Chapter Seven
Jane
Jane’s mind screamed for her to hold her tongue. It was more than a faux pas or a simple misunderstanding. She could tell she had struck at the deepest hurt of this family. And after all they had done for her.
She was a bloody fool.
Helena came to her rescue, as always. “We lost our parents and eldest brother a year ago,” she explained, her voice terribly small in the sudden vastness of the library. “Scarlet fever.”
Jane’s heart shattered at the thought. Her eyes drifted from Helena to Isobel to Viola, each of them seeming far too young to have lost both of their parents. The grief of it could have smothered her, and yet the feeling was familiar, as if she, too, had experienced such a tragedy. She pushed it away for now, choosing to focus on the people she had harmed with her carelessness.
“I am so terribly sorry,” she offered, knowing her meager apology would do nothing to soothe their pain. “I cannot begin to imagine…” The words died on her tongue. The Maycotts didn’t need her empty words.
“How could we blame you, Jane? In your current state?” said Helena, offering Jane far more grace and understanding than she deserved.
She searched her mind for some hint of a memory of the tragedy that had befallen this family. Surely the deaths of the Earl of Belhaven, his wife, and his heir would have been much talked about. But there was nothing, only a stark emptiness that served to taunt her, reminding her that pertinent memories such as this were still hidden from her as if by a veil, one she could not penetrate. But as she thought about it, a different realization sank like a stone in her gut.
“But that would mean…” she whispered to herself, unwilling to finish the sentence aloud as her eyes found Lord Jasper’s across the room. She quickly looked away.
He was not Lord Jasper, he was the dratted Earl of Belhaven.
She had, in truth, intruded upon an earl’s home, defiled his boots, and been nothing but a source of frustration to him. For Christ’s sake, an earl had dug through the snow for her blasted spectacles, and Jane had thanked him by exchanging barbs with him.
Jane’s skin heated, her chest tightened, and sweat dampened her palms. It was difficult for her to comprehend the extent of her mortification.
Jas— Lord Belhaven shifted in the corner of her vision, and it was only then that she allowed herself to really look at him. The glances they’d shared since her shameful entrance into the library had been fleeting, but now Jane was seeing him not as the eventual heir to an earldom, but rather the earl himself, and suddenly everything changed for her.
It became clear to her that while his pain was the best hidden, it was perhaps the deepest among them. But he was an earl. He had responsibilities beyond those of an heir. So he masked his sorrow with his impenetrable sternness, which she now understood made him less like a bastard and more like the rock that held what remained of his family together.
As she recalled his frustrated claim that there was no better version of him left, Jane had to wonder who it was that held him together.
It was a ridiculous query, she knew, but nothing could prevent it from filling her mind. In that moment, Lord Belhaven’s eyes found hers, the locking of their gazes seeming inevitable, as though a force neither of them understood pulled them together. There were no cracks in his armor, and no slipping of his mask. Here was the Earl of Belhaven, solemn and steady. Why was it she could see right through him, then?
And who was Annabelle to him?
Seeming to read her thoughts, Lord Belhaven’s brow furrowed and he broke their gaze, choosing that moment to turn on his heel and stride from the room, eliciting a tsk from Lady Adelaide. Whoever she was, a part of him still belonged to this Annabelle. A part he would never get back, perhaps.
Jane had no desire to pry into this family’s pain any more than she already had. But her curiosity regarding Lord Belhaven flared to life. She should never have jested with him about his fortune-hunting comments. Christ, he was the bloody Earl of Belhaven. If anyone had a right to assume the worst of her, it was a man like him. And yet, she could tell that he felt that same pull to closeness that she did, and how shamefully easy it was for them to acquiesce to it. He tried to put distance between them, and she didn’t blame him. She didn’t trust whatever it was that drew them together, either, not when she could recall nothing of her own life to compare it to.
She thumbed the ring in her pocket. While she hadn’t conceded Lord Belhaven’s unspoken belief that its existence meant that she was married in the life she had forgotten, it had seemed the obvious origin of it. But when Jane had slipped the ring onto her finger, all she felt was the thudding certainty that whoever JHD was, they were not her husband. And so the ring remained in her pocket and not on her finger. A tantalizing clue, but nothing more.
“We should see to the preparations,” began Helena awkwardly, studiously avoiding mention of her brother’s abrupt departure.
Jane swallowed her third apology, knowing it wasn’t needed. “I will do my best not to add to your burdens.”
Isobel’s melancholy lifted, and she gave her a wry grin. “If you need anything, truly anything , please don’t hesitate to call for Battersby. He is most helpful.”
The butler looked as though he would murder Isobel if he could, and Jane resolved to never ask anything of the man, lest she make another enemy in Mulgrave Hall.
The Maycott sisters smiled at her and departed, Viola giving her a small wave at the door.
Her least favorite Maycott remained in the library, however, looking at Jane as though she were a creature in a cage she sought to understand through careful study.
“Come,” Lady Adelaide ordered, gesturing for Jane to take her arm. “You and I can conduct some experiments.”
