Jane and the Ghosts of Netley jam-7 Read online

  “Should you not like to see the theatre this evening, Fly? For who knows when you shall be called back to the St. Alban’s. Never put off until tomorrow the chance that might be seized today.”

  “Very true,” he said with a look of humour in his eye; “and you might serve me admirably this evening, without the slightest disarrangement of your plans for tomorrow. What is this Mrs. Challoner, Jane, that she commands such attention? I will allow her to be a very dashing young woman — but I should not have thought her quite in your style.”

  “Frank,” I said abruptly, “I must take you into my confidence on a matter of gravest import — but first, you must assure me that no word of what I tell you will pass to Mary, or, God forbid — to Mamma.”

  His sandy brows came down at this. “I know that you should never fall into error, Jane, by your own inclination — and so must assume that no wrongdoing is involved in your tale.”

  “None on my part. You are aware of my acquaintance with a gentleman by the name of Lord Harold Trowbridge?”

  “Cass mentioned something of him, once,” he said in an altered tone. “The fellow is a blackguard, I collect, who treated you most shabbily. Has he descended upon Southampton?”

  “He is one of the Government’s most trusted advisors, Frank, and privy to the councils of war. He has spent the better part of the past year on the Peninsula, communicating the movements of the French. Indeed, I believe your Admiralty consigns a principal part of its Secret Funds to Lord Harold.”

  “What do you know of the Secret Funds?” he demanded testily. And so, as we strolled the length of the High with a leg of mutton tied up in waxed paper, I related the baffling particulars of the past week: the sudden meeting aboard the Windlass, Lord Harold’s suspicions of Sophia Challoner, the oddities of Mr. Ord, and the cloaked figure I had encountered this morning in the depths of the subterranean passage. When I had done, Frank gazed at me with no little awe.

  “You are a dark horse, Jane! But if your Lord Harold has had the use of a naval vessel — and no less a brig than Windlass—then his currency is good as gold. I know Captain Strong, and though he is but a Master and Commander, and young at that, I am certain he should never engage in any havey-cavey business along the privateering line. I may add that no less a Tory than Castlereagh professes to hold his lordship in high regard — and Castlereagh, in my books, can never err.”[22]

  I murmured assent to the wisdom of Tory ministers.

  “But I should not have suspected you, Jane, of skullduggery by night or day — though I have always said that you possess the Devil’s own pluck! And the stories you have fobbed off on Mamma — all with a view to making her believe his lordship is smitten with you—!”

  “I did not have to work very hard at that, ” I retorted, somewhat nettled. “Mamma is ready to find evidence of love in the slightest male attention.”

  Frank disregarded this aside; his moment of levity had passed. “Lord Harold truly believes Mrs. Challoner to have ordered the murder of old Dixon — the firing of the seventy-four — and the liberation of the prison hulks? I should be terrified to enter her drawing-room tomorrow; and I wonder at his lordship securing the services of a gentlewoman in pursuit of his spy, when he might have had a brigade of marines secured around Netley Lodge, merely for the asking!”

  We had come up with the Dolphin Inn as he spoke, and almost without thinking, my feet slowed. I gazed towards the bow-fronted windows of the Assembly Room, and wondered which of the many glinting panes above disguised Lord Harold’s bedchamber. Had he returned from London? “A brigade of marines should never serve, Frank. Mrs. Challoner demands subtlety and care.”

  “I apprehend. No mere cutting-out expedition, no shot across the bows, what? Don’t wish the birds to fly before we’ve clipped their feathers?”

  My gaze fell from the Dolphin’s front to its side yard, where a group of ostlers loitered. They were the usual Southampton sort: roughly-dressed and fractured in their speech; sailors, some of them, turned onto land by dint of wounds. One of them lacked an arm; another had lost his leg below the knee, and supplied the want of a limb with an elegantly-carved peg. My brother no longer noticed such injuries; he witnessed them too often, once his deck was cleared for battle. The men of a ship of the line were torn asunder with a careless rapidity that defied belief in any God.

