Jane and the Man of the Cloth Read online

  A ball whistled over my head, and in some shock and surprise, I turned towards the shot. A rough hand pulled me backwards, and Lord Harold dragged me to the cavern’s mouth.

  “This time, Miss Austen, I beg you will do me the honour of respecting what I say,” he said, with much labour of breathing, the result of his exertions. “Stay here, and do not make a sound, and if we are very fortunate, you may survive this debacle.”

  1 This description of the Lyme fire appears nowhere in Jane Austen’s surviving letters to Cassandra, and it is probable that it is among those that Cassandra is known to have destroyed before her own death, as too revealing of Jane’s personal life. A reference to the flames does appear in letter #57 in the LeFaye edition of Jane Austens Letters, which LeFaye attributes to the November 5, 1803 fire known to have occurred in Lymc. The account of a blaze recorded here, however, some ten months later, may in fact be the one to which Jane refers in letter #57. —Editor’s note.

  2 Lord Harold Trowbridge—rake, scoundrel, second son of a duke, and spy in the service of the Crown—made his first appearance in Austen’s journals while both were at Scargrave Manor, the home of her friend Isobel Payne. —iiditor’s note.

  3 This was a sort of coastal militia, of fishermen and small craft superintended by naval officers, arrayed against possible channel invasion from France. —Editor’s note.

  4 What Jane suspected was in some part true. By 1804 the British government was actively supporting French Royalist plotters who found refuge on English shores by providing them with bank drafts in the millions of francs; and a certain Captain Wright allegedly carried three separate shiploads of Royalist insurgents to French shores throughout 1803 and early 1804. All were discovered, tried, and, in the main, executed. “I may fairly say,” Napoleon later re called, “that during the months from September, 1803, to January, 1804,1 was sitting on a volcano/’ The assassination attempts culmi nated in Napoleon’s unwarranted seizure and execution of the Due D’Enghien, who was of Bourbon descent and falsely accused of as piring to Napoleon’s throne, in March 1804; but from Austen’s account, it would seem that Royalist efforts continued well after ward. —Editor’s note.

  25 September 1804, cont.

  ∼

  A VERY FEW WORDS WILL SUFFICE TO CONCLUDE MY TALE.

  The dragoons attempted, and failed, to impede the flight of Sidmouth’s boat. After a frantic quarter-hour of firing poorly-sighted blunderbusses across a heaving sea, they gave up the effort, and stood at the water’s edge in a degree of ill-humour and rainswept soddenness, that should have been amusing to behold, did not I find myself in so precarious a position. I espied Roy Cavendish, on the periphery of his troops. The Customs man’s arms were folded, his hat brim dripped with the dispiriting rain, and there was an expression of dismay on his countenance. I suspected his foul temper would descend upon my head, did I appear.

  It was then that Lord Harold advanced upon them.

  He had left me at the mouth of the cave, confident that the dragoons might persuade me to caution where his influence could not. With customary coolness, he had torn a length of rag from his white shirt, and affixed it to his pistol end; then he hauled poor Crawford to his feet, and forced the man to serve as shield for their advance through the pelting showers. It remained only to wait until the dragoons” fury was spent, and Sidmouth safely out of the way; and so Lord Harold did.

  “Ahoy there!” he cried, waving his makeshift flag of truce as he thrust the reluctant Crawford before him. “Your commander, I pray!”

  Cavendish started from his abject ruminations, and stepped forwards to meet the men; and a parley ensued, in the lowest of tones, that seemed to invert the Customs officer’s very world. Disbelief o’erspread his features, and something very like shock; and he took a step backwards from Cholmondeley Crawford in utter amazement.

  Roy Cavendish was not a man of the Crown for nothing, however—and in a few moments, he had dispatched a squadron of dragoons from their fruitless position on the beach, to retrieve what dignity they might, in a search of Crawford’s fossil site; and they discovered there a quantity of silk and other fine stuff, all imported without benefit of the King’s custom—and perhaps, most important, a set of horseshoes made crudely on the fossil forge, and marked clearly with the initials GS.

