The Reckoning
Authors: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Tags: #Aristocracy (Social Class) - England, #Historical, #Family, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Sagas, #Great Britain - History - 1800-1837, #Historical Fiction, #Fiction, #Domestic fiction
THE RECKONING
By
CYNTHIA HARROD-EAGLES
Book 15 Morland Dynasty
A
Warner
Book
First published in Great Britain in 1992
by Macdonald and Co (Publishers) Ltd
This edition published by Warner Books in 1993
Reprinted 1996, 2000
Copyright Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 1992
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All persons depicted herein - save those clearly in the
public domain - are fictitious and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 7515 0058 5
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Warner Books
A Division of
Little, Brown and Company (UK)
Brettenham House
Lancaster Place
London WC2E 7EN
Every author should have a Julia Martin.
This book is dedicated to mine.
E. Baines
A. Briggs
C.C. Brinton
J.R.M. Butler
S.G. Checkland
J.H. Clapham F.O. Darvall
A.V. Dicey
H. Finer
W.T. Jackman
H. Martineau J. Neal
R.H. Prothero
J.F. Stephens
N.W. Thomas
R.K. Webb
S.B. Webb
R.J. White
L. Woodward
History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain
The Age of Improvement English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century
The Passing of the Great Reform Bill
The Rise of Industrial Society in England
An Economic History of Modern Britain Popular Disturbances in Regency England
Law and Opinion in England English Local Government
The Development of Transportation in Modern England
History of the Thirty Years' Peace The Pentrich Revolution
English Farming Past and Present
History of Criminal Law
The Early Factory Legislation Modern England
English Local Government Waterloo to Peterloo
The Age of Reform
BOOK ONE
Acts of Men
When I have born in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, now ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country — am Ito be blamed?
William Wordsworth:
England 1802
A cold and steady rain had been falling since dawn, but by nine o'clock the wind had gone round and it had eased to a drizzle. Lord Theakston, waiting for his lady to appear for
breakfast, stood at the window of the morning-room looking
down into the street. The spring of 1816 had been the wettest
in memory, and London was never at its best in the rain. The
wind gusted in unpleasant flurries which caught under
umbrellas and hurried their owners forward for an undigni
fied pace or two. Pavements glistened; puddles collected in
ruts and potholes to trap the unwary; trees dripped and
gutters overflowed.
The sweeping-boys were much in demand. It was a thankless sort of job, Theakston reflected, watching a skinny boy
shove accumulated dung and mud – the consistency of
uncooked pudding – off the crossing at the corner of Park
Street. A moment later the wheels of a carrier's cart dragged
it all straight back again, as the horses clopped on down Upper Grosvenor Street soaked and rat-tailed, flattening
their ears against the rain.
Theakston craned his neck and looked the other way down
the street. In Hyde Park the glorious blossom candles of the
great horse-chestnuts were now no more than a dismal carpet
of brown, scattered petals. Rotten Row was deserted. He
sighed. It didn't seem a bit like May, the poets' smiling
month.
The door opened at last and Lucy came in, her hay-
coloured, curly head bent as she buttoned the cuff of her
primrose muslin. His heart lifted simply at the sight of her.
He wondered if he'd ever get used to being married to her. It
seemed such an improbable, exotic sort of privilege – like
having a lioness for a pet.
‘
Still raining?' she said. 'I wonder if it ever means to let
up?'
‘
Startin' to grow webs,' Theakston said, spreading his
fingers, and was rewarded by a flash of blue as Lucy looked
up for an instant from her troublesome button to smile at
him. Hicks, the butler, walked in bearing the coffee-pot and
newspapers, followed by Ollett with the heavily-loaded tray.
Her ladyship, much to the servants' approval, liked an old-fashioned, hearty breakfast. They had no patience with the
fashionable notion of toying with a mere slice of toast or half
a sweet roll.
