Love & Folly Read online

  Love & Folly

  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: 978-1-60174-066-3

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-066-2

  Copyright © 2008 by Sheila Simonson

  Cover design Copyright © 2008 by Judith B. Glad

  Previously published by The Walker Publishing Co., Inc., 1988

  Zebra Books, 1989

  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

  1820

  "... if there is a more foolish year in English history,

  I do not know of it."--J. B. Priestley

  Prologue: New Year's Morning, 1820.

  Their sister, Lady Clanross, sent Jean and Maggie to bed after supper.

  At least it felt that way, though the supper had been an elegant midnight dissipation of salmon and lobster patties and champagne, with the orchestra playing Ancient Musick and county guests telling the girls how handsome they looked. Maggie and Jean had stretched their permission to attend Elizabeth's New Year's gala until the clock struck one Then Elizabeth sent them upstairs, rather an anticlimax.

  It was their ball. They were seventeen years old and would turn eighteen midway through the Season, their long-anticipated come-out. Elizabeth had sent for Mme Dulac from Lincoln to rig them out especially for this night, and Clanross himself had led Jean onto the floor--after the ceremonial first dance in which he had been obliged to squire the Duchess of Cope, who was fat and fifty.

  Jean had danced the first dance, very properly, with their cousin Willoughby Conway-Gore, and Maggie had danced with Johnny Dyott, but Jean hadn't felt properly launched until she romped through the boulanger with her tall brother-in-law, Clanross. In that second dance Maggie had been stuck with red-faced Charles Wharton of neighbouring Hazeldell, but she didn't object. Johnny had given her confidence. He always did.

  Now, drooping over the balcony as the guests drifted back into the brilliantly lit ballroom, Jean fetched a huge sigh. "I could have danced forever. Until dawn, anyway."

  Maggie yawned.

  "I felt light as air, Mag. I floated from one partner to another like...like thistledown." Having called up the simile--it came from one of Mme. D'Arblay's novels--she gave a small bounce.

  Maggie pulled her filmy stole closer. "You didn't misstep? I trod on Clanross's foot in the Roger de Coverly. He said it didn't signify. Did you really drink two glasses of champagne? I had one, but Johnny brought me lemonade with supper."

  "You're not firm enough, Maggie. I simply told Cousin Willoughby I wanted wine, and he was very obliging." Jean peered over the rail. The orchestra were tuning their instruments.

  "I thought better not." Maggie stifled another yawn with her gloved hand. Both girls wore elbow-length gloves of the palest blue, a gift of the earl, who had friends in Paris. Their gowns, though superficially similar in their gauzy overdresses and high corsages, had been cut to strikingly different designs. That was Jean's idea.

  They were identical twins, so alike their close kin sometimes confused them, and with the added disadvantage of flaming red hair, they were bound to be visible. Jean wanted to make sure no one treated them as interchangeable dolls. They would dress for contrast throughout the Season, she had decided one frosty morning, planning. She would wear one colour, like a theme or favour, Maggie another. That way no one would have an excuse to confuse one for the other. Maggie could have blue, Jean had added, magnanimous.

  When Elizabeth supported the notion, Maggie acquiesced. She knew herself to be foolishly shy, but more than once that long New Year's evening she had wished she could hide in her twin-ness. Her gown, a confection of silver spider gauze over a slim frost-blue crepe, she thought perfect, far nicer than Jean's pink rosebuds over white. But Maggie was not at all sure she enjoyed being singular. That was Jean's aim.

  Maggie shivered a little, though for once it was quite warm, the heat from hundreds of wax tapers, three fireplaces, and upwards of two hundred Lincolnshire gentry overcoming even the endemic chill of Brecon.

  Her twin straightened and turned to her. "I daresay we shall have to trot off to bed. "

  "Oh, yes!" Maggie was sleepy.

  "But I wish we needn't. They're going to waltz again. How I wish I could have waltzed with Tom."

