Gwendolen Read online

  CONTENTS

  GWENDOLEN

  A Regency Novel

  CLARE DARCY

  This edition © 1978 Clare Darcy

  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 ONE

  THE SCENE IN the breakfast parlour at Brightleaves on an agreeably warm morning in late June of the year 1814 was not one that would have occasioned comment in any gentleman's house in Gloucestershire. To be sure, the Turkey carpet and the red camlet curtains at the large window overlooking a fine orchard of White Damsons and May Dukes were distinctly shabby; the family portraits over the sideboard were dim with neglect; and the table linens were so fragile from long use that they had had to be mended in a number of places. But the three ladies seated about the small mahogany table had an undeniable look of deserving better things, and would not have appeared out of place (in spite of their rather demodé apparel) in the breakfast parlour even of so exalted a house as the Duke of Tardiff's magnificent neighbouring mansion at Beauworth.

  Lady Otilia Quarters, the mistress of Brightleaves, attired in a somewhat exotic Parisian dressing gown that had descended to her from her sister, Lady Priscilla Dunn, was presiding over the coffee um. She turned over, with an air of businesslike disinterest, the small heap of letters comprising the morning post, most of which, she knew from long experience, would consist of urgent requests for the payment of various domestic bills. Opposite her sat two of her three daughters, Gwendolen, the eldest, a rather tall girl, fair, but with flyaway black brows that gave her heart-shaped face a good deal of character, and Campaspe, the youngest, just emerging, at seventeen, from what her mama considered a regrettably hoydenish girlhood.

  Lady Otilia's second daughter, Jane, was at the moment en route from London, where she had been enjoying the advantages of the Season under the aegis of Lady Priscilla; and Lady Otilia's husband, Mr. Hugh Quarters, had long since consumed his own hearty breakfast and left the house. Being in the habit of rising at five during the hunting season, he was unused to breakfasting with his family, in whom he was, on the whole, rather less interested than he was in his horses and his hounds, considering that they had all signally failed him; his wife by producing only offspring of the female sex and his daughters by committing the crime of being girls.

  At the moment, Gwendolen and Campaspe were engaged in speculation as to what tales of London splendours they might expect to hear from Jane when she arrived at Brightleaves later that day, for her letters had been tantalisingly brief, the excuse being constantly pleaded that the ceaseless round of evening-parties, routs, receptions, and breakfasts to which Lady Priscilla's position in the ton had procured her invitations allowed her no time for correspondence. Her sisters, left with nothing more exciting than the tame and familiar rural pastimes of Brightleaves, had endeavoured to be understanding, but there was no denying that they were exceedingly eager to hear Jane's account of this most glorious of London Seasons, the Season of the Great Peace Celebration, when the metropolis swarmed with foreign royalties, and one might expect to see the Tsar of Russia, the King of Prussia, or at least the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg whenever one entered a ton saloon or attended a subscription ball at Almack's.

  In all of this the two young ladies at Brightleaves had up to the moment shared only in the form of their perusal of the dispatches in the Morning Post and of Jane's all-too-succinct letters, which had run more or less in the style of: "Aunt and I attended Lady Castlereagh’s ball last evening. Tsar Alexander was present, with his sister, the Grand Duchess. He is excessively handsome."

  "Excessively handsome, indeed!" Campaspe had grumbled, upon receipt of this unsatisfactory missive. "As if everyone in England didn't know that already! If only Jane weren't so depressingly good! 1 am sure it never enters her head to repeat even the mildest gossip, and as for scandal—! But she might at least have told us what the Grand Duchess was wearing.”

  Gwendolen had said judicially that, for her part, she considered the very large new bonnets the Grand Duchess had brought into fashion exceedingly ugly, but she confessed that she, too, felt a good deal of disappointment over Jane's deficiencies as a correspondent. As she had been used from childhood, however, to constituting herself her gentle younger sister's champion, she permitted no further aspersions to be cast upon her by Campaspe, informing her instead that, since she intended to be a soldier's wife, she had best forget the frivolities of the fashionable world and concentrate her attention upon mastering at least the rudiments of domestic economy.

