Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (35 page)

"With Lord Holland as your second," I mused.

"Exactly so! Are you acquainted with Henry?"

"Not at all."

"Must introduce you. Old friend of Harry's from schoolboy days."

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 283

"And so the boy--Julian Thrace--was rescued and given over to you in Marseille," I persisted, "in the winter of 1792."

"He was then but six years of age. I could not leave the lad in France, of course, but I did not think it right to bring him home to the Holbrook nursery--there were Immy's feelings to consider, and the awkwardness of questions. Henry--Lord Holland--suggested that Julian might be sent to school with the Swiss, where Holland might observe him from time to time, and send reports as to his progress. It served very well.

Holland and his lady had made a habit of living abroad--first in France and then in Spain--and it was as nothing to them to pay a flying visit to Julian several times a year. They have even had the boy to stay in their household. Yes, it answered very well."

So well that the boy's father had never been put to the slightest trouble beyond paying his son's bills. That should an-swer a man of Freddy Vansittart's indolence very well indeed.

"What were your feelings, sir, upon hearing that Julian Thrace was believed responsible for your daughter's murder?"

"I thought it the grossest misunderstanding, and could only lament that Julian had bolted--not from want of courage, to be sure, but a lamentable ignorance of the British system of justice.

I never believed him capable of killing Imogen. Why should he, after all? There was no claim he was required to prove in order to inherit the title. I should always have known him for my son; his nose is my father's, after all, and his eyes are entirely Helene's. Besides, there were the rubies to think of. The little chap arrived in Marseille with them tied in a leather pouch un-der his shirt, like one of Ali Baba's thieves."

"The rubies?" I repeated blankly. "Not the Rubies of Chan-dernagar?"

"He has told you of them, then!" Holbrook exclaimed with delight. "An heirloom of Helene's house, and owned at one time by Madame de Pompadour, if the old stories may be 284 ~ Stephanie Barron

believed. I think Helene expected me to sell the stones, in or-der to support our son's education; but that is nonsense, of course. The stones are his inheritance from his mother, and must remain in his possession until he determines to place them about the neck of another."

Poor Mamma,
I thought ruefully,
and her blistered palms.

The Earl rose from the settee and wandered restlessly towards the window, where the prospect of lake and parapet could dimly be seen through the rain. "A black coach, and an outrider; that will be your excellent brother, Miss Austen. I do so dread a publick recital of Charles Spence's affairs. He is, af-ter all,
family.
Cannot we agree to bury the truth with the poor fellow's body? Publicity cannot return Imogen to life, after all."

"That is true," I assented, "but the truth could do much to clear your son's name. That must seem essential, as Mr. Thrace is all that remains to you."

"Julian?" The Earl glanced at me ruefully. "He shall be well on his way to Switzerland by now, and such friends as he still possesses. I suspect it will be months before I am able to locate him; and many months more before he will consent to receive me."

"I do not think he is fled to the Continent," I replied, with a swift recollection of Catherine Prowting's nocturnal wander-ings, "and you will be happy to learn, sir, that not all your son's friends are so far from home. An application in the right place should secure his return before nightfall, if you will consent to place the matter in my hands."

"I cannot conceive of a better course," Holbrook said sim-ply. "Pray tell me in what manner I may serve you in return, Miss Austen."

"You might order Major Spence's valet to search his ef-fects," I suggested, "for a Bengal chest that was once in Lord Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 285

Harold's possession. It contains all that remains of the gentle-man--and I have sorely missed the whole since Charles Spence made off with it."

"It shall be done," the Earl replied, and bowed low over my hand. "Now tell me, Miss Austen--how came we never to meet when Harry was alive? Do you never get up to Town for the Season?"

He is a stout fellow, and clearly given over entirely to dissi-pation--but Freddy Vansittart
does
possess an infinite abun-dance of charm, as Lord Harold once noted. In this quality alone, we may certainly recognise Julian Thrace's father.