  The intelligence thus obtained, and a few low words regarding statecraft, and His Majesty’s government, from Lord Harold Trowbridge, ensured that no Naval cutter should be loosed in pursuit of Sidmouth and his party. But all this it was my privilege to learn later, once Crawford was borne away to the Lyme gaol (all threat of fire in that quarter being now contained), and the dragoons dispersed. At Lord Harold’s suggestion, Roy Cavendish made it his business to inform the justice of the peace, Mr. Dobbin, of Cholmondeley Crawford’s murderous deceit.

  It was then that Lord Harold retrieved me from my place of seclusion, and looked with concern upon my sodden clothes and ravaged face.

  “Miss Austen! I have been wretchedly in neglect,” he said, with the first suggestion of anxiety I had ever observed throughout the length of our acquaintance. He doffed his dripping hat and held it awkwardly over my bedraggled curls. “You shall catch your death of cold from your exposure this e’en.”

  “I care little for that,” I said wearily, brushing his hat aside, “only I should dearly love a proper cloak, and some conveyance home, as I am falling down with fatigue.”

  He hastened to swing his greatcoat from his shoulders, and flung it about my own, and without another word, led me to his good dark horse still tethered at the fossil pits; and with the utmost gentleness, he bent to provide a hand for my mounting. I hauled myself onto the horse’s back, with less than my usual grace—being anything but a horsewoman in the best of times—and Lord Harold sprang, with something more of lightness, to the saddle before me.

  We paused an instant to gaze through the curtain of rain, and out across the waves, where, like a scrap of torn fabric, the sail of a cutter showed against a lightening sky. It moved swiftly, and as we watched, disappeared from view.

  “Where, then, do they sail?” I asked, after a moment.

  “Not to France, assuredly.” Lord Harold’s voice held an unwonted sobriety. “The country is grown too hot for men of their persuasion. The cutter will bear them to Liverpool, 1 believe—and it is their intention there to secure passage on a ship bound for America.”

  “America?” I felt the pain of parting redouble with all the swiftness of a blow to my heart. “I shall never see him again.”

  “I fear not,” Lord Harold said quiedy. He clucked to the horse, and turned its head, and commenced a slow jog towards Lyme.

  And so we rode in weary silence for a time, with nothing but the soft patter of raindrops and the first tentative birdsong to cheer our way. My thoughts were torn between exultation at the party’s escape and a regret so profound I could hardly speak. Until, with something more akin to his usual raillery, Lord Harold observed that I must take greater care in the forming of my acquaintance.

  “For, Miss Austen,” said he, “though I will not say that I disapprove of your predilection for characters such as Sidmouth, or your habit of dining at the home of smugglers, I confess that my nose is quite turned, at finding my success so spoilt, in being dependent upon your penetration. You will quite ruin my reputation, if word of this gets out; and I shall be reduced to offering you employment.”

  “—Which I should as readily decline,” I replied. “At this moment, sir, I want nothing more than the safety of my room, and a hot toddy, and a warm brick wrapt in cloths between the sheets. How it does rain! I will never be without my bonnet, in future, no matter how many borrowed greatcoats I may acquire.”

  “You have a most vexatious talent for intrigue,” Lord Harold insisted, with utter disregard for my ideas of bricks and toddies. “Most unusual, in a woman. I shall be con-standy looking over my shoulder, in future, from a fear of finding you behind.”

  “Then you shall
run headlong over my foot, my lord,” I rejoined with spirit, “for I shall assuredly stand before.”

  About the Author

  STEPHANIE BARRON, author of the critically acclaimed Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor and Jane and the Man of the Cloth, is a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen’s work. She lives and works in Colorado, where she has just concluded the third Jane Austen Mystery, Jane and the Wandering Eye, which Bantam will publish in January 1998.

  If you enjoyed Stephanie Barron’s Jane and the

  Man of the Cloth, you won’t want to miss any of

  Jane Austen’s sleuthing adventures. Look for the

  first, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor,

  at your favorite bookstore in paperback.

  And turn the page for a preview of Jane and the

  Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery,

  available in hardcover from Bantam Books in

  January 1998.

