AS I BEGAN MY MORNING’S WORK IN THE GARDEN, I WAS THINKING hard. Maybe he was the kind who needed to imagine himself in love before he could make love. This somehow fit with him: the constant trying on of roles, the shame about his origins. I liked this theory better than my alternate, which was that he’d resolved to conquer my heart as a performative challenge, the way Henry Crawford does with Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. A third possibility, that he might care about me, I mean, more than what two colleagues on a challenging mission would naturally come to feel for each other, passed through my mind but found no hold. He had professed too many things, too skillfully, for me to give this one special weight.
Yet I shivered as I thought of something that had happened the night before. Spent, sticky between the legs, I was finally feeling the cold as we put our clothing back in order, readjusting to being again contained within ourselves. He had reached down to twine one of the curls above my ears around a finger, gently pulled it out, and marveled at how it sprang back into place. “I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time,” he whispered, and I felt something catch in my heart, at the smallness of this wish.
AT BREAKFAST A FEW HOURS LATER, THE NEWS CAME IN THE FORM of a servant from Chawton Cottage carrying a sealed scrap of paper for me with a few words on it in Cassandra’s firm, even writing. Jane had taken very ill in the night. Could they trouble my brother—
Liam was draining his coffee, wiping his mouth, pulling on his coat. “It might seem weird for us to go together. But you must follow quickly. Don’t leave me alone there. What if she’s dying already?”
“She’s not dying. Just try to make her comfortable. I’ll be there soon.”
CASSANDRA CAME DOWN THE STAIRS, BLANK-EYED, TWISTING A handkerchief in her hands. “Ah, Miss Ravenswood.” She gave me her hand. “It is good of you to come as well.”
“I could not stay at home, wondering. What has happened? Please tell me.”
“She was taken ill a few hours after you left last night. A violent bilious attack.”
“Nausea and vomiting, you mean?” Cassandra looked at me oddly, but nodded. “Had she eaten anything different from the rest of the household?”
“Why would she?”
“But are you certain?”
She gave me another sharp glance. “We all ate the same thing: some green salad from the garden and a beautiful piece of venison haunch from Edward.” Her voice broke on the last syllable and she went on in a gasp: “Your brother was very kind to show up so promptly. Yet I fear there is nothing anyone can do.” She turned away as a sob, then another, shook her.
“Miss Austen,” I said, touching her shoulder cautiously. “You must not say that. Do not abandon hope.”
She took a deep breath, and when she turned back to me her expression was blank. “Yes. I must surrender myself to God’s will. Thank you for recalling me to my duty.”
I could not think of anything to say to this. “Might I see her?”
“You hardly need ask.” She turned and headed toward the stairs, and I hurried after.
SHE LAY IN ONE OF THE TWO SINGLE BEDS, HALF-PROPPED UP WITH pillows. The room was clean and full of weak daylight, yet my nose detected urine and vomit, despite the open window. Liam was hunched in a straight chair next to the bedside, chin on his fist. He sprang up when Cassandra and I walked in. “Oh, thank god,” he whispered to me. “Here, sit here.”
I squeezed his hand in passing as I sat down on the chair, still warm from him, and turned to Jane.
“I am grieved to hear you are ill,” I said. Her hair clung to her scalp with sweat, her eyes were glassy and sunken. Her face was as oddly bronzed as ever, but her lips were pale. She gave me a little smile, though, and held out her hand. The other one, I noticed, clutched her side.
“How is the female Asclepius?” she rasped.
“Now I know how you talk about me when I am not here.” Keeping hold of her hand, which was hot with fever, I inverted it for a look at her palm. It was tawny, as tanned as the back of her hand, except it wasn’t really a tan, of course, not in the Hampshire of 1816, where it rained nearly every day and ladies, if they worked in the garden, covered up.
“Have you taken up palm reading in addition to your other acquirements?”
“I see in your hand you will be a famous writer,” I said, trying to match her tone. “Generations to come will mention you in the same breath as Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare? But what about Maria Edgeworth?”
This was so unexpected that, despite everything, I had to choke back a laugh as I continued to pretend to study her palm. “These lines promise to eclipse Miss Edgeworth.”
No one said anything as I took her pulse and felt the sides of her neck, observing no swelling in the lymph glands. She leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Tell me how it began,” I said. Jane glanced up, and my gaze followed hers to where Cassandra and Liam stood by the window, separately gloomy. “Miss Austen, you might take a rest. Let me sit with her a bit.” I gave Liam what I hoped was a meaningful look, combined with a nod in the direction of the door.
“Yes,” he said, turning to Cassandra, “you must be weary. You were sitting up with her all the night, were you not?” As she murmured assent he was already guiding her out of the room. “And your mother, this morning? Is she in health?” I heard, then the door shut.
“How long have you been feeling badly?” I asked her. “Weeks, or months?”
“Like this?” A wave of her hand took in the bed, the horizontal position.
“No. I mean, not yourself.”
“I hardly know.” A pause. “It came slowly. I hardly know. In town, in the autumn, it was so exciting, even after Henry got sick. Meeting Mr. Murray, visiting Carlton House, having Fanny there. But I was often tired. I thought it was just the excitement, and I would feel better once back at Chawton. I did not.”
“What sent you to bed? The vomiting? Or is there a pain somewhere?”
“There is a dull pain here, which comes and goes.” She indicated her right midsection near the bottom of the rib cage. “It has been my faithful companion these many months. But sometime in the night, a new pain made me forget about that one.” She released and clutched again the place she had been holding one hand against. “At times it is unbearable, at others merely agonizing.” She winced. “I have never felt anything like it.”
“Did they give you laudanum? Is there any in the house?”
She slowly shook her head.