Love & Folly Read online

  Johnny was a little in love with the fiery and impetuous Lady Jean, and he had listened with melancholy amusement as the twins' eagerness wore down their elders' resistance. He also taught Lady Margaret the pas de Zephyr.

  The girls were young. They could have waited a year to make their appearance on the marriage mart and no harm done, but when they put their minds to a course of action it was well-nigh impossible to resist them. It looked as if the king's death would throw a rub in their way. Johnny wondered how they would surmount the barrier of a year of national mourning. If he had been a gambling man, he would have laid odds on their ingenuity.

  Barney Greene, his plate of sirloin demolished, wiped his mouth on the heavy damask napkin and rose from the table. "The letter for Mr. Kilbride in Dublin?"

  Clanross grimaced. "Finish that one first, then try the address to the Holton freeholders. A formality. Say all that's proper." Holton was a pocket borough. Clanross disapproved of pocket boroughs. He had inherited three.

  Greene bowed and left the room.

  Clanross ate in silence for some minutes. He looked underslept--the Featherstonehaugh dinner must have run late. Johnny finished his own meal and sat still, wondering if he ought to break in on his employer's thoughts. But it was now or never.

  "My lord."

  Clanross started and looked at him, frowning. Johnny knew he did not like to be addressed by his style, having come to the title late and unexpectedly, but he said in kindly enough tones, "What is it, Johnny? I've a letter for Richard--more business, I fear--and another for Emily. Shall you carry the post for me?"

  "Yes sir." Johnny drew a breath. "If you could make use of me in the canvassing, Clanross, or in anything of that nature, I'd be glad of the experience."

  The grey eyes narrowed. "Are you interested in politicks?"

  "Of all things, my lord."

  Clanross sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I envy you. I often think there's nothing I detest so much as politicks and politicians."

  Johnny gaped. "But-- "

  "I know. I'm inconsistent. What are they calling me now, Radical Tom? Or is it Mad Conway?"

  Johnny flushed and dropped his eyes. "But sir, if you dislike it--"

  "Why bother?" Clanross rose, half his meat untouched. "I'm stuck with it, am I not? At least until we abolish the House of Lords."

  Johnny stared.

  "Too Radical for you? Never mind, Johnny. I shan't corrupt the youth of Britain with my more extreme ideas. There'll be work enough and to spare before the election. They'll delay the funeral as much as a fortnight--safe enough, in this weather." Clanross's nose wrinkled. "Time for the crowned heads to assemble."

  "I daresay."

  "Meanwhile do you best by Richard and I'll see what I can find for you on the hustings."

  "I... Th-thank you, my lord."

  "Come along, if you want to save the expense of a hack. And keep your ear to the ground whilst you're in Winchester. Who knows, you may find stirrings of discontent even in happy Hampshire."

  Confused but heartened, Johnny rose, too, and went in search of his gear.

  Clanross deposited him at the Angel in good time to pay the fare before the coach left for Winchester at ten. Then the bells began to toll again and Johnny's elation leaked away in the chill air.

  * * * *

  The coach had begun to bowl along at a smart clip. Johnny opened his eyes to find a tight-mouthed clerk regarding him with disapproval. Probably fancies I shot the cat last night, Johnny reflected. I might have done, if anyone had asked me to.

  "Ah," said the red-faced corn chandler who sat beside the clerk. "King's dead then, poor old gentleman. 'Tis a sad day."

  "We shall not see his like again," the tight-mouthed clerk said piously. "He was a moral man."

  The plump woman beside Johnny agreed, the black plume on her bonnet nodding sycophantically. "Not like some I could name."

  "Aye," the corn chandler echoed. He shifted his heavy thighs. "Not like some."

  They were thinking of Prinny, of course. The fat, dissolute, charming Prince Regent was now George IV. Hard to imagine Prinny as King of England. George III had been king throughout Johnny's twenty-five years. Even Johnny's father remembered no other monarch, and the venerable dean recalled the days of powder and patch, of knee breeches and hoops and style, when ladies wore silk the colour of Marie Antoinette's hair and gentlemen carried swordsticks. What if the king had been old and mad for almost as long as Johnny could remember? He had been king--and he had been a moral man.

