Jane and the Wandering Eye (22 page)

“Did we observe him in such a pass, we should learn much to our advantage,” I thoughtfully said. “It may save endless trouble on your nephew’s behalf, my lord, if we await the natural progress of events.”

“I believe I am of your opinion, Miss Austen.” Lord Harold hesitated between two branching paths, chose the left, and walked on. His eyes were fixed upon the gravel walk, as though he might read his future in the stones. “I long for some betrayal on Swithin’s part. For he has certainly managed the affair with miserable é
clat.
Would it not have been wiser, for example, to secure the blackmailing letters
before
dispatching their author with a knife? And what does he mean by arranging the deed in my mother’s house? Did he intend for Kinsfell to fall into his trap, and take the blame? And if so—was my nephew
lured to the anteroom where Portal’s body lay, by the agencies of the very person whose name he now refuses to divulge? Is this why poor Simon clings to the claims of honour?”

“But what can be his purpose in so complete a destruction of your nephew, my lord?”

“I may hazard a guess. Maria Conyngham.”

We turned into a path that led to an abrupt wall of green—a decidedly dead end. Lord Harold turned, and retraced his steps, glancing about for the most likely direction. Having chosen it, he waved to me. I joined him hurriedly.

“I do not understand you, my lord.”

“Mr. Portal’s documents revealed a more troubling matter to my unwilling eyes last evening, Miss Austen, than the involvement of the Earl. For my nephew, it seems, is most ardent in his pursuit of one among the company. The very same Maria Conyngham.”

“She has been active, indeed, in cultivating admiration! At Mr. Portal’s behest, perhaps? Does she play with hearts in innocence—or for a share in the blackmailer’s spoils?”

“That is a cunning thought, indeed. I cannot undertake to say.”

“Her present disdain for Lord Kinsfell may be taken as a sign.”

“Or as a clever subterfuge to divert attention from herself. Full many a guilty woman has found refuge in righteous indignation.”

“But how was your nephew to be worked upon?”

“My brother Bertie intends Kinsfell to make a brilliant match; and regardless of the consideration due to the Dowager Duchess and her former career, His Grace should consider an actress quite below the ducal touch. Simon would be at pains to present the lady in the most
virtuous and commendable light; and if her liaison with Swithin were bruited about—”

“I comprehend. Mr. Portal’s scheme was complete, indeed. But might
this
have been the subject of his dispute with Lord Kinsfell at the Dowager’s masquerade?”

“I cannot doubt it.”

I considered in memory the outraged Marquis; his tearful sister; his drunken opponent. In the shadows beyond their circle stood the Earl and Maria Conyngham, like pieces on a chessboard regarding their pawns. Did Lord Swithin or his agent thrust home the knife in Portal’s breast, he should be rid in a single stroke of both his blackmailer and his rival for Lady Desdemona’s fortune.

“And since the Earl is undoubtedly jealous of his mistress’s favours,” Lord Harold said, as though reading my thoughts, “and resentful in the extreme of Kinsfell’s attentions to Maria Conyngham, my unfortunate nephew was left to discover the body, and shoulder the blame for Portal’s murder. Fiendishly clever!”

I came to a halt upon the path, my mind in a whirl. “But this is madness, my lord! For we know Miss Conyngham to be united by affection to Portal himself—her present grief must make it so.” Unless—

I saw again in memory the scarlet-clad Medusa of Tuesday’s rout, her black locks tumbled and her countenance made ugly by grief, as she keened over the slain Harlequin. Maria Conyngham
then
might almost have felt the knife to pierce her breast along with Portal’s, so great was her suffering. But was her display in fact the consummate expression of art—merely Conyngham the Tragedienne, with deceit her chief ambition?

“Perhaps Mr. Portal valued wealth far more than love,” Lord Harold suggested. “Or perhaps Miss Conyngham merely affects the bond—and her present grief—for the foiling of her enemies. She is accomplished in the art of dissembling, recollect.”

I shook my head, bewildered. “Then how, my lord, in the midst of such a maze, do you intend to proceed?”

“I propose to make love to the lady in turn,” he briskly replied. “For from intimacy much may be discovered.”

“She is unlikely to allow any of the Wilborough line within a mile of her person!”

