Beneath Spring's Rain (Ashton Brides Book 1)

by Rebecca J. Greenwood

  She giggled and ran out. Before she disappeared into the hall, she flashed her half-toothed grin at Daniel. He couldn’t keep the answering smile off his face.

  “Charming,” Daniel said.

  “Isn’t she just? Takes after her mother. Or maybe she got that way from me!” The large man let out a loud laugh. “I would imagine a female counterpart of mine would be a fearless flirt, hah!”

  “They are yours, sir?” Daniel’s brows rose.

  “Yes, my children through Yamini, my bibi, my mistress. Delightful creature. Didn’t imagine I’d leave them in India, like so many other men, did you? I’m not so self-sacrificing. And I don’t have an English wife to disapprove!” He chuckled. “That makes it much easier.”

  Daniel blinked at this frank conversation, keeping his countenance politely inquiring with effort. Few men brought their foreign mistresses and illegitimate children back to England, and even fewer lived with them openly.

  “Well, my boy!” The man clapped Daniel on the back. “You are m’nephew Daniel, are you not?

  “So I understand, sir. I apologize that I am not very familiar—”

  “Oh, no, think nothing of it! I’ve been in India since before you were born! Word did reach me of your mother’s death, months after the fact, of course. And I was greatly saddened. Caroline was a great favorite of mine. But look at you. You have much of her in your face, Daniel, my boy. Does me good to see it.” They looked each other in the eye, his uncle of a height with him.

  “It is good to meet you, Uncle.”

  His uncle studied him with a shrewd expression. A thrill of nerves shot through Daniel. He straightened his red uniform coat and shoved the feeling back. He had no reason to feel nervous.

  “Let me make sure I know about you,” his uncle said. “You’re a captain in the cavalry?”

  “Yes, sir, His Majesty’s 32nd Dragoon Guards.”

  “Excellent. They find horses big enough for you?” He eyed Daniel up and down the length of him.

  “We breed them ourselves in the Kentworth stables.” His elder sister Cassandra had charge of the stables on their Leicestershire estate now and was doing a bang-up job. He’d only reluctantly left the new foals a few days ago, and stopped in London for a mere day before heading down to Brighton to answer this summons. He planned on staying in the area two days before heading back to London where his family was to enjoy the Season.

  Uncle Harlow gave a nod. “You got your size from your mother’s side of the family. Good to see it.” He gave his large belly a pat with a satisfied look. “And you are a bachelor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have an eye on a pretty lady, eh?”

  “Not at this time, sir, no.” Daniel gave a light laugh, hoping to deflect any further questions on that line. He had long ago put the idea of marriage far from his mind. It did little good to dwell on impossibilities.

  “Well, maybe after this.” The large man chuckled, then clapped him on the shoulder. “I know how it is, my boy. Second son myself. They have you on half-pay?”

  “Yes. I’ve been on leave for a month. Was in Paris with the army of occupation before this.”

  “Happy to be back in England?”

  “Quite happy. It’s good to be home.”

  “England is quite the change for me after thirty-five years abroad. I’m still trying to decide if I like it.” Harlow gave a cynical half-smile. “Well, half-pay is barely nothing.” He scratched his close-shaved chin and looked into the distance. “Don’t want you forced to borrow on your expectations, that’d be foolish. How’s two thousand pounds a year sound?”

  “What?” Daniel gaped at him. His heart began to pound.

  “An heir’s allowance, boy.”

  Astonishment robbed Daniel of speech. He must be hearing wrong.

  A slow grin spread over his uncle’s face. “Alright, nephew, I’ll be clear. I’m a rich man. I’ll say it, and it’s true. I’ve made my fortune and then some. But I haven’t married. I have no legitimate heirs. And I’m a second son. I always wished I had a grand uncle to do what I intend to do for you. So it’s yours. Or will be, when I’m off. I’m naming you my heir, Daniel. My primary heir! What have you to say?”

  Daniel blinked, opened his mouth, but closed it over any stumbling answer he could give. “Me, sir?” he strangled out.

