Love's Labours

By Ellie Sloane

A romance torn apart by treachery and war.

A great read for both sexes.

John Deaver, a young, newly-qualified surgeon, working in a large London hospital, has to return to the family estate in Hampshire when his father is murdered by a highwayman.

There, he meets and falls deeply in love with Elizabeth Raymond, daughter of Edward Raymond, the neighbouring estate owner, and a childhood friend, who has a large dowry.

Their love affair is idyllic, and for a long time they fight their desires, but give in to them once, from which joining Elizabeth becomes pregnant.

They have never heard of Jeb Palmer, a rogue and a killer - an ex-corporal who presents himself as an ex-major, and ingratiates himself into Hampshire polite society, with one aim: to marry into money. He learns of one likely candidate for his wife: Hortense Henderson-Drake, and woos her until she agrees to marry him, but he then finds out that Elizabeth Raymond's dowry is far larger, and determines to marry her for her money instead.

He has Hortense murdered, and sets out to achieve his desire.

Learning of Elizabeth's forthcoming marriage to John Deaver, Palmer, with two accomplices, abduct John when he rides to Portsmouth, to buy the engagement ring. They throw him unconscious, and dressed in smelly rags, into the boat of the press gang, which is working the city that day.

John wakes to find that he is on board HMS Zealous, but has amnesia, due to the blow on his head from his abductors.

He is told that he must serve five years, with no option of returning to land.

Three days later, the fleet sails.

John has disappeared without trace, and Elizabeth and John's mother are distraught. Elizabeth's father eventually finds out what happened to John, and Elizabeth is told that she must wait five years to see him again, if ever, since the Navy is fighting one battle after another, against the French, Dutch and Spanish. She realises that John could be killed.

He does not die, but is wounded, and he distinguishes himself in major battles against the Spanish, making good friends with the other officers.

Palmer, meanwhile, has ingratiated himself with Elizabeth's mother, Edwina – a bitter woman, whose marriage to Edward has always been a sham. Palmer seduces her, and she becomes his willing accomplice in the plan to marry Elizabeth.

She resists his advances, and he then applies more and more pressure, using arson, firearms, and threats of murder, if she does not marry him.

Knowing that he desires her body, but really only wants her dowry, and that his threat to kill her father, and burn down the Raymond household, with everyone in it are real, she is forced to agree to the wedding – determined to do whatever she can to foil Palmer.

John, fighting far-off battles, intends to kill him, if he ever gets the chance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Nov 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393057758

Book preview

Copyright © Tony Nash, July 2020

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Other works by this author:

THE TONY DYCE/NORFOLK THRILLERS:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

Bled and Breakfast

THE JOHN HUNTER/MET. COP THRILLERS:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Bloodlines

Beyond Another Curtain

HISTORICAL NOVELS – THE NORFOLK TRILOGY:

A Handful of Destiny

A Handful of Salt

A Handful of Courage (WWI EPIC)

No Tears For Tomorrow  WWII EPIC)

THE HARRY PAGE THRILLERS:

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

So Dark, The Spiral

THE NORWEGIAN SERIES – author Stig Larssen:

LOOT

CNUT – Past Present

CNUT – The Isiaih Prophesies

CNUT – Paid in Spades

CNUT – The Sin Debt

CNUT – They Tumble Headlong

CNUT – Night Prowler

CNUT -  Cry Wolf

CNUT -  When The Pie Was Opened

CNUT – The Bottom of the Pot

CNUT -  Mind Games

CNUT -  Nemesis

CNUT -  Cut and Come Again

OTHER NOVELS:

The Devil Deals Death 

The Makepeace Manifesto

Panic

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

Hardrada’s Hoard (with Richard Downing)

‘Y’ OH ‘Y’

The Thursday Syndrome

This is a work of pure fiction, and any similarity between any character in it and any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. Where actual places, buildings and locations are named, they are used fictionally.

"But Fate, a lady of the most capricious whims,

Grasps, palm of hand, each harassed, mortal hour

From dawn to dawn and dust to dust;

And he, misguided wretch, who thinks

Himself to guide his destiny

Is bigger fool by far than you or I."

