A Rake Reformed, or Elliston Priory revisited
Jasper, Lord Damerel, former libertine and wastrel, was the possessor of a keen wit and a dry sense of humor, and so was fully alive to the cosmic irony of Fate's having entrusted a bevy of beautiful daughters to his care.
Venetia, his lady wife of nearly twenty years, had presented him with an heir as well but Jason was a late — and doubtless the last — addition to their hopeful brood. Five lusty girls at approximately two-year intervals had preceded him into the world.
The eldest of these was Helena, recently turned eighteen, and so named not, as was generally assumed, because her doting parents had foreseen from birth that hers would be a beauty to rival Helen of Troy's but because she had been conceived in Greece over the course of their honeymoon rambles across Europe and the Levant. But for Helena's prospective arrival, they might have extended their wanderings to North Africa, to the bazaars and pyramids of Cairo, the ruins of ancient Carthage, and the souks of Marrakesh, but they had instead wended their way by easy stages back to England so the babe might be born at the Priory. At the time, Damerel had sorely regretted cutting their travels short. In giving him her love, Venetia had given him new life, and he in return had wanted to give her what had long been her heart's desire: the wide world beyond the confines of her familiar Cleveden hills. Her excitement, pleasure and embrace of the new and exotic had been an endless source of delight to him, and he would have happily gone on roaming the continents by her side for quite a good while longer.
By the time they returned to the North Riding, a year had elapsed, and, as was to be expected, they found their neighborhood had sustained a number of changes. Venetia's younger brother, Aubrey, relieved of his fond delusion of being welcome on their wedding trip, had resided with his tutor, the Reverend Appesett, for several months before removing to student lodgings at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was, to all appearances, comfortably ensconced. Both of Venetia's erstwhile suitors had directed their attentions elsewhere: Edward Yardley, with his mother's full approval, had offered for, and been accepted by, the unexceptionable Miss Clara Denny while Oswald Denny was said to have formed an attachment to a fashionable young miss he'd chanced to meet while on a visit to his maternal uncle's estate of Crossley.
Less happily, at Venetia's girlhood home of Undershaw, the discord and disorder Sir Conway had met with upon returning to his establishment showed no signs of having lessened. There had been the blessed event of Charlotte, Lady Lanyon, being safely delivered of a son, Roland, but by all reports, that had resulted in only the briefest cessation of hostilities between Sir Conway and his mother-in-law, the abrasive Mrs. Scorrier. The two were forever at loggerheads, with Mrs. Scorrier, in her daughter's name, intent on holding absolute sway over the household, and Sir Conway equally resolved on having none of his rights and privileges infringed on. Steeped in this acrimonious atmosphere and often on the receiving end of conflicting commands, the staff had grown increasingly disaffected, and many of their number, including some retainers of longstanding, had given notice and found more congenial situations elsewhere.
Venetia's return to the neighborhood had brought a sigh of relief to those remaining below stairs at Undershaw as hope flared that she would take the situation into her capable hands and, with her usual good sense and diplomacy, broker a workable truce between the two antagonists. Sir Conway also looked to Venetia, though in his case he counted on her not only to champion his cause but also to confront the pestilential Mrs. Scorrier and rout her from the premises. Venetia was, understandably, grieved at this sorry state of affairs at her former home and might, if only out of sympathy for Charlotte, have attempted an arbitration, had not Damerel intervened. It was his firm intention to break Venetia's brothers of their habit of imposing on her good nature, and, taking Sir Conway aside, he made his position perfectly plain. "You've made your bed, Lanyon," Damerel told him, "And if it chafes you to lie in it, I'm sorry, but your problems are not my wife's to resolve. She has her own household to run, and her own concerns. Don't trouble her with yours again."
Naturally, this made for a period of frosty relations between the Priory and Undershaw, but Damerel was not sorry for it. Unlike Aubrey, whose company Damerel enjoyed, Sir Conway had no great intellect to recommend him and no depth of character, either. As for Venetia, while she might regret not being on better terms with her brother, sister-in-law and nephew, there was no denying that being spared Mrs. Scorrier's society was good for her tranquility.
