The Campaigners

Book 14: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1815: Napoleon's escape from Elba and the preparations for battle entangle the Morland family in a web of romance and heartbreak.

The Allied Army is gathering in Flanders, and where the army is, the fashionable world must go- so London society hastens to Brussels to enjoy the most exhilarating Season ever. For Heloise it brings a renewed acquaintance with her former suitor, to Duc de Veslne-d'Estienne; while Rosamund must finally come to terms with her feelings for her cousin Marcus; and for Sophie, a meeting with an enigmatic French major could well alter her future.

But as romance flourishes in a warlike atmosphere, the looming shadow of battle only makes the dancers whirl more feverishly, and when the Army marches out to face the might of the French at Waterloo, one question is in every heart: which of them will not come back?

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 592

Sample

March 1815

James Morland struggled to wakefulness from a heavy and unsatisfying sleep, and blinked for a moment in the grey light, unable to place himself in space or time.


Beside him his wife Héloïse pushed herself up onto one elbow and said sleepily, ‘James? What is it?’

‘I was dreaming,’ he said. His voice sounded thick. ‘I was riding over Marston Moor with Fanny. She was cantering ahead of
me, and there was a deep ditch and I knew she hadn’t seen it. I tried to call out to her, but I couldn’t make any sound …’
Héloïse’s hand rested on his arm as his voice trailed away. ‘It was horrible.’


‘It’s still early,’ she said. ‘Go back to sleep, love.’

‘Yes,’ he said hopelessly. He was too wide awake now. He knew he wouldn’t sleep again.

She must have heard the hopelessness, for the hand became hesitant, and she said tentatively, ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘No,’ he said, and to break the contact with her turned over on his side away from her. He could feel her still looking at
him, frowning; then after a few moments heard her sigh and felt her lie down again, close, but not touching him. He kept very
still until her breathing grew steady—she was very tired these days, and sleep came easily to her—and then he relaxed.


It was three weeks since Fanny—his daughter, his first born, his special delight—had died in childbirth, and yet still
at waking he had that moment of blankness before he remembered it; a grey moment of formless apprehension that something was
wrong, that it would have been better for him if he had not woken, ever again. Three weeks, only three weeks. For twenty years
there had been Fanny, and now there was nothing. If he lived to be eighty, he would never see her again.


He felt bad about Héloïse, with one small, distant part of his mind. He knew that she worried about him and wanted to comfort
him; but there was nothing he could take from her. He couldn’t even bear her to touch him. Wrong—selfish, perhaps? But he
felt, and couldn’t help feeling, that the grief was all his, and that he was alone with it. No-one else had loved Fanny as
he had.


Sleep was completely dissipated now: he was wide awake in the early light. They had taken to leaving the bed-curtains open, because he’d been having nightmares, and waking in the pitch-blackness had frightened him. This was the ancestral Butts Bed,
its age-blackened oak panels carved with jolly mediaeval revellers roistering amongst gigantic bunches of grapes, vine-leaves
and wine-butts: canting heraldry for the family of the long-ago bride for whom it had been made. In this bed generations of
Masters and Mistresses of Morland Place had slept, had celebrated their nuptials, had been born and had died. James himself
had been born in this bed; so had Fanny; and in this bed, too, she had died, struggling to give birth to a dead child, a boy,
who would have been heir to the whole estate.


Lying on his side, he was facing the bedside table on which stood his candle in the silver candlestick with the dolphin curled
round it which he had used since boyhood; and his book—a much-thumbed copy of Rasselas at the moment—with his place kept by a bookmarker Fanny had made for him long ago. The plaited silk string with the Turks-head
and tassel was growing frayed now, but he had used no other since the day she gave it to him with a mixture of triumph, regal
condescension, and narrow-eyed watchfulness which was so peculiarly hers.


She had been—twelve? thirteen?—at the time; it was the first thing her new governess, Miss Rosedale, had induced her to
make for him. A hard task it must have been to keep Fanny to it, and probably she had only done it at all in the hope of winning
some favour from him. Even so it was not well done—Fanny would never have put more effort into something she didn’t enjoy
than was absolutely unavoidable—and James’s extravagant praise had won him a frown from the governess, who knew how little it was deserved.