  An oddity among the familiar grouping claimed my attention: the figure of a girl in a Prussian-blue cloak, a simple poke bonnet tied beneath her chin. She stood as though in suspense, being unwilling to venture the roughness of the stable yard’s men, but determined to gain admittance. Her gaze was trained on the windows of the inn above, and it was clear at a glance that she sought someone within. The slightness of her frame suggested extreme youth; and when she darted a furtive look over her shoulder, as though fearful of being watched, I gasped aloud.

  “Flora Bastable! The maid dismissed from Netley Lodge! I should know those eyes anywhere — the exact colour of gentians, Frank, on a summer morn. But what can have brought her a full three miles from her home in Hound?”

  “What the Devil do you care for a maidservant’s business, Jane?” he demanded impatiently.

  At that moment, a chaise turned into the yard, blocking the girl from my view. When the way had cleared, she had vanished. Was it I who had driven her to flight? Had she sped deeper into the yard — or beyond it, to the alleyways and passages that led to the town’s walls?

  And whom had she sought within? Her late mistress’s enemy — Lord Harold ?

  “She certainly did not come here idly,” I mused, “and I read fear in her looks. Frank — say that you will help me! If the theatre is your object, persuade Mary that she is well enough to sit in French Street tonight; and insist upon my going to Netley Lodge tomorrow evening, despite Mamma’s protestations.”

  My brother placed his hands upon my shoulders.

  “I dislike the notion of you walking into such a den of vipers, Jane.”

  “I dislike it myself. But I dislike the murder of good men — and the burning of ships — even more.”

  “When you put it thus, my dear — I have no choice.” He drew my arm through his, and led me towards the Water.

  Chapter 20

  Message from an Unknown

  Wednesday, 2 November 1808

  At six o’clock this evening, my brother walked to Roger’s Coachyard to secure a hack chaise for my journey to Netley Lodge. Mary settled on my bed to watch me dress for Sophia Challoner’s party. I had laid my new black gown over a chair, and spread the paisley shawl across its folds.

  “It is a lovely gown, Jane.” She fingered it wistfully. “And the hat is too cunning for words! Mrs. Challoner must hold you in excessive regard, to send you such a gift!”

  “Possibly,” I returned, “but I believe it is the power of giving that she most truly enjoys. She informed me that she had not two groats to rub together when she married her late husband; and that spending her fortune is now the chief pleasure of her life.”

  “Then you do her a kindness in accepting of her generosity. Has she no children?”

  “None at all.”

  “Poor creature! A fortune should be nothing, if one were all alone in the world.”

  As I was unlikely ever to have a child myself, I found I could not agree with Mary; the spending of a fortune, in the absence of more demanding preoccupations, might be engaging in the extreme. “Mrs. Challoner should disagree with you. She places the virtues of solitude — or freedom, as she prefers to call it — above all else.”

  “She sounds an odd sort of lady. Do you admire her?”

  I hesitated. What did I feel for Sophia Challoner, beyond a persistent doubt as to her motives?

  “I admire her bravery, certainly. She fears neither man nor woman; handles her mettlesome horses herself; presides over an elegant establishment alone, with utter disregard for the opinions of others; and went so far as to view the battle of Vimeiro at close hand. She snaps her fingers a
t propriety and cuts a considerable dash. She is the sort of woman that may never enter a room without a dozen heads turning; indeed, she seems to thrive upon notice as others must upon air. But I do not think she possesses an easy soul, Mary. She is in search of something — sensation, the regard of others, a purpose to her restless life. I do not begin to understand her; but admire her?

  Yes — if you would mean the sort of admiration one reserves for a wild thing of great beauty.”

  “I have never heard you speak thus about anyone,” Mary said in a small voice. “You are so... so relentless, Jane, in the expression of your opinions. You may reduce a paragon to shivering shreds, with the well-placed application of a word.”

  I turned and stared at her. “Do I seem to you so vicious, Mary? So wantonly careless of the feelings of others?”

  She coloured immediately. “Not vicious, Jane. Not exactly. But I am always thankful that the regard of a sister prevents you from speaking so frankly as you might, your opinion of me.”

