The Regency

Book 13: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1807: the Napoleonic Wars continue and their violence reverberates in the lives of the Morland family.

Lucy trying to rebuild her life after the death of her lover, Captain Weston, is thrown into doubt and confusion by an unexpected proposal of marriage. At Morland Place, the hard-won happiness of James and Heloise is threatened by his rebellious daughter, Fanny. As heiress to the Morland estate, Fanny is determined to claim more than her inheritance, but for those dependent on her generosity, Fanny's decision to marry the unscrupulous Lieutenant Hawker brings only anxiety.

These troubled times hold many surprises, and in their darkest hour the Morlands make an astonishing discovery which enables them to face the uncertain future with new strength.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 592

Sample

March 1807

Héloïse woke, as she always did, when the housemaid came in to light the fire. The great ancestral bed of the Morlands in
which she lay was a warm, dark cave. The red damask bed-curtains were too heavy to allow even a glow to penetrate them, but
there was one vertical thread of white fire, like a fissure in a volcanic mountain, where they were not quite drawn together.
Héloïse fixed her drowsy eyes on it, and listened contentedly to the muted, domestic sounds that came to her from beyond:
the rattling rush of the bedroom curtains, the swish of hearth-brush, the crackle of kindling, the rustle of the housemaid’s
skirt as she rose from her knees, the soft click as she dosed the door behind her.


This feeling of waking content was still new to her: she had been married only four months ago, in November 1806. It was bliss
to wake to the awareness of James beside her, his warm body still wrapped in sleep. The dark cave was filled with the smell
of him — not the eau-de-Cologne that Durban patted on after shaving him, or the sweet oil he sometimes used to discipline his fine, red-brown hair — but
simply his own smell, the scent of his skin which she loved more than any perfume, and which was so intimately of him that
to catch it filled her instantly with a warm flush of love, half tender, half erotic.


James woke now, feeling the altered rhythm of her body as lovers do, and turned to draw her into his arms, murmuring a sleepy
greeting. Her body folded into the contours of his with accustomed ease, her head on his shoulder, her face against his neck.
Their breathing ebbed and flowed to the same rhythm. Loving each other coloured every moment of their days, but of them all,
she thought, these waking moments were the most exquisite.


At length he sighed and stirred, nuzzling for her mouth, and turned his hip towards her so that she felt the familiar nudging
of his waking desire. She moved to accommodate him, turning her mouth up to his, and her body quivered in response as he pushed
his hands in under her nightdress and closed them over her small, childlike breasts.


‘Je te veux,’ she whispered, and he made a sound in reply which was almost a groan, making her smile. Knowing each other, loving each other,
their bodies eased together with the minimum of effort; he slid gratefully into her, and they moved together quietly like
swimmers in a warm, calm sea. Passion and tenderness grew in an even surge, like the swell of the tide, and they held on hard
to each other, clinging together as their movements grew stronger and faster. When the moment came, she cried out with the
intensity of wanting him, and the sound pierced him as it always did, so that it seemed as if his very soul were being dragged
out of him and emptied into her.


‘James,’ she breathed. She laid her hand on the nape of his neck, and he shuddered.

‘I love you. Oh, I love you,’ he whispered.

A long time later, it seemed, he raised his head to look at her. Her skin was lightly flushed, her eyelids moist, her dark
eyes glowing, her lips curved in a smile of luminous sweetness.


‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

Héloïse cupped his cheek. It was a gauge of his love that he, who was truly beautiful, should think her so. ‘So are you, my
James,’ she said.


‘I love the way you say my name. It’s absurd! Why should it affect me so much?’ He kissed the end of her nose. ‘What were
you thinking just then, when you smiled like that?’


‘I was wondering if we have just begun a child.’

‘You said that last month, and the month before,’ he said, and was instantly sorry. ‘My own love, don’t worry. We’ve only
been married four months,’ he said reasonably. ‘There’s plenty of time.’


‘I know,’ she said contritely. ‘I am foolish; it’s just that I love you so much, I want every time to get with child.’

‘It will happen, in its own time,’ he said, thinking that he was in no great hurry to have to suspend for a year the delight
of making love to her. Of course he wanted them to have children, but he was content to wait. Tactfully, he changed the subject. ‘What do you do today?’


