Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (24 page)

“A confederate?” Spence objected. “But—”

“—You believed Old Philmore to have acted alone,” I replied, “and are astonished to learn that in silencing the old man, you failed to end his tale entirely. I am sorry to disappoint you, Major Spence; but so it is. Philmore’s nephew is even now in Alton gaol, and weakening in his loyalties.”

For the first time, Spence betrayed his fear. He turned restlessly about the room, his gaze abstracted, as tho’ debating what best he should do. He came to a halt behind the great desk, staring out the windows at the driving rain.

“I was very stupid, when all is said and done,” I admitted. “I thought from Lady Imogen’s looks on the Saturday that she was privileged in the knowledge of her own triumph. I thought Thrace was vanquished by Lord Harold’s proofs—that he knew himself exposed as an imposter. I actually believed he might have arranged her ladyship’s race and subsequent fall, in the faint hope of suppressing all knowledge before the Earl should learn of it. In short, I behaved in exactly the fashion
you
might have hoped from all our party, Major Spence. You were a consummate plotter—and I was your dupe.”

He did not move, did not reveal that he had heard me.

“You may have already perused the contents of my chest. I cannot say what you found there. But the sequel must give a partial knowledge. By Saturday, Lady Imogen was dead; and Julian Thrace accused of her murder. I collect, then, that the unfortunate Mr. Thrace
is
undeniably Lord Holbrook’s heir—and that only a noose could prevent him from inheriting your earldom, Major Spence.”

“Lord,” the Earl of Holbrook murmured, “it is as good as a play! Dolly Jordan is as nothing to you, Miss Austen. But you need not have gone to such trouble, Spence. I could have shown you the proofs myself, had you only asked. They are not to be found among Lord Harold’s papers, you know. They are among
mine.
”

We turned as with one will and stared at Freddy Vansittart.

“Wrote to me direct from France,” the Earl explained, “when he recovered the boy. Wrote the particulars and enclosed Hélène’s dying words. Didn’t need Harry’s fist to convince me of the gel’s constancy. Never had any doubt regarding Julian’s blood. I’ve maintained him in school all these years, haven’t I, and made sure he was raised an English gentleman?”

The Earl withdrew a wallet from his coat with thick and fumbling fingers. They trembled slightly as he extracted a thin sheet of foolscap, fragile and transparent with age and much folding. Even at a distance of ten paces, I could discern the familiar sloping hand.

Lord Harold’s writing.

“There,” the Earl commanded. “You may read it for yourselves. I’ve never parted with Harry’s letter. It’s all I have left of Hélène.”

We all of us stood paralysed, uncertain to whom this charge was directed. And at that moment, Spence made his move.

H
E THREW HIMSELF NOT AT THE
E
ARL OR THE PRECIOUS
relic held in his hand; nor did he grapple with Edward in a desperate surge for the door. He did not knock me down, or hurl himself through a window as Thrace had done; he dived for the great desk’s drawer.

I believe that Edward understood before I did what the Major intended. But by the time my brother had reached him the cavalry pistol was already levelled against Spence’s own temple.

“No!” Edward cried. “I beg of you, Spence—”

But the report of gunpowder and ball must serve as his only answer.

Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Frederick, Earl of Holbrook, dated 8 January 1792; two leaves quarto, laid; watermark fragmentary ELGAR; signature under black wax seal bearing arms of Wilborough House;
Personelle, Par Chasseur Exprès,
in red ink.
(British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)

Dearest Freddy:

I achieved Paris three days since, and have spent the interval in searching for the Citizeness Hélène. I will not tax your patience with a report of the state of affairs in this miserable place; I will say only that I have found her, but she is in no condition to be restored to you. To be brief: she is to meet the guillotine on the morrow. Nothing I can contrive among her gaolers—neither payments of what gold I still possess, nor the promise of safe conduct to my country—has succeeded in winning her freedom. It appears Hélène committed the fatal errors of remaining in the city when all was lost, and of championing the cause of a childhood friend similarly consigned to execution. Someone—I know not whom—has informed upon her as the paramour of a conspiring Englishman, and you know well that such
trahison
shall never go unpunished.

I shall endeavour to do what I can to disrupt the Committee’s plans, but will say no more here lest this missive go astray.

Of your son I have better intelligence—he is placed with a cottager near Versailles and knows nothing of his unfortunate mother’s fate. I have seen him, and when all is concluded—for good or ill—I shall get him to you in Marseille, or die in the attempt.

You may expect us within a fortnight.

You would find your poor lady much changed. She remains, despite the grossest of indignities and a cause for despair beyond imagining, the sweetest-tempered female I have ever met with. She begs to be remembered to you and her father, and asks on her dying eve that you guard well the life of your son. Some token he bears with him which you will recognise; I know not what. Pray God that we arrive safe.

Yours ever,

Harry

Chapter 25

The Earl’s Story

10 July 1809, cont.
~

I
T WAS
E
DWARD WHO RODE OUT TO FETCH THE SURGEON,
Mr. Althorp, from Sherborne St. John, in order that he might pronounce another sudden death to have been achieved at the great estate of Stonings. I remained with the Earl of Holbrook while Charles Spence’s valet took his master’s body in charge, and saw it washed and laid out for burial with his own hands. I had not encountered the Major’s manservant before, but was much struck by the expression of suffering that was writ on his countenance; clearly Charles Spence had been beloved of somebody.

