Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [89]
At his use of my Christian name, I became too aware of the impropriety of my position—of how it should appear, should anyone encounter us; and, indeed, of how intimate a scene I had allowed myself to play. My colour rose, my breath quickened, and I made a small movement as if to go. But die Lieutenant raised a finger and laid it against my lips. “Don't,” he whispered, “I've caught you in the witching hour, and I must exact my price.”
And with that, he bent swiftly and kissed me full upon the mouth, until I tore from his grasp in mortification, rushed headlong into my room, and slammed the door in his face. An echo of derisive laughter was my reward, and the sound of his retreat; and a little later, sharp in the regained quiet, a small click, as of a door being closed. That it came from the room to my right—Fanny Delahoussaye's room—and not from the Lieutenant's, I had not the smallest doubt. I shall have her wrath to contend with, on the morrow, for it is certain she overheard us—a scene so little to my advantage, either in its initial passivity or ultimate flight.
My cheeks are burning with shame and remembered mortification; never have I been subjected to such a liberty at the hands of a man. Yet worse is the feeling of sweet elixir that courses through my veins. I am dizzy with wonder and a want I cannot admit, even to myself; and so I admit it here, on the pages of my journal. That he should kiss me is beyond belief—and entirely without sense or purpose. Tom Hearst cannot be in love with me; for I have never possessed a fortune and am beginning to lose my beauty, and both are what a man of his straitened means and handsome looks would think his due. It is in every way incredible; and so I must ascribe his kiss to the power of moonlight, and the effect of wanton hair.
I touch a stray lock now, and must declare it nothing out of the ordinary way, however transformed by moonlight. But I feel a small thrill of gratification nonetheless, rare for a woman whose wits have always been celebrated before her person. We all of us have our failings; and mine is vanity. It shall be my last flag flying on the Day of Judgment.
How to face Tom Hearst, on the morrow? I shall die of consciousness.
And so the old year is done to death.
I January 1803
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I WAS SPARED THE NECESSITY OF FACING THE LIEUTENANT at breakfast; he and his batman, Jack Lewis, had arisen early and returned to the Horse Guards at St. James. Not a word has been let fall regarding the affair of the duel, or its outcome; I begin to believe it a figment of Miss Delahoussaye's overheated imagination. The breakfast room being quite deserted, I was afforded the leisure of weighing the heavy charge Isobel had placed upon my shoulders, and determining my course of action.
If Isobel and Fitzroy Payne were innocent of the murders, as I certainly believed Isobel to be, then someone had gone to great pains to convince us of their guilt. Firstly, the Earl had died as a result of sweetmeats eaten in the presence of his wife and her maid. Marguerite's dreadful death suggested to Sir William that she had been silenced for having observed Isobel place the Barbadoes nuts in the Earl's dish; but I considered it equally plausible that the maid had been convinced by another to put the poisonous seeds there herself. She had then been deployed in accusing her mistress through plaintive letters, and, her purpose fulfilled, was chiefly of use in being murdered—in order to incriminate Fitzroy Payne.
That Marguerite had formed a relationship of some trust with the murderer was implied by her readiness to await her killer in the isolated hay-shed at dawn. But which of the intimates of Scargrave might that be? If my theory were correct, the maid's partner must be one who gained material advantage by the removal of both the