Harold retrieved me from my place of seclusion, and looked with concern upon my sodden clothes and ravaged face.
“Miss Austen! I have been wretchedly in neglect,” he said, with the first suggestion of anxiety I had ever observed throughout the length of our acquaintance. He doffed his dripping hat and held it awkwardly over my bedraggled curls. “You shall catch your death of cold from your exposure this e'en.”
“I care little for that,” I said wearily, brushing his hat aside, “only I should dearly love a proper cloak, and some conveyance home, as I am falling down with fatigue.”
He hastened to swing his greatcoat from his shoulders, and flung it about my own, and without another word, led me to his good dark horse still tethered at the fossil pits; and with the utmost gentleness, he bent to provide a hand for my mounting. I hauled myself onto the horse's back, with less than my usual grace—being anything but a horsewoman in the best of times—and Lord Harold sprang, with something more of lightness, to the saddle before me.
We paused an instant to gaze through the curtain of rain, and out across the waves, where, like a scrap of torn fabric, the sail of a cutter showed against a lightening sky. It moved swiftly, and as we watched, disappeared from view.
“Where, then, do they sail?” I asked, after a moment.
“Not to France, assuredly.” Lord Harold's voice held an unwonted sobriety. “The country is grown too hot for men of their persuasion. The cutter will bear them to Liverpool, 1 believe—and it is their intention there to secure passage on a ship bound for America.”
“America?” I felt the pain of parting redouble with all the swiftness of a blow to my heart. “I shall never see him again.”
“I fear not,” Lord Harold said quiedy. He clucked to the horse, and turned its head, and commenced a slow jog towards Lyme.
And so we rode in weary silence for a time, with noth-ing but the soft patter of raindrops and the first tentative birdsong to cheer our way. My thoughts were torn between exultation at the party's escape and a regret so profound I could hardly speak. Until, with something more akin to his usual raillery, Lord Harold observed that I must take greater care in the forming of my acquaintance.
“For, Miss Austen,” said he, “though I will not say that I disapprove of your predilection for characters such as Sidmouth, or your habit of dining at the home of smugglers, I confess that my nose is quite turned, at finding my success so spoilt, in being dependent upon your penetration. You will quite ruin my reputation, if word of this gets out; and I shall be reduced to offering you employment.”
“—Which I should as readily decline,” I replied. “At this moment, sir, I want nothing more than the safety of my room, and a hot toddy, and a warm brick wrapt in cloths between the sheets. How it does rain! I will never be without my bonnet, in future, no matter how many borrowed greatcoats I may acquire.”
“You have a most vexatious talent for intrigue,” Lord Harold insisted, with utter disregard for my ideas of bricks and toddies. “Most unusual, in a woman. I shall be con-standy looking over my shoulder, in future, from a fear of finding you behind.”
“Then you shall run headlong over my foot, my lord,” I rejoined with spirit, “for I shall assuredly stand before.”
About the Author
STEPHANIE BARRON, author of the critically acclaimed Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scar-grave Manor and Jane and the Man of the Cloth, is a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen's work. She lives and works in Colorado, where she has just concluded the third Jane Austen Mystery, Jane and the Wandering Eye, which Bantam will publish in January 1998.
If you enjoyed Stephanie Barron's Jane and the
Man of the Cloth, you won't want to miss any of
Jane Austen's sleuthing adventures. Look for the
first, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor,
at your favorite bookstore in paperback.
And turn the page for a preview of Jane and the
Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery,
available in hardcover from Bantam Books in
January 1998.
Jane and the
Wandering Eye
Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery
By Stephanie Barron
Wednesday,
12 December 1804
Bath
∼
A ROUT-PARTY, WHEN DEPICTED BY A PEN MORE ACCOMPUSHED THAN MY own, is invariably a stupid affair of some two or three hundred souls pressed elbow-to-elbow in the drawing-rooms of the great. Such an efflorescence of powder shaken from noble wigs! Such a crush