the anger in his face melted into fear as John took a step towards the door. ‘John, don’t go.’

  ‘You are no longer my Minister,’ John said. ‘You have no need for me.’

  ‘I am still your brother.’

  The burst of fury John felt at those words took him by surprise. He spun round and William flinched. ‘No, you are not my brother. You have never been my brother. I have always been yours, and you have no conception of how hard it has been to bear that knowledge all my life.’

  William sat open-mouthed, his eyes strangely dilated. John braced himself for the attack that never came. Instead William’s face crumpled and he burst into convulsive tears.

  John was too stunned to move. He had expected anger, coldness, perhaps even indifference, but not this clear evidence that his words had wounded William more than he had ever been wounded before. What made it so much worse was that even now John had to fight the instinct to lower his weapons, to offer assistance, to surrender. Even now, after everything, he felt guilty.

  And then William made it a thousand times worse. He looked up at his brother and said, ‘I am sorry, John. I’m sorry.’

  Nothing in the world would induce John to admit these were the very words he had awaited during the whole period of their estrangement. Once they might have been enough, but John had spent six years stewing in unfulfilled bitterness. He set his lips and told a lie.

  ‘I do not care.’

  He tensed himself for William’s next attempt to keep him from leaving the room. Somewhat to his surprise nothing came. John felt a pulse of disappointment, for William’s unwillingness to try harder seemed to be confirmation of John’s unworthiness. But when John turned he caught sight of William’s lost, broken expression, the expression of a man who had received one blow too many. John suddenly remembered how alone his brother truly was, faced with the prospect of retirement after nearly half his life in office, surrounded by supporters who did not understand what he had done.

  In that moment, John knew – felt, even, with every nerve in his body – that he had gone too far. In his haste to step out of William’s shadow he had dealt William a worse blow than William had ever inflicted on him. The shock of the realisation came like a sabre-thrust to his stomach, cutting him in two.

  He wrenched at the doorknob and fled. In later years when he looked back on that evening he always remembered everything in crisp detail. The plush red carpet under his feet. The smell of damp from the stairwell. John Carthew’s exhausted voice remonstrating with a creditor in the parlour. The bite of the cold air on his cheek as he stepped into the street, and the wetness of snowflakes in his hair before he put on his hat. Yet at the time he was aware of nothing but the hollowness at his core. He took one last look at the building with its large sash windows, the soot-blackened exterior, the large front door with its fanlight and knocker in the shape of a roaring lion, all illuminated by the flickering of the oil-lamp.

  Then he did what he had sworn 23 years ago he would never do again. He turned up his collar against the wind, stepped onto the icy pavement, and left William to face the future alone.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  January 1806

  ‘Now tell me again,’ Mary said, kindly but firmly. ‘What did you say his name was, and his profession?’

  ‘His name is William Pringle, and he is a colonel in the army. I trust you have no quarrel with that, my lord General?’ There were spots of colour on Harriot Hester’s freckled cheeks and her blue eyes sparkled with defiance. John and Mary had taken her into their house in St James’s Square after the death of John’s mother three years previously. Edward Eliot, her father, was long gone; he had never got over the death of his wife, and mourned himself into the grave beside her. Now 19, Harriot Hester was undeniably the daughter of Lady Harriot Pitt, fiery and unpredictable.

  John sighed. In the weak winter light Mary could count every one of his 49 years in the creases on his brow and round his eyes. ‘I have no objection to his profession. I am concerned more particularly about his ability to provide for you.’

  ‘My mother came poor to my father, yet they managed very well, and I am heiress to £10,000 pounds a year.’

  ‘That is precisely why we are concerned—’

  ‘William loves me!’ Harriot Hester snapped. Mary flinched at her familiar use of Pringle’s first name. ‘He cares nothing for my fortune.’

  Mary strongly doubted it. Neither she nor John knew much of William Pringle beyond the fact Harriot Hester had met him at a St James’s drawing room, and that he was 15 years her senior. The words “fortune-hunter” hung like a spectre behind every heated conversation on the matter, but so far had remained unspoken.

  ‘Miss Eliot, your parents waited to obtain your grandfather’s permission before marrying. They were—’

  ‘They were,’ Harriot Hester interrupted again, ‘under the protection of my other uncle, who persuaded my grandfather to give his blessing to a love-match.’ John’s mouth tightened. Harriot leapt to her feet. ‘I wish I had gone to live with Uncle Pitt, along with my cousin Hester. What a pity you did not give me the chance.’

  She left in a flurry of cotton muslin and braided auburn hair. John rose but Mary restrained him. ‘Let her go. I will go to her.’