  My whole heart went out to her: the soft, round face under the cloud of curls; the wondering eyes of a child. Great strength of mind and purpose was concealed beneath her china-doll looks; and her goodness was unshakeable. But it was true I had disparaged Mary Gibson greatly when Frank first lost his heart to her: a mere girl of Ramsgate, with no more wit than fortune or influence. It was easy to dismiss Mary in her girlhood — but I could never regard the Captain’s wife so lightly now.

  “Will you oblige me, my dear — though I hesitate to ask it: will you help me to do up my hair as it should be done, to grace this remarkable hat?”

  She jumped down from the bed with her face alight. She had left several younger sisters, some of them barely out in Society, when she quitted Kent a few years ago; and I knew she missed the joys of preparing for Assemblies and balls — all the chatter of a ladies’ dressing room.

  She held the Equestrian Hat aloft, her narrowed gaze surveying me in the mirror.

  “You must let down the front section of your hair, Jane, for it is far too severe, and part it in the middle, I think. We shall curl the wings in bunches at the temple, and the brim of the hat shall dip just so. Have you, by any chance, a set of hair tongs?”

  As she wove the heated iron through my hair, I gripped the gold crucifix tightly in my palm. There would be time enough to clasp it about my throat, once I had crossed the River Itchen.

  It seemed that Mrs. Challoner had found an hour to commission her gown — and then had commanded several days and nights of Madame Clarisse’s time. She was breathtaking in her evening dress, of rich white Italian sarcenet; it was embroidered in gold thread with grapevines and leaves that ran across the low bodice and the edge of the cap sleeves. Scrollwork in gold ornamented the hem, which was a full foot shorter than the under-petticoat and train; gold buttons fastened the dress behind. Her hair was combed sleekly back along the right side of her head, and blossomed in curls over her left ear; a circlet of gold and diamonds ornamented her neck, and another the upper part of her arm. With her brilliant complexion and liquid dark eyes, she appeared a triumphant goddess — a victorious archangel, who might equally reward a youth for excellence at sport, or watch him broken under the wheels of a chariot. She was charmingly grouped as I entered the room, in a low chair by the fire, with Mr. Ord standing above her and a little girl of nine or ten on a hassock at her feet. The child wore a simple white gown of muslin, tied with a pale green sash; she was turning over the beads of a bracelet, and talking amiably of the afternoon’s delights. I should mention that the drawing-room of Netley Lodge provided a perfect backdrop to this elegant domestic scene: it was filled with curious treasures, brought from Oporto by Mrs. Challoner, and displayed about the room with artless taste. A brilliant bird, quite dead and stuffed, was posed in a gilt cage in one corner; Spanish scimitars hung from the walls; a drapery of embroidered stuff, in the Portuguese manner, was flung across a sopha; and heavy paintings in oils — dark as the Inquisition — stared down from the walls.

  “Miss Austen!” Sophia cried, and rose with alacrity to embrace me. I was startled at the effusion of her welcome, but returned her warmth unquestioningly. “How lovely you look in that gown!”

  Her eyes moved lightly over my figure — lingered an instant upon the golden crucifix at my throat, but without any peculiar regard — and took in the effect of the paisley shawl with obvious pleasure.

  “I must order a gown just like it, immediately — only not, I think, in black. Then we may be seen to be two girls together, sharing confidences, as we ride about the country in my charming phaeton! Maria — may I have the honour of introducing Miss Austen to your acquaintance?”

  At that moment, a lady was entering the drawingroom, in a magnificent gown of deep pink drawn up over a white satin slip; it was fastened at the knee with a cluster of silver roses and green foil, and allowed to drape on the opposite side to just above the bottom of the petticoat. Had she been less stately in her person, the gown might have been ravishing; but as it was, she appeared rather like an overlarge sweetmeat trundled through the room on a rolling cart. Her ample white bosom surged above the tight diamond lacing of her bodice; and a necklace of amethyst trembled in her décolletage.

  “Miss Austen — Mrs. Fitzherbert. Maria, this is Miss Austen — my sole friend in Southampton, and a very great adventuress on horseback.”

