Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [120]
We were ushered to a snug parlour, where a bright fire cast its glow on several easy chairs; and Mr. Cranley's card had barely been delivered, than Mr. Hezekiah Mayhew appeared to place himself at our service. He was a portly gentleman of some seventy years, quite stooped, with a shining pate that had long since lost its hair, and two bushy white eyebrows that attempted to supply the difference.
“Mr. Cranley,” the solicitor said, with a deep bow in the barrister's direction; “it is a pleasure to welcome you to my humble office.”
“The honour must be mine,” Mr. Cranley rejoined, “as well as my thanks, for having placed the Countess's trouble in my hands.”
“This firm has had the management of the Scargrave family's business for eighty years, at least,” Mr. Mayhew observed, with an eyebrow cocked for Cranley, “but never have we witnessed so terrible a passage as this. I merely chose the best and most reliable barrister I knew.” The grave brown eyes turned upon my face. “And you, Madam, would be—?”
“Miss Jane Austen. I am a friend of the Countess's.”
“Miss Austen is ungenerous in her own behalf,” Mr. Cranley interrupted smoothly. “She is the greatest friend the Countess could hope to have, and no less energetic in the new Earl's defence.”
“That is very well—very well, indeed.” Mr. Mayhew's glance was penetrating. “Friends, in my experience, are like ladies’ fashions, Miss Austen. They come and go with the seasons, and are rarely of such stout stuff as bears repeated wearing. I am glad to find you formed of better material.” With that, he led us to his inner rooms.
Mr. Cranley offered me a chair, and took one of his own before the solicitor's great desk.
“You are here on the Countess's behalf?” Mr. Mayhew enquired, with a glance that encompassed us both.
“Not directly,” I replied, “though I am charged with placing this in your safekeeping, Mr. Mayhew.” I handed him the sealed parchment that contained Isobel's final directions, and felt the lighter for having passed the burden to another. “I would ask that you address the matters it contains when we have presumed upon your time no longer.”
“Having other, more pressing matters, to discuss?” the solicitor surmised, his bushy eyebrows lifting.
“We come to you on the Earl's behalf today,” Mr. Cranley said.”
“Though, indeed, the two can hardly be separated,” I broke in. “What may serve to prove the innocence of one, cannot help but assist the other.”
“Indeed. Indeed. Pray enlighten me as to your purpose. “Mr. Mayhew drew forth a pen and a sheet of paper and set a pair of ancient spectacles upon his nose.
We explained the business of Fitzroy Payne's correspondence, and were gratified to discover that old Mayhew's wits were swift. He seized the importance of our questions directly; a correspondence file was ordered, and the final copies of several letters, whose rougher selves we had previously perused in Danson's desk, were produced for our examination.
And to our great joy, we found that one of them was utterly strange to us. No draft of it had we seen.
Scargrave Manor,
Hertfordshire,
22 December 1802
My dear Mayhew—
I should wish to consult you on a matter pertaining to the Countess's Barbadoes estate, Crosswinds. You will remember that my uncle, the late Earl, was at his death engaged in combating Lord Harold Trowbridge's financial assault upon his wife's plantations. His demise, and the Countess's concern for her material welfare, has caused her to abandon hope of staving off Lord Harold—and she lately signed a document presented by that gentleman which ceded him the property in exchange for a discharge of considerable debt.
I have recently learned from perusing my uncle's papers—which included the Countess's marriage settlement—that there exists a probable legal incumbrance upon her actions. That she was unaware of this when she submitted to Trowbridge's