Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (27 page)

"I will fetch the saddle."

He disappeared into the tack room, while the rest of us looked on in suspense. Henry sidled over to me.

"Her ladyship is in a rare temper," he said, "and for my part, I should say the right is all Thrace's. The mare is assuredly too long in the back."

"But he need not have thrown the fact in her face," I 214 ~ Stephanie Barron

returned softly. "It is almost as tho' he would incite her to be-tray herself. He wished her to appear unbecoming before her guests."

"Even so--this will be a spectacle worth recounting at my club! The Earl of Holbrook's heirs disputing their rights over open ground!"

At that moment, Mr. Thrace reappeared with a small leather saddle in his hands. "Here, Robley--saddle the mare while I fetch Rob Roy."

He led out the grey, who looked fresh and handsome as ever; tossed his own saddle over the hunter's back with a prac-tised hand, and placed his boot in the stirrup.

"Have a care, Julian," Spence muttered. "She will work her-self into a passion."

"Let the course be set," Mr. Thrace declared, "as the span of sweep between the stable yard and the main gate, a distance of nearly a mile. Are we agreed?"

"Agreed," Lady Imogen declared. "But what will you wager, Thrace? What is the price of your honour? --The sum of your losses at faro? For I know you cannot settle that debt."

Her seat was graceful and easy, her gloved hands light on the reins. The dreadful pallor of anger had fled, to be replaced by the high colour of excitement.

"Are you so dubious of victory, Lady Imogen? Why not wa-ger something we both hold dear? Let us say--" Thrace hesi-tated, as tho' measuring his odds. "Let us compete for
Stonings."

The look of elation drained from her ladyship's face. "That is not mine to stake, Thrace, as you very well know. Nor yours to demand."

"If you would already concede defeat--"

"Very well!" she cried. "Stonings it is! And may the best judge of horseflesh win!"

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Chapter 18

Neck or Nothing

8 July 1809, cont.

~

"Lady Imogen--" Charles Spence raised his hand to her bridle. "I beg of you--"

"Let me go, Charles," she retorted cuttingly. "I am not a green girl to be led by your rein. Will you call the start?"

Nutmeg wheeled before he could answer. As Lady Imogen leaned forward and cantered towards the entrance to the yard in considerable style, I thought the little mare looked skittish--as tho' she might prove difficult to manage. The natural result, I must suppose, of a mount offered too little exercise in such a season.

Mr. Thrace was already waiting, his grey prancing beside the mare. Major Spence limped towards the mounted pair.

"Race if you must, but call off this foolish wager," he begged.

"I am determined, Charles," Lady Imogen replied.

216 ~ Stephanie Barron

His hand moved abruptly as tho' he might have forbidden all gallops this morning; but at Lady Imogen's impatient twitch of her mount's head, Spence stepped back from the contenders without another word. He raised his right arm, then let it fall.

The two horses sprang forward in a cloud of dust.

"It's always neck or nothing with her ladyship," Robley ob-served cryptically to anyone who might listen. "It don't do to put a fence in her way--she'll throw her heart over, every time."

The Major was still standing at the entry to the yard, his at-tention fixed on the careening pair. I moved to join him, the others only a little behind me.

"Who is winning, Henry?" I demanded. My eyes have never been strong, and the horses had achieved such a distance that I could no longer discern which was forwarder.

"I believe it is Thrace. No--Lady Imogen has pulled to the fore!"

"We ought to have placed a man at the gate," Spence said tensely. "--To observe the outcome."

"But Thrace is a man of honour," my brother objected. "He shall certainly own the truth, once he knows it!"

"With such a prize as Stonings in view?" Spence demanded bitterly; and then he stepped forward, as tho' torn from his po-sition.

"Good God!" he cried. "She is thrown!"

He began to run down the sweep with painful ineptitude on his injured leg, but Henry was the faster. He passed Major Spence while the rest of us were still collecting our faculties and exclaiming over the fate of Lady Imogen--and in a matter of moments, could be seen halfway down the sweep. He came to a halt by the crumpled figure; I discerned him to lift her in his arms.

