“I am afraid that magistrates are quite often wrong, Mary. Do not abandon your hero yet.”

“Very well. But I depend upon you, Jane, for all the latest intelligence. If I am to look a fool, it were as well I should be prepared.” She rose, and held out her hand. “The lion has gone, and taken his prize with him; so let us venture your acquaintance once more. I would not see those plumes wasted cm my back passage, Jane. Martha would never forgive me.”

Chapter 16

Nell Rivers

Saturday,

28 February 1807,

OUR HACK CHAISE WAS THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT THE Footes' door, once the carriages were summoned — a testament to its driver's impatience, one must assume, or the penetrating cold. Frank handed in his wife, then Martha, and then myself. When we were all settled, and Mary had begun an animated discussion of baby Elizabeth's manifold charms, to which Martha kindly attended, I asked Frank softly, “What do you know of Phoebe Carruthers?”

He started; perhaps he had hoped to doze on the journey home. “No more than anyone may know. She was orphaned early, and worked as a governess, I believe — in a very wealthy household somewhere to the north. There was threat of a scandal — an attachment on the part of the eldest son — that led to her dismissal. She married Hugh Carruthers not long thereafter. He was her cousin, you see.”

“She is very beautiful.”

Frank glanced at his wife sidelong, but Mary remained insensible. “If you like that proud, untouchable look — yes, I suppose that she is.”

“Louisa Seagrave observed that all of Southampton was at Mrs. Carruthers's feet. 'Even Thomas', she said, and then broke off.”

“Did she?” enquired Frank with quickness. “They have been acquainted some years. Hugh Carruthers was a great friend of Seagrave's, I believe, and when he was killed by a ball aboard the Témérairt, nearly two years since, Tom undertook to give young Simon a step.”

“Perhaps his esteem for Captain Carruthers now extends to his widow. Certainly Louisa Seagrave believes as much.”

“You imagine her to harbour envy of Phoebe Carruthers? But she seemed to grieve so deeply for the boy!”

“Louisa Seagrave grieves for herself,” I returned tardy, “and for the loss of an amiable marriage. She spoke of Mrs. Carruthers with pity, for the death of her son; that death must justify Mrs. Seagrave's refusal to send her boys to sea. She was unstinting, however, in her abuse of her husband for having showered young Carruthers with affection — at the expense of his own children.”

Frank whistled sharply between his teeth. “She regards the woman in the nature of a rival.”

“Mrs. Foote declares that it is so.”

“What Mary Foote professes to know, all the world must see is truth,” muttered my brother. “You suspect Mrs. Carruthers as the lady Tom Seagrave would shield? The lady in the case, as you put it?”

“He did say, with some bitterness, that he might better have remained at home for all the good he achieved Wednesday evening. What if he rode out to Southampton — not with the intent of murdering Chessyre, but of calling upon Phoebe Carruthers?”

“—Whom we know to have been occupied with Sir Francis Farnham in French Street,” Frank cried.

“For at least the first of three acts.”

“And so Tom, in finding her from home, suffered a disappointment!”

“Or arrived at her door in time to make the acquaintance of her latest escort.”

“Then it is a wonder it was not Sir Francis found with a garotte about his neck,” Frank supplied.

“I DECLARE, MISS! YOUR COLD IS MUCH IMPROVED.” JENNY had torn herself from the embrace of sleep quite early this morning, and her comfortable face was quietly cheering. She is nearly forty, our Jenny — as yet unmarried, and likely to remain so; plain of feature, ample in girth as she is in kindness. No one may equal her at frying a chop or dressing a salad; but the chocolate and rolls she carried this morning were all that I could desire.

“It will be the mustard plaster, I'm thinking,” she continued. “It's just as well you employed it — what with that dreadful fever as the Frenchmen are spreading, and you so insistent upon ministering to them yourself, miss. I don't wonder Captain Austen was put out to find you'd gone to Wool House. But there, a lady must do her duty.”

“Indeed,” I replied. I sat up in bed and prepared to have my breakfast on a tray, like an indolent marchioness. I had never employed Jenny's mustard plaster, and had no intention of informing her of the fact. “Has any messenger come from Mr. Hill this morning?”

“No, ma'am.”

I was sure that Jenny knew everything to do with our smallest concerns. From her piercing search of my countenance this morning, I guessed that she was disturbed in her mind — undoubtedly because of my correspondence with Wool House. Did she think me likely to lose my heart to a foreigner? Or was she nettled at the vagaries of Frank's temper? “I am afraid we are all a sad trial, with our adventures and our disputes. It is a wonder you put up with us, Jenny.”

“I'd never call it a quiet household, what with your taste for murder and the Captain's for drabs.”[18]

I nearly choked on my chocolate.

“He did ought to be ashamed of himself! There's that poor young wife of his so far gone with the first, and her still a bride. I never thought I'd live to see the day when we should have women of the street lurking in the back doorway — but there, he is a man of the Navy, and we all know what they are. Mrs. Davies will never be done talking of it. If it weren't for the spoke I planted in her wheel, she'd have told all of Southampton.”

“Did you see the young woman who enquired Thursday for the Captain?”

Jenny shrugged. “She weren't much to see. Long in the tooth and short on washing, if you ask me. But I knew it was her straightaway, when she come round again this morning. I told her to be off in three ticks, and no mistake!”

“This morning!” I thrust aside the covers and made to get out of bed. Jenny hastened to fetch my dressing gown. “Why did you not call my brother?”

“Captain Austen quitted the house at half-past six,” Jenny returned with asperity, “no doubt upon business of his own. The Captain made sure to tell me I was not to disturb Mrs. Frank, and that I was to tell you he was gone to Gaoler's Alley.” These last words were uttered with extreme contempt.

Gaoler's Alley. We had agreed last night, before retiring to our respective bedchambers, that Tom Seagrave should be interrogated on the subject of Mrs. Carruthers. Frank was doubtful that a direct assault might persuade him to yield a confidence he seemed so determined to keep. The lady, however, might save Seagrave's neck if she could swear before the magistrate that it was she he had sought on Wednesday night — and not Eustace Chessyre.

“Even so,” Frank had told me doubtfully as we stood in the passage, “it cannot account for the entire period before the body's discovery. I do not know what we gain, Jane, by exposing Seagrave so dreadfully.”

“He may stand the test of a trifling exposure,” I retorted. “If you intimate that we shall appeal to Phoebe Carruthers if Seagrave preserves his silence, he may well unbend to spare her the mortification.”

And so my brother was not at home to answer the plea of a Southampton jade. The woman had come in search of him twice. I knew Frank well enough to believe it was not on business of a personal nature. This woman sought him as a certain authority. It was imperative that we learn what intelligence she guarded.

“Would you know the woman again?” I asked Jenny directly. “The one who wished to speak to my brother?”