Love & Folly

By

Uncial Press       Aloha, Oregon
2008

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-066-3
ISBN 10: 1-60174-066-2

Copyright © 2008 by Sheila Simonson

Cover design Copyright © 2008 by Judith B. Glad

Previously published by The Walker Publishing Co., Inc., 1988
Zebra Books,
1989

All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or
in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is
forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Published by Uncial Press,
an imprint of GCT, Inc.

Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

"... if there is a more foolish
year in English history,
I do not know of it."--J. B. Priestley

Their sister, Lady Clanross, sent Jean and Maggie to bed after supper.

At least it felt that way, though the supper had been an elegant midnight dissipation of salmon and
lobster patties and champagne, with the orchestra playing Ancient Musick and county guests telling the girls
how handsome they looked. Maggie and Jean had stretched their permission to attend Elizabeth's New
Year's gala until the clock struck one Then Elizabeth sent them upstairs, rather an anticlimax.

It was their ball. They were seventeen years old and would turn eighteen midway through the
Season, their long-anticipated come-out. Elizabeth had sent for Mme Dulac from Lincoln to rig them out
especially for this night, and Clanross himself had led Jean onto the floor--after the ceremonial first dance in
which he had been obliged to squire the Duchess of Cope, who was fat and fifty.

Jean had danced the first dance, very properly, with their cousin Willoughby Conway-Gore, and
Maggie had danced with Johnny Dyott, but Jean hadn't felt properly launched until she romped through the
boulanger with her tall brother-in-law, Clanross. In that second dance Maggie had been stuck with
red-faced Charles Wharton of neighbouring Hazeldell, but she didn't object. Johnny had given her confidence.
He always did.

Now, drooping over the balcony as the guests drifted back into the brilliantly lit ballroom, Jean
fetched a huge sigh. "I could have danced forever. Until dawn, anyway."

Maggie yawned.

"I felt light as air, Mag. I floated from one partner to another like...like thistledown." Having
called up the simile--it came from one of Mme. D'Arblay's novels--she gave a small bounce.

Maggie pulled her filmy stole closer. "You didn't misstep? I trod on Clanross's foot in the Roger
de Coverly. He said it didn't signify. Did you really drink two glasses of champagne? I had one, but Johnny
brought me lemonade with supper."

"You're not firm enough, Maggie. I simply told Cousin Willoughby I wanted wine, and he was
very obliging." Jean peered over the rail. The orchestra were tuning their instruments.

"I thought better not." Maggie stifled another yawn with her gloved hand. Both girls wore
elbow-length gloves of the palest blue, a gift of the earl, who had friends in Paris. Their gowns, though
superficially similar in their gauzy overdresses and high corsages, had been cut to strikingly different
designs. That was Jean's idea.

They were identical twins, so alike their close kin sometimes confused them, and with the added
disadvantage of flaming red hair, they were bound to be visible. Jean wanted to make sure no one treated
them as interchangeable dolls. They would dress for contrast throughout the Season, she had decided one
frosty morning, planning. She would wear one colour, like a theme or favour, Maggie another. That way no
one would have an excuse to confuse one for the other. Maggie could have blue, Jean had added,
magnanimous.

When Elizabeth supported the notion, Maggie acquiesced. She knew herself to be foolishly shy,
but more than once that long New Year's evening she had wished she could hide in her twin-ness. Her
gown, a confection of silver spider gauze over a slim frost-blue crepe, she thought perfect, far nicer than
Jean's pink rosebuds over white. But Maggie was not at all sure she enjoyed being
singular
. That
was Jean's aim.

Maggie shivered a little, though for once it was quite warm, the heat from hundreds of wax
tapers, three fireplaces, and upwards of two hundred Lincolnshire gentry overcoming even the endemic
chill of Brecon.

Her twin straightened and turned to her. "I daresay we shall have to trot off to bed. "

"Oh, yes!" Maggie was sleepy.

"But I wish we needn't. They're going to waltz again. How I wish I could have waltzed with
Tom."

Maggie's eyes narrowed. She knew Jean had cherished a
tendre
for their brother-in-law,
the earl, since they were silly girls of fifteen, but Jean rarely slipped into Christian-name moonings over
Clanross these days.

"Just once."

She sounded so defensive Maggie touched her arm lightly. "You'll waltz with him a hundred times
before the Season is over. And I'll waltz with Johnny Dyott. I don't step on
his
toes."

"Oh, Mag, wasn't it splendid? And just think, months of balls and ridottos. What is it, Maggie? I
thought you were having a good time. Do say you enjoyed it."

"Of course I did, sister. I'm only a trifle hagged. It was
splendid
."

Jean made a wide gesture with one gloved hand. "D'you say so? Then let's waltz!"

"What?"

"Here. You and I. They can't see us. Come, Mag, a dare."

Strictly speaking, they ought not waltz in publick until the Patronesses of Almack's approved their
Ton, but Jean's eyes glinted with challenge. After a moment Maggie gave a small choke of laughter. "Oh,
very well, Jeanie. But you lead."

* * * **

Below in the ballroom, Johnny Dyott eased his shoulders against the silk-hung wall and watched
the earl and Lady Clanross take the floor. They danced well together, he thought, though a trifle stiffly.
Johnny was a master of the waltz, among his other talents. With the countess's young sisters packed betimes
off to bed, he saw no lady he wished to partner other than Bella Conway-Gore perhaps. She was a notable
exponent of the art.

