Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (43 page)

Mr. George Hearst received a handsome Scargrave living under the terms of the late Earl's will, which he has effectively traded for one in Newcastle. He has repaired to the north with his Rosie, who bids fair to make an excellent curate's wife with a bit of schooling and gentle attention.

Though Fitzroy Payne is restored to Isobel's good opinion—and in so decided a manner as must make her blush with contrition and shame—he and the Countess are not yet joined in matrimony. The wounds of their past experience remain too raw. There is the weight of public opinion to be braved as well; for though they are saved from the noose, and all the indignities suffered in the weeks before their trial, they remain the object of much speculation. Isobel has retreated from society altogether, while the Earl devotes his attention to securing a suitable overseer for his estates in the West Indies. He has embarked on a plan of visitation to that region in May, and urges Isobel to accompany him; and my friend has not yet told him nay.

Isobel remains in her late husband's London house, the bitter memories of Hertfordshire and Scargrave Manor being as yet too strong. She is freed of her debt, as Lord Harold said, having received from that gentleman a large package of cancelled notes a few days after her liberation. The knowledge of her aunt's betrayal, against the extent of Frederick's goodness, has made my friend sober and sad; but she is young, and possessed of wealth and beauty, and cannot forego living for very long. With time, and forgetfulness, I believe Isobel shall find happiness again in the parity of Fitzroy Payne's mind and youth.

And Lord Harold Trowbridge? A curious man. To have held his high esteem—as I clearly did—is an honour I only understood when our acquaintance was at its close. He is everywhere misunderstood, mistrusted, and disliked, except by those who need his services; but he commands a fearful respect. I have said in the past that I should rather spend an hour with the notorious than two minutes with the dull; and my taste is proved again to be unerring.

I have here a letter penned in Trowbridge's hand—
To the light angel
—that contains a single phrase only.
My dear Miss Austen
, it says,
we may take this as a lesson: It required a woman to divine what a woman had wrought.

THE END

About the Author

Stephanie Barron, a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen's work, is the author of five previous Jane Austen mysteries. She lives in Colorado, where she is at work on the seventh Jane Austen mystery,
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley.
As Francine Mathews, she is the author of
The Cutout
and
The Secret Agent.
Learn more about both Stephanie Barron and Francine Mathews at
www.francinemathews.com
.

If you enjoyed Stephanie Barron's
Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House
, you won't want to miss any of the wonderful mysteries in this superb series. Look for them at your favorite bookseller's.

And turn the page for an exciting preview of
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley
, coming soon in hardcover from Bantam Books.

JANE

AND THE

GHOSTS OE NETLEY

˜Being the Seventh Jane Austen Mystery˜

by Stephame Barron

Castle Square,

Southampton

Tuesday, 25 October 1808

˜

THERE ARE FEW PROSPECTS SO REPLETE WITH ROMANTIC possibility—so entirely suited to a soul trembling in morbid awe—as the ruins of an English abbey. Picture, if you will, the tumbled stones where once a tonsured friar muttered matins; the echoing coruscation of the cloister, now opened to the sky, the soaring architraves of Gothick stone that oppress one's soul as with the weight of tombs. Vanished incense curling at the nostril—the haunting memory of chanted prayer, sonorous and unintelligible to an ear untrained in Latin—the ghostly tolling of a bell whose clapper is muted now forever! Oh, to walk in such a place under the chill of moonlight, of a summer evening, when the air off the Solent might stir the dead to speak! In such an hour I could imagine myself a heroine straight from Mrs. Radcliffe's pen: the white train of my gown sweeping over the ancient stones, my shadow but a wraith before me, and all the world suspended in silence between the storied past and prosaic present.

Engaging as such visions must be, I have never ventured to Netley Abbey—for it is of Netley I would speak, it being the closest object to a romantic ruin we possess in Southampton—in anything but the broadest day. I am far too sensible a lady to linger in such a deserted place, with the darkling wood at my back and the sea to the fore, when the comfort of a home fire beckons. Thus we find the abyss that falls between the fancies of horrid novels, and the habits of those who read them.

“Aunt Jane!”

“Yes, George?” I glanced towards the bow, where my two nephews, George and Edward, surveyed the massive face of Netley Castle as it rose on the port side of the small skiff.

“Why do they call that place a castle, Aunt? It looks nothing like.”

“‘Tis a Solent fort, you young nubbins,” grunted Mr. Hawkins, our seafaring guide. “Built in King Henry's time, when the Abbey lands were taken. In a prime position for defending the Water, it is; they ought never to have spiked those guns.”

“But we have Portsmouth at the Solent mouth, Mr. Hawkins,” Edward observed, “and must trust to the entire force of the Navy to preserve us against the threat from France.” The elder of the two boys—fourteen to George's thirteen—Edward prided himself on his cool intelligence. As my brother's heir, he was wont to assume the attitudes of a young man of fortune.

My nephews had come to me lately from Steventon, after a brief visit to my brother James—a visit that I am certain will live forever in their youthful memories as the most mournful of their experience. I say this without intending a slight upon the benevolence of my eldest brother, nor of his insipid and cheeseparing wife; for the tragedy that overtook our Edward and George was entirely due to Providence.

