Lady Elizabeth's Comet Read online

  Lady Elizabeth's Comet

  Regency Romance

  by

  Sheila Simonson

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2008

  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.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-046-5

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-046-8

  Copyright © 2008 by Sheila Simonson

  Cover design by Judith B. Glad

  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

  Chapter 1

  The night was glorious. Moonless November nights sometimes are--crisp and still and so clear there seems to be no barrier between the observer and the stars.

  I am an astronomer. I spent the evening and half the long night with my instrument. Although I had been absorbed for a week in tracing a dark nebulosity in Cepheus, I kept losing myself that night in the beauty of the sky. Finally my limbs and fingers cramped with the cold. I gave up.

  I climbed down from my sturdy platform, hitching my skirts over one arm to avoid stumbling in the dark, shook Harris, my long-suffering groom, awake, and with one last look at the spangled arch of black above me, went into the Dower House.

  I slept very late. By then the members of my household were so used to my eccentricity that nothing I did surprised them--or, if it did, they had the prudence not to voice their feelings. I had slept past noon before Dobbins, my abigail, worked up the courage to enter my bedchamber. She rattled the tea tray, fumbled about relighting the dead fire, and thrust the curtains open with a swoosh. Light flooded the room.

  I buried my head in the pillow.

  "Are you awake, my lady?"

  "Mmmnf."

  "Which shall it be? The blue wool or the green with the striped spencer?"

  "Go away."

  "Great doings at Brecon, my lady."

  I opened my eyes, blinking hard as they accommodated to the glare. "Great doings? Let me guess. Jenkins has dropped the Sèvres tea service." I yawned. "And Mrs. Smollet has turned him off at five and seventy without a character."

  Dobbins repressed a smug smile. "How you do go on, my lady. The blue?"

  I poured a cup of tea and sipped. "What o'clock is it?"

  "A quarter of one."

  "No, is it? I've missed breakfast again."

  "Never mind, Lady Elizabeth. Cook says eggs a la Benedick in half an hour and Mrs. Finch wishes to know should the young ladies go off to the village after all?"

  I set down my cup, staring. "Why should they not?"

  "Well, my lady, seeing as how his lordship has finally come..."

  "Lord Clanross?" I sat bolt upright, wide awake at last.

  "Yes, my lady. Jem says he drove up in the old light travelling carriage your Papa left in Lunnon, but the team's nobbut job horses, Jem says. How times has changed..."

  "Hush. Let me think. Did his lordship leave a card?"

  "There was a note not ten minutes ago, my lady. One of the Brecon footmen brought it. Willie, I b'lieve."

  I groaned. "Is there hot water, Dobbins?"

  A clanking in the hall indicated that the footman had done his duty. "Directly, my lady." Dobbins whisked from the room.

  Cautiously I stepped into the warmed slippers Dobbins had placed beside my bed, and I shivered as the draught curled about my ankles. I pulled my robe over my shoulders. Dobbins reentered bearing a steaming cannikin. She poured its contents into my handbasin and helped me into my blue gown. I was thinking furiously.

  "Shall I dress your hair, my lady?"

  I examined my reflection in the pier glass. Respectable. At least my complexion glowed from the frosty night air. My thick chestnut hair, which Dobbins had begun to brush free of tangles, is my best attribute. Given some encouragement, it waves.

  "Pull it back," I said ruthlessly.

  "Oh, my lady!"

  I ignored Dobbins's wail. I meant to look austere. I would be receiving a call from the new earl shortly, and I did not intend to make concessions for a jumped-up third cousin who had taken more than a year to arrive at his principal seat. He might be Head of the Family, but I meant him to know what I thought of his sluggishness. After all, I was not quite Nobody myself.

  My father had two sons, neither of whom survived infancy, and eight healthy daughters. I am the eldest. The present earl, my father's remote cousin, had never before clapped eyes on Brecon. I hoped he might not have suffered an apoplexy at first sight. Brecon exhibits all the more bodacious qualities of Castle Howard and the Bank of England. It is Palladian, huge, and cold as a tomb.

