Author’s Note
On the 8th July 1816 the Duke of Wellington gave his Great Ball in his mansion in the Champs Élysées in honour of the Royal Princes.
Strangely the Princes left early and in the small hours of the morning part of the basement was found to be on fire.
Gunpowder shavings and cartridges had been pushed through the bars of an open window, shattering the bars and setting the floorboards alight. Footmen quickly extinguished the flames and the Duke made light of the whole incident, yet many people alleged that it was a Royalist crime.
The Army of Occupation of one hundred and fifty thousand British soldiers in France, which were garrisoned at Cambrai after Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, ended in 1818.
Britain had only one hero, the Duke of Wellington. His conduct as a soldier, administrator and financier over the last three years gave him a position in Europe that no Englishman has ever achieved before. He returned home with batons of six foreign countries in his knapsack.
Chapter one ~ 1816
“It’s no use, Miss Alecia, you can’t make bricks without straw and I can’t cook food without havin’ the money to buy it!”
“I know, Bessie,” Alecia replied, “but Papa is very worried at the moment and I don’t want to trouble him.”
“That be all very well, miss, but we can’t go on as we are. And you asks me what your father needs is a piece of good beefsteak or a fat chicken or two.”
Alecia sighed because she knew that Bessie, who had been looking after them for over fifteen years, was speaking the truth.
But her father’s last book had sold so few copies that it had left them almost penniless and the one he was writing now would not be ready for at least another three or four months.
‘What am I to do?’ she asked herself and wished, as she had a thousand times before that the Earl of Langhaven had not died.
He had been her uncle, her mother’s brother, and because he was fond of his sister he had been unfailingly kind to them.
When Lady Sophie insisted on marrying Troilus Stambrook, her brother had been the only member of her family who did not rage at her and, as soon as he inherited his father’s title, he had given her and her erudite husband practical help.
Lady Sophie had fallen in love with the extremely handsome Troilus Stambrook when he came to tutor her brother before he went up to Oxford hoping, if not to get a degree, at least not to be sent down for total incompetence.
Troilus Stambrook was bowled over by the beauty of his employer’s daughter, who had already captivated London Society with her charm and her elegance.
Although Lady Sophie had a number of suitors, one of them in her father’s estimation extremely suitable and to whom he was prepared to give his unqualified blessing as a son-in-law, she found that once she had met Troilus Stambrook, no other man existed in the whole world.
A raging battle then ensued which continued until everybody was exhausted and which ended, because she was so deeply in love and was prepared to fight the whole world if necessary, in Lady Sophie getting her own way.
So Lady Sophie, the toast of St. James’s, married an obscure unknown writer whose only qualification was that he was a gentleman by birth and, because he was so clever, he had won a scholarship to Eton and another to Oxford University.
“You will rue the day you did anything so stupid!” the old Earl said to his daughter as they drove side by side to the small Church in the village where she was to be married.
But he was wrong, for Lady Sophie was blissfully happy until the day she died.
The only problem had been that she and her husband had so little money and, after their daughter Alecia was born, it was extremely difficult to make ends meet and she was too proud to keep asking her father for help.
When her brother inherited, everything was different.
First of all, because he loved his sister, he gave her and her husband a little Manor House on the estate where they lived rent free and saw that they were supplied with food from his farms and gardens.
There were peaches and grapes from the hothouses, any vegetables they required from the kitchen gardens and every week butter, cream and eggs came to the Manor House from the Home Farm.
There were also chickens, ducks, fat pigeons and in the spring, legs of lamb, which was one of the Earl’s specialities.
This made life very much easier and Troilus Stambrook could concentrate on his writing and not feel humiliated by the knowledge that he was depriving the wife he adored of the luxuries that had been hers ever since she was born.
Then, just after Lady Sophie died in the bitter winter of 1814, her brother, the Earl of Langhaven, had a riding accident.
It left him crippled and after enduring agonising pain for two months he too died.
It was then, when the new Earl took over Lang Hall and the estate, that everything had changed again for Alecia and her father.
The third Earl had had no son to continue his generosity because he, like his sister, Sophie, had only one daughter, whose name was Charis.
The two girls had been born within three weeks of each other, Alecia being the elder. They had played together and, as soon as they were old enough, shared a Governess.
It was only to be expected that Alecia should be the cleverer of the two, because her father always talked to her as if she was his equal and gave her lessons that were far beyond the range of any Governess.
Charis shared the lessons with Alecia and, although she did not learn half as much as her cousin, they were very happy together.
Alecia’s life was a joy from the moment she woke up in the morning to the time she went to bed at night.
She loved the lessons she had with her father, enjoyed those that took place up at the ‘Big House’ in the large airy schoolroom. But most of all she adored riding with Charis on the well-bred, well-trained horses that belonged to her uncle.