  “Yes! You.” The man’s large hand clapped Daniel on the shoulder. His muscles began to sting under the repeated onslaught. “And as my heir I’ll set up an allowance for you. Five hundred a quarter. A respectable income for any gentleman.”

  Daniel swayed on his feet.

  “Sit down, sit down, and I’ll tell you the details.” His uncle pulled his arm, and Daniel stumbled on numb knees to a settee covered in orange silk.

  His uncle grinned, his eyes disappearing into the creases of his cheeks. He clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together. “Yes! This is just as fun as I’ve dreamed it would be. I’ve wanted to do this for years. Yes, I am that uncle!” He threw back his head and laughed, his cheeks ruddy.

  “Are you in earnest, sir?”

  “Complete! Deadly earnest, Daniel. As soon as the papers are in order, my solicitor will get you your first payment. You won’t have to stay in the army, son, unless you wish it.”

  Daniel had to forcefully close his mouth. He swallowed, his eyes suddenly tight. He pressed his lips together.

  “I see how you are inclined.” His uncle watched him with knowing eyes. “I know that look.” And he slapped his knees. “Well then, and that’s a good deed done. Makes a man feel worthwhile, that his life’s work will come to something good. Now! The stipulations. You don’t get all this for nothing, and nothing is guaranteed.”

  He stood. Daniel didn’t trust his legs; he stayed on the settee.

  “Conditions and stipulations.” Uncle Harlow paced before him. “You won’t be getting all of my fortune, mind. Just the large majority. I’ll be setting up annuities for my bibi and her children. Enough for them to be comfortable.

  “And your allowance, it will be paid once a quarter, and never early. If you end up being a spendthrift and a gambler, I will discover it, and I will find myself another heir.

  “No borrowing on your expectations! I am still alive and hearty and of an entrepreneurial spirit, which means I could gamble on a venture at any time and lose all the money I have so successfully accumulated. I’ll set aside ten thousand pounds for your allowance, so it’ll be assured for the next five years. If I die a pauper with nothing to leave you, that amount in total at least you can be sure of.

  “This will give you the freedom of a gentleman. Enough to set up a household, support a wife and a nursery, so you have children to give my fortune to after you are gone. If you and your wife are wise, you should be able to live well till I’m off.”

  A wife. Daniel blinked. He swallowed against sudden tightness in his throat.

  “This brings me to the most important condition. Your bride . . .” Uncle paused. “I know how young men can ruin their lives with an ill-chosen bride. And I’ve sacrificed having a wife myself for . . .” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Well, let’s say, for my family’s sake I never married who I had a mind to. I never disobliged them, much good as it’s done them or me.”

  Daniel surmised Grandfather Harlow had not approved of his second son’s choice of wife. Perhaps that was even how Uncle Harlow had ended up in India, to separate him from a woman his father had deemed inappropriate.

  “So I’m putting in these stipulations, nephew. Your wife must be of good birth and of good character. And I’d prefer you pass her by me before you go asking for her hand, and get my approval.”

  “Oh . . . Of course, sir. I wouldn’t imagine marrying a lady that didn’t fit that criteria.”

  “Very good, my boy! Now, do you already have such a lady in mind?”

  “I—” Daniel’s face heated. How juvenile. But his heart thumped, and his stomach jumped. A beautiful face rose in his mind,
pale skin, framed by dark, glossy curls. How long had it been since he’d seen her?

  He swallowed down the longing that the thought of her evoked. “I would think the lady of my youthful dreams would be long married, sir. I will have to be on the lookout for someone else.”

  “Well, if you don’t know for sure, find out, lad. Maybe she has been waiting for you.”

  “Unlikely, but thank you, sir.”

  His uncle told him to come back tomorrow to sign papers, and invited him to dinner that night. “You must meet my Yamini! She’s a gem.”

  Daniel said yes, he would be honored, and soon he was dismissed.

  He left and stood sightlessly on the street, his mind reeling.

  This changed everything. Daniel’s entire life, its course and progress.

  He could leave the army. With it no longer hanging over him like a pall, he could pursue his true interests.