Nearly a fortnight has passed since a messenger out of Kent conveyed the dreadful intelligence: how Elizabeth Austen, the boys’ mother and mistress of my brother Edward's fine estate at Godmersham, had retired after dinner only to foil dead of a sudden fit Elizabeth! So elegant and charming, despite her numerous progeny; Elizabeth, unbowed as it seemed by the birth of her eleventh child in the last days of September. The surgeon could make nothing of the case; he declared it to be improbable; but dead our Lizzy was, despite the surgeon's protestations, and buried she has been a week since, in the small Norman church of St Lawrence's where I attended her so often to Sunday service.

I suspect that too much breeding is at the heart of the trouble—but too much breeding is the lot of all women who marry young, particularly when they are so fortunate as to make a love-match. Elizabeth Bridges, third daughter of a baronet, was but eighteen when she wed, and only five-and-thirty when she passed from this life. With her strength of character, she ought to have lived to be eighty.

It remains, now, for the rest of us to comfort her bereaved family as best we may. My sister Cassandra, who went into Kent for Elizabeth's lying-in, shall remain at Godmersham throughout the winter. Dear Neddie bears the affliction with a mixture of Christian resignation and wild despair. My niece Fanny, who at fifteen is grown so much in form and substance as to seem almost another sister, must shoulder the burden of managing the younger children, for the household is without a governess. There is some talk of sending the little girls away to school, that they might not brood upon the loss of their mamma—but I cannot like the scheme, having nearly died when banished as a child to a young ladies’ seminary. The elder boys, Edward and George, endured their visit to brother James at Steventon and appeared—chilled to the bone with riding next to Mr.
Wise
, the coachman—on Saturday. They are bound for their school in Winchester on the morrow.

Their happiness has been entirely in my keeping during this short sojourn in Southampton. I have embraced the duty with a will, for they are such taking lads, and the blight of grief sits heavily upon them. They forget their cares for a time in playing at spillikins, or fashioning paper boats to bombard with horse chestnuts. The evening hours, when dark descends and memory returns, are harder to sustain. George has proved a restless sleeper, crying aloud in a manner more suited to a child half his age. He will be roundly abused for weakness upon his return to school, if he does not take care.

My mother, I own, finds the boys’ spirits to have a shattering effect upon her nerves, which invariably fail her in moments of family crisis. No matter how diligently Edward might twist himself about in our reading chairs, engrossed in
TheLakeofKiUarney
, or George lose a morning in attempting to sketch a ship of the line, their exuberance will drive my mother to her bedchamber well before the dinner hour, to take her evening meal upon a tray.

Yesterday, I carried the boys up the River Itchen in Mr. Hawkins's skiff, and stopped to examine a seventy-four that is presently building in the dockyard there.
¹
The place was a bustle of activity—scaffolding and labourers vied for place in a chaos of scrap wood and iron tools— and left to myself, I should not have dreamt of disturbing them. But under the chaperonage of Mr. Hawkins, a notorious tar known to all in Southampton as the Bosun's Mate, we received a ready welcome from the shipwright Mr. Dixon is a hearty fellow of mature years and bright blue eyes who takes great pride in his work.

“Miss Austen, d'ye say?” he enquired sharply over our introduction. “Not any relation to Captain Francis Austen?”

“I am his sister, sir.”

“Excellent fellow! A true fighting captain, or I miss my mark! And no blubberhead neither. You won't find Frank Austen playing cat-and-mouse with Boney; goes straight at ‘em, in the manner of dear old Nelson.”

“That is certainly my brother's philosophy. You are acquainted with him, I collect?”

“Supplied the Cap'n with carronades last summer, as he could not secure them in Portsmouth,” Mr. Dixon replied. “He should certainly have need of them, once the
St Alton's
reached the Peninsula. A great hand for gunnery, your brother. Now! What shall we find to engage the interest of these young scrubs, eh?”

He scrutinized my nephews’ faces, well aware that nothing more was required to command their full attention than the spectacle of the seventy-four.

The great third-rate towered above our heads, her keel a massive construction of elm to which great ribs of oak were fixed. She was nearly complete, the decks having been laid and the hull partitioned into bulkheads, powder magazines, storerooms, and cabins, with ladders running up and down. The Itchen yard is ideally suited for such a ship, for the river water flows in through a lock, and the finished vessel may float down to Southampton Water in time.

“Jupiter!” Edward exclaimed. “Isn't she a beauty, though! How long have you been a-building?”

The shipwright gazed at his work with ill-concealed affection. “Nearly three years she's been under our hands, and you shall not find a sweeter ship in all the Kingdom. No rot in her timbers, no crank in her design; and we shan't hear of this lady falling to pieces in a storm!”

“Are such things so common?” I murmured to Mr. Hawkins.

The Bosun's Mate glowered. “Have ye not heard of the Forty Thieves, ma'am? All ships o’ the line, built in rotten yards? Floating coffins, they were—though I served in no less than five of ‘em.”

“Good Lord.”

“When is she to sail, Mr. Dixon?” George enquired.

“We expect to launch her at Spithead in the spring. Perhaps your naval uncle will have the command of her! Should you like to look in?”

“
Should
we!” the boy replied. “Above all things!”

“Jeremiah!” Dixon called. “Yo, there—Jeremiah! Now, where is that Lascar?”

A dark-skinned, lanky fellow with jet-black hair ran up and salaamed, in the manner of the East Indies. A Lascar! The boys, I am certain, had never encountered a true exotic of the naval world—one of the renowned sailors of the Seven Seas. I smiled to see Edward's expression of interest, and George's of apprehension.