Jane Austen Mysteries 10 Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (27 page)

"That is my Christian name," I returned calmly, "but how you are in possession of it, I know not."

"I am by way of being a collector of Janes," Byron replied coolly. He reached for his bottle and drank deeply of claret. "Augustas, Annabelles, Ara ... Ara ... bellas; such a multitude of vowels as women employ! Give me plain
Jane
any day."

"Or ... Catherine, perhaps?"

The poet lifted sodden eyes to mine. "She declined to be collected. As you yourself observed. We last met, I believe, in a stable yard in Cuckfield--tho' I should not call it so much as a bowing acquaintance."

"And yet, you know my name."

He smiled secretly to himself, the leer of a successful Cupid. "I can get anything from the mouths of ladies, my sweet; they fall over themselves to offer me confidences. Eliza was one of those."

Startled, I stared at him narrowly. Could it be possible he spoke of my late sister?

"Did they not inform you I've a taste for older women? Married, where possible, but I have been known to violate my principles. Indeed, I only hold principles that they
might
be violated."

"Sir!" Henry said through his teeth. "Consider what you say!"

Byron allowed his glittering gaze to drift over my brother. "I do not like your face," he said. "It suggests stupidity, without the redemptive air of Fashion. Indeed, Mr. Austen, in you I smell the
shop
. With your wife it was otherwise. Stiled herself a
comtesse
, did she not? I wonder what Mona has to say to
that.
"

Henry stiffened, but the Earl grasped his sleeve with a strong hand. "Do not regard him," he said in a lowered tone. "He is far too
well to live
, at present. I shall urge Davies to wrest the bottle from him presently, and put him to bed."

"Miss Austen," Byron sang out from his sopha-throne, "I should like to speak with you, for all you look so melancholy. Do you go in mourning for your life--all its hope of love long since lost--or for some nearer being? Come, sit beside me. I do not reek of spirits yet; I promise I shall not
drown
you."

I had a strong impulse to slap him, man of five-and-twenty tho' he was; yet a burning spark in his eye and a dangerous throb of feeling beneath the rude words piqued my interest.
This
was the man who had bound Catherine Twining with a cravat; this the man who had sailed on, regardless, as Caro Lamb foundered in the sea. What impulse of destruction rode him like a monkey? What would he
not
risk, of the lives of others--and why did danger draw him like strong drink? Was he capable of seeking the final proof of his violent impulses--capable, even, of murder?

"Let us go, Jane," Henry urged in a lowered tone. "I do not like this fellow. I do not like him at all."

"You should do me the greatest service, my dear," I murmured, "if you would but cultivate Scrope Davies. He is too plausible a foil for his lordship by half. Learn what you can of him. And leave Byron to me."

Before he could protest, I gathered my skirts and glided towards the listing figure of the poet, whose delicate fingers--quite beautiful--caressed the neck of his wine bottle.

"Tell me how you know my name," I demanded quietly as I adopted a position beside him on the sopha.

"The ambitious must always know their rivals." It might have been a cherished aphorism, so swiftly did the phrase fall from his lips; and then he glanced up, to hold my gaze with his own. The dark intensity of that look, the unnerving penetration--the impression immediately received, that I alone existed for this man, that he breathed for me and me entirely--was almost overpowering. It was as tho' a swift magnetic bond had formed between us, dragging me within his orbit, a bond I was incapable of breaking. The room and its several occupants slid effortlessly away; I heard the distant chatter as through a roaring in my ears; I might have been falling into the dark pools of those eyes, and all they promised of passionate annihilation. I was aware, as I had not been a few moments previous, of the rapidity of my pulse, the wave of heat rising in my frame, the sudden parting of my lips to protest or plead--all involuntary, all ungovernable. It was impossible that my body should thus betray me--should throw me into the power of one I
despised
, indeed! And yet, each fibre of my rebellious being strained towards that pale countenance, that burning gaze.

I apprehended in an instant how a Caro Lamb might crave such thralldom; how to enter a room Byron owned was to breathe a more electric air.
How
, my reeling mind stuttered,
had Catherine Twining been proof against such a man? What better angel had sustained her? Impossible to ignore Byron's will
!

