My Lord Tremaine: Regency Romance

By Marina Oliver

When their father, the Rector, dies Elinor and her elder sister Jane Darwen are left with very little money. But Jane is betrothed to wealthy Edmund, Viscount Tremaine. When Napoleon escapes from Elba Edmund returns to his regiment. After Waterloo news arrives of Edmund's death and his cousin William inherits the title, and soon marries Jane. Meanwhile Gervaas, helping to bury the dead, finds a live body, but the man has lost his memory.

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: Belgrave House
• Release date: Sep 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781947812482

Marina Oliver

Most writers can't help themselves! It's a compulsion. Getting published, though, is something really special, and having been so fortunate myself I now try to help aspiring writers by handing on tips it took me years to work out. I've published over 60 titles, including four in the How To Books' Successful Writing Series, and Writing Historical Fiction for Studymates.I have judged short story competitions, been a final judge for the Harry Bowling Prize and was an adviser to the 3rd edition of Twentieth Century Romance and Historical Writers 1994. If you want to find out more about your favourite authors, consult this book. I once wrote an article on writing romantic fiction for the BBC's web page, for Valentine's day.I have given talks and workshops for the Arts Council and at most of the major Writing Conferences, and helped establish the Romantic Novelists' Association's annual conference. I was Chairman of the RNA 1991-3, ran their New Writers' Scheme and edited their newsletter. I am now a Vice-President.As well as writing I have edited books for Transita, featuring women 'of a certain age', and for Choc Lit where gorgeous heros are the norm.I was asked to write A Century of Achievement, a 290 page history of my old school, Queen Mary's High School, Walsall, and commissioned to write a book on Castles and Corvedale to accompany a new circular walk in the area.Most of my Regencies written under the pseudonym Sally James are now published in ebook format as well as many others of my out of print novels which my husband is putting into ebook format. Our daughter Debbie is helping with designing the covers. For details of all my books and my many pseudonyms see my website.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Elinor Darwen put the last of the strawberry tartlets to cool. She had a dozen loaves, another dozen pasties, and these tartlets to take to the village tomorrow morning. For a moment she considered having one of the pasties for supper, then shook her head. She needed every penny they would bring in order to put aside a few more coins in her savings and buy the flour and other ingredients for tomorrow's baking. She would come and pack them into the baskets later. Meanwhile, she spread the muslin over the bread and pastry, and turned to stir the ragout simmering over the fire. If she added the small early potatoes she had dug up earlier they would be cooked by supper time.

She pulled off the all-enveloping apron which was far too big for her, and went into the parlour, the only other room in the cottage apart from the two small bedrooms up above. Jane looked up from where she sat near the window, sewing ribbons onto a nightcap. Her brown hair, darker than Elinor's chestnut curls, gleamed in the sunlight.

'I've almost finished this one. That's three I've sewed today,' she said, and sighed. 'I do wish I could do something more interesting, with embroidery.'

Elinor regarded her sister with sympathy. Though they were of a height, Jane was much more finely built. Her heart-shaped face, with the blue eyes that seemed almost purple in some lights, showed delicate bones, and she had been considered too frail to be sent away to school as she had been herself. Jane was, in fact, rarely ill, but when she did succumb to a cold or an ague she suffered greatly. She was doing her best to help earn the money they needed, and to sit sewing in a sunny window suited her to perfection. But, Elinor admitted, it was a boring occupation, and it was no wonder Jane was occasionally fretful. She often found it difficult to keep her temper with her sister, and did not always succeed.

'I know, love, but these sell well. Miss Kimble says she has ladies asking when the next are coming in. Embroidery takes so long to do, and we could not earn so much from it. When Edmund comes home you'll marry and be able to do as much embroidery as you wish.'

'I can't think why he hasn't come home by now. Or why, after so brief a visit, he had to postpone our wedding and go back, just because that man escaped! He was here for only two days. They will soon recapture Napoleon. The war is over, surely.'

'No, it isn't. I saw Mr Craven in the village yesterday and he says they are preparing for a big battle, now that monster has escaped from Elba and is gathering men around him.'

Jane shrugged. 'They'll soon catch him and put him back in prison. Surely Edmund isn't needed.'

'Mr Craven promised to give me his copies of The Times tomorrow, so we can read about it.'

