Chapter Six #2
“Well, you know I’m good at keeping secrets,” said Byron.
“I suppose that’s true,” Beaumont said immediately, as if he were reassured.
What secrets? Jane wondered. In all truth, she would not think that Byron was good at keeping secrets. He didn’t seem the tight-lipped type at all.
“So, here it is,” said Beaumont. “There was a time when it may have been true, but not in some years now.”
“I see,” said Byron. “Well, we thought, with your wife the size of a house—”
“One does not seek the company of other women when one’s wife is with child!” cried Beaumont. “Heavens, what do you take me for, George?”
Byron snickered. “I doubt you want me to answer that, Thomas.”
Beaumont snickered as well. “Oh, indeed, do not answer it at all. I suppose I know what you take me for.”
“Oh yes,” said Byron, his voice low and nearly musical. “I take you for all manner of things.”
Beaumont cleared his throat. He pointed at Byron with his knife. “You stop that, now, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Apologies,” said Byron, who didn’t sound the least bit sorry.
Was he simply like this with everyone, then? What was it about this man? Jane resolved, for the eighth time, to hate him.
“Well, to get back onto the subject we’ve wandered away from,” said Byron, “why did your affair with Miss Seward end?”
“It wasn’t truly what I would call an affair,” said Beaumont.
“Here is the way of it. When I was growing up here, a boy, in this house, she was the daughter of Mr. Seward, who ran that tavern, and her mother had died when she was quite young, and there was no one there besides her father and the servants he employed at the tavern, and we all know what those sorts of women and men are like. So, she grew up rather wild, I might say, and…” Beaumont sighed.
“Well, there was something about that, perhaps you know what I mean? There’s something about a woman like that.
You wouldn’t want to marry her or get children on her or anything like that, but you still…
you find her… I don’t know, she’s like a wild filly you wish to ride or something, do you know what I am saying? ”
“Entirely,” said Byron.
Jane shook her head, wishing she were, in fact, not listening to this conversation. She stabbed a piece of meat with her fork and shoved it in her mouth. She chewed.
“Anyway, that was a long time ago,” said Beaumont. “Long before, well, anything. Before I met you, before any of that, and before I married.”
“You married awfully young,” said Byron.
“When you know, you know,” said Beaumont with a shrug. “But that’s something you won’t understand, I don’t suppose, George. You couldn’t settle down with one person unless they chained you to the bedposts.”
“I could,” said Byron, affronted.
Beaumont laughed. “Anyway, there was some affection between Annie and me. It’s borne of such a thing, after all.”
“And to be clear, such a thing is an adolescent association of some sort?” said Byron.
“Quite,” said Beaumont. “She was wild, as I say. Any girl with any sort of proper female oversight would have been prevented from such a thing, but she wasn’t, and I suppose I took advantage.
But she was going to be taken advantage of, one way or the other, if you know what I mean.
If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. ”
Jane stuffed even more meat in her mouth to keep herself from making noise. She could not believe the things the men were saying to each other.
“Right, then,” said Byron. “So, you didn’t see her last night. You would not have climbed a ladder up into her bedroom window?”
“What?” said Beaumont.
“Yes, it’s quite curious. We found a ladder there, the window open.”
“So someone climbed up there, beat her to death, and then climbed back out?” said Beaumont.
“We don’t know,” said Byron. “And she wasn’t beaten to death. There aren’t any marks on her body.”
“No marks?” said Beaumont.
Jane realized they had just up and left without getting any information from the surgeon, assuming that Mr. Hardy had even summoned him.
She wasn’t pleased with herself. She would normally not have been distracted from that, but Byron was distracting, she found.
She made a noise in the back of her throat, one of regret.
Beaumont turned to her in horror, as if he had just now remembered she was there. “Miss Austen, about, erm, Miss Seward and me, when I was young—”
“I shan’t repeat this, Mr. Beaumont,” said Jane. “I honestly wish I hadn’t heard any of it. It’s appalling.”
Beaumont drew himself up. “Now, see here, I was quite young, and I had made no promises to anyone at that point, and she was quite amenable, and I don’t see what’s so appalling about it.”
“Oh, don’t you.” Jane set down her knife and fork and fixed him with a glare. This was a point in time when she should probably endeavor not to be so sharp, not to point out the follies of humanity within Beaumont himself. This was definitely a time. She drew in a breath.
“I don’t!” Beaumont said, nodding for emphasis.
“Well, there you are, then.” Jane let out the breath, noisily, and picked her utensils up. She began to saw at her meat.
“I don’t suppose you’d enlighten me,” said Beaumont.