CHAPTER ONE

‘Oh, Rose! Does it have to be this tight? No wonder young ladies faint. I can scarcely breathe. How on earth will I be able to dance?’

Rose Dunning, Elizabeth’s lady’s maid, gasping with the effort, pulled the strap of the corset even tighter, wondering the same thing herself, not that she would ever know the joys of attending an occasion such as the one to which her mistress had been invited.

‘Your mother will discharge me if your waist is half an inch more than the regulation sixteen inches, Miss Elizabeth. It is de rigeur for young ladies at a ball, and this is your first.’

‘But my waist is seventeen inches, not sixteen.’

‘Exactly, miss, but it will be sixteen when she measures you, or it will be the end of me.’ Rose gave another sharp pull on the strap. She tied it off and drew the tape measure from the pocket of her apron. ‘Lift your arms up, please.’

Elizabeth sighed and did as requested, wincing at the pain, as tightly enclosed flesh rebelled at the movement.

Rose measured Elizabeth’s waist for the fourth time in less than an hour, relieved that the tape showed fifteen and three quarter inches – less than the magic figure at last, knowing that her mistress would check, and with the gown on, Elizabeth’s waist might just pass muster.

‘I feel like a trussed chicken.’

And you look a bit like one, miss.

‘Well you do not need to worry, you will look just fine when you have the gown on, miss Elizabeth.’

Monsieur Duval – in truth Henry Slapp, the couturier from Portsmouth, who pretended to be French, with great exuberance, and a dreadfully un-Gallic accent, but actually came from the East End of London, had come out from Portsmouth himself to measure Elizabeth, and had produced the gown at an amount so exorbitant that it had caused Edward Raymond to gulp audibly, and for a moment consider that it would have saved him a great deal of money had he produced a son, instead of a daughter. He loved Elizabeth, however, and could deny her nothing. She was approaching twenty years of age, and having seen the way she mooned around lately, he realized that she was becoming broody, and that a husband needed to be found for her, before something dreadful happened – a husband worthy of her and the family. Hopefully, someone with a title, since that seemed to be his wife’s overriding requirement, though it mattered not to him, and the sooner the better. The close keeping of women had its limits, and though Elizabeth would not openly rebel, he had recently seen signs of rebellion in her eyes. Hence his agreement for her attendance at the Bentley-Hanson’s ball. The many previous invitations from the large houses of the county had been politely declined, without Elizabeth’s knowledge, always at the insistence of Edwina.

The decision to allow her to attend the ball had involved a considerable amount of soul searching, and she had not made it lightly.

There were youthful libidos to be concerned about, and the inherent dangers of the two sexes mixing. With this long-put-off entrance of his daughter into society a matter of great concern to him, Edward had arranged for Priscilla Beecham, the 25-year-old, unmarried daughter of the well-bred but impecunious vicar of the parish, Jeremiah Beecham, to chaperone Elizabeth. Another gown, far less expensive, had to be purchased for her, and a sizeable donation made to what Beecham had vaguely referred to as ‘church funds’, before he would agree to allow her to participate.

In a private interview, Edward had given Priscilla precise instructions about what could be allowed and what should not.

Priscilla, for her part, desperately hoped that she would become the object of desire of someone at the ball.

Edward had obtained the guest list, and had been pleased to note that there would be at least half a dozen young gentlemen present, who, if they did not already have a title, would certainly inherit one when their fathers passed away. There were also several scions of the rich local landed gentry on the list, any one of whom would do at a pinch. The rest of the men would not. Elizabeth’s dowry of four thousand guineas – a great deal of money – enough, in fact, to buy a sizeable estate of around eight thousand acres, at the current price of ten shillings per acre, would no doubt attract the attention of a number of the less wealthy young men, and he would need to instruct her carefully on how to recognise and deal with them, before matters reached the point when they approached him for permission to court her.

