Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

by Stephanie Barron

  “A knife,” he said with difficulty. “It has lodged in the bone. I cannot pull it out—”

  My brother grasped his waist, or I am sure Lord Harold should have fallen. Frank tore at the knot of his own cravate, and handed it to me. “Wad it into a square, Jane. My lord, you must press it against the wound, if you have the strength.”

  I stuffed the wad under the cold fingers of his left hand, and felt the clean steel of a blade protruding from his coat—he had snapped off the haft in struggling to extract it himself.

  “Lean upon me,” Frank ordered. “We shall attempt the stair. Jane—follow us. I would not have you before, if we should stumble and fall.”

  The slow descent commenced. Inevitably my brother jostled his man, and Lord Harold groaned—but cut off the sound with a sharp clamping of teeth. It seemed an age before the ground floor of the Abbey was achieved. When I stood at last near my brother, with the body of Orlando huddled at the stair’s foot, I saw that Lord Harold had fainted.

  “His hand had slipped—the wad is somewhere on the floor. Pray find it, Jane—he is losing a deal of blood!”

  I groped for the linen, and found to my horror that it was soaked through. Frank half-carried, half-dragged his lordship through the Abbey and laid him on the earth.

  “Press the wad hard against the shoulder,” he commanded, “and do not release it for anything. You must stem the flow of blood, Jane, or he’s done for. I shall run for the gig—we shall never manage him so far as the woods.”

  He was gone before I had time to draw breath: and that swiftly I was left alone, in the shattered ruins of Netley, with the man I loved near dying. Careless of the blood, I sank down beside him and pressed both my hands against the sodden linen, muttering a desperate plea to any God that might still linger in that hallowed place.

  FRANK WHIPPED THE HORSES INTO A FRENZY AND WE rattled downhill to the Lodge in a style Sophia Challoner might have approved. Few lights shone in the windows of the comfortable stone house; no torches burned in the courtyard. Was it possible that but a servant remained, and all the fires were doused? Hysteria rose in my breast. Without help, Lord Harold should surely die.

  Frank drew up before the door, secured the reins, and sprang down from his seat. Never had I so admired the decision and authority of my brother, as now; I understood what he must be, striding his quarterdeck with a French frigate off the bow. Lord Harold rested insensible upon my lap; I could not move for the weight. Frank pounded at the door and cried Halloo! The noise roused the man in my arms, and he opened his eyes.

  I could barely see his face through the darkness. “Lie still,” I said. “Guard your strength. You will need it.”

  “Jane—” he whispered. “On the wall … Orlando. Not … the Jesuit—”

  “I know. Hush.”

  “The knife”—his fingers feebly sought his wound—“he killed that girl, and Dixon—”

  The massive oak door swung open to reveal José Luis, the Portuguese steward, a candle raised in one hand.

  Behind him stood Maria Fitzherbert.

  “Thank God!” I cried out in relief.

  “Your pardon, ma’am, for the imposition,” my brother said hurriedly—he had never, after all, made Mrs. Fitzherbert’s acquaintance, and was not the sort to recognise a royal mistress—“but we have a wounded man in grave need of assistance.”

  “Lord Harold Trowbridge,” I added urgently. “He requires a surgeon.”

  “Help his lordship into the house, Zé,” Mrs. Fitzherbert ordered in her tranquil voice. “I shall see to the boiling water.”

  IN THE HOURS THAT FOLLOWED I ACQUIRED A FUND OF respect for Maria Fitzherbert. Despite the weakness she had lately shown at the prospect of a duel, tonight no horror or pain could disturb her, no sight of gore cause her to blanch. While Frank took a horse from the stables and flew like the wind to a surgeon in Hound, she saw his lordship laid on a sopha in the drawing-room, regardless of the blood, and tore open his shirt herself.

  “This is very grave,” she observed calmly. “Poor man—he is not as young as he was… . Miss Austen, there is a closet in the hall near the kitchen. You will find a quantity of linen stored there. Pray bring a dozen napkins, and commence tearing them into strips. We can do little until the blade is drawn.”

