“NO, THERE’S NOTHING.” Byron was kneeling down, going through cabinets in the tavern. “Lots of other bottles and spirits, but no laudanum.”
They’d come straight here after the discussion with Mr. Fields.
Jane tapped her fingernails against the countertop. She was standing over Byron. “Well, that doesn’t really mean anything.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Byron, looking up at her. “She could have gotten it from someone else. She could have drunk from their laudanum bottle and then gone upstairs on her own.”
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Yes,” said Byron, looking into the cabinet.
It was very quiet.
“Well, that’s, um, that’s really all there is, then,” said Jane, looking across the tavern to where the body was lain out.
“Yes,” said Byron.
Another long silence.
Byron stood up. “It’s really terrible that I’m feeling disappointed about this, I know. It’s a good thing to find out that this woman was not actually murdered.”
“You feel disappointed too?” said Jane, who had been attempting to conceal her own feelings. “I would have thought you’d be pleased. You wanted to clear your name, and that seems to have happened. It was an accident. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Well, yes, you’d think that would be enough,” said Byron.
“It’s not?”
“I still don’t know why I woke up there. We still don’t know what that ladder was doing there. And, I don’t know, it feels…” He gestured with both hands. “Like a ragged edge.”
“Oh, dear me, that’s exactly what I said to Cassandra last night,” said Jane.
“Utterly unfinished,” sighed Byron.
She shook her head.
He ran a hand through his hair.
“I suppose that’s the way of things sometimes,” said Jane. “In life, things don’t always add up to anything. Things don’talways mean anything. They happen, and then we just keep going, no matter how nonsensical or maddening it all was.”
“You’re not incorrect about that observation,” said Byron.
“I’m sure Lady Caroline will be happy to have you back.”
He smirked. “I shall have to explain it all to her, undoubtedly. I wondered if she’d like it better if I’d strangled a strumpet.”
“Oh, surely not,” said Jane.
“Do you know what she said of me?” said Byron, giving her a sort of bashful smile, as if this embarrassed him in a way, but in another way he was proud of it.
“What?”
“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” said Byron, and his cheeks flushed a bit. “I think she likes things about me that, erm, well…” He sighed. “I’m an adventure for her, that’s what I am. A little diversion now that her husband has tired of her. I should oblige her, I suppose. I should be what she wants, give her a thrill.”
“I thought you were going to write sonnets about the back of her heels.”
“That too.”
They regarded each other.
