Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (31 page)

With this—and with the lesser rôle of inscribing place cards—Cassandra was forced to be content. It was as well she knew nothing of my conference with William Chute and Lord Bolton in the book room. The knowledge that I had examined Raphael West’s sketchbook without his consent should certainly have roused her indignation.

I
T WAS BUT AN
hour before dinner by the time we had completed our preparations. Thomas-Vere and I had laboured gamely over the composition of so many characters—some thirty-five couples, male and female. Only those we purposed to take ourselves—meaning The Vyne household—were assigned. I was Miss Candour, and must tell everyone frankly what I thought of them. Thomas-Vere was Sir Macaroni, a rôle he should fill to admiration (he intended to borrow a pair of Eliza’s heeled French slippers and mince about the Saloon). James was to be The Archbishop, so that he might look his disapproval at the proceedings without offending the guests; William Chute was the Gamekeeper, and might walk about with a fox’s mask or a pheasant in his pockets. Eliza was Mrs. Topnote, the celebrated Italian soprano, and must sing for her supper; my mother was Lady Lavish, as befit one who possessed such a handsome reticule. Cassandra we stiled as a Greek Muse, so that she might carry her sketchbook. Mary, we had by common accord, deigned
Duchess Highinstep, so that her patronising airs might be taken for a game, and not in earnest.

The majority of the characters, however, were intended to be proffered at random to guests as they arrived in the front hall. Thomas-Vere should have charge of the gentlemen, and I, the ladies. The children—some couple dozen were expected—should form the Queen’s Court. Miss Wiggett and James-Edward were to be Queen and King of Misrule—and little Caroline was to wear a splendid faerie-gown of tulle, as Lady in Waiting.

She had spent the better part of the afternoon in the kitchens, watching Eliza’s French cook create the intricate decorations for the Twelfth Night cake. These were formed of sugar paste, pressed into boxwood moulds, the shapes then being used to form fanciful royal crowns. The confection itself was a light fruit-cake, made with yeast so that it should rise, and covered all over with a heavy paste icing. It was the most remarkable shade of pink; I suspected it had been coloured with cochineal. The last of the sugar paste crowns and scalloped edging had just been applied as we were mounting the stairs to dress for dinner; Caroline tripped up to the schoolroom behind Miss Wiggett in considerable excitement.

“You go ahead, Jane,” Cassandra said as we achieved the landing. “I shall just stop a moment to enquire of Sackett whether Mr. West requires anything. Poor man, he shall be entirely forgot in all these preparations for the ball!”

“He is in excellent hands, Cass,” I replied. “Indeed—”

I broke off at the sound of a coach and horses pulling up before the South Porch, and moved to the landing window that I might have a clear view of the scene below. Cassandra silently joined me. Eliza had said nothing of any arrivals this evening.

The carriage was a handsome landau pulled by four horses. The
sidelights revealed a crest on one panel—but in the dusk it was impossible to decipher. Had Lord Bolton returned?

A liveried footman jumped down from the landau’s rear seat and opened the carriage door. A gentleman stepped out, and turned to take the hand of a lady within.

Both were arrayed from head to toe in black: deepest mourning.

“Edward Gambier,” Cassandra whispered, “and her ladyship. What can they possibly mean by attending a ball?”

We stared at one another, perplexed. Neither of the Gambiers should be within a mile of a Twelfth Night celebration in their present bereavement. “Perhaps they have no notion a revel is in view,” I said weakly.

“Then why are they come back, Jane?”

“Perhaps they mean to accuse one of us of murder.”

I
WAS MORE FORWARD
in my dress than my sister, and thus descended to the Saloon to await the dinner bell alone. I suspected Cass of dawdling in the upper passages in the hope of meeting the nurse, Sackett, and found myself yearning for a return of her usual good sense. There have been moments in the nearly forty years I have known Cassandra when I wished her more spirited—more open to experience and novelty—less preoccupied with what was correct than with what was enlivening. But if her present infatuation with Raphael West must be taken as a sign of the latter, I must be more circumspect in my wishes.