  This was in reference to Campaspe's engagement—not very favourably regarded by Lady Otilia—to a young lieutenant in the Light division, Neil Fairhall, the second son of a neighbouring landowner. Admittedly, Campaspe was not the "Beauty" of the family—a distinction that undeniably belonged to Jane—but she had recently blossomed out of her puppy fat into a most engagingly attractive young lady, with a small, robust, supple figure, a dazzling complexion, and sparkling blue eyes, and Lady Otilia, dreaming of London for her as she had for Jane, had anticipated that she might at least bring a baronet into the family.

  She could, however, have no real objection to the proposed match beyond the extreme youth of the two young people, and as they had promised to be sensible and not even to think of marriage until Neil had obtained his promotion—and also as she knew Campaspe's exceedingly obstinate, not to say headstrong, nature—she had, like the other parents involved, reluctantly given her consent.

  She had had no such scruples in bestowing her blessing, approximately a year before, upon Gwendolen's betrothal to Captain Henry Belville, R.N., for Gwendolen had been all of twenty at the time and Captain Belville a man of one-and-thirty, with a highly successful naval career that had added a good deal of prize money to the already considerable fortune he had inherited.

  It was true that Gwendolen's acquaintance with him had been very brief, covering no more than a fortnight he had spent on leave two years before in the neighbourhood with his distant relations, the Rutledges, and that their courtship had been conducted entirely by correspondence between Brightleaves and the various Mediterranean stations where Captain Belville had been posted during the war. But Gwendolen, like Campaspe, had a mind of her own, as well as the sort of practical nature that Lady Otilia, herself a hopelessly muddle-headed romantic, had never felt herself capable of interfering with, and Lady Otilia had every confidence that when Captain Belville finally appeared once more in Gloucestershire there would be a discreetly fashionable wedding, followed by a highly satisfactory married life, in store for her eldest daughter.

  "Gwendolen," she had once confided to her friend Mrs. Rutledge, "always succeeds in managing everything to perfection"—with which statement Mrs. Rutledge, who had seen Gwendolen succeed in getting herself engaged to the highly eligible Captain Belville under the very nose of her own daughter, Evelina, was only too ready to agree.

  In speaking thus of Gwendolen's engagement, however, Mrs. Rutledge and Lady Otilia were doing her a considerable injustice. The truth was that Gwendolen had managed nothing in regard to Captain Belville, but instead had fallen head over ears in love with him, merely substituting his tall, high-shouldered figure for the rather less impressive one of Lord Nelson, whom she had hero-worshipped since she had been a schoolgirl, and charitably overlooking the fact that he had all his arms and eyes.

  Few people, in fact, suspected that the self-possessed, attractive eldest of the Quarters girls, with
her fair good looks and her frank manners, was as much a romantic at heart as her mama; but she was not Lady Otilia's daughter for nothing, and, far from considering her engagement to Captain Belville in a practical light as an excellent match, thought of herself rather as a more decorous Lady Hamilton, giving all for love to her naval hero, though, as there was no prior Mrs. Belville in the picture, the comparison was perhaps inapt.

  At any rate, she was soon to have the reward of having waited through two interminable years of war for her lover's return. Captain Belville's ship was shortly expected to reach Portsmouth, whence it was to be anticipated that he would proceed with all due speed and regard for naval orders to the arms of his betrothed. The fact that young Lieutenant Fairhall had also recently arrived in England after a period of recuperation from a rather serious wound he had received in the battle of Toulouse, and was now completing his recovery in Gloucestershire on his father's estate, meant, therefore, that Lady Otilia would soon have the felicity of displaying two engaged daughters and their betrotheds to the neighbourhood—a prospect that she could not but regard with some complacency.

  "Now if only Jane were to contract an eligible alliance—" she was fond of saying to her husband, who never paid the least heed to her, being far more interested in the mating of his horses than in that of his daughters. "Not" she would add proudly, "that one need feel the least doubt of that, for Pris writes that she is having the greatest success in London, and that it will not surprise her to see her made a marchioness before the year is out."

