The Young Pretender Read online

  The Young Pretender

  By

  Sheila Simonson

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2012

  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: 978-1-60174-147-9

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-147-2

  The Young Pretender

  Copyright © 2012 by Sheila Simonson

  Cover design

  Copyright © 2012 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 publisher.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five (5) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Published by Uncial Press,

  an imprint of GCT, Inc.

  Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

  For Mick who put up with my Jean-splicing

  1.

  "Are we there?" Alice yawned.

  "Soon. We've passed the village." Jean Conway turned from her drowsy companion and scrubbed the window of the post-chaise with her gloved hand. She peered at a hedge that lined the narrow road to the earl of Clanross's principal seat. Rain sheeted down, masking the fields and meadows beyond. It had been raining hard for their entire three-day journey from Town.

  They did not intend to drive all the way to the huge Palladian mansion of Brecon, just to the dower house. Jean had lived there from the age of fourteen with her twin and her younger sisters, and she thought of the smaller house as home. She ached for home.

  The carriage lurched, and Alice moaned. "We should have stopped in Earl's Brecon for refreshment."

  Jean made no reply. Alice had been asleep when they passed through the village that served the Brecon estate. Their driver did not want to stop for refreshment or anything else. The roads had begun to flood. He wanted to deliver his charges to their destination and turn back to the comfort of the nearest posting inn. Jean didn't blame him. He had to be soaked to the skin, riding exposed on the near horse as he was.

  She wished she'd agreed to use Clanross's traveling carriage. But that would have taken time to arrange. She would have had to wait until after the funeral. Being a woman, she could not attend it, and she had been filled with a vast impatience--to come home, to see the girls, to throw herself into the arms of Miss Bluestone.

  She pressed her face against the window and let the tears slide down her cheeks. Her sister had died five days before in Clanross's London house after a long battle with consumption, and Jean had nursed her to the last.

  Not that she hadn't had help. No one would have permitted her to martyr herself, but Fanny had needed someone from the family to be with her, to soothe her brow, to read to her, to talk cheerfully to her, and, when that was no longer possible, to listen to her prayers and fears and wishes. Poor sweet Fanny with her spectacles and straight flyaway hair. Her declining days had dragged on more than a year, but the end came swiftly and quietly. She had been not quite nineteen, eight years younger than Jean.

  Jean had had seven sisters. Now she had six. Face to the window, tears streaming, she wondered who besides herself would miss little Fanny. The answer she came up with, as always, was Miss Bluestone, and that was why, in defiance of prudence and common sense, Jean had taken a post-chaise north through the November gloom to seek out her former governess.

  The carriage lurched and swayed. The driver swore. Spray arced from the wheels as they forded the lowest point on the road. The ditch was already brimming black water, and Jean saw no sign that the rain would ease. She suppressed her alarm. No point in troubling Alice. Alice was all too easily troubled. Jean could hear her sniffling.

  She blew her own nose on a black-bordered handkerchief, stuck the scrap of lawn into her reticule, and turned back to her companion. "I daresay the girls and Miss Bluestone are taking their tea early in this weather." Miss Bluestone had charge of Jean's remaining unwed sisters, Lady Georgina, still in the schoolroom, and Lady Caroline, now twenty and betrothed to a gentleman from Grantham.

  "I wish I had an early tea," Alice whined.

  The coach rattled.

  "Not long now." As both ladies knew exactly where they were, for Alice had also lived at the dower house at one time, Jean's comment was pointless. Alice sniffed.

  Perhaps ten minutes later, the chaise passed through the open gate of the Brecon estate and pulled in before the entrance to the dower house. The palace itself lay beyond the lake, and none of the family were in residence. No lights shone there or in the dower house windows either. Miss Bluestone and Agnew, the dower house butler, were both frugal with candles, and it was just past three--twilight ordinarily, darker today with the cloud cover.

  Jean heard the post-boy rapping at the front door and thumps and grunts as the two men shifted the baggage. She watched them heave the trunk, two bandboxes, and a carpet bag to the porch. The post-boy returned to the door and banged on it. The driver dripped back to the chaise, wrestled that door open, and offered Jean his hand.

  She took it, clutched her pelisse to her throat with her other gloved hand, and stepped down into a puddle. Rain smacked her face.

  "They don't answer, me lady."

  Jean lifted her skirt and picked her way up the steps on the driver's arm. "Perhaps they're visiting friends. Tell the boy the key's beneath that urn." Where was Agnew?

  The boy fumbled about in the wrong places, and Jean came to his rescue, shoving the urn sidewise and digging the key from the crack where Miss Bluestone always wedged it for emergency use. Agnew disapproved of any key not in his custody, so its presence meant the housekeeping staff were also missing. Where were they? Jean handed the driver the big iron key and let him deal with the door. It always stuck.

  They went inside, out of the icy wet. The driver fairly danced in his eagerness to leave. A conscientious man, he offered to drive the two women back to the village or up to the mansion, but Brecon was under dust sheets with a much reduced staff, and it was always a cold house. The village inn was small, warm, and probably dirty. Jean had never stepped foot inside it, though she could have drawn a floor plan.