Well, he had known that too; but she was his little girl, his own, and he could not love her wisely when he loved her too
well. His eyes filled inexorably with tears, and he turned his face down into his arm to try to press them back. The grief
rose fresh and hot in him from some seemingly inexhaustible well.


There had been a black time, just after the funeral, when he had been seized by a kind of madness, had not been able to believe
that she was dead. They had shut her in her coffin still alive! He had woken night after night sweating with horror. She was scrabbling at the lid! She was crying out, terrified, suffocating!
Night after night he had struggled out of bed, caught between sleeping and waking, crying out to her, I’m coming! Fanny, I’m coming!; had gone running down the chapel stairs, stumbling over the hem of his nightshirt, his hair on end with the horror of it.
The first time it happened, the family chaplain, Father Aislaby, had heard him and had come down to find him trying in vain
to lever up the stone cover to the vault with his fingernails. He shuddered at the memory; but at least the madness had been
a relief from the endless pain of loss. Sleep provided at best only a brief respite. Every morning he woke to the leaden realisation
that she was gone, and he would never see her again. The tears seeped helplessly past his closed lids, and he pressed his
face harder into the crook of his arm so that Héloïse should not hear him weeping.


Breakfast was a quiet meal. Edward, James’s elder brother, sat at the head of the table and looked around the grave faces
assembled there. Beside him sat James and Father Aislaby. Héloïse, Mistress of Morland Place, and owner of it too, now, sat
at the foot, looking worn to the bone, and casting, evidently without knowing it, anxious glances at her husband between almost
every mouthful.


Along the other side of the table were Miss Rosedale, the governess, and her two former charges—James and Héloïse’s daughter
Sophie, and Héloïse’s ward Mathilde. The young women of the house had extra reason to regret Fanny’s death, for it had caused the cancellation of Sophie’s coming-out, and Mathilde’s wedding to John Skelwith, Master Builder of York.


In Edward’s view the latter was particularly unfortunate, not only because Mathilde, in whose happiness he had a deep and
tender interest, was in love with her betrothed, but also because any delay to the wedding could only lead to Skelwith’s hanging
around Morland Place. Skelwith was a very decent young man, and Edward liked him enough almost to think he was good enough
for Mathilde; but his antecedents were unfortunate. He was the result of an illicit liaison between his mother, Mary Skelwith,
and James, and though no-one but Edward, James and Héloïse knew it, the more Skelwith was exposed to them, the more chance
there was of the secret’s coming out.


There was one other place at the table, but it was empty. Fanny’s, of course! The sight of it made Edward feel irritable.
There was no reason why the chair should not have been removed and the others moved up a little—Edward, for one, would have
eaten better without that empty place mutely reproaching him at every meal—but James would not have it. If James had had
his way, Edward thought, he’d have even had her covers laid for her. He seemed to want to turn the whole house into a mausoleum.


Edward looked now at his brother with a familiar mixture of pity and annoyance. James was not exactly unkempt—he had been
shaved and dressed like an unresisting puppet by his man Durban, who would never let appearances slip—but he sat inside
his clothes as if they had nothing to do with him, nor he with the world; shrunken somehow, his face drawn, his eyes blank.
Today, Edward thought, like every other day, he would wander about the house like a lost spirit, seeking out anything that
would remind him of Fanny. It had been the same when their mother died: Edward had flung himself into the work of the estate
as a remedy, while James had mooned about all day and drunk himself stupid on brandy every night.


Edward had never loved Fanny, and had criticised James’s handling of her from her infancy upwards; but he was genuinely shocked
and grieved at her death. Poor Fanny had been married—to that reprobate Hawker—for only a few months, and had died most horribly in giving birth to a stillborn child, and Edward would not have wished such a fate on anyone,
least of all his own niece, his own brother’s daughter.


Why, then, did the sight of James fill him with almost as much impatience as pity? He felt angry with himself that he should
feel James’s grief was as overstrung as his love had been. Good God, his brother had lost his eldest and favourite daughter:
he had every right to be distraught with anguish! But Edward couldn’t help seeing how worrying about him increased the burden
both to Héloïse and to Sophie.


