Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Read online

  “But love, Isobel?” I persisted.

  She was silent, reflecting, her eyes upon the flames. Of a sudden she shivered, and I hastened to draw her lap robe over her. “You must not get a chill, my dear; for we have had too much of violent illness.”

  The Countess smiled sadly and shook her head. “It is not the cold that would carry me off, dear Jane, but an enormity of regret.”

  “For your husband?”

  “And myself,” she replied softly, her eyes finding mine. “I had not known love as a girl. Silly flirtations I had by the score, of course—one could not help it. But the day I married the Earl I knew what it was to feel a deeper emotion, and God help me, it was not for the man I married.”

  All speech was impossible at so painful a revelation. There can be no proper answer to such anguish—and anguish Isobel clearly felt, had felt during the brief tenure of her marriage, and could not silence even at her husband’s untimely end. I could well imagine that the Earl’s death had increased, rather than absolved, her sorrow, by heightening her sense of having done him a terrible wrong—a wrong now past all repair.

  “The Earl had no notion?” I settled myself on a chair opposite her chaise and took comfort in the heat of the flames. The parkland beyond the Countess’s windows was now utterly dark, and the sharp December cold pressed against the house.

  Isobel shook her head. “I pray God he did not. Such a betrayal of his best impulses he could not have borne. For his sake, I adopted the strictest propriety; and Fitzroy did the same. No dishonour should come to the man he revered almost as a father while his actions could prevent it.

  “That we may have betrayed our sensibility in countless small ways, I do not doubt, when I read that despicable letter,” she continued, gesturing towards Marguerite’s note. “Not least among the emotions it causes is fear for my husband’s sake. If she saw, who is but a servant, what may he not have seen, and kept to himself in silence?”

  I hastened to reassure my friend. “A lady’s maid may be even more in her mistress’s company than her husband, Isobel. You know it to be true. Marguerite may conjecture only, and her stab in the dark has gone home. From your husband’s easy good humour two nights past, I must believe he thought himself the happy man who had won all of your affection.”

  “You speak with conviction, Jane.” Isobel’s accent was eager. “Did you yourself believe it?”

  “I did, until the very moment when Lord Payne dismissed the devil Trowbridge. The Viscount then betrayed a concern for your welfare beyond what is usual in a nephew towards a newly-met aunt. Oh, Isobel, how could two such people as yourselves, possessed of probity and good sense, forget what is due to propriety?”

  A log burst of a sudden upon the hearth, scattering glowing embers at our feet, and Isobel started, her eyes on her husband’s portrait. I bent for the poker and busied myself at the grate.

  My friend touched a trembling hand to her lips. “It does seem mad, I will own,” she replied, “as only such love can be.” She drew breath, and with it perhaps, courage to go on.

  “Fitzroy is the true companion of my soul, Jane; we think as with one thought, and when deprived of the chance to speak, may find converse in a look enough to sustain us.”

  Her words had a particular power to strike at my heart, being virtually the same as those I had uttered once to myself, about another young man forever out of reach.1 Clumsily, I dropped the poker, and covered my confusion in retrieving it.

  Isobel perceived my dismay, and misinterpreted its cause. Her next words were accordingly sharp. “But I cannot possibly make you know this with all the force of sensibility I feel; not for our practical Jane an indulgence in emotion. It will be enough to make you understand how it came about.”

  I was wounded, I will own, for there was a time when such feeling was all I lived for; but that time is past. I resolved not to reproach Isobel for words spoken in the midst of trouble, and endeavoured to put aside self-interest. “Indeed, my dear, I would hear it,” I told her, retrieving my chair, “if it be that you wish to speak.”

  Isobel had the grace to look abashed at my kindness, and turned without further preamble to her unfortunate history.

  “I first met Fitzroy during the height of the London season, when my engagement to the Earl was already fixed, and my aunt and cousin Fanny had joined me at rooms in Town,” she began.

  “I recall your letters of that period. They betrayed no unhappiness, but rather excited expectation of the months ahead.”