“I beg to disagree, my dear Miss Austen. If she and her brother know aught of this crime, and fear discovery, Miss Conyngham will cultivate my attentions as ardently as a watchdog. She will find in me a necessary evil, for the preservation of her peace. And I shall exploit the impulse ruthlessly.”

His resolve caused my heart to sink. I could not be sanguine regarding even Lord Harold when confronted with so formidable an enchantress; and I mistrusted a something in his tone, and look, that called to mind the Theatre Royal. Miss Conyngham had worked upon him strangely as he sat in the Wilborough box, his glasses fixed upon her form.

“I intend to learn a vast deal from increased proximity,” the gentleman continued, oblivious of my anxiety, “and I should relish the prospect in any case, were my nephew’s name already cleared. Lord Swithin is spoiling for a challenge—but there are many ways of defending one’s honour, and only a few involve pistols.”

We followed a turning sharp within the maze, saw daylight suddenly before us—and were deposited at the Labyrinth’s very heart.

It remained only to find our way out again.

Chapter 10
The Comforts of Cooling Tea

14 December 1804, cont.
~

D
ANCING OF A
F
RIDAY EVENING IN THE
L
OWER
R
OOMS BEGINS
precisely at six o’clock, and runs no later than eleven—which custom we owe to the autocratic tendencies of the late “Beau” Nash, that arbiter of all that is genteel in Bath society.
¹
Accordingly the Austens put in our appearance at precisely ten minutes before six; paid our respects to Mr. King, the present Master; and the Reverend George then abandoned the ladies of the party for the delights of the card-room. My father being happily taken up by a rapacious set of whist-players, we were free to move about the Assembly in search of acquaintance, and found it presently in the form of Henry and Eliza. I was astonished to discover the little Comtesse in
attendance—for it is her usual custom only to
dine
at six or seven, and to her the Assembly’s hours must seem shockingly provincial.

“Dear madam!” Eliza cried, with a salute to my mother’s cheek. “This is courage, indeed, to venture the crush of the Lower Rooms, and on such a chilly night! And here are the girls—positively ravishing, I declare!” She stepped back a pace, the better to view my sapphire gown and Cassandra’s spotted muslin, and turned to her husband for support. “We must hope for a glimpse of Lord Harold, Henry, when Jane is in such good looks.”

I coloured—for some thought of the Gentleman Rogue
had
counseled me to put aside my cap this once, and run ribbons through my hair—and felt Cassandra stiffen beside me.

“I wonder you seek to press his lordship’s suit, Eliza,” she objected. “He cannot be respectable.”

“Pooh! And what should that signify to me? Or to Jane, for that matter? We shall leave such tedious fellows as have only their respectability to recommend them, entirely to yourself, my dear—and find contentment in the reflected glow of virtue.”

I reached a self-conscious hand to my throat, and fingered my topaz cross. “You look very well this evening, Eliza. Purple is not a hue that many may wear—but it entirely becomes you.”

“Oh, this old thing,” she said, with an indifferent shrug. “I should not dare to attempt it in London, where it has already been seen this age—but in Bath—well—” Her bright eyes roved about the room. They were filled with an animation that belied her three-and-forty years.

“Mrs. Austen!” cried a tall woman with a long white neck, her hair done up in a bewitching demi-turban of Sèvres blue and gold. She reached down to the diminutive Comtesse and pressed her gloved hand. “How delightful to see you! It has been an age!”

“Isabella Wolff, I declare!” Eliza replied in kind, and seized the beauty in a determined grasp. “You grow lovelier with every year. Jane, Cassandra—allow me to introduce Mrs. Jens Wolff, the wife of the Danish Consul. My sisters, the Miss Austens.”

Cassandra and I curtseyed.

“May I introduce Mr. Thomas Lawrence to your acquaintance, Mrs. Austen?” Isabella Wolff enquired in turn; and peering over Eliza’s shoulder I observed the handsome painter. He awaited Mrs. Wolff with an air of patient adoration. It seemed quite alien to his stormy, self-possessed features—but perhaps the more striking for its unfamiliarity.

Mr. Lawrence bowed, but showed no inclination to part with the attentions of his lady for even so short a space as an introduction; and we were forced to be content with an unintelligible word muttered into his neckcloth. If he recollected our introduction in Laura Place, he gave no sign; and I thought it very probable that he did not—his faculties this morning having been entirely taken up with the effort of capturing Lady Desdemona’s likeness.

