The Stanbroke Girls Read online

  The Stanbroke Girls

  Fiona Hill

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1981 by Ellen Pall

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition November 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-470-7

  More from Fiona Hill

  The Autumn Rose

  The Trellised Lane

  Sweet’s Folly

  The Practical Heart

  The Wedding Portrait

  The Love Child

  Love in a Major Key

  The Country Gentleman

  To P.C. with love and thanks

  1

  “But my dear Jemmy,” Lady Emilia burst out in exasperation, “if you had no intention of accepting invitations this season you might as well have stayed in Sussex! What was your object in coming to London at all if not to visit with the monde a little? When I think of all the months we have been rusticating at Six Stones, and not a soul to amuse us save John-Coachman—! I protest, Jem, it is the most provoking behaviour I’ve ever encountered.” Lady Emilia had been pacing the room determinedly during this monologue, but she now flung a vexed glance at her tranquil brother and sat down abruptly in a wine-red arm-chair. For a moment it appeared as if she would stay there, but the next minute found her on her feet again, jabbing and slashing at the sunlit air, indefatigable as ever. “It isn’t only for your sake I concern myself, you know,” she went on, trying another tack; “it looks extremely odd for me, after all, to be out among people all over town without you—when everybody knows perfectly well you are here with me, and might have accompanied me if you’d only cared to bestir yourself. It’s awkward for me, to come right to the point. Oh Jemmy, I tell you in all honesty, I can’t think why you did not stay at home in Sussex!”

  At this point Lady Emilia seated herself again and this time she did remain silent, evidently inspecting the vandyked silk cord on the wrists of her muslin morning-dress (and evidently finding it not satisfactory). Her brother, Lord Marchmont, had been watching her interesting performance with polite attention, and, as he now supposed her to have concluded her soliloquy, he favoured her with a round of light applause. In this he was joined by a second gentleman, a certain Lord Warrington Weld, whose acquaintance Lord Marchmont had made during the recent unpleasantness at Waterloo. Lord Weld had also appreciated Emilia’s fine speaking, and considered that her delivery rivalled that of Mrs. Siddons. “Brava,” he cried, from the depths of a velvet sofa. “Brava e bravissima!”

  “Encore, encore,” Lord Marchmont seconded, smiling brightly at his sister.

  “James, do answer me,” she snapped out, striving against nature to keep from smiling herself.

  “Answer you? Can such golden rhetoric be answered?”

  “It is unanswerable,” asserted Weld.

  “James, why have you come to London with me? I could have done very well without you.”

  “Upon my soul, methinks the lady truly does desire reply,” Marchmont observed to his friend. “In that case, let me consider. I came to London…I came to London—” his handsome brow knitted up in imitation of deep thought. “I have it! I came to London to talk over pistols with Manton, my dear. Now you cannot do that in Sussex; confess it and let us have done. Does the answer not please?” he inquired innocently, as Emilia cast him a look of sheer frustration.

  “Myself, I never heard such persuasive logic,” said Lord Weld. “The truth is, my friends, if it rested with me to judge between you which was the better speaker—which the more clear and compelling, whether question or answer—I could not choose. A draw, a simple draw! What a delight you are to hear.”

  “Lord Weld, be quiet,” muttered Emilia without looking up. “Jemmy knows what I mean, and why he is being so obtuse is a puzzle no logic can unravel.”

  “Oh my!” drawled Weld, unruffled.

  “Perhaps you are waiting for an apology, Emilia?” Marchmont took up again. “If so, I offer it with profoundest respects. I admit, it never occurred to me that to appear without me among the ton might cause you discomfort. But as for my mending the business by attending—out of the question. I am prodigiously sorry, however.”

  “Oh I protest, Marchmont,” Lord Weld broke in, “I can’t agree that’s a very handsome thing to say. What manner of apology is that, that recognises should and could, but gives the cut direct to would? Lady Emilia, my sympathies are all with you.”

  “Lord Weld, you may rest assured that is where they belong.”

  “Heaven save me,” murmured Marchmont, “for I see the tide of opinion runs against me. What, both sister and friend in the enemy’s camp? How on earth shall I ever hold out? Ho hum,” he added, with a pleased smile at the shine of his own top-boots. “I say, Warrington, you ought to start using champagne in your boot polish, as I do. It’s the only thing for it. Shall we ring for a glass of something interesting? This argument makes me monstrous thirsty.”

  He did not wait for the approval of the others but pulled the bell-rope himself and, when Searle appeared, bespoke a bottle of sherry and three glasses. “For Emilia drinks, you know,” he observed to Weld when the butler had gone. “It’s really too shocking of her.”

  Lady Emilia, who at the age of thirty had the freshness of twenty and the wisdom of forty, relented sufficiently to laugh at this sally. “It’s true,” she admitted to Weld, whom she had known only during the week since her arrival in London. “I am practically disreputable.”

  “Good Lord, Jem! You might have warned a fellow,” exclaimed Warrington Weld. “And here am I, a guest in your house—not a friend in London but you, and promised to stay here all season…I dareswear worse things can happen to a gentleman, but I’m sure I can’t think of a one of them. I only hope you haven’t any more terrible secrets between you.”