He realised that she might resist, since, like her mother when still a girl, she believed in true love. Edwina had had that foolish notion banished from her forever by her father, when he arranged her marriage to Edward, whom she was allowed to meet only once before her wedding day, and hated on sight. In fact, he believed that was still the case. They had not shared the marital bed since her pregnancy, which had not resulted in the son he had so desperately wanted. He was determined that Elizabeth should follow a similar path – love being a completely separate issue, and not important, though he hoped that she would have better luck than he. Though the turn of the century, only four years ahead, was being heralded  as the dawn of a new, more enlightened age, times had not changed that much. His own marriage had been far from perfect, but that, he understood, was par for the course, and it was useless to complain. A succession of young mistresses had made it more bearable.

Unfortunately, his daughter did not seem to share his belief in the need to enhance the family line when he had mentioned it, but she had voiced no contradiction, though he imagined that her character rebelled against the idea. He did not understand her at all, and she kept her thoughts to herself, whenever he attempted to converse with her on the subject. She seemed to listen to him, keeping her expression neutral and unreadable the whole time, and only murmuring, ‘Mm’ when he made a suggestion – a noncommittal sound that he decided, for his own peace of mind, to accept as agreement.

Outwardly, she showed no sign of rebellion, and that worried him.

He sighed. His own youth had been strictly controlled, but he remembered well the mildly rebellious thoughts he had entertained, though only once acted upon – with the direst of result.

That one action – giving in to his suddenly uncontrollable sexual desires with one of the parlour maids during the school holidays, after she had deliberately, and not for the first time, shown him her wiggling bare bottom, and the delights that lay between her cheeks, while on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. It had resulted in her instant dismissal, since his mother had caught them in flagrante delicto, due to the noises they had made as they both climaxed, and a most terrible beating for him, followed by a month of the strictest control of his young life, before he returned to the punishing ordeal of boarding school.

The result of that mating, while certainly not enhancing it, had produced another offshoot to the family line, but one that would never be acknowledged. The baby had been taken from the mother immediately after the birth in the poorhouse, where she would spend the rest of her days, and had been given to a childless couple many miles away, to be nurtured as their own.

Edward had learnt a devastating truth: it had required only a few moments of time to destroy two lives – that of the girl, and that of his baby, and he was determined that Elizabeth should never be in a position where she could be taken advantage of, in the way that he had taken advantage of the maid.

Once married, she would no longer be his responsibility.

Elizabeth was unaware of his thoughts. Though she knew the facts of life well enough, having watched the animals tupping and giving birth, she was as innocent as a young child when it came to personal relationships.

She had been full of excitement from the moment she had learnt that she was to go to the ball. It was still three months away – in the middle of June, but she could hardly contain herself.

Excitement at her father’s permission for her to be seen in society for the very first time, and the chance for her to display the expertise that she had acquired from her many dancing lessons with the elderly, but still sprightly Mister Ernest Crumb, whose expertise could not be faulted, even though his wandering hand that found its way so often onto her bottom when teaching her the steps of the new and daring dance, the waltz, certainly could.

Dancing with young men would be such a delightful change, though she was not sure how she would handle polite conversation with them, and even less how she would cope with their hands, if they wandered like Mister Crumb’s.

Thoughts of such intimate touching brought an instant deep blush to her cheeks, and she wondered what her dancing partners would be like.

The only young men she had ever encountered were those employed on the estate, and though she had caught an occasional appreciative glance, those young men knew their place in the scheme of things, and how easy it would be for them to be dismissed for the slightest reason. She would have blushed crimson, had she known in how many of their erotic dreams she played a major role.

They kept their distance, and openly showed only respect.

When her riding expertise had reached the stage where she could go beyond the immediate environs of the Manor, Edward had insisted that a groom accompany her.

Imagining that it would be one of the younger grooms, she was disappointed when he allocated the task to the sixty-two-year-old senior groom, James Clarke.

Though Edward was totally unaware, as soon as they were out of sight of the Manor, on every occasion, she instructed James to stay where he was until she returned.

The old man – a lifelong bachelor – had been enchanted with the daughter of the house from the day of her birth, and could refuse her nothing. On each occasion, he tied his mount to a tree, and settled down for a long wait.

As soon as she left him, she changed from riding side-saddle to riding astride, and galloped away on Prince, her pure white stallion, flying down the forest glades, her golden tresses, and her skirts, flying in most unladylike fashion.