The Earl escorted me from the scene of gore and misery that had become the library, and deposited me with a decanter of sherry and Lord Harold’s precious missive in the white and gold saloon. He disappeared for an interval, in which I assume he paid his respects to his daughter’s bier, and issued orders regarding the Major’s remains. I walked about the room in some disorder of mind, debating every moment of the past week and my own tragic miscalculations regarding the persons I had lately met. The Earl returned after twenty minutes, in apparel freshly exchanged for his garments of the morning, and looking the better for his respite.

“My dear Miss Austen,” he cried, “I could wish us to have met under more cheerful circumstances. It is shocking indeed to consider the scenes to which you have been subjected. But I am grateful to you for the perspicacity you have brought to Stonings; I should not have suspected Charles Spence in an hundred years. Altho’—given his ruthless determination to acquire my property—I doubt my life would have lasted so long.”

“I must agree with you, my lord.”

He threw himself onto the settee at my side and patted my hand encouragingly. “I apprehend, now, why Harry left you his papers, m’dear. You’re as shrewd as you can hold together, aren’t you? I wish Immy had possessed a little of your understanding; the gel might yet be spending my money hand over fist.”

He looked so troubled that I felt an unwarranted desire to protect and support him; the sort of desire that must often have attended Freddy Vansittart’s adventures, and ensured him the love and good will of those around him.

I offered the Earl Lord Harold’s letter. “I collect from this communication that the boy his lordship speaks of was Julian Thrace?”

“Indeed. Delivered like a package to my inn at Marseille not ten days after the date of that note. There was never anything like Harry for dependability; when Trowbridge gave his word, he backed it.”

“Had you known the boy before?”

“But naturally! I fell head over ears in love with Julian’s mother when I was a young man out in India, and by the hour of her death was almost Hélène’s sole support. I should have gone to her myself, at the last, but for the price the Committee had placed upon my head.”

I had an idea of the story, but forbore to interrupt him.

“She was the daughter of a French count, and the daintiest piece of work you should ever have seen, m’dear.” He sighed reminiscently. “No sapskull, neither. When we met Hélène was betrothed to another—a peer of the British realm—and her sense of what was due to her father, who had arranged the match, dictated the most scrupulous fidelity to his wishes. Her heart, however, was another affair altogether. Wonderful how these French women can reconcile the very Devil!”

I murmured assent.

“I cannot recall a happier time than those few short weeks aboard the
Punjab,
Miss Austen. When we achieved Plymouth, however, I gave her up for lost. No sooner did I find myself back in London, than I was riveted meself—it was only expected, as I had come into my brother’s title, and must stand the business. Amelia was well-born, well-looking, and without a penny to her name; that meant little to me, as I had made my fortune already in the East. I fear, however, that I was unable to accord my wife the sort of affection and fidelity a young woman might expect from her husband. My heart was already commanded by another, you see. Amelia left me when our child was but three years old, and I was forced to raise Immy myself. Not that I minded; it was preferable to living with my lady wife’s highjinks. All the same—I never undertook to marry again. Hadn’t the desire for it, if you see what I mean.”

“I do understand. But the French lady . . . ?”

“Couldn’t stick the Viscount,” he answered bluntly, “and naturally, she must have appeared in his lordship’s eyes as rather tainted goods. I will not deny that Hélène achieved her wedding day already two months gone with my child. I suppose she thought to brave it out—to deceive the gentleman if necessary, and endure a loveless marriage, provided he could be kind to her—but the truth is, St. Eustace was the Devil’s own cub, and there was no living with him for any woman. Hélène sought my protection within six months of her marriage, and I saw the poor gel safely home to Paris with all possible speed. Set her up in a lovely little house in the Rue de Sèvres, and prepared for both of us to be happy. That would have been 1786, I suppose—the year of Julian’s birth. But what with one thing and another, I only saw my French family perhaps four times in a twelvemonth. And then the Revolution began, and it was hard to know where an Englishman’s duty lay.”

“Particularly an Englishman of the Whiggish persuasion,” I observed.

“That’s the rub,” he agreed. “We were all for liberty, at first—for the reign of Reason, and the power of a Constitution, and the curbing of royal prerogatives; it was like mother’s milk to us, don’t y’know. Even Harry was wild for French republicanism. But then he saw at first hand the excesses of the populists bent on murdering all those they could not persuade. He wrote back to his friends at home that measures would have to be contrived, once the blood began to flow. And so we all agreed to serve as the rescue party for our French brothers. Charles Grey conceived of the details, and Harry and I volunteered to carry them out.”

“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.”

“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 answer 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 Hélène’s. Besides, there were the rubies to think of. The little chap arrived in Marseille with them tied in a leather pouch under his shirt, like one of Ali Baba’s thieves.”

“The rubies?” I repeated blankly. “Not the Rubies of Chandernagar?”

“He has told you of them, then!” Holbrook exclaimed with delight. “An heirloom of Hélène’s house, and owned at one time by Madame de Pompadour, if the old stories may be believed. I think Hélène expected me to sell the stones, in order 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, after 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 wanderings, “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 simply. “Pray tell me in what manner I may serve you in return, Miss Austen.”

“You might order Major Spence’s valet to search his effects,” I suggested, “for a Bengal chest that was once in Lord Harold’s possession. It contains all that remains of the gentleman—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 dissipation—but Freddy Vansittart
does
possess an infinite abundance of charm, as Lord Harold once noted. In this quality alone, we may certainly recognise Julian Thrace’s father.