He shook the thoughts away and took his eyes off his brother’s face and concentrated instead on the day ahead. His mind slipped
into the familiar business of running the estate and filled it comfortably like a favourite shabby coat. He had to go out
to North Fields to inspect the lambs—Shepherd had reported sickness amongst them, scours and staggers which sounded as though
it might be serious. They were a special bunch, too, he thought with a frown, the fruits of his cross-breeding plan with a
prize Merino ram, and the last he wanted to lose.


And this afternoon the Inspector-General was coming to look at half a dozen three-year-olds with a view to purchasing them
as cavalry remounts. If he liked them, they’d probably go eventually to the Blues or the Life Guards, who still rode only
black horses—the rest of the cavalry having gone over to a mixture of blacks, bays and browns. Edward hoped so: the Blues
and the Life Guards were the only heavy dragoons who rode long-tailed horses, and Edward didn’t approve of docking.


This latest business of Boney escaping from Elba and taking France again was shocking, of course, he thought; but a renewal
of the war meant more Morland horses sold, which was good for the estate. And then there were the cereal crops—war kept
corn prices high. Life had to go on, whatever your personal grief. If only James could understand that, and keep himself busy,
instead of moping…


The butler, Ottershaw, came in with a letter, and everyone looked up. It was not the right time for the post to have been
collected, so it must have been delivered by hand. Mathilde in particular looked at it with keen anticipation, which faded
as Ottershaw handed it to Edward, saying, ‘It came by private courier, sir, so there was nothing to pay.’


Edward examined the outside, aware of all the eyes on him. It might be something important, even exciting; at least it was
an interruption to the sad routine.


‘It’s addressed simply “Morland”. Shall I open it?’ Edward asked of the table at large. As the elder Morland brother, he had
always been nominal head of the household, and since his mother’s death had held the estate in trust for Fanny. But when Fanny
died before reaching her majority, the Trust had terminated and a secret clause in her grandmother’s Will had come into effect,
by which everything had passed to Héloïse. It had been unexpected, and yet somehow not surprising: Héloïse seemed exactly
the right person to perpetuate those standards and values which his mother had embodied, which were somehow the spirit of
Morland Place. She would be a better guardian for the Morland family than Fanny could ever have been, and Edward accepted
her gladly as he never could have accepted his niece.


Well, Héloïse was now Mistress of Morland Place; but Edward still sat at the head of the table, and receiving a smile of acquiescence
from her, he opened the letter himself and began to read it.


‘I wonder who would use a private courier?’ Sophie said into the waiting silence.

‘John does sometimes,’ said Mathilde, ‘to take instructions to his employees in other towns. I suppose most business people
do.’ She was still at the stage where she introduced her beloved’s name at every possible juncture in conversation.


‘More likely to be an attorney’s courier,’ said Miss Rosedale, eating a kipper bones-and-all, as was her habit. ‘Sophie,
I think you should practise on the pianoforte today. You’ve hardly been at the instrument all week. And then we’ll read some
sermons together. If you’d like to join us, Mathilde, we can all get on with our sewing and read aloud in turn. There are
shirts in the poor-basket, if you’ve nothing of your own.’


Héloïse gave her a grateful look, knowing that Miss Rosedale was trying to keep the young ones’ minds occupied, and also
to give her leisure to attend to her multifarious duties.


Edward had been reading the letter with a frown, and now looked up and said, ‘Well, here’s a go! Fanny’s grandpa’s dead—
old Hobsbawn! I don’t know who should properly have this—you, James, or Héloïse. What happens now, I wonder?’ He held out
the letter, and as James made no move to take it, Father Aislaby passed it down to Héloïse.


Héloïse scanned the page and said, ‘It is from Jasper Hobsbawn—old Mr Hobsbawn’s cousin. It is very short “Sirs, I regret to inform you that Mr Joseph Hobsbawn died during the night of the 9th of March, of a seizure. By the terms
of his Will, his entire estate passes to his grand-daughter Mrs Hawker. I await your instructions.” And that is all. What a very curious letter. But perhaps he is deeply grieved.’


‘It sounds to me more resentful than grieved,’ Edward said, ‘and who can wonder? He must have been hoping at least to inherit
the old man’s spinning-mills, after all the work he’s put into them. But he doesn’t mention Fanny’s death. Surely he must
know about it? You did write to old Hobsbawn, didn’t you, Héloïse?’


