The Regency Romances of Mira Stables: Part One

by Mira Stables

  “You seem to have played a very gallant part in last night’s little episode,” jeered Hugh, getting his own back. Elizabeth’s eyes sparked at that, but before she could utter indignant protest the Earl caught her eye and said, “No you don’t, my girl. If you dare say one word, I shall tell them just how I was prevented from leading the pursuit,” and Elizabeth subsided meekly, to the deep disappointment of their interested friends.

  The two girls drifted into a discussion of clothes, Ann saying mischievously that she had a particular fancy for a tint that was neither apricot nor gold but somewhere between the two, and did Elizabeth think it would be becoming to a brunette bridesmaid? “Just the colour of that rose in your sash,” she explained with an air of complete innocence.

  The doctor’s gig appeared round the curve in the avenue and he waved cheerfully in passing and presently came back to say that Hanson’s leg was doing just as it ought. “A clean break, and doesn’t seem to have taken much harm from the mauling it got, which is a merciful dispensation of Providence, my lord.”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed the Earl. “John is the real hero of the occasion. Pluck to the backbone. Always was.”

  “But a sad business about Mr Garrett,” the doctor went on. “Or perhaps I should not say so. It may have been all for the best, for indeed, my lord, you would have had to agree to his being confined after this latest exploit, and that, you have always maintained, would be worse than death.”

  The Earl nodded but did not pursue the subject, and the doctor, after one or two enthusiastic comments on his gift horse’s paces and behaviour, took his leave.

  Elizabeth looked up at the Earl, a hint of penitence clouding her happy face. “What happened to Mr Garrett?” she enquired. “I’m afraid I’d forgotten all about him.”

  “I did not think there was any need to distress you with the story,” he said. “The doctor is probably in the right of it when he says that it is better this way, so do not grieve for him too much. The men found him at the quarry foot early this morning. Perhaps he slipped or missed his way in the darkness. He must have been killed instantly and could not have suffered.” Privately he considered it more than likely that Garrett had deliberately flung himself to his death, but there was no point in dwelling on that sort of speculation. Deliberately he broke the sympathetic little silence, asking Hugh if he felt inclined to embark at once on his new responsibilities by accompanying him into Gloucestershire. “For this insubordinate wench of mine declares that she’ll not be married without her grandmother and her aunt to see the knot fairly tied. And for my part I’d as lief they saw for themselves that she is marrying me of her own free will and not as the result of blackmail or any other kind of tyranny,” he added with a reminiscent little smile in Elizabeth’s direction.

  “Why yes!” said Hugh innocently. “I had forgot you are her guardian. I say, Anderley, it’s not at all the thing to marry your ward. Did you ask your own permission?”

  “It was a very delicate situation, my dear Hugh,” expounded the Earl solemnly. “She wouldn’t have Timothy. I did once think that she might even take a fancy to you, but clearly she has a little more discrimination than the average female. So what could I do but marry her myself? Couldn’t have her hanging on my hands, you know. People would say I hadn’t done my duty. And since she has become quite docile and biddable under my training, I managed to bring myself to sticking point—”

  The end of this eminently reasonable exposition was lost, two highly incensed young ladies pelting the speaker with cedar cones with such unfeminine accuracy that he fled as fast as his long legs would carry him with Elizabeth in hot pursuit. With deep cunning he led the chase around the corner of the house, stopped short, and turned about to catch the flying figure in his arms and fold her close, breathless with running so that she must needs submit to his kisses. Then he held her off for just a moment, his hands framing her face, as he said with new-learned diffidence, “You do come to me willingly, don’t you, my darling? It wasn’t quite all funning back there. I’m too old for you, I know, and selfish to claim you for my own when you’ve seen so little of the world. But indeed I cannot bear to give you up.”

  Confidently the blue eyes smiled back into his. She gave her head a comical little shake. “Not willingly, my lord. More than that. In despite of myself, for try as I would, I could not help but love you. So I come to you proudly, eagerly, and with all my heart.”

  QUALITY MAID

  For my sons, who wanted a really black villain.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  “DO hurry up, Clee, and tell us what he has to say,” begged Faith. Clemency nodded absently, brows still knit over the lawyer’s closely-written missive. The sisters were lingering over the breakfast table, though there was little in the meagre repast to stir the pleasures of appetite. Clemency abandoned the search for any note of hope in the letter and handed it over to her twin, Prudence, shaking her head despondently at Faith’s expression of wistful hope.

  “Nothing good, I’m afraid,” she said. “So far as I can make out the mines are not producing anything. Mr. Morrison says there is no prospect of income from that source, and expresses the hope that the farm is prospering. I wonder how he thinks we have lived this past year! If it had not been for selling off the stock and letting the land, we must have starved. There was no money for labourers’ wages. Perhaps he expected the three of us to turn farmer.”

