Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

I allowed the slightest suggestion of confusion to cross my features. “But what, then, is the purpose of the waggons in the courtyard? I expected an entire party of pleasure-seekers upon my arrival — and yet could barely discover a soul!”

“We were about the hay-making yesterday,” Sidmouth said evenly, with a look to Seraphine; “until halted by the onset of the storm. Had Toby been better fitted to his work, the equipages should hardly have been left standing; but his injury, and the pressing nature of my own affairs, necessitated their present abandonment.”

He could not have known, of course, that Toby had declared his injury to be a thing of the night — and well after any waggons should have been put up.

“I hope your expectations are not all downcast, Miss Austen, at finding us quite alone? For we are generally so retiring at High Down Grange, that the addition of merely one to the circle is taken as a novelty. We are in your debt, you see, for this visit.”

“And I feel it particularly,” said Seraphine, turning from the fire, “for you know I see almost no one. I wonder, Miss Austen, if you would care to take a turn along the cliffs — the weather being so fine? We might converse at some leisure in the open air; and as such days will offer only rarely in the coming months, we ought to seize them when we may.”

Though I had toiled fully two and a half miles uphill from Lyme in the previous hour, I surmised Seraphine to be seeking some privacy, if not my safe removal from the vicinity of the kitchen garret; and declared myself not antagonistic to the notion of exercise. While the lady went in search of her cloak, there being a brisk breeze off the sea, I settled myself into an empty chair; and so was left in the company of Mr. Sidmouth for some anxious moments.

“Let me repeat myself, Miss Austen, the better to show my gratitude, even at the risk of increasing your tedium,” he began, his brown eyes warm in his harsh-featured face. “I am very much obliged to you for this visit. I know full well that you are come at my express request, made only a few nights ago — a melancholy night, in retrospect, given the events that followed hard upon our evening's enjoyment at Darby.”

For a moment I knew not how to reply, surprised that he should mention even so obliquely the death of Captain Fielding.

“There is to be an inquest, I understand, at the Golden Lion,” I ventured at the last.

“It will avail them nothing,” Sidmouth said grimly, and threw himself into the chair Seraphine had vacated. “Fielding's murderer is long gone from the vicinity.”

“You would credit, then, the notion of a footpad? You believe Captain Fielding to have died by misadventure?”

“Is there an alternative?” he enquired, with a knitting of the brows. “For the Captain is unlikely to have done away with himself, Miss Austen, having first dispensed with his valuables.”

“But another might have effected a similar appearance.”

“To what purpose?” Mr. Sidmouth's voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and his countenance was stilled and shuttered.

“To suggest that what was murder by design, was merely a perilous encounter with a highwayman — the better to divert suspicion, and throw into doubt all hope of confounding the killer.”

“And why should any wish to trifle with Fielding's life in so terrible a manner?”

“Come, come, Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried. “Km are a man of the world. You know what it is to inspire enemies, and to maintain a relation of enmity with another. Surely you may supply a myriad of reasons for such an extraordinary course. You bore the Captain too little love, not to wish him as much ill-fortune as he was unhappy enough to endure.”

“Are you suggesting that I wished him dead, Miss Austen? Or, worse still, that in wishing him dead, I took measures to achieve my aim?” Mr. Sidmouth rose from his chair and crossed to where I sat, his powerful form overtaken by malevolence. I had an idea, of a sudden, what it should be to cross him in a matter of some importance to himself, and swallowed hard to overcome my fear.

“I suggest nothing,” I replied.

“Miss Jane Austen of Bath never speaks to little purpose.’ ‘He observed me narrowly. “You actually believe me capable of such foul conduct as Fielding suffered! Does my aspect betray me as so prone to violence, however just and warranted it might be? But no—” he said, wheeling about, “—it is unwise to enquire too closely of a lady whose aspect is so clouded with doubt. The answers should be too little to my liking.”

“Mr. Sidmouth—”

“Say nothing, Miss Austen, for good or ill,” he said harshly; “you cannot know the effect your words should have. I am too little master of my feelings in the present moment to meet either your contempt or your concern with the attention they deserve.”

And with that, he left me — in such a state of perturbation, that I barely disguised my sensibility before Seraphine, who returned some moments later intent upon a walk.

“I MUST TELL YOU, MISS AUSTEN, THAT GEOFFREY ESTEEMS YOU highly. It is his fondest wish that we should grow acquainted; and I am so desirous of company in my isolation, that I welcome his interest, and the benevolence it has inspired. You are very good to weary yourself in seeking the Grange.”

I studied Seraphine's beautiful profile curiously. She spoke so frankly of her retirement from society, as though it were a sentence imposed by a merciless court, that I adjudged her amenable to some gentle questioning.

“I cannot help asking, Mademoiselle — how come you to be here, so far from your home, and quite without friends?”

“Home is a mere channel away, Miss Austen, and Geoffrey the greatest friend I have ever known,” she replied quietly. “But I understand what you would ask. France might as well be at the ends of the earth, for all the hope I have of returning — hope or desire, both being equally extinguished by my sad history. I have been in England nearly a decade, having fled the horrors of the guillotine at the age of fifteen.”

“Your family suffered in the revolution?”

“Suffered!” Her lip curled expressively, and she turned to gaze out at the sea an instant, before resuming our pacing along the cliff's edge. “I saw my mother taken away in a cart, and my father; my three aunts, two of my uncles, and my eldest brother — all perished on the infernal machine.”

“Good God!” I cried.

“Words cannot express the blood-lust, the mad desire for revenge, the senseless hatred that compelled the people in those days. It was the sort of frenzy only rarely witnessed by rational beings — thank God.”

“But how came you to escape?”

She shrugged and averted her gaze. “My relations in England exerted their energies on our behalf — you should know that Mr. Sidmouth is the son of my mother's sister — and for once they were successful. We were smuggled out of the prison beneath a load of refuse, and borne swiftly to Boulogne, there to embark upon a ship bound for this coast; and here I have remained ever since, walking these cliffs that I might gaze towards France, and remember those who did not escape.”

“You speak in the plural, Mademoiselle,” I said tentatively. “Was there some other who escaped at your side?”

“My youngest brother, Philippe. He was but ten at the time.”

“A brother! How fortunate that you should be left with some prop in the midst of tragedy — some confidant in sorrow! But where is your brother now, Mademoiselle? Away at school, perhaps?”

To my surprise, she shrugged, the faintest of smiles overspreading her lips. “Philippe has returned to France. He is with Napoleon's army there.”