‘Of course. I wrote to him at the same time as I wrote to Mr Hawker.’ She sometimes felt that everyone forgot Fanny’s husband,
absent in Vienna at the Congress, rather too easily. He may have been unsuitable material for a husband, but he was Fanny’s
choice, and Héloïse at least believed that he had loved Fanny truly. ‘Perhaps the letter might have gone astray.’


‘More likely it’s lying about Hobsbawn House somewhere, unopened,’ Father Aislaby said wisely. ‘It must have arrived shortly
after the old gentleman died, and I don’t suppose anyone would have been thinking about opening letters then. I expect it
got put with a lot of other papers, and no-one’s got around to dealing with it yet.’


‘But what a queer thing,’ Edward said, ‘that the old man should have died on the same night as—’ He stopped short as James
gave him a bitter look; and then gave a slight shrug. It was unreasonable of James to suppose that they could go on without
ever mentioning Fanny’s death.


‘But what will happen now?’ Héloïse asked anxiously. ‘If the mills were to come to Fanny, does that mean they now come to
me? Or to the Mr Jasper of the terse letter? I must say that I do not at all want them, and he, poor man, must deserve them as much as anyone.’


James turned on her sharply. ‘It’s not a matter of deserving. Want them or not, if they were Fanny’s, they will be yours.
You will not give away anything that was hers.’


‘But, James, I have so much,’ Héloïse protested gently. ‘What would I do with spinning-mills? I know nothing of such things.’

‘That’s nothing to the point. You can employ a manager, as others do. No-one would expect you to run them yourself. Fanny wanted them, and they were hers by right, and she shall have them, even if it is by proxy.’


Héloïse, seeing he was speaking not rationally, but from his deranged emotions, would have dropped the subject, but Father
Aislaby had been struck by the legal aspects of the affair, and mused aloud, ‘I imagine it will depend on which of the two
demises actually took place first. It might be a very interesting case—’


‘Interesting!’ James glared.

Aislaby was not perturbed. ‘Indeed. If Fanny predeceased Hobsbawn, even by only a few minutes, the estate will go to his residuary
legatee—whoever that may be. But if the old gentleman died first, Fanny would have inherited, for however short a time,
and the Hobsbawn estate would have been part of her estate when she died. A pretty tangle—and the stuff of which Chancery
lawyers’ fortunes are made.’


Edward took the letter back, and re-read it ‘It says he died during the night of the ninth. That could mean anything from sunset to sunrise. I suppose the first thing would be to find out exactly
what time he died.’


‘Why bother?’ James said harshly. ‘You see Jasper Hobsbawn believes the estate has gone to Fanny—’

‘But he does not know she is dead,’ Héloïse said, looking at him with unhappy eyes. This was not like the man she had loved
and married.


‘We don’t know that. Most likely he’s read your letter and everything is settled. Why stir up trouble? Hobsbawn meant Fanny
to have the mills—well, she shall have them.’


‘But, James, perhaps it is not right!’

He stood up abruptly. ‘The letter says “during the night of the ninth”. Fanny died in the early hours of the tenth, didn’t she? Then leave it be!’ he snapped. ‘She shall have what is
hers by right!’


Héloïse looked stricken, and Miss Rosedale, with an appearance of calm, began gathering her charges up and ushering them from
the table. Aislaby said. ‘The truth will come out, sooner or later. The Will will have to be proved, and it will all come
out. Someone had better write to Jasper Hobsbawn and ask him what time the old man died, and get the whole matter straightened
out.’


‘No-one’s going to rob Fanny of her inheritance,’ James growled, and pushing his chair back, stalked out of the room, leaving
an uncomfortable silence behind him.


‘Well, Héloïse?’ Edward said after a moment. ‘You’re Mistress of Morland Place. What shall it be?’

She looked distressed, but there was no doubt in her mind. ‘Whatever comes of it, it is only the truth that matters. I shall
put the matter in the hands of good Mr Pobgee, the lawyer, and he will know what is best to do. I shall send this letter to
him, and he can write to Mr Jasper Hobsbawn, if it is necessary.’