“ Experiments ?” Jane ventured as Lady Adelaide guided her toward the pianoforte set in a corner of the library.
“You told my niece that you believe there are memories too ingrained to be lost to you, such as the ability to walk or knowledge of the works of Jane Austen?”
Jane nodded, beginning to understand Lady Adelaide’s intent.
“Then surely we can trick your mind into remembering more of your past by performing certain tasks that might also be deeply rooted within you.”
“And you believe the pianoforte is where to begin?”
Lady Adelaide pulled out the bench. “I’ve yet to meet an accomplished lady who possesses no skill in this regard.”
Jane hesitated. “And if I’m not a lady?”
“Then at last we will know something about you. Right now, we know very little.” She stepped away from the bench and gestured for Jane to take a seat.
It was a beautiful instrument, made of rich, gleaming wood, scalloped gold trim, and extensively carved legs, with the word Erard intricately embellished in gilded script above the keys. But it did not call to her like she would have expected if she were a great proficient. The cushioned bench, upholstered with pale green silk, was comfortable, and bore signs of having been used for years—small frays in the fabric, a permanent dent where someone had sat for many hours, some minor scuffs on the legs.
“Who plays?” Jane asked as she took her seat.
“Played,” Lady Adelaide corrected. “The countess played beautifully.”
Jane tried to imagine her, a woman possessing Isobel’s coloring and Helena’s grace, with perhaps a hint of Viola’s curiosity. She must have been a wonderful mother , she thought, feeling a pang of emptiness for having no memories of her own.
“I’m told my nieces and nephews inherited my brother’s distinctly non-musical ears,” Lady Adelaide said, sighing sadly. “You may begin.”
Jane raised her wrists and held her hands above the ivory keys, waiting for some sense of rightness or understanding to come over her.
But nothing did.
“Are you perhaps waiting for the instrument to invite you to play?” asked Lady Adelaide impatiently.
Jane pressed a few keys, the notes sounding discordant to her ears. She pressed a few more, hoping for harmony to emerge, but it was clear she did not know how to play. She looked up to Lady Adelaide, who was wincing.
“It would seem I am not familiar with the pianoforte,” she said, standing up and away from the bench, so as not to blaspheme further.
“We simply cannot leave it at that,” said Lady Adelaide, taking her vacant seat and beginning to play. The difference was stark. Her fingers moved deftly over the keys, each tone weaving together to create a melody of great beauty, her expression locked in deep concentration. As Lady Adelaide played, Jane allowed herself to simply listen and enjoy it. She didn’t think about her missing memories, her accident, the guilt or her shame or her fears. She thought of nothing save for how the music managed to transport her, giving her a feeling of lightness she hadn’t known since before she’d awoken in Mulgrave Hall.
Lady Adelaide finished and released a sigh of relief, as though she’d had no choice but to play after Jane’s disastrous attempt, lest the gods of music take offense.
“What was that?” Jane asked, in sudden awe of the woman.
“Schubert’s ‘Ungarische Melodie,’” she said with a sniff. “His compositions could make anyone sound gifted.” She paused. “Well, I suppose not anyone .”
Jane ignored the jab. “You play beautifully, my lady.”
She closed the fallboard. “I play technically well, but I lack a true passion for the instrument. Rebecca played as though she couldn’t live without it, as though it fed her, body and soul.” She let the sentence linger, lost in memory.
“It must have been a joy to hear her,” said Jane.
“I hardly ever had the chance to,” Lady Adelaide replied. “I rarely made the trip from Bordeaux.”
“It’s a long journey,” offered Jane.
“Longer still when there is no warm welcome at the end of it.” She shook her head. Jane knew better than to dig further. “That is enough delving into unhappy memories. Our first experiment was a failure, but worry not, I have a few more theories.”
And so she and Lady Adelaide spent the next hour learning that Jane was similarly incapable of playing the harp, hopelessly bad at all forms of needlework, and unable to converse in French, which, according to her inquisitor, was beyond the pale for a proper young lady. Despite her lacking in that regard, Jane got along quite nicely with conversational Italian and German (she also had high hopes for Ancient Greek and Latin, but Lady Adelaide refused to investigate further as they were, in her words, the purview of men). Additionally, she was capable of performing an adequate waltz and lively polka (much to her dancing partner’s chagrin), able to solve arithmetic problems with ease, and well versed in the art of penmanship, all things a proper lady would be trained to do.
But none of her successes or failures added up to an answer about who she was. It was as though she was half accomplished, half ordinary. She would have been grateful to know one way or another, but to have some skills that suggested she was a lady, yet be lacking others was infuriating.
Lady Adelaide did not seem any less frustrated by the results. “I would say your ability to dance competently would make you the daughter of a peer, but your utter lack of skill with a needle surely precludes you from that.”
“Perhaps I am a natural dancer only because I excel at fencing—”
Lady Adelaide pretended not to hear her. “And yet, your penmanship suggests ample instruction, but who has ever heard of a lady who couldn’t play an instrument?”