“And is Mr. Wolff in Bath as well?”

“He is not at present.” The Consul’s wife seemed indisposed to elucidate the matter.

“But you do intend a visit of some duration?” Eliza persisted.

“As for
intentions
—I may never return to London at all! Everything about Bath agrees with me exceedingly.” This, with a provocative smile for Mr. Lawrence, who had the grace to colour slightly. “You must call upon me in Bladuds Buildings, Eliza—or look in upon the meeting of the Philosophical Society. I quite depend upon it—” And so, with a flutter of her hand and a general nod, Isabella Wolff ran off, and spent the better part of
the evening in dancing with Mr. Lawrence, to the scandal of the town.

“Now I wonder what
she
has got up to,” Eliza mused, as she followed the pair with her eyes.

“A very handsome lady,” my mother said with approval, “though I cannot like her taste in turbans. She might almost hail from the tent of an Oriental, I declare!”

“She was never happy with Jens Wolff, and Mr. Lawrence is decidedly handsome,” Eliza went on, oblivious. “He has quite a brooding, stormy air as well, does he not? I might as readily lose my heart to him myself, were I disposed to wander.”

My mother started, and surveyed the Comtesse narrowly. “I believe I shall go in search of Henry, my dear,” she said with decision; and so she left us.

“But you are not disposed to wander,” I reminded Eliza, who
would
giggle at my mother’s departing back, “and I cannot think that Mr. Lawrence would be entirely agreeable, on closer acquaintance. I have it on reasonably good authority that he is nearly a bankrupt.”

“And who among the fashionable is not?” Eliza retorted carelessly, as she fanned her flushed cheeks. “A man may run on for years in that fashion, owing huge sums to everybody, so long as he clings to reputation.”

“I should judge Mrs. Wolff to risk far more in
that
quarter,” Cassandra observed. “Her reputation is not likely to survive her visit to Bath.”

“Mr. Lawrence does have a habit of throwing ladies into disaffection with their husbands, Jane,” Eliza conceded. “You must have seen the recent letter in the
Morning Gazette.”

“It has been ages since I read a London paper,” I replied, my curiosity roused. “To what letter would you refer?”

“Mr. Siddons’s.”

“The husband of the celebrated Sarah?”

“The same. He resides here in Bath, you know, for his gouty legs—and has quite broken off with his wife.”

“I did not know it. But what of this letter?”

Eliza’s eyes shone with delicious malice. “Mr. Siddons offered a
reward
, no less, to those who would expose the author of the slanders directed at his irreproachable lady—of having been detected in adultery with Mr. Lawrence!”

“But she has always been reputed virtuous—and is of an age to be Mr. Lawrence’s mother!”

“I quite agree, my dear. Isabella Wolff, at least, we may consider his contemporary. But Mr. Lawrence has painted Mrs. Siddons a score of times, to the greatest public acclaim—and in years past, seemed quite taken with the entire family. Excepting, perhaps,
Mr.
Siddons.”

“I think you had better convey this tale to your friend Mrs. Wolff,” Cassandra observed, in a tone of gentle reproof.

“She is already aware of it, I am sure,” Eliza said with a shrug. Then, leaning towards my sister, she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Is not that Mr. Kemble, Cassandra? Your old friend from the Chilham ball?”

A portly officer in his thirties, not above the middle height and with receding brown hair, was advancing determinedly upon us; and I trembled for my sister. She is of so mild and unprotesting a disposition in general, as to be severely imposed upon by bores of every description—who find in her quiet beauty and paltry fortune a double advantage; for she is a lady who can neither fail to bring them credit as a partner, nor tempt them to abandon the single state. At the Chilham ball to which Eliza referred, my sister had consented to dance no less than
four dances
with Mr. Kemble—and had found both his conversation and skill to be sorely wanting. He can claim no relation to the famous Kemble family of actors—tho’
such a distinction might render even
his
tedium easier to bear—but is rather a member of the Kent militia, and an intimate of my brother Edward’s home at Godmersham. Mr. Kemble is a great enthusiast for shooting and riding to hounds. He finds ample scope for discourse in the merits of his dogs and hunters.