The Duke’s daughter closed the volume she had been reading and nodded austerely. Those round eyes, deeply shadowed, swept the length of my person. “Welcome to Chatsworth, Miss Austen. You find us in a melancholy state, I own, but we are glad you are come to lighten it.”

“You have my deepest sympathy, Lady Harriot, and my gratitude for allowing this trespass upon your kindness at such a time.” I curtseyed deeply.

Lady Harriot made an impatient little movement — a plucking with one hand at the lace of her gown — and then recovered her countenance. If she had heard my words, she had already dismissed them as a commonplace — the muttered decencies of the Polite World — and accorded them no other significance beyond an irritant. I had not known her mother; I could not possibly comprehend what Georgiana Duchess, nor her passing, had meant in this household, and every attempt at condolence must be regarded as the grossest impertinence. I wondered if Harriot Cavendish was often prone to dismiss the goodwill of others. Her life must be full of sycophants and toad-eaters.

“May I introduce Miss Trimmer to your acquaintance?” Lord Harold directed my steps towards the creature in grey cambric and inclined his head with a certain fond deference. “Miss Jane Austen — Miss Selina Trimmer. Miss Trimmer has been Lady Harriot’s governess from her earliest years, and now serves by way of companion.”

“It is a pleasure,” Miss Trimmer said, with a nod of her head. “Any friend of our excellent Lord Harold must always find a welcome at Chatsworth.”

“Do you make a long visit in the neighbourhood, Miss Austen?” enquired the Countess of Swithin. “Do say that you intend a few weeks, at the very least!”

“I fear it is beyond my power to name the length of my stay, Lady Swithin,” I replied with a smile, “since I remain at the pleasure of my cousin Mr. Cooper, who was so good as to bring me into Derbyshire.”

“I do not know that name,” Lady Harriot observed with a frown. “Is he a gentleman of Bakewell? I do not believe that we have ever met.”

“Mr. Cooper is a clergyman, Lady Harriot, with a living in Staffordshire, and I fear his interest in this county does not extend beyond its trout streams! I have seen very little else, I assure you, during the three days I have spent at Bakewell.”

“Then you must remain another week complete,” Desdemona said warmly, “and allow us to show you the wonders of Derbyshire. There are said to be at least seven, are there not, Uncle?”

“Only by the county’s detractors, Mona. I could name an hundred, and never tire of discovering more.”

“There is Cresswell Crag, and the Heights of Abraham,” she began, numbering them upon her fingers, “and the Nine Ladies — they are monstrous great stones, Jane, rather like to the Henge — and the Blue John Cavern! Have you ever descended into the depths of the earth, and seen stone carved by nature into the semblance of a cathedral?”

“I confess that I have not.”

Lady Swithin clapped her hands. “Then we shall make up a party and spend the day. You must and shall see the Blue John!”[6]

“If your cousin is an angler, Miss Austen,” Lady Harriot interposed, “then you may assure him that the very best streams are on the Chatsworth estate. Mr. Cooper must come one day and fish with the other gentlemen, before he quits the neighbourhood.”

“You are very good, my lady,” I replied, “but I fear Mr. Cooper is lately surfeited with trout streams. I do not think he will be fishing very much in future. Miller’s Dale has put paid to his passion.”

She gazed at me in some little puzzlement, then said, “Why, of course! You are the lady who stumbled over the dead maidservant!”

“If Miss Austen was so unfortunate,” said Miss Trimmer briskly, “I cannot think she would wish to be reminded of it.”

The governess’s words barely checked her former charge. “Mona informed us of it only yesterday! An extraordinary business, was it not?”

“Extraordinary,” I murmured in assent, though there were many other words I might have chosen to describe Tess Arnold’s end.

“I cannot remember the like in all my days in Derbyshire! And the Inquest was held this morning, I believe. Did the panel put a name to the murderer?”

“Unhappily, they could not. The Inquest was adjourned.”

“I cannot recall that I ever encountered that maid,” Lady Harriot mused, “though I have often been at Penfolds Hall.”

“Have you, indeed?” I enquired, with a quickening of interest.

“Of course. A tie of the deepest respect subsists between Chatsworth and the Danforth family. Its basis is nearly two hundred years old. I feel this … misfortune of theirs … quite deeply.”

“I understand that they have suffered much in recent months.”

Her head came swiftly round, and she studied me acutely. “Have you been listening, then, to gossip in the streets of Bakewell, Miss Austen? I would not credit everything you hear. More superstition is bred in those stone cottages than miners’ whelps, and ignorance is the commonest form of barter. We trade in everything but charity, in these wretched hills.”

Startled, I glanced at Lord Harold. For a lady nearly ten years my junior, the Duke’s daughter had a tongue swift as a viper’s. I must be on my guard in future, did I hope to pry any secrets from Chatsworth’s walls.

“It was Sir James Villiers who first repeated something of the Danforths’ history,” I replied.

“Mr. Charles Danforth but lately lost his wife — having lost, in turn, the four children she had borne,” Lady Harriot informed me. “First little Emma was taken, in the midst of a virulent fever, when she was but five years old. That would be last November. She was a beautiful child — very pretty in her ways.”

Lady Harriot rose restlessly from her chair and began to pace about the lawn, her eyes fixed upon the grass and her tone growing ever more strident. “Then Julia died suddenly in February, of acute gastric attacks. Mr. Danforth was from home at the time — and the illness came on suddenly. My father called a physician from London, and sent the man express at his own expense. Everything was done for her — purges, draughts, bloodletting.” Lady Harriot shook her head. “Nothing could save the child.

“John d’Arcy Danforth died in March. He was no more than two, the darling of his father. And in the midst of her grief and despair, Lydia Danforth was brought to bed of a stillborn son in April, several weeks before she expected.”

A gasp from Lady Swithin; I looked, and saw that she was unwontedly pale. Lady Harriot was too engrossed in her tale to notice its effect on her friend. She stared at me hotly.

“Do you know what the townspeople said of Lydia Danforth, with all her children dead about her? They declared that she was cursed. That she had mated with the Devil, and must reap her reward. And when she followed her babe to the grave a few days after, they mouthed pious comforts, assuring all and sundry that her death was the will of God!”

Unable to contain her rage, Lady Harriot took refuge in mimicry. “‘The pore missus is at peace, now, wit’ ’er little ‘uns,’” she spat out in a broad Derby accent; and turned her furious gaze upon Lord Harold. “We may give thanks at least that she is beyond the spite of her neighbours!”

“So many children. It does not bear thinking of,” whispered Lady Swithin. Her right hand was pressed against her stomach, as though she might protect the babe within, and her grey eyes — so like Lord Harold’s — were wide with fear. It would be as well, I thought, did Lady Harriot consider of those who were present, as well as those who were gone.

Something in Mona’s voice must have alerted her; Lady Harriot summoned a smile, and reached for the Countess’s hand. “If you do not sleep a wink this night, Mona, you may lay the account at my door. Swithin will pillory me for putting such dreadful notions in your head. Forgive your Hary-O, my darling — if I am a wild beast sometimes, I cannot help it.”