Jane and the Barque of Frailty Read online

  Outstanding Praise for JANE AND THE BARQUE OF FRAILTY

  “Barron … gives us the Jane Austen she believes in … an acute observer with a keen understanding of human nature.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Barron has fashioned another intricate charmer.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “Satisfying right to the last revelation … Like Regency great Georgette Heyer, the author excels at both period detail and modern verve. Aping Austen’s cool, precise and very famous voice is a hard trick to pull off, but Barron manages it with aplomb.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Charming, literate and unequaled in its dissection of Regency-era social injustices.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Austen fans will enjoy Barron’s period detail and series devotees won’t want to miss the latest.”

  —Booklist

  “Barron’s fictitious first-person account of Jane Austen as an amateur sleuth brings Regency London richly to life.”

  —Romantic Times (four stars)

  “Rich in historical color and interesting detail … Readers of literary mysteries and fans of Jane Austen will surely enjoy the latest episode.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Jane’s ninth adventure builds to the intensity of a thriller but never abandons the gentle language and good manners of a proper Regency story.”

  —Historical Novels Review

  “Barron has written an exciting Regency historical mystery that gives the reader a glimpse of the dark side of the ton. Historical mystery readers will love this tale.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Barron’s research is impeccable, bringing the sights and sounds of Austen’s era to the page with details and sparkle.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Readers both old and new will celebrate this book, its author, and its protagonist.”

  —Mystery News

  JANE AND HIS LORDSHIP’S LEGACY

  “Exquisitely leisurely, with time for whist, tea, strolls across the lawn, church homilies, digressions on those ‘too high in the instep,’ and plenty for Jane’s banker brother and treasure-hunting mother to do, leaving her to savor her lover’s papers.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Considered by some as the best of the ‘neo-Austens,’ Barron gets high marks for authenticity and wit.”

  —Booklist

  “More fine prose for an appreciative audience.”

  —Library Journal

  “Readers who hope to recapture, if only briefly, the pleasure of reading Jane Austen for the first time will welcome Barron’s eighth Jane Austen mystery …. As usual, Barron has masterfully imitated Austen’s voice.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Barron continues to write a good, quick-moving plot with plenty of period details …. Barron continues to combine truth and fiction successfully.”

  —Drood Review of Mystery

  “Barron’s depiction of Austen’s life is spot on!”

  —Anniston Star

  “Barron’s prose style skillfully mimics the tone of Austen’s work.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  “An elegant series.”

  —Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

  JANE AND THE GHOSTS OF NETLEY

  “Barron’s cause is aided by her deft marshaling of historical detail—the textiles alone (Sprigged muslin! Bombazine!) are worth the price of admission—and, of course, a dash of genuine erotic friction between Jane and the roguish Lord Harold.”

  —Time

  “The latest installment in Stephanie Barron’s charming series … [is] a first-rate historical mystery. Barron writes a lively adventure that puts warm flesh on historical bones. The nice thing is she does so in a literary style that would not put Jane Austen’s nose out of joint.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “The books are well-written and well-crafted. Jane is an endearing character. And Jane and the Ghosts of Netley is the best of the lot—and its ending is the most memorable.”

  —Denver Post

  “A wonderfully intricate plot full of espionage and intrigue … The Austen voice, both humorous and fanciful, with shades of Northanger Abbey, rings true as always. Once again Barron shows why she leads the pack of neo-Jane Austens.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “With elements of an espionage thriller and a Regency romance, [this] is a book Barron fans have been awaiting. The suspense is superb …. Barron brings historical mysteries to a new level.”

  —Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine

  “Barron remains true to Austen’s real character … [and] is equally skillful in depicting the daily life of impoverished gentility during the Regency era Well worth reading.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  “Stephanie Barron’s series wittily blends Austen’s life and her novels into satisfying mysteries and what could have been Settle in for a long session of pleasurable reading.”

  —Mystery News

  JANE AND THE PRISONER OF WOOL HOUSE

  “There’s plenty to enjoy in the crime-solving side of Jane[She] is as worthy a detective as Columbo.”

  — USA Today

  “An ideal vehicle for the classic cozy murder mystery.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “If you appreciate the literary acumen of Jane Austen the author, you might be surprised to discover you are even more entranced by Jane Austen the detective!”

  —Aptos (CA) Times

  JANE AND THE STILLROOM MAID

  “Another first-rate addition to the series.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Barron does a wonderful job of evoking the great British estates and the woes of spinsters living in that era … often echoing the rhythms of the Austen novels with uncanny ease.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Very appealing … As in Austen’s novels, the relationships are complex and full of suppressed passion.”