Keep your counsel, Jane, she urged herself. Keep it to yourself. Do not say anything, not a thing, be quiet. “Well, it’s the whole bit with the wild filly business, I suppose, in the end. I am often simply horrified by the way men see us.”
“I would never speak of you that way, Miss Austen, to be clear,” said Beaumont. “You are nothing like a wild filly.”
“Thank you for that,” said Jane, faintly sarcastic. “I hesitate to ask what I would be seen as. In fact, do not tell me. To be clear, it is that you see a woman like an animal.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it like that,” said Beaumont. “It’s just a turn of phrase. We compare men to animals all the time.”
“Mmm, do we? Service animals?” said Jane. “Animals that we keep domesticated on our properties, saddled, bridled, pulling carriages, doing duties, that sort of thing? Is that what we compare men to?”
Beaumont inclined his head. “I suppose I see your point. But that was precisely what was admirable about Annie, you see? That she would not be domesticated.”
“Yes, but that is not why you wanted her. You did not, in fact, want her. There’s a certain sort of woman that men want, and she is a creature who is moldable, biddable, and made entirely for service, and then there’s the rest of us.” Drat, Jane, why did you say that aloud?
Byron chuckled. “This is why I like Miss Austen. Her book, you know, the one about the four women shuffled off into nowhere because they aren’t of use to any men, the one about the women who can’t get any assistance of any kind until some men come along and wish to marry them, it’s quite cutting, in the end, I think.
Most of it goes right over everyone’s head, but—”
“You have read it,” said Jane, looking at him.
“No, Caro just talked incessantly about it,” said Byron, smirking at her.
“Anyway, I certainly haven’t written a book,” said Jane. “Or at least, I haven’t published one.”
“Certainly not,” said Byron.
“This, my lord, is why I can’t see why anyone would think you were good at keeping secrets,” said Jane.
“Perhaps you are more of a wild filly than I might have thought,” said Beaumont.
Jane gave him a positively horrified look. “Do take that back.”
“Of course, madam.” Beaumont had turned bright red.
Then, it was quiet, only the scrape of their knives against their plates.
Beaumont spoke into his carrots. “It’s only that it is rather the nature of things, isn’t it? God created Eve as a helpmeet for Adam. Women are here to…”
“Serve men?” said Jane.
“Complement men,” said Beaumont.
“Well, if that is the case,” said Jane, “that is as it is, I suppose. But if you are one of the women who isn’t much of a complement to anyone, there might be something for us to do, truly.
You have no idea what it is to be a person that society just throws away as unimportant and odd.
You have no idea what it is not to belong. ”
“That’s not true, Miss Jane,” said Byron quietly. “We both do know about that.”
She eyed him, wondering at that. She considered asking more about what he meant, and then discarded the idea.
Something about the way he spoke made her decide to leave any inquiry on the topic.
She drew in a breath and changed the subject.
“Whatever the case, that is not the purpose of this conversation.”
“No?” said Beaumont. “What is?”
“Where did you go after you saw Lord Byron last night?” said Jane. “Did you see Miss Seward?”
“You think I killed her,” said Beaumont.
“This is why I said for me to handle this,” said Byron to her.
Jane rolled her eyes. “You know, I think I’ve had enough to eat.
I think I must take my leave of you both.
I know scurrying out in the midst of dinner is rather irregular, but this entire conversation, you must own, has been highly irregular, and I am simply through with it all. ” She got to her feet.
“I didn’t kill Anne,” said Beaumont. “Is that why you’re running off like this? You don’t wish to eat with a murderer?”
“You didn’t kill her,” said Jane. “Byron didn’t kill her. Mr. Hardy was off wherever he was and that means he didn’t kill her. But something happened to her, and we don’t know what it was.”
“No one’s saying you killed her, Thomas,” said Byron. “But did you see her with anyone?”
“Last night, you mean?”
“Aye,” said Byron.
“I didn’t see her at all. I was only at the tavern briefly,” said Beaumont.
“And Mr. Hardy,” said Jane. “Do they get on? Are they… involved?”
“Oh,” said Beaumont, raising his eyebrows. “You know, she was wild, so I would not put anything past that woman. But near as I know, that was just a business relationship.”
“Who would have a reason to kill her?” said Byron.
“I haven’t any idea,” said Beaumont. “But it must have been someone who didn’t like her, don’t we think?”
“Someone who didn’t like her, perhaps,” said Byron. “Or someone who liked her very much and therefore flew into a passion when she angered him.”
“Not a passion,” said Jane. “Not if it’s poison.”
“Yes, I suppose,” said Byron. “That would be planned. Cold and calculated and well thought-out.”