“Mr. Cooper would never presume to impart particulars so injurious to the reputation of a lady, and a lady so closely connected to himself,” Sir James said quietly. “In the present instance, indeed, he would not wish it known that you have been associated with past cases of murder. It might enflame the gossip already circulating about the town.”

I coloured, doubted, and was silent.

“The intelligence I received, Miss Austen, was from a very old acquaintance we hold in common. He is presently residing at Chatsworth, being an intimate of the Duke.”

“Chatsworth!” I cried. “I must believe you to have been imposed upon, Sir James! For I know no one in Derbyshire.”

At that moment, the rustling in the passage increased and the parlour door was thrust open. I turned, gazed, and rose immediately from my chair. A spare, tall figure, exquisitely dressed in the garb of a gentleman, was caught in a shaft of sunlight. He lifted his hat from his silver hair and bowed low over my hand.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Austen. We have not met this age.”

Nor had we. But I must confess that the gentleman had lately been much in my thoughts.

“Lord Harold,” I replied a trifle unsteadily. “The honour is entirely mine.”

28 August 1806, cont.

THE APPEARANCE OF LORD HAROLD TROWBRIDGE HAS ever been a source of astonishment in my life, the sudden intercession of a breathless world, imperfectly understood. His taste for fashionable intrigue and clandestine statecraft, when allied with a character already prone to discretion, make him an elusive figure. Although an intimacy of sorts subsists between us — as much as any such condition may, when the lady is single and impoverished and the gentleman one of the most pursued partis on the marriage circuit — I never know when he is on the Continent or in Town; in danger of his life on behalf of the Crown, or dying of boredom at a country retreat. Ours is not the sort of footing that might encourage a voluminous correspondence. The exchange of letters between a lady of my station, and a gentleman of his, might suggest an improper liaison or a secret understanding. I have never enjoyed either in my association with Lord Harold.

On the present occasion we met after a silence of above eight months, and the absence, on his part, of nearly a year. I had seen vague reports in the public journals of diplomatic sallies in the Baltic, and visits to the Prussian Court; I had snatched at rumours of romantic alliance with a certain Russian Princess, and the whiff of scandal in the Montalban chit’s elopement. I knew not what to credit, what to deny, what to approve, or what should give me pain.

I cannot presume upon Lord Harold’s notice, or even look for the continuance of his friendship. But he is, without exception, the most intriguing member of my acquaintance; to move in his circle is to drink a kind of elixir, not necessary to the maintenance of life, but sparkling in its effect and invariably invigorating.

Though my mother and sister disapprove Lord Harold’s influence, I consider my intimacy with the Gentleman Rogue to be a considerable honour, and one not lightly bestowed. On certain occasions, and in certain circumstances, I have known some part of Lord Harold’s confidence and his counsel — and in this, I understand myself to have been the keeper of his trust. Should he disappear from the face of the earth and persist in silence the better part of a decade, I should still meet his renewed attentions with cordiality.

“I understand your mother and sister are also in Bakewell,” he said to me now, and I replied in the affirmative. “They are well?”

“Perfectly well, I thank you.”

“Despite the intrusion of a murderer in their midst?”

“I do not think my mother has afforded the Arnold girl more than a quarter-hour of consideration,” I said drily, “and my sister, though greatly distressed by the reports she has heard, was spared all sight of the corpse. We must remember, Lord Harold, that it is August. The world’s concerns cannot be too deeply felt when the weather is fine.”

This sally won the barest ghost of a smile. “What brings you into Derbyshire? I should have thought to find you in Kent, at Mr. Edward Austen’s estate, in such a season.”

“My brother is from home at present,” I told him, “having taken a house at Ramsgate; but I may find it in my power to visit Godmersham again in the autumn. We intend a removal in October to Southampton, my lord.”

“Southampton?” he repeated, with a slight frown; “I should not have thought your character any more suited to a watering place, Jane, than it has been to the dissipations of Bath. Of what is your mother thinking?”

“Of economy,” I returned, “and of my brother, Captain Francis Austen, who makes his home our own. Southampton is but seventeen miles from Portsmouth, and the naval stores; wherever Frank’s duties may take him in the world, he shall always return to the Hampshire coast.”

“I see.” Lord Harold declined Sir James’s offer of refreshment and drew forward a chair. “It was very wrong of me to speak as I did — the effect of surprise alone must explain it. But what brings you then to Bakewell? It is rather more northwards than Southampton, surely?”

The Gentleman Rogue had never been given to idle chatter, and if I wondered at his distracted air, and his random pursuit of subject, I forbore from comment. I found his appearance to be remarkably ill. I had never seen him so obviously prey to an inner torment as he now appeared, and I experienced the most lively anxiety on his behalf. His beak of a nose looked sharper than ever, the skin being stretched tightly across the bone; his eyes were hollow, and I should judge that his rest had been disturbed for some nights past. Perhaps the affair of the Russian Countess — so vaguely alluded to, in the slyest of morning papers — had exacted a greater toll than I realised. Had there been a duel? A suicide? An illicit birth in a small town on the Continent? It seemed as though a great sickness or a desperate sorrow must gnaw at the man. Lord Harold looked all his eight-and-forty years at least.

“We have been embarked on a journey of pleasure this summer,” I told him gently, “and being so near to the Peaks as my cousin’s home in Staffordshire, could not defer a glimpse of Derbyshire’s beauties.”

“I rather imagine it is a chance you will forego next time it offers,” observed Sir James. “If Mr. Cooper is to be consulted, you should better have stayed at home.”

“Tess Arnold would still be as dead,” I replied.

Lord Harold said nothing. His grey eyes were fixed upon my face. In the usual way I would never have presumed to enquire as to his movements, but he was so little master of himself that the question sprang thoughtlessly to my lips. “And you, my lord? What brings you to Derbyshire?”