  And he would have money enough to marry.

  A wife had been a luxury he had never been able to justify. He had put that dream out of his mind after the family finances convinced him the army was his only choice for his life’s work. He had joined a war that had been continuing for twenty years. He would not bring a wife into that. And since the war’s end, on half-pay, he couldn’t afford to keep a wife. The dilemma had been insurmountable.

  But now . . .

  The girl he’d loved from afar since he was a youth, was she still free? Could it be possible that Miss Eliza Moore was still unwed?

  He would look up her direction, inquire after her. Would she welcome attentions from her former acquaintance and sometime dance partner?

  Eliza Moore. Thinking her name still caused a tightness of longing in his chest.

  Chapter 3

  Five weeks before April 24, 1817

  Eliza tramped through Hyde Park, trying to avoid puddles, her half-boots caked with mud from when she hadn’t managed.

  She’d had to race off the graveled paths, and duck behind trees and shrubbery to avoid being seen. She had caught sight of Lord Crewkerne’s carriage twice on the carriage paths, but both times had been able to stay out of sight.

  This awful game could not continue much longer. She was exhausted, drenched from rain, and cold hopelessness ate at her. Though the sun was hidden behind heavy clouds, she knew it lowered. Soon it would be evening.

  He was right. None of her friends would or could take her in. Her own cousins had cast her out. If London society thought her fallen then she was, no matter what she had actually done.

  She wasn’t! She had done nothing but let a man kiss her. A man who she thought would marry her. A man she did not know was married already.

  But the Ton knew. And that kiss had been witnessed by gossips, whose wagging tongues grew it to a monster of lies. She hoped the tattlemongers choked on their exaggerations.

  Why had her cousin Mrs. Broughton not mentioned that Crewkerne was married? He was of her circle. She must have seen the attentions he was paying Eliza.

  She was the poor relation. Growing up, she had never imagined that fate would be hers—an unwanted burden on her distant family.

  None close remained alive. She was alone.

  She clutched the leather folio of sheet music to her chest, and pushed back at the despair threatening to overwhelm her. The irony of it. She’d been gifted a few coins by her cousins yesterday on her twenty-first birthday. She’d spent them today, so excited to be able to purchase the sheet music she’d been eyeing for weeks. She hadn’t even used her scant windfall to purchase new, colorful ribbons to replace the mourning colors of those she owned.

  She hadn’t known she should have saved those funds to help support her in her unexpectedly desperate state.

  The black ribbons were the remains of her years of mourning, the latest being for her cousins’, the Broughtons’, only son Charles, who had died a few months before. The necessity of the upcoming Season with two daughters to settle was all that was bringing the family out of mourning.

  Poor Charles was only the latest in a line of deaths that had plagued Eliza’s life until she was the last surviving of her immediate family. Her father’s nephew, William Broughton, had inherited her father’s entailed estate upon his death six years ago. After the deaths of Eliza’s mother and maternal grandparents, Eliza had returned to her childhood home to stay with the Broughtons, an unwanted hanger-on, a relic of a lost family line.

  What would her Grandmama, the late Duchess of Lyonston, say if she could see her granddaughter now? She had been a grand Lady of the Wardrobe for Queen Caroline, but had lived to see her family line dwindle. Now only lost, impoverished Eliza remained.

  Ruined Eliza.

  Despite her innocence, she was a fallen woman, her reputation besmirched and beyond repair. What could she do?

  She was chilled through, and the afternoon lengthened. She was hungry.

  What did women who found themselves in this situation do? She refused to sell her body for a warm meal and a roof.

  The Magdalen House. Eliza stilled, one foot raised to take the next step. The thought of Grandmama had brought the charitable institution forward in her mind. She set her foot down and stood motionless as the idea churned.

  Her grandmother had been a governor of the Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes. She had brought Eliza to services at the Magdalen’s famous octagonal chapel, its choir of reformed prostitutes bringing paying worshipers to their evening services.

