Jane and the Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery

by Stephanie Barron

  He could hardly rejoice in the thought; that he knew the desk had been plundered, and by whom, I little doubted—and so, in the most desultory manner imaginable, our dance declined to its end.

  “I AM HAPPY TO SEE YOU AGAIN, LORD HAROLD,” MY mother said with considerable effort a half-hour later, as we stood in the Tea Room hopeful of securing places. “You do not know Mrs. Henry Austen, I believe.”

  “On the contrary, madam—we have met in London. At the late Sir Hugh Walpole’s, I believe.” Lord Harold bowed.

  “You have a remarkable memory, my lord,” Eliza cried. “I have not seen Lady Walpole this age! But I believe we may have met at a rout or two, when she was more given to braving society.”

  “You are well, Lord Harold, I hope?” my mother enquired.

  “I am, ma’am. And I find you in good health, I trust?”

  “Tolerable, tolerable—though Mr. Austen’s is not what I would wish. Mr. Bowen will have him walk out in the coldest weather, as you saw yourself when you were so kind as to call in Green Park Buildings Wednesday; and though the exercise may be beneficial, I cannot think the sharpness of the wind entirely salubrious.”

  “No, indeed. And did the Reverend determine to remain at home this evening?”

  “He is playing at whist, sir. My son Henry attends him.”

  “Jane,” my sister Eliza whispered, “I am quite taken with your Gentleman Rogue. I understand, now, Lady Walpole’s utter enslavement to Trowbridge several years past. There was quite a scandal, you know, when she abandoned Sir Hugh.”

  “Eliza,” I retorted in a quelling tone. “He will hear you.”

  The little Comtesse’s dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “I do not care if he does. I should like nothing better than to have the whole history from Lord Harold himself. Sir Hugh shot himself in the midst of Pall Mall, you know; and Lady Walpole has not shown her face this age. Lord Harold has quite thrown her off, I expect.”

  “Eliza—”

  But I need not have excited anxiety. Lord Harold was utterly transfixed by my mother’s recitation of woe. In his dark blue coat and cream-coloured breeches, his head tilted slightly to one side, he was all politeness—and might rather have been attending Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, on the Whigs’ prospects in Government.

  “Reverend Austen has suffered a trifling cough,” my mother continued, “though I will dress his chest in mustard and flannel; and I cannot be sanguine regarding his bowels.”

  “Now, Mamma,” I protested. “Lord Harold is hardly a physician, and can have no interest in our … trifling coughs.”

  “On the contrary,” he protested amiably, “I am frequently called to offer an opinion in my mother’s case, and place the greatest trust in Dr. Charles Gibbs, of Milsom Street. He is a most excellent physician, and has quite preserved the Dowager Duchess against Bath’s penetrating damps.”

  “I have not the honour of acquaintance with Dr. Gibbs,” my mother replied.

  “Then I shall make certain to send him to Green Park Buildings. You cannot do without Gibbs.”

  My mother curtseyed, and turned to me abruptly. “Jane, my dear, I long to be at home. Have you not had enough of dancing? Cassandra is greatly fatigued—the poor child suffered a trying injury to the head last summer, Lord Harold, while we were travelling in Dorset—and I cannot think the lateness of the hour good for her.”

  “I shall be quite all right, Mamma,” I replied with equanimity. “For Henry and Eliza do not desert me. Do you attend Cassandra home, and I shall follow presently.”

  She would have protested—would rather have remained, than abandoned me to Lord Harold in her absence—but my brother was so insistent upon her leaving, and even went in search of my father for the purpose of speeding her departure, that her intentions were utterly routed. She turned from our little party with a swirl of her skirts, and I perceived that I should be subject to a scolding on the morrow.

  “And now we may have our tea in peace,” Eliza announced. She seized upon a table with remarkable energy, and awaited the appearance of a footman with the tea things.

  “I did not expect the pleasure of meeting you this evening,” I said to Lord Harold, when all the bustle of family business was over.

