“But I saw the flames! I could not help but observe them, from the Lodge — the blaze illumined the entire waterfront! How very extraordinary! Is it the work of vandals? Or a rival shipyard?”

“Very likely both,” my mother asserted, “for every sort of miscreant will wash ashore in Southampton. It is always so with your port towns.”

“I wish I had known as much when I determined to remove here.” Mrs. Challoner preserved an admirable command of countenance for one whom, I must suspect, knew more than was healthy of the Itchen fire.

“We are vastly obliged to you for doing so. Only think what might have befallen Jane else! Her head should never have been put to rights.” My mother threw me a quelling look. “Pray sit down, Mrs. Challoner, and let us supply you with coffee and muffin — for you cannot have breakfasted properly, in quitting the house so early.”

The lady inclined her head, but professed herself bound for her dressmaker on an errand that could not wait; and with many wishes for my continued good health, and promises of future visits, she gracefully mounted the steps of her perch phaeton and took up the reins.

“What a very daring young woman,” my mother observed from the parlour window, a note of awe in her voice. “Driving herself, with only a manservant behind! That is what comes of living in foreign parts!”

The manservant was the very José Luis — or, as Mrs. Challoner preferred to call him, Zé—and he had proved a taciturn, powerfully built Portuguese fellow. He was as careful of Sophia Challoner as a hawk should be of its young, but he had spared me hardly a glance as we rolled briskly down the road from Netley this morning.

“Her Hindu coat, I vow and declare, is beyond anything I have seen this twelvemonth,” my parent continued. She was correct in this; for the dove-grey sarcenet was trimmed with tassels and silver fox.

“What can she find to discuss with a milliner? She must hardly want for a pin.”

“Except, perhaps, gowns of a suitable weight for the English winter. She has surely never required them before, being almost a native of the Peninsula — and will dress in silk, though complaining all the while of the cold. I supplied her with Madame Clarisse’s direction.”

Madame Clarisse, though born Louisa Gibbon, maintained a modiste’s establishment of the first stare in Bugle Street. All the ladies of fashion waited upon her there, in the pretty pink and white dressing room, and were supplied with finery at breathless expence.

“Very proper, I am sure. Mrs. Challoner looks the great lady.”

By this imprecation, my mother meant to imply that her new acquaintance appeared to be in easy circumstances — far easier than our own.

“She is a widow, and her fortune acquired by the Port wine trade,” I said distantly.

“Trade! I should not have detected it in her vowels, Jane. But then I recollect — the Challoners of Hampshire have long been Recusants, and one is never certain what Papists will get up to.[10] They must earn their living as best they can, poor things.”

“The Challoners, disciples of Rome?” I could not imagine the mistress of Netley Lodge educated by nuns in a French cloister. “But Mrs. Challoner merely took that name at her marriage. It is possible that her husband alone was a Recusant — and that she does not adhere to the faith.”

“Possible,” my mother admitted doubtfully, “but I cannot think it at all probable, Jane. The Papists are very careful whom they marry — and recollect: Mrs. Challoner has spent nearly the whole of her life in Portugal. With such a husband, and priests and churches at every side, who should blame her if she  fell into disreputable habits? Indeed, I must say that she acquits herself very well, considering. I should not object to your knowing more of her.”

With which gesture of magnanimity, my mother left me to nurse myself in peace.

“The papers speak of nothing but the Peninsula,” Martha Lloyd noted with a sigh some hours later, “and the tone of comment is unrelieved by optimism. Poor General Sir Arthur is covered in disgrace — I am certain his career is at an end.”

Martha being of the opinion that I should remain quietly at home so soon after an injury to the head, we had settled down by the parlour fire and given ourselves over to perusing the recent numbers of the London papers. We had been forced to forgo them of late, in deference to my nephews’ amusement and my sudden passion for watercolours.

“Do not pity Sir Arthur,” I advised. “He is a Wellesley, and as a family they have a genius for selfpreservation. He has been routed for the nonce, but shall regroup and advance the stronger for it.”

“I did not know you were a student of military strategy,” said a voice from the hallway, “much less of politics. I ought to have guessed it. Pray continue, Miss Austen.”

I glanced up from my paper to find our maidservant, Phebe, hovering in the doorway; at her back was a gentleman, an expression of languid amusement on his countenance.[11]

“Lord Harold Trowbridge!” I observed. “I had not looked for you in Castle Square today — but you are very welcome.”

Martha thrust herself hurriedly to her feet, her countenance flaming, as the Rogue strode into our parlour. She had learned enough of Lord Harold — from my mother’s veiled hints and my own obscure remarks — to comprehend that no meeting with such a man could ever be easy.

“May I present my friend, Miss Lloyd, to your acquaintance? Lord Harold Trowbridge.”

“A pleasure,” he said, bowing correctly in Martha’s direction.

“Pray accept my sincere condolences on the loss of the Dowager Duchess.”

“You are exceedingly good, Miss Lloyd. I attended Her Grace’s funeral rites only yesterday, and I may say they were exactly as she might have wished. Mr. John Kemble, the tragedian, broke off his London engagement in order to declaim the death scene of Ophelia; and very prettily he spoke it, too. It was my mother’s greatest ambition to play at tragedy, you know, but she had a fatal talent for the comic.”

“Indeed, sir?” Martha’s countenance struggled to suppress the outraged sentiments of Christian virtue, as well as the indecision battling in her soul. Ought she to support me in the presence of my dangerous acquaintance? Or did true friendship dictate a flight from the room as swiftly as possible?

I pitied her, but could not hesitate.

“Martha, be so good as to consult with Cook on the preparation of the pullet. No one has your genius for receipts — and I should hate to see a good bird spoilt.” Her lips twitched, from mirth and relief; she nodded once to Lord Harold, and sailed out of the room like a black ship of the line.

“I did not know you were entertaining guests,” he observed, as the door closed behind Martha. “Forgive me, Jane, for having lately commanded so much of your time, when others had far more vital claims upon it.”

“Miss Lloyd forms a part of our household, my lord. She has been in the nature of a sister to me since childhood; and being now quite alone in the world, she elected to throw in her lot with ours.”

“Ah.” In that single syllable, I detected a world of understanding. A household of four women: one elderly, and the others, spinsters long since left upon the shelf. A cattery, we should be called in the fashionable world of gentlemen’s clubs; or worse yet, a party of ape-leaders. I had never surprised an expression of pity in Lord Harold’s eyes, and I hoped I should not discover one now.

“How does your head, my dear?” he asked abruptly.

“It is repairing apace. You knew of my injury?”

He took up a position by the fire, his hand gripping the mantel. “I was informed of it last night by Orlando. Though he was forbidden to shadow Mrs. Challoner, he was expressly charged with observing you, and was ravaged with suspense when he saw you taken up in the dragon’s equipage. Nothing would do but he must despatch an express, urging me to make all possible haste south, as you were clearly subject to torture in the fiend’s clutches.”