  The earl's note, addressed with stiff propriety to "the Lady Elizabeth Conway," awaited me in the morning room. I opened it over my superbly sauced eggs.

  "Madam," it said baldly, "if it suits your convenience, I shall do myself the honour of calling upon you at four o'clock this afternoon. My compliments. Clanross."

  I found myself staring at the signature. It was black and stiff and unadorned. My father had been earl of Clanross, too. Papa's signature had flowed elegantly in the Italian manner of his generation. Though it was by then more than a year since my father's death, it disturbed me to a surprising degree to read "Clanross" in that curt, graceless hand.

  With an effort I turned back to my nuncheon.

  When my sisters bounced into the house at three they found me at work beside the withdrawing-room fire, transcribing my notes.

  "Oh, Lizzie, Clanross has finally come!" That was Maggie, fiery red hair atangle.

  "Lord Clanross."

  Maggie ignored my correction. Jean, her identical twin, said in affected accents, "My dear, the villagers are all agog. Too comic."

  I raised my brows.

  Jean flushed but she gave me back a grey-eyed, half-defiant stare. Jean and Margaret, really my half-sisters, were fourteen, an uncomfortable age. Jean was growing up faster than her twin. I wondered what, if anything, could be done to mend her manners.

  "That will do, Jean." I turned to Alice Finch, my companion, who had accompanied the girls to the rectory in Earl's Brecon, where the long-suffering rector was trying without striking success to turn them into Christian gentlewomen. "Good afternoon, Alice. You look breathless. I hope the twins haven't worn you down entirely."

  Alice gave me an uncertain smile. Her hands fluttered like limed birds. "Oh, no. Mr. Bedell is in spirits today. We had a comfortable coze. His catarrh has quite cleared up, and he thanks you most sincerely for the liniment."

  Mrs. Alice Finch, a genteel and impoverished widow, had been foisted on me by my married sister, Anne, in a fit of propriety, and the arrangement was not working well. I did not need a companion. At eight-and-twenty I was not a green girl. Alice's sociable nature was thwarted at the Brecon Dower House. I rarely played cards, nor did I entertain company, and my astronomical work baffled her.

  I daresay Alice found my life as dull as I found her. I had to admit, however, that she dealt conscientiously with Jean and Maggie. They had been shipped to me in June by my other married sister, Kitty, Lady Kinnaird. Kitty had judged the girls ungovernable. So had the governesses I had hired for them. To do her credit, Alice had rallied round when the governesses fled, but the twins' high spirits exhausted her, and indeed,
they were not her work. I was.

  "May we walk up to Brecon?" Maggie again.

  "No, you may not. His lordship will call within the hour."

  Grumbling, the girls composed themselves to wait.

  * * * *

  "He's coming! He's coming!" Jean had been at the window nearly the whole hour. I peered out. I could just see a small upright smudge making its slow way down the half mile of rolled lawn that spreads its blank apron before the east wing of Brecon. At that pace it would certainly be four o'clock before his lordship appeared on my doorstep.

  Ashriek with excitement, the twins pestered me to allow them to await Lord Clanross in the withdrawing room. There I drew the line. I am not inhumane. Brecon and the twins in one short afternoon would overset the most stalwart of men.

  I did permit my sisters to conceal themselves on the landing where they could watch his lordship's arrival unespied, and I promised faithfully to call them down if he wished to meet them. Further than that I would not go. They were still schoolroom misses, after all.

  Alice and I seated ourselves side by side on the withdrawing-room sopha, hands folded, waiting. The fire crackled. A decanter of amber sherry winked on its spotless tray. Agnew, my butler and majordomo, had lit one branch of candles, for the room faces east and because of the woods is apt to grow dark early.

  The soft light glowed on polished wood and brocade and marble. On the white mantle of the Adam fireplace the enamelled clock Papa brought me from Paris during the Peace of Amiens whirred and chimed four.