  "Time for a change, then," the corn chandler muttered. "Past time."

  "'O wind,'" Johnny intoned, quoting a line from a poem his friend, Hogg, had sent him lately in manuscript. Was it Byron or that fellow Shelley? "'O wind, if Winter comes can Spring be far behind?'"

  Everyone stared at him.

  The king is dead. Long live the king.

  No one was going to say anything further. The acts suspending habeas corpus and making open criticism of the government a capital crime were still in force. Only that past August, mounted troops had ridden down unarmed citizens in the streets of Manchester. What ever people might be thinking, they would keep their thoughts to themselves among strangers.

  Perilous times.

  And I, Johnny mused, his melancholy deepening, am journeying to Winchester to help Colonel Falk scribble a novel. A noble endeavour. He leaned back again, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the scene at Brecon when the Conway sisters discovered they were not, after all, to make their come-out. He rather thought Lady Jean would swear.

  2

  "...so it's true, after all. The king is dead."

  "Hellfire and damnation!"

  Elizabeth Conway winced. "Really, Jean."

  Jean's twin, Margaret, plucked a macaroon from the tea tray. "It's a great pity, Jean, but I daresay His Majesty didn't die to spite us." She nibbled the confection.

  Jean sniffed.

  A year ago, Elizabeth reflected, Maggie would have munched and Jean would have thrown something at her. It is just possible that my sisters are growing up. She reached again for her husband's brief letter. "Three months of deep mourning..."

  Jean plumped down on the sofa beside Elizabeth and peered at the neat script. "Then in April we can put off our black ribbands and make our come-out."

  "April will be taken up with electioneering." Elizabeth folded the letter again lest Jean see the private joke with which Tom had closed, an allusion to her new telescope. No point in adding fuel to Jean's fire. "The new Parliament are to take their seats on the twenty-fifth. After that, I daresay the leaders of the Ton will begin to entertain privately, but you cannot be presented this year, so what is the point? At least I don't think there will be a court levee. Prinny has never had a great regard for the proprieties, but even he...well, we shall see. Tom means to come home as soon as he can."

  "Oh good," Maggie dusted the crumbs daintily from her fingers. "Una's healing nicely, but I'll want Clanross's opinion." Una was Maggie's Irish setter, a gift from Clanross, and a recent mother. The birth had been attended by complications.

  It was Elizabeth's private belief that Maggie felt more enthusiasm for Una's puppies than she had felt at the prospect of a London Season, but Maggie was a good girl and where Jean led her twin would follow. Whither Jean, seething beside her, would direct her frustrated energies, Elizabeth did not venture to imagine. She said cautiously, "Should you care to make your come-out in half-mourning, Jeanie?"

  Jean sniffed. Her small-boned fists clenched on her lap, and her flame-red hair crackled with indignation. "It's so unfair. Anne even promised in her last letter to take us to Mme. Thérèse."

  Lady Anne Featherstonehaugh, their second sister, was a modish political hostess and awake to the highest kick of fashion, which Elizabeth knew she was not. That Anne had agreed to see to the girls' gowns was Elizabeth's doing, and she was about to tell Jean so when the girl rounded on her.

  "You don't care, Elizabeth. You're happy!"<
br />
  "Do you accuse me of rejoicing at His Majesty's demise? Believe me, I'm not so lost to propriety."

  "You know what I mean," Jean muttered, sullen. "Your blasted telescope."

  Elizabeth looked at her from the corner of her eye. "Perhaps it's fortunate you won't be going about in Society after all. Your language would make a grenadier blush."

  Jean burst into tears.

  Elizabeth and Maggie exchanged alarmed glances. Jean was not the crying kind. As she patted her sister's quivering shoulders and murmured soothing phrases, Elizabeth groped for some scheme of action to divert Jean's mind from her troubles, but nothing presented itself.

  In truth, Elizabeth was rather shaken by the strength of Jean's disappointment. She tried to remember her own feelings when, twelve years before, she had prepared to make her debut in society. Her stepmother, Jean and Maggie's mother, was alive then, and their father as well. 1808--the height, or depth, of the war. The ballrooms had been full of uniforms. A dashing and rather exciting time. Jollier, Elizabeth thought ruefully, than the present, in spite of alarums and excursions.

