The Toll-Gate Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1954 by Georgette Heyer

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks, Inc.

  A Ride in the Park/Heywood Hardy © Fine Art Photographic Library

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Heyer, Georgette

  The toll-gate / by Georgette Heyer.

  p. cm.

  1. England—Social life and customs—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6015.E795T65 2011

  823’.912—dc23

  2011026464

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  One

  The Sixth Earl of Saltash glanced round the immense dining-table, and was conscious of a glow of satisfaction. It was an emotion not shared by his butler, or by his steward, each of whom had served the Fifth Earl, and remembered, with a wealth of nostalgic detail, the various occasions upon which the State Dining-room had been used to entertain Royalty, foreign Ambassadors, and ton parties of great size and brilliance. The Fifth Earl had been a Public Man. It was otherwise with his son, who had neither the desire nor the ability to fill a great office. Indeed, so little expectation had he of entertaining even the most undistinguished scion of a royal house that the State Apartments at Easterby might have fallen into total disuse had he not, at the age of thirty, become betrothed to the Lady Charlotte Calne.

  This, since he was the sole surviving son of the Fifth Earl, he could not but consider to be a matter of considerable family importance; and to mark it he had summoned to Easterby, to meet his prospective bride, every available member of the house of Staple. A rapid review of his maternal relations had been enough to convince him that their presence at this triumphant gathering would be as unnecessary as it was undesirable. To the Staples he was a person of consequence, the head of his family, and not even his masterful sister Albinia would withhold from him (in public) the respect to which his position entitled him. It was otherwise with the Timbercombes, owing him no allegiance; and it did not take him more than a few reflective minutes to decide that his marriage did not concern them.

  So twenty persons only sat down to dinner under the painted ceiling in the State Dining-room; and the Earl, seated at the head of a table loaded with plate, and bearing as a centrepiece an enormous epergne, presented by some foreign potentate to the Fifth Earl, looked around him with satisfaction.

  It mattered nothing to him that the room was over-large for the company, and that the gentlemen outnumbered the ladies by two: the Staples had responded in the most gratifying way to his invitation, and were behaving – even his formidable Aunt Caroline – just as they ought. He could see that Lady Melksham, his future mother-in-law, was impressed. With most of the Staples she was already acquainted, but she had not until today met his Uncle Trevor, the Archdeacon, who was seated beside her, or his huge cousin John. His unmarried aunt, Maria, who kept house for him, had suffered a little qualm about John’s lowlier position at the dining-table, but she had yielded to the Earl’s wish. She knew, of course, that an Archdeacon must take precedence over a retired Captain of Dragoon Guards, but the Archdeacon was her younger brother, and it was difficult for her to realize that he had any particular standing in the world. John, on the other hand, was the only son of her second brother, and heir-presumptive to the Earldom, which made him, in her eyes, a person of consequence. She ventured to say as much to the Earl, and he was not displeased: he felt it to be a very just observation.

  ‘However, I daresay dear John won’t care where he sits!’ had added Lady Maria comfortably.

  The Earl felt that this was regrettably true. He was very fond of John, but he thought him far too careless of his dignity. Probably his years of campaigning in the Peninsula had made him forgetful of what was due to himself and the name he bore. His manners were easy to a fault, and he very often behaved in a freakish way which seriously shocked his noble relative. His exploits in the Peninsula had made him a by-word amongst his fellow-officers; and one at least of his actions since he had sold out, in 1814, had seemed to the Earl unbecomingly whimsical. No sooner did he learn that Napoleon was again at large than he returned to the Army as a volunteer; and when the Earl had shown him that duty did not demand such a sacrifice of his dignity, he had burst out laughing, and had exclaimed: ‘Oh, Bevis, Bevis – ! You don’t suppose I’d miss this campaign, do you? I wouldn’t, for a fortune! Duty be hanged!’

  So off had gone John to the wars again. But he had not remained for long in the humble position of a volunteer. Colonel Clifton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Dragoons, no sooner heard that Crazy Jack was back than he enrolled him as an extra aide-de-camp. He emerged from the Waterloo Campaign much refreshed, and with no more serious injuries than a sabre-cut, and a graze from a spent ball. The Earl was very glad to see him safe home again, and began to think that it was time he settled down, and married an eligible female. He had inherited a small estate from his father; he was twenty-nine years of age; and he had no brothers.

  His lordship, glancing round his table, remembered this, as his eyes alighted on his aunt-in-law, the Honourable Mrs Staple. He wondered that she should not have provided her son with a suitable wife, and thought that perhaps he would broach the matter to her later in the evening. He was not quite two years older than John, but as the head of the family he believed himself to be responsible for his cousins. This helped him to overcome the feeling of inferiority which too often possessed him when he was confronted by these over-poweringly large persons. A big race, the Staples: he was himself a tall man, but narrow-shouldered, and inclined to stoop. John, of course, was a giant; and his sister, Lady Lichfield, who was talking with determined amiability to the Earl’s very dull brother-in-law, Mr Tackenham, stood five foot nine inches in her bare feet. Lucius Staple, only child of the Fourth Earl’s third son, was a big man, too; and so was Arthur, the Archdeacon’s eldest-born, just now striving to entertain his cousin Lettice, who was making sheep’s eyes at John, across the table. Even young Geoffrey Yatton, Lettice’s brother, though still slightly gangling, bade fair to tower above the Earl; and their mother, Lady Caroline, could only be described as massive.

  Lady Charlotte Calne, the Earl’s betrothed, had been so much struck by the s