  I did as she bade, and fetched water from the steward. Lord Harold had fainted again in quitting the gig, but he stirred a little under Mrs. Fitzherbert’s hands.

  “This is not the first time, you understand, that I have ministered to a gentleman’s wounds,” she observed. “The Prince once affected to mortify himself, early in our acquaintance, when I was adamant against the connexion—he slashed himself with a letter knife, and I was summoned to his bedside at midnight by the news that he was dying. Not even the most determined of lovers should drive steel into bone, however. Who did this thing?”

  “His valet. A man by the name of Orlando.”

  “Ah, yes—the murderer of that poor girl.” She said this as though there had never been the slightest doubt; and I suppose, in being an intimate at the Lodge, she should hesitate to believe any of her friends the culprit. “James—Mr. Ord—told me how it was, at the inquest. The valet ran, I think?”

  “His lordship has been grossly deceived. It is probable that Orlando has been in the service of the French—that he is responsible for violent actions among the dockyards—”

  She raised one brow. “But I thought it was Sophia that Lord Harold suspected? She chuckled over the notion a good deal.”

  “Sophia was aware of his suspicion?”

  “There is very little that escapes that lady’s notice. She told me not long ago that the French had placed a cuckoo in Lord Harold’s nest: the valet had better have hanged in Oporto. What has become of him?”

  “We left him for dead, among the Abbey ruins.”

  Lord Harold’s eyes flicked open at this, and he stared full into Maria Fitzherbert’s face. “I tried, Maria … tried to prevent … Ord speaking …”

  “Hush, Harry,” she murmured.

  “He is safe, now. Portsmouth. Forgive inquest … wronged you …”

  She pressed her fingers against his lips, and shook her head. He passed once more into unconsciousness. His pallor was dreadful, and his limbs cold. A bubble of fear rose in my breast, and I bit my finger to thwart a sob.

  “You love him very much, do you not?” she said. “A pity. He was always a desperate character. I have known him quite a long time, you see.”

  She wrung out a linen wad in a basin of hot water; it flushed a dangerous red.

  “Desperate, perhaps—but honourable withal.”

  “Exactly so,” she agreed calmly. “His lordship’s voice was among the loudest that counseled the Prince to throw me off—he could not condone illegal marriage, and indeed, I could not condone it myself—but I never held his opinions against him. They could not prevent our being friends. Lord Harold is ever the gentleman in his address; mere politics could not turn him a cad.”

  Sophia Challoner should certainly have protested at this. I remembered how she had viewed him: as a man who employed a blackmailer for valet, and profited from the spoils. Certainly Orlando had penned the threatening letter for Flora Bastable—and had learned what he could of Sophia from the girl—but with Lord Harold’s knowledge? Was it for this the Rogue begged forgiveness?

  “Mrs. Fitzherbert—if Mrs. Challoner was not a spy, and her frankness with regard to her own affairs is everywhere celebrated—what possible cause could her maid find for blackmail?”

  The Prince’s wife sank back against her seat, and stared at me limpidly. “Did you believe it was Sophia she thought to touch, with that frippery tale of secrets? You may rest easy, my dear. The maid’s object—and the valet’s, if it comes to that—was always me.”

  A pounding at the front door forestalled what she might have said. It was Frank, with the surgeon.

  WE WERE BANISHED FROM THE ROOM WHILE THEY worked over him. As the door closed
upon the scene, I caught a glimpse of the surgeon and his tool: an iron tong, akin to the sort used for pulling teeth, poised above the blade in Lord Harold’s shoulder. Then I heard a gruff voice—“Hold him, now—hold him steady—” and the agonised groan of a man in mortal pain.

  Mrs. Fitzherbert placed her arm about my shoulders and murmured, “Brandy, I think.”

  She drew me aside into the dining parlour, where a decanter stood upon a sideboard. “It is well you found the Lodge inhabited this evening. We intend to quit this place on the morrow.”

  I drank little of the liquid she gave me, and summoned what composure I could. My thoughts might fly to the man on the sopha, but my tongue could yet utter commonplaces. “Mrs. Challoner left for London in good spirits, I hope?”

