Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (28 page)

“I do not intend to ask after brawn,” my mother confided as she sampled a custard tart. “I am sure the Swan’s must be superior; but I shall be treated to it upon another occasion, perhaps.”

A fire roared in the hearth; our situation was entirely private from the general run of the publick house’s patrons; and a dull sunshine picked out the lead in the old inn’s windowpanes. I seated myself
on a settee near Cassandra whilst my mother renewed acquaintance with some friends from Deane, where the Harwoods lived. John Harwood, it seemed, had sold his father’s string of hunters—he could no longer support a stable, and was not to be found among the handsome company that had ridden out this morning. It must be gall and wormwood, to continue in a neighbourhood where one had been accustomed to figure as squire—and to have the entire world talking over your misfortunes.

“Were you happy to see Mr. Raphael West, Jane?” Cassandra enquired, breaking in upon my reflections.

I toyed with a slice of bacon. “No more than yourself, my dear. He is an engaging acquaintance, to be sure—with so much knowledge of the world, and of the people in it.”

“I wonder at his remaining in Hampshire so long,” she said slowly. “Surely it cannot require much more of his time, to capture William Chute’s likeness? His talents are so great—his hand so swift. I should labour a fortnight to express on paper what he achieves in a quarter-hour.”

I turned my head aside, so as not to appear to scrutinise my sister too closely. Cassandra has mourned her long-lost love, Tom Fowle, nearly twenty years—since his needless death of yellow fever in Santo Domingo. To my knowledge, she has never seriously entertained an attachment since. To her, Tom’s memory is sacred; her heart went into a tropick grave. Was it possible that her connexion with Raphael West—a man whose first love was also gone, and who shared her love of Art—had awakened a flame in the embers of Cass’s heart?

I could not follow the thought too nearly; it suggested the possibility of pain. I said only, “Mrs. Bramston informs me that Mr. West has lately been in London. He is only just returned to The Vyne from business there. I confess I am surprized he should chuse to reenter
a house and a situation from which he was lately freed—but there is no accounting for the tastes of gentlemen, to be sure.”

“If he lost several days in his journey, perhaps he does require further poses of William Chute. There can be nothing else of importance to call him back here,” Cassandra said evasively.

Did she look to me for reassurance? Did she wish me to declare as boldly as my character might, that Mr. West had formed an attachment to shy, principled, retiring Cassandra and her tentative sketchbook—or to declare, rather, that he had returned to Hampshire for me?

I could neither support nor crush her hopes so entirely. I did not believe either conjecture to be true. I sensed in Raphael West a single-minded purpose, beyond the petty interests of those around him. He reminded me more strongly than any I had encountered since Lord Harold’s death, of that steely gentleman. Like the Gentleman Rogue, West’s intellect was engaged in a higher and more deadly game than mere courtship. He treated with the fate of Nations, and the men who would rule them. What were affairs of the heart, but indulgent distractions?

I would never set myself up as rival to Cassandra. It was a fond saying of my mother’s, when both of us were young, that if Cass were to be taken to have her head cut off, I would be clamouring for the treat, too. —So much did I always adore my elder sister. I will never have her goodness—I am cursed with a sharper mind, a more restless spirit, an unendurable dissatisfaction with the inequities of life. Cassandra is one of the Blessed. I should leave her in her little fever of happiness over Raphael West, and let time work the necessary correction.

A
FTER AN HOUR OR
so of lingering within doors, our group of ladies—some eleven in number, counting the folk from
Deane—began to surfeit of food and indolence. My sister took out her sketchbook to capture the scene in charcoal. My mother unearthed her netting—she had embarked upon another reticule, a diminutive one intended for Jemima. I strolled to the window and gazed out upon the monochrome of January. A churned stableyard; the dark etching of elm and oak against a livid sky. I wondered whether I might hear a hunting horn or the baying of distant hounds, if I ventured out-of-doors—but no doubt the pack was miles distant by now.

“Should you like to take a turn along the lane, Miss Austen? The ground is rather dirty, but after so long an interval in the carriage, I confess I am wild to be in the air.”

Lucy Portal.
Wild
appeared to be a favoured word; and it captured the impulsive nature that shone from her open countenance. “I should be happy to. But are you well enough?”

