It was remarkable how neatly he offered this intelligence, pat as a rehearsed recital, and I must be forgiven for meeting it with as much suspicion as interest. I studied Count Julien’s profile as he bent over his dinner, and noted once more the maturity behind the youthful façade — the look of a young man too well-acquainted with the world.

“You are an admirable son to devote your evening to a parcel of dowds, Count. What is the meaning of such charity?”

I had used the phrase deliberately, as reflecting Eliza’s careless remark, but in truth the insipid conversation of several women in their fifties, two spinsters nearly twice his age, and a clutch of gentlemen whose long association with Mrs. Latouche’s husbands recommended them to her society, must have proved unbearably tedious to the boy. I was certain some other interest compelled his attendance; and my evil genius whispered that he was come in the guise of spy — at his mother’s behest. Was it possible that the Comtesse d’Entraigues had learned to fear her oldest friend — Eliza?

“Dowds!” the Count returned, with an easing of his expression; “you move me to utter a compliment on your beauty, Miss Austen — for certainly no one treated to the vision you present, could proclaim you a dowd!”

“I hope I am not such a gudgeon as to credit such stuff,” I said calmly. “Do admit that you are bored to desperation — and accept our thanks for enlivening the party. What are the usual pursuits for a gentleman of nineteen? I enquire as the aunt of several young men, who shall be on the Town in a few years.”

Count Julien allowed me to turn the conversation from the Princess with good grace. “For those of means as well as birth, the possibilities are legion! There are the clubs, where one might play at cards or dice; the wagers on horseflesh; the carriage-driving in the Park; cockfights and mills — these are the prize-fights, you understand — and of course, the pleasures of Society, such as assemblies at Almack’s, or the private parties of the ton.”

“Decidedly, you mortify your flesh in enduring this evening! I am even more in your debt, sir. Do gentlemen such as yourself patronise the Muslin Company? Or is that reserved for an elder set?”

If I had expected to jar his complacency — excite his consciousness of his father’s affairs — I was to be disappointed.

“I spoke of those who possess means,” he reminded me, “not merely birth. The High Flyers scorn those of us whose hearts are ampler than our purses; and if I may be so coarse as to declare it, Miss Austen, your genteel ladies are much the same. I have a title — a certain breeding — but I am heir to a château presently in ruins somewhere in the Auvergne, and the doors of the ton are not always open to me, you understand. When the gift of friendship is offered — as Mrs. Latouche offers it — I should be a fool to do other than honour her. Presently she will beg me to play the pianoforte — that is my gift — and after a little show of modest unwillingness, I shall oblige. It is possible I may have to earn my bread in such a way, with time.”

“Surely not! Even in England there are any number of expensive young men, whose fortunes are unequal to their births,” I persisted. “Second sons, for instance — or seventh sons. Surely they shift and contrive?”

“You think me suited to the Church?” said he, with a sardonic lift of the brow. “My father’s cleverness and my mother’s art are my sole inheritances, Miss Austen; neither is given to a pious turn. I had much better marry my fortune — if any schoolroom chit possessed of means will entertain my suit. That is the solution so many of your second sons employ. But which heiress? Perhaps Miss East will have me, if I can but acquire a taste for reading.”

The cynicism of the speech should have been an effrontery, had it not been uttered with a boy’s painful bitterness; and for an instant, I glimpsed the raw youth full-blown behind the polished manners, and pitied Count Julien. He reminded me a little of my Willoughby — born to a station he could not maintain, but for a desperate gaming — the courting of aged relatives — and finally, the sale of his soul in pursuit of an heiress. Society is reckless, in teaching its youth to despise honest labour.

“If not the Church, then consider the Law,” I suggested. “Or, my dear Count—! You might be endlessly useful as a secretary, particularly among such men as require translations from the French! Consider the realm of politics. Surely with your father’s connexions … I know of an Earl’s son, Charles Malverley, who finds no shame in such a situation. … ”

Count Julien rose abruptly from his chair, tho’ the second course was hardly begun. “I can well believe that Malverley is insensible to shame,” he said, in a voice tense and low. “He has no feelings to offend. You must forgive me, Miss Austen — I find I cannot support this party after all.”

He would have quitted the room on these words, but that Mrs. Latouche clapped her hands, and said with obvious delight, “Julien! Do you mean to play? His performance on the pianoforte is most superior, I assure you.” With effort, and an enchanting smile, the impoverished nobleman bowed. “Of course, chère madame,” he said. “You have only to call the tune.”

IT WAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE MOST EXQUISITE music I have ever been privileged to hear. His fingers moved with a delicacy and precision that lacked nothing in skill; but the emotions they conjured forth owed everything to passion. I had only to listen once to Count Julien d’Entraigues, to know that in him I had met a young man of complex forces; a man whose obvious charm hid a subtler, more potent self; a man who might be capable of anything.

I quitted the house on Portman Square not long after his hands had stilled, and the sweetness of the final notes died away in the air. There seemed nothing more to keep us in that over-furnished drawing-room.

“Beethoven, I think,” Eliza murmured as our hackney pulled up in Sloane Street; and I was still sufficiently bemused — canvassing every detail, every word of my conversation with the Frenchman that evening— that I failed to pay sufficient attention to her words, or even to Eliza herself. I was already mounting the stairs as she paid off the jarvey; I had opened the door — it had been left on the latch — and had stepped into the front passage as the hackney pulled away. It was only as I turned to pull off my gloves and remove my bonnet, that I caught Eliza’s sharp cry.

Chapter 24

The Gentleman in His Cups

Monday, 29 April 1811, cont.

SHE LAY IN A CRUMPLED HEAP OF FEATHERS AND silk on the flagway, but a yard from the door.

“Eliza!” I cried in horror. “Manon — Manon, come quickly! Your mistress has swooned!”

I hastened back across the threshold and knelt over the limp form. Eliza’s arms were flung above her head, and her reticule had slipped from her hand; in the glow of the streetlamp her pallor was dreadful.

“Good God, what can have happened?” I placed my arm behind her shoulders to support her, and raised her from the stones. She groaned pitiably.

“Sacre dieu!” Manon muttered beside me. She wore her nightdress and cap; the faint scent of lavender rose from the fresh linen on the chill night air. The maid’s fingers, where they touched my arm, were icy; and I saw that she had not stayed even to don a dressing gown. “Let us take her inside.”

I grasped Eliza’s torso, and Manon supported her knees; and so we half-carried, half-dragged my sister’s lifeless form inside the house. Madame Bigeon was standing in the front passage, her candle raised, her aged face piteously crumpled.

“Pauvre madame! She fainted?”

“I must suppose it to be so — and then struck her head, perhaps, on the flagway. She is certainly insensible.”