other three bowed; and there our mutual interest ended.
“They are also privileged, in being able to call Percy— Captain Fielding—our cavalier.”
At my expression of enquiry, Captain Fielding looked diffident, and would have turned away, the better to avoid explanation, but Mrs. Barnewall intervened.
“There!” she cried. “Was ever a man so perverse in accepting praise! I assure you, Miss Austen, that Captain Fielding comes by the name through nothing dishonourable, as his countenance would suggest. But I shall leave you to tease him about the story, and so give you grounds for conversation; for one must talk in the dance, and I am sure he means to ask you.”
Captain Percival Fielding is of good height and very well-made, with fair hair, a quick blue eye, a sudden smile, and the ruddy countenance of a man accustomed to being and doing in all weathers. That he is possessed of a wooden leg joined just below the knee detracts not at all from his charm; if anything, it adds a certain dash to his otherwise commonplace appearance. His impediment certainly impedes him very little, as I was to learn in the course of the evening; for tho’ he forewent this first dance in order to make my acquaintance, to enquire as to my engagement for the next, required but a moment; and for my acceptance of his offer, only another.
“And I believe this is your father, Miss Austen? For we have not been introduced,” Mrs. Barnewall said.
I hastened to amend my stupidity, and made each known to the other; and was made acquainted myself with the gentleman on Mrs. Barnewall's other arm, who was no more the Honourable Mathew than the Captain. A Mr. Crawford, an elegantly dressed gentleman of undistinguished countenance, balding head, and perhaps five-and-forty years—a widower possessed, so Mrs. Barnewall tells me, of a prettyish sort of place called Darby, out east along the Charmouth way.
“We were just speaking,” Mrs. Barnewall said, “of that dreadful business on the Cobb.”
My father looked vague.
“The hanged man, Father,” I supplied.
“Ah, yes—dreadful business, dreadful/’ He looked a trifle dismayed—at a lady's advancing the topic, I imagined, rather than the topic itself.
“They say he must be one of the Reverend's men, and killed by a rival,” the ginger-haired Letty Schuyler remarked.
“And /heard that it was the Reverend did the deed,” her sister Susan rejoined scornfully, “because the man betrayed his trust.”
“But what of the flower?” Captain Fielding objected.
“Flower?” I enquired, all attention to every detail.
“A white flower was found near the hanged man,” Mrs. Barnewall supplied. “It is the talk of all Lyme.”
“A rose, was it not?” This, from Letty Schuyler.
“No, no!” her sister Constance cried. “It was a lily. I have heard the Reverend intended it as a sign, but know not what it signifies.”
“But should a man of the cloth be likely to commit murder at all?” my father cried indignantly. “We are not in Rome, where all manner of evil may be perpetrated in an odour of sanctity. The Church of England may be charged with many faults—a laxity of moral purpose, betimes, and an unbecoming luxury, on occasion; to such faults any human institution may be prone. But the taking of a life! I profess myself quite shocked that you may credit the notion, and toss it about as a commonplace among yourselves.”
“My dear Reverend Austen,” Mr. Crawford said with a knowing air, and great good humour, “you quite mistake the Miss Schuylers. They speak not of a clergyman like yourself—ho! ho! a very good joke that would be—but of a notorious scoundrel who devils these parts—the very Reverend, who is famed for bringing contraband goods from France, and supplying all of England with his wares.”
“A smuggler!” I cried. “I had not an idea of it!”
“Indeed, Miss Austen,” Captain Fielding replied, “the Dorsetshire coast has ever been prey to the evil. The Reverend is merely the latest ringleader of an ancient trade indeed. The Gentlemen of the Night, as such fellows presume to call themselves, have long plied the coves and secret harbours of the very waters beyond those windows.” And with a bow to the ladies, he added, “I must declare myself quite of the Miss Schuylers’ opinions.”
“But which?” the youngest, and the prettiest, enquired with a winning smile. “For you know, Letty and Susan cannot either of them agree.”
“I think either equally possible, for the Reverend's hand is certainly behind the gibbet,” the Captain diplomatically replied.
“And I, Fielding, cannot see the sense of it,” Crawford broke in. “The man's