  Her mind strayed to her husband, as it often did when he was gone, and she wondered what Tom had been doing in 1808. Probably sitting in winter quarters in Portugal, scratching his fleabites and rehearsing for regimental theatricals, when he was not on outpost duty. Tom seldom reminisced about his military service, and when he did his recollections were apt to focus on fleas and fandangoes.

  Oh Tom, come soon, she pleaded silently. I need you. Jean needs you.

  As if in response to her prayer, the door opened. Elizabeth's pulse quickened. She gave Jean a squeeze and sat up. It was not Tom--only Nurse bringing the babies for their aunts to inspect and approve. Still, the diversion was welcome.

  Maggie jumped to her feet and ran to capture the Honourable Richard Conway, who had escaped Nurse's grasp and was waddling, petticoats already adroop, in the direction of the briskly burning fire. Nurse set Lord Brecon on his unsteady pins and straightened his skirts with a cluck. "There now, wasn't Master Dickon all clean and tidy for his mama, and now look at him." Maggie had rescued the baby from the coal scuttle. "I beg your pardon, Lady Clanross. He's too quick for me, that one."

  Elizabeth smiled and held out her arms to Brecon who staggered solemnly over to her. "Mama," he said experimentally.

  She gave him a hug. "That's right, darling. Just keep practising and you'll have it down pat any day now."

  Beside her Jean gave a watery giggle. Brecon had caused some consternation over Christmas by calling all female persons above a certain age mama. At the time Elizabeth had been less amused than her sisters, but she was glad now that the baby had diverted his aunt from her self-absorbed gloom. "Will you go to Auntie Jean, then, Ba?"

  Lord Brecon gave an assenting bounce and was duly handed over. Dickon, on Maggie's knee, crowed with delight as she began to tickle his round person, and the atmosphere lightened appreciably.

  Elizabeth's sons, like her sister, were twins, though the boys did not look much alike. It was some consolation to her that she had produced not one but two heirs to the earldom at the first try. Among them, her father's wives had borne eight daughters and no sons, which was why Tom was Lord Clanross.

  In another sense the boys were a fortunate gift. As with Maggie's Una, the birth had been attended by complications. When she woke at last from a high fever, a week after she had begun labour, the physician had informed Elizabeth that she would bear no other children. In the weeks--nay, months--of melancholic reflection that followed, Elizabeth had clung to the fact that at least she had given Tom an heir.

  She could not help feeling that she had failed him, even so. Tom had been orphaned young and had lost his own twin sister to the same illness that had killed his mother. While he cared not a whit about securing the succession, Elizabeth thought he needed a large family and she had wanted to give him many children, daughters as well as sons.

  Elizabeth's barrenness was grief to her, but it was a grief she kept to herself. Tom had never spoken of it. Indeed she sometimes wondered whether he had been told. However, his affection for the boys was unqualified. And, she thought, half sad, half amused, if she had not given him daughters, at least she had given him a raft of sisters.

  Besides Jean and Maggie, who were great favourites with him, there were Anne in London and Kitty in Scotland, Elizabeth's full sisters. And, in the Dower House down the gentle hill upon which the palace of Brecon sat in icy neoclassical splendour, where they were attended in great comfort by the redoubtable governess, Miss Bluestone, resided the three other Conway daughters. Fanny, Georgy, and Caro, Jean and Maggie's full sisters, were still in the schoolroom. Quite a population of Conway females. And they will all have to be presented, Elizabeth thought. Perhaps Tom and I should emigrate to Upper Canada before the evil day arrives.

  She watched her sons and her sisters romping on the Turkey carpet and wished Tom would come. Parliament would be dissolved at once, he had said in his letter. The Whigs were hopeful that Prinny would bring them in at last. Tom was less sanguine and less enthralled by the current Whig leadership. The questions he considered most urgent--the want of work, the price of bread, Catholic Emancipation to placate turbulent Ireland, redistribution of Parliamentary seats--were not likely to receive much attention even from the Whigs, if, as rumour had it, Prinny intended to divorce Queen Caroline.