When he died she could hardly believe that everything she knew and loved had come to an end.
It had been agonising to lose her mother, but she also lost Charis, who, of course, had had to leave her home and the horses that were so much a part of her life.
She felt as if suddenly she had been swept from the warmth of a fire into the frightening ice-cold of a world outside that she had never known before.
When the new Earl took over, all the luxuries that Alecia had taken for granted ceased abruptly.
The new and fourth Earl was a very distant cousin, a rather raffish young man, unmarried, who enjoyed London and had no intention of burying himself in the country.
He was quite prepared to come down occasionally to his newly acquired country seat, bringing with him large house parties of beautiful women and men like himself who wanted to ride in the daytime and gamble through the night, staking a fortune on the turn of a card.
To Alecia the tales that reached her of what the village called the ‘goings on’ up at Lang Hall seemed incredible and she could hardly believe that they were taking place in what had always been to her a second home.
“If your dear mother knew what was a-happenin’,” Bessie said over and over again, “she’d turn over in her grave, that she would!”
“Well, what is happening?” Alecia asked.
“Nothin’ as is fit for your ears, Miss Alecia,” Bessie replied, “but there’s ladies rouged, powdered and covered in furs and jewels and gentlemen drinkin’ enough claret to drown themselves, besides stakin’ great piles of gold sovereigns, which is disgraceful if you ask me, seein’ how much sufferin’ there is ‘cos of the war.”
Alecia agreed with her because she was deeply perturbed by the treatment suffered by the men who had been demobilised from the Services now tha
t the war with Napoleon was ended.
Without a pension and without any recompense for the years in which they had fought so bravely, most of them were unable to find work.
One thing that was obvious to Alecia was that the fourth Earl of Langhaven was not interested in his cousin who lived at the Manor House, nor for that matter in the concerns of any of the other people on his estate.
He did not visit the farmers, which gave them offence and he spoke only to the gamekeepers about the prospects of the shooting in the autumn.
After every visit, when he could be seen riding in the distance, he and his party would drive back to London in their phaetons and travelling chariots without having exchanged a word with those who lived in the shadow of Lang Hall.
“How can he behave so badly, Papa?” Alecia asked indignantly when after the Earl’s third visit he had still made no effort to come in contact with anybody on the estate.
“I am afraid it is modern manners, my dear,” Troilus Stambrook replied, “but as your cousin is persona grata with the Prince Regent, I imagine that he does not think he should waste his time on people like us!”
‘I will go to see him,’ Alecia decided to herself. ‘Then perhaps I can persuade him to go on being kind to us as Uncle Lionel used to be.’
She thought of walking up to the Big House and asking to see the Earl.
It was not only her shyness that prevented her from doing so, but also her pride, which would not allow her to humiliate herself by begging.
At the same time she had to face the fact that things were growing more and more desperate and money was shorter and shorter.
Her mother’s allowance, which was never a very large one, had stopped when she died and it was only then that Alecia realised how little her father earned by his writing.
His books were clever, but far too erudite for the general public and, while they were appreciated by Scholars, Dons and University Librarians, the amount they brought in was so infinitesimal that Alecia understood that it was with reluctance that the publishers agreed to take another of his books.
‘I shall have to do something,’ she thought now as she walked from the kitchen.
She left Bessie muttering that luncheon would consist of a few vegetables and little else unless the hens in the garden would lay another egg, which was extremely unlikely as they had had two for breakfast.
‘I shall have to do something!’ Alecia repeated to herself.
She could not imagine what she could do and there was nothing left in the house that they could sell.
She wept bitterly when her father disposed of a few pieces of jewellery that had belonged to her mother.
She had also cried when the china figures, mostly of Dresden, that her mother had collected over the years, many of which she had brought with her when she married, had been sold for just a few pounds.
Now there was nothing left except for the furniture, which was worn and badly in need of being recovered and a portrait of her mother that hung in her father’s study.
It had been painted when she first went to London and had become a social success overnight.
‘We cannot sell that,’ Alecia thought. ‘If it was taken away, it would break Papa’s heart.’
She knew that her father thought of the portrait as his inspiration and, when he was alone, he would look up at the picture and talk to his wife as if she was still alive.
It was only by burying himself in his writing that her father was able to forget the agony of his loss and go on living without a wife.
‘What can I do? What can I do?’ Alecia asked herself again and again.
Finally she decided to swallow her pride and was just about to walk up to the hall when she was surprised to hear a carriage draw up outside the front door and wondered who it could be.
She saw so few people these days, and anyway, as it was morning, it was an unusual time for anyone to call.
There came a loud rat-tat and it never crossed Alecia’s mind that she should wait for Bessie to open the door but hurried to do so herself.
Then she stood transfixed to see the elegant travelling carriage that stood outside and the person who was stepping out of it.
