I stood up, and let the pearls drop back in their chest, a frown of puzzlement creasing my brow. Something was missing. What could it be? What had the two besotted fellows sought and failed to find?

Silk.

But of course. Silk, so necessary for clothing a beautiful woman as vanity and fashion dictated; silk, that draped the costliest windows on the most breathless streets of the country's principal towns — most precious of tissues, its sheen unrivalled, its colours brilliant, its sinuous length wrapping the kingdom from north to south — silk. Spun principally on the Continent, and in the south of France, and taxed within a hair's breadth of everyone's life, and thus a smuggler's fortune. I had owned only one silk gown in my entire life; but I had not yet learned to despise its glorious folds.

And so the Reverend was a silk trader — a Man of the Cloth. The sobriquet's sly pun bespoke a certain cleverness — a tendency to flout convention, and turn the comprehensible on its head; both qualities quite native to Mr. Sidmouth's character. And my very own Eliza had declared Sidmouth a frequent traveller to France, where his cousin Seraphine must provide a valued service, in speaking the language fluently. I little doubted that whatever her professed distaste for Buonaparte, or the depth of her wounds from the revolutionary past, that with a brother well-placed in the Imperial army, she was not disinclined to cross the Channel on behalf of Sidmouth's interests. From Roy Cavendish I had it that the Reverend employed agents — and who better to employ, than Seraphine? Was this the source of the enmity between Captain Fielding and High Down Grange? Had he discovered that Mademoiselle LeFevre was but a pawn in her cousin's game, and endeavoured to separate them, for the preservation of her liberty?

I sat down on a keg and put my head in my hands. The night's burden of knowledge was all too heavy, and my store of sleep too small. There was nothing more to be done, than to discover my whereabouts, and effect a return home — by the road, if all within the Grange were yet abed, or the tunnel, if need be.

There was a staircase at the room's far side, and I quickly sought it, and in the greatest stealth and trepidation, turned the doorknob at its head, expecting at every instant to be set upon by Sidmouth's dogs. But all was quiet; and a delicate light streamed over the threshold as I swung wide the door — dawn had come to the cliffs above the sea. I waited an instant, listening for some sound in the stillness, and then stepped into sunshine and looked about me, blinking in disbelief.

For I had emerged from a gardener's shed, and found myself in a ruin — a prettyish sort of place, surrounded by rosebushes now long past their bloom, and the arched forms of wood nymphs trapped forever in unyielding marble.

Captain Fielding's wilderness temple.[63]

Chapter 14

Setting a Course

20 September 1804, cont.

“HOW VERY PROVOKING OF MR. SIDMOUTH TO GET HIMSELF arrested,” my mother was saying, in some vexation, as I descended the stairs to the breakfast room. “For he is certain to hang, so Miss Crawford tells me, though he seemed to be overflowing with admiration for our dear Jane. I declare I never saw a more promising inclination, Mr. Austen — excepting, perhaps, Captain Fielding's — but that came to nothing, and Miss Crawford assures me in any case that he intended to make his proposals to her niece. But, there it is — the poor man died before he could speak, and Miss Armstrong is denied even the interesting circumstance of mourning a proclaimed lover.”

“Indeed,” my father responded drily. “To mourn for a gentleman one may only claim as an acquaintance, lacks something of verisimilitude.”

“A sad business altogether,” my mother resumed, having heard, one imagines, the sense of her husband's words, without their subtle derision. “I shall never speak of Mr. Sidmouth again, as I told Miss Crawford only yesterday. He is a very undeserving young man, and his want of consideration for the feelings of others is truly abominable — and I suppose there is not the least chance of Jane's getting him now. Ah, my dear, here you are at last!”

As I claimed my place at table, my father peered at me over the top of his spectacles, and remarked at my wearied countenance.

“You are not lying awake of nights, my dear, in consideration of Sidmouth's affairs?” he said, with a brief smile. “It is something indeed, for a girl to pine after a gentleman in gaol; it lends a certain style to her attitude, and renders her remarkable among the circle of her friends; but I should hope my stout Jane not unduly affected in her finer sensibilities.”

“No, Father,” I replied, and knew not where to look.

“Mr. Sidmouth is one of the most undeserving young men in the Kingdom,” he said, with an air of evident enjoyment, “or so your mother assures me. The very worst of men, I understand, for having shot the gallant Captain — or for failing to petition your hand first — I am not quite certain which. But one assumes he had his reasons, for both his trifling actions.”

“I cannot believe a man should act as he has done, without a very good reason,” I rejoined.

“Ah, there you would debate philosophy, my dear— and I never entertain philosophy before breakfast It is unfortunate, all the same. I cannot find out that anyone in town believes Sidmouth innocent; and so he shall probably hang; and yet I liked the man. He had a sound understanding, and a forthright temper, and a dignity of purpose that was not unbecoming. Jane,” my father broke off, “I am sure you are indisposed. Your aspect is decidedly weary for one who has lain so long abed.”

I endeavoured to reassure him, and divert my mother's attention, in pleading the probable onset of a cold (nothing very remarkable, when I consider the manner in which I spent the better part of the night); and was accordingly counseled to keep to my room, and partake frequently of warm lemon-water. I made no objection to the plan, perceiving some benefit in quiet reflection; for I have much to consider. A few pleasantries over chocolate and rolls, then, and my mother's petitioning me for an opinion as to the trimming of a hat she purchased yesterday for Cassandra, and in a very little while I found myself alone once more, and established over my journal and pen.

To SAY THAT I WAS ASTOUNDED AT FINDING MYSELF IN THE CAPTAIN'S garden is perhaps to say too little. With what disbelief, did my eyes encounter the familiar landscape, and how, with a mind revolting against the evidence of its own perception, did I cast about for understanding amidst the utter routing of my sense! Every precept I believed to be founded upon rock, I must discard as so much baseless sand; and those cherished notions of my own ability, as a canny student of character, I must vigorously disown. They are the product of vanity, and being acknowledged as such, deserve their sudden abandonment.

The revelations of the wilderness temple have forced a revision of all that pertains to Captain Fielding's affairs, and the conclusions I drew — was intended to draw — from his words and actions. His extensive establishment of the gardens — over so short a period of residence — becomes more comprehensible when one considers the labour so necessary to the excavation of the tunnel and storerooms, and the secreting of their purpose amidst a quantity of greenery. (I must endeavour to find the labourers who effected it, since the Captain assuredly did not) His behaviour, too, on the first occasion of my visiting the wilderness temple, now bears a different construction; for the Captain's anxiety at Cassandra's indisposition is revealed now as a fear of discovery — and I recall, with all the clarity of the remembered day, his haste in summoning the ladies from their stopping-place, and his closing the tool-shed door, before ever he enquired as to the extent of my sister's distress. I wonder I did not remark upon it before — how a gentleman encumbered by a wooden leg, should choose the greater exertion of crossing the little pavilion entirely, on such a trivial errand.