  On what grounds? Elizabeth wondered. Infidelity? But Prinny was famous--or notorious--for a series of plump mistresses, not to mention his morganatic wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert. Surely he would nor be so brass- faced as to sue for divorce on the grounds of his wife's amatory adventures. What then? And if he does bring a bill of divorcement, will the queen countersue for divorce on the grounds of bigamy?

  A divorce was bound to be a political matter. The parties would take sides, not on the truth or falsehood of the evidence, but on the basis of the advantages to be gained from taking one position or the other. Precisely the sort of false dilemma to produce rioting in the streets, as if there were not already enough civil disorder.

  Elizabeth sighed.

  "Do look, Lizzie, Brecon can dance!" Jean was laughing heartily as the heir, looking pleased with himself, wobbled up and down a few times on his still uncertain legs. They gave way. He sat down hard and began to wail. Jean picked him up. Dickon, closely attended by his Aunt Margaret, was exploring the wainscoting. He had acquired a fine coating of dust. I must speak to the maid, Elizabeth thought absently as she rose to take her sobbing child from Jean.

  "Good God, what's this, a donnybrook?"

  "Clanross!" Jean and Maggie.

  "My lord." The nurse.

  "Oh, Tom, thank God you are come." Elizabeth ran to her husband. He enveloped her and the heir in a large, rather wet hug--he wore riding gear--and smiled at Maggie and Dickon.

  "That's a fine greeting. What's the matter, my lady?" She blinked, momentarily confused. Now Tom was home nothing was the matter. "Prinny cannot possibly divorce the queen. He has no grounds."

  The earl's eyebrows shot up to his hairline and he grinned down at her. "And what has that to do with me and thee?"

  Elizabeth flushed and laughed. "Nothing. Not a thing. Did you ride? You're wet with snow."

  "And mud," Clanross agreed amiably, bending to kiss her cheek. "I'm growing too old for winter manoeuvres."

  "But the carriage..."

  "I left it in Grantham and hired a nag. It was faster than the carriage. Otherwise I should have had to put up for the night in Chacton." He had taken Brecon from her and was nibbling the fingers the baby poked in his mouth. "Very tasty, Ba."

  "Papa!" Dickon beamed expectantly from Maggie's arms so Clanross took him, too, and they made a circuit of the withdrawing room, his lordship with a giggling infant on each arm. It was all very silly and happy, and Elizabeth, perversely, felt a strong urge to break into tears. My turn.

  After dinner she and Clanross retired to their suite. Elizabeth had had an antechamber
made into a cosy sitting room when she had finally agreed to live at Brecon--it was a splendid house but far from homely--and some of their pleasantest times had been spent there, remote from family and guests and servants with a warm fire crackling on the hearth.

  "Shall you have to go back to town soon?" Elizabeth snuggled close and began playing idly with his watchfob.

  "I left Barney Greene at the house. He can send for me if I'm needed. I've a week at least, Elizabeth." He pulled her closer still. "A reprieve, but I fear the next months will require my absence from Brecon more often than I like."

  They spoke idly of absent friends. After a time Elizabeth murmured, "Did you send Johnny Dyott to your friend in Hampshire?"

  "Yes. He rode down on Sunday."

  "Sunday!"

  "Perhaps he is beginning to kick over the traces at last. He won't take holy orders, will he?"

  "I don't think so. He has come that far. His father will be distressed, but really, Johnny would chafe at the confinement of a parish." Elizabeth hesitated. "Have you considered that he might do well in politicks? He is a personable young man."

  "And a Tory by temperament, if not conviction."

  "Does that matter?"

  Tom said slowly, "The thing is, he has ideals, and I'd be loathe to disillusion him so young."

  "He's twenty-five. Not a youth."

  "Except in his own mind."

  That was true. In many ways Johnny Dyott was an estimable young man, but there was in his make-up a core of indecisiveness and deference that made him seem much younger than he was. She wondered why it should be so--an overbearing father?

  Tom sighed. "Richard will keep him occupied."

  "I daresay." Elizabeth was not well acquainted with Colonel Falk, though he was Dickon's godfather. She had met few of Tom's military friends. Sometimes she felt as if Tom were deliberately excluding her from that part of his life, for he kept up the friendships. He didn't intrude his old companions on her company. She hoped he did not imagine she was reluctant to welcome them. Almost she asked him, but it would be easier to change the subject.