  “She stayed only for the receipt of the note you sent. The knowledge that James—Mr. Ord—was secure in his passage, was everything to her; and the Conte da Silva was equally happy to learn that Monsignor should achieve the Americas without further delay. We are all of us in your debt.”

  “My brother’s, perhaps—but not mine.” Guilt, powerful guilt, over the false pretences under which I had pursued Sophia Challoner’s friendship surged again in my heart.

  “Indeed, I may say that I only remained at Netley another night—extraordinary conduct, in the absence of the Lodge’s mistress—to be certain that Mr. Ord was sped on his way.”

  It seemed, then, as the lady stood before the gilt mirror in Sophia Challoner’s dining-room, that she desired to impart a confidence; but the drawing-room door burst open, and Frank reappeared.

  “The wound is stitched, but continues seeping,” he informed us brusquely; “the surgeon believes there is not much time.”

  “You mean—?” I set down my glass of brandy unsteadily. “But cannot we send for Dr. Jarvey? Or take him directly in the gig to East Street now?”

  “No, Jane. He is too weak; if the wound does not kill him, movement will.” Frank’s gaze was merciless. “He is asking for you. Both of you.”

  I gazed at Maria Fitzherbert, but she declined to take precedence. I may say that I ran to him.

  He was propped a little on a pillow, and his eyes—though heavy-lidded—were yet alert. A clean bandage stretched from collarbone to ribs; but a dark aureole of blood had already blossomed there. He held out his hand, and I seized it in my fingers. Maria Fitzherbert sank down in a chair.

  “Maria,” he said.

  “Yes, Harry?”

  “Your son is … safe … no word of the truth—”

  “How long have you known?” she demanded quietly.

  He shook his head. “Guessed. He has the look … of the Prince—twenty years ago …”

  Twenty years ago, when Maria Fitzherbert had been happy at Kempshott Park. Understanding fell upon me like a dash of cold water.

  She rose abruptly and walked away from us, to stand by the window seat where I had observed her working fringe—as placid, I had thought then, as a cow. What sacrifices this woman had endured! Two husbands and a son in the grave—all the scorching calumny of public comment over her liaison with the Prince—the loss of reputation—and then the most painful ordeal: the royal child sent out into the world, there raised by virtual strangers.

  “Remembered how you admired Archbishop Carroll,” Lord Harold said wearily. “Found out that Ord’s family emigrated on the same ship to the Americas that Carroll took. Your work of course. Understood then. Does Ord know?”

  She shook her head.

  He clutched at my fingers—a spasm, perhaps, for the touch relaxed almost instantly. “Jane.”

  “My lord.”

  He smiled faintly, a curving of the lips; but the face was so haggard, and beaded with sweat. “You cry, dear? Waste. Should’ve married you years ago.”

  I kissed his cold hand—my throat was too constricted for speech, and my heart beating wildly. “You must try, Lord Harold. You must rally!”

  His grey eyes opened wide, and he gazed clearly at my face. “Promise me … you will write. Heroine—”

  “What is writing compared to life, my lord?”

  “All we have. Fool, Jane. Fool.”

  “No, my love—”

  But he was already gone.

  Editor’s Afterword

  The present volume of Jane Austen’s detective memoirs is distinct from the six manuscripts I have previously edited in that it concludes abruptly—without the sort of coda she often wrote, to assure her readers of the pleasant future in store for those whose lives she had followed. We know from her novels that Austen enjoyed happy endings; but one clearly eluded her here, as it so often did in matters of the heart.

  The story that unfolds in Jane and the Ghosts of Netley is one that I find particularly absorbing, because I have long been a student of the illegal marriage between Maria Fitzherbert, Catholic commoner, and George, Prince of Wales (later George IV of England). In editing the present manuscript, Saul David’s Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency (Great Britain: Little, Brown, 1998) was extremely helpful. David outlines the history of James Ord, Fitzherbert’s putative son, and his rearing among the Catholic gentry of Maryland. Ord did become a member of the Jesuit order, and later confronted his friends with questions regarding his parentage that were only partially answered. Mrs. Fitzherbert, though she never publicly admitted her parentage of Ord, declined categorically to sign a document testifying that her marriage to the Prince had been without issue. She is believed to have borne the Prince a daughter as well, one Maryanne Smythe, who was passed off as a niece and eventually reared in Mrs. Fitzherbert’s household.