“Perfectly—else I should not have suggested the scheme.”

If her indisposition was pregnancy, she was not very far along. I reached for my spencer, gloves, and bonnet, and told my mother I should return presently. I half-expected Mary to force herself upon us, but discovered that she was dozing in a chair by the fire. Cassandra lifted her finger to her lips in an appeal for silence. Lucy and I crept out of the side parlour.

She sighed with relief once we had gained the road in front of the village green. “There appear to be a few shops over there,” she said, gesturing vaguely, “but I confess that to be shopping is not at all what I intended. I want a brisk interval of exercise, which no amount of dawdling in front of milliners’ windows may supply.”

I declared myself of her opinion, and so we set off in the direction the Hunt had taken that morning, towards the open country beyond the village.

“I am glad you were so good as to accompany me, Miss Austen, for I intend to interrogate you.”

“Indeed?” I returned politely.

“Ever since Mrs. James Austen let slip this morning that poor Miss Gambier is believed to have been murdered, I have been on the fidgets! You must know that we passed much of our girlhood together.”

“I did not. I am very sorry for your loss.” Of course Mary must be saying what she should not, in canvassing the sensation at The Vyne. I had barely overlistened her conversation in the carriage this morning, but her indiscretion could not surprize me.

“Miss Gambier was forever visiting Freefolk Priors, while old General Sir Mathew leased the manor from my husband’s father, Harry Portal. Miss Gambier’s mother was the General’s niece, you know.”

“I had forgot Mr. Portal’s father owned the General’s house!” I exclaimed. “And so your husband grew up there, before it was let?”

“In the old place. The manor at Freefolk Priors has since been pulled down. When the General died, John’s father built Laverstoke House new upon the site. John’s elder brother, William, lives there now. But I persist in thinking of the place as it was in the Mathews and Gambiers’ day. Which, of course, is my own!”

“You grew up in the same neighbourhood, I collect?”

“In Whitchurch, but a mile distant. I met my husband at the Basingstoke assemblies.”

They had much to answer for, those balls—James had fallen in love with Anne Mathew, the General’s daughter, at one of them.

“I fell out of my acquaintance with Mary Gambier,” Lucy Portal continued, “once I married. Our paths lay apart. But I was fortunate enough to discover her living in Bath about a year ago—we took a
house in Laura Place, you know, while Ashe Park was being refurbished—and should have been happy to renew our friendship.”

“She was not?” I asked.

Lucy hesitated. “I should say rather that she was changed. The open character I recalled from our youth had become guarded and opaque. To call her aloof must suggest a conscious revulsion from my overtures; say rather that she barely noticed them. She appeared to me as one who had, in some measure, renounced Society and all its pleasures.”

In the distance I caught the faint sound of baying. The pack was in full throat; the fox must have broken. Even now the bright stream of horses and riders, vivid spots of colour in the landscape, must be coursing after the Master.

“I should describe Miss Gambier in much the same terms,” I said. “Her character appeared as a puzzle. She was often on her knees in The Vyne Chapel—but given what occurred there last week, this is hardly wonderful.”

“Mrs. Austen suggested there was an attachment between Miss Gambier and the messenger who was killed.”

“So it appeared,” I said carefully. “Can you tell me, Mrs. Portal, whether there was any mystery surrounding Mary Gambier, when you met her in Bath? A whisper of scandal, perhaps, or a rumour that persuaded her to avoid Society?”

She shook her head. “If Mary suffered from idle talk, it was not on her own account.”

“Her brother’s, perhaps?”

“Edward!” Lucy smiled indulgently, as one who has known a man first as a troublesome boy. “He was at Oxford that year, I believe—and must have persecuted only his tutors. No, Miss Austen, I refer to Lady Gambier. There are many in Bath who refuse to receive her.”

My footsteps slowed. “She is a difficult personality, to be sure. But … to cut her dead? Whatever for?”

Lucy Portal might have answered me. But at that moment, the clatter of a horse, galloping flat-out, assailed our ears. We turned as one and gazed up the lane towards the coverts. I did not recognise the rider at first, but then Lucy clutched at my arm.

“Your nephew, Miss Austen,” she said. “And in a tearing hurry. Whatever can be wrong?”