  Eliza had been fascinated by the disembodied sound coming from the elevated choir loft, the singers’ identities kept private by a screen that stretched the length of it. She had met the kindly Reverend John Prince, chaplain and secretary of the charitable organization.

  Grandmama had wanted Eliza to see the cautionary tale of these women’s destroyed lives, and to see the hope that was there, as they rebuilt those lives again behind those fenced and secluded grounds.

  The Magdalen House was for women in her predicament, or in worse.

  What day was it? Friday? They only accepted applicants once a month, if she remembered correctly, on a Tuesday.

  No matter. She was the granddaughter of the Duchess of Lyonston. She must try.

  With purpose warming a fire in her heart, she took her bearings. A long walk was ahead of her.

  With brisk steps, she left Hyde Park, cut through Green Park, skirted St. James’s Park, and crossed Westminster Bridge, determined to reach Blackfriars Road and the Magdalen Hospital.

  Chapter 4

  Three days before April 24, 1817

  “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel!” Daniel’s sister, Florentia, flew down the stairs of Ashton House and leaped up into his arms. He stumbled back, but then swung her around in a twirl, his arms beneath hers. “You’re here! You’re here! You’re back!”

  “I’m back!”

  “Florentia!” The tiny Marchioness of Kentworth, their stepmother and widow of their late father, stood at the top of the stairs, her face disapproving. “Goodness gracious, young lady, you are not a child anymore.” She descended gracefully.

  Daniel smiled up at her in greeting, and then down at his adorable sister. She had grown tall, plump, and pretty in his years away with the army. “Maybe you are too old now, then, sister dear? Perhaps we need a new tradition?”

  “Must all fun end because I am a young lady?” She pouted. He noted she controlled herself so much as to not stomp her foot.

  “A grown-up lady of seventeen, about to be presented. Is that not why I am here?”

  The color drained from her face. “Do not remind me, Daniel. I live in daily horror of it!” She clutched his sleeve.

  “What’s this, Florrie? You will charm the queen, as you charm all.”

  “But there are so many rules. And the queen’s so old and strict, and what if I do something wrong? What if I sneeze, or cough, or accidentally turn my back to her, just not thinking, or if I trip or lose my balance as I await her kiss and I fall face first into her lap? Oh, it is too
horrible!”

  He narrowed his eyes and stepped back. “Do it right now,” he commanded, repressing a smile.

  “What?”

  “The curtsey. Here.” He moved into the sitting room and sat on a Queen Anne chair. “I am the Queen. Curtsey before me and await my kiss, Lady Florentia Ashton.” He gestured before him.

  She followed. “But you aren’t scary, Daniel. This is not a useful exercise. Not at all.”

  “You wound me, Florentia! I am a fierce cavalry captain in the service of Their Majesties. I assure you, I am capable of being at least a tenth as scary as Her Majesty. Especially in the defense of His Majesty’s interest against foreign scoundrels.” He mock-glared.

  She giggled.

  “Come girl, it’s time for your kiss!” He made his voice querulous and old.

  Florentia sobered herself, and stood tall, a twinkle still in her eye. She advanced with a stately pace toward him in his chair. Their stepmother joined her, taking her position as Florentia’s escort. A small, fine-boned woman just reaching middle-age, she was dwarfed by her robustly-sized stepdaughter.

  “Your Majesty, may I present my stepdaughter, Lady Florentia Ashton, daughter of the late First Marquess of Kentworth.” Their stepmother gestured to Florentia, and Florentia stepped up to him, sank down low in the deep curtsey required for presentation to the queen, and inclined her forehead, awaiting the kiss of the monarch due to the daughters of nobility.

  “What a charming gel!” he proclaimed in his querulous voice. Florentia’s face twisted in her effort to keep from breaking out in giggles. She swayed infinitesimally, and he pressed his lips to her forehead and released the pressure with a loud smack.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Florentia stood, and backed slowly away from him, her lips pressed together against her mirth. She made it out of the door.

  He leapt up, gave a whoop and clapped. “Bravo, my lady! A perfect execution.”

  She grinned from the hallway and performed a balletic twirl in triumph.