I looked my surprise. “Yet you told Isobel nothing of this?”

“You must recollect that I had no reason to do so,” he protested. “When the maid first disappeared from the Manor, Isobel said nothing that suggested she should be found; and I thought Marguerite's departure nothing more than a falling-out between herself and her mistress. Of the letters, and the threats they contained, I learned only with the rest of the household; and by that time, the poor girl was dead.”

The story was plausible enough. “But you have not sent the things to the Barbadoes?”

“I had only to request the address of Isobel, and the deed was done; but events have intervened. It was well for me that I did not, for Sir William Reynolds would view the maid's belongings after the inquest yesterday, and came to me much as you have done. But he learned nothing of use to him, by all appearances, and bade me send them on to the girl's family.” Tom Hearst paused, and studied me closely. “It is exceedingly good of the Countess to consider the affairs of her maid when her own are in such a state.”

Particularly when the maid has been the cause of her own ruin. The thought, though unspoken, hung in the air between us.

“That is ever Isobel's way,” I said lamely, “and perhaps concerning herself with such small matters relieves her of her cares.”

“Perhaps.” The Lieutenant attempted to resurrect his usual good humour. “I shall have Joan fetch the things directly.”

I HAVE MUCH TIME TO CONSIDER LIEUTENANT HEARST'S words as the Scargrave carriage rattles on to London, and have drawn out my journal in an effort to write my way towards a better understanding of what they may mean. The journey will last several hours, unrelieved of the tedium of conversing with Fanny Delahoussaye and her mother; Isobel and Fitzroy Payne are conveyed separately, under armed guard, in a discomfort and shame I shudder to contemplate. That this is only the beginning of the indignities they shall endure, I fully understand, and quail at the responsibility with which Isobel has charged me.

The Scargrave tangle becomes more tenebrous with the passing hours, and were I a creature prone to violent emotion, I should despair of ever making sense of it. That the lives of Isobel and die Earl hang in the balance only heightens my impatience with my own understanding. Where I seek for intelligence, in hopes of throwing light upon the puzzle, I find only greater obscurity; and my visit to the Hearst brothers’ cottage is no exception.

For though Lizzy Scratch avowed that she had placed the maid's locket in the batman's keeping, it was not among Marguerite's possessions when Tom Hearst turned them over to me. In the cloth bag I received from the cottage housemaid were a few items of worn clothing; a packet of letters in French from Marguerite's relations in the Indies; and a miniature of a woman who might have been her mother. That was all — no books, no trinkets, no keepsakes of any kind; a melancholy collection for the summing up of a life.

And so a hard choice is before me. As plausible as his story might be, Lieutenant Hearst neglected to apprise me of one fact — did he remove the gold locket from among Marguerite's possessions, or did his batman, Private Lewis, see fit to do so? And what heavy burden of guilt lay on master or servant, to move either to such an act?

Chapter 15

The Enchanting Eliza

31 December 1802

Scargrave House, Portman Square

NEW YEAR'S EVE, AND THE REVELS IN THE STREET BELOW have raised such a tumult that sleep is banished. I am sitting up by the light of my taper in the rich room I have been given at Scargrave House. A greater contrast to the Manor's genteel shabbiness cannot be imagined — here, all is done up in the latest fashion, with vines and vases plastered on pale blue walls. It is clear that the late Earl was a man whose spirits took flight in London rather than in the country, and that this was to be his principal residence; everything possible has been done to make it a comfortable home for his new bride, whose apartments tonight — never before visited by her — are shuttered and dark, with drop cloths against the dust. The special session of the Assizes having remanded their case to the House of Lords, Isobel and Fitzroy Payne are banished to the horrors of Newgate prison, there to live as best they might until their arraignment; though their stay shall be short — the trial is to be scheduled early in the next session, some ten days hence — it cannot hope to be marked by comfort or cheer. Sir William shall be special prosecutor for the Crown, Mr. Perceval being indisposed[34]; and a Mr. Cranley, a barrister of good repute and rising in his profession, shall serve for the defence, though the duties of such are so circumscribed[35], I wonder he bothers to take the case at all. Mr. Cranley must see an advantage in notoriety — for it is rare that a peer is brought to trial in the House of Lords — and hopes it shall improve his prospects—

(Here the handwriting trails off.)

— a great boom, as though a cannon had gone off near the house — I rush into the hallway in my shift, taper held aloft and pulse quickened, like Banquo ready to cry, Murder! murder! And find that all is quiet in a moonlit slumber, and I am alone with the fancies of midnight and a sharp sense of my own silliness.

Not quite alone, however; as I turn back to my room, I see the quiet form of Lieutenant Hearst, leaning against his doorway, but two removed from mine. He should have sought his own lodgings at St. James, but was pressed by his brother and Fanny Delahoussaye to stay to dinner; and so here he is, bedded down too near me, and watching in the dark.

“You are shivering, Miss Austen,” he said, and thrust himself away from the door frame. He walked towards me, his blue eyes glittering in my candle flame, the swathe of moonlight dappling the shoulder of his silken dressing gown; altogether an apparition torn from one of my dreams, scented with a whiff of danger.

“I heard an explosion, and feared for the house,” I replied, lowering the candle; and I should have turned to go, but something about him fascinated me — the gliding movement of his form, completely graceful in die darkened hall, and with the trick of moonlight, as weightless as an apparition. I thought of the ghostly First Earl, and felt as though turned to stone.

“It is the gunpowder; set off in Southwark at midnight to welcome the New Year,” the Lieutenant said. “Pay it no mind.” He stopped a bare foot from me, and held my eyes steadily with a sort of wonder, as though he, too, felt himself in a dream.

“What extraordinary hair;” he murmured, “all tumbled like that about your face; it's a sight I could not have imagined, and so beautiful in the moonlight. Do you realise what a crime it is, that a woman's husband is the only man ever to see her hair like this? To deny the world such beauty is pure folly. And you have no husband, Jane.”

At his use of my Christian name, I became too aware of the impropriety of my position — of how it should appear, should anyone encounter us; and, indeed, of how intimate a scene I had allowed myself to play. My colour rose, my breath quickened, and I made a small movement as if to go. But die Lieutenant raised a finger and laid it against my lips. “Don't,” he whispered, “I've caught you in the witching hour, and I must exact my price.”

And with that, he bent swiftly and kissed me full upon the mouth, until I tore from his grasp in mortification, rushed headlong into my room, and slammed the door in his face. An echo of derisive laughter was my reward, and the sound of his retreat; and a little later, sharp in the regained quiet, a small click, as of a door being closed. That it came from the room to my right — Fanny Delahoussaye's room — and not from the Lieutenant's, I had not the smallest doubt. I shall have her wrath to contend with, on the morrow, for it is certain she overheard us — a scene so little to my advantage, either in its initial passivity or ultimate flight.