and I sent him on his way. As I watched him go, I gave thanks for the Jameses of this world, and their easy access to places a lady should take care not to visit. He is very likely to form his own construction of matters, but little likely to divine the truth of my purpose—suspicion being far from his nature, and detection beyond his power. I have observed that men will quite happily believe they are rendering a service to a lady, where they might baulk at being made a mere pawn; and yet it is the latter that is so often the case.
And with that thought, the face of Seraphine LeFevre rose unbidden before my eyes. The equivocations of this afternoon did not sit well upon my mind. I could not be easy in her character; I mistrusted her motives, and her purpose was unclear to me. Did she tend the wounded at the Grange tonight, as the stars shone from a darkening sky? Or had my suspicions unnerved her—and sent her out on the beach to a dark green boat, and a hard row against the tide, and a cutter waiting to sail for France— leaving Sidmouth alone in a stone-hearted gaol?
22 September 1804
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LAST EVENING'S STARS PROVED AS LITTLE TO BE RELIED UPON, AS THE conflicting reports of Sidmouth's character; for this morning dawned still and wet, with a thick fog rolled in off the harbour, and all the town's bustle and business at once magnified and muffled by the impenetrable cloud. I gazed at the lowering gloom with displeasure. If any hoof-prints yet remained at the site of Captain Fielding's misadventure, they should be utterly marred by rain, and offer little in the way of suggestion as to the murderer's comparative size and strength. Tliat door was closed to me; but others might yet be opened.
It was decidedly not a day for paying a call; and so I was hard-pressed to explain the energy of my resolve to wait upon the Barnewalls this afternoon, at my mother's exclaiming over the poor nature of the day, and declaring it fit only for remaining indoors by a comfortable fire. Indeed, she began to talk so much of an early removal from Lyme, it being evident that the closer weather of autumn was hard upon us, and the fair golden days of late Sep-tember fast in decline, that I seized upon her mood and avowed as I must pay the call, as we might determine to be off at any moment, and the Barnewalls sadly neglected. I was forced to exaggerate here the level of attention the lady had paid me, from the necessity of painting an object worthy of serious consideration; but eventually gained my point. A hack chaise was summoned; my father handed me in with a wink; and in less time than I should have imagined possible, I was on my way to the Barnewalls” residence. It was a slow trip, owing to the fog, and elicited many a grumble and curse from the coachman; but I benefited from the solitude and tedium of the occasion, in reviewing my purpose in paying such a call.
I knew from rumour, and something Mrs. Barnewall had dropt, that they had taken an excessively large establishment some few miles out of Lyme, near the village of Wootton Fitzpaine.1 This is a small habitation, tucked into a valley between two hills, with an ancient ruin on the one and a lovely growth of woods crowning the other. One or two well-kept farms, and a cruciform church, in some need of repair, form the major part of the village; and as I eyed the belfry of the latter, I could not but think that it should make an excellent signal tower, did someone have need of conversing with ships at sea. I had neither time nor inclination to explore its utility, however; the one truly fine house in Wootton Fitzpaine was my object, and I could spare only a thought for the scattered settlement it overlooked.
Wootton House proved to be an excellent modern estate, its limestone construction dating not earlier than the middle of the last century, and well-fitted-out by its own-ers, who were absent in London, and who had leased the place to the Barnewalls through their Dorset agents—or so Mrs. Barnewall informed me, within a few minutes of my arrival at her door, having seen me divested of my pelisse and hat, and begun the necessary civility of showing me