“Miss Austen,” Edward Gambier said with a bow as I entered the Saloon. “I daresay you did not expect to meet again so soon.”

“That does not make the event any less desirable,” I returned, extending my hand to him. “Rather the reverse.”

“You are very good.”

He was less smiling and jovial than I remembered; not to be wondered at, now that he had known his sister’s loss some days. Grief is more likely to tighten its hold in the first week, when disbelief has given way to the horror of acceptance. I noted his bleak eye and haggard appearance, and pitied him.

Thomas-Vere Chute then entered the Saloon, to exclaim over Edward Gambier’s presence. I concluded that not only the Austens remarked upon the sudden arrival.

“The obsequies in Bath were exactly as one should hope?” Thomas-Vere enquired in a lowered voice.

“Indeed. Tho’ my poor mother is now prostrate at the grave. I should not have left her, indeed, did my aunt not command my support. Between the claims of two elderly ladies, how is one to chuse? Neither ought to be denied.”

Except that one had a fortune to bestow.

I met Thomas-Vere’s gaze. He lifted his brows slightly; he, too, was as puzzled as I.

“Your aunt accompanied you here?” I enquired, with a false air of surprize.

“Yes. She is greatly fatigued from our journey, however, and takes dinner in her rooms.”

“If you chuse to do the same, Mr. Gambier, no one should blame you.”

Edward Gambier gave me a wintry smile. “I find that I require the balm of Society, Miss Austen. I have a difficult task before me, and must take solace in the support of my friends.”

Good lord, did he indeed intend to accuse one of us of murder?

“You may count me among them, sir. But surely you do not refer to our Twelfth Night ball tomorrow evening?”

“Ball?”

William Chute appeared in the room, my mother on his arm, and advanced upon us. “Gambier! I did not for the world expect you! To what do we owe this pleasure, my dear fellow?”

Edward Gambier knit his delicate brows. “To my uncle, sir. Admiral Lord Gambier. Did he not communicate his intention of descending upon The Vyne tomorrow?”

“If he did, the communication was mislaid,” Chute retorted tartly. “But no matter. He is very welcome, to be sure. What is one more, when a hundred are expected?”

“A hundred?” Gambier repeated blankly.

“For the ball,” I supplied.

“Good God, I had no idea.” He accepted the glass of wine Chute offered him, and tossed back half of it. “My uncle has not yet learnt of Mary’s death.”

“Dashed awkward,” Thomas-Vere said.

“He wrote to us in Bath,” Gambier persisted, “that he intended breaking his home journey here, Mr. Chute. At The Vyne. He means to present you with a copy of the Treaty of Ghent. You are sure you have had no word?”

Realisation overcame me. Benedict L’Anglois. He had received the Admiral’s communication, and opened it in the way of secretaries scouting their employer’s correspondence. Rather than meet the Admiral—he had bolted.

“My aunt’s letter breaking the news cannot have reached him before he left Ghent,” Gambier went on. “In good conscience, we could not allow my uncle to learn the intelligence of Mary’s end from mere acquaintance. He was excessively fond of her. We came post-haste to arrive before him, so that he might hear the dreadful truth from our lips.”

“I see,” Chute said drily. “We must hope the Admiral is a little
delayed in his journey, lest the revelries in this house tomorrow appear in exceedingly poor taste. Let me refill your glass, Edward—you have need of it.”

THE TWELFTH NIGHT

Cassandra insisted upon taking a turn with Sackett at sitting up by Raphael West during the night. When I closed the bedchamber door, there she was, gently lit by a shielded candle, a few feet from his bedside. If West did not instantly offer for Cass’s hand in marriage upon regaining his senses, there was no justice in the world; and I attempted to be sanguine about it. I had long since given up any pretensions to his interest I might have entertained. I was unwilling to fight my sister for happiness. What man could resist the mixture of sweetness and devotion Cass presented? Regardless of the fact that she should be two-and-forty in a matter of days? He was some years older than that himself.

