Alverstone, p.1
Alverstone, page 1
Alverstone
A Regency Family Saga of Love and War
Beatrice Knight
Maiden Press
ALVERSTONE
A Regency Family Saga of Love and War
Copyright © 2023 by Beatrice Knight
Beatrice Knight asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents portrayed in it are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright conventions. Except for use in reviews, no part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Maiden Press.
The author expressly prohibits and entity from using this publication for purposes of training artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text, including without limitation technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as this publication. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
To the extent that the image on the cover of this book depicts a person, such a person is merely a model and is not intended to portray any character featured in the book.
www.maidenpress.com
Cover photo: Lee Avison / Trevillion Images
Edited by: Jennifer Knight and Meg Brown
E-Book: 978-1-939505-14-9
Paperback: 978-1-939505-15-6
Audiobook: 978-1-939505- 16-3
Contents
1. THERE ARE WORSE FATES
2. AN ARROW SHOT FROM THE PAST
3. DELIVERANCE
4. GHOSTS
5. NOTHING LESS FASHIONABLE THAN HONESTY
6. AUNT STIRLING’S HUMILIATING HISTORY
7. THE DOWAGER
8. NO GOOD DEED
9. AMERICAN COLORS
10. THE RULE OF HER HEAD
11. FOOTMEN ARE THE WORST
12. CHILLED AIR
13. DEEP WATERS
14. ONE CANNOT BE THOUGHT A PHILISTINE
15. SHROPSHIRE IS NOT HADES
16. THE VITORIA FÊTE
17. MAY THE BEST MAN WIN
18. THE RIVALS
19. THE CIVILIZED WORLD
20. THE QUESTION OF EULALIA
21. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
22. WORLDS APART
23. THE ISHERWOOD BALL
24. THE CONUNDRUM
25. BATTLE LINES
26. THE HEAVY HEART
27. NO SHAME
28. AN UNMISTAKABLE HINT
29. TWIST THE KNIFE
30. DOOM AND GLOOM
31. THE DIE IS CAST
32. THE BALM OF FEMININE FELICITY
33. THE DEVIL’S CAUSEWAY
34. HALFWAY TO HEAVEN
35. DEARLY BELOVED
36. ROSE
37. THE COMTESSE DE VAUBONNE
38. VINDICATION
39. THE CLOISTERED TOWER
40. THE MATHEMATICS OF FATE
41. GLORY
42. A GRAND GAME
43. PERIL
44. THE BATTLE OF LEIPZIG
45. ENTERING AN ALEHOUSE UNESCORTED
46. REDEMPTION
47. THE EDGE OF TIMELESSNESS
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
About the Author
1
THERE ARE WORSE FATES
London, England - July, 1813
“It is a ball, not your execution.” The Dowager Marchioness Alverstone marched her eldest son up the grand stone staircase at Almack’s. “There are worse fates than dancing with the richest heiress in England.”
“You kidnapped my horse,” Jasper replied. “A trifle drastic, Mama.”
“Drastic? Miss Thorne has been in town for a fortnight, and you have not even sent your card.”
“She does not want for admirers.” He cast a cynical eye toward a gaggle of gentlemen fawning over a young lady in the anteroom ahead.
Weighed down by jewels, ringlets, and a stupendous fortune, Miss Angelica Thorne sat perched on a sofa like a doll, her feet not touching the floor. She could have passed for a child playing dress-up in her mother’s finery.
“Eighty thousand pounds would make a maggot irresistible,” his mother continued, “and she is far from that. They say she rejected two counts during her time in Italy. Of course, Europe heaves with penniless nobles. She could have secured a Hanoverian prince for such an inducement.”
“It is not too late.”
Jasper’s retort earned one of her disappointed little huffs. A tender being, loyal to him in the most trying of circumstances, she did not often take him to task, but from the concentration on her face, he could tell she was weighing her next words.
“My dearest, I know you desire to dislike Miss Thorne, but you have seen too little of her to determine her character.”
“One cannot see too little of such a woman.”
He suppressed an unfilial urge to escape to his club. How the devil had the vacuous chit on the sofa induced his father to write that absurd codicil? Had there been some impropriety? Was Jasper to have a wife foisted on him in exchange for her family’s silence?
No, his father would never have seduced a neighbor’s unmarried daughter. Even supposing he had taken leave of his senses, when could this improbable liaison have occurred? The late marquess had fought Napoleon on the Peninsula since Talavera, and as the Leeds Intelligencer had blathered upon her recent return, Miss Thorne had spent the past three years gadding about Europe, where her beauty and condescension proudly distinguished her as an English rose among foreign blooms.
The only connection between their families was a friendship between his younger brother Gyles and the Thorne son and heir, Daniel. After Oxford, the two men joined the same cavalry regiment. Thorne had been mentioned in dispatches. Cut down at Badajoz, poor fellow.
When the Thornes were not at their estate, they were in Bristol, the last place on earth his father would have chosen for a romantic indiscretion. Silas Thorne ran his business there, and like many wealthy merchants, he had sought to dignify himself by owning a country seat. That was how he came to purchase Wrothadder, the property adjoining Alverstone Castle.
