“Minx,” Mr. Prowting said fondly. “She is a sad baggage, Miss Austen.”

“Catherine cares nothing for flirtation or good jokes,” Ann added with a curl of her lip, “and would not object to so many children, provided she were left in peace with her harp. Lord, Mamma! Only conceive of the look on Jane Hinton’s face, when Catherine was presented as the Squire’s wife! How you should love to parade it over the Hintons, with their endless preaching about entailments and usurpers.”

An appalled silence greeted this sally, but as Ann was engaged in adjusting her bodice lace, she failed to notice. Mrs. Prowting had flushed rosily, and her elder daughter could not lift up her eyes. It required only this united weakness, I supposed, for Ann’s impudence to rule the Prowting household.

“The Hintons?” my mother innocently enquired. “I do not recollect the name. Are they also our neighbours?”

“Mr. John-Knight Hinton is the son of our late rector, who was a most excellent man,” Prowting said with an appearance of discomfiture. “I wish that I could say the same of his son. But Jack Hinton is an indolent fellow, dissatisfied with his station in life, and unequal to improving it by either wit or exertion.”

“You are too unkind, Papa.” Catherine’s countenance was suffused with a blush. “Mr. Hinton’s character is good, and his understanding — tho’ perhaps not brilliant—”

“—is as high as you may safely look for a beau,” her sister observed waspishly.

“Ann,” Mrs. Prowting protested.

“The Church would not do for him,” continued the magistrate with impatience, “—nor yet the Army; and as he is the youngest child and only son, Mrs. Austen, he has been much spoilt. Tho’ now fully five-and-thirty years of age if he is a day, Jack lives in idleness with his elder sister at Chawton Lodge, directly opposite the Great House.”

My mother glanced from one Prowting to another in considerable puzzlement. “The Lodge did not pass to the new incumbent, I collect?”

“Dear Mr. Papillon — such a kind gentleman, and so eloquent on the subject of forgiveness — rebuilt the old Rectory when Mrs. Knight gave him the Chawton living several years since,” Mrs. Prowting supplied. “But the Lodge was not in that lady’s gift; it was formerly the Dower House, and has passed through the female line to the Hinton family.”

My mother frowned. “Then I must have seen the place not an hour ago, when you were so kind as to escort me to the Great House gates, Mr. Prowting. I wonder you did not mention it. And Mr. Hinton’s Christian name is John-Knight, you say? And he lives in the former Dower House? Are the family at all related to the Kentish Knights?”

It was the Knight family that had adopted my brother Edward as their heir, and the Knight family that had inherited the manors of Chawton, Steventon, and Godmersham that Neddie now enjoyed. There had once been Knights in Hampshire, but they were all died out; and their Kentish cousins had come into these distant properties as a matter of course. My mother’s questions were posed in all innocence, but their effect was galvanic.

“Lord!” cried Ann Prowting, “Do you mean to say you are ignorant of what everybody hereabouts knows — that the Hintons and all their relations are the last true descendants of the Hampshire Knights?”

“Ann,” her mother attempted once more. “I do not think it is for us—”

“But, Mamma,” she retorted impatiently, “it is beyond everything great! Here Jack Hinton has been saying for an age that he ought to be Squire of Chawton — and the Squire’s mamma don’t even know it!”

Chapter 5

Chapters in a Life

Wednesday, 5 July 1809

A flood of birdsong roused me at half past six this morning. I opened my eyes to find the sunlight full in my face; the bedchamber looks south and the window is still undraped. Strange, I thought, to hear no sound of the sea. The relentless murmur of wave upon shingle was one aspect of Southampton life I should regret.

With consciousness came the memory of the dead man in the cellar; there might be intelligence today of both his name and the nature of his end. I reached for my dressing gown and crept quietly out of the room, determined not to wake my mother — but I need have had no fears for her slumber; the shock and exertion of yesterday, coupled with Mr. Prowting’s excellent claret, ensured that she should lie slumbering yet a while.

The peace of this country morning was indescribable, a balm for jangled nerves. I stood in the silent kitchen, and listened to the rustling of some small creature against the exterior boards, the lowing of cattle in the distance, and the crowing of a cock — then threw open the back door and stepped out into the yard. A tin pail hung on a hook nailed to the lintel; I took it up, and moved to the well to draw some water. This, I decided, as the pump moved easily on its oiled hinge and the clear water began to flow, should be the work I would claim within our new household: the drawing of water and the preparation of fires in the early morning, the making of a simple breakfast, when everyone else lay abed. The freedom and quiet of an undisturbed hour should be a luxury beyond everything; indeed, it was all the luxury I desired.

Having escorted us from his dining parlour the previous evening, Mr. Prowting had helped us to lay a simple bed of coals in the kitchen hearth before departing for his own bed. The fire, properly banked, would serve to boil our tea this morning. The cottage boasted no ingenious modern stove, nothing but a spit and a quantity of iron hooks for the arrangement of kettles, and even Martha might find the conditions less than desirable; but Mr. Prowting had pledged himself to the task of securing a few servants among that class of village folk as were accustomed to labour in genteel houses — had several prospects already in mind — should be happy to interview them so early as today, etc., etc. — and should send the likeliest recruits to my mother for final approval. I foresaw little difficulty, delay, or exertion for myself in the business, and was content this morning to set my mother’s kettle on the fire.

The task done, I hesitated briefly in the small kitchen. Ought I to dress and walk out into the street, in search of the woman Mrs. Prowting assured me was the best baker of fresh bread in the village? Or could I trust to Providence and my mother’s slumber a little longer, and steal a glimpse at the contents of Lord Harold’s trunk?

After yesterday’s discovery of the corpse, Mr. Prowting had carried my bequest to the henhouse for safekeeping, as I did not think it kind to require the gentleman to enter a stranger’s bedchamber. The Rogue’s lead key hung heavily in my dressing-gown pocket. I curled my fingers around its length and walked swiftly back out into the yard, in the direction of the outbuildings.

It is in the nature of treasure chests to yield their contents unwillingly. I expected a lengthy engagement with the lock that dangled from the hasp; expected to be reduced to stratagems and tears, blood flowing from my ravaged fingers — but in the event, the key turned in a well-behaved fashion and released the heavy iron pad easily from its bolt.

Barely breathing, I lifted the trunk lid with care. From Lord Harold’s last testament — his wish that I might bring order to his correspondence and somehow construct a narrative from a chaos of events — I had anticipated much confusion of parchment. But it seemed that this morning all my cherished notions were to be o’erthrown. Before my eyes was a compartmented cabinet, as neatly arranged as a solicitor’s desk, and filled with all manner of letters bound up tidily in varicolored ribbons. In one area of the cabinet was a place reserved for leather-bound copybooks; in another was a grouping of ledgers. Several rolled documents, when unfolded, were revealed as ships’ charts and battlefield maps — at a glance, I could discern the entrepôts of the Indian Ocean, and a plan of the city of Paris.