“Please, miss, and I thought I did ought to tell Tha’ as me broother Jack is come home.”

“And what has he to say?”

Sally grinned. “He’s been nearly run off his legs, the past three hour. First he took the road to Chatsworth, while Nate undertook the road to Monyash — Nate’s me cousin, and fair put out about his dinner he were, but I don’t pay no mind to that, he were happy enough to have the coin, and Sir James paying him handsome to boot—”

“Sir James was at home?”

“He were,” Sally said carefully, “and at his dinner, too, but Nate says as how he seemed fair flummoxed and called for his horse direckly. The whole country is wanting their nags tonight — it’s like an army moving, miss.”

“And your brother Jack?”

“He never laid eyes on the gentleman as Tha’ were wanting,” Sally said doubtfully, “but gave the note to the housekeeper and was asked to wait for a reply. He sat in the servants’ hall at Chatsworth, miss, and his eyes were fair round as cups when he did describe it, so grand as it were! Like a fairy castle, Jack says, and they’m gave him bread and cold chicken—”

“Did he carry a reply?”

“Tha’ll never guess!” Sally grinned, triumphant. “Sent out in a great carriage, he were, to the constables in Buxton, with a letter penned by the Duke himself! Jack’s not likely to get over it! He’s strutting like a gamecock, he is, down in me moother’s kitchen, and telling anyone who’ll listen about the Duke’s horses.”

“Thank you, Sally. You have prevented a very grievous harm, you and your family, and I am sure that the Duke himself would thank you. But I would urge young Jack not to crow too loudly. There are violent men abroad tonight, and some of them may resent your part in thwarting their plans. Tell your brother he has done a noble thing, and that it is a very great secret. Important gentlemen rely upon his silence. That should guard his safety.”

“Aye, miss,” said the girl, bobbing a curtsey. She pulled the door closed behind her.

I was relieved enough in my mind to seek my own bed, and lay there in fitful slumber nearly three hours. If Sir James Villiers and the Duke’s men could not deter the rabble of Bakewell from firing Penfolds Hall, then Jane Austen’s attempts should be hopeless. Yet sleep remained elusive, a haze of impressions half-dreamt and half-understood, in which the figures of Chatsworth moved with the grace of knights and queens, across a chessboard of mown lawn and gravel.

THE TOWN CLOCK HAD JUST TOLLED THE HOUR OF two, when a clatter in the hallway and a stifled oath brought me bolt upright in the darkness. Someone was attempting to lift the latch on my bedroom door.

Heart pounding wildly, I reached for a taper, and then recollected that I had no embers in the summer grate by which to light it. Thoughts of the masked men in the square — of the quantity of gin they had consumed — of Sally’s brother Jack boasting of his errand behind the Duke’s horses — flitted rapidly through my brain. I weighed the merits of screaming for aid, or retreating into the clothes cupboard, where my four muslin gowns now hung limply; neither course, upon reflection, should do me credit. The person seeking entry might be none other than my sister, Cassandra. But she should have knocked first, and called out my name; and in over thirty years of living, I could not recall a time when she had emitted a drunken oath.

I threw back the bedclothes and stepped lightly on the floor. The boards, though fairly new in their construction, creaked beneath my feet. The man — for I had concluded the intruder was a man — did not falter, however, in his fumbling at my latch. To his misfortune, I had thrown a bolt before retiring for the evening, and the latch itself availed him nothing; my door remained obdurately closed. The intruder’s invective flowed swift and furious, though it remained unintelligible; the speech was slurred and the sense fragmented. He must be completely disguised in drink.

When barely a yard from the doorway I called out in a harsh voice, “Who is it? What do you want at this hour of the night?”

All movement beyond the oak planks immediately ceased.

And then, to my horror, I heard a shrill scream and the crash of a heavy china object upon the floor. I pulled back the bolt, threw open the door — and found my sister, Cassandra, standing in the hall, well wrapped up in a dressing gown. Mr. George Hemming lay inert at her feet.

She had broken her chamber pot upon his head.

WE SUMMONED MY COUSIN MR. COOPER, AND BADE him carry his friend into the comparative privacy of our communal parlour, where Mr. Hemming was laid across two armchairs. The tumult in our passage had disturbed the innkeeper’s rest; he shuffled up the narrow back stairs from his quarters with a lighted lamp, and begged to know why decent people could not keep to their beds of an evening. At the sight of Mr. Hemming lying still insensible across his comfortable armchairs, Mr. Davies’s mouth dropped open, and the hand holding his lamp began to shake.

“It’s nivver anoother murther?”

“No, sir, it is not,” retorted my cousin. “Mr. Hemming has merely indulged too much in drink, and suffered an unfortunate blow to the head in navigating his way through your narrow corridors! He requires a vial of hartshorn, a damp cloth, and a quantity of hot coffee, which I trust an inn as reputable as The Rutland Arms should be capable of supplying.”

“And a fresh chamber pot, I think, Mr. Davies.” Cassandra cast the innkeeper a winning smile as he turned to go. “Mine has unaccountably shattered. Pray leave your lamp, as well—”

“How does Mr. Hemming appear, Edward?” I asked my cousin. “Are the bones of the skull at all injured?”

“I think not, Jane. But his brain must be sorely addled by the quantity of Blue Lightning he has consumed. His very clothes reek of gin!”

“I am quite well, damn it — or would be, if you’d leave off hovering!” muttered the solicitor, his eyes opening. “What in God’s name connected with my head, Cooper? It felt as though the house itself fell upon me!”

“I fear you struck your skull against the lintel of my door, sir, in attempting to open it,” I told him primly. The blow had succeeded in sobering the gentleman more swiftly than any coffee could do. “Perhaps you would explain what you meant by such a visit, and at such an hour? We are all agog at the honour of it.”

“Your door?” He had the indelicacy to look horrified. “I was assured it was Cooper’s.”

“Unhappily, he is presently occupying the next room down. But you have secured his attention, Mr. Hemming, as well as my own, by the manner of your approach. Pray tell us in what way we may serve you.”

George Hemming gazed around the circle of faces staring down at him, and the belligerence died out of his countenance. “I came to confess,” he told us. “I thought it best to seek out Cooper, and make a clean breast of it. Clergyman, you know — adept at this sort of thing. Shriving.”

“Confess?” I repeated, puzzled. “To playing truant? Avoiding the Inquest? Or to indulging in spirits beyond what any sound person should tolerate?”

Mr. Hemming began to shake his head, then stopped short as the pain in his skull seized hold of his senses.

“To the murder of the stillroom maid,” he said.