  “Only a few,” Emilia told him. “Most of them no worse than—oh, a murder, for example.”

  “Or two, for two examples,” Marchmont joined in.

  “Or three.”

  “Or four.”

  “You’re acquainted with the seven deadly sins, no doubt,” Lady Emilia remarked to Weld.

  “Slightly.”

  “We’re on intimate terms,” she announced grandly.

  “With every blessed one.”

  “You can imagine our secrets!”

  “They can’t be imagined,” asserted the earl, breaking off to receive the sherry from Searle and handing the glasses round. The Earl of Marchmont was hospitable, and there was little he liked better than the company of trusted friends. He was proud of his sister, only six years his junior yet still as straight and tall and beautiful as she had been at her come-out. Her clear grey eyes and her dark glossy hair, so like his own, her handsome mouth, strong chin, her pliant neck and supple waist, all—so far as he could tell—went on quite heedless of the years, the eye never losing its bright glitter, the mouth its frank and easy smile. The fact of her never having married mystified him. At first, after the early death of their parents, he had thought she kept single through a dutiful (if needless) devotion to himself—but their frequent discussions on this point convinced him he was wrong. That she might have married if she liked to he knew for
certain, but she remained a spinster. He had come to accept it, but in the end he had no notion of why it was, or how it was. That she was happy, he knew, and no more. And indeed there are very many who live in close quarters, year upon year, with no more idea of the shadows in their fellows’ hearts than they have of the dark side of the moon.

  As for Emilia, her idea of her brother’s heart was a little shrewder. In appearance he was more than her equal: tall and slender, with a handsome head proudly carried and her own wide grey eyes, he had broken the hearts of women whose names he never even knew. His manners were as impeccable when out in society as they were careless among his intimates; among match-making mammas he was widely acknowledged both extremely eligible and extremely unattainable. His wealth was considerable; except for his charming (if somewhat eccentric) sister, he had no dependants at all; he must marry—they whispered to one another year after year—or permit the estate to pass into the hands of that reprobate de Guere…and yet he did not marry! Many were the girlish hearts that wavered cruelly between hope and fear when Marchmont went to the Continent under Wellington, and many the pretty pairs of eyes that scanned the lists of war-wounded during those days, seeking, praying they would not find, his name. Nor did they—but he might have been killed for all the good that came of their concern, for here he was safe back again, and in London, and a full se’ennight into the season—and not a hostess had seen his face!

  The war had done something to her brother, Emilia knew; and even more than that, she divined, the marriage of a certain Miss Charlotte Beaudry during his first campaign abroad had done something to him. Even his mother had died before her time. Women, to Marchmont, were a race of turncoats—one could as well trust them as serpents, and, like serpents, it was scarcely worth the trouble of learning which were poisonous and which were not. But her comprehension of his difficulties did nothing to alter the facts. The match-making mammas were absolutely right: he must marry and produce an heir or forfeit the estates, at his death, to Sir Jeffery de Guere. The very thought of de Guere wandering over Six Stones at his leisure was sufficient to make her feel queasy. A ghost of this image in her mind, she accepted a glass of sherry from her brother and renewed her assault on him simultaneously.

  “Jemmy,” she began, speaking somewhat more softly though far more directly, “if you do not go out among the world a little, how can you ever hope to find a wife?”

  “Aha,” said Marchmont, gesturing significantly to Lord Weld. “Take a second glass, dear fellow, for the spectacle is about to become interesting. Did you see that cannon behind my sister? I did not, till now. Her skirts must have hidden it,” he added sardonically.

  “My dear brother, perhaps we ought to take up this discussion at some other time,” Emilia suggested, with a glance at Weld.

  “I should not dream of depriving our guest of the pleasure,” objected he. “I assure you, he likes nothing better than a scuffle—is that not so, Weld?”

  “I must confess it is—though if you do not like to have an audience, perhaps I must leave—”

  “Dear me no, I insist on your staying,” cried Marchmont. “When Emilia begins on this topic two against one is scarcely equal—I mean, our two can hardly begin to resist her one.”

  “Jemmy, you make me sound like a battalion.”

  “A regiment does you more justice.”

  “But it’s true, it’s true!” she almost wailed, breaking suddenly from the banter. “You must find a wife, Jemmy, this is impossible. My darling—forgive me, for you know this weighed very little with me at the time, yet it is true all the same—consider that if you had been killed in the wars Sir Jeffery would be installed at Six Stones and I living on his mercy! Well, my dear, it is true,” she insisted, when her brother did not answer.

  “The way I see it,” he brought out slowly, after a moment, “the real blame attaches to Warrington here. If it were not for him, you know, I should indeed have been killed in Europe. So, Weld, how do you plead? You are guilty of saving my life; that is indisputable. But this other charge—how do you answer?”

  Lord Weld looked bewildered. “What charge, exactly, am I facing?”