  “A pleasure,” said Maria Fitzherbert. She inclined her head. I curtseyed quite low — for one is so rarely in the presence of a royal mistress, particularly one who believes herself a wife, that I was determined no lack of civility should characterise our meeting. She smiled at me; said a word or two respecting “dear Sophia, and her bruising experience in Oporto,” made it known that she regarded me as an object of gratitude for having taken “dear Sophia” under my wing — and moved, in her ponderous fashion, towards the window seat. There she took up her workbag and commenced to unfurl a quantity of fringe.

  I had heard from my cousin Eliza de Feuillide, who knew a little of the lady, that Maria Fitzherbert was the most placid and domestic of creatures; that she loved nothing so much as a comfortable coze in the countryside, particularly at her house on the Steine in Brighton; that the Prince’s predilection for loud company and late hours was the saddest of trials; and that, if left to herself, she would summon no more than three friends of an evening, to make up her table at whist. She must be more than fifty, I presumed, and the sylph-like beauty she had commanded at eighteen — the year of her first marriage, to the heir of Lulworth Castle in Dorset — was now utterly fled. Mr. Weld had been six-and-twenty years her senior, and he had survived his wedding night but three months. She was no luckier in her second union, to Mr. Thomas Fitzherbert of Swynnerton Park and London; for he died but four years after their marriage, along with her infant son. She had been nine-and-twenty when at last the Prince prevailed against her scruples, and persuaded her to be his consort. Now the golden hair was turned to grey; her flawless complexion flaccid. But the Prince was said to prefer portly women.

  Mr. Ord crossed the room, apparently to admire Mrs. Fitzherbert’s fringe — his attitude all politeness — but a tug on the tails of his black coat from the little girl in the green sash brought him whirling around, at the ready to tickle her. She shrieked with delight, and hid herself behind the column of Sophia Challoner’s dress; Mr. Ord, however, forbore to pursue her there.

  “Minney,” said Mrs. Fitzherbert quietly, “it is time you were returned to Miss LaSalles; come, kiss my cheek and make your adieux.”

  The child affected to pout, and cast down her eyes; but she was a dutiful creature, and did not hesitate to peck the matron’s cheek and skip out of the room in search of her governess.

  “That is little Mary Seymour,” Sophia informed me in a low voice. “You will have heard of her troubled case, I am certain.”

  I had read of Minney Seymour, as she was known, in all the London papers. She was the seventh child of Lord Hugh and Lady Horatia Seymour, the la
tter a consumptive who had placed the infant in Mrs. Fitzherbert’s care before going abroad for a cure. Poor Lady Seymour, whose husband was a ViceAdmiral of the Royal Navy, had returned to England when her daughter was two — only to die of consumption a few weeks later. Her husband, serving on the West Indies station, had survived her but a matter of months. The child had remained with Mrs. Fitzherbert, much doted upon by the lady and her royal consort — until the Seymour family demanded her return when Minney was four. The furor that then ensued was indescribable.

  The Prince claimed immediately to have had conversations with the dying mother, in which she made over the care of her child to Mrs. Fitzherbert; he used his influence with every member of the Seymour clan; made over a fortune for the girl’s use, once she should be of age — and when the case was brought to the House of Lords two years since, His Royal Highness shamelessly manipulated the votes of his cronies to require a judgement in Mrs. Fitzherbert’s favour. Some part of the Seymour family was said to be outraged: not least that the child was to be raised by a Catholic, and subject to the polluted atmosphere of the Prince of Wales. But having seen the blooming girl and her adoptive mother, I could not think Minney Seymour so very unhappy. The child had never, one must remember, known her true parents — and could hardly be expected to rush from all the comforts of a royal household in Brighton, to the arms of her unknown relations.

  “I am very glad that you are come,” Sophia said in my ear. “Would you oblige me — before the rest of the guests are assembled — in walking into my dressing room for a little conversation? For I should dearly like to consult you.”

  “Of course,” I said in surprise.

  With a glittering smile at Mr. Ord, who now stood in a becoming attitude near Mrs. Fitzherbert’s seat, she swept out of the room and led me swiftly up the stairs. I could not imagine the source of such urgency — had she commissioned a gown of whose style she was in doubt, and required a second opinion?