I was wakeful much of the night, being alone in our bedchamber. In the early hours of morning, Cass crept into bed, and I was able to sleep a little. It fell to me, however, to deliver young Caroline’s final gift of the Christmas season—Jemima’s Twelfth Night costume.

This was a diminutive domino robe and mask Cassandra and I had fashioned out of a startling shade of pink silk. It was designed to fall in rustling folds over the doll’s head and gown, sweeping to
her feet, with intriguing almond-shaped openings in the black eye mask. This was the usual garb worn by fine ladies who condescended to appear at publick masques; and no rakish beau should presume to know Jemima’s identity, in the midst of the Children’s Ball. Caroline might clamour for a matching domino, but she must be contented with faerie tulle.

As I returned from the nursery wing along the upper passage in the weak light of dawn, my hair hanging down my back, I was startled to discern a wraith-like figure wavering in a doorway ahead of me. I stopped short and peered through the gloom. It was Raphael West.

He had one hand on the doorjamb and the other pressed to his eyes. His head undoubtedly ached. But he was upright—God in Heaven! How had he managed it?

He stepped forward, and swayed.

I ran to him, catching him under the arms as he fell. He was exceedingly heavy for one of my weight, but I was not overpowered.

“Raphael,” I said urgently. “Raphael.”

He opened his eyes, sense swimming in them, as unfixed as stars in the night sky.

“Jane,” he said wonderingly, and touched my cheek with his fingers. “A dream. I have such dreams—”

“No,” I said. “I am here. Where is Sackett? Where is—”

He lifted my chin with one finger, and set his lips on mine.

He acted as all dreamers do, as tho’ under the compulsion of a greater god. I was party to the spell, for I did not protest or break his hold; I merely swooned beneath him, conscious of a wetness on my cheeks where tears of thankfulness slipped down. I was thankful for his life. For the sense that had returned to him. For this benediction at his hands. When at last he released me, his dreaming gaze
still not entirely of this world, I said only, “You must go back to your bed. You had a fall on the hunting field some days since. You require your sleep.”

He nodded once, turned, and immediately threw himself down on the bedclothes. I closed the door as quietly as possible; I do not think he was sensible, even then, that I was there.

It was only as I moved back towards my own room that I saw my sister Cassandra outlined in the doorway. How much had she witnessed? I stopped short, stricken; but without a word, she turned away. In her countenance I detected something of a bird who knows its wing is broken beyond repair.

I
T WAS
S
ACKETT WHO
delivered the news of Raphael West’s awakening. She had witnessed his eyes open at dawn, and had immediately descended to the kitchens to prepare beef tea. It was during this interval that I discovered him wavering in his doorway; and upon Sackett’s return, West was once more asleep. He remained in that state—healing, restorative sleep, rather than the insensible state that had prevailed for days—until Mr. Price arrived at ten o’clock, and testily woke him.

“You are recovered, sir,” he declared as he examined West’s eyes. “Do you recall anything of the Hunt morning, and your fall from your horse?”

“I do not,” West replied. “The moments leading up to it, and everything after until this hour, are as a blank.”

He was unlikely, then, to remember my face upturned to his, or the waking dream that had been our kiss. I mastered a feeling of disappointment, and resolved never to think of it again.

Price insisted on bleeding his patient, and at last the beef tea was offered. West informed poor Sackett that it was the merest swill,
and demanded steak and ale. William Chute was only too happy to accede to the request.

“We shall let him recover his strength, Miss Jane,” he confided to me, “before we tax him with the sketchbook. I should hate to learn that he has forgot all he discovered in Portsmouth and London, along with his memory of the hedge at Sherborne!”

West was asleep again by noon, the bleeding having enervated him. In returning to my bedchamber in search of a needle and thread—Mary would demand a headdress of feathers for her rôle as the Duchess of Highinstep, and nothing would do but I should fashion it—I discovered Cassandra curled under a shawl in a tragic mood, staring into our fire.