The Young Pretender Read online

  Jean remembered that it was torture to hear Fanny read aloud, which her little sister had insisted on doing whenever they had had an evening of novel-reading or poetry. After a moment, she said, "I remember that she never could read anything comic, because she laughed so hard she couldn't say the words."

  At that, Miss Bluestone wept. So did Jean. Both of them felt much better for weeping.

  When they had shared their reflections about Fanny's too-short life, Miss Bluestone demanded an account of the lake rescue. Wild stories were circulating.

  Jean obliged and was warm in her praise of Mr. Sholto's actions.

  "I should expect no less of him," Miss Bluestone said. "He's a good man and quick-witted."

  "Charles says he knew Fanny."

  "Indeed." She described the jaunts through the countryside, Sholto driving the gig with Fanny and herself tucked in beside him, and the long conversations they had enjoyed about everything and nothing. "He could make her laugh."

  He had made Jean laugh. She pulled sharply back on the reins of her imagination. Perhaps he had fallen in love with Fanny.

  "He treated Lady Frances like a young sister," said Miss Bluestone, reading her mind with perfect ease. "He has four."

  Jean groped for a change of subject. "Do you think you and the girls should come to Brecon now the flood danger is past?"

  Miss Bluestone confessed she would like that for several eminently logical reasons. The Whartons ought not to have to deal with so much fretful company with Cecilia near her time. Not to mention the burden of feeding so many people, including six servants. They would be better occupied at the dower house, cleaning up and surveying what would have to be bought to replace items lost to the flood. Much better than lurking about Hazeldell doing nothing.

  "Cook will have to restock her pantry," she concluded with a sigh. "And to think we were beforehand with the world coming up to Christmas, pluming ourselves on our economy, Agnew and I. I shall have to write his lordship this evening and request his help."

  Jean knew very well that Miss Bluestone managed her sisters' household whilst Agnew polished the silver and Miss Mackey sat and knitted. So it had been when Jean was a girl in the schoolroom. So it was now. She wondered what Miss Bluestone would do when Georgina made her come-out the next year. The governess was a woman of wide ability. She would never again find a situation that gave such scope to her talents.

  We could set up household together. Jean felt a moment of cheer at the thought. Alice could go off to Kitty in Scotland. She was always prating about dear Lady Kinnaird. Let Alice live with Kitty. Jean was willing to take any odds that Miss Bluestone knew how to start a fire.

  "Shall we send for Mrs. Smollet now?"

  Jean rang the bell.

  Mrs. Smollet was less than delighted at the prospect of opening Brecon, but she couldn't very well close the doors to Lady Clanross's temporarily homeless sisters. Jean assured the housekeeper she would write Elizabeth at once and then sat back and watched as Miss Bluestone calmed the agitated woman, pointing out the advantages of having six extra servants at Brecon, including a butler and a sous chef paid from the dower house budget. Nor would there be a need to open the huge salons downstairs. The sisters were in mourning and would not be entertaining.

  "Mourning? Oh dear Lord, I forgot the hatchment!" Mrs. Smollet wrung her hands. "Poor Lady Frances. And the hangings." The death of an earl's daughter could not go without appropriate commemoration. Thoroughly distracted, she agreed to open sufficient bedrooms, a larger withdrawing room on the first floor, and the small dining room below with its adjacent anteroom.

  "Nothing more than that," Jean said firmly. "We shall live here, snug and quiet as mice, just until Agnew says the dower house is habitable. I'm sure his lordship will approve. I know my sister Elizabeth will."

  "Mr. Sholto--"

  "He must be informed, of course--"

  "But he's living here too." She raised her chin, eyes defiant, as if Jean had objected. "The ground floor of his cottage is a mass of mud and debris."

  "Where--"

  Mrs. Smollet said, "He has a room off the estate office with a day-bed and a clothes press. When he works late in the bookroom or the estate office he often stops the night, but his staying here never intrudes on the household even when his lordship is in residence. Mr. Sholto eats with the staff, as you know, Lady Jean."

  "Then there's no problem," Miss Bluestone said, "though he ought to join us in the dining room, Mrs. Smollet. We are well acquainted with Mr. Sholto, a very gentleman-like young man."