Mr. Thrace had wheeled his tearing mount and galloped Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 217

back towards the little mare. Nutmeg had skittered away from the sweep as tho' shying from the burden she left behind. As Henry staggered towards us, I was dimly aware of Mr. Thrace coursing alongside Lady Imogen's mount, and leaning forward to grasp the mare's bridle.

"Spence!" Henry shouted. "You must send for a doctor!"

"Is she gravely hurt?" the steward cried, and lurched for-ward to meet my brother. I was only seconds behind him, Catherine Prowting at my back.

Charles Spence bent over the face of his beloved, his own white with shock. His fingers fumbled at her pulse, felt for sense in her neck--and then abruptly he stepped backwards.

"The doctor," he said numbly. "What can a doctor hope to do here? She is already dead."

I do not think, in those first moments of tragedy, that Charles Spence could trust himself to speak. He merely reached for the limp form of the Earl's daughter, and my brother placed her gently in the steward's arms.

Ann Prowting took one look at Lady Imogen's insensible features--the brutal angle of the head where it rested on the Major, so suggestive of a broken neck--and gave way to a fit of strong hysterics. Thin, high-pitched screaming akin to the hiss of steam escaping a teakettle--until Catherine firmly slapped her sister's cheeks, and led the sobbing figure back towards the house.

"My lady!" cried the groom, Robley, his monkey eyes star-ing. "My lady
Imogen
! Enough of your pranks! Don't be giving an old man what's served you faithful a heart attack!"

"We must carry her into the house," Henry said, "and send for a doctor. She must be seen, Spence--tho' all hope is gone."

218 ~ Stephanie Barron

The steward nodded vaguely, as if unsure of his ground; and at that moment Mr. Thrace pulled up on his lathered grey, Nut-meg's rein in his left hand.

"Charles! What the
Devil--
Here, Robley, take this horse back to her stable." He dismounted, a look of wild dismay on his countenance. "She's not badly hurt, I hope?"

Spence turned on the Beau his same expression of vague uncertainty.

"She's dead!" Robley groaned. "The sweetest, most madcap minx what ever slipped her foot into a stirrup! Oh, my lady--I allus said as how your temper would plant you a facer one day, and now look! Dead, and how I am to meet the Earl
--Look after
her, Robley,
he said afore we so much as left London--"

"Stable the horse," Thrace muttered viciously to the groom; and with tears streaming down his crabbed cheeks, Robley com-plied.

Charles Spence began to walk towards the terrace we had only lately quitted in such a spirit of enjoyment, but Lady Imogen was no feather weight in death, and his game leg was decidedly unsteady.

"Let me take her," Thrace said, "lest you fall."

"No!" Spence retorted savagely. "But for
you--"
Whatever reproach he might have uttered was allowed to die in silence.

He trained his gaze on the house's distant portal, and staggered forward; and so fixed was his purpose that it achieved a kind of sacred beauty. We all of us fell back from respect, and followed in the soldier's train across the unmown lawns.

He laid her in the saloon, on a gold and white sopha only lately refurbished; and knelt at its head with her limp hand in his, a courtier at the bier of a sleeping princess. Thrace stood like a stone near one of the long windows, his face turned to the lake's prospect. The casement had been thrown open, and birdsong drifted on the air, impossibly sweet. Of all those as- Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 219

sembled with heavy hearts in the silent room, Thrace must be the most severely tried by guilt and regret.

"Oh, God," Spence muttered brokenly from his bowed po-sition on the floor--"when I think of her father!"

Henry stepped forward--alone among the gentlemen still cool and collected. "I shall ride into Sherborne St. John and summon the surgeon."

"His name is Althorp," Thrace said over his shoulder. "I will accompany you, Austen."

"Would that I could offer any assistance in such distress,"

John Middleton said heavily, "but I fear you have long been de-siring our absence, Spence. We shall wait only for the doctor, and then depart for Chawton."

The steward raised his head, as tho' the words recalled him from a far country, and glanced towards the door. It had opened almost soundlessly on new-oiled hinges, and I saw that the groom, Robley, stood there. Beyond him in the main pas-sage were assembled a hesitant group of domestics, their faces o'erspread with the most potent expressions of shock.

"Beggin' yer pardon, sir." Robley's voice rang with a power quite alien to his earlier tone of sorrow. "I reckoned you ought to see
this.
"

He held his right hand aloft.