  John sat back down in obvious relief. A middle-aged, childless man saddled with a headstrong girl could not be expected to have the same tolerance as a man surrounded by daughters. ‘A bad business. A very bad business.’

  ‘She’s in love.’

  ‘She thinks she is.’ Mary said nothing. John hesitated. ‘Do you suppose she really regrets coming to us?’

  ‘She has been happy here until now.’

  ‘No doubt she is jealous of her cousin Hester,’ John said. Since William’s return to the premiership just over a year ago, his eldest niece Lady Hester Stanhope had acted as his political hostess, attending the most glamorous functions and enjoying London’s social and political life as one of the most important women in the capital after the Queen and Princesses.

 
; ‘She might have gone to live with your brother. He is also her guardian.’

  John snorted. ‘William, offer the run of his house to two women? The world was shocked enough when he took in one! Nor did he need to take Hester in at all. My sister may be long dead, but Lord Stanhope is still alive.’

  ‘You can hardly blame Hester for wanting to flee her father.’

  ‘He has made unfortunate political decisions, true enough, and his endorsement of French republicanism makes him dangerous to know, but I cannot forget what Stanhope was when he was still Lord Mahon. I cannot forget he was once my brother-in-law and friend.’

  ‘You are more forgiving of Lord Stanhope than of William,’ Mary remarked softly.

  John’s head jerked up, and she immediately wished she had not spoken. She and John could speak of almost anything, but his quarrel with William was the one topic she had long ago realised she could not broach. Even over the past 18 months, during which he and William had served once more as colleagues in a wartime cabinet, John had taken care never to engage his emotions when speaking of his brother.

  Mary would be the first to admit there was much to distract John from inspecting his feelings for his brother. William had wanted to succeed Addington with a strong ministry embracing all political factions, but circumstances had forced him into a narrow, precarious arrangement besieged by the excluded on all sides. Even his own cousin, Grenville, had coalesced with Charles Fox’s opposition.

  A series of disasters had exacerbated William’s political weakness. Henry Dundas, now Lord Melville and the First Lord of the Admiralty, had been accused of embezzling funds while Treasurer of the Navy and would soon stand trial for it. On the continent, a new military coalition had been formed against France, but the defeat of Austria at Ulm and Russia at Austerlitz had destroyed all hope there. The only comforting news had been the victory over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, but Admiral Lord Nelson’s death had overshadowed even that. There was a real chance William’s government would not survive the upcoming parliamentary assault. William himself certainly knew it; he had only just returned from six weeks in Bath recouping his health ahead of a session that promised to be rigorous and decisive.

  Love and forgiveness, life and death. Mary pressed her fingers to her aching temples. Beneath her hands, she saw her husband watching in concern. She knew she had not been fully present for some time now, and that John had noticed, as wrapped up as he was in public affairs and the prospect of losing his Cabinet post. But everything Mary had seen and heard pointed towards another, private danger on the horizon, one that would soon force her to breach the tacit prohibition that had existed for so long on William. Her husband would soon have more need for her support than, perhaps, he yet knew. She dropped her hands and said, ‘You should speak with William about Harriot Hester.’

  John’s reaction was instant, as though she had suggested something distasteful. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  Because once, you would have told him everything without qualm. Because I know you miss that openness more than you will ever say. But Mary said only, ‘Because he is also her guardian.’

  ‘I do think he might have more important matters to think about. Parliament meets next week, and William has just returned from Bath. As far as I know he remains at his house in Putney.’

  ‘Are you not worried about William’s remaining out of town so close to the sitting of Parliament?’ Mary asked, but John either accidentally or deliberately misunderstood her.

  ‘It’s not as though he is still in Bath. You know William. He never stops working, even on holiday. I can go to him whenever I wish.’

  Mary set her lips in frustration, but she had to insist. ‘Come now, John, you’ve not seen him since the beginning of December.’

  ‘Very well.’ John gave an ungracious sigh. ‘I will go to Putney tomorrow. In any case I have a letter to deliver to my brother from the King.’

  ‘Good.’ Mary closed her eyes in relief, and yet John’s unconcerned tone of voice alarmed her. Did he truly not see how unusual it was for his brother to have remained in Bath so long? Could John be so distracted by the political situation that he had not heard the whispers? Or did he simply not want to see, or hear, or believe, the signs that William was more ill than he had ever been before?

  But then Mary could hardly blame John for remaining oblivious when she was scarcely able to understand the significance of what was happening herself. She was all too aware that until John and William made their peace, John himself would find none.

  ****

  Mary found Harriot Hester in her room, scowling into her dressing table mirror. Their eyes met in the reflection; Harriot Hester’s lips tightened but she said nothing. No doubt John would have received a different reaction, but Harriot Hester had not yet reached the point of chasing her aunt from the room.

