Grace Gibson

The Lost Heir of Devonshire

Grace Gibson

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Aurora Regency
An imprint of
Musa Publishing

The Lost Heir of Devonshire, Copyright © Grace Gibson, 2011

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

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Musa Publishing
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Lancaster, OH 43130

www.musapublishing.com

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First Published by Aurora Regency/AMP, August, 2011
Aurora Regency is an imprint of Musa Publishing

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This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-61937-023-4

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Editor: Celina Summers

Cover Design: Kelly Shorten

Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna

“I hope, my dear, that you have ordered a good dinner for today,” said Mr. Fanley abstractedly, as he perused his newspaper in the breakfast parlour.

“Are you predicting you will be quite famished, Papa?” asked Mary with a touch of amusement.

“What? Oh.” Mr. Fanley put down his paper in mild confusion. “I suppose I forgot to tell you that we can expect company today.”

“That is a very good joke,” she laughed. “
We
have no company to be had for a hundred leagues, and if we did, it would be the Himmels or the Hunters. Surely our table on a Thursday is good enough for
them.
”

Mr. Fanley looked sheepish. “I fear I am not joking this time, Mary. I expect Lord Riversham at four o’clock.”

“Four o’clock!” she gasped, searching his face with astonishment.

“I meant to tell you of his letter when I first received it but somehow it got past me. I suppose I thought I had apprised you. But never mind, child, he is surely not so elevated he cannot enjoy a good mutton stew, else he would never have thought to come.” This was a relieving thought for Mr. Fanley, who believed nothing bad of anyone and did not disturb himself over small things like a dinner.

Mary, charged with running the great house of Greenly, was not at all reassured by her father’s dismissal of Lord Riversham’s expectations. After a pinched silence, she stood up and tartly announced she would dearly love to know the purpose of a visit from some unknown nobleman to their far removed county if only she had time to hear it.

Her father glanced up in time to see his daughter fly out of the breakfast room. While she set her household on its ear, airing sheets, beating rugs and scattering boys to the village to search for whatever could be had for dinner, he retreated quietly to his book room.

Once in the quiet envelope of that panelled room, Mr. Fanley retrieved Lord Riversham’s letter from his desk. He had written in his precise and determined hand that he would be travelling north of his own country estate on various matters of business and etc., and the road, being not so far removed from Greenly, would pass near. He hoped he would not be unwelcome for a short visit of two days’,. time…with regards and etc. The visit was wholly unremarkable visit in Mr. Fanley’s mind, and though he regretted omitting mentioning it to Mary, he could not conjure up the least bit of anxiety over Eversham’s coming.

Mary’s mortification however, was not so easily assuaged. While a new goose was got from the butcher and Sally and Bess were put to making trifles and custards and meat pies, there was no fish, no French sauces, jellies, or fine haunches within her reach or the scope of her help. And the house, although clean, was not really fine; in places, the furnishings were sadly worn and the style of everything was beyond ancient. Mary sighed and folded back the lace of her sleeves to do what she could to make Greenly Manor as respectable as possible. When, some half an hour past four o’clock, a carriage was heard in the long drive, she felt less satisfaction than resignation over a necessary evil.

What Lord Riversham thought or felt upon entering the parlour of the manor house could not be apprehended. He was a person of tremendous dignity, with a long and forbidding nose, thin lips and a daunting air of sobriety. He wore black, with a black silk waistcoat, a fine silk cravat and lace at his sleeves. His manner being so profound, Mary felt some conviction that he could not be quite pleased with their simple surroundings.

Upon presentation to his Lordship, Mary made him a pretty curtsey and endured a somewhat overlong scrutiny through a quizzing glass. Toward her father, Lord Riversham was more forthcoming. He was brisk in his inquiries of “young Fanley” who was gone up to University, and he inquired after a punctiliously long list of old acquaintances, enough of them lodged in Mary’s memory to lead her to realize this awesome Member of the Quality and her simple country father had been acquainted at Oxford. While she made demure murmurings and attended her company in the role of hostess, she could not help wondering at his business. She had no doubt he had a purpose, perhaps some matter of importance relating to her father, who sat completely at his ease in his buckskin breaches, linen shirt and brown frock coat. Having never known her father to be concerned with anything but his estate, his farms, his two children and all his livestock, very likely in that precise order of importance, intense curiosity soon overtook her nerves.