Jasper’s family had offered to buy the crumbling pile when their former neighbors could no longer fend off the bailiffs. But Thorne had swept in with his trove of newly minted guineas, and the late marquess thought it beneath him to bid against a Cit with pretensions. Thus, Wrothadder came to be inhabited by the type of man who whooped and snapped his fingers at country dances.
Jasper was a small boy in skirts when their new neighbors drove through High Alverstone village ahead of a wagon procession reminiscent of those seen in the wake of Napoleon’s army, hauling the looted heritage of conquered nations back to Paris. Mr. Thorne, lacking inherited possessions of his own, had been obliged to acquire those of others at Christie’s auctions.
Over the years that followed, he spent a vast sum converting Wrothadder into a faux-Gothic castle. He never saw a gargoyle he didn’t like and thought a moat and drawbridge the last word in baronial chic. The villagers were agog when he installed an artfully aged dungeon complete with shackled skeletons and instruments of torture liberated from a Spanish castle.
This theatrical vulgarity drew swarms of visitors, an affront Jasper’s mother took personally. After all, Alverstone Castle had genuine dank dungeons and a ‘prisoner’ paid sixpence a day to groan in a cell during the tourist season.
The trouble was, when a castle dated back to the Plantagenets, everyone south of Hadrian’s Wall had either seen it or endured tedious accounts of its splendors from others who had. Where was the novelty?
Silas Thorne, by contrast, thrilled his patrons with commemorative trinkets boasting I survived the Iron Maiden of Wrothadder. He staged picnics featuring music, spit-roasts, and fireworks. The tourist influx showered extra shillings on innkeepers, bakers, blacksmiths, and haberdashers. Thorne and his wife came to be seen as benefactors of High Alverstone. Even the local gentry welcomed the Wrothadder windfall with the embarrassed glee of poor relations receiving a tasteless vase from a rich maiden aunt.
Jasper had no quarrel with Thorne. He was a jaunty, well-scrubbed man with a liking for frilled neckcloths and brocade waistcoats. He carried himself with an air of bristling importance, cheerfully prodding the chests of employees with short, chubby fingers.
The late Mrs. Thorne had been exactly the kind of wife a man like him should have: large, richly dressed, earthy, and ambitious. What the couple lacked in the manner born, they strove to acquire. An etiquette tutor smoothed their rough edges. Thorne largesse fattened church coffers. When the ladies of the area championed a cause, the Thornes held a benefit. They reared their son as a fine young gentleman and dangled their two surprisingly handsome daughters before every penniless aristocrat in search of a rich wife.
Eventually, they secured a brilliant match for their younger girl to the Viscount Isherwood, heir to the impoverished Tilbrooke earldom. The connection opened doors once closed to them. Had the elder Miss Thorne not depart
But the Marchioness Alverstone?
No.
The Alverstones had no need to sell Jasper’s title to the highest bidder. His future had been charted since the day he was born. He would do his duty and marry the daughter of a duke, marquess, or earl. Perhaps even a baron. If political advantage merited a minor step down.
As for love, he was realistic. His wife would be his partner in continuing the illustrious Alverstone dynasty. As the mother of his children, she would have his respect and proper affection.
He cast a skeptical look at Miss Thorne, unable to envision her in a maternal role. For that matter, she seemed remarkably ill-suited to take his mother’s reins in any capacity. The Marchioness Alverstone ran several great houses and an army of servants. She hosted glittering occasions and was equally at ease conversing with a king, prime minister, or dairymaid.
As they drew near, Miss Thorne's admirers fell back, all nods and bows for the fabled matriarch of the Alverstone clan, the woman who had turned down a Russian prince to marry Jasper’s father for love.
She smiled most amiably, saying, “Miss Thorne, how happy to see you looking so well after your travels. You will remember my son Jasper as the Earl of Rotherton. He is now the marquess after his father fell at Salamanca.”
Miss Thorne ignored the cue to offer condolences. Letting her fan droop somewhat peevishly, she inclined her head like a monarch before addressing Jasper in a breathy lisp he suspected owed more to fashion than nature.
“Lord Alverstone, I did not expect to see you here.”
“The lady patronesses are admitting virtually anyone this evening, it appears,” he said with a pointed edge.
“The war is such a horrid inconvenience,” she trilled. “My sister, Lady Isherwood is having vapors over the guest list for her masquerade ball. I shall make sure she does not forget to invite you and the dowager, my lord.”
Was the set-down intentional or was she merely a half-wit? He might have put her in her place, but that satisfaction belonged to his mother. She would sooner find a slug in her salad than hear herself dismissed as the dowager.
“Oh, you need have no concern that your sister would make a blunder of that magnitude, Miss Thorne. Lady Tilbrooke has schooled her so well, no one would guess she was not reared among families of ton. I imagine you find her much changed.”
