Jane and the Stillroom Maid (13 page)

Lord Harold exchanged a look with Sir James, and both men were silent a moment. “His Grace must feel his wife’s passing, to be sure. But his consolation in life has always been the friendship of Lady Elizabeth Foster; and she is presently his guest at Chatsworth.”

“I see,” I said, although I saw nothing but that Lord Harold would dissemble, and that he moved in deeper waters than I had previously understood. A change of conversation appeared advisable. “Pray tell me, my lord, how does your family?”

“Very well, thank you. My nephew Lord Kinsfell is very lately married.”

“I wish him joy! And your delightful niece? Is the Countess of Swithin in health and beauty?”

“Desdemona is blooming,” he replied, with more of lightness than I had yet seen; “indeed, she is increasing. We expect the child to put in its appearance at Christmas.”

“How delightful!” I cried, and marvelled inwardly at the effect of time. I had first made the acquaintance of Lady Desdemona Trowbridge some two years before, in Bath, when she was a girl of eighteen and all unmarried. Now she was a lady of fashion—a formidable hostess in Town—a Countess in her own right, and soon to be a mother. Life for Lady Swithin had only grown more dazzling, while life for Jane Austen had contracted yet further. I had survived the passage of my thirtieth birthday, the loss of my father and a very dear friend; I was soon to give up my abode of three years, and venture forth into the unknown. I possessed even less inclination for marriage, and fewer prospects of achieving that state; I must live upon the princely sum of fifty pounds per annum—the probable cost of one of Lady Desdemona’s gowns—and did I dwell too long
upon the impoverishment of my circumstances, I should grow unutterably depressed.

“It was precisely this that drew me to your side today, Miss Austen,” Lord Harold was saying. “My niece is come with me to Chatsworth, to condole with Lady Harriot Cavendish, who is of an age with Mona and a friend from her earliest years. The Countess learned of your presence in Derbyshire only last evening, from Sir James”—this, with a glance for the Justice—“and could not know of it, without desiring to renew the acquaintance. My niece would have waited upon you this morning, indeed, but that Sir James assured us you were to appear as witness at the Inquest; and so it was settled that I should seek you out and bring you back to Chatsworth when all was concluded. Lady Swithin is wild to meet with you again—I say no more than she would herself,” he added with a smile, “for those were her very words.”

Chatsworth! Second only to Blenheim as the most venerable and exalted estate in the land! That I should be invited, the acquaintance of one of its intimates—that I should walk into its grand foyer, not as a member of the touring public, but as a guest desired and welcomed! I might stroll through its extensive grounds, arm-in-arm with a Countess, and admire the fabled fountains and the Spanish oaks scattered about the lawns—I might take tea at a table set out on the grass, or sample fruit from a hothouse tree. I might fancy myself an equal with such a man as Lord Harold, and turn to find his gaze upon me. I, Jane Austen, an intimate of Chatsworth—and of the heathen Whigs it harboured!

Whatever would Cassandra say?

But then, with an inward sinking, I considered my state of dress. I had donned a respectable muslin gown of pale blue that morning, and had gone so far as to submit to a navy-blue spencer, despite the heat, in deference to the austerity of the occasion. I was very nearly
suffocating. My gown, moreover, was not in the first stare of fashion, and grossly unequal to the grandeur of the Cavendishes.

And I was emphatically
not
in mourning.

“The Countess is very good,” I told Lord Harold haltingly, “but it is beyond my power to accept her invitation. Perhaps, if she intends to prolong her stay in the neighbourhood, we might walk together in Bakewell—”

“Courage, Jane,” said Lord Harold quietly. “You always possessed it of old. Do not fail me now.”

His grey eyes met my own, and held—and for the barest instant, I saw deep into his soul. Lord Harold was oppressed with worry, an anxiety so fearful he could not share it before Sir James; and I knew with absolute certainty that the visit to Lady Swithin was in the nature of subterfuge. He desired my counsel. And if I would learn of his secret concern, I must brave all the impropriety of appearing without black gloves, in a suffocating spencer, at the most hallowed house of mourning in all England.

“I await your pleasure, my lord,” I said.

28 August 1806, cont.
∼

T
HE
C
AVENDISH FAMILY ARE WITHOUT QUESTION AMONG
the Great in Derbyshire—indeed, throughout all of England. It may fairly be said that the Whig party was born among these peaks in 1688; for it was the Cavendishes who conspired with their near neighbours, the Manners family—later the Dukes of Rutland—to call William of Orange and his consort, Mary, from Holland in a Glorious Revolution. Having seized the throne of England from James II, William III rewarded his king-makers with dukedoms; and they served him in turn, by reminding him that though the throne might be his, the kingdom was now
theirs
. It is a Whig tenet that the monarch serves at the pleasure of the people—if one considers the people to be solely those who own a vast deal of property. The Whigs will court the common rabble in order to preserve their own heads secure upon their shoulders, without ever intending to do very much to ameliorate the rabble’s condition—other than to set them against their kings.

I write all this in the pages of my journal despite my
deep regard for Lord Harold Trowbridge, a Whig if ever there were one. The Dukes of Wilborough, having always possessed a keen sense of interest, were no more slow to champion William than their Cavendish brothers; and thus fortunes were made, influence won, and Lord Harold preserved from want from the moment of his birth. It should not be remarkable that such a man is an adept at the manipulation of faction, and at the preservation of his own life, regardless of the tempests of warfare and politics; he was formed in intrigue, schooled in calculation, and took the cynic’s breath with his mother’s milk.

