Emily and the Dark Angel (28 page)

“Welcome to the family, my lord.”

“Don’t start that,” said Ver firmly. “I’m keeping it a secret.”

“You can’t do that,” Marcus protested.

“I can try. At least until I’m on my honeymoon. By the time we return, hopefully I’ll have grown accustomed.”

“I’ll ‘my lord’ you morning, noon, and night,” promised Emily cheerfully. Verderan gave her a look that raised a blush.

Hector spoke up. “It appears I may have been mistaken in some of my views of you, Mr. Verderan. I apologize.”

“That’s very handsome of you, vicar. If I’d lost Emily to you, I’d have been somewhat disgruntled, too.”

They moved on to the curricle before Hector could work out a suitable response. Margaret admired the ring, and said to Verderan, “You see, I knew what I was doing when I left you two alone.”

“I don’t know how you ever came to be a vicar’s sister,” he said sternly. She dimpled at him.

Then he turned to Helen Sillitoe, who was no less shabby but considerably less haggard. “Mother, I hope you are happy for me.”

“Very happy,” she said. “You have found a pearl, and also a woman of warmth and strength.”

Ver and Emily instinctively reached for each other and held hands. Both Nelson and Beelzebub looked round to wonder at this strange state of affairs and then tossed their heads as if despairing of human peculiarities.

“I do think they talk,” said Emily.

Verderan looked at her. “Spare me. I’ve just got my life onto a precarious piece of level ground. Don’t cast me into new insanity just yet.”

“Aye,” said Marcus. “But talking of horses, you’re riding mine. And I don’t want it sold.”

“I don’t suppose you do,” said Ver, and immediately swung off.

“I say, that’s not necessary ...”

Ver waved and a distant rider began to come over. “I have three here. My groom will ride that one. It looks a little raw and you don’t want to miss the run.”

“I certainly don’t,” said Marcus with a grin and mounted. “Nelson’s always been a promising beast, and I can see he’s coming into his own.”

Verderan looked up at Emily, and she obediently slid off Bel and into his arms.

“Here now,” said Sir Henry. “There’s people watching!”

Neither Emily nor Verderan paid any attention and when they finished the thorough kiss, the friends and neighbors who’d come along broke into applause.

“Do you still want to hunt?” Ver asked.

The promise in his eyes of other things they might do sent a shudder through her, but she said, “After the trouble I’ve been to to get here? Of course I do!”

He took a letter out of his pocket and gave it to her. “Very well, but I wouldn’t read that until you’re safe home again.”

“Is it going to burn a hole in my pocket?” she asked.

“More than likely. The old desk went up in smoke in the night.”

She was laughing as he tossed her into the saddle. His groom rode up on a rangy dun, and he swung into the saddle just as the horn blew and the hounds started out.

“Then let’s hunt,” said Ver and they turned to join the field.

When I wrote this book my sister was living near Melton Mowbray and I often stayed with her, so it was natural for me to think of setting a story in “The Queen of the Shires.” After all, if the young ladies of the Regency period dreamed of waltzing at Almack’s, their brothers dreamed of riding to glory with the Quorn.

In fact, since nearly all the rich, wellborn young males of England spent November to April in the shires hunting, I began to wonder why the husband-hunting mamas didn’t move into the area along with them. But then I decided those wily matrons (also wives and mothers) knew that even a “diamond of the first water” would not receive so much as a glance when paraded next to a “bang-up bit of blood and bone.”

Horses, not ladies, were the true passion of the Regency male.

Hunting has always been popular with the English, but until the eighteenth century, the quarry of choice was the deer. With increasing population and agricultural land use, deer became scarce and the fox came into its own. It is said that in 1762 the Duke of Beaufort was returning from a disappointing day’s hunt when he threw his hounds (a technical term, not an indication of brutality) into some rough growth and drove out a fox. The subsequent chase was memorable, and hunting foxes slowly gained in popularity.