The next several years had seen the Damerels largely fixed in the country with the occasional run up to their Brook Street residence for some part of the London Season their only departures. The long-overdue repairs and refurbishing to the Priory, its grounds and dependent farms consumed most of Damerel's energy, and he discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that there was considerable satisfaction to be had in reversing the ravages of long neglect and restoring a measure of its former luster to his ancestral estate. This unprecedented attention to his property's needs was viewed at first by his neighbors and tenants with a skeptical eye, but as he persevered and improvements to the house, gardens and cottages continued apace, he was allowed to be sincere in his efforts and garnered their respect.
Damerel's industry had as its impetus a desire to provide handsomely for Venetia and baby Helena, and that desire only intensified with each new addition to their family. For her second birthday, Helena received the gift of her sister Penelope, and a little more than two years after that, Cassandra joined them in the nursery. To accommodate the girls, their nanny and several junior nursemaids, the nursery wing of the house underwent extensive renovations, and these were no sooner completed than Iris put in her appearance. In due course, just as Iris was graduating from crib to cot, Daphne arrived on the scene and assumed the distinction of youngest Damerel offspring, a distinction she was not to concede until Jason was born four years later.
To be sure, the Damerels were not unique among their neighbors in being fruitful and multiplying, though their increase was the most prodigious. Lady Charlotte, after a string of miscarriages, succeeded in giving Sir Conway a second son, Francis, a delicate boy whose sickly constitution didn't endear him to his father. Clara Yardley had done her duty by her husband and produced an heir and a spare as well: Dennis and William, of an age with Penelope and Cassandra, respectively.
As this new generation rose up, there was, sadly, the inevitable decline of the old. Of Damerel's elderly aunts, spinsters Eliza and Jane were the first to go to their reward, and within months of each other. Their elder sister, the formidable Lady Storborough, being made of sterner stuff had outlived them by a good decade, but they had all, before shuffling off this mortal coil, known the satisfaction of seeing Damerel reestablished in Ton circles, and had in recompense named him the sole beneficiary of their estates. Eliza and Jane's bequests were relatively small but, as they helped defray the cost of his improvements to the Priory, exceedingly welcome. Meanwhile, upon Lady Storborough's passing, Damerel inherited what could only be termed a fortune in property and liquid assets. The income realized from renting out the Grosvenor Square mansion — some 50,000 pounds per annum — was sufficient in itself to make Damerel a wealthy man. With, at the time of his aunt's death, four daughters' dowries and futures to secure, he was extremely glad of the windfall and greatly relieved in his mind.
On the heels of this good fortune, and quite unexpectedly, Venetia had also come into a sizable inheritance. Tragically, her mother, Lady Steeple, was thrown from her horse when it failed to clear a hedge, and had broken her neck in the fall. Her devoted husband, Sir Lambert, was inconsolable at her loss, and, knowing him to have no family of his own and having always had a soft spot for the old rip in her heart, Venetia had urged him to come to them in Yorkshire for whatever comfort they might be to him. He had arrived with mounds of luggage, jam-packed with his extensive wardrobe, personal items and adornments but carrying with him as well the entire inventory of diamond jewelry he'd showered on Aurelia over the years. He pressed this king's ransom of necklaces, bracelets, brooches and ear bobs on Venetia, assuring her that, although her mother had never explicitly said so, it must have been her dearest wish that they be passed on to her daughter. He made it a condition of the gift, however, that she not share any part of it with her brothers, Sir Conway and Aubrey having in his view forfeited any claim to it, the former by having snubbed Aurelia the one time their paths had crossed and the latter by having disdained making the slightest push to meet her. "You were the only one, puss, to afford her respect," he told her. "That makes you deserving."
Sir Lambert's visit had been projected to last a month, but it had stretched to two and then again to six. He became very attached to the girls and they, lacking of any grandparents of their own, in turn grew very fond of him and took to calling him Grandpa Lamb. He indulged them all outrageously and gave no sign of partiality, though he was sometimes known to sigh when his gaze settled on Helena, so much did she resemble his late wife. In time, he moved on to attend to his affairs, but he remained a frequent and favored visitor until his death, upon which sad occasion it was learned he had bequeathed his substantial personal fortune and any properties not entailed upon his heir to his dear step-daughter's six children, to be divided among them equally and entrusted to the management of their father until such time as they married or attained their legal majority.