  Prudence put the letter aside. “Town bred men have no understanding of country matters,” she excused the absent lawyer. “I expect he thinks a farm runs itself. I’m sure we’ve done all that girls could in tending the poultry and the fruit and vegetable gardens. But if there is no money to come from those mines, what do we do now? I vow I’m ashamed to be seen in the village in this shabby old gown, and Faith’s pink is positively indecent.”

  “I only wear it in the house,” protested the youngest Miss Longden, putting her hands protectively across a sweetly rounded bosom which was certainly rather too clearly defined by the skimpy pink dress. “It’s three years old and I’ve grown a lot since then. May I read the letter, Clee?”

  Clemency handed it over. “Being shabby is bad enough,” she said gloomily, “but we shall soon be cold as well. There was quite a sharp frost last night and the coals are nearly all gone and no hope of paying for more.”

  “Isn’t there anything else we could sell?” asked Prudence; and then, tentatively, “Some of Mama’s jewellery?”

  “Papa would be sure to miss it,” said Clemency. “He still spends hours in her room fingering her possessions and is quite convinced that some day she will come home. But I think he might let us use some of her dresses. I could say that after all this time they are quite out of fashion and that she would want everything new.”

  “And fine figures of fun we shall look in Mama’s elaborate silks and velvets,” groaned Prudence.

  “They can be altered to more suitable styles, and at least they would cover us decently,” said her twin, with a firmness developed over the years in which she had played mother to the other two, “and it was you who said that Faith’s lustring was indecent.”

  Prudence subsided meekly. Faith looked up from the lawyer’s letter. “You wouldn’t think these mines could be just a take-in, would you? The names are so very respectable — El Christo de Lagas and Santa Brigida! I expect it was the name
s that induced Papa to choose them, though he really ought to know by now that names are nothing to go by. I mean — well — look at ours!”

  “He thought they would bring him a fortune,” said Clemency sadly. “And so did Mr. Morrison. Everyone who could afford to do so was buying South American mining shares. Papa can scarcely be blamed, especially as it was all for us. You know how little he cares for money. If it could bring Mama home or buy back his sight, it might be different. As it is, with Mama’s money so oddly tied up, he thought to provide more comfortably for us. He still blames himself that Pru and I were never properly launched into Society, and already he is worrying about your come-out, Faith.”

  Faith chuckled. “The only thing I’m likely to come out of is this dress. Do you really think you can persuade him to let us use Mama’s things, Clee? I hate to be a bother, but to speak truth my petticoat is in rags, and as for my stockings —” She lifted her shabby skirts to reveal much darned stockings of coarse white cotton.

  “I’ll ask him this very morning,” promised Clemency.

  “Which is all very well, and as you say, it may at least serve to cover us decently. But it won’t pay for coals,” objected Prudence. “I still think we ought to seek some kind of employment. Even if we did not earn much, we should at least have enough to eat, and Papa would be spared the cost of our keep.”

  “One of us would have to stay at home,” Clemency pointed out. “Papa has learned to live with his blindness, but we could not all desert him.”

  “If only Mama would come back,” sighed Faith, who was still young enough to hope for a miracle.

  There was a sorrowful little pause. It was Faith herself who went on slowly, “Though it is hard to imagine what could have happened to her. Is it four years now, Clee?”

  “Close on that,” said Clemency briefly. It was not a subject that she wished to dwell on.

  But Faith persisted. “Where could she have gone? And Elsie with her,” she wondered for perhaps the thousandth time.

  That was not the least part of the mystery. One grown woman might conceivably disappear in a busy town, but when Mrs. Longden had gone to stay with her godmother in Richmond in the county of Surrey, she had taken her maid with her, and it was during this visit that tragedy had struck. Mrs. Longden’s health had given some cause for concern. The strain of nursing her adored husband through the grave illness that had followed upon a shooting accident, and the final shock of learning that his sight was irretrievably gone had told heavily upon her health and spirits. The family physician spoke anxiously of the possibility of decline. It was hoped that the change to a softer southern climate might prove beneficial, and she had been persuaded to pay a long promised visit to Mrs. Clare. Certainly her first letters after her arrival had seemed quite cheerful, and her spirits appeared to be reviving under the comforting influence of her godmother’s gentle wisdom. But before the month was out she had grown restless and moody, fretting for home and blaming herself overmuch for her lack of fortitude in affliction. And then she had disappeared. Mrs. Clare, obliged to go out on business one morning, had returned to find both guest and maid vanished. No message had been left and all their belongings save Mrs. Longden’s purse were still in the rooms she had allotted them. Thinking that they had perhaps gone shopping she had awaited their return throughout the afternoon. They had not come. Enquiries subsequently revealed that they had not been seen in Richmond itself, nor had they boarded any vehicle leaving the town. It could only be assumed that some passing traveller had given them a lift. But in spite of repeated advertisements and offers of reward, no such person had come forward. It was as though the earth itself had opened and swallowed them.