'If you are interested in such matters. All I want is for Edmund to come home so that we don't have to exist like peasants!' She gestured, pointing to the garden. 'Look at Mattie, doing laundry for Mrs Craven and Edmund's obnoxious mother! It's so embarrassing, like charity!'

Elinor bit back a sharp retort. Mattie was their old nurse, and insisted on doing the laundry.

'I can't cook much, my lovey,' she'd said when they first moved to the cottage, 'but I was always a dab hand at finishing fine linens. And we have that lovely well with good soft water, and several bars of the lavender soap left.'

But it was not only fine linens Mattie laundered. She did larger items, too, and was at that moment struggling to fold one of the bed sheets that had been drying on the line stretched between two apple trees. Elinor suppressed the urge to go and help her. Mattie had pride, and refused to admit to her age and her arthritis, which was getting worse with her hands being in water so much.

Elinor tried to speak calmly. Though Jane was, at three and twenty, her elder by four years, she relied on her younger sister for all the difficult decisions they had been forced to make. She could at least, Elinor thought, refrain from constantly complaining. Her petulance was affecting her looks.

'Edmund will surely be home soon,' she said. 'I'll be glad to meet him at last. I recall seeing him when he was a schoolboy, but not properly since.' She had been at school in Bristol when he'd been home before, and he and Jane had become engaged. On his last brief visit, before the news of Napoleon's escape, she had met him once only for a few minutes after morning service. All she had noticed then was how tall and good looking he was, with an excellent figure, shapely legs encased in skin-tight pantaloons, and with his dark hair brushed in some casual style. 'Meanwhile, we have to make the best of things. We were fortunate to be offered this cottage when Papa died, and that it has such a good range and even a bread oven. Most cottages are not so well provided for.'

Jane sighed. 'If you think that fortunate! I don't, when it means you spending all day cooking.'

'How else do you think we could survive? Papa left us no more than a few pounds, and my baking earns us money.' Elinor felt the time for plain speaking was now.

'He was always improvident.' Jane was bitter.

Her sister was a dreamer, not fit for the life they were now forced to lead. The sooner Lord Tremaine returned to Devonshire and married her the better.

'He was a fool! He fell for every hard luck story told him, and the villagers knew it and some of them, I fear, were not always truthful. They traded on his generosity.'

She thought back to their life in the huge roomy Parsonage. Their father, the Rector, had given away most of his stipend and the small income his own father had left in trust, an income that had ceased at his death in March three months earlier. They had been fortunate when Jonah Carter, Edmund's bailiff, had offered them the lodge, then empty when Ted Brooks, the old gardener, died. It was at the entrance to one of the less important drives that led, not directly to the house, but to the stables. They had been even more fortunate that Ted had planted such a flourishing vegetable patch. They had existed on his early vegetables until Elinor had begun to bake and sell bread and other things in the village shop.

Jane sighed again, bit off the cotton, and laid the finished nightcap on top of two more.

'There, you can take those to Miss Kimble tomorrow. I have enough cambric for just two more, so can you buy me another length, and more thread.'

Elinor nodded, and began to set the small table in the corner for supper. She felt a surge of rebellion, and though she knew their only drink would be water, she defiantly set out some of the wine glasses they had brought from the Parsonage. Most of their better quality possessions had been sold, but at Jane's tearful request, they had been taken for sale to Plymouth, some dozen miles away. Some were still unsold, and the money they had so far received had been far less than they had hoped.

'I couldn't bear the thought of any of the villagers, or our former friends, buying them, so that we would be reminded every time we set foot in their houses,' she'd said.

Not, Elinor thought, that they had had any invitations since leaving the Parsonage. Perhaps it was because people respected their mourning, but Elinor had a horrid suspicion it was because of their reduced circumstances and ambiguous social status.

Jane rose and went across to the door that opened onto the steep, enclosed staircase.

'I'll go and change. What's for supper? More of that insipid ragout?'

'It's all we can afford,' Elinor said, sighing. She was tired of it too. 'But I was able to put in a few pieces of beef I saved from the pasties. Perhaps tomorrow we should kill one of the hens. That old one has ceased laying.'

'It would be a pleasant change. Are you going to put on an evening gown? You've been wearing that old cambric one all day.'