Mary began to feel sufficiently in command of herself to address his Lordship at dinner. Her pride could only be made to suffer so much and she succumbed to the impulse to buy herself a little redress in his opinion. “I am sure you will forgive our simple supper, my Lord, when you hear that Papa has only this morning informed me of your visit?”

His Lordship’s eyebrows rose as did some reply to his lips, but he was interrupted by Mr. Fanley. “Oh, don’t mind Thomas, my dear. He is not too proud to make a repast with an old friend.”

“You acquit yourself very respectably in your housekeeping, Miss Fanley,” said his Lordship in grave accents. “This duck is well-dressed.”

In the face of this dampening compliment, Mary swallowed and retreated into an equally grave silence. The gentlemen did not linger over port in the dining room and Mary, surprised at being joined in the parlour so soon, suspected the Greenly Manor cellar could not provide a bottle worth lingering over. She smiled ruefully at her private observations. With a continuing air of scrutiny, Lord Riversham proffered a stiff smile in return.

“Do you play?” he asked, gesturing to the pianoforte.

“Oh, indeed, she does play,” asserted her father, and no amount of modesty could then save Mary from making the required exhibition. She would not show off for anyone, and, so armed with assurance, she played passably and with taste for her own pleasure. Next his Lordship examined her needlework without comment, pronounced her watercolours of Ferndale Forest to be “charming,” a word which sounded chilling from his lips, and resumed his study of her while she poured the tea and served small cakes. “Are you much in the way of reading?” his Lordship suddenly asked as she took away his tea things. “What is your education?”

She smiled politely and replied with dignity. “Indeed sir, since my mother passed away, my father sent me to be educated at Miss Rivers’ Seminary in Newcastle.”

“And what did you study? What was your education at this…school?”

“Oh, the classics of course, a little Italian, French and all the other hallmarks of a respectable female education, sir. We may be rustic here, but we have been not neglected.” She was offended by his inquiries, but her slight tone of reproach did not work on His Lordship. He only nodded and replied he had not thought Fanley would be remiss in the
essentials.

After tea, the gentlemen retired to Mr. Fanley’s bookroom, where Mary made sure there was a fire and a bottle of burgundy. “I will not demur,” Lord Riversham said immediately upon shutting the door. “I have come to look at your daughter.”

Mr. Fanley looked blank for a moment. “You have come to look at Mary? Whatever for?”

And then, as an unhappy thought began to make its way clear in his head, he started and sat forward. “Well, Thomas, you can look at her all you want, but she’ll not look back at you twice. Good God, Riversham!”

“Sit back Fanley,” replied his Lordship repressively. “How can you be so absurd?” He shook his head to rid himself of the unwonted notion, and began again with very deliberate accents. “I have come to look at your daughter for my nephew.”

“The Duke’s son?”

“Yes, the Marquis of Denley.”

Mr. Fanley could not shake his perplexity. “I find that I do not understand you, Thomas. You have me quite dumbstruck. It is, I am sure, all a lark of some kind, but you are not the kind of man to perpetrate a folly. Who has sent you here to make a joke of me and mine? I am not the least amused I can assure you.” Mr. Fanley, a man so unused to disruption that when it came he was at risk of being completely overpowered, sank back and stared with real agitation at Riversham.

“I will make all clear if you will stop your vapours and hear me. I have contemplated this course of action for many months. I assure you that I am perfectly serious.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” cried Fanley with much irritation, “I can hardly wait to hear what you have planned for Miss Mary Fanley. Indeed I need your assistance in disposing of my daughter for I am too puddle-headed to exert myself to promote her future!”

Lord Riversham, with the directness of one born utterly humourless, began to edify Mr. Fanley on the nature of his visit.

Several days later, not thirty miles to the south of Greenly Manor, a young man sat in the private parlour of a small roadside inn, his arm thrown over the back of his chair and his legs thrust out pell-mell in front of him.

“You expect me to rusticate in some farmer’s house?” he demanded, his face darkened by a black scowl.