‘I have some calls to make: first to return Lady Fussell’s, who called yesterday, and then I must go to see Mrs Shawe, because
she is very low after her miscarriage, poor lady — her second in two years, James, just imagine! And then to the village:
I shall call on Widrith the weaver — oh, how hard it is to say that name! — and Abley the baker. I shall order one of his
hams, I think.’


‘My love, surely we killed a pig only two days ago? I may not have much of a memory for domestic detail, but I do remember
Father Aislaby laughing about a fracas in the kitchen over the trotters.’


‘Trotters!’ Héloïse repeated, rolling the ‘r’s voluptuously. ‘What a word this is, so touching, for pig’s feet! But yes, it
was because Monsieur Barnard wanted to make the feet into a special dish for me, and Ottershaw said they are not fit to be
served to gentlefolk, which upset him. Barnard does not like to be told his business. And so there was a trouble.’


‘That’s putting it mildly, when the cook threatens the butler with a cleaver,’ James observed.

‘I don’t think he would actually have struck him,’ Héloïse said judiciously. ‘Only it seems there is a tradition in your kitchens that when a pig is killed the t-r-rotters are always kept for the upper servants, and Ottershaw did not want to lose them. I like pig’s feet very much, as Barnard
prepares them,’ she added musingly, ‘but I think one could not serve them when there is company for dinner. They have not
a very proper look.’


‘Well then, why do you want a ham from Abley the baker?’ James asked, remembering where they had begun.

‘Oh, not because we need one, but because he has been ill. For several days he could not open his shop, so he has lost much
money. I shall let him overcharge me for the ham, and that will make things easier for him. And I shall ask him what is the
secret of his feeding, which makes his pigs taste so much better than ours.’


‘Do they?’

‘No, but it will make him feel more cheerful, because everyone likes to be asked about something they know well, and he must
be in need of cheering. It is very wearing to have the cold in the lungs, and cough all the time. And he truly loves his pigs, I think.’


James laughed affectionately. ‘Madame Machiavelli! Do you know everything about every one of our villagers? You remind me
of Mother.’


‘Do I?’ Héloïse looked pleased. ‘I should like to be worthy of her, though I am mistress of Morland Place only until Fanny
grows up. But I often think of your mother, and try to think how she would do things, and keep her kingdom for her properly.
A sort of regency, you know.’


James looked down tenderly into her face. ‘You are everything she could have hoped for, Marmoset. And everything I want, too.’

Héloïse sighed with pleasure and lifted her lips for kissing. ‘But James,’ she said, breaking off a moment later, ‘speaking
of Fanny, it really will not do, you know. She must have a governess.’ James rolled off her, without making any reply, and
Héloïse, regarding him thoughtfully, added, ‘And Sophie, too, of course. A good governess for both the girls will make all
the difference to them.’


‘You haven’t worried about a governess for Sophie until now,’ James said expressionlessly.

‘I was used to teach Sophie myself before I married you, but now at Morland Place I have so much more to do that I have not
the time. And besides,’ she added ruefully, ‘my education was only such as girls were given in France before the revolution
— needlework and devotions!’


James only grunted unhelpfully at the pleasantry.

‘And besides again,’ Héloïse went on frankly, ‘you know very well that Fanny would not mind me. Yes, James, do not make faces
and turn away your head! You know it is true. Fanny does not like me.’


‘Nonsense! If you mean that business last week, there’s no proof at all that it was Fanny who did it. I think it’s very hard
the way you all automatically blame her, just as if she were responsible for everything that happens in this house. And even
if it were Fanny,’ he added with the irritability of guilt, ‘it was only a harmless prank.’


Héloïse leaned up on one elbow. ‘James, she all but admitted it. And it may have been a harmless prank, as you say, to steal
a knife and cut up two of my dresses, but me, I did not find it amusing. Fanny does not like me; and Father Aislaby does not like her, and won’t take any trouble with her, and someone must take trouble with her, mon àme, or she will grow up very strange, and be unhappy. I am sure she is not happy now, no, even doing what she likes all the time.
‘Do what you will’ is not a good thing for a child. You must engage a governess — voilà tout.’