  “I could not resist attending my niece to the Assembly, in direct opposition to the Earl of Swithin’s views of propriety. I observe that he at least has not remained at home, in deference to my nephew. He is even now paying court to Miss Conyngham, and is careful that Desdemona observes it. Mona, for her part, is engrossed in conversation with a Colonel Easton. How diverting it all is, to be sure.”

  “Colonel Easton?”

  “He is an officer in the Dragoon Guards, and has been in love with my niece this age. Mona rides with him tomorrow at Dash’s.”2

  “I am unacquainted with Colonel Easton—but had heard that he is recently come to Bath. And that he was injured in a duel,” I managed. “The result of an insult to Lord Swithin.”

  “And so he was. His right arm is still bound up in a sling, like a badge of honour. The Colonel and the Earl do not speak. We may presume this lends the flirtation a certain piquancy in Mona’s eyes.”

  Lord Harold handed me a glass of wine punch, and secured himself another.

  “Your family does not regard my attentions with pleasure, Miss Austen. I fear I have rendered you a disservice. Pray accept my apologies.”

  I coloured, and looked conscious. “I do not understand you, my lord.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I fancy you do. I quite ruin your reputation with every advance upon your doorstep, my dear.” The Gentleman Rogue’s words were couched in boredom; but I detected a wound. It is something, indeed, to be suspected of impropriety wherever one goes—the justice of the suspicion notwithstanding.

  “My family may, perhaps, be a little overawed at your greatness, my lord.”

  “Then they are very unlike the greater run of Bath society.” He surveyed the crush of pleasure-seekers jostling for places in the Tea Room, several of whom averted their looks as his lordship glanced their way, and an expression of bitterness flitted across his countenance. “Perhaps I should have attempted to speak to you in the midst of the street, and preferably at noon. For we should hardly draw greater interest in the public square, than we have done in the privacy of this corner. I have damaged you immeasurably, Miss Austen. First the theatre, and now the Assembly—it requires only an urchin to publish our assignation in the Labyrinth, to complete the ruin of your reputation! All of Bath will be detecting you in an intrigue, and pitying you when I turn my attentions to Miss Conyngham.”

  “I should rather thank than berate you, Lord Harold.” I sipped at my punch and felt suddenly exposed to an hundred curious eyes. “Such interesting attention will at least ensure that my present life is less tedious than of old.”

  He was silent a moment. “Are you, then, unhappy with your lot? Bath, to be sure, lacks the superior society of London, but I have heard many ladies describe it as endlessly diverting. Is it so unequal to your amusement?”

  “I have not the idleness of character to take pleasure in dissipation,” I replied. “I sorely want to be doing something. And perhaps I have endured Bath’s pleasures too long. Even Paradise, I suspect, will grow contemptible through eternal association.”

  “We are very much alike in this, my dear. I find the tedium of daily routine very nearly insupportable. It is the sole inducement to involve myself in—affairs of a delicate nature. Without the spur of variety, I should be a lost man, unfitted to good society.”

  And thus we find the root of your restless heart, I silently observed, forever intent upon the next conquest. But I only said, “In the present case, at least, you have the welfare of your nephew to lend urgency to the game. Your energies could never be brought to a similar pitch by mere ennui alone.”

  “That is true,” he said, his grey eyes alight. “But tell me, I beg. Did you learn anything of Hugh Conyngham? For I observed you to dance with him a
n hour since.”

  “Nothing of what Mr. Elliot would deign to call proof” I said with a droll look, “but I would wager my life that he knows of the letters’ disappearance, and misgives the nature of our recent visit to the wings. I took care to present you as a formidable fellow, alive with suspicion regarding his sister and the Earl, and happy in resources denied to others. I may fairly say we may expect the unfortunate Mr. Conyngham to move in considerable anxiety—and seek the protection of the only person available to lend it—the Earl of Swithin.”

  “And tomorrow I embark upon Maria Conyngham.”

  “Take care, Lord Harold, that she does not embark upon you”

  “That must be impossible, my dear.”

  “Forgive me, but I cannot be so sanguine.” I met his eyes as steadily as I knew how.

  “You do not believe me in danger!” He affected a careless good humour, but there was a wariness in his looks.