  Jane and the

  Wandering Eye

  Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery

  By Stephanie Barron

  Wednesday,

  12 December 1804

  Bath

  ∼

  A ROUT-PARTY, WHEN DEPICTED BY A PEN MORE ACCOMPUSHED THAN MY own, is invariably a stupid affair of some two or three hundred souls pressed elbow-to-elbow in the drawing-rooms of the great. Such an efflorescence of powder shaken from noble wigs! Such a crush of silk! And what general heartiness of laughter and exclamation—so that the gender tones of one’s more subdued companions must be raised to a persistent roar, rendering most of the party voiceless by dawn, with only the insipid delights of indifferent negus and faltering meat pasties as recompense for all one’s trials.

  So Fanny Burney has described a rout, in Cecilia and Camilla; and so I should be forced to record my first experience of the same, in a more modest volume I entitle simply Jane, had not Fate intervened to render my dissipation more intriguing. For last night I endured the most fearsome of crushes—a post-theatrical masquerade, forsooth, with myself in the role of Shepherdess—at no less exalted an address than Laura Place, and the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s abode, with attendant hundreds of her most intimate acquaintance.

  And what, you may ask, had Miss Jane Austen to do in such company? So my father gendy enquired, at the moment of my setting out from Green Park Buildings (where all my dear family have been situated but two months, having lost our former lodgings in Sydney Place to the infamous Coles), my brother Henry at my side, a most formidable Richard the Third, and his wife, Eliza, done up as Marie Antoinette.

  “Why, Father,” I replied, with a wave of my Shepherdess’s crook, “you must know that the invitation is all my brother’s, procured with a view to amusing Eliza, who must have her full measure of Bath’s diversion during so short a visit to the city, and in such a season. Bath at Christmastide may yet be called a trifle thin, in requiring the larger crowds of Easter to lend it style; and if Eliza is not to be thoroughly put out, we must seize our diversion where we may. A masquerade, and at the express invitation of a Dowager Duchess, cannot be let slip. Is not this so, Henry?”

  “Indeed,” my brother stammered, with a look for his elegant wife, who appeared to have entirely swallowed her little dog, Pug, so pursed with false innocence was her mouth. Eliza is but a slip of a lady, tho’ in her present towering headdress, complete with ship’s models and birds of paradise bestowed about her heavily powdered curls, she bid fair to rise far above her usual station.

  I must confess to a greater admiration for Eliza’s queen than for Henry’s king—for though both may be called cunning by history’s judgement, Eliza has the advantage over Henry, in having at least seen Marie Antoinette in all the Austrian’s former glory, and thus being capable of the incorporation of that lady’s vanished style in her present dress; while Henry is dependent upon the merest notion of humped backs and twirling moustachios, or a general reputation for squintyness about the eyes, for the affectation of his villain.

  “And our own dear Madam Lefroy is to be in attendance at the Duchess’s party as well, Father,” Eliza added. “It is to form the chief part of her final evening in Bath—she returns to Hampshire on the morrow—and we cannot part without some notice on either side. I am sure you would not wish us to neglect so amiable a neighbour, so dear a friend. For who shall say when we shall meet again?”

  “But are you even acquainted with the Duchess, my dear Jane?” my father asked, in some bewilderment.

  “Assuredly—” Henry began.

  “—not,” I concluded.

  “That is to say,” my brother amended hastily, “the acquaintance is entirely mine, Father. I have performed some trifling service for the Wilborough family, in the financial line. The rout tickets came to me.”

  “I had not an idea of it, my dear boy.” The expression of pleasure that suffused my father’s face, at this indication of his son’s advancement in his chosen profession of banking, made the falsehood almost worth its utterance.

  “But now we must be off,” Eliza interjected firmly, “or lose another hour in search of chairs, for our own have been standing at the door this quarter-hour.1 It has quite struck eleven, and how it snows! Do observe, my dear sir, the unfortunate chairmen!”

  Bath’s climate is usually so mild as to escape the advent of winter, but this night at least we were subject to a fearsome blast. And thus, as my father clucked in dismay from the drawing-room window, all benevolent concern for the reddened cheeks and stamping feet of the unlucky fellows below, we hurried down to the street, where indeed our chairs had been idle already some minutes, and setded ourselves comfortably for the trip to Laura Place—or would have, had not my Shepherdess’s crook refused the conveyance’s close accommodation. This small difficulty resolved, by the abandonment of the offending object on the stoop of Green Park Buildings, the chairmen heaved and hallooed, and off we went—with only the occasional bobble to recall the untidiness of the snowy streets, and the likelihood of a yet more strenuous return.