  Maggie's eyes narrowed. She knew Jean had cherished a tendre for their brother-in-law, the earl, since they were silly girls of fifteen, but Jean rarely slipped into Christian-name moonings over Clanross these days.

  "Just once."

  She sounded so defensive Maggie touched her arm lightly. "You'll waltz with him a hundred times before the Season is over. And I'll waltz with Johnny Dyott. I don't step on his toes."

  "Oh, Mag, wasn't it splendid? And just think, months of balls and ridottos. What is it, Maggie? I thought you were having a good time. Do say you enjoyed it."

  "Of course I did, sister. I'm only a trifle hagged. It was splendid."

  Jean made a wide gesture with one gloved hand. "D'you say so? Then let's waltz!"

  "What?"

  "Here. You and I. They can't see us. Come, Mag, a dare."

  Strictly speaking, they ought not waltz in publick until the Patronesses of Almack's approved their Ton, but Jean's eyes glinted with challenge. After a moment Maggie gave a small choke of laughter. "Oh, very well, Jeanie. But you lead."

  * * * **

  Below in the ballroom, Johnny Dyott eased his shoulders against the silk-hung wall and watched the earl and Lady Clanross take the floor. They danced well together, he thought, though a trifle stiffly. Johnny was a master of the waltz, among his other talents. With the countess's young sisters packed betimes off to bed, he saw no lady he wished to partner other than Bella Conway-Gore perhaps. She was a notable exponent of the art.

  The musick swelled and so did the company, swaying and swooping in the dance that very high sticklers still regarded as fast. Fortunately, like the Conway twins, the high sticklers had retired from the scene. The floor was left to enthusiasts. Johnny let his vision blur and watched the sweep of colours. A successful affair. Should ease his lordship's way with the county notables.

  A flash of white at the top of his view caught his attention. What was it? He squinted. Above, on the long gallery overlooking the ballroom, Lady Jean and Lady Margaret Conway were waltzing together. They were so high up and so far away he could not distinguish between them, though his romantic fancy had always told him he would know Lady Jean. He watched, careful not to stare too obviously--for he didn't wish to call attention to what was a minor lapse of conduct--until the music swirled to a close.

  Like flames, he thought, flames dancing against the night.

  1

  The King was dead.

  Johnny Dyott clutched the strap and hung on as the top-heavy accommodation coach rattled out of the yard of the Angel Inn, lurched past St. Clement Danes, and headed west through the muffled clangour of London bells. It seemed to Johnny that the bells had not ceased since the old King's death, long awaited, was announced the evening before. Johnny had fallen asleep to .their tolling.

  Sunday, the thirtieth of January, in the y
ear of grace 1820. The bells of Wren's church--of all Wren's churches--summoned the faithful to morning service.

  The coach jolted once more on the icy cobbles, slowed momentarily, and began to pick up speed as the wheels found purchase. Johnny leaned back and closed his eyes. He was a little subject to carriage sickness.

  Snow blew with a thin rattle against the windows of the coach. Sunday. He ought not travel on the sabbath. Johnny's father, dean of Lincoln cathedral, had always been a strict sabbatarian. Ordinarily, Johnny would have deferred his journey another day out of respect for his father's opinions, but the thought of stopping longer in London, a strange London transformed by funereal gloom and suppressed excitement, had been suddenly insupportable.

  * * * *

  He had awakened early, roused by the bells, and thrown his belongings into the portmanteau before the maid brought his hot water. She was red-nosed with weeping and ready to tell him her exact sentiments when she first heard the dreadful tidings, but Johnny cut her short and asked her to summon a footman to carry his traps down to the foyer. He meant to leave directly after breakfast. The maid was almost as dismayed at his resolve as his father would have been, though for less pious reasons, but, like all of the Conway servants, she was far too well-trained to demur. When Johnny pressed a generous vail upon her, she even summoned a smile.

