Nellie hesitated a moment, looking the disheveled Byron over, and then she opened the door.
There were a number of men out there, in fact, and Jane recognized some of them from various activities in town, balls and the like, and others she did not, being that they were not the sort who would be at balls. There had to be ten or fifteen of them. They all looked angry.
“Send him out,” called one of the men at the back of the throng, and the cry was taken up by others, who all called it out as well. “Send him out, send him out!”
Jane pushed forward so that she was in front of Nellie, and she addressed the crowd. “I must apologize, good sirs, but there is no conceivable way that I can make room for all of you in my house, I’m afraid. If you’ve come to visit, I must insist that you come in smaller groups over a span of time, so that I might be able to better accommodate you.”
A man in the front, one that Jane recognized as Mr. Eves, owner of the inn in town, stepped forward. “Miss Austen, we are only here for that wretch of a man who is hiding in your house. We know he’s here. He made a great deal of racket about how he’d come here and you would tell us that he couldn’t have hurt Anne. We, however, are quite certain that he did, and we are going to do what needs to be done to that man.”
Jane licked her lips, her mind spinning. “And what needs to be done, Mr. Eves, for he is rather convinced you mean to hang him?”
“Well, that’s what should be done with a man who does what he did,” said Mr. Eves. “But I don’t want to trouble your delicate sensibilities, ma’am.”
Jane pressed her lips together. “Do you have any idea who that man is?”
“Don’t do that,” called Byron from inside the house. “I beg you, Miss Austen, really, you have no idea what it’s like to be instantaneously famous. If everyone knows I’m here, then it will be a disaster.”
“I see, well, I suppose you’d like to be killed, then,” said Jane to Byron. To Mr. Eves, “That man is Lord Byron, the author ofChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage.”
“What?” said Mr. Eves, eyes wide.
“At the very least,” said Jane, “you can’t go about stringing up members of the peerage, can you, Mr. Eves?”
Mr. Eves bowed his head. “I suppose not.” He turned around to the gathered men and raised his voice. “Back to town, boys!”
The men protested.
“Who’s to answer for what happened to poor Anne, then?” yelled one.
“What did happen to Anne?” said Jane. “Are we talking about Anne Seward?”
“Aye,” said Mr. Eves.
Anne Seward’s father had owned a tavern and—upon his death—Anne herself had taken over the overseeing of it. She had done this with the assistance of a male servant the family had employed, a man named Mr. Hardy, a man who was quite broad and quite strong. Mr. Hardy was silent and stern and a bit formidable. He and Miss Seward ran the tavern, which gave way to various whispers about the proprieties of such an arrangement. But together, Miss Seward and Mr. Hardy kept the place going.
“What’s happened to her?” said Jane, again.
“She’s been strangled, that’s what,” said Mr. Eves. “And that man in there, lord or no, did it.”
“I did not!” cried Byron stoutly. “Couldn’t have. I was here with the Misses Austens, after all.”
“All night?” called a man from outside.
“Tell them, Miss Austen,” said Byron.
She turned on him, shaking her head. How dare he demand she say he was here all night?
“Please,” said Byron. “They’re going to string me up else.”
“They most certainly are not,” said Jane. “Off with you,” she said to Mr. Eves and the others. “You cannot string up a baron.”
And then she shut the door in their faces.
CHAPTER THREE
LORD BYRON WASattacking biscuits like a starving man.
Jane sat opposite him, thinking that soon enough, Cassandra and her mother would be back from their morning walk, and Cassandra might not be pleased that there were biscuits to be had at all, given that she had wished no sweets in the house. But Jane herself had asked them to be prepared, thinking it an oversight if they had visitors. She had not been expecting Lord Byron to come back, of course.
