I offered a brief account of germ theory, which she listened to with a furrowed brow and a doubtful smile.
“I was intending to ask you how time travel worked. But after that, I think I shall not.” She patted the bundle that sat on the table. “It is ‘The Watsons,’ of course, as you are too polite to ask. I read it over occasionally, each time wondering if something could be saved, made into a novel the world would be amused and edified by reading. The answer is always no. Yet I cannot bring myself to destroy it, for the same reason I hate it: too much of myself is there. But if people of the future took such pains on my account—” Pushing it across the table to me, she finished her wine and stood up. “I beg you, do not think less of me when you read it.”
“I will never think of you with anything other than admiration and astonishment.” I rose, too, and she held out her hand. I started to say more but could not, as the reality sank in: I would never see her again.
“And affection, I hope,” she murmured. “As I of you.” The moment teetered on the brink of heartbreak, but then she smiled. “And your—your colleague. Mr. Finucane. You must convey my regards.” She frowned, looking at me more closely. “But are you not—You call him by his Christian name.”
“That need not imply the same degree of intimacy, in the world we come from.”
“Oh.” She seemed unconvinced. “But when you return to where you came from, will you not marry?” My face must have showed my surprise, for she went on: “It only seemed from how he spoke of you, when we talked yesterday, and he, so absurdly, apologized for flirting with me—Am I wrong? Are his feelings not returned?”
“I am warmly attached to him,” I finally came up with. “But in our world, you must understand, women have many other choices in life besides which man they marry.”
“I can see they do.”
“Anyway, he is to marry someone else.” Did I believe this? I wasn’t sure. There’s a way you can hold two opposing ideas at once, and perhaps it was convenient for me to think Liam had been, if not exactly lying, maybe carried away with his own enthusiasm that morning in the asparagus bed.
She put her hand on my arm, eyes widening.
“He has entangled himself unwisely? Like my Edward Ferrars?”
“She is a far better match than your Lucy Steele.”
“But she is not you.”
“She is richer, and more elegant. And with her help, he will rise and rise. He is an ambitious man, you know, under his pose of diffidence.” I had never consciously thought this about Liam. Yet as the words came out, something about him that had not made sense suddenly did, and I felt a chill pass through me.
“Perhaps.” She looked thoughtful. “He spoke only of you.”
I was tempted to ask what he’d said. But pride defeated curiosity, and I congratulated myself on my restraint as I saw her out and said goodbye once more, not starting to cry until the door had closed behind her.
CHAPTER 19
AUGUST 10
Leatherhead
I WOUND UP THE HOUSE IN TWO DAYS AND A FURY OF PHILANTHROPY, helped along by the discovery of several ten-pound notes I’d hidden in the lining of a rarely worn spencer for my journey from London in December and forgotten about. I wrote glowing characters for the remaining servants. I gave our chickens to my favorite neighbor, a widowed cottager named Betsy, and entrusted her with the care of Alice B., the cat. Mrs. Smith and Sarah got their wages for the rest of the year and the contents of the pantry to take back to their family in Basingstoke. Tom, to whom I gave the cows, and North, to whom I gave most of my clothes, were also paid off, with their last job being to accompany me to Leatherhead, since ladies do not travel alone.
Jencks was already gone. Liam had taken him with him when he left, ostensibly as his valet, with the plan to fire him once he got to his destination for letting Henry Austen walk into the room without first checking if we were “at home.” Which he’d clearly done on purpose, though whether with the aim of blackmailing us later or just of causing trouble was unclear. But it was obvious in retrospect that Jencks must have figured out what Liam and I were up to and had been saving this information until he could use it.
Seeing Liam set off in the middle of the night accompanied by this sinister creature had been one more source of unease in a day full of it, but what could I do? I did not want him in the house with me, and we feared if we fired him immediately he might come back with mischief on his mind. It occurred to me more than once in the time I was alone in Chawton that Jencks could simply kill Liam on the road; take possession of the horses, the carriage, and its contents; and head for Yorkshire and a new life. He’d get away with it too; who would ever notice Liam was missing, except me?
So it was with trepidation that I pulled into the yard of the Swan in our hired post chaise, late afternoon of a gloomy day, to be helped out of the carriage and pay off the driver. While North and Tom dealt with the logistics of arrival, I looked around, hoping to see Liam, and instead seeing the man who’d denied us lodging on our first night in 1815. I recognized him at once, though he seemed strangely normal, no longer looming like the menacing gatekeeper I remembered. He was barking orders to some men swapping out the horses on a chariot and took no notice of me. I turned to go into the inn with increasing disquiet—maybe Liam really was dead.
Then I saw him, partly hidden by a wall near the entrance to the yard. He stepped forward and held out his hand.
“There you are,” I said, suddenly shy. This, even though I’d spent the whole carriage ride—at least when not thinking about his likely murder at the hands of Jencks—imagining with pornographic precision all the things we could do together now that we no longer had to fear our servants. He looked down at me, with no words but a face full of feeling. His hand felt cold and strong wrapped around mine as we went inside.
CAST OUT OF JANE’S ORBIT AND NO LONGER PLAYING OUR PARTS, WE did not know at first how to be toward each other. In the private parlor where we ate a vile shepherd’s pie washed down with musty claret, we kept raising and dropping conversational topics. My late-night visit from Jane and her gift of the manuscript. The unnerving scene when Liam had fired Jencks.
“He had such a face on him when I told him his services were no longer wanted. But what did he expect? He’d behaved terribly, yet I paid him off through Lady Day. He was luckier than he deserved.”
“What kind of face?”
“Like an angry man disappointed in love and life.” Liam’s own face lit up with a sudden smile. “I began to think you were right, and he had a crush on me.”
“I told you.”
“So, the bloodletting. What do you think she has?” Liam asked after a pause.
“There’s no way of telling, without lab tests. It was just a hunch. Not very scientific.” I had a cold sensation as I thought of just how unscientific it was. Desperate was more like it. Had I lost my mind?