Chapter Two
DURING THAT FIRST meeting, Lord Byron and his companion stayed for over an hour, ate whatever it was that was made up in the house, inquired about the lack of sweets only ten or so times, badgered Jane endlessly to admit that she was the author of Sense and Sensibility, and then eventually left.
Obviously, Jane was the author of the book, and just as obviously, she could not go about claiming that she was, something that bothered her more and more these days, as the book had become increasingly popular.
It was truly something to be the author of a popular novel and not be allowed to say that one had written it.
However, propriety had its own demands, and Jane would meet them without complaint.
That was Jane’s life, and Cassandra’s, too, for that matter.
Life made demands, they met them, and they did not complain.
After all, it was no use trying to say that they had lived difficult lives or that they were put upon or disadvantaged or anything of that nature.
There was no real evidence of that claim.
Well, it had been quite awful when Cassandra’s husband-to-be had died at sea, especially when Cassandra was so pretty and so very kind and good and quite obviously marriageable material, except Cassandra didn’t ever get married after that.
Cassandra was twenty-two when she became engaged, and they did not marry immediately so that Thomas could put together the money to support them both.
But two years later, they had news that he had died of yellow fever, and Cassandra had been heartbroken.
She was still quite young enough then to make another match, though she never did.
But this was the way of things, rather much of the time, Jane knew. Life was brutal to positively everyone. Only the very lucky escaped its pains and punishments.
Jane herself had never had a love quite like that in her life, but she did not bemoan such things, for there was no point in that.
She was on the shelf now, and she was not going to get married, and she would much rather think about it in terms of the positives rather than spend all her time feeling sorry for herself.
She and Cassandra and her mother had their brother, after all, and he had provided this house for them, and they had just enough of everything they needed, and there was no need for a husband, none at all.
If Jane had a husband, she would not be able to write and publish her books, and she was working on revising something now, something she had written long ago, practically in her girlhood, called First Impressions.
She had written it as an epistolary novel, entirely in letters, because that had been the fashion then, and she was now having to work hard to revise it all out of that format.
Of course, she supposed many people wouldn’t look at the idea of being able to publish books as an advantage. Many people would think a husband would be preferable to an anonymous writing career.
However, Jane was endeavoring to think positively about her situation.
After the first meeting with Byron, they all discussed it over dinner with their mother, Mrs. Austen. She was also named Cassandra. Jane’s elder sister had been named for her.
“I have heard only awful things about that man,” said their mother, contemplating her peas. “However, I am dreadfully sorry to have missed his call, I must say. What was he like?”
“He has a limp,” said Cassandra, taking a sip of wine. “I think it is from some childhood illness or some such.”
“A club foot, yes,” said Jane. “But it wasn’t very noticeable, I didn’t think.”
“He sat down much of the time,” said Cassandra. “He brought his married mistress with him, did we tell you that?”
“You did,” said Mrs. Austen. “But that’s what I hear about him. I hear that he’s positively shameless. He’s exactly like that Childe Harold in that poem of his, reckless and wild and living without any restraint.”
“He did giggle rather a lot,” said Jane, with a shrug. “I suppose that wasn’t restrained.”
“Well, have either of you read the poem?” said Mrs. Austen.
Jane cut her mutton.
Cassandra sipped more of her wine.
“I haven’t, of course,” said Mrs. Austen.
“I hear it’s rather lengthy, and it’s not even finished, that he has only come out with the first two cantos.
Of course, I was never like your father, reading all those novels and that.
I much rather would have a bit of scripture to read, maybe some classic play or the like. ”
“Everyone has read it,” said Jane. “Positively everyone.”
“Well, not me,” said Mrs. Austen. “Was it really Lady Caroline Lamb?”
“Oh yes,” said Cassandra. “She did not give us her name, but of that, there can be no doubt. And I have already heard gossip of his being overly associated with her, and it is positively shameless indeed for him to be cavorting with her under our roof. She is a married woman, after all.”
“Positively shameless,” agreed Mrs. Austen.
“He’s wretched,” pronounced Jane. “I did not admit to having written anything, and I doubt we’ll ever see him again.”
BUT INDEED THEY did see him, only the next day.
Jane heard the sound of someone pounding on the door, and then the door opening, and then a maid calling out, “Excuse me, sir, it is customary to wait for the door to be answered before rushing into a house!”
Jane was upstairs in the house, spending the morning reworking First Impressions. She came down the steps and there was Lord Byron, eyes wide, clothes rather askew—his jacket and waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat untied, his boots muddy.
“Miss Austen,” he said. “It is a matter of some urgency. I need your assistance.”