  Owing to Lord Clanross's habit of rising before six, breakfast in the Conway town house was served at the unfashionably early hour of eight. The family were not yet in residence after Christmas holiday, though Clanross himself had returned to town the week before for a debate in the Lords. He had brought Johnny and his political secretary, Captain Greene, with him.

  The night before, the night of the king's death, Clanross had dined at the house of his brother-in-law and political agent, Featherstonehaugh, the M.P. The earl had taken Greene, not Johnny, ith him, and Johnny was feeling ill used. He had hoped for a word alone with Clanross in the breakfast room, but, to add to his chagrin, he found Barney Greene at table before him making steady inroads on a sirloin of beef. Clanross was not yet come down.

  Greene, a grizzled, stolid gentleman of forty, looked up as Johnny entered and mumbled a brief good day before returning his attention to the roast beef and mustard. He ate with the same single-minded despatch with which he attacked the earl's political correspondence. Johnny envied him the importance of his work.

  "You've heard the news, I take it." Greene swallowed a draught of ale.

  "That His Majesty died last evening? Yes."

  Greene made an impatient noise. "The election."

  Johnny's hand stopped with a spoonful of buttered eggs midway between the chafing dish and his plate. He felt his ear go hot. Why hadn't that occurred to him? The king was dead. Parliament would be dissolved and an election called for. As Lord Clanross had the disposal of several safe seats and some influence in the outcome of other, contested seats, Greene would be plunged at once into the business of politicking.

  Johnny filled his plate at random, his mind racing. He listened with half an ear as Greene prosed on about the Conway interest. Perhaps Clanross would find some use for an energetic young man in the coming campaign. More than anything, Johnny wanted to be about the nation's business, though he knew he was unqualified and wholly inexperienced in political matters.

  Clanross had hired him as a private secretary, someone to help him deal with his scientific papers, his numerous charities, and the wide personal correspondence inevitable in his position. Johnny had accepted the post with eagerness and gratitude that Clanross should remember a very green ensign whose brief, inglorious presence in his company had ended seven years before. But despite his gratitude and eagerness, Johnny had in his secret heart hoped that the earl would entrust him with a publick mission. So far that had not happened, but it could. It might.

  Scarcely had Johnny seated himself and poured a cup of the very strong coffee Clanross favoured when the earl entered the breakfast room.

  Then in his thirty-eighth year, the Earl of Clanross was a tall man with serious grey eyes and a thatch of thick, greying hair. It never ceased to surprise Johnny, who had known him as plain Captain Conway, that he looked the earl--or rather, for most earls were elderly, goutish, and decrepit, that Clanross looked as an earl ought to look, upright and distinguished. He dressed with a neat propriety that accorded better with his lean height than the extremes of fashion would have done, and he carried himself like a soldier.

  That his military erectness owed more to a back injury he had taken in the Peninsula than a disposition to stiffness, Johnny was beginning to understand after three months in the Conway household. At eighteen, Ensign Dyott had hero-worshipped Captain Conway with all the foolish enthusiasm of his years. Now, at five and twenty, Johnny found that he liked the earl, a different and altogether more comfortable sentiment. Nevertheless Johnny was still a little in awe of his employer.

  Clanross greeted Barney Greene and smiled at Johnny. "Waite tells me you've decided to leave for Winchester this morning." He cut a slice of sirloin and seated himself.

  "I thought to." Johnny hesitated "My lord...er, Clanross, if the king's death alters things..."

  Clanross was pouring a cup of coffee. His eyes gleamed with amusement, but he said gravely, "It's bound to, you know. Especially for Prinny"

  Johnny flushed "I know... I meant... What with the election and so on, if you've a more urgent use for my services..." He trailed off, incoherent with hope and embarrassment.

  Clanross took a reflective sip of coffee. "I can think of few things more urgent than helping Richard Falk."

  "Yes, but a novelist."