Her mother, horrified at the thought of discussing sexual matters with Elizabeth, had given her a copy of the 1747 book, "The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in such Principles of Politeness, Prudence, and Virtue", from which she learnt that riding astride was considered indecent for women, due to the old-dated belief that a woman’s hymen could break when riding astride. Riding aside, or side-saddle, as it would later come to be known, was considered essential to protect a woman’s virginity.

In her early teens, she had scared the grooms by jumping onto the horse from an upturned barrel, her clothes all over the place, until she had settled on the saddle.

Edward, seeing her do this one day from his study window, also gave her a book, by a man named Carter, and directed her to a page headed, "How to get on a horse".

She giggled as she read it:

"A woman needs two men to mount a horse. One shall hold the horse’s head still, and the other shall help the woman get on the horse. The groom should stand before the horse, holding him by the bridoon rein. The lady must lay her right hand on the top of the pommel with her whip rest on the off shoulder of the horse, and her left hand on the right shoulder of the person that is to lift her, who stooping and fixing their hands together, by intermixing their fingers, the lady will put her left foot in their hands, bending her knee and raising it nearly on a line with her hip, and giving a spring, she will be lifted on the saddle." It went on to speak of a woman needing a man to aid her in getting off the animal: "taking a foot out of the stirrup, and giving her left hand to her attendant."

There followed pages of instructions regarding suitable clothing.

Elizabeth blithely ignored everything, breaking every rule of the day.

She felt as free as the deer, the hares and the pheasants that scattered away when she disturbed them.

If Edward had known about her disobedience, he might well have made a different decision, but he did not, and thus Fate came to play a hand.

CHAPTER TWO

John Deaver stood, as required, with the five other neophytes, up close to the operating table, all of them spattered with the blood of the four patients that the surgeon, Sir Timothy Spall, had, in his opinion, operated on, and in all of theirs, butchered, thinking again how true were the words written in 1750 by John Hunter, about the surgery of the time: "A humiliating spectacle of the futility of science".

John and his peers had often doubted their decision to become surgeons, while watching Spall at work. All of them thought that he would have been far better employed at Smithfield Market, and, in fact, he had acquired the nickname, ‘The Butcher’, though was probably unaware of it.

John imagined that had Spall been aware of it, he would have revelled in it – such was the manner of the man.

John wondered what King George must have thought of Spall, and his smell, when he knelt before him for his knighthood. He was no more than five feet four inches tall, overweight, and slightly hunchbacked, with a straggly ginger beard and moustache, vicious little piggy eyes, and a mouthful of bad teeth. His breath smelt bad enough, without the addition of stale rum, which he imbibed throughout the day and evening, and belched and farted out all day long.

His personal smell told of his disbelief in bathing, and was far worse than that of the suppurating flesh and pus that the apprentice surgeons were surrounded with, when watching Spall at work.

He always seemed to have a cold, and one of his less endearing habits, practised dozens of times a day, was to shove a bloody finger into one nostril, and blow the snot out of the other, often towards his students, before repeating the process with the other nostril.

Many were the times that he had entered the operating room staggering so much that one or another of the acolytes would have to hold him up while he performed his botching, and it was not uncommon to see him remove the wrong limb, or operate on the wrong organ, while they had to stand silently by, and watch him murder yet another patient.

On most days, operations were carried out on the wards, with so little space around the bed where lay the patient being operated on, that John and the others often had to climb onto the beds of other patients, to their great detriment, in order to satisfy Spall’s demand for close observance.

Today, as on two days every week, they were in the amphitheatre, with over two hundred paying spectators around them, many of them infectious, and carrying diseases themselves, crowded together on the benches, eager for the bloodletting spectacle.

Spall loved playing to the crowd, and often attempted to enthral the spectators by using more difficult techniques than necessary, and cutting more unnecessary flesh, to the detriment of the patient. At times, he would even call someone down from the crowd to participate in the operation – someone else who was without disinfection, and with little education and no skill.