‘A gaoler, you mean,’ James muttered. He stared stonily at the canopy for a moment longer, and then sighed and yielded, turning
onto his side to look at his wife. ‘Oh Marmoset, I worry so much about her! When she was born, and Mother first put her into
my arms, I thought I should die from so much love! She was so perfect, so untouched and innocent. I thought I would devote
my life to her. I thought she would make everything right for me. I was lonely when I was a child, and I determined she should
never feel that way. And her mother never cared for her, so I had to care twice as much. But somehow, it didn’t answer. She
seems to get more wild and difficult all the time. When I saw your dresses all cut to shreds —’


He broke off, and his expression was painful. Héloïse understood the agony of divided loyalty he must have felt, and still
be feeling: loving her, and loving his daughter, he must want so much to convince himself that Fanny had not meant ill by
her ‘prank’.


‘Well, mon âme, I have told you what,’ she said comfortably, making her voice matter-of-fact for his sake. ‘Find a good governess —
a woman of learning, whose character is firm, and whose heart is warm — and let her devote herself to Fanny, and you will
see all will be well. I wish we might find someone like Lucy’s good Miss Trotton! She is exactly the sort of woman who would
suit.’


‘Do you think so?’ James said, already more cheerful. ‘I am not averse from bribing Trot to change establishments, if you
think it will serve! Offer her twice the salary Lucy gives her, perhaps? Or would a sum of money, cash to invest in the Funds,
be more to the purpose?’


‘Now it is you who are Machiavelli,’ Héloïse smiled, and allowed herself to be engulfed again. How easily James was swayed
into optimism, she reflected, when it came to his wayward daughter; for herself, she had been much perturbed over the knife incident, though she had made light of her fear, not to put ideas in Fanny’s head. She did not believe that
the hiring of a governess, even one like Miss Trotton, would put everything right in an instant, but it seemed to her essential
that someone should have continuous charge of the child. She must not be allowed to run all over the country unattended as
she did now. It was not only the question of the harm to Fanny’s manners and morals, but of the harm she might do to others.
Where had she got the knife, for instance? It had not come from Morland Place. Héloïse had a mother’s vulnerability towards
her own little Sophie and Thomas. She could not really believe that an eleven-year-old child would actually do them violence,
but she would not have them bullied or oppressed if she could help it, and Fanny was more than equal to that.


But she seemed to have carried the first point, at all events; James would no longer resist the idea of a governess; and as
he was now giving serious consideration to the question of how much of his tongue would fit into her left ear, she felt obliged
to leave further discussion for another time. The dressing-bell had not yet been rung: there was at least another quarter
of an hour, she estimated happily, before they need get up.


The subject of her stepmother’s musings was at that moment only a few yards away, in the chapel gallery. Crouching down, Fanny
could look through the pierced-work of the balustrade without being seen, and watch Beamish, the altar-boy of the day, lighting
the candles and setting things out for the early celebration. Yesterday Beamish had been held up to Fanny as a model of youthful
piety and good behaviour by Father Aislaby, who had discovered her playing cat’s cradle during vespers. Now Fanny meant to
get even with him.


In one hand she held a short length of narrow pipe, which she had taken from the back of the blacksmith’s forge, and in the
other a few dried peas. When the moment came, and Beamish was in the right place, she would let fly at him. A dried pea, striking
the right, tender place with sufficient force, could hurt a surprising amount. If he were to drop and break a candle he would
find himself in trouble. At the very least, he would probably let out a yell, which would earn him a reprimand; and in the dimly-lit chapel he would never know what hit him.


The moment came; Beamish yelled, and though he did not drop the candle, he tilted it so wildly that wax splashed down onto
the floor. Smiling with satisfaction, Fanny eased herself backwards and out into the little passageway which led to the spiral
stairs, intent on putting as much distance between herself and the crime as possible. Then, finding herself opposite the door
to the dressing-room of the great bedchamber, she stopped, and her smile faded.


