Cassandra took over as his principal nurse, which kept me from having to see much of her, and freed Jane for other things. Like negotiations with John Murray. One day I was shown into the empty drawing room, noticed a stack of paper on the Pembroke table, and risked a closer look, suspecting page proofs, for it was type, not handwriting. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich . . . was all I dared read, but it was enough: Emma was going forward.
Then there was the royal librarian, James Stanier Clarke. Jane Austen’s life was surprisingly constricted considering the hugeness of her subsequent fame. She never sought to meet or correspond with other writers, and her visit to Carlton House was her closest brush with history with a capital H. It intrigues her biographers and also frustrates them, because no written account survives: what she saw and thought, either of the fulsomely opulent palace or of Mr. Clarke, whose subsequent letters to her established him as a comic monster of self-importance, a real-life Mr. Collins.
One morning Liam and I had gone to Hans Place, as we did most days, to see how Henry was doing, and found Jane alone in the drawing room, wearing a dress I’d never seen before. Since I knew her wardrobe well by now—it was not extensive—this seemed worth noting. “Oh!” she said. “It is you.”
“Were you expecting someone more formidable?” Liam asked with mock gravity and the French pronunciation, taking her hand and kissing it. Though their flirtatious banter was an established thing by now, it still amazed me. The assurance with which Liam carried on was a tribute to his acting skills, but what was she feeling? That was more of a riddle.
“Merely my niece, Fanny Knight. Edward went back to Kent to fetch her, and they have been in town since yesterday. She is dear to me, yet no one would describe her as formidable—though she is very accomplished. But no”—she looked from Liam to me with an arch smile—“I fear you have missed the important visitor of the day. Mr. Clarke, the prince’s librarian, left only a few minutes ago.” She paused. “A man of such parts is met with but rarely . . . Is that a carriage stopping outside, is that what I hear?”
Liam went to the window. “Your acuteness is astounding. Mr. Knight and a young lady, getting out of a chariot.”
The account of the royal librarian’s visit had to wait while we greeted Edward and were introduced to Fanny, his oldest child. She was blond and pink, a daintier version of Edward, with a dignified air that made her seem older than twenty-two, which she was. She’d been just fifteen when her mother died of complications after her eleventh time giving birth. Edward never remarried, leaving Fanny effectively the woman of the house from then on, with many servants to command and lots of little brothers and sisters to worry about. It would prove good training for her subsequent marriage to Sir Edward Knatchbull, a widower with six children, to whom she’d give nine more.
Fanny embraced her aunt tightly and greeted us coolly, but Edward was as friendly as ever. “Well, Jane,” he said when we had all settled ourselves, “and what of the prince?”
Her eyes were bright with amusement. “Mr. Clarke came to call this morning, Ned, you have only just missed him. I entertain the highest hopes of Mr. Clarke. Such self-importance, such solemn nonsense! It is fortunate I received him alone; I would have been unable to keep my countenance had you all been here.”
“What did he say that was so comical?” Fanny asked.
“It was not so much the words, my dear, as his manner of conferring them on me. Each sentence polished to a lapidary gleam and measured out like gold on a pawnbroker’s scale.”
Edward said: “Jane, have you ever been to a pawnbroker? Unless you are leading a more dissolute life than we think when here in town with Henry, I cannot imagine such a thing.”
“It is the pernicious influence of Mr. Clarke; that gentleman has overthrown my seat of reason, and my metaphors are rioting like Luddites in Lancashire.”
A stir of air made me turn to see Cassandra standing in the doorway. “Ah,” she said, her gaze surveying us all and pausing on Liam. “Dr. Ravenswood, you are here. Henry was hoping so. Will you go up and see him?” Her tone, if not warm, was at least polite. She acknowledged me with a curt nod.
Liam stood up at once. “I am come with no other design, madam; take me to him.”
“I think you know the way to his room by now. I shall test your powers of navigation,” she said with an ambiguous smile, sitting down in the chair he had been occupying. Liam bowed and started upstairs, as I tried to decide if this familiarity was insulting or a sign she was warming to him. Liam had seen more of Cassandra in recent days than I had, since they were both often in the sickroom with Henry; something he’d said yesterday suggested she was perhaps becoming less hostile.
With a start, I realized Cassandra was speaking to me, in the same coolly civil tone she’d used on Liam.
“Henry says he is feeling much better. If he continues to do so, he would like to leave his bed and see you tomorrow. Will you and your brother be able to come for tea?”
“Nothing could give us greater delight.” Seeing a look pass between the two sisters, I wondered if one had originated the invitation, and required the other to deliver it. This reversal in what I thought to be their usual chain of command was interesting. Seeing Henry, after all this time, would be interesting too.
CHAPTER 9
NOVEMBER 7
23 Hans Place
AT TEA THE NEXT EVENING, WE FOUND CASSANDRA, HENRY, AND Jane; Edward and Fanny Knight, and Mr. Haden, the apothecary often mentioned in her letters from this time. Mr. Haden was nearly as short as I and slightly built. This, along with his remarkable eyes—so blue they were nearly violet, with the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on an adult man—gave him a boyish quality. There was something awkward in his bow to me, but his manners were gentle, his eagerness to please evident. He was attentive to Fanny, but not flirtatious; maybe biographers had gotten that wrong. I also thought he and Jane showed no special signs of favoring each other—she was flirting only with Liam. Could our arrival have prevented that friendship from deepening?
Henry kissed my hand with a quiet intensity that made me blush and look around, but no one was paying attention to us; Liam had gathered everyone else around the large atlas on the table and was explaining something about the West Indies.
“Miss Ravenswood,” Henry said in a tone that was likewise quiet and intense, without its usual irony. “How good to see you again. I have missed you.”