Spence scowled and rose to his full height. "What is it, Robley?"

"A thorn," the groom said, "near two inches long, and sharp as the dickens. I found it beneath the saddle when I put Nut-meg in her box. Cut the flesh so deep the mare was bleeding, she was."

"What is that to me, at such a moment?" the steward cried.

"It ought to be everything, sir," the groom retorted. "This here thorn's the reason yon mare tossed her rider, and it was put there a-purpose.
This thorn killed my lady Imogen
."

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Chapter 19

A Bolt into the Blue

8 July 1809, cont.

~

There could be no talk of returning to Chawton now.

Mr. Prowting stepped forward and grasped the great dou-ble doors, as tho' desirous of shutting out the crowd of domes-tics assembled in the passage. "You must come in, sirrah, and explain yourself."

The groom walked determinedly towards Charles Spence.

"You're accustomed to cavalry, Major. You know what it should be like, with a great sharp thorn such as this beneath the saddle, as soon as her ladyship leaned into her race."

Spence reached out as if in a dream, and grasped the thorn between his fingers.

"Pressing down on it she was, without even knowing, and the thorn stabbing Nutmeg all the while. It's no wonder as the Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 221

horse bolted and threw my lady; wanted to get the saddle off her back, she did."

"But how--"

"That thorn weren't there when I unsaddled the mare yestiddy," Robley persisted obstinately: "The mare was clean. A thorn like that don't just happen to find itself under a saddle.

You take my meaning, sir?"

"You are saying that it must have been placed there," Mr.

Prowting declared, as Charles Spence remained silent. The steward was turning the thorn between his thumb and forefin-ger, fascinated, but at the magistrate's words a terrible look of understanding burgeoned on his face.

"You
saddled the mare, Robley."

"But I did not
fetch
the saddle for the race. It was Mr. Thrace as did that," the groom returned meaningfully. "--Mr. Thrace, who allus rides out alone of a morning, and is in and out of the stable yard at all hours, and dislikes my lady with a passion to equal her own. Thought to put a noose around my neck, he did. Me, what has served her ladyship near twenty year!"

As we stood in horrified silence, aware of what the groom's words must mean, Spence wheeled to stare at the Beau, who still stood by the great windows.

"Julian,"
he whispered. "Can it be possible?"

Thrace did not reply. His handsome countenance had gone white--with fear or guilt, I know not--and all his easy manner was fled.

"Will you not speak, man? Defend yourself--explain your-self--but for God's sake,
speak
!"

Thrace's gaze moved from one of our faces to another. "I can no more say what has occurred than you, Charles."

I believe Spence might have thrown himself at the man in fury then had my brother not stepped forward, quick as a flash, 222 ~ Stephanie Barron

and restrained him. Catherine Prowting cried out as the two struggled; but Henry's strength proved greater than Spence's weak leg. The steward gasped, then sank to the floor near Lady Imogen's still form.

"She was so joyous this morning--so proud of her home and her horse!" he muttered. "All of life, all happiness before her. A life snuffed out--"

It was then Julian Thrace made his mistake.

With a look of panic on his countenance, he dived without warning through the open window.

"Hi!" Henry shouted, and rushed to the casement. "He's making for the stables! He shall bolt, and we do not take care!"

Robley turned with the swiftness of the monkey he so re-sembled and cried to Charles Spence, "Your gun, sir, if you take my meaning. I'll fetch Rangle and the others and head 'im off at the gate!"

In an instant he was gone from the saloon.

Henry looked as tho' he might follow Thrace through the open window, but John Middleton was before him.

"It is for the magistrate to act now, I think, Mr. Austen. Else we shall have a second murder done."

Mr. Prowting was already standing before Charles Spence, his aspect the picture of painful dignity. "No gun, Major. No swift and untimely justice. The man shall be seized, and his guilt weighed in a court of Law."

Spence turned his head towards the yawning casement, lis-tening for a sound perhaps only he expected; and at that mo-ment, I heard it too. The rapid patter of the great grey hunter's hooves as they galloped, far beyond the reach of Robley and his baying pack, down the length of Stonings' sweep.