“I did not.”
“I suppose he had a fever? Was he hot to the touch?”
“I did not touch him.”
“Well, did he appear feverish?” Liam didn’t answer. “He might have looked sweaty, or flushed. The eyes can look strange, too. Glassy.”
“Perhaps he was a little flushed,” Liam muttered after a pause. “He was so yellowish, hard to say.”
“What about his bowels? Were his bowels very disordered?”
Liam said nothing.
“And how does his stool look, did you think to ask?”
Another silence followed, a long one.
“It isn’t a thing I felt comfortable asking a gentleman,” Liam said at last. His voice was quiet, but there was a hostile edge to it. “That is to say, I forgot item eleven on your extensive list of questions. But even if I had remembered, I would not have asked him.” After another pause, he added with more of an edge: “So there you are.”
We had been inside the park, headed north, but at the next opportunity, shortly past the Reservoir, Liam turned left, then left again. I registered this without reflecting on it, lost in my own thoughts, which were divided between trying to diagnose Henry Austen’s ailment secondhand and wondering about Liam. Quiet people; you never knew about them. Then I looked up, surprised to realize we were leaving the park, but on the south side. Liam took the left at Knightsbridge and then turned onto Sloane.
“Isn’t this the wrong direction?” I asked. The park is a more pleasant place to ride than the streets. Past Sloane Square, the area grows desolate: there is the Royal Military Asylum, the orphanage for children of soldiers killed fighting Napoleon; then a large gloomy hospital with a graveyard conveniently nearby; then Ranelagh, the former pleasure garden now shuttered and abandoned. It was a long trip back to Hill Street. “Why did you go this way?”
Liam made no reply, but I got a clue when we turned in to the circle of Hans Place. “Surely you’re not headed back to Henry Austen’s?”
“It appears I am.”
“It’s too late for visiting—it must be nearly five. And you were there already.” Liam did not look at me or answer, but I sensed anger in the set of his neck, his jaw. The thought struck me that if he should decide to commit me to a lunatic asylum, lock me up at home, or beat me, the law was on his side, and all our money in the bank in his name. Not that I believed he would do any of these things, but that he could sent a chill through me, that I was in a place where such things were possible. “Hey, look at me.” My voice shook. “What are you, crazy?”
We were already outside Henry Austen’s. Liam pulled the horses to a stop and finally turned to face me, his expression not angry, as I’d expected. He seemed to be having trouble finding words. Finally he began: “The thing is—we’ve got to be on the same side here, Rachel, because—”
He stopped. And in that pause, something happened. Looking back, I would say it was the moment I first saw him clearly. Not my idea of him, not the various selves he had on offer, but what was: his shyness, his odd charisma. What had possessed me to needle him like that?
“I know,” I said. “We do. I’m sorry. The main thing is to cultivate him, to make him trust you. And you’ve been doing that. I shouldn’t be so—”
The front door opened to reveal Henry Austen’s manservant, Richard. “Dr. Ravenswood!” He seemed delighted. “The lad will see to your horses in a moment. I’ll ask if the master is at home.” Beaming, he disappeared again. Yet I doubted our visit would be welcomed by his employer; a doctor might plausibly call again at this hour, saying he’d forgotten something—but what was my excuse? I felt myself grow cold all over, then hot with anticipated embarrassment.
“My vails must be too generous,” Liam said. “I thought he was going to kiss my hand earlier when I slipped him some money on the way out. Has he been watching the street all this time, praying for my return?” Despite everything, this made me laugh. “And now I can never give less—he will hate me.”
“That’s the least of our worries. What are you going to say to Henry Austen?”
“I’ll think of something.”
ALL I COULD HOPE WAS THAT HENRY WOULD NOT BE “AT HOME,” but Richard ushered us into the empty drawing room, assuring us the master would be down immediately. We stood by the hearth like two people facing the firing squad. How was I going to get through this?
I heard Liam’s faint gasp and looked up. Henry stood in the doorway, yellower than I could have imagined and wearing a banyan, a more elegant iteration of a bathrobe, over shirt and pants. Behind him was a slender woman, on the tall side, in a lace cap with a few curls spilling out. She had his nose, hazel eyes like his, and a quizzical expression that seemed right. Yet I could not believe it, until Henry came into the room and said:
“Doctor, I am honored indeed by your second visit today—Miss Ravenswood, by your first. And my sister, Miss Austen, having expressed the wish to be introduced to you—”
“The honor is all ours,” Liam said, stepping forward and putting out his hand, then, remembering that shaking was the lady’s decision, jerking it back. “I am—that is—your honored, er, humble servant.” He bowed, turning a deep scarlet.
Jane Austen studied him, expression unreadable, and did not offer her hand. She inclined her head slightly and looked at me. Her eyes were bright, her gaze direct. I thought of meeting Eva Farmer: I had the same sense of being in the presence of a formidable intelligence, of feeling the air around us warped by the force of it. After a moment of silence that seemed to stretch and stretch, I managed to squeak, “How d’ye do?”
“Please,” she said. “Sit down. So good of you to come.” Her voice was husky, as if she were getting a cold, with a drollness that seemed to give her commonplace words an extra spin. Liam and I sat as abruptly as marionettes, and a longer silence ensued.
Henry came to the rescue. “My sister has been here just these few days. I was not fit to go out, or we should have called on you before now, Miss Ravenswood, as I promised. I regret the omission.”
Jane Austen smiled at her brother. “You need not apologize. One would think, to hear you, that they are come to town with no other design than to meet me.” She turned her smile on us. “But that is Henry. He never thinks but of how to promote my happiness.”
“So you have not been in town long?” I winced at the banality of my own remark.
“Just since Friday.”
“And your journey, uneventful, I trust?”