  Over the years the twins had gradually come to accept the idea that they would not see their mother again, but their father remained confident that some day she would come home, and Faith, true to her name, shared his belief. Eighteen-year-old Clemency had taken over the reins of household management, and Prudence, whose talents were not domestic, had divided her time between her father and the outdoor activities of farm and garden. She read the papers to the blind man, played chess with him, patiently at first, guiding his fumbling fingers, and then with increasing zest as his powers developed until he was first her match and then, quite frequently, her master.

  When days were sunny she walked abroad with him, describing the passing scene and warning him of approaching acquaintances so that he might be ready with a greeting, or perhaps he would sit with her as she worked in the garden, advising her as to the best situation for the plants that she was handling.

  Apart from the continual aching anxiety over their mother’s fate, life settled down into a comfortable if monotonous fashion, and if the twins had an occasional private moan over their vanished dreams of a London season they were young enough to feel hopeful of the hidden future and to take pleasure in the simple hospitalities of the neighbourhood. There was deep satisfaction, too, in their adored father’s growing facility in overcoming his difficulties.

  “At times one would scarcely know that he was blind at all,” they assured one another proudly.

  In the summer of 1824 Faith, now sixteen, came home from school and set about persuading her father that she was sufficiently educated for all practical purposes and need not return to that very select Harrogate seminary for young ladies. By way of proving her erudition she volunteered to take over the daily newspaper readings, thus freeing Prudence to help Clemency with the fruit picking and preserving that was now in full swing. And among the items that she read were glowing accounts of the vast profits to be made by investment in South American mining concerns.

  To Faith, whose financial problems were limited to the hoarding of sufficient pocket money to buy birthday gifts for her family, the articles meant only a struggle with unfamiliar Spanish place names. To her father they sang a different song.

  Of late he had been increasingly concerned over financial matters. His personal fortune was modest, but as his wife had been a considerable heiress the family had lived in comfort, even luxury, until her disappearance. It was then that the awkwardness deriving from the way in which her estate was tied up made itself felt. Felicity Longden’s father had never wholly approved her marriage. While he liked John Longden well enough, he could not feel that a simple country gentleman was a worthy match for a girl who had received several far more distinguished offers. He perceived that his daughter had not inherited his own shrewd good sense if she could so permit sentiment to dictate her choice. Clearly she must be safeguarded against her weakness. It would be prudent to settle her fortune so that she should receive only its income during her life-time, the principal being tied up in trust for her offspring after her death. His prospective son-in-law was as careless as Felicity. Concerned only with the prospect of calling his beloved, ‘wife’ at the earliest possible moment, he raised no objection to this rather disparaging arrangement, an attitude which only confirmed Mr. Hasledon’s poor opinion of his business capacities. That careful man had proceeded to arrange matters safely, as he thought, for the pair of simpletons. He could not be expected to foresee the tangle caused by his daughter’s disappearance, and since he had died several years before that tragedy occurred he was not then in a position to set matters right.

  Since Mr. Longden was resolute in refusing to presume his wife’s death, his daughters could not inherit. This would not have mattered if they could have continued to draw on the income from the Hasledon estate, but this, too, was denied them, by an arrangement made in haste at the time of Mr. Longden’s accident that his wife should have her own account with the bank. The fortune that had comfortably sufficed his bachelor needs was insufficient to support his family. The South American venture seemed to offer a heaven sent answer to all his difficulties. With all the enthusiasm of the tyro, he had plunged recklessly, hesitating only as to whether the Serena mine should make his fortune rather than the Santa Brigida, for as Faith had shrewdly guessed, the names of the mines had worked powerful
ly upon his fancy.

  But the months passed and there was still no sign of the promised golden harvest. The girls had conspired to shield him from the full knowledge of the abject poverty to which they were reduced, hoping each day that the luck would turn. Mr. Morrison’s letter had finally quenched that hope. The mining venture was a calamitous failure.

  “We simply must do something,” said Prudence determinedly. “The summer has been bad enough, but I can’t and I won’t face a Yorkshire winter on a diet of potatoes and cabbage with a precious egg for an occasional treat. You’ve no notion how hungry one gets working out of doors. I’m beginning to understand how starving people can bring themselves to steal food. I’ve nearly forgotten what roast beef tastes like, and I’m sure if I met an unattended sirloin I should promptly succumb to a life of crime.”

  It was laughingly, playfully said, but Clemency knew that the laughter masked the bitter truth. Pru really did suffer from hunger pangs. What was more, the work she did in garden and poultry yard was too much for a girl. Studying her twin with eyes grown anxiously perceptive, Clemency realised that she was much too thin. Perhaps it was her fading summer tan that made her look pale and sickly, but that did not account for the sharp angling of her jaw and the hollows at her neck. In strong contrast to her own slight fragility, Pru was tall, built on noble Junoesque lines. This morning in the sharp October sunlight she looked almost gaunt. Clemency’s soft lips firmed to a resolute line.