A faint smile formed at his lips; he was waiting for my reply. What was it he had said?--That the ambitious always knew their rivals?

"I do not understand you," I gasped.

The smile widened. "Was there ever so fickle a tongue as that of woman? You understand me too well, I suspect. Nothing has been so praised or sought as
Pride and Prejudice
since Scott last cast his wretched verses upon the adoring public; and therefore it was imperative in me to pierce the veil of
A Lady
.--Is that not your captious name, my Jane? For shame, for shame, to disavow it! How could you deny your own child, and at
birth
? I call it
missish
, a sort of prudery and deceit that will not be borne! If you will write, then proclaim your words to the World! Let the avid ghouls of Bond Street and Pall Mall know to whom they owe the mirror of Mrs. Bennet, in all her mercenary glory!"

My eyes dropped; I drew a shuddering breath, and regained some shred of composure. "How can you know this?" I demanded. "Whom have I trusted, that ought rather to be suspected?"

"Do not make yourself anxious--I am sure dear Eliza carried your secret to the grave," he said. "--But for the one exception all women must make, soon or late--
myself.
" Of course. She would have felt it immediately: that quivering, seductive bond--that cord impossible to break. In her dying state it would have been as life-blood to Eliza, to brave a rout party where Byron lounged, merely to have his gaze meet hers and feel, for an instant at least, more alive and ardent than she should ever feel again.

"My relations with the frailer sex rarely conform to rules, you know," he said, "and they have next to nothing to do with
vows
. I am sure she meant to keep her promises most faithfully--but poor Eliza was a butterfly creature, susceptible to flattery and the influence of fashion; I was all the rage in her final months.
Childe Harold
having lately broken upon an astonished
ton
, she
must
use her knowledge to attract me."

"Her knowledge?" I repeated.

Those eyes raked over me once more. "It was as gold in Eliza's hands. She possessed something no other lady possessed: the name of a greater writer than I."

My gloved hands formed tight claws where they lay in my lap. My second novel, sped by the success of my first, had appeared in January; and in April Eliza had expired. When had she shared her secret?

Of a sudden, I was visited in memory by her dying words.
Regret
...
regret
. Had this been meant for me?

"You should rather thank than blame her," Byron said in a lowered tone, meant for my ears alone. "I have not thought to publish your secret to the world. There is no value to anything once it is known everywhere. But do, Miss Austen, confess to your next work--It ought to be your policy, as it is mine, to proclaim your every sin. The publick will devour you alive--but it will also devour your books, which is all to the good." He took another draught of his claret, and for an instant, I was freed of the consuming gaze. "Sins are the writer's stock-in-trade, however vicious. Incest, rape, idolatry, sodomy--nothing is too violent for my appetites; all these have I known, and you may find their ghosts reanimated in my verse."

I believed it now, when I might have scoffed earlier, but it was time to summon control, and place a quelling distance between myself and the poet. Intimacy must be unsafe, when one fenced with Byron.

"I have only looked into
Childe Harold,
" I remarked mildly, "but enjoyed what little I read of it."

Those eyes glittering with drink or fury narrowed at my tepid praise; then he bestowed upon me the most seraphic of smiles. Instantly, the hectic brow was revealed as a child's; the vicious tendencies, as mere play-acting. Another woman might have felt swift sympathy; my cooling brain was the more active, in perceiving a warning.

"You chuse to invoke our first meeting, Lord Byron, at Cuckfield," I persisted. "I am emboldened, therefore, to ask a home question. What drove you
then
to take up and bind a respectable young lady of only fifteen--one known, moreover, to enjoy the protection of a father?"

"Snapping my fingers beneath the General's nose was half the attraction." His eyelids drooped, brooding. "But Catherine herself incited me to it, that morning, as my coach came alongside her--so fresh as she was, so delicate, her look half-shy, half-inviting, as tho' she had begun to trust me at last. She gave me her hand, and I lifted her into the chaise--ready to cherish her, ready to ravish her if she would but swoon in my arms a little--Pure innocence! Can you have an idea of it, Miss Austen?"