  “How could they do otherwise?” my friend cried. “We were to embark upon that most frivolous and light-hearted of ladies’ enterprises—the purchase of my wedding clothes. My aunt is well-acquainted with the best warehouses, as you may imagine from having heard her discourse on mourning; and she was invaluable to me in the acquisition of a Countess’s wardrobe. I should not have denied her the pleasure in any case; such a venture was to be but the rehearsal for her daughter’s wedding, her dearest concern.”

  “I may be thankful my own mother’s inclinations are in a less material direction,” I said dryly, “for I should assuredly be the ruin of her hopes.”

  Having met with my mother frequently while in Bath, Isobel could not repress a smile; but her sad tale reclaimed her attention. “Lord Payne was newly resident in his uncle’s Town home, having left his estate in Derbyshire for the season. Fitzroy immediately became the object of my aunt Delahoussaye’s excited speculation; for where one union is effected in a family, and the respective members thrown much together, another may well be formed; and to see her daughter as heir apparent to the title I was to assume, by marrying my husband’s heir, became my aunt’s primary object.”

  “It reigns unabated among her schemes,” I could not refrain from saying; “I was nearly pulled from die dance die other evening in Madame Delahoussaye’s eagerness to secure Lord Payne as her daughter’s partner.”

  “And that, after I had already asked Fitzroy to lead Fanny in the first dance, behind his uncle and myself. He detests nothing so much as dancing, however he excels at it; and he regards standing up with Fanny as a punishment. He should rather have partnered you, my dear Jane—he told me so himself.”

  “I am flattered. But we digress.”

  “In London, my husband-to-be was frequently attended by his men of business, and prevented from escorting me to the season’s gaieties as often as he might like. Frederick found it no difficulty, however to send Fitzroy in his place, and my aunt was ready enough to have Fanny make a third.” Isobel stopped short, overcome by memory.

  “How many hours the three of us strolled Bond Street, Jane, a lady on Fitzroy’s either side; or took the air of the Park in our carriage, Fitzroy seated opposite with Fanny at his right hand. It gradually became a torment; his mind and mine were too much alike not to leap at the chance to converse; we found much in common that thrilled and moved; and yet behind the growing felicity in one another’s company, there was a burgeoning despair. The inevitability of my fate approached—and to dishonour the man who had done so much for each of us was impossible. That we thought severally in this vein, without speaking of it to the other—that we had never spoken of the feeling that overcame us in one another’s presence—I need not assure you. Such a speech could not but harm.” She fell silent, lost in despondency.

  “Until?” I prompted.

  The Countess hesitated, as if unwilling to repeat in speech the indiscretions of the past. “Until the day Fanny suffered a slight indisposition, due to her greediness for cold stuffing at dinner the previous evening.”

  “It prevented her from accompanying you the next day?”

  “It did. We had formed the design of a visit to Hampton Court, by barge up the Thames, and visit we did—though the party was formed of but two.” My dear friend’s face was suddenly transformed. “The delight in those few hours, Jane! The carefree happiness of our day! What laughter, what meaning in silence, what trembling in my hand as I took his arm to promenade! We moved t
hrough stately rooms and terraced gardens as though they were ours and we had come into our kingdom. A marvelous charade. For a time, we might play at what we never could be.”

  A little of Isobel’s emotion affected my senses, and I strove for calm. “And you spoke, then, of the future?”

  “How could we not?” Her glad aspect dimmed. “But it was a discourse saved for the waning of the day, when the long shadows proclaimed our liberty at an end, our paradise lost. In contemplating the necessity of a return, the duplicity it meant, Fitzroy found that he could not bear it; and in the shadow of a great tree in the Court gardens, he seized me in his arms and…kissed me, Jane.”

  I was silent with pity and horror.

  “The memory of it burns upon my lips still,” Isobel said, reaching a finger to her mouth. “It was to burn in my heart all that night, as I dined with poor Frederick; and dined with Fitzroy, who sat opposite as though turned to stone.”