  "I saw him start out. He was walking very slowly." I stopped, annoyed with myself for chattering.

  Alice made a polite sound and twitched her ruffled silk into smoother folds. "Shall you invite his lordship to take his dinner with us?"

  "No." That seemed harsh. After a pause, I added, "No, we needn't go that far. The mere observance of civility is all that seems called for. It's not as if he were really Family."

  The minutes stretched. At last, just as the clock struck the quarter, Agnew opened the front door and we heard subdued male voices from the foyer. I took a long breath and began composing formal greetings.

  "Lord Clanross, my lady." Agnew held the withdrawing-room door, then closed it neatly behind our caller.

  The polite phrases died on my lips.

  My father's successor was a stick man, a marionette, a caricature--and oddly colourless. His hair was grey-brown, his skin brown tinged with grey, and his eyes were a lightless grey like clouds before a heavy storm. He was tall and seemed taller, and he held himself with ludicrous stiffness as if a ramrod had been poked not down his spine but into his soul. A parody soldier.

  Alice and I, as was proper, had risen at the earl's entrance. She unfroze first and made him a fair curtsey. Hastily I followed suit as, ruffles and lace aflap, my companion extended her hand and said something fluting.

  To do his lordship credit, he took in her role directly. The grey eyes flickered. He bowed very slightly--as if he could not bring himself to bend below a fixed altitude--and murmured, "Mrs. Finch, Lady Elizabeth," in a flat voice which was not quite bass.

  I said something, I know not what. We sat.

  As the three of us exchanged stiff courtesies about the weather, my married sisters' establishments, and the style of Brecon, my mind began to invent satires. Everything--his appearance, the reports I'd received from Anne and Kitty, my own prejudices and expectations--charged the situation with barbed comedy. But when I met his lordship's eyes, any inclination I had felt to laughter dissolved. Whatever he might be, he was not a figure of fun. I cannot convey the chill evoked by that bleak grey gaze. It was not expressionless so much as unreadable.

  We uttered set phrases. Fifteen minutes later, having refused our offer of refreshments, Clanross took his leave.

  Alice and I went with him as far as the door. He made his brief bow and walked off along the long gravelled carriageway at a slow, measured pace--without so much as a backward glance.

  "What's he like?" That was Maggie.

  "We watched the whole time. Why didn't he send for us?" Jean, aggrieved.

  "I think he's a stick," Maggie said scornfully.

  Alice began to laugh, rather hysterically. "Stick," she gasped. "Oh, dear. I beg your pardon. S-stick!"

  I could only stare. I had been inclined to think her a stupid woman.

  * * * *

  That evening was clear and moonless, ideal for my work at the telescope. As I climbed up to my instrument, however, I could not at first put the interview with Lord Clanross from my mind. I shook my head to clear it. It was nonsense to allow a mere interloper to cut up my peace.

  I tilted the great refractor very slightly and corrected for the time lapse. Just as I put my eye to the eyepiece I caught a glimmer of light through the leafless branches of the trees. No, really. The Brecon servants knew better than to show a light in that wing on clear evenings. The east wing rooms were offices, muniments, display rooms. No one lived there. Mr. Moore worked in the estate offices on the main floor, but he was snug at home by dark, always. Well, I'd speak to Smollet, the Brecon housekeeper, tomorrow. I had work to finish first.

  Sir William and Miss Herschel had writ in the most heartening way about my dark nebulosity--or was it merely an irregular blank, a hole or tunnel in the vacancy above me? I felt the familiar tingle of anticipation and applied myself to the eyepiece. Below, Harris sniffled with cold. I scarcely heard him.

  It was an excellent session. At three or so the cold penetrated even my awareness. I called it a night. My notepad was covered with sketches and scratchings. I folded the pad and bestowed the instrument. Descending the ladder, I caught a glimpse once more of the bothersome light. A lamp, clearly, and no curtain drawn. Smollet would hear from me next day.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Smollet was suitably distressed.

  "Oh, dear, Lady Elizabeth, your work! I clean forgot. I'm that sorry."

