“You are very intimate with the gentleman's business, Mrs. Barnewall,” I observed.

“Am I?” She laughed mockingly, and reached for her snuffbox with the archest of glances. “I must say I find the gentleman irresistible. But then, most women do, do they not, Miss Austen? I daresay you have fallen victim to Sidmouth yourself, on one or two occasions.”

“If I have, I should be the very last to own it,” I said firmly, and rose to take my leave. “It has been a most enjoyable afternoon, Mrs. Barnewall; I regret that I visited Wootton House only at the close of your stay in these parts. I should like to have seen it in finer weather.”

“Then do not stay away, while yet we both remain in Lyme,” she rejoined, with perhaps an equal level of insincerity; and so we parted — two women of self-sufficient habits, and little inclination for the society of females, and yet driven together by a mutual need for confidences gained. I had come to Mrs. Barnewall with the intention of soliciting intelligence; but it was only at our parting that I knew her to have received me with an equal aim in view. I felt that I had been carefully managed from my first step inside her hail; but the why of it eluded me.

Chapter 20

The Watcher in the Doorway

Sunday, 23 September 1804

IT WAS NEARLY THE HOUR FOR DINNER WHEN I RETURNED TO WINGS cottage from Wootton Fitzpaine yesterday afternoon, but the fog had lifted under the influence of a light breeze, promising a shift in the weather; and so I seized a few moments of liberty to slip down Pound Street to the linendraper's, of a mind to view Mr. Milsop's latest sketches of evening gowns, so important to the effect of a good length of peach-coloured silk, and to consider whether a demi-turban[71] or a feather should be better suited to my headdress; and with such pleasant fancies dancing before my eyes, and banishing all thoughts of smugglers, their wives, and their purported bloodlettings, I very nearly ran down poor Mr. Dagliesh, who was engaged in conversing with a rotund lady of middle age, not five paces from Mr. Milsop's door.

“Miss Jane Austen!” he cried, with a flourish of his hat and a hasty bow. “I hope I find you well?”

“Very well, Mr. Dagliesh,” I replied, with a nod for his companion, who paid no heed to ceremony and made her lumbering way on up the street, leaving me to enjoy the gentleman's undivided attentions. “I am relieved to see you in excellent health.”

“Had you any reason to fear for it?” he enquired.

“Oh! No reason at all — though I guessed you were so much in demand, and in the middle of the night, too — about the shingle and the downs, in attending to all manner of wounds of a sudden received, whose victims have not the luxury of appearing by the light of day — that I thought you must soon be quite broken down.”

He started, and gave me a narrow look, and with a foolish smile, said that the demands of a country practise were sometimes unmanageable.

“Particularly when one is under the obligation of attending to one's friends,” I continued. “The demands of a stranger might be put off to another day; but the necessity of one's intimate acquaintance may not be gainsaid. And there has been so much of that sort of thing in Lyme, of late! A lady thrown from a horse here, a shot to the back there, a skirmish at sea that might leave a man at the mercy of Fate — I wonder you have slept at all, from riding to the Grange.”

“Miss Austen—” he began, and then halted in confusion.

“I know now why you could not be summoned, the very night of my sister's unfortunate injury — for you were undoubtedly in attendance upon some smugglers’ band, deep in the folds of the Pinny, or secreted in a convenient cave. And nothing is plainer than your failing to appear the morning of her departure for London, to pay your respects. It was the very morning that Mr. Sidmouth routed the dragoons, just below the Cobb, and even 1 observed Davy Forely the lander to have been shot Was it Mademoiselle LeFevre who cared for him there, in the kitchen garret, against the Preventy Men's discovery?”[72]

“I could not undertake to say,” the surgeon's assistant replied. “It was not there that I attended him, certainly. But tell me, Miss Austen — would you have a man die of a wound he did not merit, when a surgeon could easily be called? Is there some wrong you might find, in my ministering to such unfortunates? For to heal is my calling in life.”

“No wrong, Mr. Dagliesh — unless it be that your care for the local criminal set prevents you from attending to those more worthy of your attention. Had my sister died of her injuries, I should look with less gentleness at the manner in which you spend your evenings.”

“Heaven forbid!” he cried, with a sensible look. “And how does your sister? She continues to mend?”

“As swiftly as we might have hoped — her Ijmdon physician having no other claim upon his time and attention, that might prove more remunerative.”

“You are severe upon me.” He turned his hat in both hands, worrying at the brim. “But money has not been my object, though you would have my motives solely mercenary. I may go so far as to assert, Miss Austen, that neither my conduct, nor that of those I have attended, merits such censure; but honour forbids me saying more.” His look, when he raised his eyes, had something of pleading in it, and a circumspection I should not have guessed Mr. Dagliesh capable of. “There is a nobility in the most common of men, Miss Austen, when they are spurred to act from principle; and I have found that the appearance of what is wrong may often cloak, conversely, a very great good.”

“As I am sure the opposite is true,” I rejoined, somewhat tardy, “with all manner of evil parading itself as circumspection and propriety.”

“That has ever been the case,” he said, with some gentleness. “The wonder is that we should still be equally as fooled.” And with a civility, he left me — though less happy in my designs upon peach-coloured silk.

IT WAS AS I RETURNED FROM POUND STREET TO WlNGS COTTAGE, that I first noticed the presence of a man to my back. He appeared to find interest in shop windows at exactly the moment I turned to gaze at something on offer; and resumed his slow stroll in my train whenever my interest was satisfied, and my own walk recommenced. Upon first perceiving him, I was puzzled; then alarmed; and finally, determined upon calculation. Though I had half a mind to confront him with questions, the possibility that I but succumbed to an over-active imagination, could not be discounted; and so I turned instead into a local purveyor of comestibles, in search, ostensibly, of tea. I knew the shop to let out onto an adjacent street at its rear; and upon learning that no tea was to be had in all of Lyme — a curious notion, that — I exited by this latter way. Imagine my dismay, upon perceiving the gentleman as yet behind! For he had assuredly pursued me to the shop's interior, and thence into the adjacent street.

I had no desire to alert him to my awareness of his presence, by attempting blatantly to lose him; and so, with my head down and my feet purposeful, I made as swiftly as I might for Wings cottage. A hurried ascent to my room, to dress for dinner — and to observe the gentleman posted in the street below, arranged so very casually in a doorway, for all the world like one of my brother James's Loiterers.[73]

I wonder what shall become of him? Does he intend to remain there the rest of the night? And who has set him upon me — and for what possible reason? Is he, perhaps, one of Roy Cavendish's men, intent upon learning the direction of my enquiries, since I have been so rude as to avoid communication with the Customs man himself?