Beyond the dressing-room, in the great bedchamber itself, in the massive, carved bed in which she herself had been born and
would one day die, the ancestral Butts bed which belonged to her, as did everything in the house, her father lay at this very
moment with that woman. Fanny’s brows drew down into a scowl. She hated the Frenchwoman, not for taking her mother’s place — for Fanny had never
cared a jot for her mother, and did not believe her father had, either — but for stealing her father’s love. Before the Frenchwoman
came, all Papa’s love had been for Fanny. She had come first with him, and she could not endure to lose her place to another.


Her hand went automatically to the doorknob, and for a moment she considered marching in, disturbing them, demanding Papa’s
attention, his love, his caresses. But common sense intervened; she paused, imagining the scene, seeing how angry he would
be. He would side with that woman, against her. Grief came to reinforce anger; she clenched her hands with frustration. Her left hand still gripped the length
of pipe; she frowned down at it a moment; and then suddenly jerked it up and used its rough end to score a short and violent
runnel down the polished wood of the door.


I’ll shew her! she thought. I’ll get even with her somehow! She dragged the sharp metal down the door-panel again and again in an ecstasy of hatred. Somehow, someday, she would make
the Frenchwoman pay for stealing her father away from her; she would make her suffer!


The dressing-bell began to ring, startling her out of her black passion. Fifteen minutes until first mass! Fanny stared at
the door with faint shock. Had she really done that?’ The gouges shewed pale in the old, dark wood. It was seasoned mahogany,
and though she had not managed to score it very deeply, someone was bound to notice sooner or later. Well, let them, she thought defiantly. They couldn’t prove it was she,
any more than they could over those silly old dresses.


But there were footsteps on the spiral stair, the light running feet of Héloïse’s maid, Marie, coming up to dress her mistress
for chapel. Fanny looked around her for a hiding place. The stairs went on further up for another half-turn, ending in a blank
stone wall, and Fanny ran quickly up and crouched there, pressing herself against the central pillar and peering down onto
the landing below.


Marie appeared, her hair neatly hidden under a linen cap with long ribbons which Fanny’s fingers longed to tweak, a silk chemise
folded over her arm. She walked straight forward, opened the dressing-room door, and went in, without, apparently, noticing
the scratches. As the door closed behind her, Fanny sighed with relief. The landing was ill-lit: perhaps the damage might
go unnoticed for weeks, or for ever.


When nursery breakfast was over, Jenny always brought the children downstairs to the dining-room. Fanny, entering cautiously,
could tell at once by the atmosphere that the damage to the dressing-room door had not yet been discovered. Breakfast was
finished, but no-one seemed in a hurry to get up. Papa and Father Aislaby had newspapers open in front of them, and Madame
and Mathilde were looking through a ladies’ journal together. Even Uncle Ned, who always went straight about his business
as soon as he had swallowed the last mouthful, was lingering. His face was normally dour and grim — Papa said he hadn’t smiled
since the death of Uncle Chetwyn, who had been his best friend — but today he looked almost cheerful, leaning back in his
chair in the first patch of sunshine they had seen for ten days.


His new hound, Tiger, had its great foolish head jammed into his lap, its eyes closed blissfully as he pulled its ears over
and over through his hands. Uncle Ned’s old bitch, Brach, had had to be put down just before Christmas, and her longtime mate,
Leaky, had simply pined away within a week. Tiger was one of their great-great-grandchildren, grey and wolf-eyed like them,
but with handsome black-and-russet brindling over the quarters.


Fanny pouted a little at the thought of her own wolfhound, Puppy, whom Uncle Ned had banned from the house because, he said, it was so bad-mannered. But he always brought his dogs in.
And Madame had her hound Kithra at her feet under the table, too. Unfair!


Fanny would have gone straight in, but Uncle Ned and Papa were talking, and Jenny caught her wrist and frowned, and made her
wait at the door.


‘You can quite see why Grenville is so keen on the Catholic emancipation,’ James was saying. ‘He and his friends only ever
had three policies; and now slavery’s been abolished, and no-one in their right minds would advocate Parliamentary reform,
when the country’s seething with anti-Jacobin feeling, and all the new industrial nabobs are clamouring for representation
—’


‘Well, who in his right mind would have brought forward this Catholic Militia Bill, either?’ Ned challenged. ‘It hadn’t a
chance of getting through.’


