“JANE,” LORD HAROLD MUTTERED, AS WE FOLLOWED Mrs. Haskell above, “I would do much to support your endeavours; but do not allow me ever to sample such a concoction again. I shall be suffering the flux for a fortnight, I am sure.”

Chapter 18

A Natural History of Despair

29 August 1806, cont.

“AND DID YOU SPEAK TO THE STEWARD — MR. WICKHAM?” I enquired of Lord Harold as our hired curricle rolled away from Penfolds Hall.

“I did — though Mrs. Haskell would have it the man was indisposed, on account of his unhappy experience with the ruffians last night. I was obliged to expend full a quarter of an hour in attending to the lady’s history of that dreadful affair; I was treated to tears, convulsive fits, and a threatened swoon, at which I gallantly applied Mrs. Haskell’s vinaigrette with my own hands.”

I glanced at him sidelong. “And to what purpose, my lord?”

“Are you so mistrustful of gallantry, Jane? What possible cause can the male sex have given you, for so unbridled a cynicism?”

“I do not pretend to know anything of the general run of men.”

“Ah. Very well. Your mistrust is reserved for myself alone. Or perhaps it is applied universally to second sons? In either case — I commend your ruthless opinion. I managed to convey to Mrs. Haskell my infinite concern for her late difficulties — dropped a word or two as to the wild character of so many young women — the world of trouble devolving from the management of a great household — the sadness attendant upon the Danforth family—”

“And Mrs. Haskell poured out to you her soul.”

“The sum of the matter is this: She had long suspected the nature of Tess Arnold’s interest in her employer’s brother, and set a tenant’s child to the task of following the stillroom maid whenever she should have occasion to quit the Hall. This infant — being early schooled in extortion and deceit — so informed upon Tess Arnold, that Mrs. Haskell contrived to discover the girl Monday in a state of undress in an abandoned ice-house on the western boundary of the Penfolds property—”

“Playacting,” I murmured.

“—taking care, one imagines, to watch Mr. Andrew safely away before visiting her wrath. She claims that Tess denied the liaison—‘bold as brass,’ was Mrs. Haskell’s encomium — and so she dismissed the girl from service on the spot.”

“Tess Arnold was not admitted back into the house?”

“Not by Mrs. Haskell — or at least, not with her knowledge. She swears she never saw the girl again.”

Lord Harold did not need to inform me of how readily a way might be found into Penfolds Hall. I had entered it myself this morning, without the housekeeper’s being in the least aware. “So she could offer no notion, I collect, of how the maid came by Charles Danforth’s clothes that evening?”

“None whatsoever. She has interrogated most acutely the two maids who shared Tess’s garret quarters — and though either might be sworn to silence, or feel themselves allied with the dead maid against their superior, Mrs. Haskell believes they know nothing more than they have said. I gather she did not scruple to lay the rod against their backs — and what the rod does not reveal, is not worth our consideration.”

I shuddered. “And all this you learned in a mere quarter-hour? I should better have left Jennet Arnold in your care! Rather than dark hints and brooding surmises, you should already have won the name of Tess’s murderer! But what does Mr. Wickham say to such disorder? Did Mrs. Haskell overcome her scruples, and disturb the steward’s rest?”

“Upon learning that I was come direct from Chatsworth, ostensibly with instructions from Charles Danforth intended for Wickham’s ears alone, Mrs. Haskell let me to him. A most amiable fellow, and quite the gentleman. We had a good deal of conversation, while you mused on the nature of tansy and bergamot.”

“—Without recourse to fits and vinaigrettes?”

“Wickham did not swoon, I gather, even in the noose’s mouth. He reserves a just and noble rage for the men of Bakewell, who nearly had his neck last night; but knows nothing of stillroom maids and their schemes, profitable or amorous. He regards Charles Danforth as the most amiable of men; considers his recent history lamentable in the extreme, and deserving of pity rather than malice; and hopes that the appearance of a new mistress among the household might turn the tide of public sentiment in his master’s favour.”

I regarded Lord Harold steadily. “Is Mr. Wickham so close in his master’s confidence, as to speak the name of Lady Harriot?”

“A man cannot always be observing his fellows on horseback, riding over the fields to Chatsworth, without drawing the proper conclusion,” Lord Harold replied. His countenance preserved an admirable gravity. “I gather Wickham has been urging marriage on the mourning widower, though Lydia Danforth is but four months in the grave.”

“Curious,” I commented. “Did he give any reason for such haste?”

Lord Harold snapped the reins over the backs of our borrowed horses. “You never fail to amaze, my excellent Jane! A thousand women should have exclaimed at the indignity visited upon the dead lady, in thus driving her husband to the altar; a thousand more should have berated Mr. Wickham, or Mr. Danforth, as dishonourable and unfeeling brutes. You merely wish to know the reason why. Very well — I shall tell you. Or perhaps, I may say, I shall tell you why not.”

“Exclusion is the better part of reason, my lord.”

“I endeavoured to learn, with infinite discretion, whether Mr. Danforth is embarrassed in his circumstances, and requires a wealthy wife with a considerable fortune to save him — but Mr. Wickham assures me that, in addition to the comfortable rents of the Penfolds estate, Charles may depend upon his late wife’s income. Lydia Danforth, it seems, was the only child of a prosperous textile-mill owner, such as are prevalent in these Midland parts; and though her birth was inferior to her husband’s, she brought Charles Danforth no less than an hundred thousand pounds. Lydia possessed only a life-interest in the sum, however; by stipulation of her father’s will, the principal was to be settled upon her children. At her death — all such children having predeceased the lady — the wealth became Charles Danforth’s to command.”

“Good Lord!” I cried. “If ever there were a motive for murder, there is one! Had the maid and her mistress exchanged places, we might look no further for the cause! But though a man might often be blamed for his wife’s death in childbed, I have not heard it called murder.”

“Not in an English court of law, in any case,” his lordship replied. “But such a vast sum of money does give rise to speculation. Had the children not preceded their mother to the grave—”

“Had the babe not been stillborn, and carried his mother with him—”

“Then Charles Danforth should be a much poorer man.” Lord Harold tapped the squarish parcel that rested on the curricle seat between us. “What did you spirit away from Penfolds Hall, my dear Jane?”

“Tess Arnold’s stillroom book,” I replied. “In which she recorded the histories of each of her cases, the dates on which the poor sufferers sought her aid, and the remedies she availed them.”