Jane and the Year Without a Summer by Stephanie Barron

Author:Stephanie Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2021-12-17T21:12:57+00:00

17

History of a Fallen Woman

Saturday, 1st June, 1816

Cheltenham, cont’d.

“Miss Austen!”

The housemaid, Lucy, accosted me as I quitted her ladyship’s room. With a hurried nod for Captain Pellew and Miss Fox, who were removing their headgear by the fire before attending the Viscountess, I took the visiting card the maid offered.

“Gentleman to see you,” she said. “He’s waiting below.”

Mr. Raphael West. On the back of the card, he had hurriedly penned the words—A few moments of your time. I glanced at the mantel-clock: It lacked barely a quarter before four, when Portreath intended to remount his siege upon his errant wife. Given that he might already have presented her with poisoned macaroons, I did not like to be absent for the interview. Perhaps Mr. West would join me in the sitting-room?

I hastened to follow the maid downstairs, where West stood in apparent contemplation of a hideous framed sketch of the Elm Walk, his hat in his hands. “Miss Austen,” he said, turning to bow in greeting, “I wonder if you would care to take a turn in my curricle? The rain is at an end, and there are still two hours before sunset and your dinner—”

At that moment, Captain Pellew lurched down the stairs, his stick ineffectually negotiating its steepness and his stiff leg. “Lucy,” he called to the housemaid, “you must send for Dr. Hargate. At once! Her ladyship has suffered another fit. I must leave this note for Lord Portreath at the York,” he added, exhibiting a slip of sealed paper, “setting back his visit by an hour.” He nodded at West, and moved heavily past us to the door. So much activity, for a man who is lame! Again, doubt as to his motives stabbed at my mind. But West was waiting—

“I will fetch my pelisse,” I told him; and this swift errand accomplished in a trice, I was handed up into the neat equipage he had hired from the York livery.

It was a sporting curricle, with a single job horse, and quite likely to bowl along if the animal was given its head. West threaded his way through the traffic along the High in the direction of the Gloucester Road, and once free of the town’s traffic, settled into a steady, trotting pace.

“I am grateful to you, Jane, for submitting to this wish of mine for open air,” he said, as we ambled along. The recent showers had made the roadbed soft, and there were ruts from the passage of other and heavier conveyances; it was not to be a smooth passage, but I did not care—such exhilaration as I felt in my breast at being free of the narrow confines of the spa town, and in the treasured company of this excellent man.

“Not at all,” I returned serenely. “You seem troubled in your mind, Mr. West, and exercise as well as conversation are certain remedies for the relief of anxiety.”

“I have just concluded an interview that disturbs me greatly.”

“Indeed?”

He kept his eyes trained, perforce, on the

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