The theatrical environment was highly distracting. Surgery was dangerous enough, without the noise and movement of the crowd causing the surgeon to lose focus.

Spall’s apron was proudly stained with the blood of countless others, who had lain, and for the most part died, on his operating table over the previous fourteen years. It was the sign of distinction, and a badge of honour, in a profession that judged its master craftsmen not by the efficacy of their work, but by the speed with which they carried out that work, and the sheer numbers of patients they operated on, without the slightest regard for how many of them died.

At a time when a twenty percent survival rate after an operation was seen as remarkable, Sir Timothy revelled in a rate that was less than a quarter of that, but he was acknowledged as being at the head of his profession, and was looked up to by most of his peers, due to the speed with which he butchered. He, and most of them, believed that death following an operation could, in every case, without exception, be attributed to foul miasmas – something over which no surgeon had any control.

Certainly, there were enough foul miasmas, both in St Bartholomew’s and everywhere in the London streets, filled not only with the overflow from tens of thousands of inefficient cesspools, but also with horse droppings – over a thousand tons of it every day, of which the small boys who were paid to remove it could only manage a small proportion. In effect, like most cities around the world, London stank to high Heaven, and diseases like cholera, typhus, diphtheria, and scarlet fever thrived as a result.

It was a far cry from the rolling, clean hills of John’s home, but to become a surgeon, it meant a sojourn in either London or Edinburgh – the two recognised centres for teaching that skill.

John had his own ideas regarding the way operations should be carried out, and they differed greatly from those of his present tutor. To call him a mentor would be a considerable stretch of the truth. Brought up on the family’s country estate, John had watched the birthing of a variety of animals during his earliest years, before being sent off to boarding school, and during the holidays, and he had noticed the way that the mothers always cleaned their offspring immediately after the birth, and how a wounded animal continually licked clean the wound.

That was nature at work, and it seemed natural to John that wounds should be kept clean – not covered with bloody, unwashed, puss-soaked cloths taken straight from other patients who had died, but to voice even the slightest hint of such a heinous theory would have meant his immediate removal from the training programme, for which his father had paid Sir Timothy so many hundreds of guineas.

Even mentioning it to his fellow students would mean his removal. Though they were more or less friends, they could not be trusted not to take advantage. It was dog eat dog.

Many times, he had carried out every operation known to science on cadavers, of which there was a plentiful supply, and knew that he could do them just as fast, and far more efficiently than Spall, but he and the others had not yet been allowed to operate on a living human being.

No student was allowed to operate on live flesh until they had watched six months of such butchery, and when they took up the scalpel, they would be expected to follow as nearly as possible the ways of their master. Their aprons could never be changed or cleaned, and it was an unwritten law that their scalpels should have the blood of previous patients on them as they cut into the next one.

Certain things would change after today, their last as students. On the morrow, they would begin their active careers as surgeons on the wards of the hospital. Like the others, John had been warned that when he was allowed that honour, if he wanted to progress beyond the status of simple ward surgeon, he would be required to make blatant mistakes on every second or third patient, to convince Spall that the pupil remained inferior to the master, and would never become a competitor.

John often wondered if he could do that, and knew that he could not. It was not in his nature, and he knew that he would soon be in trouble. At his initial interview, he had been told that newly qualified surgeons were expected to remain at Saint Bartholomew’s for three years after qualifying, but it was not a written requirement, and he intended to move on, despite having no idea where such a move would take him. Surgery was a surprisingly closed shop, and the Old Boy Rule dominated the profession. One wrong word from a senior member, and one could find oneself unemployable.

After four years at Cambridge University, achieving his degrees in medicine, John had spent the following year, required as a pre-curser to his apprenticeship for surgeon, working in a mortuary, dissecting corpses, finding evidence for the Bow Street runners, in cases where murder had been perpetrated, preparing bodies for burial, and practising every surgical operation that he would one day carry out on live bodies until he could do them blindfold, under the expert tutelage of Robert Hague, an old man of seventy-one, who had been one of the country’s top surgeons himself, until gangrene had caused him to lose his right arm, making him fit only for morgue duty. Robert had bolstered not only John’s knowledge of every part of the human body, and the many diseases and damages to which it was subject, but also instilled in him how important it was to keep his own counsel, in a profession whose pundits guarded their professional positions and opinions more fiercely than a lioness guarded her cubs.