  “I think you move at your very peril. Her motives and skill are of the most subtle; her charms, infinite. Have a care, I beg.”

  “I will promise to present the lady with a heart as duplicitous as her own appears to be,” Lord Harold replied; but there was little of levity in his words.

  And so he bowed, and left me to the significant looks of Henry and Eliza, and all the comfort of cooling tea.

  1 Beau Nash was Master of Ceremonies for the Bath Assembly up to his death in 1761, and believed himself responsible for the regulation of public conduct. He forced those who frequented the Rooms—duchess and commoner alike—to a rigid standard of etiquette that survived him by fully fifty years.—Editor’s note.

  2 This was a riding school located in Montpelier Street, where, for a seasonal subscription, the gentry might receive instruction in riding or hire mounts for their use.—Editor’s note.

  Chapter 11

  A Knife at the Throat

  Saturday,

  15 December 1804

  ~

  I PARTED FROM THE HENRY AUSTENS IN THE FOYER OF THE Lower Rooms not long thereafter, but I did not go to my chair in even tolerable composure. My thoughts were entirely consumed with Lord Harold Trowbridge for the better part of my journey home to Green Park Buildings. He has ever been a man of coldest calculation, a master-player at chess, and moving amongst a multitude of boards—all of them quite chequered. I had thought the tender passions to be his abhorrence; and indeed, with such a career as he has made, they should never prove his friends. However many women he may keep in style in Mayfair, his heart is unlikely to be touched. This containment of temper preserves him from the stabs of the impertinent, just as it renders the exploitative without object. Moreover, I trace in its lineaments the result of some great disappointment in early life—the loss of a beloved to betrayal, or perhaps a crueller fate. My intimacy with Lord Harold has never been of so great a kind as to permit the exchange of confidences; and thus my conjectures must remain unsatisfied. But his weakness in the present instance troubles me—I detect an inclination to the challenge of Maria Conyngham’s heart—and I fear for the composure of his mind.

  I cannot, however, find in this any possible hope of happiness for Lord Harold. He knows of her proximity to Richard Portal, and of that gentleman’s blackmailing art; knows, too, that Maria is tied by affection or avarice to the Earl of Swithin. And though he cannot prove it was her hand that thrust home the dagger, suspicion will curl in his very entrails—poisoning his thoughts, destroying his sleep, and turning his tenderest feeling the betrayer of his judgement. He will be flayed alive by the division in his soul—and that suffering will lead him to divine the truth.

  And in seeking the truth, he can only destroy Miss Conyngham.

  A sudden lurch to the chair thrust me strongly against the left-hand window, and I cried out in some alarm. I had barely time to observe that the forward bearer had set down his poles, pitching me to the front of my seat, before the aft man did likewise; and the two ran off without a word of explanation, quite impervious to my exclamations of outrage and dismay. Where was the link boy, with his flaring lamp?1 The darkness enshrouding the chair was absolute, and in sudden, sharp fear, I fumbled at the door.

  It was then I perceived a figure looming over me—and my breath caught hard within my throat.

  “There now, ma’am, hand us your reticule, or we’ll be forced to find it—and we’ve ways of looking you won’t much like.” A most ruffianly-appearing fellow stared down at me in the darkness, his face partially obscured by a handkerchief. “You shouldn’t ought to travel when the night’s without the moon, miss. Mortal dangerous it is.”

  I sank back into the chair, finding in its low-ceilinged space a hint of reassurance and protection, and saw that a second man, bearded and muffled to defy detection, had taken up position by the first. The chair had been abandoned in an alley—no doubt through the thieves’ collusion with the dastardly chairmen—and the place was unfamiliar to my eyes. In such darkness, however, all of Bath might be disguised. I briefly considered screaming in a bid for assistance—surely the streets must as yet be populous—but recollected the habit of the most common footpad, of carrying a knife or a club. And so I handed the thieves my reticule without complaint.

  They were a curious pair—hulking and sturdy as farming hands, but dressed in the ape of fashion. Had I passed them on the street, and never heard them speak, I might have taken them for gentlemen, indeed—and could hardly believe their raiment won from the profits of petty stealing. The first man untied the strings of my little purse and probed within.

