“Maybe Mr. Seward,” said Jane. “Maybe Mr. Eves. And I still haven’t talked to Mr. Welling about his ladder or anything else. He could have been Miss Seward’s lover.”
“Heavens!” objected Mrs. Austen. “Let us not use that word at the table.”
“Apologies,” said Jane.
“Yes, sorry, Mama,” said Cassandra.
There was a long pause.
“Well, then,” said Cassandra, “you will simply let him get away with it?”
“As you pointed out, Cassandra, this is none of our affair,” said Jane.
Cassandra pressed her lips together, thinking that over, but then she nodded. “All right. I suppose that is fair enough.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BYRON TURNED UPthat afternoon, dressed and shaved, his eyes still bloodshot.
She met him in the entryway and spoke to him there, her voice gentle. “I appreciate you coming, and I don’t wish to be overly rude, but I think we both know you must not be here.”
Byron gaped at her. “What?”
“This isn’t good for me, my lord,” said Jane. “All this excitement and this improper behavior and these sordid revelations. I must not take part anymore. If you wish to investigate further, I shall tell you the last thing that I found out, and then I shall wash my hands of it all.”
Byron shook his head slowly, his lips still parted. “Miss Jane—”
“Miss Austen, please,” she said.
“MissJane,” he repeated. “I know my behavior has been inexcusable these past few days, but you must understand, when I saw you there this morning, it… I don’t know. It was like magic. I snapped right out of it. I never had anyone count on me like that before. Well…” He thought about it. “I suppose I have, but then I always let them down, and—” He broke off. “And that’s what I’ve done here.”
She hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words. She finally settled on, “I don’t judge you, my lord. Perhaps youare right. Perhaps the melancholy you feel is a great deal worse than most other people’s. Perhaps that explains a vast number of things about you, in fact. And if so, I believe you can’t entirely help it, but it doesn’t matter. Because we are all judged on what we have done, not whether we can help it. Society has strictures. We must live by them.”
“No,” said Byron. “We really don’t have to.”
“You don’t have to, perhaps, but I do,” she said. “I’m a bit fanciful, and I long for adventure, my lord, but I am ultimately too practical to ever go on a real adventure. I know where my place is, and I know what I am meant to be doing. The only fancies I should be following are the ones my pen takes me on. Please.”
“So, you really won’t come with me now?”
“No,” she said. She looked down at her feet. “And don’t come to seek me again.” She felt awful, and she felt as if she were being harsh on him, but it wasn’t really about him. He could not help it, as she had said. It was about protecting herself. She would not be swept up in all of it again.
“What did you mean when you said Mrs. Beaumont was out in the woods saying she had to see someone?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she was just tired and a bit out of her head from having given birth recently. Perhaps she got confused, and she wanted her babe all along. But I got the distinct impression it was someone else that she wanted to see.”
“Beaumont?”
“No,” said Jane. “We don’t still think she did it?”
“Well, we don’t think she used Mrs. Attleby,” said Byron. “But who is this man she needed to see, and why?”
“What is her motivation for doing this, though? The more I hear of Beaumont, the more it seems clear he has never been that interested in Miss Seward at all. He has been interested in men, and she has been a means to an end.”
“Yes, that’s true enough,” said Byron. “There are people like me who really don’t have a preference, and then there people like him, who really do. So, if we are thinking his wife schemed to end this woman out of jealousy, it doesn’t fit.”
“No, for it’s been years since there was anything between them and because she was never the object of his affection.”
“I have to say, Miss Jane, it’s a pity that you’re decided against finishing what we started.”