I think we both expected James-Edward to pull up his horse and speak to us as he approached, but to our surprize he did neither. He was clinging to Trooper’s neck like a monkey, and if I had not known what an excellent rider he was, I should have suspected the horse of running away with him. His mouth was set in a grim line as he swept past, and his gaze did not swerve from his object. Indeed, it is probable that Lucy and I were invisible to him.

Without a word we gathered our skirts and hastened back the way we had come. We were in time to meet James-Edward at the door of the Swan, already remounting his horse.

“What is it?” I cried, as he turned Trooper impatiently back towards the open lane. In the stableyard behind, an ostler was harnessing a team to a cart.

“An accident,” James-Edward said, his eyes on the cart.

I realised with foreboding it was meant to follow him—and take up a body.

“Who?” I demanded.

“Mr. West. He was thrown from his mount, and took a nasty knock on the head.”

“His neck is not broken?” Lucy Portal faltered. Of all injuries on the hunting field, it must be the most dreaded.

“Or his back?” I said.

James-Edward lifted his shoulders. “Who can say? He is insensible. Papa could not rouse him. Mr. Chute sent me back for the surgeon—but he is attending a birth at Monk Sherborne, I’m told. We shall bring Mr. West back here in the cart.”

“Better than lying in a field,” Lucy said.

I attempted to nod. A cold desolation spread through me.

M
RS
. G
IGEON, THE PUBLICAN
’
S
wife, ordered a fire lit in her best bedchamber and set cans of water to heat on the kitchen hearth. A stable lad was sent on horseback to Monk Sherborne in search of the surgeon—a man named Price—and an air of urgency overtook the Swan. For those of us who were acquainted with Raphael West, and forced to wait in idle suspense, the interval before the cart’s return was an unhappy one. The folk from Deane might gossip and smile, while those who had been intimate at The Vyne must collect in silence by the parlour window.

“An accident?” Cassandra muttered. “Oh, Jane—”

I clasped her fingers in my own. “I cannot help but think of Madam Lefroy.”

Ben’s mother, Anne Lefroy, and my own dear friend—who died from a similar fall from her horse nearly ten years ago.

“I daresay it is another of these murders,” my mother supplied philosophically, as tho’ she referred to comets coursing unexpectedly across the night sky. “It is too much to believe that Providence would strike from caprice, when the Chutes have already borne so much!”

“Do we know how the fall occurred?” Cassandra asked.

Mary might be of importance, here. “James-Edward says that Mr. West was crammed before a fence, and thrown.”

“Crammed?” I repeated. “By whom?”

“James-Edward did not say. I suppose he did not notice. It may have been more than one rider, perhaps.”

Cramming was the bane of good horsemen—when less experienced hunters, or wilder mounts, forced their way too close to one preparing to leap over an obstacle. It might well have been a chance encounter, such as should occur on any hunting field.

But my heart argued it was not.

He had warned me to guard myself. He had feared that I would be an object of violence. When in fact …

“If only he had stayed in London,” I muttered.

“Girls,” my mother cried, “James is come!”

I leaned over her shoulder—Mamma is shorter than I by several inches—and stared through the frost-rimed windowpane. My brother led a sort of cortège, with William Chute at his side. Behind them came the Swan’s cart, driven by its chief ostler, and bearing within—God knows what tragic figure. As I watched, James pulled up Aristo and dismounted, handing the reins to a stable lad.

We hastened as one to the door. James had jumped into the cart and was lifting Raphael West’s shoulders. Despite myself, I winced; if the spine should be damaged—

William Chute was at his feet, and had grasped West’s ankles. The stable lad hurried to support the midsection, and slowly—slowly—our friend was eased from the bed of his conveyance.

I waited until the men should have turned with their burden, to face the Swan’s front door—saw his white face and shuttered eyes, the way his head lolled helplessly on one shoulder—and felt ill. I stepped backwards, into the hall. Cassandra started forward.

She knew nothing, of course, of his true employment—nothing of the restless spirit that urged him to direct his wit against the enemies of the Crown. Nothing of the Secret Funds, or his constant exposure
to danger. She knew only the sensitive hands that captured the world on paper as surely and swiftly as an angel, and the probing gaze that saw into one’s very soul.