Aislaby nodded and stood up. ‘Ten to one but that James is right, and young Hobsbawn knows all about it; but it’s best to
be sure.’


At Chelmsford House in Pall Mall, Robert St Vincent Morland, the eighteen-year-old Earl of Chelmsford, ran up the stairs two
at a time and burst into the small saloon crying, ‘Mama! Have you heard the news?’


He broke off abruptly when he discovered that his mother was not alone. Roberta, formerly Countess of Chelmsford and now Mrs
Firth, was entertaining a morning visitor; seated on the sopha opposite her was the trim, severely fashionable figure of James
Morland’s sister Lucy, Lady Theakston.


‘Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am—I didn’t know you were here,’ said Bobbie. He was a tall, still a rather gangling young man,
whose feet and hands seemed too big for him. He was very fair, with golden curls and round blue eyes just like his mother’s,
and that fine skin which shews every movement of the blood. His cheeks flushed now simply with consciousness of being looked at. ‘I didn’t see your horses outside,’ he said to Lucy to fill the brief silence.


‘Probably because I sent Parslow home with them,’ she replied, and indicated with an economical movement of the hand her daughter
who was sitting beside her. Lady Rosamund Chetwyn, second of the three children Lucy had borne to her first husband, the Earl
of Aylesbury, was aged seventeen; tall, freckled, sandy-haired, and to judge by her angular posture and restless hands, not
yet accustomed to the dignities of a grown-up gown and coiffure. Both she and her mother were wearing black bands for Fanny.
‘I mean to walk as for as the Admiralty afterwards and then back across the Park. If I don’t exercise Rosamund,’ Lucy said,
as though her daughter were a horse, ‘she gets restless.’


Rosamund didn’t seem to mind this form of address at all, and grinned up at Bobbie as though she were still wearing plaits.
‘Mama don’t like it above half that she can’t bring me out until we’re out of black gloves. She hoped to get me married and
off her hands by midsummer!’


‘Hold your tongue, you abominable child,’ Lucy said, without heat. ‘To think that I came back from Vienna just to bring you
out! It was the unluckiest thing, Fanny’s dying like that,’ she sighed to Roberta, who raised an eyebrow at the choice of
adjective. Of course, strictly speaking we need to wear black gloves only for six weeks, but it might just as we’ll be six months:
there’s nothing shabbier than a launch half-way through the Season! It looks so half-hearted—and I shall need all the help
I can to get Rosamund off, despite everything her governess has done.’


‘I don’t mean to get married at all, Mama, so you may as we’ll save your trouble,’ Rosamund said, with a boldness which so
disturbed Roberta that she intervened to change the subject.


‘But what was it you wanted to say, Bobbie dear? Have you some news?’

Bobbie sat down on the edge of a chair and pushed a careless hand through his fair curls. ‘Oh, Lord! Yes, Mama—I met Lord
Anstey in the street outside Brookes’s, and he said that Rothschild’s courier arrived last night from Vienna.’


Lucy’s expression sharpened with interest. ‘Vienna? Hah! Rothschild’s are always first with the news. I always apply to them sooner than the Foreign Office—their messengers travel
faster than Bathurst’s. What is it, Bobbie? I haven’t heard from Danby for over a week.’ Her new husband was still in Vienna,
one of the Duke of Wellington’s aides at the Congress.


‘Well, ma’am, it seems they have signed a new coalition treaty against Boney! Russia, Prussia and Austria are to provide seven
hundred thousand men between them, all to be marched into Flanders as soon as they can be levied. And we are to provide five
million pounds in gold—’


‘Five million? But I haven’t seen a single gold coin in years,’ Roberta exclaimed. ‘Nothing but this dreadful paper money.
Where on earth will we get so much gold?’


‘Rothschild’s will provide the specie—isn’t that right, Bobbie?’ Lucy answered. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without them.
Danby says they’ve practically financed the war single-handed. So we’ve signed a treaty? Well, this is famous news!’ A quick
frown drew her fair brows together. ‘But the devil of it is that all our seasoned troops are across the Atlantic fighting
that ridiculous American war.’


‘Only the infantry, ma’am—we still have our cavalry,’ Bobbie said eagerly.