  Mrs. Smollet thought he would probably prefer to take his meals with the staff. "He's not at all high in the instep, you know. Not like Mr. Moore."

  No, they agreed, he was not like Mr. Moore.

  Miss Bluestone left almost at once to set the removal in motion, and Mrs. Smollet went off in search of the hatchment, a coat of arms suitable for the fifth earl of Clanross's seventh daughter--it would bear the Conway shield with the Cameron arms, their mother's bloodline, on the dexter side, both set in black. And there must be crepe hangings and a proper wreath. No, Jean did not think it was necessary to dress the staff in full mourning. Black armbands would be more than sufficient. And yes, Mrs. Smollet could think about hanging the Christmas greens, though not just yet.

  Alice and Jean ate their dinner in lone splendour in the morning room, and Alice was peeved. She thought Jean should have wakened her in time to greet Miss Bluestone. There were silences. One more day, Jean thought, grim.

  When they had finished eating, they went up to the sitting room where Alice tatted and Jean opened the first volume of Tomorrow. It was not a new book, but Jean hadn't read it when it came out, so she had tucked it into her trunk along with Mr. Peacock's Mad Marian. Ordinarily she would have plunged into Tomorrow, for she liked Maria Edgeworth's tales, but this one didn't catch her interest. She had read the third paragraph three times before she gave up.

  "Don't you like it?"

  "I'm in the wrong frame of mind for a novel." She rose. "I'll go find Walter Scott's poetry."

  "The bookroom is bound to be cold. The whole house is cold." Alice shivered.

  "Shall I move the screen for you?" She indicated not the fire screen but one they were using to block the draught from the door.

  "Never mind," Alice muttered. "I don't like Scott."

  "I wasn't going to read aloud."

  "I shall retire."

  "Are you well, Alice?"

  "I'm cold." She bundled her handwork into the workbasket and stood. "Good night."

  Jean rose too. She drifted out, thinking that she would send Alice north to Kitty after Christmas. All that was needed was an excuse.

  Jean was always a little reluctant to enter the library. When she and Maggie turned eighteen, the year of their come-out, Jean had fallen in love with Clanross's librarian, a poet who was the son of the incumbent of St. Ewold's in Earl's Brecon. Fortunately for Jean's peace of mind, the vicar had since moved to Lincoln to an appointment in the chapter of the cathedral. He was now a canon, she thought. Mr. Tidmarsh, his elderly replacement, was Tom's choice.

  Owen Davies, the librarian, turned out to be a faithless fool and a very bad poet, but Jean's experience of young men was then so slight she had had no way to judge except by appearance. He had looked rather like the famous statue of David in Firenze. At least in the face. She had been well able to imagine his other attributes.

  When Owen set off for Upper Canada to avoid a sedition charge, Jean had taken a gig from the Brecon stables and chased after him, alone except for a compliant maidservant. She drove as far as Bristol where his ship waited. Lord Clanross had had no difficulty following her, and the ensuing confrontation, not with Tom but with Owen, had humiliated her more than she was willing to admit.

  Before the flight to Bristol, most of Jean's encounters with Owen had taken place in the Brecon library. Whenever she entered the bookroom after an absence--this time of two years--the old shame washed back over her lik
e a rogue wave. Though she continued to use the book collection, she always braced herself for the ordeal of entering the room. Tonight, however, her exasperation with Alice distracted her, and she strode into the vast, dimly-lit chamber without pausing to collect herself.

  For an instant, she imagined the man sitting at the long table with a stack of papers and a slim book was Owen. Then he looked up and rose. It was Sholto, of course. She ought to have expected him to be working there.

  "Lady Jean." His tone was colourless, and he didn't smile. Nor did he look like a work of art. In fact, he looked like a Scots steward who needed a shave.

  "Please sit," she snarled. "I came for a book."

  He inclined his head and resumed his chair, his eyes going back to his papers. He picked up the quill he had been writing with.

  Jean bit her lip. She ought to apologize, for she had had no reason to be rude to him, but he clearly did not wish to be interrupted by conversation.

  She went over to the shelves that held modern poetry. Mr. Scott's verse was not there, not even her favourite, "Marmion." Disappointed, she took a thin volume--Cowper--and sat just inside the circle of light from Sholto's work candle.