Suddenly she gave a cry of delight that seemed to echo out into the spring sunshine.
“Charis! Can it really be you?”
Lady Charis Langley ran towards her cousin and flung her arms around her.
“Alecia, dearest! I am so thrilled to see you!”
The cousins kissed each other and then with their arms entwined, they walked through the hall and into the drawing room.
“How could I have guessed – how could I have imagined that you would suddenly turn up like this?” Alecia was saying. “Oh, Charis, I have missed you and you have not written to me for nearly two months.”
“I know, dearest, and you must forgive me,” Charis replied, “and now I have so much to tell you, I hardly know where to begin!”
Lady Charis’s mother had died very tragically when she was only a little girl and after her father’s death she had gone to London to live with an aunt, the Duchess of Hampden, who had, as soon as she was out of mourning, presented her at Buckingham Palace.
Before this there had been, however, innumerable small dinner parties and entertainments that Charis had never experienced before, but which obviously delighted her.
At first, after leaving the country, she had written to Alecia almost every day, telling her how much she missed her and relating everything that was happening in London.
When the letters became less frequent, Alecia realised that Charis was busy with new friends and, although she was sure that she still loved her, there was a great deal to occupy her days.
Then, since the beginning of the year, Charis’s letters had grown even fewer and, when she did write, it was obvious that she did not have time to write down for Alecia everything she was doing.
However, now she was here and Alecia could only gasp at the difference in her appearance from when she had seen her last.
Then she had been miserable and unhappy over the death of her father and frightened of going away from the only home she had ever known.
She had left in a flood of tears, looking in her black gown and bonnet very unlike the laughing lovely girl with whom Alecia had shared her life for eighteen years.
Now, as she looked at her cousin, she realised that she was dressed in the very latest fashion, very different from anything she had ever seen before and she had a new beauty that seemed altogether breathtaking.
Charis took off her high-crowned bonnet, which was trimmed with small ostrich feathers and threw it onto a chair.
Then she drew Alecia down beside her on the sofa and said,
“You look just the same! Have you missed me?”
“Terribly!” Alecia replied. “Nothing has been the same since you left and everything is strange and rather horrible since the new Earl took your father’s place.”
“I am not surprised,” Charis said. “I never did like Cousin Gerald and, when I see him in London, he is always with some actress or Cyprian so that it is impossible for me to speak to him.”
Alecia’s eyes widened.
“Do you think those are the women he brings here?”
“I would not be surprised,” Charis answered, “although he spends quite a lot of his time with the Prince Regent.”
It passed through Alecia’s mind that the Prince Regent’s reputation had shocked most of the older people in the village, but before she could say anything Charis continued,
“But I did not come here to talk about Cousin Gerald. It is about myself and oh, Alecia, you have to help me!”
“Of course, dearest, I will do anything you want, although it is very difficult for me to think how I could possibly help you.”
As she spoke, she was admiring not only Charis’s elegant fashionable gown, which looked extremely expensive, but also the string of perfect pearls round her neck.
She wore a
s well a gold bracelet set with small diamonds on her wrist and a very valuable diamond ring on the third finger of her right hand, which seemed somehow a little ostentatious for a young girl.
Then she realised that Charis, with whom she had been so familiar that she had always believed she could read her thoughts, was looking worried.
Because she was aware perceptively that something was wrong, she said quickly,
“What is it, Charis? Tell me how I can help you.”
Charis looked down at the diamond ring on her right hand before she said,
“I am engaged to be married!”
Alecia gave a little cry.
“Oh, Charis, why did you not tell me? How exciting! And, of course, you will be very happy!”
“Very very happy!” Charis agreed. “I am so lucky, Alecia, and Harry says that he is the luckiest man in the whole world! But just at the moment there are difficulties.”
“First of all,” Alecia said, “who is Harry?”
“He is the Viscount Turnbury, son of the Earl of Scarcliffe,” Charis replied proudly.
Alecia did not speak, she just listened as Charis went on,
“He is so handsome, so amusing and to me the most wonderful man in the whole world!”
She smiled before she said,
“I love him, Alecia, in exactly the same way that Aunt Sophie loved your father and, if he had not a penny and was of no significance whatsoever, I would be quite ready to run away with him.”
“I have always hoped and prayed that you would love somebody like that,” Alecia said, “but what is the difficulty?”
“That is what I have come to tell you.”
Charis drew in a deep breath before she began,
“We knew as soon as we met each other that we were in love and, when Harry asked me to marry him, I wanted to tell everybody how happy we were. Then suddenly his mother died.”
“I am sorry,” Alecia murmured.
“We realised,” Charis went on, “that we could hardly announce our engagement immediately after her death. Then, while Harry was trying to think of a way by which we could avoid having to wait a whole year to be married, a terrible thing happened.”
Love Casts Out Fear Page 1