Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery Page 24

  “You go ahead, Jane,” Cassandra said as we achieved the landing. “I shall just stop a moment to enquire of Sackett whether Mr. West requires anything. Poor man, he shall be entirely forgot in all these preparations for the ball!”

  “He is in excellent hands, Cass,” I replied. “Indeed—”

  I broke off at the sound of a coach and horses pulling up before the South Porch, and moved to the landing window that I might have a clear view of the scene below. Cassandra silently joined me. Eliza had said nothing of any arrivals this evening.

  The carriage was a handsome landau pulled by four horses. The sidelights revealed a crest on one panel—but in the dusk it was impossible to decipher. Had Lord Bolton returned?

  A liveried footman jumped down from the landau’s rear seat and opened the carriage door. A gentleman stepped out, and turned to take the hand of a lady within.

  Both were arrayed from head to toe in black: deepest mourning.

  “Edward Gambier,” Cassandra whispered, “and her ladyship. What can they possibly mean by attending a ball?”

  We stared at one another, perplexed. Neither of the Gambiers should be within a mile of a Twelfth Night celebration in their present bereavement. “Perhaps they have no notion a revel is in view,” I said weakly.

  “Then why are they come back, Jane?”

  “Perhaps they mean to accuse one of us of murder.”

  I WAS MORE FORWARD in my dress than my sister, and thus descended to the Saloon to await the dinner bell alone. I suspected Cass of dawdling in the upper passages in the hope of meeting the nurse, Sackett, and found myself yearning for a return of her usual good sense. There have been moments in the nearly forty years I have known Cassandra when I wished her more spirited—more open to experience and novelty—less preoccupied with what was correct than with what was enlivening. But if her present infatuation with Raphael West must be taken as a sign of the latter, I must be more circumspect in my wishes.

  “Miss Austen,” Edward Gambier said with a bow as I entered the Saloon. “I daresay you did not expect to meet again so soon.”

  “That does not make the event any less desirable,” I returned, extending my hand to him. “Rather the reverse.”

  “You are very good.”

  He was less smiling and jovial than I remembered; not to be wondered at, now that he had known his sister’s loss some days. Grief is more likely to tighten its hold in the first week, when disbelief has given way to the horror of acceptance. I noted his bleak eye and haggard appearance, and pitied him.

  Thomas-Vere Chute then entered the Saloon, to exclaim over Edward Gambier’s presence. I concluded that not only the Austens remarked upon the sudden arrival.

  “The obsequies in Bath were exactly as one should hope?” Thomas-Vere enquired in a lowered voice.

  “Indeed. Tho’ my poor mother is now prostrate at the grave. I should not have left her, indeed, did my aunt not command my support. Between the claims of two elderly ladies, how is one to chuse? Neither ought to be denied.”

  Except that one had a fortune to bestow.

  I met Thomas-Vere’s gaze. He lifted his brows slightly; he, too, was as puzzled as I.

  “Your aunt accompanied you here?” I enquired, with a false air of surprize.

  “Yes. She is greatly fatigued from our journey, however, and takes dinner in her rooms.”

  “If you chuse to do the same, Mr. Gambier, no one should blame you.”

  Edward Gambier gave me a wintry smile. “I find that I require the balm of Society, Miss Austen. I have a difficult task before me, and must take solace in the support of my friends.”

  Good lord, did he indeed intend to accuse one of us of murder?

  “You may count me among them, sir. But surely you do not refer to our Twelfth Night ball tomorrow evening?”

  “Ball?”

  William Chute appeared in the room, my mother on his arm, and advanced upon us. “Gambier! I did not for the world expect you! To what do we owe this pleasure, my dear fellow?”

  Edward Gambier knit his delicate brows. “To my uncle, sir. Admiral Lord Gambier. Did he not communicate his intention of descending upon The Vyne tomorrow?”

  “If he did, the communication was mislaid,” Chute retorted tartly. “But no matter. He is very welcome, to be sure. What is one more, when a hundred are expected?”

  “A hundred?” Gambier repeated blankly.

  “For the ball,” I supplied.