Robert insisted, ‘You can be as brilliant as you like, John, but just one word amiss can cause instant dismissal, and the end of your career. Believe me, trust no one, and when it comes to the Butcher, whom you will have the extremely doubtful pleasure of watching for six months when you finish here, it’s Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir, all the time, no matter what you might be thinking. You have the makings of a great surgeon, so do not let that stinking licensed assassin stop you from achieving that greatness.’

And so, John stood and watched yet another slashing job, which ended with a distended appendix held triumphantly aloft in bloody hands, and a still-bleeding patient removed to the side ward for painful stitching up by an orderly, and no doubt a much more painful death before another new day dawned.

Spall demanded, ‘Time, Wilson.’

The slight, ginger-haired young man on John’s immediate right, shouted loudly for the sake of the crowd, ‘Four minutes and twenty-three seconds, master.’

Spall drew a flask from his pocket, unscrewed the lid, and took a long drag at it, before bragging, ‘I do believe that is another record, gentlemen.’

They all had to applaud, and keep huge smiles on their faces, while he looked around at them, judging the genuineness of those smiles.

Shouts of approval and loud clapping came from the crowd in the amphitheatre seats.

That afternoon, while John watched Spall at work, his mind was on his future.

Once he had spent the required three years at Saint Barts, or possibly before, he intended to leave the squalor, the crime, and the filth of London.

He envisioned joining the staff of one of the south coast hospitals, and talking the senior staff into opening an operating theatre, but as with Elizabeth, Fate was watching him from the wings.

~~~oOo~~~

While John was observing Spall at his butchery, his father, Thomas Deaver, was watching his T-man, Andrew Alderson, and two of his estate workers, Jim Dawson and Fred Alton, herding the previous year’s crop of Jersey heifers – eighty-four of them - into the holding pens, ready to be driven to market in Fordingbridge on the morrow.

The men would leave before dawn, and he would drive his gig to market later, in time to watch the sale, and draw the proceeds.

Thomas was proud of his cattle, and of his whole estate. He had inherited it at the age of thirty-four, twenty-one years previously, and had purchased and added almost a thousand acres to the family holding – the first additions since his ancestor, Charles de Verre, had been granted the land by William the Conqueror, for his sterling service, as one of William’s loyal senior lieutenants.

Thomas closely resembled Charles, if the portrait that hung in the Great Hall was a true representation of his ancestor.

He was lean and fit, tall for the time, only half an inch short of six foot, with dark, naturally wavy hair, bright, intelligent grey-blue eyes that seemed to smile, except for the rare occasions when he became angry, and full lips that rarely portrayed anything but a smile. The one indication of his ancestry, shared, along with the rest of his looks, by his son, was his slightly Roman nose.

He was looking forward to meeting the other estate owners and smaller farmers, all of whom he could call friends, at the cattle sale. After the auction, they would retire to The George for a pint of ale and a gossip before heading home, some poorer in cash than when they arrived at the auction, after buying livestock, the others with their pockets full of guineas, like Thomas.

He spent the rest of the day checking that the grass edges had been trimmed to the exact height he had specified, and that the work of the hedge-laying team met with his approval, since he believed that smart hedges portrayed to the world smart estate management.

When he sat down to dinner that evening, he was a satisfied man.

Had he known that Jim Dawson and Fred Alton were in the village pub, The Fiddler’s Arms, talking about their trip on the morrow, and the large bag of guineas their master would be carrying on the return journey, he would have been disturbed, but not unduly alarmed.

Had his knowledge also included the presence of Robert ‘Robber’ Snook, one of the last active highwaymen in England, hiding away from his normal hunting grounds near London, and drinking with Tam Alvin, a local pickpocket and petty thief, his serenity might not have been so complete.

The two criminals were sitting at a table close to that at which his estate workers sat, and listening intently.

The next morning, after an early, hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, he set off in his gig, a smile on his lips, and not a worry in the world.

Even the