  Sholto glanced at the book. "'God works in a mysterious way--'"

  "'His wonders to perform.'" Jean closed the Cowper quote. "Too mysterious for my taste. Do you by any chance have Scott's poetry?"

  "Have it?" He blinked. "Did I borrow it? No, I don't like it. Mind you, he tells a good tale. I like Ivanhoe."

  "His poetry is not on the shelf."

  "Do you fancy I absconded with it in a fit of patriotism? Ask Miss Bluestone. She also borrows works from the Brecon library."

  "So she does." Why that simple explanation hadn't sprung to mind Jean didn't know. Perhaps she was set on finding fault with Mr. Sholto. She squinted at his book. "Newton's Principia?"

  "Mine, not his lordship's." He scowled. "You needn't look surprised. It's a translation. One of the few books I have left, thanks to the flood. 'Twas upstairs. A little bedside reading."

  For insomniac nights, no doubt. "I'm sorry." She hoped the volumes of Scott were safe in the dower house schoolroom, not downstairs where they might have suffered flood damage. She nodded toward the stack of papers he had been dealing with. "Are you totting up my brother-in-law's losses?"

  He rubbed at the spot between his eyebrows. "That will take a while. I'm writing the affluent among us for donations."

  "Donations?"

  "Many of the cottages in the village were damaged by the flood. The people who live in them are poor, and they will need to buy sea-coal to dry their houses out, among other things. Most of them are camped in the church, but they can't stay there much longer. Now that they're fed, the first order of business is to dry everything."

  "I see." She didn't exactly. "If most of the flood damage there was caused by the lake overflowing, should Clanross not supply the fuel they need?"

  "I'm sure he'll want to, and I've already brought in coal and several loads of firewood from the limbs blown down in that October storm, but there's something to be said for a community of concern, Lady Jean. His lordship lives here only a few months of the year. The people I'm writing to live here all the time."

  She turned that over in her mind. "I think I see what you're saying. If they give to a fund for sea-coal, they'll take a proprietary interest in the results."

  His mouth eased in a smile. "People like to be involved."

  "You're a clever man."

  The smile vanished. "Not very." His hand caressed the cover of Newton's work.

  "You're confident of Tom's generosity."

  "I'm confident of his sense of duty. He knew the lake shore was vulnerable and had already agreed that I should have the weak bank strengthened. I was to start the work after Christmas."

  "You must be frustrated."

  His mouth tightened. After a moment, he said, "Good evening, Lady Jean." He set the papers atop his book, clutched the pile one-handed, and rose. "I've had a long day. I'll leave the candle." He trudged from the room. Not a graceful exit.

  Jean stared after him. Whatever she had said had been the wrong thing. She took Cowper off to her bedchamber then abandoned him in favour of her journal, but it was too soon for the journal.

  She could not bring herself to enter an account of Fanny's death in her day book, though she had forced herself to write the letters to her sisters, and until she did that she could write nothing else, not even an account of the flood. She lay in bed and thought. The trouble with the journal was that it demanded honesty.

  4.

  The girls' remove to Brecon took an extra day, because Cecilia had invited Caroline's Intended, Mr. Barnet, to dinner at Hazeldell. When her sisters finally arrived at Brecon in Charles's carriage, they embraced Jean and said all the right things to her, but it was clear that they would have preferred to stay with Cecy. Hazeldell was miles closer to Grantham, for one thing. They had also been looking forward, Caro to her wedding, Georgy to an early come-out perhaps, and now they must observe six months of full mourning for Fanny.

  That was Jean's reading of their mood. Miss Bluestone had brought the girls up far too carefully for either to express open resentment, but Jean knew them well enough to know when they were pouting. She repressed her own feelings, glad to leave the two of them to Alice's ministrations and to go off on her own.

  Accompanied by Jem, she rode some miles around Brecon, but the roads were still bad, and it was too chilly to ride far in any case. When she passed through Earl's Brecon, she looked at the clump of cottages near the bridge. She couldn't tell which was Mr. Sholto's. The houses were aswarm with workmen, and coal fires burnt on every hearth, if black smoke from the chimneys were an indication.