  "He won't require you to spin fantasies for him, Johnny, but his disability makes copying slow work. I daresay he'll set you to straightening the Canadian correspondence. Bookkeeping was never Colonel Falk's strong point." He sipped again. "He's done yeoman work as secretary, though. I should have foreseen he'd throw himself into that business. Richard never does anything by halves."

  The Canadian "business" was a charity Clanross had organized--and funded--five years before, when the government decided to grant officers lands in Upper Canada in lieu of prize money and arrears of pay. By then it was evident that discharged soldiers from the Peninsular Army would have great difficulty finding work. The economy was in postwar shambles, unemployed weavers and mill workers rioted in the north, and veterans of many years' service were left to beg their way from town to town, desperate for bread and employment.

  That the situation was bitterly unfair Clanross had pointed out in the Lords more than once, but the debt-ridden government were unwilling to increase taxes in a time when landlords suffered from declining rents and the Poor Law burdened the conscientious with further outlay.

  Many of the less affluent officers had emigrated to Upper Canada themselves. But wealthier officers, with no real need for the grants and no wish to transport their families to a wilderness, could be persuaded to assign their holdings to the use of discharged veterans. Some, like Clanross and his friend, Lord Bevis, donated their land grants to the project outright and made substantial gifts of money as well. Others, less affluent or less generous, were willing to help settle the men and their families as tenants.

  It was a useful scheme, but it was complicated enough to require the services of Clanross's solicitors and at least one bookkeeper. Colonel Falk did not keep the books, but as secretary he had the considerable chore of writing cajoling, placatory, and grateful letters to contributors. He also kept a journal of the charity's transactions and provided emigrants with letters of introduction, testimonials of good character, and, alas, in some cases, pleas for leniency addressed to the colonial officials when beneficiaries indulged in feckless misbehaviour.

  "Shouldn't have said Falk was the charitable type myself," Barney Greene mumbled around a mouthful of toast. "Had the reputation of a care-for-nobody."

  "Appearances can be deceiving." There was ice in Clanross's tone. Greene's eyes dropped to hi
s plate and he mumbled something apologetic.

  Clanross turned back to Johnny. "The success of the project has been Colonel Falk's doing. Bevis and I lend our names, but he does the work. I never intended... Well, that is by the by. The point is Richard needs your assistance, Johnny, and needs it now. I'll rub along without you for a fortnight or so. Do your best for him. He's my oldest friend." He sawed a bit of beef and daubed it with mustard. "You'll like Mrs. Falk. Charming woman. Have you taken a room at the Pelican?"

  "Yes."

  "Excellent. I don't want you to burden the household. What with my godson's illness and a new infant, Emily Falk will have her hands full."

  "Yes, my lord." Johnny addressed his cold coffee and congealed eggs with a gloom he hoped was not obvious. It all sounded so domestic and trivial. "I'll do my possible. Does Lady Clanross come to town next week as planned?"

  Clanross gave a wry smile. "She will be cast down, I daresay, but I fear the girls' come-out must be put off."

  At that sally, Johnny smiled, too. Lady Clanross had spent Christmas bemoaning the necessity of removing to town to present her twin sisters to society. An astronomer of some note, her ladyship had lately caused the Chacton works to cast a very large mirror for her new reflecting telescope, and she longed to oversee its installation in the small observatory Clanross had built for her at Brecon. But if spring was the season for astronomical discovery, it was also the Season.

  Lady Jean and Lady Margaret Conway would turn eighteen in May and they were determined to come out. Christmas had seen them aflutter with plans for new gowns and new sensations--theatre parties and routs and balls, balls, balls. At their insistence, their dancing master had called up all the gentlemen in the household, including Johnny, as auxiliary troops, and the long gallery had echoed with dancing musick throughout the holiday.

  Clanross had married the eldest daughter of his predecessor, a remote cousin. Lady Clanross's sisters, with wealth, birth and striking good looks in their favour, meant to take the Ton by storm. It was an enthusiasm neither the countess nor her husband shared, but they were inclined to indulge the girls.