There were still two factors that prevented the development of foxhunting, however. One was that hounds lacked the speed and endurance to stay with foxes. The other was that foxes are nocturnal, and to catch them men had to rise before dawn, which was not much to the liking of the aristocracy.

It was the great Hugo Meynell, who inherited the position of Master of Fox Hounds of the Quorn in 1753, who solved both problems. First he began to copy some of the famous breeding experiments of the agricultural revolution to improve the hounds. Then he employed earth stoppers. These men would go around a selected area before dawn and stop up any burrows they found. Some foxes would be forced to seek hiding aboveground in gorse or thick undergrowth called a covert (pronounced
kә-vәrt
) where, if the hounds were lucky and the fox was not, one of them would be found.

The fox was not to be killed there, I hasten to point out. That is called “chopping a fox in covert” and is considered a terrible waste. The aim is to have the fox break and run, and hopefully run for hours over challenging country so the riders who follow the hounds will have an exciting ride. After all, when Oscar Wilde described foxhunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible,” he summed it up pretty well. The fox is not hunted for food, but for the sport it gives.

Regency and Victorian hunters claimed that the purpose of foxhunting was to kill vermin, but this is exposed as spurious by their efforts to preserve the foxes for their enjoyment. Tom Assheton-Smith believed that to kill a fox other than by hunting was a heinous crime. If worse came to worst, some masters would even resort to bag foxes—those purchased from other areas or even from abroad.

For the hunting enthusiast such as a Meltonian, the ride was everything; he didn’t mind if the fox finally won free and lived to provide a run another day. (Lord Alvanley is reputed to have remarked, “What fun hunting would be if it were not for the damned hounds.”) If the fox was caught, however, the hunter’s greatest wish was to be in at the kill, to show that he could keep up with fox and hounds over twenty to thirty miles and many hours of the most challenging riding imaginable. Many fell. Many horses and men were injured. Many died. It was an exercise in machismo.

Perhaps Wellington and the other senior officers on the Peninsula were not so eccentric as it seems when they encouraged their cavalry officers to hunt, even allowing them furlough to return to England during hunting season. If Wellington truly said that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” he may well have added, “and on the rolling fields of the shires.”

There are any number of interesting characters from the world of Regency hunters, but I have used only Assheton-Smith and Osbaldeston in this book.

George Osbaldeston was probably as unpleasant as I portray him here, but he was also a great sportsman. He once shot one hundred pheasant and ninety-seven grouse with one hundred ninety-seven shots and he rode one hundred miles in ten hours to win a bet of one thousand guineas. He achieved his goal and became Master of the Quorn in 1817.

The Meltonians of the Regency were fairly civilized men who took their hunting seriously. Things got out of hand as the century progressed and wild pranks were common off-field amusements. In the 1830s the Marquis of Waterford and some friends took it into their doubtlessly drink-sodden heads to daub a large part of Melton with red paint. This is the origin of the phrase, “to paint the town red.”

The development of the railway system changed hunting as it changed the whole of England. Now people could come and go more easily and were less likely to turn to foolishness when there was no hunting. Now the more sober elements of society, who were unable to dedicate months to the sport, could come up for a few days. Ladies, even, began to accompany their men and join the field. The shires entered a more respectable, and even more glorious, phase of their history.

But the Melton hunting society of the Regency has its own special character and charm, and I found it an ideal setting for the story of Piers Verderan and Emily. After all, in what other location would such a quiet, conventional person as Emily be likely to encounter the Dark Angel and actually find they had something in common?

Incidentally this, like all novels, is a blend of fact and fiction, but the incident of the balloon coming down into the Cottesmore hunt on November 1, 1813 occurred just as I have described.

I’m delighted that this story is back in print and I hope you have enjoyed it. There are other novels connected to this one, all recently republished by New American Library.

