Jane and the Stillroom Maid (32 page)

“His Grace will be often in the fields, at sport, over the next few months.”

“To be sure—but it is not as though we shall remain in Derbyshire indefinitely. We shall be often coming and going to London. And it is not as though Hary-O were a considerable
comfort
, you know—she may look the angel, Harry, but she is a most selfish and cold-hearted little—” Here, the last word was cut off by a bout of coughing. Lord Harold, I noticed, did not leap to his beloved’s defence; but neither did he join in Lady Elizabeth’s condemnation.

“Grief is a capricious mistress, Bess.”

“Oh, yes—I do not deny that she is
excessively
grieved—but I should think that her heightened sense of what is due to her mother’s memory, would make her ever more eager to show kindness to her mother’s oldest friend! And yet she
will
not do the civil, and appear in public with Canis and me—which might quell the hideous nonsense everybody speaks behind our backs, you know; that the family is all in disorder, and entirely on my account.”

“It is possible that any appearance in public is distasteful to Hary-O at present.”

“Oh—as to that—I do not derive any pleasure from it myself, I assure you! But one must consider the obligations of a ducal house! It is vastly unpleasant to parade before the eyes of the
ton
, and know the vicious things that must be said of one; to feel that the purest conduct in the world—the devotion of an old family friend at such a melancholy time—must be trammelled in the mud of vulgar opinion!”

“I am sure you have suffered a good deal.”

“And so
tenacious
as Hary-O must be on the subject of
place!
Canis and I have never paid much heed to those things; everything with us is easy—but Lady Harriot must have the proper deference paid to rank and authority. She, who is the merest
child
—! It should do her a world of good, I daresay, to throw herself away on a
nobody like Andrew Danforth, and then see what
place
the world afforded her! She should not be so nice in her distinctions
then
, once the protection of her father’s house was lost to her!”

This sudden access of spite—and Lord Harold’s ominous silence—must have warned even one so insensible as Lady Elizabeth; she broke out once more in a fit of coughing.

“Bess, I fear the night air does not agree with you,” Lord Harold observed, and led her gently away.

I tarried another moment or two, alone under the stars—thinking of all that had passed, and wishing foolishly that the Gentleman Rogue might return. My cheeks had lost their heat, and the tumult in my brain receded; a buzz of determined conversation told me that all the gentlemen had now joined the ladies. It would be as well, I thought, to discover what I could of Lord Harrington’s movements on the night of the murder; I should never have such an opportunity again.

I smoothed my grey silk, touched a hand to the borrowed combs, and turned my face to the light—towards the tea service, the card tables, and the conversation—all the claims of Lord Harold’s glittering world.

30 August 1806, cont.
∼

“I
UNDERSTAND
, M
ISS
A
USTEN, THAT YOU ARE ACQUAINTED
with George Hemming,” said Mr. Charles Danforth as I emerged from the moonlit terrace.

“A little,” I concurred with a quickening of interest, “but hardly so well as yourself. He has served your family in the capacity of solicitor, I believe?”

Danforth accepted a cup of tea from Lady Swithin, handed it in turn to myself, and steered me gently towards a settee placed comfortably in an alcove. “Such a term does not begin to describe the loyalty and devotion he has shown to Penfolds Hall,” he said. “In the course of thirty years, Hemming has served my family in nearly every capacity one can name. I owe him every measure of gratitude and respect—nay, of friendship. I am greatly disturbed in my mind at his present circumstances.”

I seated myself and studied Charles Danforth’s countenance. It was sober and reflective; and though stamped with the lines of old pain, suggested nothing of a willful duplicity. “You were surprised, then, to learn of Mr. Hemming’s confession?”

“Nothing could have a greater power to astonish! I was told of it only yesterday before dinner, the morning having been entirely consumed with anxieties of my own—but perhaps you will have heard of the despicable attack on Penfolds.”

“Yes.”

He looked a trifle conscious, and seemed unable to resume the thread of conversation; if I knew of the attack, presumably I knew that all of Bakewell believed Charles Danforth a murderer.

“And can you account for Mr. Hemming’s extraordinary behaviour? For I must tell you, Mr. Danforth, that I regard his claims as entirely false.”

He sat down beside me, and eased his lame foot straight out before him. “It does not sit well with a man of my temperament to skulk here, under the Duke’s protection, as though I were afraid to enter my own house. Had I not been pressed to remain for Hary-O’s native day, I should have ridden out long ago.”

It was hardly a reply to my question. I let his words fall without remark, and took a sip of tea.

“Miss Austen—have you spoken with George—Mr. Hemming?”

“I have. I was present at his confession, if one may thus describe an admission so thoroughly disguised in drink. I told him then that I believed him to be shielding another—to have claimed the murder of the maid in the belief that Sir James Villiers would be satisfied. But Sir James is not. Too many aspects of Tess Arnold’s death do not accord with Mr. Hemming’s story.”

“Aspects?” he enquired, with a penetrating look. “And may I ask—? But no. You shall not be pressed to an indiscretion.”

“Sir James is of my opinion, Mr. Danforth, that Mr. Hemming would act in the guise of scapegoat. But for whom? Have you any idea?”

I observed the gentleman so coolly, and yet so narrowly, that I could not mistake the turn of his
countenance. Charles Danforth was consumed with anxiety; and his fears were inspired by whatever George Hemming might know.