  —Booklist

  JANE AND THE GENIUS OF THE PLACE

  “This is perhaps the best ‘Jane’ yet. Barron’s mysteries also educate the reader, in a painless fashion, about the political, social and cultural concerns of Austen’s time. Jane [is] a subtle but determined sleuth.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Barron tells the tale in Jane’s leisurely voice, skillfully re-creating the tone and temper of the time without a hint of an anachronism.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Cleverly blends scholarship with mystery and wit, weaving Jane Austen’s correspondence and works of literature into a tale of death and deceit.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE

  “Barron’s high level of invention testifies to an easy acquaintance with upper-class life and culture in Regency England and a fine grasp of Jane Austen’s own literary style—not to mention a mischievous sense of fun.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “A pleasant romp … [Barron] maintains her ability to mimic Austen’s style effectively if not so closely as to ruin the fun.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Stephanie Barron continues her uncanny re-creation of the ‘real’ Jane Austen …. Barron seamlessly unites historical details of Austen’s life with fictional mysteries, all in a close approximation of Austen’s own lively, gossipy style.”

  —Feminist Bookstore News

  JANE AND THE MAN OF THE CLOTH

  “Nearly as wry as Jane Austen herself, Barron delivers pleasure and amusement in her second delicious Jane Austen mystery …. Worthy of its origins, this book is a delight.”


  —Publishers Weekly

  “If Jane Austen really did have the ‘nameless and dateless’ romance with a clergyman that some scholars claim, she couldn’t have met her swain under more heartthrobbing circumstances than those described by Stephanie Barron.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “The words, characters and references are so real that it is a shock to find that the author is not Austen herself.”

  —Arizona Republic

  “Delightful … captures the style and wit of Austen.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  JANE AND THE UNPLEASANTNESS AT SCARGRAVE MANOR

  “Splendid fun!”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Happily succeeds on all levels: a robust tale of manners and mayhem that faithfully reproduces the Austen style—and engrosses to the finish.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A lighthearted mystery … The most fun is that ‘Jane Austen’ is in the middle of it, witty and logical, a foil to some of the ladies who primp, faint, and swoon.”

  —Denver Post

  “A thoroughly enjoyable tale. Fans of the much darker Anne Perry … should relish this somewhat lighter look at the society of fifty years earlier.”

  —Mostly Murder

  Also by Stephanie Barron

  Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

  Jane and the Man of the Cloth

  Jane and the Wandering Eye

  Jane and the Genius of the Place

  Jane and the Stillroom Maid

  Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

  Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

  Jane and the Barque of Frailty

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Georgette Heyer, in thanks for all the hours of pleasure her books have given me.

  Chapter 1

  A Night Among the Ton

  No. 64 Sloane Street, London

  Monday, 22 April 1811

  ∼

  CONCEIVE, IF YOU WILL, OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, Covent Garden, on an evening such as this: the celebrated Mrs. Siddons being rumoured to appear, after too many months’ absence from the stage; the play Macbeth, with all the hideous power of Shakespeare’s verse and Sarah Siddons’s art; and the Polite World of London brawling in the midst of Bow Street, in an effort to reach its place in the box before the curtain should rise.

  Such a welter of chairmen, link boys, fashionable carriages, street sweeps, porters, and coachmen! Such oaths, blasted into the ears of delicately-nurtured females, carried hurriedly to the paving lest their satin slippers should be soiled in the horses’ dung! Such an array of silks and muslins, turbans and feathers, embroidered shawls and jewelled flounces! The scent of a thousand flowers on the air, the odour of tobacco and ripe oranges and fish from the markets in Covent Garden, the great theatre’s windows thrown open against the warmth of the spring night and the heat of too many bodies filling the vast hall! The flickering of wax candles, a fortune’s worth thrown up into the gleaming chandeliers; the rising pitch of conversation, the high screech of a woman’s laughter, the impropriety of a chance remark, the hand of a gentleman resting where it should not, on the person of his lady—all this, like a prodigal feast spread out for my delectation.

  The vague shadow, too, of a Bow Street Runner lounging in the doorway of the magistrate’s offices opposite—which I chanced to glimpse as brother Henry swept me to the theatre door; lounging like an accusation as he surveyed the Fashionable Great, whose sins and peccadilloes only he may be privileged to know.

  It is a scene hardly out of the ordinary way for the majority of the ton, that select company of wealthy and wellborn who rule what is commonly called Society; but for a lady in the midst of her thirty-fifth year, denied a proper come-out or a breathless schoolgirl’s first Season, a shabby-genteel lady long since on the shelf and at her last prayers—it must be deemed a high treat. Add that I am a hardened enthusiast of the great Sarah Siddons, and have been disappointed before in my hopes of seeing her tread the boards—and you will apprehend with what pleasurable anticipation I met the curtain’s rise.1

  “Jane,” Eliza murmured behind her fan as the Theatre Royal fell silent, “there is Lord Moira, Henry’s particular friend and an intimate of the Prince Regent. Next his box you will recognise Lord Castlereagh, I am sure—was there ever anything so elegant as his lady’s dress? It is as nothing, however, to the costume of the creature seated to our left—the extraordinarily handsome woman with the flashing dark eyes and the black curls. That is the great Harriette Wilson, my dear—the most celebrated Impure in London, with her sisters and intimate friends; do not observe her openly, I beg! Such gentlemen as have had her in keeping! I am sure our Harriette might bring down the Government, were she merely to speak too freely among her intimates. They do say that even Wellington—”

  The pressure of Henry’s hand upon his wife’s arm silenced Eliza, and I was allowed to disregard the men of government equally with the demimondaine in her rubies and paint, and sit in breathless apprehension as a cabal of witches plotted their ageless doom.