And now he was to carry a respectable Tory Austen into the very heart of Cavendish territory. If I must storm the gates of Chatsworth, then no one but Lord Harold would do for my lieutenant.

At our first entering the country, my mother determined that we should view Chatsworth’s grounds and some part of the house, which by custom are made open to the public. But upon learning that the family were down for the summer, and thrown into the deepest of mourning, we gave up the scheme in excessive disappointment. A sense of delicacy would not allow even Mrs. George Austen to invade the Cavendishes’ privacy at such a time.

Her surprise would be great indeed upon learning that I had now secured an invitation to the house. In anticipation of the fevered exclamations such intelligence would excite—the inordinate concern for my state of dress, my speech, my manners, and my looks—and fearful that my mother would end by determining that she must accompany her younger daughter on so august an occasion—I undertook to leave my dearest relation in ignorance of events until they should be entirely past repair. I settled it with Sir James Villiers that he should call upon my cousin Mr. Cooper at The Rutland Arms, and convey to my mother a note I swiftly penned, explaining the nature of my absence.

I might trust Sir James to make all my party easy as to the propriety of my visit, and the considerable honour of the Countess of Swithin’s notice—for he is possessed of exactly that buoyant self-assurance, that familiarity with the Great World, calculated to impress my mother and comfort my sister. When Sir James is done, I might well be the object of envy for having glimpsed Chatsworth on so intimate a scale—despite having entangled myself once more with Lord Harold.

His lordship had come to Bakewell in an elegant landau, drawn by four matched bays, the panels and doors emblazoned with the Devonshire serpent and stag. A liveried coachman handed me into the carriage, and I settled myself opposite Lord Harold with all the sensations of delight attendant upon an airing in such an equipage, behind such a team, and through such splendid country. It was useless to attempt much conversation amidst all the bustle of the village; and until we had descended the length of the town, and crossed the ancient stone bridge that led towards Chatsworth, Lord Harold said nothing. But a journey of three miles cannot be passed entirely in silence; and presently, in a lowered tone, he enquired how I did.

“Perfectly well, my lord, I thank you.”

“The breeze is not too distressing?”

“Not at all. I find it most refreshing. You will recollect that I have my spencer.”

He then enquired whether I had yet ventured the Baslow road, and upon my answering in the negative, observed, “Then you may expect nothing but delight. This part of the country is known as Manners Wood, after the Rutland family. Do not neglect the view, Jane, as we achieve the top of the hill.”

“I am sure I shall find it charming, Lord Harold.”

He studied my countenance an instant, and then ventured, “You look very well, Jane. I rejoice to find you so obviously in health. It has been too long since we last met; and yet you appear not a day older.”

“You flatter me, sir,” I chided him.

“Not at all. I merely detect in you a resilience I am far from feeling myself.”

“You
do
appear to have sustained a trying period.”

“Most trying. From a variety of causes, this past twelvemonth has proved the most difficult of my life.” His gaze wandered over the woody hills to left and right, the gentle slopes of pasturage fading now in late summer, without appearing to register their beauty. “And now this brutal death in Miller’s Dale. It is by far too much.”

I frowned. “I had not expected you to feel the maid’s murder with any personal sensibility, my lord.”

“I confess I do not,” he returned, with a brusque laugh. “Indeed, I have entirely failed to consider of the wretched girl. She is nothing to me. It is for those who might be encompassed in the affair, that my anxiety is all alive. If I but knew what Georgiana would do—how she would wish me to act—” He broke off, and raised his hand to his lips in mute frustration.

The late Duchess. Comprehension and astonishment broke upon my head at once. I leaned forward and spoke in no more than a whisper, conscious of the footman behind and the coachman before.

“Would you suggest, my lord, that an intimate of Chatsworth is somehow entangled in the murder of Tess Arnold? But her death was an act of savagery—an act of madness! Surely no one from that exalted family—”

He looked at me with pain. “I am not master enough of the circumstances, Jane—I am too much in the dark on several fronts—to know what can or ought to be disclosed. Would that I might share the worst torments, the most despicable of my fears! But such are not for your hearing.”

I sat back against the squabs and studied him narrowly. “Why was it so necessary for me to call at Chatsworth, my lord?”

“Because Mr. Andrew Danforth, the younger son of Penfolds Hall, rode out with His Grace the Duke this morning; and shall certainly be attendant upon the ladies at this hour.”

“I have not seen the younger brother,” I mused, “though I was so fortunate as to observe Charles Danforth only a few hours since. He is a … singular gentleman. I have rarely remarked so much grief and suffering upon so contained a brow.”

“Charles Danforth is an exceptional fellow. You know that he is descended on his mother’s side from the d’Arcy family, and in Charles one might almost discern the d’Arcy powers reborn.”

“I confess I am unacquainted with the name. Are they well known in Derbyshire?”

“It was the d’Arcys who conspired with the Cavendishes and the Rutlands to bring about the Glorious Revolution,” Lord Harold informed me, “in an alehouse in Whittington named the Cock and Pynot. It was there the Whig party was born, Jane.”
1

“And has not escaped the air of the alehouse from that time to this,” I murmured. “But you were speaking of Mr. Andrew Danforth, I believe.”