The musick swelled and so did the company, swaying and swooping in the dance that very high
sticklers still regarded as fast. Fortunately, like the Conway twins, the high sticklers had retired from the
scene. The floor was left to enthusiasts. Johnny let his vision blur and watched the sweep of colours. A
successful affair. Should ease his lordship's way with the county notables.

A flash of white at the top of his view caught his attention. What was it? He squinted. Above, on
the long gallery overlooking the ballroom, Lady Jean and Lady Margaret Conway were waltzing together.
They were so high up and so far away he could not distinguish between them, though his romantic fancy had
always told him he would know Lady Jean. He watched, careful not to stare too obviously--for he didn't
wish to call attention to what was a minor lapse of conduct--until the music swirled to a close.

Like flames, he thought, flames dancing against the night.

The King was dead.

Johnny Dyott clutched the strap and hung on as the top-heavy accommodation coach rattled out
of the yard of the Angel Inn, lurched past St. Clement Danes, and headed west through the muffled
clangour of London bells. It seemed to Johnny that the bells had not ceased since the old King's death, long
awaited, was announced the evening before. Johnny had fallen asleep to .their tolling.

Sunday, the thirtieth of January, in the year of grace 1820. The bells of Wren's church--of all
Wren's churches--summoned the faithful to morning service.

The coach jolted once more on the icy cobbles, slowed momentarily, and began to pick up speed
as the wheels found purchase. Johnny leaned back and closed his eyes. He was a little subject to carriage
sickness.

Snow blew with a thin rattle against the windows of the coach. Sunday. He ought not travel on
the sabbath. Johnny's father, dean of Lincoln cathedral, had always been a strict sabbatarian. Ordinarily,
Johnny would have deferred his journey another day out of respect for his father's opinions, but the thought
of stopping longer in London, a strange London transformed by funereal gloom and suppressed excitement,
had been suddenly insupportable.

* * * *

He had awakened early, roused by the bells, and thrown his belongings into the portmanteau
before the maid brought his hot water. She was red-nosed with weeping and ready to tell him her exact
sentiments when she first heard the dreadful tidings, but Johnny cut her short and asked her to summon a
footman to carry his traps down to the foyer. He meant to leave directly after breakfast. The maid was
almost as dismayed at his resolve as his father would have been, though for less pious reasons, but, like all of
the Conway servants, she was far too well-trained to demur. When Johnny pressed a generous vail upon
her, she even summoned a smile.

Owing to Lord Clanross's habit of rising before six, breakfast in the Conway town house was
served at the unfashionably early hour of eight. The family were not yet in residence after Christmas
holiday, though Clanross himself had returned to town the week before for a debate in the Lords. He had
brought Johnny and his political secretary, Captain Greene, with him.

The night before, the night of the king's death, Clanross had dined at the house of his
brother-in-law and political agent, Featherstonehaugh, the M.P. The earl had taken Greene, not Johnny,
ith him, and Johnny was feeling ill used. He had hoped for a word alone with Clanross in the breakfast room,
but, to add to his chagrin, he found Barney Greene at table before him making steady inroads on a sirloin
of beef. Clanross was not yet come down.

Greene, a grizzled, stolid gentleman of forty, looked up as Johnny entered and mumbled a brief
good day before returning his attention to the roast beef and mustard. He ate with the same single-minded
despatch with which he attacked the earl's political correspondence. Johnny envied him the importance of
his work.

"You've heard the news, I take it." Greene swallowed a draught of ale.

"That His Majesty died last evening? Yes."

Greene made an impatient noise. "The election."

Johnny's hand stopped with a spoonful of buttered eggs midway between the chafing dish and his
plate. He felt his ear go hot. Why hadn't that occurred to him? The king was dead. Parliament would be
dissolved and an election called for. As Lord Clanross had the disposal of several safe seats and some
influence in the outcome of other, contested seats, Greene would be plunged at once into the business of
politicking.

Johnny filled his plate at random, his mind racing. He listened with half an ear as Greene prosed
on about the Conway interest. Perhaps Clanross would find some use for an energetic young man in the
coming campaign. More than anything, Johnny wanted to be about the nation's business, though he knew he
was unqualified and wholly inexperienced in political matters.

Clanross had hired him as a private secretary, someone to help him deal with his scientific papers,
his numerous charities, and the wide personal correspondence inevitable in his position. Johnny had
accepted the post with eagerness and gratitude that Clanross should remember a very green ensign whose
brief, inglorious presence in his company had ended seven years before. But despite his gratitude and
eagerness, Johnny had in his secret heart hoped that the earl would entrust him with a publick mission. So
far that had not happened, but it could. It might.

Scarcely had Johnny seated himself and poured a cup of the very strong coffee Clanross favoured
when the earl entered the breakfast room.

Then in his thirty-eighth year, the Earl of Clanross was a tall man with serious grey eyes and a
thatch of thick, greying hair. It never ceased to surprise Johnny, who had known him as plain Captain
Conway, that he looked the earl--or rather, for most earls were elderly, goutish, and decrepit, that
Clanross looked as an earl ought to look, upright and distinguished. He dressed with a neat propriety that
accorded better with his lean height than the extremes of fashion would have done, and he carried himself
like a soldier.

That his military erectness owed more to a back injury he had taken in the Peninsula than a
disposition to stiffness, Johnny was beginning to understand after three months in the Conway household.
At eighteen, Ensign Dyott had hero-worshipped Captain Conway with all the foolish enthusiasm of his
years. Now, at five and twenty, Johnny found that he liked the earl, a different and altogether more
comfortable sentiment. Nevertheless Johnny was still a little in awe of his employer.