  I am come to London in the spring of this year 1811—the year of Regency and the poor old King’s decline into madness, the year of Buonaparte’s expected rout in the Peninsula, of straitened circumstances and immense want among the poor—to watch like an anxious parent over the printing of my first novel. Yes, my novel; or say rather the child of my heart, which is to be sent into the Great World without even the acknowledgement of its mother, being to be published by Mr. Thomas Egerton only as By a Lady.

  And what is the title and purport of this improving work, so ideally suited to the fancy of ladies both young and old?

  I have been used to call it Elinor & Marianne, after the fashion of the great Madame d’Arblay, whose exemplary tales Camilla, Evelina, Cecilia, etc., have set the fashion in literature for ladies. Mr. Egerton, however, is of the opinion that such a title is no longer the mode, the style being for qualities akin to Mrs. Brunton’s Self-Controul. I have debated the merits of Worthiness and Self-Worth, or An Excellent Understanding. Eliza, on the other hand, would hew to the sensational.

  “How do you like The Bodice Rip’d from Side to Side, Jane? Or perhaps—I think now only of Marianne— The Maid Forsworn and All Forlorn?”

  “But what of Willoughby?” brother Henry objected. “Should he not be given pride of place? Call it then The Seducer, and have done.”

  “It shall be Sense and Sensibility,” I replied firmly, “for I am partial to sibilants; and besides, Cassandra approves the division: Elinor a creature of Reason, and Marianne entirely of Feeling. You must know I am in the habit of being guided by my sister. —Insofar as my inclination allies with hers, of course.”

  Henry and his wife cried out against this, abusing Cassandra for the excessive starch of her notions, and the quiet propriety which must always characterise my sister’s views. I ought possibly to have paid more heed to their opinions—it is Henry, after all, who has franked me in the publishing world, having paid Mr. Egerton to print my little book—but I am tired of toying with titles. All my anxiety is for the pace of the printing, which is excessively slow. I am resident in London a full month, and yet we have arrived only at Chapter Nine, and Willoughby’s first appearance. At this rate, the year will have turned before the novel is bound, tho’ it was faithfully promised for May—a set of three volumes in blue boards, with gilt letters.

  “Jane,” Eliza prompted as the curtain fell on Act I of Macbeth, “you are hardly attending. Here is the Comtesse d’Entraigues come to pay us a call. How delightful!”

  I roused myself quick enough to observe that lady’s entrance into our box, with a headdress of feathers nearly sweeping the ceiling—a quizzing-glass held to her eye—an expanse of bony shoulder and excess of décolleté—and schooled my countenance to amiability. There are many words I might chuse to apostrophise the French Countess—one of Eliza’s acquaintances from her previous marriage to a nobleman of Louis’s
reign—but delightful is not one of them. The Comtesse d’Entraigues was used to be known as Anne de St.-Huberti, when she set up as an opera singer in the days of the Revolution; but by either name she is repugnant to me, being full of acid and spite. Eliza hints that her friend was the Comte’s mistress before he was constrained to marry her—and at full five-and-fifty, Anne de St.-Huberti must be grateful for the protection of d’Entraigues’s name. She paints her pitted cheeks in the mode of thirty years since; is given to the excessive use of scent; affects a blond wig; and should undoubtedly be termed a Frightby the ruthless bucks of Town.

  “Eliza, mignon,” she crooned as she presented one powdered cheek in all the appearance of affection; “how hagged you look this evening, to be sure! The years, they have never sat lightly upon you, bien sûr! You have been fatigued, sans doute, by your visit to Surrey last evening—it was a great deal too good of you to solace my exile!”

  We had indeed ventured into Surrey last night, despite all my doubts regarding Sunday travel, to enjoy an evening of music at the d’Entraigues abode. The old Count spoke nothing but French, and I understood but a fraction of the communication, tho’ Henry admirably held up his end, and declared the gentleman to be a man of parts and considerable information. The son, young Count Julien, who appears everything an Exquisite of the ton should be, with his excellent tailoring, his disordered locks, his shining boots, and his quantity of fobs and seals, delighted us with his superior performance upon the pianoforte.

  The Comtesse had deigned to sing.

  Taken all together, I should rather endure a full two hours of her ladyship’s airs in the Italian than a few moments of her conversation; and as she and Eliza put their heads together, I considered instead how the Theatre Royal might serve in a novel: the comings and goings of great personages, a lady’s chance encounter with an Unknown; or the appearance of a Rogue, for example, who might interpret the slight nothings and subtle displays of the ton with an understanding far more penetrating than my own …

  It was impossible to be in London at the height of the Season without reverting in thought to Lord Harold Trowbridge. That late denizen of Brooks’s Club, that consummate sportsman and intimate of princes, should certainly have graced one of these lofty boxes, and been in close converse even now with Lord Castlereagh, perhaps, however little he liked that Tory gentleman’s conduct of war. He should have profited by the play’s interval in dallying with a lady, or shown himself one of Harriette Wilson’s favourites, his sleek frame displayed to advantage against the marble columns of the tier. But would he, in truth, have noticed Jane?