  “Why, this business of my having to take a wife, of course! It’s all your fault—you can’t deny it. In my opinion, the only honourable thing for you to do is to go out and find one for me yourself. If you could marry her for me too—well, that would be something! But I set aside that possibility…much too difficult, I’m afraid—”

  “Now see here, old man, if what your sister says is true, you ought to have found a wife years ago! It’s not my fault you were idiot enough to run off to Belgium with Lady Emilia unprovided for, unthought of, it appears. Why, if there’s any question of culpability—”

  “And there is,” Emilia interjected.

  “It would seem to belong entirely to you. If I were in your shoes, I’d rush right out and get married tomorrow; today, if it could be arranged. Don’t wait another minute, Marchmont. Why, this is monstrous! Lady Emilia, how do you bear his selfishness?”

  “Long practice.”

  “No doubt.”

  “This is out-and-out treachery,” exploded Marchmont suddenly. “If I’d had any idea you would behave so fiendishly, Weld, I’d never have let you stay and watch this battle. The last thing I ever expected—! How would you like to be ordered to go out and marry tomorrow? I should like to see you in my place; I assure you you’d look at things very differently.”

  But Lord Weld hardly attended him. He had sat up on his sofa at last and was conferring tête-à-tête with Emilia. “Who is this Jeffery de Guere?” he inquired, while Marchmont fulminated unheeded. “Can he really be worse than Marchmont?”

  “Oh dear, I am afraid so,” confided Emilia. “Demon though Jemmy may be, he is preferable to Jeffery. Naturally Jeffery is family—a cousin on my mother’s side—and perhaps I ought not to be telling tales,” she paused dubiously, “but the fact is, he is an odious rake, quite notorious, and a positively idiotic gamester. He has gambled away nearly all of his fortune; it is common knowledge everywhere that it was he who was responsible for poor Miss Partridge’s nervous collapse two seasons ago—well it is common knowledge, Jemmy, you know it is!” she broke off, as she noticed her brother glaring at her.

  “There’s no use in making it more common than ever,” he observed.

  “My goodness, what a nice sense of privacy we seem to have developed in the past ten minutes!” she returned. “Come now, Lord Weld will not repeat what I tell him. Will you, sir?”

  “I should die before that,” he asserted blandly.

  “There, you see? He should die before that. Such being the case, I may as well tell him about that business at Crockford’s—”

  “You do and I’ll—I’ll put ground glass in your orgeat,” threatened Marchmont at once. “Lord Weld knows quite enough about Jeffery right now. He will agree with us, at all events, that it would be unpleasant for you to be—cast upon his mercy, I think is how you put it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Very well. It would be unpleasant. But you know, Emilia, there is another alternative besides my marriage.”

  She sat up a little straighter. “Indeed? And what exactly might that be?”

  “Why, naturally, if you were to marry, dear ma’am. That way your husband would provide for you, I should do nicely till I die at some ripe old age, and de Guere can have the title then and the devil with the business. What say you?” he asked, rising and bowing towards her with a look of pointed inquiry.

  “I say—it will not answer,” she finally replied.

  “Because—?”

  “Because every tenant in the neighbourhood would be ruined before Jeffery had had the estate five years. There is more at stake than my welfare or yours, Jemmy. I do not even mention the disappointment Father would most certainly have felt had he known how readily you contemplate the loss of all he cared for so deeply,” she added, stopping at nothing in her ruthless attack.

/>   The blow went home. “You don’t even mention it, eh?” said the present earl hollowly, sitting down again with a weary sigh. “That’s very odd, because I could swear I heard someone speak of it not thirty seconds ago.”

  “Well, Jemmy, I’m only telling you what you already know is the case. I am sorry to be obliged to confront you with it, but we are none of us growing any younger, and if you do not choose a wife this season—or at least go out a little!—people will begin to believe you are positively peculiar.”

  “They are more than welcome to believe that.”

  “You know what I mean,” she answered, with a sensation of having said these words rather too often already.

  A silence settled on the young people. In the street below them a rattle of coach wheels was heard, then a burst of shrill laughter, then more silence. Lord Weld grew uncomfortable. He pushed a pale hand through his red hair and remarked with an uncertain laugh, “If I had known it would come to all this I’m not sure but what I wouldn’t have let you perish at Waterloo after all, Marchmont. And as for accepting your invitation to stop with you this season—”

  “Poor Lord Weld,” Emilia broke in ruefully. “We have presented quite a spectacle for you this morning, have we not? Pray believe me, however, when I tell you that Jemmy and I have had precisely this argument—oh, perhaps not precisely, but in any case variations on the same old theme—every season for years. Every spring we go through it! We are half crazed with being shut away in Sussex all winter, we contemplate with mutual delight the change of scene ahead; we pack up the house, alert all the servants, and rush in a gay dash up to London—where bang! We have the same discussion again: won’t Jemmy come to this rout, can’t we go together to Vauxhall, even once, just to hear Madame Catalani…isn’t Miss Everett pretty, she seems to have bloomed like a flower since last year…But no, nothing will answer, nothing will do. Jem goes to Manton’s, takes in Tattersall’s, hangs about idly at White’s, and before we know it it’s time to go home again. Why, three years ago (or was it four?) our dear old Marchmont did not even have the grace to appear at a dinner-party I myself gave! Can you imagine?”