‘What else could they do?’ James asked lazily. ‘They hadn’t another idea between them, and they have to talk about something
in the Chamber, after all. And they nearly got it past the King.’


‘By trickery,’ Ned snorted. The King must have had a fit when he was told what he almost signed. Catholics allowed to be staff
officers? Nonsense! The Duke of York would have died of rage! Saving your presence, Father,’ he added hastily, seeing Father
Aislaby’s raised eyebrows. ‘I’ve nothing against the idea, but you know what these fanatical anti-papists are!’


‘What’s an anti-papist, Uncle Ned?’ Fanny asked with interest. James, whose back had been to her, turned and smiled a welcome.

‘Fanny, love! Come here and kiss me, you pretty thing!’

Fanny ran to him, glad of the excuse to omit the customary formal curtsey to Héloïse. Jenny bid the little children, Sophie
and Thomas, to go to Madame, and glared at Fanny, who merely glared back, kissed her father, climbed onto his lap and repeated
her question. ‘What are anti-papists?’


‘Silly people, Fanny,’ Ned said shortly. ‘Nothing you need know about.’

‘Don’t interrupt and ask questions, Miss Fanny,’ Jenny reproved sternly. ‘Speak only when you’re spoken to.’

Ned pushed back his chair and got up. ‘I must be off. But it’ll mean the end of this Government, Jamie, you mark my words. The King’ll never forgive ’em. They’ll be out before the
month, and good riddance! Ministry of All-the-Talents, indeed! The only talent they shewed was in doing nothing.’


‘Are you going out to Twelvetrees?’ James asked.

‘Yes — we’ve ten colts to cut. Want to come and give a hand?’ Ned asked.

James laughed. ‘No, no, I’ll forgo my share of the treat, thank you. I’ve got that pair of bays to school for Mrs Micklethwaite,
if they’re going to be ready by the end of the month. I just wanted you to have someone bring the training-phaeton down for
me, so that I can take them out this morning.’


‘Very well, I’ll see to it.’

Father Aislaby got up too, and he and Ned went to the door together, going out as Ottershaw, the butler, came in.

‘Excuse me, my lady,’ he said, looking at Héloïse, ‘but Mr and Miss Keating have called, asking for Miss Nortiboys.’ No inducement
could persuade the English servants to pronounce Mathilde’s name any other way. ‘I did mention you were still at breakfast,
my lady —’


Mathilde looked up, and her guilty flush clashed with her hair. ‘Oh, Madame, I forgot to mention! Patience asked me on Sunday
if I would spend the day with her today. She said she might persuade her brother to drive over and take me in to York, but
I didn’t know they would come so early.’


‘It doesn’t matter, chérie,’ Héloïse and good-naturedly. ‘We had finished anyway. Please ask them to step in, Ottershaw. And you may clear.’


‘I beg your pardon, my lady, but Mr and Miss Keating are waiting at the door, in a sporting vehicle, my lady.’

‘Good heavens, they must be in a hurry! Run and fetch your bonnet, then, Mathilde. Be so good to tell them, Ottershaw, that
Miss Nordubois is coming.’


‘I imagine, knowing Tom Keating, that he’s having difficulty holding his horses,’ James said as Ottershaw went out. ‘He has
a propensity to buy horses he can’t handle, which his father must deplore! I wish you may not be overturned, Mathilde. Do
you entirely trust this beau of yours?’


Mathilde blushed even harder. ‘Oh, yes, sir! I mean, he isn’t my beau, but I’m sure he drives very well!’

‘James, don’t tease!’ Héloïse intervened. ‘Run along, Mathilde. And don’t spend all your allowance in one shop! Remember you
will want all sorts of things for the ball next week.’


‘Yes, Madame. No, Madame.’

James halted her at the door. ‘Who brings you home?’

‘Oh, I expect Tom — that is, Mr Keating —’ Mathilde stammered.

‘Not alone,’ James said firmly. ‘If his sister does not accompany you, then a servant must. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course,’ Mathilde said, and dropped a hasty curtsey and hurried out.

Fanny, sitting on her father’s lap, was an interested witness to all this, and thought with contempt that Mathilde was particularly
ugly when she blushed, for it made her freckles stand out and drew attention to her horrible red hair.