  "We'll make ourselves comfortable here, if you'll just bring our traps inside." It was soon done--not without cursing. The trunk and bandboxes dripped on the tiles. The carpet bag that held their night gear slumped beside the other luggage.

  "Thank you." Jean pressed a sovereign into his hand, a large douceur considering the fat fee her brother-in-law Clanross had already paid him. He tested it with his teeth, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and went out again into the dim afternoon, dragging the boy with him. Jean stood at the door and watched the yellow-bodied vehicle out of sight. She almost called the driver back. Water was flowing across the road.

  Alice removed her gloves and bonnet.

  Jean dropped her own hat and gloves on the hall table and winced as cold air struck through her short red curls and stabbed at her scalp. Her ears tingled. "AgNEW!" But the butler didn't respond.

  Alice shivered. "Nobody's home."

  Half an hour later, Jean had to admit Alice was right. They searched upstairs. Everything was tidy--beds made, chamberpots emptied, clothes presses orderly. The unused bedrooms and the schoolroom waited, blank and still. Miss Bluestone's room wa
s vacant and the large bedchamber Caro and Georgy shared. All the hearths had been swept.

  On the top floor, the servants' quarters showed no signs of hasty departure either, but clearly everyone had gone. What of the groom and the horses? Jean peered from one of the windows, but the pediment that encircled the roof blocked the stables from view. She caught a glimpse past the woods of her father's ornamental lake. It was no more than a shimmer of light beneath the lowering sky. The lake looked closer than usual, an odd optical effect.

  Jean made her way downstairs, leaving Alice in what had been Fanny's room, curled on the bed with a quilt over her head and still fully clothed.

  Though Fanny had been gone from the dower house more than a year, the room showed her taste in the pressed flowers she had had framed, the fidgety print fabric of the curtains, and the clutter of small porcelain figurines. It looked as if everyone expected her return.

  Jean paused on the landing to blink back tears, but she was thinking at last. In her haste to get out of the rain, she had not looked at the outside of the house closely. Even so, she must have noticed crepe hangings or a mourning wreath on the door. Miss Bluestone had not received Clanross's letter. Jean's heart sank. She would have to break the news.

  She clutched the banister like an old woman as she went on down to the foyer. A puddle had formed around the forlorn luggage. She supposed she ought to do something about it, though the tiles would take no permanent damage. Or would they? Ought she to mop? She was uncertain about domestic matters. She thought she could start a fire in one of the hearths, or perhaps in that intimidating iron stove in the kitchen, but wasn't there something about dampers? Did Alice know? Jean had once started a bonfire.

  For the first time in her life she considered the advantages that might derive from being too poor for servants. One might learn something useful. She could sew a basic seam, curry her horse though the grooms had always removed her saddle, and drive a gig, and she did know how to deal with dogs. She could also dress herself, because she and her twin Maggie had done each other's buttons when they wanted to hoodwink their maid and sneak from the house. Otherwise, when it came to practicalities, Jean was hopeless. She made a mental resolution to amend that.

  "Alice," she called, "come help me with the fires!" but Mrs. Finch didn't respond--probably didn't hear.

  Shivering, Jean hurried to the butler's pantry and the stairwell that led to the basement kitchen. If she hadn't been grasping the banister, she might have tumbled down the steps, for she tripped on her black serge skirt. She reached the unlit hall, panting, and pushed the door open by guess, but the kitchen had only the two leaky areaway windows, so it was dim too.

  "Lights first," she muttered. "Then fires." When her eyes had adjusted, she spotted a row of working candles on the deal dresser. She set two of them on the big table where Cook chopped vegetables and rolled pastry. "Flints or lucifers." She scrabbled in drawers and eventually turned up a flint. There was no tinder. Ruthless, she took out her handkerchief. The flint sparked after five tries, the cloth ignited, and she lit one of the candles. She also singed her fingers.

  Sucking at them, she stomped on the flaming fabric until it was safely out. Grateful she had no witness to her incompetence, she lit the other candle, took a death-grip on the candle-holders, one in each hand, and went back upstairs. She moved with care to avoid blowing the candles out or stumbling on her skirt. The foyer looked better in the yellow light, but it was as cold as banished hope.

  "Alice," she called. No reply. She called again. Still no answer. She set one of the candles on the table beside her damp bonnet and climbed up to the first floor. Alice was asleep.

  Jean shook her awake without remorse. They were going to need fires soon, not just for warmth but for water to wash with and tea and blessed bed-warming bricks. She hoped Alice knew how to light the kitchen stove.

  It was a forlorn hope. Alice, long-widowed, had never had anything to do with newfangled contraptions like closed stoves. She didn't like them. Ugly things. She had always relied on her servants to light fires.

  Jean stood by Fanny's window, looking out, as Alice, yawning and grumbling, took herself behind the screen to use the chamber pot. Alice was offended. Her status as a gentlewoman had been called into question.

  Of course Alice had had servants. Jean said so by way of apology.

  She leaned toward the window and shifted to the left. The lake was closer. It now lapped the nearest marble bench. Her father, the fifth earl, had scattered the elegant benches at intervals on the margin of the lake, so guests could sit in comfort whilst they viewed the bridge that led to a tiny mid-lake pavilion. The folly was much admired in regional guidebooks.

