Stephanie Barron - Jane and The Wandering Eye

“And did you lose it to Easton?”

“No — but I would imagine the man who won it, did not possess it long. He is notoriously unlucky at games of chance, and must soon have given up the brooch to another.”

“The Colonel was certainly in possession of it a few months back, when a man calling himself Mr. Smith — a bearded fellow of some bearing — pawned the object in Cheapside. Easton redeemed it only a few weeks ago — just after the affair of honour, in which you injured his right arm. We may conclude that his desire for revenge, and his incipient plan, dates from that unhappy event. It was fought in respect of Miss Conyngham, was it not?”

Swithin inclined his head. “Easton believed me to have designs upon the lady — but I assured him that whatever my past attentions might have been, my heart was now engaged by another. He called me a blackguard and a liar. I could not allow such accusations to rest.”

“Your sisters thought they had seen the Colonel in Bath Street on Thursday, but were later confused by his clean-shaven appearance.” Lord Harold looked to me. “Did Pierrot sport whiskers, Miss Austen?”

The image of a burly, bearded figure of motley in converse with a scarlet Medusa rose before my eyes.

“Easton!” Lady Desdemona cried. “It was you!”

Throughout this explanation, Colonel Easton had stood mute and white-faced in the magistrate’s grip; but now he burst out with venom, “You shall never prove it, Trowbridge!”

“I do not have to,” Lord Harold replied easily. “For that is Mr. Elliot’s task.”

AND SO OUR MISBEGOTTEN PARLOUR GAME WAS AT LAST come to an end.

“Despicable man,” Maria Conyngham whispered, as she passed before Lord Harold’s gaze. “I shall damn you from my grave.”

He inclined his head with exquisite grace; and at Mr. Elliot’s behest, the lady quitted the room. But I observed Lord Harold’s eyelids to flicker as he watched her go, and his countenance become even more inscrutable; and read in these the extent of his self-loathing.

His mother observed as well, and understood; but the Duchess said nothing — merely reached for his hand.

“Well, my dear Jane — here’s a to-do,” my Uncle Perrot mused in a whisper. “It will be all over Bath on the morrow; and what I shall say to your aunt, I cannot think!”

“Lay the whole at my feet, my dear,” I advised him, “for she has quite despaired of my character these three years at least.”

Monday,

24 December 1804

Christmas Eve

TIME PASSED; LORD KINSFELL WAS RELEASED, AND RETURNED to the bosom of his family. The spectacular fall of the interesting Conynghams was a three-days’ wonder, and Eliza’s account of it much solicited in the Pump Room. My mother soon forgot her younger daughter’s scandalous taste for blood in a more consuming anxiety for her son’s financial well-being — and grew seriously vexed when no commissions for Henry materialised from my intimacy with the Wilborough family. I cast about for solace — and found it in the unlikely form of the Leigh-Perrots. For, as I told my mother, the very evening of the infamous Rauzzini concert my uncle had excessively valued Henry’s sage advice regarding the ‘Change.

“Then it is fortunate, indeed, Jane, that you took him up on the concert scheme, for I am sure he should not have thought of Henry and Eliza otherwise — and I know it was a sacrifice for yourself, disliking music of that kind. You were always a good sort of open-hearted girl. Cassandra is nothing to you.” She busied herself about her work a moment, humming fitfully in snatches of disconnected song, and presently warmed once more to her subject.

“Perhaps now your uncle may place some funds at Henry’s disposal — for Lord knows he has enough lying about at Scarlets, and even here at Paragon, to keep your brother in commissions a twelvemonth. I cannot think what he contrives to do with it all — for my sister Perrot hardly spends a farthing. She is of a saving nature, is sister Perrot — very saving indeed, and the housekeeping is the worse for it. The soused pig tasted decidedly ill the evening of her card party, and I could not find that she had even so trifling a confection as a seed-cake about her. The claret was tolerable, however — but I suppose that Mr. Perrot is vigilant about the laying-down of his cellar. No, Jane, you did not suffer at all in your sacrifice of the card party — and your willingness to oblige your uncle did you credit in his eyes, I am sure. Perhaps there may be a legacy in it, by and by.”

I left her happy in scheming how the various Austens might best contrive to exploit their more comfortably situated relations, and trusted that the patronage of the ducal family might never be mentioned again.

ONE SENSATION WAS SWIFTLY SUCCEEDED BY ANOTHER, AND the murder of Richard Portal gave way to news of far happier moment, with the announcement of Lady Desdemona Trowbridge’s betrothal to the Earl of Swithin. The gossips of the Pump Room would have it the redoubtable Earl had once fought a murderer at pistol-point in defense of the lady’s honour — but in support of so broad a claim, even Eliza very wisely said nothing.

“Jane,” my sister Cassandra said, as I lingered over the notice in the Bath Chronicle , “the post is come. You have a great letter from James. Is it not singular, indeed? For he never writes to you , if he can help it. I cannot think what he has found to say — and at considerable length, too.”

I jumped up from the sitting-room table and turned eagerly to the packet she held in her hands. “This is despatch, indeed! I must admire my brother the more, when that spirit of industry and rectitude — so generally tedious in his person — may contribute at last to satisfying my concerns. I expect this to contain news of Ashe.”

Cassandra stood very still, and a change came over her countenance. “Jane, there is a something you have not disclosed, that is troubling you deeply. I am certain of it. You have been comporting yourself in the strangest manner — most unlike yourself, indeed — from the moment we learned of Madam Lefroy’s death.”

I settled myself once more at the table, James’s letter slack in my hands. “And should you expect me to behave as myself, in the midst of so dreadful a grief?”

“As yourself in mourning, perhaps. But instead you go about like a lady of the ton , embarked upon her first Season! Madam Lefroy is all but forgot — and then, this?”

“Poor brother James! He would be no end offended to hear you speak so of his letters!”

“Do not sport with me, Jane.” Dear Cassandra’s voice held an unaccustomed ferocity. “I have always been privileged to share your smallest cares, as you have shared mine; but of late I must feel that you are entirely closed to me.” She sat down beside me and reached for my hand. “Your behaviour pains me, I will not deny. I esteemed Madam Lefroy as much as did you, and her death has quite destroyed my peace. You are not alone in your melancholy. Or perhaps you have not observed the torment of our dearest father? It galled him so to be unfitted by poor health for the journey to Ashe. But he was told that all travel must be impossible, with the delicate state of the lungs — Mr. Bowen feared an imflammation, it seems — and so Father was frustrated in his desire to show some small respect of friends cherished the better part of a lifetime. It is not fair in you, Jane — it is most unkind — to exclude your family from your counsels, and turn instead to strangers.”

“And is James, then, become a stranger?”

Cassandra sighed. “You know that I do not speak of James.”