  Prophetic words, it appeared; or at least Lady Priscilla*s hints might have prepared Lady Otilia for what she was to read that morning in one of the letters that lay beside her plate —though if they had prepared her, the gasp she uttered upon perusing its initial lines gave no hint of it. Gwendolen and Campaspe looked up from their own breakfasts to see their mama staring at the sheet of elegant cream-laid notepaper with an expression upon her face that might have betokened a seizure of some sort, utter horror, or rapturous delight. With Lady Otilia, it was difficult to tell; being Welsh, and with a strong Celtic flair for the dramatic, she always overplayed her emotions.

  "What is it. Mama?" Gwendolen enquired, prepared for anything, but unwilling to commit herself to concern until she knew the reason for her volatile parent's perturbation.

  Lady Otilia raised her eyes, which had been fixed upon the letter before her as if she had been mesmerised by the words she had read there, and Gwendolen saw a beatific smile slowly appear upon her still rather pretty, plump face.

  "My dears!" she ejaculated. "You will never guess! Dear, dear Jane! A marchioness! Oh, I shall never forgive myself for having given in to your papa's wishes and allowed her to be christened Jane, only because of that odious great-aunt of his who was going to die and leave us a very pretty fortune, only she never did, and lived on for ages, and then it was no more than three hundred pounds we had of her, and your papa spent every penny of it on a mare named Sparkler—"

  "Mama!" It was Campaspe who interrupted, with an appearance of the greatest impatience and—oddly, it would have seemed—even of consternation upon her face. "Do give over rambling on forever about great-aunts and Papa's horses and tell us what is in the letter. Is it from Aunt Pris? Is—is Jane engaged to a marquis?"

  "Not to say actually engaged, my dear," said Lady Otilia, collecting herself with some difficulty, it appeared, and rearranging the lace frill on her dressing gown, which, as Lady Priscilla was somewhat taller than she, had a distracting way of slipping off her shoulders in a rather degagé manner. "But as near it as makes no difference! Lyndale, if you will believe it!" She enunciated the name reverentially. "Estates in Derbyshire and in Kent, Pris says, and at least fifty thousand a year! And a. marquis, of course, my loves! He is to come to Gloucestershire at once and request your papa's permission to pay his addresses to her! Pris says it is all quite, quite settled; she has had a long conversation with him—"

  "He is coming here?"

  This time it was Gwendolen's turn to look dismayed as her eyes took in at a glance the shabby red curtains, the faded carpet, and the Lowestoft ware upon the table, which, though it had been very pretty once, now displayed for all to see the chips and cracks of its long service. The notion of entertaining in such surroundings a member of the highest ranks of the nobility, who was possessed, in addition, of so large a fortune that he must expect to have everything about him in the first style of elegance, might not strike housewifely terror into Lady Otilia's breast, for she was well known to dwell in a vague, romantic world of her own, in which such details as cracked plates and mended table linens were generously overlooked.

  But Gwendolen's more practical nature saw things with a clearer eye. It would be appallingly difficult, she was well aware, with their meagre staff and limited means, to entertain properly a gentleman of the Marquis's high position, and she was therefore greatly relieved to hear her mama say, as she once more consulted Lady Priscilla's letter, "No, no, not here at Brightleaves, my dear; he is to stay at Beauworth, your aunt writes. He is cousin to the Duke, you know." She added triumphantly, "I daresay it will be quite impossible for the Duke to ignore us any longer, now that dear Jane is to be betrothed to Lyndale"—for it had long been a sore point with her that, owing to a quarrel that had occurred years before between Mr. Hugh Quarters and the Duke, she and her daughters were never invited to Beauworth.

