Once her mother and sister returned, however, they would certainly focus on the matter at hand, not the biscuits. And the matter at hand was determining what was to be done with this man. She and Byron were in the sitting room, the same sitting room where he’d come to see her before. She folded her arms over her chest. “Is there any point in asking if you did strangle Anne Seward?”
“I couldn’t have done that. I was here.”
“You were not here, and we both know it, and I don’t know why you’re insisting you were,” said Jane.
He looked up, a bit sheepish.
“It sounds as if someone found Miss Seward’s body this morning.”
“That would be me,” said Byron.
“Where’s your…” Jane cleared her throat. “Where’s Lady Caroline?”
“Oh, she had to go back to London, clearly. She could not stay overnight in the country with me. Her husband wouldn’t stand for that.”
Jane snorted.
Byron sighed. “I suppose I could have convinced her otherwise, but once you’re overly brazen with women in that way, they tend to want you to do… things with them, protective things, to act as if you’ve taken ownership of them or what-have-you, and every time I try this, it goes rather badly, I must say.”
“Ownership?” She wasverysharp.
He ate a biscuit. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
She sneered at him. “I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly the type of man you are.”
“Yes, I suppose,” he said, leaning back and surveying her. “I’ve been uncharitably compared that Willoughby fellow of yours on more than one occasion.”
“You said you hadn’t read it.”
“Everyone else has, Miss Austen,” he said. “I suppose you haven’t read mine either.”
She looked away.
“Oho! Truly?” He was smiling, and she could hear it in his tone even though she wasn’t looking at him.
“I believe I said rather cutting things about it when I saw you last,” she said. “It’s very bad.”
“Don’t hold back there, Miss Austen. Tell me exactly what you think.”
“Oh, I don’t care about your poem in which you whine for stanzas upon stanzas and pages upon pages about how terrible it is to be a wealthy, independent man of means,” she said. “Chiefly, what I am concerned about right now, my lord, is whyyou are hiding in my house and eating all of my biscuits and being accused of murder!”
“I haven’t murdered anyone,” he said. “And I am not really a man of means. I think I have to sell an entire estate, actually—”
“Oh, to have more than one estate to sell—”
“And I also haven’t had any breakfast. The biscuits are quite good, you see.”
She rolled her eyes. “How was it you came to discover Miss Seward’s body? I suppose you took rooms at an inn in town, is that way the way of it? Miss Seward’s tavern should not have even been open yet. Why were you there?”
“Well, I may have…” He gestured with the biscuit. “Truly, these are excellent biscuits. My compliments to your cook.”
“You may have what? Don’t try to writhe out of this. You’ve come to me for protection and you are even now under my roof, and I demand you answer my questions.”
“It’s only that it’s not entirely proper to speak about with a woman like you, I suppose,” he said.
“Oh, I see,” said Jane. “There are those rumors about her, after all.”
“No, I didn’t—” He gave her a look. “No, I was notwithMiss Seward in that way.”