“I do.” His uncle, sat upright over his tea, his mouth pursed in complete distaste at his nephew’s outrage.

“You are absurd! I’ll not do it.”

Lord Eversham put down his napkin. “You will do precisely what I tell you directly after you apprehend the facts of your situation, Robert.”

The Marquis crossed his arms over his chest and cocked one long leg at an angle across the other. He glared at the shine on his riding boot, contemplating an abrupt end to the interview. But some vague sense of duty to an elder relation prevailed; with some dignity he retorted that he would hear his uncle if only to be sure his dinner would not be delayed.

Possessed of the dispassionate temper of a French executioner, Riversham expressed no surprise at such a rare display of obedience from his nephew. With the tone of a man used to his word being taken as law, he began.

“You have thrown away your fortune, exhausted all your friendships. Your relations, upon whom all hope should be placed, will not admit you. Your reputation is so permanently soiled you will never be invited to any respectable pace for the whole of your life unless I throw my own reputation to the devil and drag you along behind me. At this moment, you are being pursued by the Runners for incomprehensible debts and crimes unknown even to me. In polite company it is not even said you are the worst of rakes, or a profligate. You are simply unmentionable, though you are regularly lampooned in the society pages as
the Lost Heir
. Not even the most mercenary of mothers want you for their girls. Among the vulgar company in which you remain welcome, I will venture to guess you are famous.”

“Perhaps this week, I am…unpopular,” growled the Marquis.

Eversham ignored that hopeful prognostication. Instead, he produced a document from his coat.

“I am now in possession of a trust into which all your income is bound. It is irrevocable except by me. Robert Allenham, Marquis of Denley and Heir of Devonshire, this is not one of your scrapes that will blow over in a week. I have spoken to all your bankers, discharged your man of business, and closed your empty accounts. There will be no recourse for you this time, and I will not lend you one guinea or repay your debts unless you bend to my will.”

“You’d see me in prison?” gasped Denley.

“Gladly.”

A black silence fell between them, as realization began to take hold of one and resolve hardened in the other.

“See here, Robert. Your scandalous career, such as it was, is over. If you were not destined to become the master of Devonshire and head of the family, I would not lift a finger. I am exerting myself solely because my interest lies in preserving and promoting the family fortune.”

“Preserving? Promoting?” scoffed the Marquis in a fit of bitter laughter. “And what of my father? You know what he is!”

“You forget he is my brother,” replied his lordship dryly. He produced another document from his coat. “This is a trust into which your father’s fortune is bound, and I am also the executor of this fund. He is no longer in command of his money, sir.”

The Marquis of Denley shot out of his chair in a state of stammering rage. “How could- You cannot! The law will never allow it. I will meet you for this…this outrage, uncle or no uncle!”

“Save your bullet for yourself. I expect one day you will need it,” his uncle rejoined in a bored voice. “Your father himself signed away his rights. He has been made to see he is ruined but for this last step, and when things were thus explained, he took himself and his young wife — what is her name? Evelyn, yes — to the continent for an extended visit.”

“My father, on an allowance?” Denley asked in a hollow voice.

“Sit down. Yes, he is subsisting on a competence and is removed from the influences of society.”

“You rather mean you have spared society.”

“I have him in Dijon, at a comfortable Hotel, with servants and luxuries befitting his station. But the rest, gambling routs, ton parties, costumes, and whatever odd fancy he was used to take, are no longer affordable, and so he is…recuperating.” After a brief pause, he added quietly, “He was well on his way to Bedlam, you know. He is not well in his mind.”

“Oh? And who does not know he is mad? Who can have seen him…” A shudder stopped the Marquis from continuing.

“Who, indeed? So, here is your situation, Robert. You may rusticate in a ‘farmer’s house,’ as you have put it, and make the acquaintance of Miss Mary Fanley. I will then do what I can for your situation with the law. Or, you can leave here running with what you have in your pockets. But I hear Bow Street made inquiries in Bath three days ago and that they were tipped you headed north.”

The Marquis, failing to note the mention of the Runners, deprived Lord Eversham of his moment of triumph. Instead he stared at his uncle in shaken horror.

“Miss who?”