  The quarrel had come about as a result of the fact that the Duke, who knew everything about his neighbours' business owing to having a very large and efficient staff who would have been sacked without mercy if they had failed him even in the smallest detail, had discovered that Mr. Quarters's affairs had got at that time into such a tangled state that the only way out for him appeared to be to sell Brightleaves and its remaining land. It was land that the Duke had long coveted, embracing as it did the finest trout-stream in that part of the country, and he had accordingly lost no time in making an offer for it.

  The offer, however, had unfortunately been received by Mr. Quarters—notoriously a gentleman of a quick and unpredictable temper—in much the same spirit in which a devout Christian might receive an offer from the devil for the purchase of his soul. Brushing aside the Duke's man of business, who had come to Brightleaves as his noble master's emissary, he had ridden over to Beauworth on one of the splendid coverhacks with which, in spite of the Duke's unlimited means, he always managed to take the shine off the inmates of his ducal neighbour's stables, and had demanded audience with the Duke himself. High words had then passed between them—including, as had later been relayed by a sharp-eared footman to a breathlessly attentive audience in the Hall, a threat by Mr. Quarters to pitch the Duke's man of business into the millpond if he ever came to Brightleaves upon such an errand again, and an equally disagreeable promise by the Duke to "ruin" Mr. Quarters.

  Fortunately, neither of these interesting events had come to pass. Mr. Quarters, by certain mysterious dealings with Messrs. Smith and Brown, the well-known London moneylenders, had contrived not to be obliged to sell Brightleaves to the Duke or to anyone else; the Duke had made no more offers for it; and a state of armed neutrality had now existed for several years between the opposing parties, in which Brightleaves and Beauworth mutually ignored each other socially.

  What the Duke of Tardiff might or might not do now as a result of his cousin's becoming engaged to Miss Jane Quarters was not, however, a matter that appeared to interest that young lady's sisters at the moment. Indeed, the news of the projected betrothal, far from arousing the same pleasurable excitement in their breasts that it had in their mama's, appeared rather to have thrown them into a distinctly grave and, in Campaspe's case, even a much-perturbed mood.

  "But, Mama, Jane can't—" she burst out impetuously, as Lady Otilia ceased speaking; but Gwendolen checked her with a warning glance.

  "What has Jane to say to all this?" she herself went on to enquire in a more temperate tone of Lady Otilia. "Is there no word from her in Aunt Pris'
s letter?"

  "Oh, my dear, she will be thrown into transports, of course!" Lady Otilia said largely. "Naturally, she has not written herself, since Lyndale spoke to your aunt only after Jane had set out on her journey—and, indeed, it would scarcely be becoming in her to discuss the matter before Lord Lyndale has received her papa's permission to pay his addresses to her! Jane has always been the soul of propriety, you know," she concluded proudly.

  Campaspe again opened her mouth to speak, but was once more forestalled by Gwendolen.

  "Yes, she has," she agreed to Lady Otilia's last statement "Which makes it seem more than a little odd—doesn't it?—that she should have attracted the interest of a man like Lyndale. You must remember, Mama, what a great deal of tittle-tattle there was when he succeeded to the tide a year or so ago; it made a stir even in such a quiet, out-of-the-way place as this. A man who has spent the past dozen years in—is it Morocco? —Algeria?—at any rate, quite out of the way of civilisation, and whose adventures there would seem to make some of Lord Byron's heroes appear pale by comparison—surely it appears very odd for him to fix his choice on a quiet, inexperienced girl like Jane—"

  ''Not at all! Not in the least, my dear!" said Lady Otilia roundly. "Indeed, it frequently happens, I believe, that a gentleman who has led a life of—shall we say, varied experiences? —acquires the wisdom in the course of those experiences to realise that a carefully reared girl like Jane will make him the most satisfactory sort of wife. And then she is so very beautiful, you know! I am sure we need feel no surprise at any conquest she has made!" She rose, gathering up the sheets of her letter. "But I must not stay talking here forever," she said briskly, "for I promised Mrs. Rutledge I should call this morning, and it might very well be that I may stop in for a moment at the Rectory as well. I daresay you will wish to come with me, my dears? It is a lovely day; I am sure we shall all enjoy the walk."