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Chapter 26

New Beginnings

Wednesday, 26 July 1809

~

My dearest Frank, I wish you Joy

Of Mary's safety with a boy,

Whose birth has given little pain,

Compared with that of Mary Jane.--

So far I had managed to compose, in my letter to my brother Captain Frank Austen, when the Muse failed me. Lord Harold might love to instruct that writing is
all we have--
but in my experience, on too many occasions we may not command even so much as a word. I sighed, and set aside my pen, and de-termined to take a turn in the garden to refresh my jaded senses.

Cassandra and my mother were gone out to Alton, and the Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 287

cottage was mine to possess alone. In the past few weeks since our descent upon Chawton, turmoil had given way to peace, and the rightful enjoyment of the summer months in all their lazy plentitude. We had the imminent arrival of Martha Lloyd from Kintbury to look forward to; and increasing intimacy with the Great House family to leaven the simple bread of our usual days; restorative walks through the surrounding country; and the promise of an occasional visit from some one of our broth-ers. Not to mention the delights of the hopeful family in Lenton Street, and the babe so newly born.

For my part, the past few weeks had been one of discovery and acceptance. The salvation of Julian Thrace from a mur-derer's gibbet, and the determination of his father to present the young man as his son and heir without further delay, had sent the most interesting part of our local acquaintance flying from the country. The Heir to the House of Holbrook had been discovered sheltering in a shepherd's cot long since aban-doned on Robin Hood Butts. By Julian's side, in terror of his life, was Old Philmore--who had been brutally served with a club by Charles Spence after delivering the Bengal chest into the Major's hands. This cowardly act had been achieved in darkness, on the very night of the cottage burglary; and it hav-ing been a night of waning moon, Old Philmore succeeded at escaping from Stonings with his life, and a great wound to the head. Knowledge of his own guilt in the matter of the chest, and a terror of what the steward might further do, had con-vinced the old man to lie low until such time as Justice had been served. A chance meeting with Julian Thrace, who had his own story of persecution to tell, had sealed the matter, and made of the two fugitives friends in need.

My application to Catherine Prowting--without the neces-sity of informing her father or betraying the folly into which his 288 ~ Stephanie Barron

daughter had plunged--had wrested the young man's location from her terrified lips. The Earl himself rode out to find Julian, and no one else was privileged to witness their reconciliation, or to know what was then said. My brother Edward, however, was able to satisfy Mr. Prowting that Charles Spence was entirely responsible for the murders of Shafto French and Lady Imogen; and in the conversation of the two magistrates, Justice was allowed to have been served.

Catherine Prowting received a very pretty round of thanks from Mr. Thrace for her care of him in distress, but no offer of marriage; and as that gentleman is now gone a fortnight from Hampshire, and no one knows whether he is ever likely to re-turn, the unfortunate Catherine appears certain to fall into a decline.

To supplement the loss of such compelling society, however, I have had my Bengal chest: returned with a forced lock and a splintered face, but with the contents mostly intact. Great disor-der reigned among Lord Harold's papers, as Charles Spence had obviously gone through them in immense haste, and failed to discover the proofs he so desperately sought; but there is a satisfaction in bringing order from chaos, against which even I am no proof. I have spent many consuming mornings closeted in my bedchamber, with packets of letters and journals spread out all around me, and am in a mood to welcome any shower of rain, as discouraging all other activity but that of reading.

Cassandra, observing me, sniffed with disdain that I was as much Lord Harold's inamorata in death as in life--and I did not trouble to argue the point. Entire worlds of experience have been opened to me through his lordship's letters; and I feel now as tho' I hardly knew him, when he stood in my par-lour with one booted foot on the fender, and his hooded grey eyes fixed on my countenance. There is much to trouble, and Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 289

much to shock, among these papers; much also to admire and love. But what a burden he has placed in my safekeeping! I no longer trust to the security of a cottage.