And so it was that, in the brief span of some twenty years, Damerel had gone from living on the fringe of polite society, his finances in a fluctuating and ever-precarious state, to being a man of considerable consequence, respected by his peers and dependents alike not only for his wealth but for his acumen and diligence in restoring his estate to prosperity and his family to the social prominence and respectability his forebears had enjoyed. His personal transformation had been so complete, his checkered past had all but faded from public awareness, and, if the likes of Edward Yardley and Mrs. Scorrier persisted in recalling the scandalous conduct of his youth, their tales of dissipation and depravity were so incongruent with the man Damerel had become, they were generally met with astonishment, if not outright disbelief.
From the vantage point of his fifty-eight years, Damerel, too, had trouble recognizing himself in the jaded, reckless vagabond he'd been at thirty-eight. That rackety life he'd led, full of incident and empty of direction, was so markedly different from his current life, it might almost have belonged to a stranger. He often thought that if his life were a stage play, the years of his majority could be neatly divided into Acts I and II, the first encompassing his fall from grace, social ostracism and aimlessly wandering, and the second, his chance encounter with a fetching blackberry thief, and the reformation he'd undertaken out of love for her. It had been Venetia's acceptance of him, warts and all, and, especially, her compassion for his younger self that had taught him to believe he was not, as he'd been made to feel, irredeemable or worthless. In a sense, she had, by loving him without condition, restored him to himself, to the optimistic young cub newly down from university set on a career in diplomacy and making his mark on the world. In his second act, he'd channeled that ambition into the humbler goals of becoming an irreproachable husband and father, one whose wife and children would never wanting for anything and who'd be proud to claim him as their own and bear the Damerel name.
He thought he could, without conceit, take credit for having achieved those aims, and it was, of course, immensely gratifying to look about himself and see all that he and Venetia had accomplished. Increasingly, however, this taking stock occasioned not only pleasure but a certain melancholy as well. He was painfully conscious of time's passing, of these precious days of having all his family together drawing to a close. Three of his and Venetia's chicks were now fledglings, and the eldest of these, his golden Helena, was poised to spread her wings. In a scant month's time, she was to be presented at court and brought out into society, which, given her beauty, grace and intelligence, Damerel had no doubt she would take by storm. Already, at the York Assemblies, she'd been a great success, outshining every other young lady present, and not, judging by the gentlemen flocking about her, only in her father's eyes. Watching his dear girl dazzle and delight, Damerel had known a rueful sympathy with Sir Francis Lanyon's reluctance to let Venetia mix with society. Like his father-in-law before him, he knew the selfish wish to keep his daughter always at home, but, unlike him, was not so monstrous as to act on it.
And so, in the spring of 1838, Damerel felt himself on the brink of a new stage in his life, an Act III as it were, in which his role was not to strive for still more wealth, prestige and influence, of which he had an abundance, but to shepherd his daughters through the dangers of young adulthood and see them happily settled. It promised to be a challenge, not because he feared they'd lack for suitors; they were too lovely, accomplished, and well-connected not to "take." His worry was, instead, that, well-dowered as they were, they'd be the favored prey of fortune-hunters, seducers or other unprincipled rogues. Having lived among scoundrels, he knew only too well how deceitful men could be, and was disposed, on that account, to presume all men to be wolves in sheep's clothing until they proved otherwise. Venetia, appreciating his concerns but finding them excessive, reminded him their girls were not ninnies with more hair than wit, and weren't likely to be duped. He had to admit she was right; while they did not all resemble their mother in looks, they had all, it seemed, inherited her good sense and discernment, and had been educated, moreover, by an astute and eminently sensible governess. He ought, by rights, to have been reassured, but his worry was undiminished.
With Daphne only ten years old, Damerel reckoned he faced a decade, at least, of anxiety and hyper-vigilance on his daughters' behalf. If, as he sometimes imagined, his fear for them was Fate exacting retribution for his careless, rakehell years, he deemed it a fitting penance, and one he was happy to serve. He envisaged many trials ahead, but he was resolved, come what may, to see his green girls happily established. They deserved his best efforts, and they'd get nothing less.
Because while reformed rakes might — or might not — make the best husbands, as prospective fathers-in-law they could be the very devil. Damerel was determined to prove it.