turning the gold under the lanthorn. “You found this even now, on the passage floor?”
“Perhaps a long-dead monk let it fall, centuries ago.”
“It is too well-polished, too delicately chased. Curious.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Will you keep it, Jane?”
“Should I not leave it here, in expectation that the owner might return?”
“It could prove useful. Place it in your reticule for safekeeping.”
I did as he bade me, feeling like a thief.
“You are not injured, I hope?” his lordship enquired.
“My gown will be soiled, if it is not already torn; but I am entirely out of temper with women’s apparel, and cannot lament the cost. You will be leaving me at home in future, and placing your trust in the stealthy Orlando.”
He grasped my hand by way of answer, and led me forward.
• • •
“It breaks my heart to see the old stones thus, despoiled of their marble. Only think what this place once was, in the days before King Henry worked his change on the land!”
The words filtered down through the rotting wood of the tunnel hatch, set into the stone a mere foot above our heads. We stood poised in the middle of the ascending stairs that led from passage to kitchen, and in another moment I am sure that Lord Harold should have thrust open the hatch-door, and we must have been discovered, but for the woman’s voice starting up in the midst of conversation. Heat and chill washed over me in waves, from a suspense at our situation; for the voice, I readily discerned, was Sophia Challoner’s.
“The mantelpiece, I imagine, now forms the center of some gentleman’s household?”
It could only be Mr. Ord who spoke; but the American’s tone was far more serious than the one he had adopted at his lady’s dining table.
“Everything that could be scavenged has been stripped from the place. The same is true throughout England — for Henry was accustomed to highway robbery, and liked to call it politics.”
The heels of her half-boots rang on the paving above my left shoulder; involuntarily, I ducked, and felt Lord Harold’s hand in warning at my waist.
“That accounts, I suppose, for the air of sadness,”
Ord said. “It is far more oppressive within the Abbey than in standing upon the walls. There one might have an idea of the old days, when the abbot commanded one of the finest views of the Solent, and welcomed visitors from every part of the world.”
“Oh, why does mon seigneur not come?” Sophia Challoner demanded tautly, as though she had heard nothing of his wistful speech. “We have been waiting here full half an hour — and still he does not appear.”
“There might be a thousand causes for delay. Do not make yourself anxious, I beg.”
“I am always anxious,” she muttered, low. “I eat and sleep and breathe anxiety. It has become my habit, since Raoul was killed.”
Lord Harold’s hand tightened on my waist.
“You merely take the grief from these old stones,” Mr. Ord replied gently. “Let us go out and look for mon seigneur on the path. I am persuaded you will benefit from the air.”
She said nothing by way of reply; but the rapping heels made their way across the room, and faded out of earshot. With stealthy grace, Lord Harold drew me back down the stone passage. Although we moved with haste, I did not stumble, and neither of us spoke until we stood once more at the tunnel’s mouth. Then Lord Harold smiled faintly.
“How close we came to discovery, Jane! And what, then, should I have said to Sophia?”
“That you share her opinion of King Henry as a thief and a vandal, and should be charmed to make her companion’s acquaintance.”
“He speaks with a pronounced American accent. Mr. Ord, I presume?”
“But who is this mon seigneur they expected? A man in a long black cloak, perhaps?”
“Mon seigneur,” Lord Harold repeated. “My lord, in the French. A nobleman of the present regime—
one of the Monster’s able minions? And does he serve as Sophia’s agent — or her master? I pity the fellow. Tho’ he command the greatest of temporal powers, he will yet shudder to encounter Sophia’s wrath. She is more terrible even than Napoleon when she suffers a disappointment.”
“You are very hard upon the lady, sir.”
“It is my habit, Jane, with regard to all the fair sex — excepting yourself.”
“She betrays a marked preference for lost Papist glory.”
“In this, as in everything, she is squarely at odds with England. I believe I shall position the long-suffering Orlando in this tunnel, for the nonce, and charge him with listening well at trapdoors. We might learn much of the Enemy’s plans, from a pair of ears well-placed.”
I recollected the footprints on the tunnel floor — the prints not of Orlando’s making-and my heart misgave me. “What if the French lord uses this passage as his method of approach? The evidence of Mr. Hawkins’s boat on the strand may have warned him of our presence today, and turned him back from his appointment — but what if he were to happen upon Orlando?”
Lord Harold thrust open the grilled door. “So much the better,” he answered grimly. “Orlando might slit the villain’s throat, and save us all a world of pain.”
Chapter 11
Stowaway
Saturday, 29 October 1808
... Mamma is hourly torn between raptures over the pretty little village of Wye, and the contemplation of what it should mean to possess full six bedchambers without the necessity of filling them all. For my own part, I should like to see us settled in Hampshire — near enough to our friends and relations for the sake of society, but without feeling too great a dependence, as we might in such proximity to Godmersham as Wye offers. Kentish folk in general are so very rich, and we are so very poor, that I fear the temptation to comparison would improve the opinions of neither.
I raised my pen and stared in dissatisfaction at the letter to my sister. I had come to a full stop from an inability to convey what was chiefly in my mind: Lord Harold Trowbridge, and the business that had brought him to Southampton; Lord Harold, and the veil that had been torn from my eyes in the confines of his carriage. I could say nothing to Cassandra of the interesting Mrs. Challoner, or her assignations among ruined stones — nothing of the young American on his lathered black mount, or of cloaked and sinister strangers. I ought not even to mention his lordship’s name, in fact; Cassandra feared his influence over my heart.
You are most unlike yourself, Jane, when that man is near, she had chided me once in Derbyshire. When admitted to his sphere, you grow discontented with your lot — and he is the very last gentleman on earth to improve it. By such attentions, he exposes you to the ridicule of the world for disappointed hopes, and himself to charges of caprice and instability.
Cassandra is so thoroughly good — so determined to greet each day with an equal propriety of demeanour and ambition — that she invariably puts me to shame.
And yet, I cannot see Lord Harold again without my whole heart opening — to him, and to the prospect of a far wider life than I have ever dreamt of enjoying.
I drew forth a second sheet of foolscap and scrawled, for my own eyes alone: — If I am a wild beast I cannot help it—
Then I threw both sheets of paper into the fire, and hurried downstairs to breakfast.
“FOUR HOURS in a closed carriage with a gentleman of Lord Harold’s reputation — and you still have not received an offer of marriage?” my mother demanded as she sipped her tea from a saucer. “He should never have served you so ill, Jane, had your father been alive! Mr. George Austen, Fellow of St. John’s College and Rector of Steventon, should have made his lordship understand his duty quick enough! I ought to forbid Lord High-and-Mighty the house.”