I have written to Mr. Bartholomew Chizzlewit of Lincoln's Inn, and desired him to despatch a special courier to Chawton, so that Lord Harold's bequest might be returned to the solici-tor's offices. There, from time to time, I might visit his lord-ship's ghost--and determine how best to fulfill the heavy charge he has placed upon me. The writing up and publication of the Rogue's memoirs will prove no easy task--but if it is to be a lifework, it is one I feel myself equal to undertake. The effect of the
Memoirs of a Gentleman Rogue
should be as a bombshell bursting upon the Polite World; and nothing would deprive me of the privilege of unleashing so cataclysmic a force.

I have not yet learned to ignore Lord Harold's loss. Here, in the simple beauty of this country garden, with the prospect of my family's society always around me, I must know myself even still for a woman set apart. Great love denied has been my bur-den; and its bastards are silence and loneliness. It is my very sin-gularity I must struggle with now--as perhaps I have always done. It was Lord Harold alone who understood this; and hon-oured me with his esteem despite the ways in which I shall never be quite like other women.

Or perhaps--
as he told me once
--because
of them.

290 ~ Stephanie Barron

Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Miss Jane Austen, dated
3 November 1808; one leaf quarto, laid; watermark Fitzhugh and
Gilroy; sealed with black wax over signature.

(British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)

My dearest Jane----

If I survive the morning's work--as no doubt I shall--this
letter will never reach you; but if I am fated by some mischance to
fall under Ord's hand, I cannot go in silence upon one subject, at
least.

I am no sentimentalist. I will tell you that you are hardly the
most beautiful woman I have ever known, Jane, nor the most
enchanting. Your witchery is of a different order than others'--

and springs, I believe, from the extraordinary self-possession you
command. It is unique in my experience of women. You have my
unqualified esteem and respect; you have my trust and my heart;
and if I love you, my dear, it is as one loves the familiar room to
which one returns after desperate wandering. In this room I
might draw the shades upon the world and live in comfort
forever.

Do not cry for me, Jane--but carry me always in your heart,
as one who loved you for that courage to be yourself, and not
what convention would have you be.

Your Rogue

Editor's Afterword

There are many who make it their lifework to study Jane Austen and her novels, and to them I owe a considerable debt. There are others, however, who are content to simply en-joy her words and live for a while in the world she created; and to many of these devoted readers, the town of Chawton--and the cottage in which Austen lived the final eight years of her life--have become a shrine to a lost time and place. They will probably object to my portrait of the village as hostile to the Austens' arrival in 1809, but there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that the four women who took up residence in Widow Seward's cottage were not immediately beloved. The claims of the Hinton family, and their relations the Baverstocks and Dusautoys, against Edward Austen are well documented, and resulted in a lawsuit in 1814 demanding the reversion of the Chawton estates to the direct heirs of the Knights of Chawton.

Edward was forced to settle the claim with a payment of fifteen thousand pounds to Jack Hinton, which he raised by the sale of timber from the Chawton woods. In that same year, Edward also prosecuted one of the Baigent boys for assault; but history does not tell us whether it was Toby or in what manner he attacked the Squire.

292 ~ Stephanie Barron

Ann Prowting submitted to fate and married Benjamin Clement of the Royal Navy. After the end of the Napoleonic wars turned him on shore, the young couple took up residence in Chawton and remained there until their deaths. Catherine Prowting never married.

Edward Austen and his children took the surname of Knight in 1812, when his patroness Catherine Knight died. He stayed briefly in the Great House in 1813 and again in 1814, but remained until his death a resident of Kent. The Middleton family gave up the lease of the Chawton estate in 1812, and in the years before Edward's eldest son, Edward (1794-1879), moved into the Great House in 1826, the place was at the dis-posal of Jane's naval brothers, Frank and Charles. Frank's fourth son, Herbert, was born there in 1815.