  "Fortunately I wasn't aiming my instrument in that direction last night, but don't let it happen again." I was about to unbend and indulge my curiosity with a few discreet questions about her new master when I was struck by something in the housekeeper's manner. "What is it, Smollet?"

  "The thing is, my lady, that's the room his lordship is using." She wrung her hands. "He's made it into his bedchamber."

  "What!" At last count there had been forty-one bedrooms in Brecon.

  "He specified that room, my lady, and caused Jeremy and Mr. Jenkins to move a bed in, and two of those chairs from the small drawing room. And a clothespress and a cot in the next office for Mr. Sims. What Mr. Moore will be thinking I can't say." She sniffed.

  "Sims?" I asked at random. I have seldom been more bewildered. Could Lord Clanross be mad?

  "Sims is his lordship's man." A twitch of her nose indicated Mrs. Smollet's opinion of Sims's probable antecedents.

  "Good heavens," I muttered.

  That was feeble and Smollet knew it. "I don't like to raise objections," she said in pious tones. "At least not so soon."

  "Never mind, Smollet. I'll speak to his lordship myself."

  She looked somewhat mollified and presently regaled me with an account of the new earl's arrival. The man had not even bothered to inspect the State Apartments. The servants were offended by that.

  When the housekeeper had finished her tale of woe, I said, "It's early days to be making judgements, Smollet. Is Lord Clanross in now?"

  She sniffed again. "Closeted with Mr. Moore. I daresay they'll be through with their business soon. They've been at it since ten o'clock and it's past three now. Mr. Moore does like a nuncheon. Shall I have Jenkins announce you, my lady?"

  I hesitated. Five hours at the account books? "Yes, let's rescue Moore from starvation, by all means."

  She showed me into the small study my father had had furnished years ago for my mother's brother, Harry Whinyeats. The bookshelves were lined with studbooks and old bound volumes of The Spectator. I picked one up idly. It smelled of m
ust.

  "I've put her la'ship here, my lord."

  "Very well." The earl entered with the same stiff, slow gait he had shown at our meeting the previous afternoon. Perhaps he thought it stately.

  We exchanged formalities, and he added on a note of impatience, "How may I serve you, Lady Elizabeth?"

  "By drawing your curtain nights," I said tartly, setting The Spectator aside.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I daresay you've been told of my eccentric avocation, Clanross."

  "You're an astronomer."

  Well! At least he didn't invent an obnoxious neologism--astronomeress, astronomette. Small blessings.

  "Last evening was favourable for my observations. On such nights your servants have been kind enough to avoid showing lights on the east face of Brecon. You are using the accounts room, I believe."

  "And my lamp distracted you? I'm sorry."

  "Fortunately the interference wasn't significant last night. In the future, if you'll kindly draw your curtains..."

  "When the sky is clear?" He gave a short, sharp nod. "Yes. Very well."

  "I'm obliged to you."

  He made one of his stiff half-bows--an oddly formidable person.

  * * * *

  Thomas Conway--that was his name--was my father's second cousin and none of us knew him. There had never been any thought of his inheriting the earldom. My father's brothers, George and William, intervened between him and the title, even if my stepmother failed to produce the expected heir. It had seemed probable that my vigorous father would sire a son who would live to succeed him. Then we were visited with disaster.

  Stepmama, whom I loved dearly, died in childbirth. Two years before that my Uncle George, whose marriage had been childless, had died of an inflammation of the lungs. Then, in 1813, shortly after stepmama's death, William, a bachelor and a rasping rider to hounds, took a header on Pytchley Common and stunned us all by breaking his neck.

  I believe, though he wouldn't have said so to me, that it was Uncle Will's death that persuaded Papa it was his duty to remarry. He had mourned the twins' mother very sincerely. Nevertheless, within the year he married Miss Bracknell, and a sixmonth later, on their Swiss bridetrip, the fatal storm arose on Lake Lucerne and both were drowned. Hence Thomas Conway, sixth earl of Clanross.