  My friend’s hand found mine and grasped it tightly. “Have you ever felt, Jane, a crushing sadness while at the same time experiencing a heady euphoria?”

  I could only shake my head, unwilling to share my own poor fortune.

  “Then you have never been in love,” Isobel said decidedly, “and you did right not to accept Mr. Bigg-Wither.”

  “But what was the outcome, my dear?” I persisted. “Did you never consider a full disclosure to Lord Scargrave?”

  “No, Jane. That could not be. We declared our love, canvassed our mutual honour and the esteem we owed the Earl, and came to a tortured resignation. I could not destroy Fitzroy by dishonouring his uncle—as destroy him I should. To do so would bring misery upon all in the Earl’s household, and burden the purer emotions we felt with regret and recrimination.”

  “But how could you go forward?” I cried, all amazement.

  Isobel looked her confusion. “I know that you should not have done so, dear Jane. With your strength and sense, you should have broken off the engagement and retired from the scene.” She hesitated, as though her next words caused her pain. “But I had Crosswinds to consider, and all that Lord Scargrave had vouched he would do. For the sake of my father’s memory, I determined that I could not choose otherwise than to marry the Earl.”

  “And Lord Payne? What of him?”

  “We deemed it best to part company until the fateful day was achieved. Fitzroy offered the Earl some excuse, and fled to the country. I was married not two weeks later, toured the Continent for some three months, and returned to Scargrave for the Christmas holiday.”

  “I wonder how you bore it,” I said.

  “Did not you see the change?” Isobel burst out. “You, who are my dearest friend in the world—did not you discern that I was in the throes of some great trouble?”

  “I did not, Isobel,” I replied, wondering at my own stupidity. “I thought you only a trifle wearied by the duties of your new station. And that is for the best, my dear—for if I did not discern it, you may be assured your husband was equally in the dark.”

  “How terrible,” the Countess murmured, “that one should find the ignorance of a husband to be a blessing.”

  “And so you had not met again, the Viscount and yourself, until the night of the ball?” I resumed.

  She shook her head. “It was for this I begged your presence on the occasion, my dear Jane. I dearly needed the strength of a friend beside me at such an hour. That Fitzroy came at all was necessary to the duty he owed his uncle; to have stayed away would have seemed strange: But he did not meet me with composure. And I believe his feelings are as unabated by the passage of a few months, as I know my own to be.”

  “Isobel,” I began, and rose to stand before the fire with the maid’s crumpled letter in my hand, “we must consider what we are to do. Marguerite claims she will go to the magistrate; we have determined to lay the business before him ourselves, and so prevent her the element of surprise. To contain the affair, this would seem the only course. But what then? Do you disclose what you must to Sir William regarding your feeling for Fitzroy?”

  Isobel started from her chaise, cheeks scarlet and eyes ablaze with indignation. “It is impossible! In every respect, impossible!”

  “You will dissimulate, then?”

  “I shall regard the suggestion as of a piece with the rest of the maid’s nonsense—no more to be believed than her accusation of murder,” she retorted, with spirit.

  “To what, then, do we ascribe her motive? That must be our question.” I stopped beneath the Earl’s portrait and regarded it thoughtfully. “We must tell Sir William we believe Marguerite capable of blackmail; that she wishes to frighten you into paying for her silence. A paltry art from a paltry maid. He must see the sense of it.”

  Isobel moved swiftly to her desk in search of pen and paper. “Of course, Jane. It has merit. I shall ring for the footman directly; he may take my note to Sir William. I think it best we meet after the funeral tomorrow, do not you agree?”

  “Propriety would argue the same.”

  “So it shall be.”

  “Isobel—” I began, and then hesitated. Why disturb further what was already disturbed beyond imagining?

  “Jane?”

  “You are certain in your mind that your husband died of natural causes?”

  “Why should I not be?”

  “Why, indeed?”

  1. It is unclear from the text of which former suitor Jane is thinking. Because these manuscripts were intended as private journals, occasional passages exist where Jane is clearly “talking to herself.”—Editor’s note.