  The water level of the lake had always been variable. The present earl, her father's distant cousin, had married Jean's eldest sister, Lady Elizabeth. Tom had once drained the lake. When he replaced the water, the level had risen fairly high, but Jean had never seen it this high. She squinted at the bench. Something marred its perfect whiteness, a streak of black.

  She turned away. Storm debris, no doubt. A tree branch. The pavilion and the bridge that led to it were invisible in the dark and the sheeting rain.

  Alice emerged from behind the screen, smoothing her hair with one hand and her skirt with the other. "Brrr, I shall put my pelisse back on."

  "You could use the quilt as a shawl."

  "I think not." Alice was still on her dignity. She took her coat from the peg and shoved her arms into the sleeves. "Ugh, it's damp."

  "So's mine." Jean hadn't even considered removing her fur-lined pelisse. The house was clammy. "Let's go down and see what we can make of the sitting room hearth. There's sea coal in the scuttle." She picked up the candle.

  As Jean reached the landing, someone banged at the front door. She almost dropped the candle holder, and the flame flickered. Behind her, Alice shrieked.

  "Oh, hush. Who can that be? Jem?" She hoped so. Jem was their groom of all work. He could start fires. She trotted on down the stairs with the candle guttering. She had scarcely gained the foyer when the unlocked door opened, and a man entered. It was not Jem. Now she thought of it, a servant would not have come in by the front door. Agnew did not allow it.

  "Lady Jean?"

  "Who are you?" She peered at the intruder across the black and white tiled floor. He stayed at the door, half in and half out. He was hatless, and his short riding cloak dripped on the tiles.

  "Sholto, my lady." When she didn't respond, he added, crisp with impatience, "Lord Clanross's factor."

  "Good heavens, Mr. Sholto, come in and close the door. There's a cold breeze." The candle flames flickered, but she recognized him now, even in the uncertain light. She should have--she'd known him, or of him, since she'd first come to the dower house. He'd been young then himself, a gangly boy. In the interim, she'd seen him off and on at a distance. Now he was Clanross's steward. He was not more than thirty, young for the work but no longer gangly.

  He was looking beyond her. "Mrs. Finch?"

  "Mr. Sholto, we are very glad to see you. There's nobody here, no servants." Alice's voice sounded plaintive.

  "We took everyone to Hazeldell yesterday morning--Miss Bluestone, Miss Mackey, and the young ladies. There's flooding. The Whartons invited them to come, and to bring Agnew and the other servants. The groom--"

  "Jem," Jean interposed.

  "Aye, Jem. He took the horses up to the Brecon stables. Durbin will house him in the grooms' quarters--there's plenty of room." Brecon wouldn't flood. It lay with its outbuildings on what passed for a hill in that part of Lincolnshire.

  "I see," said Jean. "But surely--"

  He ran a hand through his wet hair. It flopped. "How d'ye come to be here, my lady? Did they not warn you in the village? They expect flooding there too."

  "We drove straight through Earl's Brecon."

  He frowned then gave himself a slight shake. "Least said soonest mended. Miss Bluestone gave me no word of your coming. I spotted the post-cha
ise as I rode down from Quillan's farm and came as soon as I'd sent word to the house to prepare rooms."

  "My sister died. I wanted to tell Miss Bluestone." Jean's throat closed.

  He drew a sharp breath. "Lady Frances?"

  She nodded, staring at his boots which were puddling the tiles. "Fanny. Yes."

  "Och, I'm gey sorry."

  "It was not unexpected." Her voice sounded cold in her ears.

  "She was a canny wee lass." He ran a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, Lady Jean." His distress seemed genuine, but how had he known Fanny, if he had? Perhaps Alice could tell her.

  She opened her mouth to ask him why he had ordered Mrs. Smollet to prepare rooms at Brecon as soon as he saw a post-chaise at the dower house. That seemed odd.

  When he spoke again he had regained his composure and his command of English locution. "If you'll come with me, ladies, I'll row you to Brecon. You can't bide here."

  "Row us!" Alice squeaked.

  "Aye. I didn't want to take a horse across a flooding stream because of the debris in the water. So I used the boat." There was only one, quite small. "I tied it to yon bench." He waved an arm in the direction of the lake.

  "Thank you," Jean said. "We'll stay here."

  "Your choice, of course, but you'll find Brecon more comfortable when the lake drains."

  "Drains?"

  "The road to the village is already under several feet of water. The lake is slopping over the bank on that side."

  "And?"

  "The bank on this side is weak. If… when it gives way, water will surge through your stables and flood the basement of this house too. It may even reach the ground floor." He made a wide gesture at the black and white tiles. "If you're determined to stay here, best keep upstairs. I'll carry your luggage up."

  Jean strode to the table and set her candle down by her bonnet. "I think you exaggerate." She went to the door and peered out. It was quite dark and still pouring. The gravel at the base of the steps was certainly awash. A stand of rhododendrons masked the shore where Sholto claimed the bank was vulnerable. It was impossible to judge whether he was right, but why would he lie?