  One or two people looked up as she passed. A woman dropped a curtsey. They knew who Jean was, but no one had the temerity to hail her. She smiled on all, impartial, and rode on.

  Why not stop and speak to people? She was conscious of Jem watching her. The groom's eyes were dark and curious. What could she say? That she'd had almost no conversation with anyone but Fanny for the last sixmonth? That she'd forgotten how to chat?

  When she took her self-doubt to Miss Bluestone, the governess suggested that Jean practice, a teacherly response.

  "Practice? On whom!" She thought of her blundering words with Mr. Sholto in the bookroom and shuddered.

  Miss Bluestone meditated. "We shall call upon Mrs. Moore--that is, the elder Mrs. Moore. You and Lady Clanross had already taken Fanny to Switzerland when Mr. Moore suffered the fatal stroke. Indeed you ought to call upon the widow. It's some years since you've seen Mrs. Robert too."

  "Not since she was a bride." That was true. Robert Moore and his wife had made their first home in Chacton. Was her name Cynthia?

  "Then let us lose no time. We'll pay a morning visit." The conversation took place before dinner, on the day Jean had made her melancholy way through Earl's Brecon. Caro and Georgy wandered into the antechamber during the exchange. When they heard of the prospective call, both of them groaned.

  Miss Bluestone raised her brows. "Have you other plans?"

  Georgy shook her head, tossing her brown curls.

  "We can't make plans. We're in mourning." Caro didn't try to hide her feelings.

  "Don't come," Jean snapped. "We don't need you."

  Miss Bluestone frowned but didn't reprove her. "Jean has not paid her condolences to Mrs. Moore, Caroline. If you choose not to join us, you ought to write your Grantham friends of Frances's death. You must do so as soon as may be, lest they fancy you can join their holiday revels."

  Caro's expressive face fell at the thought of a bleak holiday season.

  "Georgina, I have a list for you. Italian verbs describing actions. You will conjugate twelve of them, if you please."

  Georgy sighed. When Miss Bluestone said conjugate, she mean ten times for each verb--in writing, word perfect. Perhaps there was something to it. Jean's Italian, though hardly fluent, was cor
rect nine years out of the schoolroom.

  Jean was glad to have Miss Bluestone to herself. She drove the gig, the governess watching critically, and was able to ask which of the muddied cottages was Mr. Sholto's. If the girls had come, she wouldn't have dared to enquire. They would have found her curiosity curious.

  Miss Bluestone said, "The one on the left with the blue door. He took the lease seven years ago, I believe. I daresay he had it altered to suit him and didn't care to move when Mr. Moore died. As you see, it's an ordinary cottage but a good location for his purposes."

  "Apart from the trifling inconvenience of floods."

  "Apart from that," Miss Bluestone conceded. Workmen were washing the walls with lime. Other workmen scrubbed at the other cottages. The floodwater had to have rushed through the midden beside the dower house stables before it reached the village. The cottages were probably still damp and smelly, but Jean thought some of them were now inhabited.

  She pulled the gig up to the entrance to the Steward's House, as the Moore dwelling was inevitably called. A groom appeared, and the ladies climbed down. Here the only sign of flooding was mud on the cobbles. Jean watched her step.

  Mrs. Moore was a faded lady of sixty. She had kind eyes. Jean had not known her well, but they had met. The widow thanked her for her sympathy and extended her own. "So sad to lose a sister. Lady Frances was a sweet child."

  Jean's tongue locked. She could think of nothing to say. Mrs. Moore was knitting stockings for the flood victims, she said. She turned the heel.

  Miss Bluestone intervened before the silence became desperate with her reflections on Fanny's struggle to learn to read, and that led Mrs. Moore to her children's varied learning experiences and the eccentricities of her husband's apprentices, including Mr. Sholto, whom she seemed to regard as a stellar pupil. She boasted that she had taught him to speak English. The bad moment passed.

  As they were about to rise to leave, Mrs. Robert came in. She apologized to Jean--one of her children was cutting a tooth. She seemed overwhelmed by the honour of a visit from the earl's sister-in-law. That flustered Jean, but Miss Bluestone sat silent and left her pupil to rescue herself.