“Let’s hear your story,” I say archly, “and then I’ll decide whose key is cooler.”
“It is a little-known fact outside of the Nolan family,” she begins, “but on my father’s side we descend from Jane Austen’s favorite brother, Henry Thomas Austen.”
Despite my lousy mood, I find myself grinning. “Not bad as a start! Let’s see if the rest lives up to it.”
“My paternal grandfather had inherited Jane Austen’s portable writing desk that her father—my sixth great grandfather—had had made for her,” Margot continues. “It was more of a box than an actual desk, and a very nifty one at that!”
“Was?”
“My grandparents donated it to the British Library.”
“How very selfless of them!”
“They got some perks out of it, including a plate with their names.”
I consider it. “Still.”
“Also, Grandpa held on to a small part of that desk at my request.”
“The key, I presume?”
“It was Grandpa’s and my little secret,” she says with a smile. “The desk had a lockable drawer when it was in our family. That drawer is unlockable now.”
“That’s a very nice story—” I begin.
She flashes a palm. “I’m not done yet! Thereallyinteresting part is the circumstances in which that desk was made. Henry Thomas married his first cousin Eliza.”
“Ew.”
“Different times, different mores.” She gives a small shrug. “Eliza had been married once before to a French nobleman named Jean Capot, Count of Feuillide.”
“What happened to him?”
She mimes slashing her throat. “The revolutionaries executed him at the guillotine in 1794.”
I shudder theatrically.
“Aww,” she goes. “Did any of your ancestors meet a similar fate?”
“No, but it was touch and go. They seriously feared for their lives during those bloody years.” That is why the Montevor royals gave the keys to the vault for safekeeping to various trusted individuals. The general plan was to get them all to England, a country considered much safer than Mount Evor from the revolutionary contagion, and then recover them when the red plague was squashed. But things didn’t go to plan.
“That’s revolutions for you,” Margot says. “They start with freeing political prisoners and end with executing political opponents.”
I nod. “So, back to your story. Eliza becomes widowed in 1794…”
“Yes, and she inherits from her martyred husband an unpretentious key, which he had cherished greatly.”
“Any special reason?”
“He never told her, or maybe he did but the message got lost somewhere along the intergenerational telephone.” She opens and spreads her hands. “Whatever the reason, we do know he asked her to keep his key concealed.”
And suddenly, Margot’s story goes from “nice” to intriguing. I await the rest of it expectantly.
“Ready for the twist?” she asks.
“Hit me.”
“Eliza went to her uncle George, who was Jane’s and Henry Thomas’s father, which also made him Eliza’s father-in-law because she married Henry Thomas—” She interrupts herself. “Still with me?”
