Jane surveyed him.
“I promise,” he said. “I swear on all that is holy. I simply drank too much last night. I remember staggering about in the tavern and trying to find my way out, but I got lost wandering about in the hallways in the back of the place and then I just lay down and drifted off, and they must have shut the whole place down with me in it. So, when morning came and I awakened, I went looking again for a way out of the place, but I came upon Miss Seward instead.”
“I see,” said Jane, regarding him. “Why is this behavior so very improper to impart to me?”
“I don’t know. You’re very…” He squared his shoulders. “You have a sort of disapproving air about you, I must say, and you’re rather matronly—”
“Matronly,” she repeated.
“Look here, you’re older than me—”
“I suppose, but really, my lord, has anyone ever explained to you that when you are in a person’s house, asking, reallybegging, for their hospitality and assistance, that it is often not a terrible idea to be a bit on the complimentary side?”
“Is saying that you’re matronly an insult? What are you? Five and thirty?”
“Six and thirty,” she muttered, glowering at him.
“All right, then,” he said. He ate another biscuit. “Well, if you’d like me to apologize, Iamsorry. I’mterriblysorry. It’s a very attractive sort of matronliness, truly. You have a way about you, and I obviously like you, or I wouldn’t have come back here to ask—reallybeg—for your assistance.”
She lifted her chin and looked him over and sighed, and she might have said more, but she was actually trying rather hard not to laugh. He was sort of charming in a way, wasn’t he? He was altogether awful, truly, but he also had a knack for uttering an amusing turn of phrase.
“Can we go back to the exceedingly traumatizing way I started my day?” he said. “It was rather upsetting, let me tell you, a dead woman first thing in the morning. I may have made rather a lot of noise. Everyone came running and there she was, very dead, and there I was, standing over her, and then they chased me, and it was all quite village mob of them, and I ran here.”
“You ran two miles from town here with a mob on your heels?”
“Why do you think I need to eat so many biscuits?”
She sighed again. And then she heard the sound of the door shutting downstairs and she sprang up to her feet. “That will be my mother and Cassandra.”
“Oh, I haven’t met your mother,” he said, looking down at himself. “Pity I look like this, having been up all night drinking too much and everything.” He made a face. “I suppose being accused of murder isn’t going to ingratiate me to her, either.”
Jane stood, staring at the doorway, and Cassandra appeared and their mother behind them and Byron stood up and wiped crumbs out of his cravat and said, “Lovely to see you again, Miss Austen.” He smiled at Jane. “You’ll have to be Miss Jane now, I suppose, so we don’t get everything confused. Lovely name, Jane.”
She rolled her eyes. “I notice there’s never some propriety that demands we call a man by his first name, of course.”
“My first name is George,” he said. “It’s not nearly as lovely as Jane.”
“That sort of thing,George,” she said, “is not going to work on me.”
He smirked. “Ah, well, I suppose I can see that.” He tilted his head to one side. “Perhaps it might have worked better if I hadn’t called you matronly?”
“Is anyone going to introduce our guest to me?” said Mrs. Austen.
“Mother, this is Lord Byron,” said Jane. “Lord Byron, my mother.”
“Highly irregular, truly,” said Cassandra as she came into the room. “You did arrive yesterday after never being properly introduced to anybody at all.”
“You don’t know that,” said Byron. “Perhaps I presented myself to your brother—your son, madam—first, before coming here.”
“Oh, if so, Edward would have come here to present you to us,” said Cassandra.
Byron’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, I suppose.”
“There are biscuits made up, I see,” said Cassandra.
“Well, it did seem as if it was a bit of an oversight, having nothing sweet in the entire household,” said Jane. “I know you wish to reduce, but you don’t need to, and anyway, when we had surprise visitors yesterday, we all saw exactly what the consequences of such things are—”
“You reallydon’tneed to reduce,” said Lord Byron, winking at Cassandra. “Have a biscuit. They are divine, I tell you, though I may only be saying this because I’ve had nothing to eat all day and my stomach is churning with a great deal too much strong drink from last night and I saw a dead woman first thing upon waking.”