Héloïse glanced reproachfully at her husband. ‘I wish you would not tease poor Mathilde,’ she said. ‘She minds it, you know.’

‘Nonsense!’ James said. ‘Every girl of eighteen likes to be asked about her beaux — unless she hasn’t got any, of course.
How long has Tom Keating been dangling after her?’


‘He does not dangle,’ Héloïse said. ‘She is intimate with Patience Keating, that’s all, and Patience and her brother are very
close.’


‘Mathilde will never catch Tom Keating,’ Fanny could not resist commenting, ‘not whatever she does.’

Héloïse frowned disapprovingly, but James looked amused. ‘Why, what do you know about it, Fan?’ he asked.

‘Tom Keating would never marry a girl with freckles!’ Fanny said contemptuously. ‘He’s a trump card! He has a capital grey hunter, and he said I have the best hands in the county.’


‘Ah, now we come to the nub of it,’ James grinned. ‘Let me guess: you met him out exercising his grey when you were flying
about the countryside on Tempest, and he paid you some outrageous compliment.’


‘It wasn’t ‘rageous!’ Fanny said indignantly. ‘We jumped a stream to give him a lead, because he couldn’t get his grey over.
Tempest flew over, and then the grey followed, and he was grateful, and he said I was a splendid rider.’


‘Well, so you are, chicken,’ James said, ‘but you’ll do your reputation no good if you go about admiring young Keating’s horsemanship.
He ruined that chestnut his father bought from me two years ago, and he’ll ruin the grey before the summer if he goes on the
way he is. He’s managed to get the brute so peppered up that either he’ll break its neck, or it’ll break his.’


‘My love, I don’t think this is suitable talk for children,’ Héloïse said gently, and to Fanny, ‘You must not speak so freely,
Fanny, about people older than yourself. It isn’t seemly, and you are old enough now to begin to behave like a lady. I think,
James, that when I am out today I had better place an advertisement in the York Mercury on that matter we agreed this morning.’


Fanny looked at her with narrowed eyes. Something was being plotted against her, she thought.

‘Yes, if you like,’ James said, and feeling Fanny’s rigidity, tried to placate her. ‘It’s time we were thinking of a new mount
for Fanny: Tempest is a grand sort, but he isn’t a lady’s mount — what do you think, Fan?’ Fanny drew breath to concur rapturously,
but before she could speak he spoiled everything by adding, ‘And while I’m at it, I must see about a pony for Sophie, too,
as I promised. I think I know where I can lay my hands on just the right animal for her.’


Sophie flashed her father a dazzling smile of gratitude and pleasure; and Fanny was still reeling as James put her off his
lap and stood up, saying, ‘I must be going. I want to take those bays out to the Knavesmire and give them a good opener, to
get the fidgets out of their feet. All this rain has played the deuce with their training.’


Jenny was holding out her hand to Fanny, but she ignored it, fixing pleading eyes on her father. ‘Oh Papa, can I come too?’
she asked urgently.


‘No, Puss,’ James said firmly. ‘They’re an untrained team — it would be too dangerous. Run along now with Jenny. It’s time
you were all in the schoolroom, anyway.’


Fanny’s face contracted sharply with disappointment, and she watched her father kiss his wife and depart with such hungry
eyes that for once Héloïse felt oddly sorry for her.


‘I shall be going out later in my phaeton,’ she said, as Fanny trailed after the little children, across the room to where Jenny was waiting. ‘Would you all like to come with me for a drive?’ Sophie and Thomas accepted eagerly, but Fanny said
nothing. ‘Fanny?’ Héloïse prompted kindly. ‘You can take the reins for a little, if you like.’


Fanny turned and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘No thank you, Madame,’ she said with a frosty dignity which looked odd on her
usually animated face. ‘I think I had better stay here and study my school books.’ And she turned and stalked out, evidently
feeling she had dealt an unbeatable card. Héloïse smiled — school books indeed! — and then caught Jenny’s eye, and gave her a cautionary look which said, make sure she doesn’t get up to mischief,

It was the first time the bays had been out alone together; without trained horses harnessed up to quiet them, and they gave
James a lively time. His man, Durban, had the greatest difficulty in backing them between the shafts of the training-phaeton,
even with