  Mary drew up a chair and they sat in silence. Harriot Hester looked very young, with her auburn ringlets, her snub nose and her wide blue eyes. Mary could well see why Colonel Pringle might wish to court her, quite beyond her personal fortune. What she could not get past in her mind, however, was how little Harriot Hester looked like her mother. Mary could still remember how similar Lady Harriot Eliot’s eyes had looked to John’s, almond-shaped and flecked with amber. There was nothing of John at all in Harriot Hester.

  ‘Should you not rest, Aunt Chatham?’ Harriot Hester said eventually. ‘You seem tired.’

  ‘I am well enough.’

  Harriot Hester nodded, unconvinced. She seemed to be waiting for Mary to resume the conversation. Mary supposed it was reasonable of her to do so; why would she have sought her niece out, unless to tell her something specific? And yet she had almost forgotten what she had wanted to say. Her thoughts flew about her head as though something had disturbed them.

  At length Harriot Hester said, ‘I am sorry about what I said downstairs. I did not mean it.’ A pause, then with spirit, ‘Apart from what I said about Colonel Pringle. I meant every word of that.’

  ‘You truly wish to wed him?’

  ‘He has asked me to be his wife, and I do not see why I should refuse him.’ An expression Mary recognised well enough came into Harriot Hester’s eyes. She smiled bashfully at her aunt. ‘I love him.’

  ‘Love counts for much,’ Mary said. ‘But it cannot perform miracles.’

  Almost exactly 25 years had passed since she had first fallen in love with John on the terrace at Albemarle Street. Mary wondered if, in the early days of their courtship, she had looked as Harriot Hester did now, glowing with the pleasure of love. She caught a glimpse of herself in the long mirror: her cheeks were sallow, her hair streaked liberally with grey under her powder and cap. It was the face of a stranger. She jumped as Harriot Hester took her hands. Her niece looked anxious.

  ‘Aunt Chatham, I do not think you are well.’

  Mary opened her mouth to deny it, but something in the touch of Harriot Hester’s hand released something that had been kept shut up for too long. She bent her head and choked out a sob.

  Harriot Hester’s hands tightened. ‘Oh, Aunt, I am so sorry. Had I known how much pain I would cause you by my attachment to Colonel Pringle—’

  ‘No, it is not that. It is … it is … I barely know what. I am worried about my husband.’

  ‘Uncle Chatham? Because of the situation of the ministry?’ Harriot Hester hazarded. ‘Is Uncle Pitt in peril?’

  Mary felt hollow, as though the tears had cried all feeling out of her, for now at least. ‘I think he is.’

  ‘Then don’t worry.’ Harriot Hester grinned unconvincingly. ‘Uncle Pitt has survived far worse than this. He will surprise us all. He always does.’

  That was not what Mary had meant, but she forced a smile, conscious that Harriot Hester needed reassurance as much as she did.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  January 1806

  The deserted streets were plunged into a winter’s gloom when John’s carriage left St James’s
Square for Putney. A strong wind whistled round the glass window and threatened to blow out John’s travelling lamp as he crossed the simple wooden toll-bridge between Fulham and Wandsworth. He tried to distract himself with reading, but the movement of the coach made him feel ill and forced him to abandon his book. He gazed out of the window at the bare-branched trees, the frosty fields, and the passing houses, and thought.

  This visit to Putney was a fool’s errand. He had nothing to say to William that could not wait till his brother was in London. Why had Mary insisted on his going now? John frowned at his reflection in the carriage window. Somewhere beyond his worries about the fate of the ministry and the prospect of losing his Cabinet post, John was vaguely aware his wife was slipping away from him. He was finding it increasingly difficult to read her thoughts, as though she were afraid of what he might find if she let him in.

  The pale bronze sky promised snow as the carriage turned off the Portsmouth road onto the gravel path leading to Bowling Green House. John peered at the approaching house’s long, stuccoed frontage with some trepidation. Melville, Ulm, Austerlitz – would William shrug it all off, as he often did bad news? Would he need comfort? If so would John be capable of giving it to him?

  These questions dropped out of his mind the moment he stepped across the threshold. John had expected William to have plenty of visitors, and had anticipated being one of many clamouring for a moment of his brother’s time. And yet the house was quiet and empty. There were no liveried messengers, no clerks carrying bundles of papers, no backbenchers waiting for an audience, nobody at all except George Pretyman-Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln.

  John clasped the Bishop’s hand in greeting. ‘My dear Bishop, what brings you here? And where is everyone else?’