  “Good God, I had no idea.” He accepted the glass of wine Chute offered him, and tossed back half of it. “My uncle has not yet learnt of Mary’s death.”

  “Dashed awkward,” Thomas-Vere said.

  “He wrote to us in Bath,” Gambier persisted, “that he intended breaking his home journey here, Mr. Chute. At The Vyne. He means to present you with a copy of the Treaty of Ghent. You are sure you have had no word?”

  Realisation overcame me. Benedict L’Anglois. He had received the Admiral’s communication, and opened it in the way of secretaries scouting their employer’s correspondence. Rather than meet the Admiral—he had bolted.

  “My aunt’s letter breaking the news cannot have reached him before he left Ghent,” Gambier went on. “In good conscience, we could not allow my uncle to learn the intelligence of Mary’s end from mere acquaintance. He was excessively fond of her. We came post-haste to arrive before him, so that he might hear the dreadful truth from our lips.”

  “I see,” Chute said drily. “We must hope the Admiral is a little delayed in his journey, lest the revelries in this house tomorrow appear in exceedingly poor taste. Let me refill your glass, Edward—you have need of it.”

  THE TWELFTH NIGHT

  28

  THE UNEXPECTED GUEST

  Thursday, 5th January 1815

  The Vyne

  Cassandra insisted upon taking a turn with Sackett at sitting up by Raphael West during the night. When I closed the bedchamber door, there she was, gently lit by a shielded candle, a few feet from his bedside. If West did not instantly offer for Cass’s hand in marriage upon regaining his senses, there was no justice in the world; and I attempted to be sanguine about it. I had long since given up any pretensions to his interest I might have entertained. I was unwilling to fight my sister for happiness. What man could resist the mixture of sweetness and devotion Cass presented? Regardless of the fact that she should be two-and-forty in a matter of days? He was some years older than that himself.

  I was wakeful much of the night, being alone in our bedchamber. In the early hours of morning, Cass crept into bed, and I was able to sleep a little. It fell to me, however, to deliver young Caroline’s final gift of the Christmas season—Jemima’s Twelfth Night costume.

  This was a diminutive domino robe and mask Cassandra and I had fashioned out of a startling shade of pink silk. It was designed to fall in rustling folds over the doll’s head and gown, sweeping to her feet, with intriguing almond-shaped openings in the black eye mask. This was the usual garb worn by fine ladies who condescended to appear at publick masques; and no rakish beau should presume to know Jemima’s identity, in the midst of the Children’s Ball. Caroline might clamour for a matching domino, but she must be contented with faerie tulle.

  As I returned from the nursery wing along the upper passage in the weak light of dawn, my hair hanging down my back, I was startled to discern a wraith-like figure wavering in a doorway ahead of me. I stopped short and peered through the gloom. It was Raphael West.

  He had one hand on the doorjamb and the other pressed to his eyes. His head undoubtedly ached. But he was upright—God in Heaven! How had he managed it?

  He stepped forward, and swayed.

  I ran to him, catching him under the arms as he fell. He was exceedingly heavy for one of my weight, but I was not overpowered.

  “Raphael,” I said urgently. “Raphael.”

  He opened his eyes, sense swimming in them, as unfixed as stars in the night sky.

  “Jane,” he said wonderingl
y, and touched my cheek with his fingers. “A dream. I have such dreams—”

  “No,” I said. “I am here. Where is Sackett? Where is—”

  He lifted my chin with one finger, and set his lips on mine.

  He acted as all dreamers do, as tho’ under the compulsion of a greater god. I was party to the spell, for I did not protest or break his hold; I merely swooned beneath him, conscious of a wetness on my cheeks where tears of thankfulness slipped down. I was thankful for his life. For the sense that had returned to him. For this benediction at his hands. When at last he released me, his dreaming gaze still not entirely of this world, I said only, “You must go back to your bed. You had a fall on the hunting field some days since. You require your sleep.”

  He nodded once, turned, and immediately threw himself down on the bedclothes. I closed the door as quietly as possible; I do not think he was sensible, even then, that I was there.

  It was only as I moved back towards my own room that I saw my sister Cassandra outlined in the doorway. How much had she witnessed? I stopped short, stricken; but without a word, she turned away. In her countenance I detected something of a bird who knows its wing is broken beyond repair.