“I can well believe that he would place a noose around his own neck, if it might save another whom he loved,” the gentleman said in a voice hollow and low. “Hemming is the best-hearted and best-intentioned fellow in the world. I can conceive of no reason on earth why he should have harmed Tess Arnold—but neither have I ever known George Hemming to
lie
.”

“And so you turn on the horns of paradox,” I murmured.

“
One of his
actions must be false,” Danforth exclaimed. “But which? Having admitted falseness to be impossible, I cannot rightly say.”

“Perhaps, if Mr. Hemming could explain his actions—either his purpose in lying, or his purpose in killing the maid—we might comprehend his behaviour.”

“Naturally,” Charles Danforth agreed, “but it is just that sort of explanation we cannot expect. I understand from Sir James—who rode out here yesterday to impart the news of Hemming’s confession—that he will offer no reason for his violence or its result.”

“I suppose,” I said tentatively, “that if the person truly responsible were forced to acknowledge his guilt, Mr. Hemming would regard himself as released from silence; but any declaration
then
on his part should no longer seem useful.”

Charles Danforth clasped his hands uneasily on his knee. “My father and his second wife died in a carriage accident, Miss Austen, when I was but eighteen years of age, and intending Cambridge. It was Hemming who travelled to London to inform me of the tragedy himself, Hemming who comforted me in my first paroxysm of grief. For months thereafter, when I was a lost and frightened boy, it was Hemming who served as guide through a world of care I had not hoped to assume for decades together. I should be a very different man but
for his influence; I have reason to regard him with affection all my life. If I can in any measure serve as friend in his present turmoil, then I shall. I owe him that much.”

“Charles!” cried the Countess of Bessborough, approaching with a glow of animation, “you must save us all from the most dreadful ennui, and partner me at the whist table! I cannot drag Granville away from the charms of Lord Harold’s conversation.”

Mr. Danforth rose with good grace, nodded unsmilingly to me, and went immediately to Lady Bessborough’s side; and I did not speak to him for the remainder of the evening. But his words—the force of his expressions, and the manner in which he uttered them—lay powerfully in my mind. He had formed a desperate resolution, I should judge, and required only the opportunity to act.

His Grace preferred, when sitting down to cards, to play at faro—a game whose sole purpose may be described as the loss of as much of one’s purse as one is willing to wager. It is a game played by two people alone, one of them serving as dealer and bank; Lady Elizabeth Foster served in this capacity for the Duke, sitting opposite him at the green baize table and turning over cards very prettily with her thin white hands. The Morpeths sat down to whist, and claimed Lady Bessborough for a third; her partner was the dutiful Charles Danforth. Lord Harold was engrossed in conversation with Granville Leveson-Gower; and that left Lady Harriot, the Countess of Swithin, Andrew Danforth, and myself at leisure.

“Well, Hary-O, and how shall we mark so signal an occasion? Should you like to play at
vingt-et-un
, macao, or loo?” Danforth enquired in a cavalier tone. “Though my brother has callously revealed that my pockets are entirely to let, I shall wager my pitiful pence in honour of your native day.”

“Do not beggar yourself on my account, I beg. I am
sure that I am sick of cards. Losses at the
tapis-vert
reduced my mother to a walking shadow. I should much rather amuse myself with music than anything.”

“Then pray let us open the instrument!” Danforth cried. “I do not think, Miss Austen, that you have seen the music room as yet, but it may justly be described as one of Chatsworth’s glories; though nothing in the room is so much an ornament as she who is accustomed to play there.”

Lady Harriot looked archly, and slipped her arm through Desdemona’s. “My father cannot bear the sound of the pianoforte when he is at cards, Miss Austen, so I am afraid we must hurry ourselves away. Do you play?”

“A little.” I had not touched an instrument in months, however; though I had hired one for my use in Bath, it was an indifferent article. “I should dearly love to hear a true proficient.”

“I cannot claim to be so much—and dear Mona is always flying about, she cannot sit still for the length of a concerto! But Mr. Danforth sings. Perhaps we may attempt a duet.”

The gentleman bowed; and without further ado we followed Lady Harriot from the grand salon into the music room at Chatsworth.

It was an excessively elegant chamber—the sort of place that should be reserved for public concerts, with its draperies of gold, its little French chairs, its massive harp and violins in cases. The pianoforte to which Hary-O turned was of rosewood, beautifully inlaid—and but one of the instruments displayed in the room.

“A present from my father,” she observed, “sent down from London only three days ago. Though he can be said to possess not the slightest interest in music, he is still capable of spending ridiculous sums. I have not yet grown accustomed to the keys.”

She sat down at the instrument and trilled her fingers
over the ivories. It was the first occasion on which I had chanced to remark her hands: long, thin, speaking fingers, expressive of all the fire and passion in her soul.
These
should never be tanned from neglect of a glove, nor coarsened by exposure to a scullery; they were hands designed for the fluttering of a fan or a pen, for the wearing of precious jewels, for the offering of a caress. Hands that might hold in a phaeton’s team or curb a wild horse as well—for there was strength unsuspected in their lines.

“I await your command,” she said with an eye for Andrew Danforth.

“Would that those words were true,” he murmured caressingly.

“That depends upon the construction one chooses,” Desdemona said briskly. “I would wish you to sing airs in the Italian; if you
must
descend into sentiment before us all, Mr. Danforth, you had much better do so unintelligibly.”

It occurred to me that the Countess—though preserving her manners with the grace that was second nature—did not approve of her friend’s suitor.