The barbed compliment found its mark. An audible titter could be heard from Miss Thorne’s admirers. Glaring at the culprits, she adjusted her neckline with twitchy little fingers.
“I cannot say I have noticed. Although my family is quite changed, to be sure. My mother passed to her reward while I was on my Grand Tour, and my brother fell in Spain.”
“These sorrows have been dreadful, indeed,” Lady Alverstone said in a gentler tone.
“Terrible,” Jasper agreed. “Captain Thorne served in the same regiment as my brother. They were good friends, I believe.”
Miss Thorne managed a brave nod, and then uttered a small cry of dismay. “You must think me an unmannered creature to keep you standing, Lady Alverstone. Will you not sit with me and partake of a refreshment?”
“You are kind, but I have promised Lady Cowper a hand of whist.”
Miss Thorne offered a melting smile. With her dainty face framed by pale gilt ringlets and her eyes the color of blue ribbons, she was pretty in the brittle way porcelain figurines were pretty. Even without her fortune, she would draw followers, Jasper thought. Gentlemen loved to feel powerful in the presence of weakness.
A sense of shame disquieted him as he met her gaze. Those eyes were beguiling in their vulnerability. Having imagined her guilty of some Machiavellian plan to ensnare him, he decided his suspicions were ungentlemanlike. She was clearly shaken by the loss of her mother and brother, but unmoved by the demise of his father—hardly the reaction of a lover.
The bizarre edict must have come as a shock to her. Certainly, her father knew nothing of it when Jasper confronted him. Still, Silas Thorne had not risen in the world by neglecting opportunities. Quick to declare his esteem of the late marquess, with whom he had never dined, he had waxed on the sense of obligation he felt, as a gentleman, to honor the codicil.
Additionally, having had the stuffing knocked from him by the demise of his wife, he could think of no better way to revere her memory than to see their elder daughter secure in marriage. To that end, he had summoned her back from Italy and was pleased to inform Jasper that she would return a woman of property befitting the highest position for he had settled Wrothadder on her to sweeten the pot.
Hoping to elicit the young lady’s private view of their situation, Jasper asked, “Would you care to dance, Miss Thorne?”
A village idiot would have commanded more enthusiasm. She preened with a coquettish gentility Jasper would typically associate with a bit o’ muslin under a gentleman’s protection, not a young lady admitted to Almack’s.
And how had that come about? Even with Lady Isherwood as her sister, Miss Thorne was not of the first stare. Observing a decrepit tabby dozing nearby, he had his answer. Lady Helen de Brendt, a family connection of Lady Salisbury and Lady Cholmondeley, both Almack’s patronesses. Impeccable lineage. Financially embarrassed. Paid to elevate the daughters of rich social climbers.
“I’m afraid, you shall have to await your turn, for my tender sensibilities prohibit me from disappointing the gentlemen ahead of you.” Miss Thorne tilted her fan at a pair of spotty whelps. “The next set belongs to the viscount. Then Mr. Farnaby after him.”
Jasper lifted an eyebrow as the danglers exchanged gloating smirks.
“We shall have occasion to become better acquainted when I return to Wrothadder,” she continued. “Provided I am still free to consider suitors, of course.”
Catching a calculating gleam in her eyes, Jasper decided she was not as artless as she appeared. Miss Thorne was adept at playing the hand she had been dealt, conscious of her strengths, and perfectly capable of exploiting others’ weaknesses.
He had underestimated her.
Offering an indifferent nod, he said, “I too have other obligations this evening. So, I shall take up no more of your time.”
“Other obligations?” his mother whispered as he drew her away. “With snakes in Iceland, I presume.”
“Would you have me await my turn while Miss Thorne attempts to lure a superior suitor?”
“You are too proud, Rotherton.” She still called him by his courtesy title, his father being the only man she had ever addressed as Alverstone. “She meant no offense.”
“Did she not?”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Wiser heads would be turned in her position, my dearest. The world whispers of your father’s will, so she is surrounded by toadies seeking the favor of a future marchioness. Get to know her a little. That is all I ask.”
Aggravated by her defense of the girl, he said, “I recall nothing in the codicil obliging me to court her.”
“Your father made his expectations plain enough.” Her voice was husky with sorrow. “But if you choose to dishonor his last wishes, that is your prerogative.”
Jasper let out an exasperated sigh. “I need no reminding that he gave his life for me, Mama. If not for that sacrifice, I would not be standing here, and you would not be making excuses for a woman who just insulted both of us.”
“Very well. I shall not press the matter.” She blinked back tears and lowered her head in quiet dignity.
Capital. He had made his mother cry. She had lost the man she described as her twin soul. She was barely out of mourning. And now her son rebuked her for defending her late husband’s judgment.
“Forgive me,” he said gently. “You know I shall never neglect my duty to our family.” Planting a kiss on her soft, pale cheek, he added, “And Mama, be so kind as to have your men return Montgisard to his stable. He must have his routine, or he sulks.”
She managed a wan smile. “He is headstrong. Like his master.”
2
AN ARROW SHOT FROM THE PAST
Elsewhere at Almack’s