  15 December 1802

  ˜

  MY DEAREST CASSANDRA—

  You asked that I write you once Lord Scargrave was in the ground, and tell you of the particulars.

  The day dawned stormy and soon commenced to snow quite hard, so that we were bundled into closed chariots for the journey to the Reverend Samuels’s service in the little church of Scargrave Close. The Reverend is an elderly man, of pinched and nearsighted appearance; he looks to be consumptive and not a little wandering in his wits, as he more than once addressed the deceased by his father’s name, and on one occasion by his brother’s, both of whom have preceded the Earl from this life. The poor health of the celebrant and his vague demeanour explain why his society is not sought at Scargrave; they bode well for the rapidity with which George Hearst may succeed to the living, if matters are disposed in the Earl’s will as Mr. Hearst has reason to hope.

  There was, as can be imagined, little remarkable in the good Reverend’s eulogy. It was a solemn recitation of the Earl’s worldly passage that might have been taken from the account of a London journal, rather than any intimate knowledge of Lord Scargrave’s character. I find that there is nothing sadder than such a ceremony, when it is marked by indifference and ignorance of its subject. Better to be celebrated by those whom one has known and loved, than dispatched by a relative stranger, of incongenial habits and temperament, with whom one has passed no more than the trivialities of social necessity. But such was the Earl of Scargrave’s fate.

  As is the custom, however, only the gentlemen of the family walked behind the carriage bearing his body to the great Scargrave tomb, where his first Countess already lies slumbering; and given the heavy fall of snow, I profess for once having been pleased with the lot accorded my sex. The women repaired to the Manor, there to indulge in that excess of grief considered necessary in any lady of delicacy and breeding; knowing my delicacy, and still more my breeding, you need not be told that few tears fell from my eye. I confess to a period of contemplative silence, however, during which I reflected upon the suddenness of the Earl’s passage from this life, and the upcoming interview with Sir William Reynolds—yes, Sir William Reynolds, our dear friend of old, who has traded London for Hertfordshire upon his retirement, and is now turned the local magistrate.

  You have from me the particulars of the maid Marguerite’s letter in my last,1 though if I refrained from conveying with perfect frankness a
ll that Isobel discussed that day, you must forgive me. What I heard, I heard in confidence, and there the matter ends. Suffice it to say that we look forward this afternoon to presenting a blackmailer’s mark to a man of the law, and have hopes that our actions may stem unfortunate rumour.

  I fear that Christmas at Scargrave will be a grim affair, and could wish myself returned to Bath and my beloved sister, were it not for the comfort Isobel seems to draw from my presence.

  I send you my love, and ask that you convey it as well to my father and mother.

  Yours very affectionately,

  J.A.

  Journal entry, later that day

  ˜

  WE WERE ASSEMBLED FOR TEA IN THE GREAT SCARGRAVE drawing-room when Cobblestone, the stooped and aged Scargrave butler, announced Sir William. Despite Isobel’s anxious looks, I was relieved to observe that his visit was taken as nothing out of the ordinary way by the other members of the family.

  “He is come, I suppose, to offer condolence,” said Fitzroy Payne.

  “And to secure his position with the new Earl, no doubt,” threw in Tom Hearst, as Cobblestone withdrew. The Lieutenant stabbed viciously with a poker at a log burning too slowly for his taste, and sent up a shower of sparks. “These petty local justices are all of a piece. Keep firm hold on their sinecures, eat heartily of mutton and ale at the local fetes, and concern themselves little with matters beyond their purses.”

  “A failing they hold in common with the petty local gentry,” came a sepulchral voice in reply.

  All eyes turned to Mr. George Hearst, sunk in his armchair in the farthest corner of the room, a volume of Fordyce’s Sermons open upon his knee. “We cannot expect the men we appoint to govern us, to be better than ourselves. Did Sir William not curry favour at the Manor, it should be a miracle; for assuredly, brother, you and I have been attempting it all our lives.”