'I have more work to do,' Elinor said, trying to keep her voice pleasant. Much as she admired Jane for trying to keep up standards by dressing for dinner, she often felt her sister had no real appreciation of the desperate straits they found themselves in. If it were not for her baking and Mattie's laundering, and Jane's own small contribution of sewing nightcaps, they would soon be penniless.

Perhaps Jane had cause for resentment. Their father had never tried to save, and the time of Edmund's return was problematic. Two years earlier, while Elinor was still at school in Bristol, and when Edmund, Viscount Tremaine, had been recuperating from a wound sustained at San Sebastian, he had proposed to Jane, and would have married her before returning to the Peninsula if their mother had not died. Jane had been waiting impatiently for his return ever since. She had frequently asked why they could not have removed to Tremaine Court after Papa had died, to live with Edmund's mother, but old Lady Tremaine had rejected all these requests.

'You're not my son's wife yet, Miss,' she'd said, 'and until you are you'll not set foot in my house.'

The truth was, Elinor recognised, though she did not say anything to Jane, that Edmund's mother had made other plans for her son. She herself came from an old Cornish family, and considered her niece Diana, who lived near Bristol, a much more suitable bride for Edmund than the daughter of an impecunious parson, whose father had been merely the squire of a small insignificant manor in the Cotswolds. Papa had been the only child, his mother dying at his birth, and his father had, it seemed, quarrelled with all his own family. Their mother's family had cast her off when she married Papa, and he had never talked about them. Elinor did not even know their name.

It was a wonder, Elinor sometimes thought, that Jonah Carter had been permitted to offer them the lodge, but when she had asked if old Lady Tremaine objected he had winked at her, and said his master had given him authority to do what he thought best. Lady Tremaine had no power to gainsay him.

* * *

Elinor rose early the following morning, dressing quietly so as not to wake Jane. They shared the larger of the two bedrooms at the lodge, but with the bed and a pair of chests they had brought from the Parsonage, there was no room for anything else. Jane grumbled continuously about there being no washstand, but when Elinor, exasperated, asked her who she thought would carry up jugs of water for her, she simply said she could not accustom herself to having to wash in the kitchen.

Having washed, drunk some water, and nibbled at the dry crust of a loaf of bread, Elinor fetched the old donkey and strapped the panniers on his back. Then she set out to walk to the village three miles away. It was a bright, sunny morning and she enjoyed the walk, despite the constant need to drag the donkey away from the bushes and verges he found so interesting. Eventually she reached the small village, and tying the donkey to a hitching post outside the shop, took the nightcaps inside.

'Ah, good! I have had a couple of queries,' Miss Kimble said. 'I told the ladies you would almost certainly bring me some more today.'

'Haven't we furnished all the ladies in the area with new nightcaps?' Elinor asked, laughing.

'Not quite, and some of them want more than one.'

'How fortunate! I'm not sure what else Jane could make for you.'

'Well, soon, no doubt, Lord Tremaine will be home from the wars, and your troubles will be over.'

Elinor hoped so, but when she was back in the village street she met Mr Craven, one of the wealthier residents who lived in a large Queen Anne house near the church, who had news.

'Here are the papers I promised you, my dear,' he said, handing over a bundle. 'But the news in the paper now is that Napoleon is marching fast towards the border. As soon as he crosses it, no doubt there will be a battle. Thank goodness Lord Wellington is now in Brussels.'

'Can he defeat that monster?'

Mr Craven looked worried.

'They've never met in battle, and from all the reports it seems that the Duke's crack troops have been sent to America, or the Indies. He's left with the remnants, and the Dutch and Belgians who don't all of them want to see Napoleon defeated.'

After Elinor had taken her loaves and pasties to the general village shop, she went to buy the flour she needed, and some meat she could use in more pasties. At the last moment she recalled Jane's need for more fabric and thread, then set off back home. Mr Craven's news was disturbing. What would happen if the Corsican Ogre won the forthcoming battle? Would he try to regain Spain and Portugal, or would he turn his sights to England? They were only a few miles from the Devon coast, so any invasion might come close to them.

Half way back home she could restrain her curiosity no longer. Mr Craven's newspapers were several days old, but they contained the only details she was likely to discover, so she tied up the donkey and let him graze while she sat on a fallen log and attempted to read the reports which had come from Brussels. She read how the French had welcomed Napoleon's return. Instead of capturing him and returning him to captivity the soldiers had joined him. He had reached Paris, been acclaimed, and was preparing to invade the Netherlands which he considered a part of France.