  For those interested in religious issues of the period, Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–1829, by Michael A. Mullett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), is instructive. For a history of the English and French in Portugal, I can recommend no finer work than Michael Glover’s The Peninsular War, 1807–1814 (London: David and Charles, 1974).

  Stephanie Barron

  Golden, Colorado

  March 2002

  About the Author

  STEPHANIE BARRON, a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen’s work, is the author of six previous Jane Austen mysteries. She lives in Colorado, where she is at work on the eighth Jane Austen mystery, Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy.

  Also by Stephanie Barron

  Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

  Jane and the Man of the Cloth

  Jane and the Wandering Eye

  Jane and the Genius of the Place

  Jane and the Stillroom Maid

  Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

  And coming soon in hardcover from Bantam Books

  Jane and His

  Lordship’s Legacy

  If you enjoyed Jane and the Ghosts of Netley,

  you won’t want to miss any of

  Stephanie Barron’s tantalizing mysteries.

  Look for them at your favorite bookseller’s.

  And read on for an exciting early look at the

  next mystery featuring Jane Austen!

  Jane and His

  Lordship’s Legacy

  Being a Jane Austen Mystery

  by

  Stephanie Barron

  Chapter 1

  All We Have

  Tuesday, 4 July 1809

  Chawton, Hampshire

  I CAME INTO MY KINGDOM TODAY AT HALF-PAST three—or so much of one as shall ever be granted me on this earth. Four square brick walls, five chimneys, a simple doorway fronting on the Winchester road and a clutch of outbuildings behind: such is Chawton Cottage.

  “Lord, Jane,” my mother breathed as she surveyed the unadorned façade of her future abode from the vantage of our hired pony trap, “I should not call it charming, to be sure—but beggars cannot be choosers, you know, and we must admit ourselves infinitely obliged to your excellent brother. Observe, a new cesspit has been dug, and the privy painted! I declare, is nothing forgot that might contribute to our comfort?”
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  I did not reply, for though the raw mud near the new plumbing works looked dismal enough, my mother could not hesitate to approve the generosity Edward has shown. A man of considerable property, as the heir of our distant cousins the Knights, my brother chooses to reside at his principal estate of Godmersham, in Kent—but has given us the use of his late bailiff’s cottage here in Hampshire. If a former alehouse, fronting the juncture of two highways overrun by coaching traffic, with rough-hewn beams, low-ceilinged rooms, and cramped stairs, may be considered a luxury, then we are bound to be grateful to Edward; he has saved four women the expence of lodgings, and for a household of strict economy and perpetual dependence, that cost must be a saving indeed.

  There are some among our acquaintance who would hint that, in possessing the freehold of every house in Chawton village, my brother might have done more for his widowed mother, and done it years since; but I will not join my strictures to theirs.1 My heart rises to smell the good earth again, and rejoices to think that my mornings will never more be shattered by the bustle of a town, and all the noise of commerce crying at the gate! There is nothing, when one is broken-hearted, like the healing balm of the country!

  “I shall plant potatoes,” my mother declared briskly, “and if we are fortunate, we shall gather them by late September. The cottage’s aspect might be softened, Jane. It requires only a flowering vine, I think, to grow romantickly across the door.”

  “—and to complete the picturesque, ought to be sagging in its casements. It is too much to hope for a shattered roof or a tower crumbling into ruin; we must contrive to be satisfied with a building that is only ample, sturdy, and in good repair, Mamma.”

  The house’s position at the fork of Chawton’s two principal roads must be adjudged an evil—but outweighing this are the broad meadows to north and east, the stout wood fence and hornbeam hedge enclosing the grounds, and the delightful promise of birdsong from the thriving fields. Mr. Seward, the late bailiff, maintained a shrubbery and an orchard, but Mrs. Seward cannot have loved her flowers; the borders must and shall be worked. Syringas, and peonies, and the simpler blooms of mignonette—all these we shall have, and Sweet William too.