“I wrote Susan so long ago, I declare I hardly recall her outline. She was the first of a long succession of works to fall from my pen.”

“There are other novels? All dedicated to a different lady?”

“No less than four books are entombed in my wardrobe, sir, and none of them fit to be read beyond the fireside circle, I assure you.”[12]

“I wonder.” He studied me thoughtfully. “You are not unintelligent, and possess, moreover, an acute understanding of the human heart.”

I found I could not meet his gaze.

“The novel portrays, one imagines, the veritable apogee of all Susans?”

“She is a young girl, for there can never be so much interest in a woman once she has passed the age of five-and-twenty. It is better, indeed, for the novelist’s fortunes if her heroine should expire before that point.”

“I am entirely of your opinion. Does Susan suffer a painful end?”

“Hardly as swift as she might wish, and not within the compass of the novel. I fancy she dies in childbirth, like all the best women of my acquaintance — but for the purposes of this story, I have merely sent her to an abbey.”

“Excellent decision, given the environs to which you are subjected. Does she moon among the ruins, intent upon discovering a swain?”

How to describe my poor neglected darling, languishing these many years in the dust of Stationers Hall Court?

“Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that my purpose falls beyond the mere entertaining power of the best novels,” I attempted. “Let us assume, in fact, that my object is to satirize such works — in the very act of mastering the form.”

“Subtle Jane! But how is such an ambition to be satisfied?”

“By portraying a creature so enslaved to the practice of novel-reading, that she ceases to discern the difference between the stuff of books, and the stuff of life.”

“A victim of literature!” Lord Harold crowed aloud. “Very well — and so, among the ruins, does she mistake past for present, and imagine herself a nun?”

“Nay, my lord. She is sent on a visit to an ancient abbey, where she hopes to encounter mysterious decay — only to suffer the disappointment of a modern establishment, thrown up over the bones of the old, where all is just as it should be! The master of the house has not murdered his wife; his daughter is not a prisoner in the tower; and the handsome young suitor is anything but a foundling prince. In short, he is a clergyman.”

“How very provoking! I did not think you could be so cruel to children of your own invention.” He leaned towards me, his face alight. “What is it about novels that engages your interest — nay, that commands your powers?”

Torn between the duty of turning his scrutiny with an arch remark — and the desire to unburden myself to one who might actually comprehend — I gave way, as is generally the case, to Desire.

“All of life, my lord, is found among the workings of three or four families in a country village. You may laugh if you dare” — for his sardonic mouth had turned up at the corners — “but what I say is true. In the hopes and sacred dreams of a young girl on the verge of womanhood, one may see as much of courage and destiny as in the most valorous deeds of the Ancients, with far better scope for conversation.”

“All of Fate, encompassed in a Susan! I do not like your ambitions so circumscribed, my dear. You had better call her Clorasinda, or some other name of four syllables, and exchange this respectable watering-hole for London, where the full panoply of human folly is on daily parade.”

“I cannot bear the thrust and noise of a town; and besides — people themselves alter so much, with the passage of time, that there is infinite material for a patient observer. In the relations between men and women alone, one might detect endless subtlety and variation.”

“Just so. I wonder, Jane, when I shall meet myself in your prose?”

“Never, my lord. You should defy my attempts at subjugation.”

He drew down his brows at this. “At last you have said what may be understood. It is a delicious power, is it not, to subject the unwitting to the lash of your pen? This is what truly beguiles you, Jane. You have found your weapon in words. You set out your creatures as examples of the human type — you anatomise them with a few deft strokes — and there is the character of Man exposed: in all its weakness, foible, arrogance, and careless cruelty.”

“And its goodness,” I amended. “I may laugh at what is absurd, but I hope I may never meet true worth with derision.”

“I cannot regard the world with the indulgence and affection you do,” he returned. “My greatest fault is a propensity to despise my fellows, when I do not condemn them.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested hesitantly, “that is because a man is more often taught to exploit another’s weakness — to use what is vulnerable for his own ends — than to respect what is admirable and good?”

He glanced at me swiftly. “Tell me, Jane — have I ever attempted to exert that kind of power over you?”

“No, my lord.”

“—Though I may often have been tempted?”

I knew, then, that I had played at cat’s paw with a lion. Lord Harold apprehended my vulnerability — my brutal weakness: how I longed to be at his side at any hour, the merest observer of an intellect and a decision so acute as to leave me breathless — how I longed for his regard, and strove to merit it. How I led a parched existence in his absence — though that absence might endure for years — aware that true life occurred wherever he might be. The knowledge of all Lord Harold understood fell upon me there, in the intimacy of his closed carriage; and I gasped, as though I wanted for air.

“Do not look so alarmed, Jane,” he said briskly.

“We were speaking, I think, of novels. You ought to demand the return of your Susan from Messrs. Crosby and Co.; they seem disinclined to publish, and the sacrifice of so much talent upon the altar of male stupidity is not to be borne. Once you have succeeded in retrieving the copyright, you must entrust the manuscript to me.”

I swallowed hard on my emotions. “You are very good, my lord.”

“I am a scoundrel,” he rejoined gently, “but as we both apprehend that much, there is nothing more to be said.”

In the interval of a day, the yard’s mud had dried somewhat, though the smell of pitch and timber was just as strong as I had found it the previous morning. I understood the cause once Lord Harold handed me down from the carriage: Mr. Dixon’s men had cleared a space at the centre of the yard, and piled the remains of the seventy-four near the sea wall. Vast charred timbers of elm and oak rose into the sky like a devil’s scaffold, and flames licked at the base. The ship was become a pyre, with all Mr. Dixon’s hopes freighted upon it.

“The Lascar?” Lord Harold shouted.

The cloud of smoke was heavy enough that I could distinguish none of the men who tended the bonfire. My eyes smarted and my nose burned. I shook my head helplessly. Lord Harold, perceiving my streaming looks, motioned me back to the carriage. The coachman and Orlando both were at the horses’ bridles, for the great beasts had no love of fire.

“Take Miss Austen to Porter’s Mead,” his lordship cried to his coachman above the crackle of burning wood. “I shall join you there in a quarter of an hour.”

Amble handed me within, and I collapsed on the elegant cushions in a paroxysm of coughing. We were under way in an instant, the horses wheeling towards the sea. I found, when I recovered myself, that Orlando was seated opposite, and that in his hand he extended a clean linen handkerchief marked with a great scrolling monogram: H.L.J. Lord Harold’s own.

In his other hand was a silver flask.

“May I suggest a drop of brandy, ma’am, to clear your throat? I need not attest to the quality.”