  I profited from the brief journey, by indulging in a review of the causes of our exertion, for pleasure was unfortunately the least of them. However circumscribed my usual society in Bath—which is generally limited to my Aunt Leigh-Perrot’s insipid card parties, and the occasional indulgence of the theatre when my slim purse may allow it—I am not so desperate for enjoyment as to spend a decidedly snowy midnight done up as a Staffordshire doll, in a gay throng of complete strangers more blessed and happy in their mutual acquaintance. Nor are Henry and Eliza so mad for rout-parties as my father had been led to believe. My brother and sister2 had succumbed to my entreaties for support, and had gone so far as to prevaricate on my behalf. From an awkwardness of explanation, I had deliberately withheld from the Reverend George Austen the true nature of our visit to Laura Place. We were gone in the guise of revellers, indeed, but laboured in fact under a most peculiar commission.

  Lord Harold Trowbridgc, my dark angel of recent adventure—confidant of the Crown, adversary of whomever he is paid to oppose, and general Rogue-about-Town—is the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s younger son. He is also in the throes of some trouble with a lady—nothing unusual for Lord Harold, although in this instance, the novelty of the lady’s being not only unmarried, but related to him, must give the mendacious pause. In short, his niece, Lady Desdemona Trowbridge—an Incomparable of the present Season, a girl of eighteen with all the blessings of fortune, beauty, and breeding to recommend her—has thrown off the protection of her family and friends; has left all in London whose interest should form her chief consideration and care; and has fled to the Dowager Duchess in Bath. The agent of her flight? The redoubtable Earl of Swithin, who claims an interest in the lady’s future happiness. In short, the Earl has offered for her hand—and caused the fair Desdemona considerable vexation and grief.

  Lord Harold observed the flight, and respected his mother’s wishes to leave the girl to herself for a time; he r
emained in Ixmdon, and restrained His Grace the Duke from summoning the chit immediately back home; he forbore to visit Laura Place himself, and urge the reclamation of sense; and when the Lady Desdemona showed neither an inclination to quit her grandmother’s abode, nor to suffer very much from her voluntary exile, being engaged in a delightful round of amusement and shopping in the weeks before Christmas—he applied, at last, to me.

  My niece is a lady of excellent understanding, Lord Harold wrote in his barely legible hand, but possessed of the Trowbridge will She is headstrong and entirely capable of acting against her own interest. I am most concerned that she not fall prey to the basest of fortune hunters—whose attentions she might unwittingly encourage, from a misplaced sense of pique, or an inclination to put paid to Lord Swithin s plans. Is it impossible—do I ask too much— that you might observe her movements for a time, my dear Miss Austen? And report what you observe? I wish chiefly to know the nature of Desdemona ys acquaintance—in whose circle she spends the chief part of her days—and the names of those gentlernen upon whom she bestows the greatest attention. You would oblige me exceedingly in the performance of this service; for tho” Her Grace might certainty do the same, she is, as you may be aware, not the strictest judge of propriety.

  And as the letter supplied a direction in Pall Mall— White’s Club, to be exact—and the very rout tickets formerly mentioned, I could not find it in me to refuse—if, indeed, at present I could refuse Lord Harold anything. It is not that I owe him some great debt of gratitude, or harbour for the gentleman a more tender sentiment; but rather that where Lord Harold goes, intrigue surely follows—and I confess I have been insupportably bared with Bath, and the littlenesses of a town, since my return from Lyme Regis but a few weeks ago. The Gentleman Rogue and his errant niece presented a most welcome diversion.

  And so to Laura Place we were gone.

  I DO NOT BELIEVE I EXAGGERATE WHEN I DECLARE THAT THE DOWAGER Duchess of Wilborough’s establishment was ablaze last e’en with a thousand candles. Light spilled out of a multitude of casements (the original glazing of which must have exacted from the late Duke a fortune), and cast diamond-paned shadows upon the snowy street; light flowed from the open entryway at every chair’s arrival, like a bolt of silk unfurled upon the walk. A hubbub of conversation, too, and the clatter of cutlery; a voice raised hoarsely in song; a burst of laughter. The faintest strain of a violin drifted to the stoop.