  IT WAS SACKETT WHO delivered the news of Raphael West’s awakening. She had witnessed his eyes open at dawn, and had immediately descended to the kitchens to prepare beef tea. It was during this interval that I discovered him wavering in his doorway; and upon Sackett’s return, West was once more asleep. He remained in that state—healing, restorative sleep, rather than the insensible state that had prevailed for days—until Mr. Price arrived at ten o’clock, and testily woke him.

  “You are recovered, sir,” he declared as he examined West’s eyes. “Do you recall anything of the Hunt morning, and your fall from your horse?”

  “I do not,” West replied. “The moments leading up to it, and everything after until this hour, are as a blank.”

  He was unlikely, then, to remember my face upturned to his, or the waking dream that had been our kiss. I mastered a feeling of disappointment, and resolved never to think of it again.

  Price insisted on bleeding his patient, and at last the beef tea was offered. West informed poor Sackett that it was the merest swill, and demanded steak and ale. William Chute was only too happy to accede to the request.

  “We shall let him recover his strength, Miss Jane,” he confided to me, “before we tax him with the sketchbook. I should hate to learn that he has forgot all he discovered in Portsmouth and London, along with his memory of the hedge at Sherborne!”

  West was asleep again by noon, the bleeding having enervated him. In returning to my bedchamber in search of a needle and thread—Mary would demand a headdress of feathers for her rôle as the Duchess of Highinstep, and nothing would do but I should fashion it—I discovered Cassandra curled under a shawl in a tragic mood, staring into our fire.

  I knelt down beside her chair.

  “Do not look like that, Cass,” I pleaded. “What you observed meant nothing. He was half-alive, half-dreaming. He did not even know I was real.”

  “He knew,” she said, in a barely audible voice. “He loves you, Jane.”

  “Nonsense.” I was as brisk as tho’ she were young Caroline. “I suspect Mr. West loves nothing so much as his art; and that is just as well. It shall never disappoint, as a flesh-and-blood lady should.”

  “Do not sport with me. If he asked for your hand, you should be gone in a thrice.”

  “And leave you? Never.” I grasped her shoulders. “We are both of us too old to be thinking of setting up our own establishments, Cass. And besides—the question does not arise. He has no memory of that meeting in the passage; it is but a part of the whole insensible period of the past few days. I do not regard it; and you should not, either. I am certain Raphael West does not.”

  She held my gaze searchingly. “Truly, Jane?”

  “Truly. We shall leave The Vyne tomorrow, and he shall return to London. Life shall go on as before. We shall remember him as a man thankfully delivered from peril, when others were not—and be content in the knowledge that he lives.”

  She heaved a sigh, and held my hand between both of hers.

  I left her then, to compose herself—and endeavoured to follow my own advice with as much grace.

  IF MY HEART HAD been lighter this evening, I might have played at Candour in better spirits. To be witty without giving offence is an art I have not entirely achieved; and I began to regret my choice of character, from a fear of abusing everybody. I should rather have represented Policy, or even Hypocrisy—and gone about with fulsome compliments for all. As it was, I constrained myself to say only what was both honest and inoffensive—and thus, said very little at all.

  Half the Kingdom, it seemed, had travelled through the cold to grace Eliza Chute’s Stone Gallery on Twelfth Night. Thomas-Vere and I stood at the foot of the staircase in the entrance hall, in the dying warmth of the Yule log, with baskets in our hands and masks covering our eyes. The effect was of a highwayman and his jade begging alms, but I did not care. The disguise allowed me to feel other than I was. Anonymity may be a powerful drug; it is as well we do not taste too much of it in our daily lives. As the guests entered in pairs and in groups, Sir Macaroni and Miss Candour offered their baskets of male and female rôles; the guests chose at random, and went on to assume their characters in the heat and chatter of the Great Drawing-room. Wither and Mary Bramston were among the first to arrive, as befit those in some wise attached to The Vyne; she penetrated my mask immediately, and asked whether “that poor artist fellow was dead yet.”