  The second man peered through the doorway, and I quailed at the rage in his eyes. They were singular, indeed, as though the Devil’s mark was upon him—for even in the gloom I could discern that one eye was light, and the other dark. Where had I seen a similar pair before? But I lacked time for all reflection—for to my extreme terror, he reached a hand to the collar of my pelisse, and the hand held a knife.

  I rapped his knuckles sharply with my fan and screamed aloud at the full pitch of my lungs. The ruffian seized me by the shoulders, and endeavoured to bring the knife to my very throat—when his hand was stilled by the blessed sound of running feet careening around a corner.

  With an oath and a slam of a fist to the sedan chair’s roof, my assailant dashed back into the darkened alley. His companion followed hard at his heels. And it was then I remembered where last I had seen him—he was Smythe, the labourer from the Theatre Royal. I screamed again, and thrust myself out of the chair and into the arms of a burly fellow in the blue uniform and peaked cap of the chairmen—and recoiled in horror, as from a nightmare too quickly renewed.2

  “Now, miss,” the man said comfortingly, “what’s the to-do?”

  “I was abandoned in this place by some of your brethren, and set upon by thieves,” I managed. “Pray to call the constable.”

  He turned and hallooed to some confederates, who dashed off in pursuit of my assailants; and trembling in every limb, I was conducted through a growing crowd to the safety of a coaching inn.

  It was another hour before I achieved the stoop of Green Park Buildings, however, having been sent home in a hack chaise at the constable’s expense. I had lost my reticule and such coin as I possessed to my dedicated footpads. The constable had dutifully noted the abandonment of the chair, the seizing of my purse, and my description of a man with parti-coloured eyes, who I thought was named Smythe, and very likely to be found in Orchard Street. He was content to believe the incident one of common theft—but I knew otherwise. It was nothing less than my murder that Smythe had attempted tonight; and that he was sent by the same person responsible for Richard Portal’s death, I felt certain.

  The question that remained, however, was why?

  MY FATHER WAS SITTING UP WITH AN ANXIOUS FACE, HIS candle nearly guttered and a volume of Grandison open on his lap. “Jane!” he cried, as I entered the sitting-room. “It is nearly one o’clock! The dancing cannot have been so excessively prolonged.”

  “No, Father,
it was not,” I wearily replied, and laid my bonnet upon the Pembroke table. “I have been waylaid and robbed in the neighbourhood of Westgate Buildings.”

  “Robbed?—But were you then walking alone? And how came you near Westgate Buildings?”

  “I was not so foolish as to venture entirely alone into the streets on a night without moon.” My voice was cross, but I had perhaps had too much of questioning. “I can only think the chairmen were in league with the thieves, for they brought me to that insalubrious neighbourhood and abandoned me to my fate.”

  My father said not another word, but enfolded me in his frail arms. We are almost of a height, he and I; and through the flannel of his dressing-gown, I could discern the light, rapid beating of his heart. “I fear for you, Jane,” he said at last. “This is uncommon, indeed, for Bath at Christmastide, and the close of a respectable evening’s entertainment. It would not have to do, I suppose, with a certain gentleman we all choose to despise?”

  “I assure you it does not, Father,” I untruthfully replied; but no further words could I utter.

  “Very well.” His looks were grave, and I detected a want of his usual confidence. He might almost have disbelieved me. “But you are not to summon a chair again, Jane, unless in the company of a larger party.”

  “I may safely promise you never to do so.”

  He bent to kiss the crown of my head in the gentlest fashion possible. “I am sorry for you, indeed, my dear. You will say nothing of this affair to your mother, I beg. Her fancies run quite wild enough, without the fodder of fact to lend them strength.”

  SLEEP WAS LONG IN COMING WHEN AT LAST I SOUGHT MY bed, and my dreams were racked with fear—so that I recoiled insensible from knives that pressed against my neck, and should have cried aloud, but for the choking length of pendant chain that twined around my throat. A glittering bauble hung almost to my knees, ringed about with pearls; and as I watched, its smouldering eye turned from blue to brown and back again—unblinking all the while.