“Pardon me,” she said, alighting from the bottom step, “but am I to understand that you have just forced your way into my house?”
“I know, it’s highly irregular,” he said. “But the matter, as I have just said, is urgent.”
“I’m surprised you’re even awake at this hour of the morning,” she said. “You seem like the type who lies in until noon.”
“Yes, well, it is rather difficult to sleep when people are trying to hang you, so I suppose that’s why I’m up and moving.”
“Hang you?” said Jane. “What are you talking about?”
“All right, here it is,” said Lord Byron. “You know that I was here, meeting you, yesterday, and that I can’t have been doing anything else.”
Jane furrowed her brow. “I am ever so confused in this moment, my lord, I must say.”
“You do know it,” he insisted. “You don’t deny that I was here. Oh, and your sister, she can confirm it as well. In addition, the servants!”
“Yes, I suppose, but what does that have to do with anything at all, especially with the threat of being hung?” she said. She thought about it. “Hanged?”
He pointed at her. “In several moments, some men are going to knock upon this door, and you need to tell them exactly that, that I was here, and that I can’t have—”
A banging on the door interrupted him.
Jane cleared her throat.
The maid who had answered the door, who had been watching all of this with wide eyes, looked at Jane questioningly.
“Yes, go ahead, Nellie,” said Jane. “Answer it.”
Nellie hesitated a moment, looking the disheveled Byron over, and then she opened the door.
There were a number of men out there, in fact, and Jane recognized some of them from various activities in town, balls and the like, and others she did not, being that they were not the sort who would be at balls. There had to be ten or fifteen of them. They all looked angry.
“Send him out,” called one of the men at the back of the throng, and the cry was taken up by others, who all called it out as well. “Send him out, send him out!”
Jane pushed forward so that she was in front of Nellie, and she addressed the crowd.
“I must apologize, good sirs, but there is no conceivable way that I can make room for all of you in my house, I’m afraid.
If you’ve come to visit, I must insist that you come in smaller groups over a span of time, so that I might be able to better accommodate you. ”
A man in the front, one that Jane recognized as Mr. Eves, owner of the inn in town, stepped forward.
“Miss Austen, we are only here for that wretch of a man who is hiding in your house. We know he’s here.
He made a great deal of racket about how he’d come here and you would tell us that he couldn’t have hurt Anne.
We, however, are quite certain that he did, and we are going to do what needs to be done to that man. ”
Jane licked her lips, her mind spinning. “And what needs to be done, Mr. Eves, for he is rather convinced you mean to hang him?”
“Well, that’s what should be done with a man who does what he did,” said Mr. Eves. “But I don’t want to trouble your delicate sensibilities, ma’am.”
Jane pressed her lips together. “Do you have any idea who that man is?”
“Don’t do that,” called Byron from inside the house. “I beg you, Miss Austen, really, you have no idea what it’s like to be instantaneously famous. If everyone knows I’m here, then it will be a disaster.”
“I see, well, I suppose you’d like to be killed, then,” said Jane to Byron. To Mr. Eves, “That man is Lord Byron, the author of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”
“What?” said Mr. Eves, eyes wide.
“At the very least,” said Jane, “you can’t go about stringing up members of the peerage, can you, Mr. Eves?”
Mr. Eves bowed his head. “I suppose not.” He turned around to the gathered men and raised his voice. “Back to town, boys!”
The men protested.
“Who’s to answer for what happened to poor Anne, then?” yelled one.
“What did happen to Anne?” said Jane. “Are we talking about Anne Seward?”
“Aye,” said Mr. Eves.
Anne Seward’s father had owned a tavern and—upon his death—Anne herself had taken over the overseeing of it.
She had done this with the assistance of a male servant the family had employed, a man named Mr. Hardy, a man who was quite broad and quite strong.
Mr. Hardy was silent and stern and a bit formidable.
He and Miss Seward ran the tavern, which gave way to various whispers about the proprieties of such an arrangement.
But together, Miss Seward and Mr. Hardy kept the place going.
“What’s happened to her?” said Jane, again.
“She’s been strangled, that’s what,” said Mr. Eves. “And that man in there, lord or no, did it.”
“I did not!” cried Byron stoutly. “Couldn’t have. I was here with the Misses Austens, after all.”
“All night?” called a man from outside.
“Tell them, Miss Austen,” said Byron.
She turned on him, shaking her head. How dare he demand she say he was here all night?
“Please,” said Byron. “They’re going to string me up else.”
“They most certainly are not,” said Jane. “Off with you,” she said to Mr. Eves and the others. “You cannot string up a baron.”
And then she shut the door in their faces.