Chapter Three
LORD BYRON WAS attacking biscuits like a starving man.
Jane sat opposite him, thinking that soon enough, Cassandra and her mother would be back from their morning walk, and Cassandra might not be pleased that there were biscuits to be had at all, given that she had wished no sweets in the house.
But Jane herself had asked them to be prepared, thinking it an oversight if they had visitors.
She had not been expecting Lord Byron to come back, of course.
Once her mother and sister returned, however, they would certainly focus on the matter at hand, not the biscuits.
And the matter at hand was determining what was to be done with this man.
She and Byron were in the sitting room, the same sitting room where he’d come to see her before.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Is there any point in asking if you did strangle Anne Seward?”
“I couldn’t have done that. I was here.”
“You were not here, and we both know it, and I don’t know why you’re insisting you were,” said Jane.
He looked up, a bit sheepish.
“It sounds as if someone found Miss Seward’s body this morning.”
“That would be me,” said Byron.
“Where’s your…” Jane cleared her throat. “Where’s Lady Caroline?”
“Oh, she had to go back to London, clearly. She could not stay overnight in the country with me. Her husband wouldn’t stand for that.”
Jane snorted.
Byron sighed. “I suppose I could have convinced her otherwise, but once you’re overly brazen with women in that way, they tend to want you to do…
things with them, protective things, to act as if you’ve taken ownership of them or what-have-you, and every time I try this, it goes rather badly, I must say. ”
“Ownership?” She was very sharp.
He ate a biscuit. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
She sneered at him. “I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly the type of man you are.”
“Yes, I suppose,” he said, leaning back and surveying her. “I’ve been uncharitably compared that Willoughby fellow of yours on more than one occasion.”
“You said you hadn’t read it.”
“Everyone else has, Miss Austen,” he said. “I suppose you haven’t read mine either.”
She looked away.
“Oho! Truly?” He was smiling, and she could hear it in his tone even though she wasn’t looking at him.
“I believe I said rather cutting things about it when I saw you last,” she said. “It’s very bad.”
“Don’t hold back there, Miss Austen. Tell me exactly what you think.”
“Oh, I don’t care about your poem in which you whine for stanzas upon stanzas and pages upon pages about how terrible it is to be a wealthy, independent man of means,” she said.
“Chiefly, what I am concerned about right now, my lord, is why you are hiding in my house and eating all of my biscuits and being accused of murder!”
“I haven’t murdered anyone,” he said. “And I am not really a man of means. I think I have to sell an entire estate, actually—”
“Oh, to have more than one estate to sell—”
“And I also haven’t had any breakfast. The biscuits are quite good, you see.”
She rolled her eyes. “How was it you came to discover Miss Seward’s body? I suppose you took rooms at an inn in town, is that way the way of it? Miss Seward’s tavern should not have even been open yet. Why were you there?”
“Well, I may have…” He gestured with the biscuit. “Truly, these are excellent biscuits. My compliments to your cook.”
“You may have what? Don’t try to writhe out of this. You’ve come to me for protection and you are even now under my roof, and I demand you answer my questions.”
“It’s only that it’s not entirely proper to speak about with a woman like you, I suppose,” he said.
“Oh, I see,” said Jane. “There are those rumors about her, after all.”
“No, I didn’t—” He gave her a look. “No, I was not with Miss Seward in that way.”
Jane surveyed him.
“I promise,” he said. “I swear on all that is holy. I simply drank too much last night. I remember staggering about in the tavern and trying to find my way out, but I got lost wandering about in the hallways in the back of the place and then I just lay down and drifted off, and they must have shut the whole place down with me in it. So, when morning came and I awakened, I went looking again for a way out of the place, but I came upon Miss Seward instead.”
“I see,” said Jane, regarding him. “Why is this behavior so very improper to impart to me?”
“I don’t know. You’re very…” He squared his shoulders. “You have a sort of disapproving air about you, I must say, and you’re rather matronly—”
“Matronly,” she repeated.
“Look here, you’re older than me—”
“I suppose, but really, my lord, has anyone ever explained to you that when you are in a person’s house, asking, really begging, for their hospitality and assistance, that it is often not a terrible idea to be a bit on the complimentary side?”
“Is saying that you’re matronly an insult? What are you? Five and thirty?”
“Six and thirty,” she muttered, glowering at him.
