I studied my brother's countenance as he handed me once more into the hoy. An expression of trouble had replaced his usual cheer; his brother officer's concern, it seemed, was catching. We should both have much to hide from little Mary.

“Is the Captain aware that you have been offered his ship, Frank?” I asked him quietly.

“I would not tell him for the world, Jane.” Frank did not tear his gaze from the open water beyond the harbour's mouth; Portsmouth was at his back, and I fancied he preferred it so. “Pray God I am never obliged to.”

Chapter 3

The Lieutenant's Charge

Tuesday,

24 February 1807

I FIND MYSELF RATHER UNWELL THIS MORNING, OWING, IT must be assumed, to the thorough wetting I received yesterday evening, as Frank and I returned up the Solent It was a weary, tedious business, with the rain pouring down and the wind in an unfavourable quarter. The hoy's master was forced to come about with such frequency, that we might all have been sailing on the carapace of a giant crab, sidling backwards into Southampton Water.

Owing to the lateness of the hour, a great fuss was made of us in Queen Anne Street, when at last we achieved our lodgings; Mary was anxiety itself, believing us both gone to a watery grave off Spithead, or set upon by pirates, and threatening to advance her labour on the strength of it. My mother went so far as to quit her bed and appear in the parlour to remonstrate with Frank — a gesture she has not considered of since the New Year at least. The most sensible member of the household, our landlady Mrs. Davies, proffered steaming soup and a fresh cutting of cheese, which we gratefully accepted. But it cannot have been earlier than ten o'clock by the time we mounted the double flight to our rooms, our candles guttering in the draughts; and I had been shivering with chill for an hour since.

And so, the morning not yet advanced to eight o'clock, the rain still coursing against my windowpane, and Frank alone abroad of all the house, I have propped myself against the bed pillows and taken up my little book. My nose is streaming and my head feels as though it has been stuffed inside a sack of goose feathers, the mere thought of which ensures a breathless sneeze. A cold in the head is nothing, of course, compared to one which chooses to settle in the lungs, and I must account myself fortunate — I shall certainly look far more ill than I truly am. But that thought fails miserably to comfort me. I had passed most of the autumn in poor health, having contracted the whooping cough after an unfortunate exposure in Staffordshire. My ailment occasioned considerable alarm in my mother's breast — her anxiety rose the higher with every whoop — so that by Christmas she was grateful to count me among the living, and herself impervious to such an ignoble complaint. Had I malingered any longer, she might have insisted upon carrying me off to Bath, for a medicinal turn about the Pump Room; and that I could not have borne.

I sneezed once more, and reflected on the efficacy of hot liquid in banishing all manner of ills. I might have ventured downstairs in my dressing gown and petitioned for a pot of tea — but a bustle from the hall suggested that our very own Jenny, the excellent creature who has been with us since our days in Lyme, and who shall serve as maid in the hired house in Castle Square, had already procured me one. I called admittance at her knock — her freshly-scrubbed face, pink from the ice in the washstand this morning, peered around the door — and the heavenly scent of steeped China leaves wafted through the air.

“Writing again, miss?” she enquired, as though much inclined to scold. “The time I've had, scrubbing black ink from your bed sheets! And no fire, yet, in the grate — what does that foolish Sara do with herself, I'd like to know, when she should be tending to you all? And you perishing from that drenching you got at Captain Austen's hands, I've no doubt! I'll look to the fashioning of a mustard plaster this morning, if you will be so good as to keep to your bed. There's little of advantage to take you abroad today, I'm thinking, with the weather so wet and nasty!”

I thanked her through the muffled folds of a cambric handkerchief, and sent her to the depths of the kitchen in search of mustard. The tea was ambrosial. I sipped it contentedly as my pen moved over the page.

The weather has often been wet and nasty in Southampton this winter; so sharp and chill, in fact, that on the worst occasions we have not ventured out-of-doors even to attend Sunday service. Such a moral lapse in the wife and daughters of a clergyman should be deemed inexcusable, did we possess a team of horses and the conveyance suitable to our station; but we do not, and a slippery progress through the ice and mire of the streets is not to be thought of. My brother ventures out to skate in the frozen marshes, and kneel alone in his Sabbath pew; on every street corner he may meet with a friend, and learn all the most urgent naval gossip.

In returning from church, Frank will often carry in his train a solicitous acquaintance, come to comment on his wife's blooming looks, and enquire about his mother's health. These occasional bursts of friendship and information do much to break the monotony of our routine and loosen the stranglehold of winter; but they are too brief and narrow in their content. Our acquaintance in Southampton is mostly derived from Frank's professional circle, and though I possess a fine naval fervour, and will assert that sailors are endowed with greater worth than any set of men in England, I must admit to a certain weariness in their society. They are entirely taken up with battle and ships, and with the advancement of themselves and their colleagues up the Naval List; and though dedicated to the preservation of the Kingdom, and possessed of noble hearts and true, they are, in general, a population whose schooling ended at roughly the age of fourteen. I had forgot, until my chance encounter with Louisa Seagrave, how much I craved the conversation of intelligible people — of those whose world is made large by the breadth of their ideas. As the years advance upon me, and my monetary resources grow ever more slim, I have begun to feel the walls of these rooms — whatever rooms I chance to inhabit, they are all very much of a piece — press inwards upon me. I am stifling from the limitations penury must impose, like a candle shut up in a coffin. I am desperate to lead a different life, and yet know that all possibility of exchange is denied me.

My heart whispers that I should have been better pleased with my lot, had I never formed an acquaintance with the Great — had I not sampled the dangerous delights of a certain notorious gentleman's world, or shared some particle of his confidence. I am sure that my sister, Cassandra, believes the same. But one cannot wish a hundredth of one's experience undone, any more than one might command the heart and will of another; and though I might lament the change, in having traded the summer beauties of the Peaks and all the elegance of a ducal household in Derbyshire, for the damp and draughty lodgings of winter in Southampton, I could not desire Derbyshire unseen. I might recognise the pernicious hand of regret clutching at my entrails, but I confess that I prefer a sense of loss — and its attendant spirit, depression — to ignorance of my own heart.

I have heard nothing of Lord Harold Trowbridge since parting from him at Bakewell last September. I have no expectation of a furtherance of our acquaintance. Indeed, in regarding the inner oppression that so often follows a sojourn in his company, I have lately begun to wonder whether I should leave off the acquaintance entirely. But I have not the heart for a formal break in friendship, nor, indeed, the strength. Hope of once more encountering The Gentleman Rogue, I confess, is one of the few impulses that sustains me in such a raw and unlovely February.