“We are all very well, sir, I thank you,” she replied with a curtsey, “only a trifle tired. We have walked to Seaton Wood and back.” She kept her eyes trained on Neddie's face, as tho' she could not trust herself to look beyond; but her appearance was one of tolerable composure.

“So far!” Neddie cried. “Then I am sure you have carried my little Lizzy nearly half the distance.” He caught the child up in his arms, and kissed her.

“Not at all, Papa,” she said stoutly. “I was promised an extra bit of pudding with my supper, if I achieved the walk alone.”

“How very wise of Miss Sharpe. But I am forgetting my manners — I do not believe you are acquainted with our guests, Miss Sharpe. This is Mr. Sothey, and that is Mr. Finch-Hatton; Miss Sharpe, my daughters' governess.”

She curtseyed again to the two gentlemen, who doffed their hats; and I glanced quickly from the improver to the governess to observe how Mr. Sothey took the introduction. I expected a certain reserve; a circumspection, even — but he defied expectation as always.

“I am privileged in being very well-acquainted with Miss Sharpe,” he said with a bow, and the keenest look in his grey eyes. “We were so fortunate as to spend some weeks together in Weymouth, last year, while she was yet with the Portermans. Your friends are in health, I trust?”

“Very well, sir,” Miss Sharpe replied, in a barely audible tone. Her cheeks had flushed crimson from mortification; she must be suffering agonies of discovery before her employer — for never, at any mention of Mr. Sothey's name heretofore, had she admitted to the acquaintance. I felt for her, and could have abused Mr. Sothey for stupidity to his face.

He moved towards her slowly, until a very little distance separated them. “And are you equally in health and spirits, Miss Sharpe?” he enquired softly. “Or has something occurred to trouble you?”

“I believe I should be returning to the house,” she replied, and took Lizzy's hand. “Come along, Fanny. We deserve our lemon-water, after such vigourous exertion; and then perhaps we shall rest a little, until dinner is served.”

“Until dinner, then,” Mr. Sothey said, raising his hat to Miss Sharpe.

“I always take my dinner with the children, sir,” she replied distantly; and with a nod to Mr. Emilious, moved off across the lawn.

Mr. Sothey watched her go without another word. There was a compression to his lips, and an intensity in his gaze, that argued strong emotion; but he remained as ever under perfect regulation. The suspicions of the entire party must be awakened against him; even Mr. Emilious seemed to observe his friend narrowly; but the improver turned towards us all with a smile, and said gaily: “How oddly she has arranged her hair, to be sure! I have never observed anything like it. She is very much changed since last summer — quite fallen off in looks. I should hardly have known her again.”

Chapter 19

Bailing the Trap

25 August 1805, cont'd.

“I HAD EXPECTED MR. VALENTINE GREY TO DINNER,” Neddie observed, when the servants had withdrawn and we were established over our boned trout and jellied fowl, “but he has disappointed me, alas. We must endeavour to talk affairs of state without our most knowledgeable partner.”

From a hurried conference with my brother in the drawing-room before Mr. Emilious led me to the table, I had learned that The Larches returned no reply to my brother's note. If this was cause for anxiety, Neddie betrayed no sign; Mr. Grey might have gone up to London, on a matter of business, and failed even in receipt of the message. But on the morrow, Neddie vowed, Mr. Grey must be found and questioned regarding the matter of Spanish lace; for events looked to have taken so grave a turn, as to make my brother doubt the extent of his own authority.

“Mr. Grey?” Julian Sothey enquired, with an eager glance. “How I should have liked to have seen him! I came away from The Larches, you know, on the very day of his wife's tragic death; and have never been so fortunate as to meet with Grey since. He was in London at the time, of course; but I am greatly remiss in paying my respects. Circumstances prevented my attendance at Mrs. Grey's funeral — and in short, he will think me an odd sort of friend, do I not pay a call of condolence very soon.”

None of us assembled at the table, I imagine, should have broached the subject of Mrs. Grey directly to the improver; and his raising it himself, in so careless a fashion, must give rise to wonder in more than one quarter. Neddie was taken aback, and even I was at a loss for words; but Lizzy's self-possession, as always, was equal to everything.

“You may have one source of consolation, Mr. Sothey,” she said, “in the felicity your sudden descent upon Eastwell Park brought to Lady Elizabeth. She was never more astonished, she told me, than when you assured her it was within your power to pay your longed-for visit. She was quite unable to account for the honour of seeing you, having considered you quite fixed at The Larches.”

This last required some reply. Some men might have coloured and looked confused, or hurried themselves into too-fulsome explanation; Mr. Sothey merely laughed. “Lady Elizabeth, I believe, is the most generous of my friends — for never have I appeared on her doorstep, a lost and masterless cur, that she has not received me into her household without the slightest demand for explanation!”

“We have grown so used to Sothey's turning up like a bad penny,” Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton observed, “that he might almost have a bedchamber set aside for his perpetual use! But in this instance, Mrs. Austen, I fear that Lady Elizabeth has unconsciously misled you. Sothey informed me of his intention of quitting The Larches some weeks before the day he intended, but I neglected to relate the fact to my sister. I cannot excuse such neglect; I may only plead the coincidence of a summer cold, that rendered me so wretched as to ignore everything that did not have to do with myself. Lady Elizabeth's confusion at the races and likewise her surprised delight, were entirely of my making.”

“I suppose her chief fear at present,” Lizzy said with a slight smile, “is that Mr. Sothey will be gone as suddenly as he came!”

“Experience has taught her, madam,” that gentleman replied, “that I am rarely to be found in the same house for many weeks together. I consider myself quite fixed at Eastwell Park for the present — but should events conspire to divert my attention, I should be gone in a matter of hours!”

“You endeavour to make inconstancy appear a matter for pride, Mr. Sothey,” I objected, “but it will not do. A man of your reputation cannot so lightly risk the world's good opinion. An appearance of sober dependability must be your best friend at present, when many might wonder at your quitting The Larches so precipitately.”

He shrugged almost indolently. “My work there was done. To have remained longer would have looked very odd, indeed.”

“Despite the circumstance of sudden death in the household?”

Mr. Sothey smiled. “You forget, Miss Austen, that Mrs. Grey's murder was the merest coincidence. I had fixed on the date as my intended departure long before, as Mr. Finch-Hatton will attest; my bags were packed and stowed in the chaise I drove to the race-meeting.”

Perhaps so much was true; but I thought the improver's gaze too steady, and his expression too fixed, to permit of easiness. Neddie, I knew, was observing him acutely; and finding his reliance upon Mr. Emilious instructive. Would Mr. Sothey have come to Godmersham, I wondered, without his wise old watchdog?

“Circumstances, it seems, prevented even Mr. Grey from witnessing his late wife's interment,” Lizzy observed. She, at least, was enjoying the exchange. “With so near a relation absent from the rites, Mr. Sothey can hardly charge himself with neglect.”