  “Unfortunately not,” a voice above us on the stairs said quietly; and Raphael West, arrayed in his most correct evening dress of black coat and white shirtfront, with his cravat splendidly tied, descended the final few steps. “Raphael West at your service, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Bramston, and bowed low over her hand.

  She had sense enough to colour as she murmured her pat phrases of congratulation on his recovery, and forgot entirely to draw a character, returning to do so once West had safely moved on.

  “Do not trouble to take a card, my dear fellow,” Thomas-Vere enjoined as West approached him. “We did not provide one for you. You were to have died well before this evening’s gaieties—and have confounded all expectation. You shall do very well as The Beau, however, for a more elegant turnout is not to be found in the drawing-room. Everyone will know at a glance that you are meant to parade as Brummell.”

  “I shall not offend your dignity by enquiring if you are well enough to stand,” I said. “Do not be making a fool of me, therefore, by falling over into a swoon.”

  “What is your own rôle, Jane?”

  “Candour. I am meant to expose the nakedness and expence of half the ladies, and abuse the figures of all the men.”

  “I can think of nothing more suited to your talents.” He bowed.

  I grimaced at him. “Am I such a shrew?”

  “Nay; a powerful voice for Justice. Is it true that Lady Gambier has consented to join us?”

  Thomas-Vere let out a snort. “I had thought she would keep to her room in strictest mourning. But perhaps she drew Melpomene as her rôle—the Muse of Tragedy—and means to play it for the crowd.”

  Throngs of happy guests, in their most brilliant finery of the season, passed to and fro in the Staircase Hall and the Saloon, the drawing-room and the dining parlour; but all these were behind our position at the foot of the stairs, and I could see nothing of Lady Gambier. Edward Gambier I knew to be present—he was as simply arrayed as Raphael West, but his cravat was black instead of white.

  “When all this is over,” West murmured while Thomas-Vere was engaged in offering a card to John Harwood, “I must speak to you about my researches in Portsmouth and London.”

  “My duty as Candour compels me to admit that I have looked into your sketchbook,” I said. “William Chute has done the same.”

  He frowned.

  “You forget,
” I warned. “It was feared you would die. We thought it imperative to know why someone wanted you silenced. Ah, Mrs. Portal! How ravishing you look in that singularly-coloured gown!”

  I presented my basket and offered Lucy the rôles; they were dwindled, now, to but a handful. A few minutes more at my post, and I should be released to what enjoyment in Twelfth Night I could find.

  “Then you have seen pieces of the puzzle,” West said. “But we shall talk of this tomorrow.”

  He bowed, and moved around the staircase into the crowd.

  “That was Mr. West, was it not?” Lucy Portal observed. “I am happy to find him recovered. It was a dreadful moment when we were interrupted in our walk, by the passage of your nephew’s horse—on such an errand!”

  Her words recalled a question that had lingered in my mind. “Mrs. Portal,” I said when she would have moved on, “you may be surprized to learn that your old friends the Gambiers are within.”

  “The Gambiers?” she repeated. “At such a time? And in deepest mourning?”

  “Their arrival was unexpected. But it brought to mind a matter you mentioned on our Sherborne walk. You said that Lady Gambier was not generally received in Bath society. I have been wondering what you meant.”

  Lucy smiled at her husband. “Go ahead, John—I shall be with you in a moment. I meant, Miss Austen, that many in Bath were inclined to cut Lady Gambier in favour of her husband, the Admiral. You know that the two are estranged?”

  “I did not,” I said.

  “The Admiral is everywhere admired, as much for his propriety as a Christian, as for his record of service,” she said. “But having brothers in the Navy, you will know this already. Lady Gambier’s coldness to her husband has excited much comment; he is generally to be pitied.”

  “That makes matters plain. Thank you for your candour, Mrs. Portal.”

  She dimpled, and plunged into the throng.

  “Well, Miss Austen, I believe we have earned several glasses of my brother William’s claret cup.” Thomas-Vere set down his basket and offered me his arm gallantly. I tried not to stare overlong at the spectacle of his hosed feet, encased in a pair of Eliza’s heeled slippers. I held my masked head high, instead, and prepared for enjoyment.