Three come before:

Set after this one, and published together as
Lovers and Ladies
are:

I have written many other historical romance novels set in Regency and Georgian England. There’s a complete list on my Web site at
www.jobev.com
, and you can also sign up there to receive my occasional newsletter by e-mail.

All best wishes,
Jo Beverley

 

 

 

O
WAIN CHANCELLOR opened the bedroom door, hoping Sax was alone. He usually got rid of his women before falling asleep, but every now and then one managed to linger. This morning, however, the Earl of Saxonhurst was sprawled over the entire width of his enormous rumpled bed, his disordered tawny hair and sleek muscles making him look like a sated lion.

It probably wasn’t hard for him to persuade his lovers to leave. They’d only have to once experience his greedy dominance of the whole bed.

Owain pulled back the gold brocade curtains at one of the long windows to let in crisp, winterish sunshine.

Sax stirred, muttered a sleepy complaint, and opened one eye. “What?” It was delivered flatly without a hint of alarm, but contained the trace of a warning. There’d better be a good excuse.

“A letter from your grandmother.”

The other eye opened and the head turned to the mantel clock—the one set in the belly of a fat, white, oriental figure. It made Owain think of an enormous grinning maggot. “You woke me before ten for that? It can only be a deathbed plea for mercy and understanding.”

“I regret to inform you that the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield is in her usual health. But I think you’ll want to read this without delay.”

Sax closed his eyes again. “What an extraordinary assumption.”

Owain rang the bell and waited. Soon a powdered and liveried footman backed in bearing a tray containing a silver coffeepot and accompaniments. He was almost bowled over from behind by a huge, enthusiastic, ugly hound, who charged in to rest his head on the high bed by Sax’s head, teeth showing as if he’d found the tastiest meal.

“We in trouble, then?” the footman asked cheerily, setting his tray down. The short stature, lively face, and big eyes had given him the nickname Monkey, and, truth to tell, the dog looked to weigh more than he did.

Sax didn’t open his eyes. “You will be, Monk, if you sound so cheerful at this hour.”

“Some of us ’as been up since dawn, milord. Can’t stay miserable for ’ours just to suit you. Message from the dowager duchess, they say.”

“Have
they
managed to read it yet?”

“Mr. Chancellor’s not let it out of ’is fingers, milord.”

“Plague take you all. I don’t know why I had you taught to read. Go away.”

Cheerfully, the footman left.

Owain poured a cup of the blisteringly strong coffee and stirred in three lumps of sugar.

Sax inhaled.

His eyes opened, and he snarled amiably at the hound’s teeth, causing the shaggy tail to thump on the floor like a drum. Then he rolled to sit up, stretched just like a big cat, and took the cup.

He wasn’t actually an enormous man, and in fine clothes he looked elegantly well built, but he was all muscle like a healthy predator, and nakedness made the most of it.

He drank the whole cup in silence and held it out to be refilled, casually greeting the dog, Brak, with his free hand. Only then did he glance at the letter. “Since you’re not a fool, Owain, I am visited by a sense of deep foreboding.”

Owain offered him the unfolded sheet of paper. Sax took it but fingered it as if trying to sense the contents. “The old monster can’t affect my income or my freedom. So . . . ? She’s not trying to visit, is she?”

“To the best of my knowledge, the duchess is celebrating the season at Daingerfield Court.”

“Thank God.” He was coming to wakeful alertness almost visibly, Owain thought, changing from lion, to tiger, to his most dangerous form—intelligent man.

Sax drained his second cup of coffee before finally opening the letter and reading it. Owain watched with interest, for he had no idea how his friend would handle this predicament.

“Plague and damnation,” Sax said at last, but dazedly. Braced for one of the famous Saxonhurst rages, Owain breathed a sigh of relief.

When Sax looked up, for once he looked rather lost. “When’s my birthday?”

“Tomorrow, as you well know. New Year’s Eve.”

Sax almost levitated from the tangled sheets to pace the room magnificently naked. “The old bitch!”