“I don’t mean to disappoint you, my lady,” she replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm as she sank into a plush armchair.
Lady Adelaide waved her hand lightly. “Do not trouble yourself, Jane. I did say I enjoyed puzzles.”
But Jane was tired of being something that needed to be solved. She wanted to be a person whole.
Lady Adelaide looked pensive. “You know, we have not yet tried painting—”
“If you don’t mind, my lady, I think I am done experimenting for the day.” There was a crushing pain in Jane’s head. She would have happily murdered someone for a cup of tea, but she drew the line at summoning Battersby.
“I will escort you to your room, then.”
“I think I’ll stay here for a while, if you don’t mind.” The books that lined the shelves were still calling to her, and though her head ached and exhaustion tugged at her, Jane intended to do something of her own volition that day. Something that might serve to deepen her understanding of herself, more so than needlepoint and dancing had.
Lady Adelaide raised her chin at her in assessment. “Very well. I shall have tea and sandwiches sent to you.”
Jane stopped herself from exclaiming in delight, knowing Lady Adelaide would not deem an outburst like that to be proper. “Thank you, my lady.” She paused, considering how the woman had spent the last hour. What had been frustrating for Jane was surely tedious, thankless work for Lady Adelaide, who had arrived at Mulgrave Hall to grieve with her nieces and nephew and had instead been saddled with a burden in the form of a rootless woman. “And I must thank you for aiding me in getting a bit closer to discovering who I am.”
Lady Adelaide stood, her palms flattening any errant wrinkles in the bodice of her gown. “Think nothing of it, Jane. We will get to the bottom of it eventually.”
“Still, I know I’m a burden to you and the rest of the Maycotts.”
Lady Adelaide didn’t disagree. “As burdensome as you may be, I believe you are giving the family something else to focus on during a trying time. We recently marked a year without my brother and his wife and son.”
“Only a year?” When Helena had said it, a year had somehow seemed longer. Jane could recall nothing of her life, but like the ability to speak, she was beginning to think that grief was too ingrained in her to ever be truly forgotten. If she had learned anything that day, it was that she knew intimately the pain of losing someone she loved. But who?
“Indeed,” replied Lady Adelaide, furrowing her brow as if piecing something together. “I called my arrival an act of providence, but perhaps mine wasn’t the only bit of divine intervention.”
Jane couldn’t help but choke on a laugh. “I hardly think the earl would agree with you on that account.”
Lady Adelaide’s face fell, and Jane held her tongue, having learned her lesson earlier. “Tragedy befell us all, but none so much as Jasper.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jane before she could stop herself.
But the woman shook her head. “I cannot say more without betraying his confidence. It is his story to tell.”
She could accept that. Even as she had asked the question, it had felt wrong. If she ever got the truth of it from someone, she wanted it to be Lord Belhaven himself. Not that she thought she was entitled to it, or that he was liable to tell her anything. In truth, the man didn’t trust her. And why should he? She scarcely had leave to trust herself.
Interpreting her silence as acceptance, Lady Adelaide bowed her head slightly. “I’ll leave you to your browsing, then.”
She departed, leaving Jane in Mulgrave Hall’s well-appointed library, totally alone. She approached the shelves nearest her and ran her fingers along the leather spines, reading titles and authors silently to herself and hoping for something to stick out, like Jane Austen had.
But nothing did.
Perhaps the library was too vast, the titles too obscure, shelves climbing to the ceiling in places. She had scanned the titles of books on one shelf in a room fit to bursting with them. She’d need a ladder in order to see them all fully.
A maid brought a tray of pastries and sandwiches and a pot of strong tea. Jane nibbled on a biscuit and pondered her current predicament.
Maybe it had been a mistake to think she’d find some hint of her former self so quickly. It had barely been two days since her accident, and while she was in a hurry to return to the life she had surely left behind, it would seem her mind did not agree with her.
After devouring most everything on the tray, Jane sighed and flounced into the chair behind the grand desk. Perhaps if she began writing, this time unconsciously, memories would be forced to rise to the surface. As she began to clear a space to work in, she picked up a book that had been carelessly left face down, possibly damaging the spine. Resolving to remind the Maycotts of how to properly care for a book, she closed it, placing it atop the rich mahogany desk for its owner to find it, unbesmirched.
And then she noticed the title.
It was Pride and Prejudice . Had Lord Belhaven left it there? She assumed it was his desk—it was rather masculine and covered in a mess of papers that appeared to pertain to earlish matters. Whoever was reading it was about a quarter of the way through the book. Jane scanned the page and felt a rush of that same sense of familiarity she had been seeking. She decided not to fight it. If the words of Jane Austen were all she could remember, then so be it.
She sank back into the chair and flipped to the beginning, letting out a comfortable yawn as she did so.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife…
She smiled at that delicious bit of irony while images of the brooding, uncompromising yet handsome Lord Belhaven unwittingly filled her mind, and she thought, if any among them resembled one of Miss Austen’s creations, it was he.