‘True enough—but what use is cavalry without infantry?’ She shook her head, and Roberta, who had known her for a long time,
smiled inwardly at how completely Lucy had become an army wife since marrying Danby Wiske, now Lord Theakston, where for so
many years she had spoken of nothing but naval matters, the disposition of ships and the promotion prospects of captains and
junior admirals.


‘It was the unluckiest thing, to have shipped off the Peninsula veterans just at the moment Boney chooses to escape. Apart
from the 52nd and the 23rd, we’ve no-one who’s seen any action,’ Lucy went on.


‘What about the Guards?’ Roberta said.

Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘Hyde Park soldiers,’ she said dismissively. ‘Second battalions.’

‘Yes, ma’am—but at any rate, under the treaty we are to provide as many men as possible,’ Bobbie continued, impatient to
get to the heart of the subject, ‘and the Army of Occupation is to join with the Dutch and Belgian forces as soon as they can, and the Duke of Wellington is to go to Brussels
to take overall command.’


‘The Duke? Oh, famous!’ Rosamund exclaimed. ‘If anyone can beat Boney, he can!’

Lucy quelled her with a look. ‘And how many men are we to raise?’

‘Lord Anstey spoke of a hundred and fifty thousand men immediately and more later,’ Bobbie went on, and turned a burning look
on his mother. ‘He said there’s bound to be a flood of volunteers—everyone wants the chance to finish Boney off once and
for all. And the militia are to be transformed into regulars; and as for officers, Lord Anstey says there are queues forming
at the Horseguards already—men my age, and younger! Oh, Mama—!’


Here it was at last Roberta looked alarmed. ‘Now, Bobbie—’ she began, but her son interrupted passionately before she could
get to the inevitable negative.


‘But, Mama, everyone will be going! It’s the most tremendous thing that ever happened, and once the Duke has beaten Boney,
the war will be over and I’ll never have another chance! Oh please, mayn’t I have my colours now? I want it above anything!’


‘Lord! How splendid!’ Rosamund cried, jumping to her feet. ‘Oh, I wish I were a man! It isn’t fair, really it isn’t! To think
of going to Flanders and marching with Old Hookey into France and fighting Boney—oh, Bobbie, you are lucky!’


Roberta found her voice. ‘It’s out of the question. No, really, Bobbie, how could you even ask?’

Despair filled the earl’s pleasant young face. ‘Oh Mama, please! You can’t imagine how important it is to me!’

Lucy was fond of Roberta, and seeing her friend’s distress, she interrupted on her behalf. ‘Don’t talk like a fool, Bobbie,’
she said with her accustomed bluntness. ‘You’re the earl. Until you marry and provide yourself with an heir, you can’t afford
to risk your life.’


Bobbie reddened with embarrassment and distress. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I already have an heir—’

‘Yes,’ Lucy said scornfully, ‘your uncle Horatio, and his son, your cousin Marcus—both of them regular soldiers, and probably on their way to Flanders this very moment! If you go too, that will be all the eggs in the same basket. Off you’ll
all march into battle, and supposing you all three get killed? Use your wits, Bobbie. Don’t you see you’re upsetting your
mother?’


Bobbie, still very red, turned towards his mother and stammered an apology.

‘It’s all right, darling,’ Roberta said, distressed as much for him as for herself. ‘I know how much you want to go and fight
alongside Marcus, but really, it wouldn’t do, you know. An earl has responsibilities.’


‘Yes, of course, I understand,’ he muttered, his eyes cast down in a vast effort at control ‘I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have
mentioned it. If you will excuse me now—’ And with an awkward bow, he retired to nurse his chagrin in private.


Oh dear,’ said Roberta, looking at the door that had closed behind him. ‘He does mind it so dreadfully.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ Lucy said shortly. She was not normally noted for her tact, but seeing how the exchange had upset Roberta,
she now firmly changed the subject. ‘But we were talking of Rosamund’s come-out. Of course Sophie was supposed to be coming
out this Season as well, and we were going to launch them together, but now Héloïse talks of putting it off until the little
Season in October. I can’t decide whether it would be better to bring Rosamund out then, or to wait until next year. What
do you think, Rob? She’ll be eighteen by then, but it isn’t so very old, is it?’


Roberta tried to