“All right, then,” he said. He ate another biscuit. “Well, if you’d like me to apologize, I am sorry. I’m terribly sorry. It’s a very attractive sort of matronliness, truly. You have a way about you, and I obviously like you, or I wouldn’t have come back here to ask—really beg—for your assistance.”
She lifted her chin and looked him over and sighed, and she might have said more, but she was actually trying rather hard not to laugh. He was sort of charming in a way, wasn’t he? He was altogether awful, truly, but he also had a knack for uttering an amusing turn of phrase.
“Can we go back to the exceedingly traumatizing way I started my day?” he said.
“It was rather upsetting, let me tell you, a dead woman first thing in the morning. I may have made rather a lot of noise. Everyone came running and there she was, very dead, and there I was, standing over her, and then they chased me, and it was all quite village mob of them, and I ran here.”
“You ran two miles from town here with a mob on your heels?”
“Why do you think I need to eat so many biscuits?”
She sighed again. And then she heard the sound of the door shutting downstairs and she sprang up to her feet. “That will be my mother and Cassandra.”
“Oh, I haven’t met your mother,” he said, looking down at himself. “Pity I look like this, having been up all night drinking too much and everything.” He made a face. “I suppose being accused of murder isn’t going to ingratiate me to her, either.”
Jane stood, staring at the doorway, and Cassandra appeared and their mother behind them and Byron stood up and wiped crumbs out of his cravat and said, “Lovely to see you again, Miss Austen.” He smiled at Jane.
“You’ll have to be Miss Jane now, I suppose, so we don’t get everything confused. Lovely name, Jane.”
She rolled her eyes. “I notice there’s never some propriety that demands we call a man by his first name, of course.”
“My first name is George,” he said. “It’s not nearly as lovely as Jane.”
“That sort of thing, George,” she said, “is not going to work on me.”
He smirked. “Ah, well, I suppose I can see that.” He tilted his head to one side. “Perhaps it might have worked better if I hadn’t called you matronly?”
“Is anyone going to introduce our guest to me?” said Mrs. Austen.
“Mother, this is Lord Byron,” said Jane. “Lord Byron, my mother.”
“Highly irregular, truly,” said Cassandra as she came into the room. “You did arrive yesterday after never being properly introduced to anybody at all.”
“You don’t know that,” said Byron. “Perhaps I presented myself to your brother—your son, madam—first, before coming here.”
“Oh, if so, Edward would have come here to present you to us,” said Cassandra.
Byron’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, I suppose.”
“There are biscuits made up, I see,” said Cassandra.
“Well, it did seem as if it was a bit of an oversight, having nothing sweet in the entire household,” said Jane. “I know you wish to reduce, but you don’t need to, and anyway, when we had surprise visitors yesterday, we all saw exactly what the consequences of such things are—”
“You really don’t need to reduce,” said Lord Byron, winking at Cassandra.
“Have a biscuit. They are divine, I tell you, though I may only be saying this because I’ve had nothing to eat all day and my stomach is churning with a great deal too much strong drink from last night and I saw a dead woman first thing upon waking. ”
“A what?” said Cassandra.
“I say, you are quite familiar upon very little acquaintance, are you not, young man?” said Mrs. Austen.
“Apologies,” said Lord Byron. “I am entirely out of sorts, in all truth. I am subject to a great deal of anxiety in the present moment, and I am not at all certain that I am not going to be hung by a group of ruffians. That is the entire reason I am here, of course. I had nowhere else to go. Seeing as Miss Jane and I here are both authors, however, I knew we’d get on well together, and here we are, after all, so very familiar upon very little acquaintance, just as I predicted. ”
Jane rubbed her forehead. “You are familiar, sir. We are tolerating your behavior.”
“I’m quite used to that, I must say. Being tolerated, that is. It’s my lot in life.” He ate another biscuit. “I must say it is a bit disconcerting to eat biscuits alone. I shall have them all devoured and none of you will have had any at all, and that will make me look like a dreadful house guest.”
“Will it.” Jane was sarcastic and sharp.
He smirked at her.
“It seems to me that everyone is behaving frightfully,” said Mrs. Austen.
“Apologies, again,” said Byron. “In all honesty, I do get that same accusation from absolutely everybody, so I suppose there must be some truth to it.”
“All I mean,” said Mrs. Austen, “is that there are subjects being bandied about such as dead bodies and hanging, and everyone keeps returning to the subject of biscuits!”
“Oh,” said Byron, nodding.
“Indeed,” said Jane, sinking down to sit again. “You really haven’t explained it all, my lord.”