“I can help,” Martha muttered and followed her.
“Dr. Ravenswood,” Jane said, going over to Liam and taking his arm, “let me borrow your strength for a moment. There is a jar in the stillroom that none of us have been able to open—” And they were gone, Henry and I left alone with a theatrical suddenness. I couldn’t help admiring how smoothly everyone had managed it. Only, what was I going to do now? We were standing by a window, our hands still clasped.
“How are you, Mr. Austen?” I asked inanely. He looked down at me; his eyes were red-rimmed and there was a strange brightness in them, an intensity that made me think he might be feverish again. “I have been thinking over what you have said with great care.”
He squeezed my hands. “I must be truthful. I am come to my bank in Alton on painful and urgent business. I am optimistic by nature, but I fear the worst. And in that case—I will no longer be a man in a position to—That is, my offer—You understand.” He stopped. “Indeed, that is why I have not spoken to your brother, as I should have, outlining my—Everything has happened so quickly, Miss Ravenswood, so quickly and yet so slowly. I cannot say from one day to the next what my true financial state might be. It has been agony.”
I looked up at him, disarmed by his forthrightness. Feeling some inner fortification crumble, like a wall coming down in a shower of bricks and dust, I shivered with fear, or gladness. “You cannot suppose it is about money? That that is why I hesitate?”
“My dear, it is always about money. We live in the world, after all.”
“You know that I have some of my own, do you not?”
“If you take me for a fortune hunter, I must tell you that you are quite mistaken.”
I squeezed his hand. “Henry. If I may call you that?” The effect of my words was startling; a tremor passed through his body as he stared down at me. “I will marry you. But I think we must try to save your bank first, shall we not, before we tell everyone?”
AND THAT WAS HOW I ENTERED INTO A SECRET ENGAGEMENT, A thing you are never supposed to do, for reasons Emma and Sense and Sensibility make clear. Yet even from the start it wasn’t entirely a secret. As soon as they’d come back into the room, I felt Martha and Cassandra suspected something, while for Jane it was more than a suspicion. Her gaze went first to Henry. His expression and his manner seemed to give away nothing, but somehow she knew. She smiled at me and pressed my hand when Liam and I left.
“My dear Miss Ravenswood,” she said with an arch look.
Since the whole idea was to get money to Henry, which I could not do on my own as a woman, I had to tell Liam. I did so in as few words as possible, once we were out of earshot of the cottage.
I was shaking as I began; we had not discussed this—or for that matter, really any serious subject touching on the mission—since we’d traveled down from London, weeks ago. Which was crazy. True, the house was big and we were divided by our gender-specific activities, with little privacy. True, I’d been avoiding him—more than I’d acknowledged until this moment. The incident at the Angel, weird and awkward even at the time, had assumed greater ghastliness in retrospect. But still. It was undignified to sulk over a rejection; beneath me, as an admirer of Jane Austen novels and as an independent woman. Why should I grant him such power? Before I was done speaking, I’d started to feel better, almost defiant.
Liam said nothing for a long time. We had turned from the lane onto the drive that led to the Great House, and were approaching the church halfway up the hill. When he finally spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on the landscape around us and his voice calm.
“It’s bold,” he said. “But maybe that’s what we need to be, right now. You’ve not made any progress, have you, with getting upstairs to look for the letters, or with asking her about ‘The Watsons’?”
“Not yet.” I was stung by this implied criticism, though he’d delivered it in a mild tone. But before I could defend myself, he was continuing:
“I’ll talk to Henry. Maybe tonight. Perhaps I can travel with him when he returns to town—Did he give you any idea how much money he might need?”
“We didn’t actually talk about it.”
“Perhaps not a subject one discusses with one’s intended,” Liam said with a small smile, finally meeting my eyes but not holding the gaze. “Oh well. I’ll talk to him.”
“You’re not angry?” My mind returned to the unfortunate encounter at the Angel; with an effort I put the memory away.
He looked at me sadly but said nothing.
“I mean, that’s good. I’m glad you understand this was necessary.”
“Just be careful.”
“I always am.”
CHAPTER 13
JANUARY 24, 1816
Chawton House
LATE ONE AFTERNOON, NOT LONG BEFORE WE WERE TO LEAVE EDWARD’S house, I was alone in the library, which was large and impressive as a room, less so in books. There were lots of bound volumes of The Spectator from the middle part of the previous century—exciting only in comparison to all the books on agronomy. I probably should have been reading one of those, but I’d come looking for a novel. Not a particular one, though I knew the sort I wanted: something like Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, ridiculous yet entrancing. Edward Knight did not seem to have any novels, strange for a brother of Jane Austen; I could not even find hers. The titles were getting hard to read, with the room growing darker; I was in its dimmest corner, far from the fireplace. I was thinking I should get a candle from the mantel when the door at the other end of the room creaked open and two men walked in, midconversation: Edward Knight and Frank Austen.
“. . . expect me to rescue him this time!” Edward said. “He has lived beyond his means for years. He is an opportunist, not even an effective one. And with the lawsuit oppressing me—he cannot think that I will rescue him.”
“He has no unreasonable expectations, I am sure, Ned. What does the letter say? Can you show me?”
“As fine a piece of self-justification as I have ever seen in written form! Here, feast your eyes.”
There was a pause, which was when I should have revealed that I was there. I had not been trying to spy, and while I’d heard things I should not have, they were nothing terrible. But I was too surprised to react, and then it was too late, as Edward went on:
“And that hint he drops at the end—about an opportune marriage—has he lost his reason entirely?”
“Nothing wrong with marrying an heiress, if one can manage it. You did.”
“That is not the same at all. I was of independent means. And she was of a known family of long-standing respectability—if he is referring to the lady I suspect, we know nothing of them, nothing . . . slaveholders . . . this queer business with moving into Ivy Cottage . . .”