The piercing gaze held mine again and I drew an unsteady breath.

"--How o'erwhelming the throes of passion for an unaccustomed purity might be?" he muttered. "All the complicity of that closed carriage! Her face, her figure, her soft voice were incitement to anything you may imagine--and I should never be proof against their charms!"

A groan broke from somewhere in the room--I looked away, and saw Scrope Davies with his hands pressed against his face, as tho' his skull throbbed with acutest pain. Henry, who had been conversing with the gentleman, paused in perplexity and placed a hand on Davies's arm. Byron, however, heard nothing of his friend's distress--being too intent upon reliving his thwarted passion.

"Catherine did
not
trust me, however. She did
not
swoon. When presented with the soul and heart of a poet--she first screamed, and then shrank, as tho' from a leper. It is my lameness--I know it is my lameness; she saw the blighting mark as the Devil's touch. His token of ownership." Byron sneered, but the hateful look was entirely for himself. "The beautiful Catherine was as repulsed by me as by a reptile, slimed and dank; as by a relic dug too soon from a foetid grave. In her disgust, I knew my worth. Perhaps it was
this
that formed the chief part of her fascination--the girl despised me almost as much as I despise myself."

Ah! Sudden comprehension flooded my mind. Not self-hatred, but self-love, was Byron's consuming demon. He was incapable of apprehending a fellow creature's outline, however ardent his object might feel in his presence; the world entire must be viewed solely as it related to
Byron
.

"Being the victim, as I see you mean to stile yourself," I observed in a lowered tone, "why stop at abduction? If Catherine could not love you--could never endure to be yours--why not end the agony of her refusal, with her life?"

"Ah, but that should be a
poem
, Miss Austen--not the sequel to a dull evening's entertainment at the Brighton Assembly," he said abruptly. "I might write such a poem; but I should never form the elaborate intention of quitting a ball, deserting my rooms, and employing my friend Davies as surety for my reputation, in actual life. I was too drunk to hunt the girl through the entire town at the dead of night, for one thing; and for another, too sick of Caro Lamb. Besides, I must confess my ardour for young Catherine had already begun to wane; one cannot always be proclaiming deathless love to a chit who colours, avoids one's eye, and ducks behind a pillar rather than surrender her heart. It verges on the ridiculous; and I avoid the ridiculous at all costs--in life, as in poetry."

I glanced about the elegant little drawing-room: the Earl was tossing the bones with Hodge and the Bow Street Runner; Lady Swithin was tuning the strings of the violinist's instrument; and my brother was once more trading pleasant nothings with Mr. Scrope Davies, who appeared to have recovered from the head-ache. Our host was remarkably pallid, however; sweat stood out on his brow; and he determinedly avoided glancing in his friend Byron's direction. All was not perfect cordiality between the two, I supposed; tho' Byron should probably fail to observe it.

"My lord," I said, "that child's body was wrapped in a hammock taken from your yacht. It was placed in the bedchamber thought to be yours. If we regard as credible your assertion that you did
not
drown her--"

He bared his teeth and I was reminded, inevitably, of the wolf. "The coroner has proclaimed it!"

"--then someone has gone to great lengths to see you hang. Who hates you so much?"

He drained his bottle to the dregs. "The better part of England, my poor darling."

The voice was a caress I forced myself to ignore."That will not do. You must confine yourself to those who hate you,
and
knew of your passion for Miss Twining. A much more select gathering, I'll be bound."

His eyes roved over my form, as tho' my gown were transparent, and I revealed in all my nakedness. I raised my chin and stared back at him.

"You are decidedly imperturbable," he observed. "Our Jane is not
missish
. Neither an ape-leader nor an old maid; nor yet a simpering dowd, for all she
does
go in black."

Perversely, I blushed--the words and the intensity of his tone having their predictable effect. Indeed, the man should not be allowed to roam unfettered in polite Society!

"Shall I draw up a list of my enemies for your private perusal?" he jested. "Do I understand you undertake to
name
Miss Twining's murderer?"