“Colonel Easton?”

“He is an officer in the Dragoon Guards, and has been in love with my niece this age. Mona rides with him tomorrow at Dash’s.”[57]

“I am unacquainted with Colonel Easton — but had heard that he is recently come to Bath. And that he was injured in a duel,” I managed. “The result of an insult to Lord Swithin.”

“And so he was. His right arm is still bound up in a sling, like a badge of honour. The Colonel and the Earl do not speak. We may presume this lends the flirtation a certain piquancy in Mona’s eyes.”

Lord Harold handed me a glass of wine punch, and secured himself another.

“Your family does not regard my attentions with pleasure, Miss Austen. I fear I have rendered you a disservice. Pray accept my apologies.”

I coloured, and looked conscious. “I do not understand you, my lord.”

“I beg your pardon, but I fancy you do. I quite ruin your reputation with every advance upon your doorstep, my dear.” The Gentleman Rogue’s words were couched in boredom; but I detected a wound. It is something, indeed, to be suspected of impropriety wherever one goes — the justice of the suspicion notwithstanding.

“My family may, perhaps, be a little overawed at your greatness, my lord.”

“Then they are very unlike the greater run of Bath society.” He surveyed the crush of pleasure-seekers jostling for places in the Tea Room, several of whom averted their looks as his lordship glanced their way, and an expression of bitterness flitted across his countenance. “Perhaps I should have attempted to speak to you in the midst of the street, and preferably at noon. For we should hardly draw greater interest in the public square, than we have done in the privacy of this corner. I have damaged you immeasurably, Miss Austen. First the theatre, and now the Assembly — it requires only an urchin to publish our assignation in the Labyrinth, to complete the ruin of your reputation! All of Bath will be detecting you in an intrigue, and pitying you when I turn my attentions to Miss Conyngham.”

“I should rather thank than berate you, Lord Harold.” I sipped at my punch and felt suddenly exposed to an hundred curious eyes. “Such interesting attention will at least ensure that my present life is less tedious than of old.”

He was silent a moment. “Are you, then, unhappy with your lot? Bath, to be sure, lacks the superior society of London, but I have heard many ladies describe it as endlessly diverting. Is it so unequal to your amusement?”

“I have not the idleness of character to take pleasure in dissipation,” I replied. “I sorely want to be doing something. And perhaps I have endured Bath’s pleasures too long. Even Paradise, I suspect, will grow contemptible through eternal association.”

“We are very much alike in this, my dear. I find the tedium of daily routine very nearly insupportable. It is the sole inducement to involve myself in — affairs of a delicate nature. Without the spur of variety, I should be a lost man, unfitted to good society.”

And thus we find the root of your restless heart, I silently observed, forever intent upon the next conquest. But I only said, “In the present case, at least, you have the welfare of your nephew to lend urgency to the game. Your energies could never be brought to a similar pitch by mere ennui alone.”

“That is true,” he said, his grey eyes alight. “But tell me, I beg. Did you learn anything of Hugh Conyngham? For I observed you to dance with him an hour since.”

“Nothing of what Mr. Elliot would deign to call proof” I said with a droll look, “but I would wager my life that he knows of the letters’ disappearance, and misgives the nature of our recent visit to the wings. I took care to present you as a formidable fellow, alive with suspicion regarding his sister and the Earl, and happy in resources denied to others. I may fairly say we may expect the unfortunate Mr. Conyngham to move in considerable anxiety — and seek the protection of the only person available to lend it — the Earl of Swithin.”

“And tomorrow I embark upon Maria Conyngham.”

“Take care, Lord Harold, that she does not embark upon you”

“That must be impossible, my dear.”

“Forgive me, but I cannot be so sanguine.” I met his eyes as steadily as I knew how.

“You do not believe me in danger!” He affected a careless good humour, but there was a wariness in his looks.

“I think you move at your very peril. Her motives and skill are of the most subtle; her charms, infinite. Have a care, I beg.”

“I will promise to present the lady with a heart as duplicitous as her own appears to be,” Lord Harold replied; but there was little of levity in his words.

And so he bowed, and left me to the significant looks of Henry and Eliza, and all the comfort of cooling tea.

Chapter 11

A Knife at the Throat

Saturday,

15 December 1804

I PARTED FROM THE HENRY AUSTENS IN THE FOYER OF THE Lower Rooms not long thereafter, but I did not go to my chair in even tolerable composure. My thoughts were entirely consumed with Lord Harold Trowbridge for the better part of my journey home to Green Park Buildings. He has ever been a man of coldest calculation, a master-player at chess, and moving amongst a multitude of boards — all of them quite chequered. I had thought the tender passions to be his abhorrence; and indeed, with such a career as he has made, they should never prove his friends. However many women he may keep in style in Mayfair, his heart is unlikely to be touched. This containment of temper preserves him from the stabs of the impertinent, just as it renders the exploitative without object. Moreover, I trace in its lineaments the result of some great disappointment in early life — the loss of a beloved to betrayal, or perhaps a crueller fate. My intimacy with Lord Harold has never been of so great a kind as to permit the exchange of confidences; and thus my conjectures must remain unsatisfied. But his weakness in the present instance troubles me — I detect an inclination to the challenge of Maria Conyngham’s heart — and I fear for the composure of his mind.

I cannot, however, find in this any possible hope of happiness for Lord Harold. He knows of her proximity to Richard Portal, and of that gentleman’s blackmailing art; knows, too, that Maria is tied by affection or avarice to the Earl of Swithin. And though he cannot prove it was her hand that thrust home the dagger, suspicion will curl in his very entrails — poisoning his thoughts, destroying his sleep, and turning his tenderest feeling the betrayer of his judgement. He will be flayed alive by the division in his soul — and that suffering will lead him to divine the truth.

And in seeking the truth, he can only destroy Miss Conyngham.

A sudden lurch to the chair thrust me strongly against the left-hand window, and I cried out in some alarm. I had barely time to observe that the forward bearer had set down his poles, pitching me to the front of my seat, before the aft man did likewise; and the two ran off without a word of explanation, quite impervious to my exclamations of outrage and dismay. Where was the link boy, with his flaring lamp?[58] The darkness enshrouding the chair was absolute, and in sudden, sharp fear, I fumbled at the door.

It was then I perceived a figure looming over me — and my breath caught hard within my throat.

“There now, ma’am, hand us your reticule, or we’ll be forced to find it — and we’ve ways of looking you won’t much like.” A most ruffianly-appearing fellow stared down at me in the darkness, his face partially obscured by a handkerchief. “You shouldn’t ought to travel when the night’s without the moon, miss. Mortal dangerous it is.”