She thoughtfully resumed her way home. Before she could start on today's baking she needed to iron the laundry Mattie had done yesterday. Mattie said she would do it, but Elinor insisted she rest, or help Jane with her sewing. The nurse was old, and standing over the wash tub was really more than she could manage. She could not stand for yet more hours today, ironing. Besides, they would have more laundry to wash tomorrow from the Court. Lady Tremaine, saying she would not have permitted them to live for nothing in the lodge if she had been consulted, said they could repay her generosity by working for her. Elinor had, after considerable argument, shamed her into paying something towards it, but only half what Mrs Craven gave them. Had it been Elinor's threat to tell Edmund, or the fear of her parsimony becoming known in the village that had caused her to agree? Elinor would have liked to refuse, but they needed every penny. During the summer they had plenty of vegetables and fruit, for Tom had a flourishing small orchard, but when winter came they would have less to sell. Elinor, putting no reliance on Edmund's imminent return, was determined to set aside as much money as possible for the winter.

* * *

Gervaas Devos was just about to shovel the next body into the mass grave when he heard a groan. He paused. Was the man dead, or was what he thought a groan some odd illusion? He bent down and touched the man's bare shoulder. It was warm, much warmer than the flesh of the other bodies he had buried that day. He glanced round. He ought to ask advice from the Prussian soldiers supervising the burials. But he hated the Prussians. And the man looked strong and fit, unlike many of the corpses he had buried. He turned the body over. There were no obvious wounds, no sabre cuts or gunshot holes. The fellow had probably been hit on the head. He pushed aside the dark wavy hair, and found a bruise on the side of the head. He smiled, gratified at his perspicacity. Then he noticed a ring on the man's little finger, where his hand had been hidden under his body. That was perhaps why the ghouls who had been stripping the dead and wounded of anything of value had missed it. They had taken everything else apart from his breeches, probably because these were heavily stained with blood. Gervaas looked for other wounds, but the breeches were undamaged. The blood had probably come from the badly wounded man who'd lain on top of him, who had perished only minutes before Gervaas had reached him and tipped him into the grave.

He looked more closely at the ring. There was a flat part. It had some kind of engraving, letters entwined amid a circle of what looked like flowers. It was probably a signet ring. He had heard of these, but never before seen one. He glanced towards the Prussians. They were a long way off, and it was almost dusk. He went to fetch the mule which was his only form of transport, heaved the man onto the animal's back and left the battlefield. He was soon hidden by a belt of trees, and he made sure to keep to the less frequented paths as he made his way home.

The man had not moved, but he still breathed. When Gervaas reached the small cottage which was his home he decided he could leave the man for a few minutes while he spoke to his wife and brought some straw from the lean-to hut where it was kept.

Madame Devos had been stirring something in the pot over the fire, and when she heard his arrival she bustled out.

'Gervaas? How did it go? Were you paid?'

He frowned. He had not dared to ask for his pay while the man was on his mule, nor had he dared to leave him for fear some other peasant would make the same discovery as he had.

'I'll get it tomorrow,' he said. 'I've something which will prove far better than the miserable few coins they give us. Help me take in this straw, and find a cover. It'll do for a bed in the corner, and he'll be where you can tend him.'

'Who? Gervaas, what have you there?'

'Our fortune,' he replied. 'Stop arguing, and help me get him to bed, Freija, and I'll explain. I'm hungry. Is supper ready?'

Grumbling all the time, but not daring to disobey, Freija did as she was bid. The stranger was breathing, but that was all. There was no sign of returning consciousness. She had no spare blankets, but covered him with a greatcoat Gervaas had brought back from the battlefield the previous day. She took some food to her son, who lay in the attic bedroom. Then she put two bowls on the table, spooned the rabbit stew into them, and broke off chunks from the loaf. She poured some of her own ale into tankards as Gervaas sat down on the bench while she sat opposite on a stool.

'Well?' she asked.

Gervaas broke off a piece of bread and dipped it into the stew. When he had eaten it he belched, took a deep drink of ale, and smiled at her.

'He wears a ring with some kind of cypher,' he said. 'He's a wealthy man. His family will pay well to have him restored to them. Meanwhile, until they pay up, he's a big strong fellow, and can help me