mind making shift to room with Jane. For, you will understand, we have but two bedchambers. It would be some return,” she concluded, brightening, “for your kindness in taking our family in, not a few weeks ago, after our own dreadful misfortunes—though I should not like to suggest that being overturned, and being charged with murder, are at all the same thing.”
“You are very good, Madame Austen,” Seraphine replied, her gaze steadfast upon the pale plaster above, “but it is not in my power to accept your invitation.”
“Not in your power? But, my dear—how can it not?”
“Mother—” I said, in an attempt to intervene, “Mademoiselle LeFevre may wish for the reflection so necessary at such a time, and so dependent upon solitude.”
“Indeed, madame, I have obligations that must be met—the needs of a farm being unrelenting—and though I value your kindness and consideration”—at this, the angel's eyes slid downwards to meet our own—“I must decline your entreaty to remove from the Grange.”
“Well!” my mother declared, dumbfounded.
I recollected, then, the midnight landing from the smugglers’ cutter, and the muffled burden borne up the cliffs at Seraphine's direction. Was an unknown fellow even now recovering from his wounds beneath the Grange's roof? Was this why Seraphine could not desert her post in Sidmouth's absence?
“As you wish, my dear,” my father said, with a mild nod, “but may we offer you some other relief?”
“Pray for me, my good sir,” Seraphine replied, “and for my cousin, Mr. Sidmouth. I fear that neither of us shall be long for this world.”
I glanced at my father, and motioned the maid from the doorway. “Fetch a pot of tea for the mademoiselle, and be quick about it,” I said. “How long should the lady have lain here, without a drop of restorative by her? I cannot believe you did not think of it before.”
“There's no tea to be had,” the maid replied, without shifting from her place. “Stores'uv been low these three days past, and what wit’ the ‘quest today, tea'uv been all drunk up.”
“Then do you run to a shojp and purchase some, you stupid girl,” I said briskly, and handed her a few shillings. “Be off with you.”
The slattern dropped a curtsey, and scurried away, her expression turned sour. I seized the opportunity of her absence to close the chamber door as firmly as I might. I did not choose for the entirety of Lyme to overlisten my conversation with the mademoiselle.
“Your cousin's circumstances are so very bad,” I observed, as I turned back towards the bed with an effort at complaisance—for I was curious how my apparent indifference might provoke the lady, and what turn of conversation it should bring. “I wonder that he bothered to deny his guilt at all, considering how many are the proofs against him.” Without waiting for a reply, I looked to my father. “When, sir, did you declare to be the next sitting of the Assizes?”
“I did not, that I can recall,” the poor man replied, in some surprise, “but I believe I heard them to be held in Dorchester, in but ten days’ time.”
“So Sidmouth must endure another ten days in the Lyme gaol,” I said thoughtfully. “Unless it be, of course,that some other comes forward, and admits a part in the Captain's murder. But who else can have had so much reason to kill the man? It does not seem very likely. We may take it, then, that Sidmouth has but a few weeks more to live; for the Assizes once concluded, his trial and execution shall be speedily achieved. You know that they are in the habit, at Newgate, of hanging the convicted only a day or two following their condemnation.”
“Jane!” my mother cried. “Remember where you are, my girl! Have you lost all sense?”
But Seraphine's attention was gained—her expression more pained, and less remote—and so my cruel object was won. Her face, always pale, was almost translucent, and her eyes were gone glassy from shock.
“Get out,” she said, her fingers clenched upon the bedsheet. “Get out, before I serve you with violence.”
“As you did Captain Fielding?” I replied, drawing forward a chair, and seating myself companionably by her side, to my parents” consternation. “Was that the thought of the moment as well—or did you plan your assault upon his person?”
Seraphine's beautiful face was working, lost between outrage and confusion, and I hastened to profit from the moment.
“I have the idea of it well,” I continued. “Yourself on a horse, perhaps in pursuit of a