Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (45 page)

“You know a great deal more of my movements, Orlando, than I should like.”

“That is my office, ma'am. He who would serve as valet to Lord Harold Trowbridge, must also undertake the duties of dogsbody, defender—and spy.” He threw me a twisted smile; bitter truth underlay the flippant words.

“His lordship does not disembark in Southampton?”

“He is bound for Gravesend, and London, with the tide. You will have read of the family's loss?” I reflected an instant “The Dowager Duchess?” Lord Harold's mother, Eugenie de la Falaise, formerly of the Paris stage and wife to the late Duke of Wilborough, had passed from this life but a few days ago. I had admired Her Grace; I mourned her passing; but I could not have read the
Morning Gazette's
black-bordered death notice without thinking of her second son. It had been more than two years since I had last enjoyed the pleasure of Lord Harold's notice; and though I detected his presence from time to time in the publicity of the newspapers, I have known little of his course since parting from him in Derbyshire.

“Had the dowager's death not intervened, his lordship should have come in search of you himself. But Fate—”

“Fate has determined that instead of Lord Harold, I am treated to an interview with his man,” I concluded. “Pray tell me, Orlando, what it is that I must do.”

1. A third-rate ship carrying 74 guns, this was the most common line-of-battle vessel and a considerable number were built during the Napoleonic Wars; by 1816, the royal navy possessed 137 of them. They weighed about 1,700 tons and required 57 acres of oak forest to build.—
Editor's note.

2. The opinion given here is a rough paraphrase of sentiments Jane first expressed at the age of sixteen in her
History of England, by a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian.—Editor's note.

3. Austen wrote the manuscript entitled
Susan
in 1798 and sold it to Crosby & Co. for ten pounds in the spring of 1803. The firm never published it, and Austen was forced to buy back the manuscript in 1816. It was eventually published posthumously in 1818 as
Northanger Abbey.
—
Editor's note.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor
A Bantam Book

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Copyright © 1996 by Stephanie Barron.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-48651-6

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v3.0

Table of Contents

Editor's foreword

1

2

1.

2.

Jane's Introduction

About the Author