Chapter Seven
JANE STAYED FOR the rest of the dinner, after all, but once it was done, she was intent on getting back home.
Byron, who seemed to have drunk too much wine with dinner and was looser, his gestures more exaggerated, volunteered to escort her home, and she protested, all the way out to the stables, that she did not need an escort.
She probably could have walked the distance from Mr. Beaumont’s house back to her own, but she was glad not to have to do so, not in the dark, not all by herself.
A ride on horseback, though, would take very little time at all, and she was confident that she need not have anyone fussing over her, least of all a very drunk Byron.
Byron told the stable hands to saddle two horses, and Jane protested again.
“I really don’t need you to accompany me, you know,” she said.
“You needn’t worry that I shall try to come inside with you or something,” said Byron. “I shan’t.”
“No, that is not why I protest,” she said.
It wasn’t. She wanted a little space and time to herself, though.
When she got home, she would be pestered by Cassandra and, to a lesser extent, her mother.
Pestered wasn’t really the right word, Jane supposed.
It wasn’t fair to call it that. Cassandra would be rightly concerned about why Jane had disappeared after claiming a short turn around the grounds and then sent a letter back saying she’d be gone for dinner.
Cassandra would also be understandably curious.
So, once Jane was inside the door of her house, she’d be answering questions.
She wanted this short ride back home to be one of silence, wherein she could gather her thoughts and put herself back together. Most especially, she wanted to come up with an answer as to why she had done this.
What had possessed her to go gallivanting all over with Lord Byron of all people?
“So,” Byron was saying, “there is some other reason you protest?”
“I suppose I should simply like a bit of time to myself to get my thoughts in order,” she said.
“You can’t expect we’re going to be speaking to each other while riding horseback,” he said.
No, she knew they wouldn’t, but he would be there, and she suspected, somehow, that Byron’s presence would mean that she wouldn’t be able to think clearly.
But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t doing all of this because of Byron, at least she didn’t think so.
“I can’t let a woman ride home alone in the dark,” said Byron. “It wouldn’t be chivalrous of me.”
“Do you care much about chivalry?” she said pointedly.
“I’ll see you home,” he insisted. “But if you like, I’ll ride behind you several paces and give you a bit of space. Would that suffice?”
With anyone else, she would assure them that it wasn’t necessary, but she only nodded at Byron, grateful that he would offer a small solution. “Thank you.”
On the ride home, Jane thought about the question that Byron had put to her yesterday. Which sister from Sense and Sensibility was she? Marianne or Elinor Dashwood?
The truth was, of course, that she was both of them. They were both her characters, and she had written them herself.
The story asked the reader to identify with Elinor over Marianne, Jane thought, and she supposed that Elinor, the sister with more sense, was the one she hoped she was more like.
But if you looked at her and Cassandra, it was easy to graft Jane onto Marianne.
Jane had never taken up with a man like the Mr. Willoughby in her book, but she had witnessed it often enough.
There had been precious little of what passed for romance in Jane’s life.
A short little flirtation when she was much younger, a marriage proposal she thought better of, dances, things of that nature.
She had never been in love.
No one had ever been in love with her.
And she now knew that wasn’t going to happen to her.
She would sometimes say this aloud to people, and people would always say positively cruel things back to her about it, things that Jane knew these people didn’t mean as cruel at all, but thought were reassuring.
They would say that Jane didn’t know what the future held in store and that she might hold out hope.
They would tell some story about a spinster in her thirties who made a love match.
They would trot out trite sayings about how it was never too late and things of that nature.
Jane would be forced to smile and agree with them, and say, “Oh, yes, perhaps my fortunes will change.” But she knew they would not. So, she had mostly stopped saying this aloud to people.
Because what she really needed was not for people to tell her to keep hope alive, but for people to explain to her how it was that she came to terms, really came to terms, with being a woman whose identity wasn’t formed by her attachment to some man or other.
How did Jane really accept the fact that she was just Jane Austen?
For so much of Jane’s life, she hadn’t been that, anyway, she’d been Cassandra’s little sister.
As a small girl, she had adored Cassandra, worshiped her like a goddess, her older sister, who was kind and pretty and perfect.
Jane had kicked up such a fuss, in fact, that she’d been sent off to school with Cassandra, even though Jane was too young for such a thing.
And Cassandra, the eldest, the prettiest, was the one who had been in love, who had been engaged to be married to Tom Fowle, who had done everything right, but had been scorned by fortune.
Is that what I think of myself? Jane wondered as she rode home in front of Byron. Do I think that I did something wrong and that’s why I haven’t got a husband?
She knew that wasn’t the case. She had not. Life was just this way sometimes. Indifferent. Brutal. Painful.
It wasn’t always this way, though, and she knew that.
Still, the fact that she could acknowledge that life was not easy was the best bit of evidence that she was not Marianne.
I am not following Byron around because of some kind of infatuation, she said to herself, firmly.
Of course, she really was sort of infatuated with him, she had to admit that to herself. He was too young for her, too rich for her, and too much of a scoundrel for her. The idea of marrying someone like Byron was entirely out of the question.
He was too young to be looking for a marriage, anyway. Men of his class and station often waited until they were Jane’s age, ironically, while women Jane’s age were hopelessly too old for anyone to want them.
But when he did, he would marry for respectability and money, Jane was sure of it.
Byron had made lots of comments about not having money.
That was common enough amongst the peerage, truly, being titled but penniless.
Byron would want an heiress of some kind, someone whose wealth he could pilfer himself.
And he already had a reputation of being less than proper and so he would want someone who would make him look better.
Jane was not and could not ever be considered for the role.
I don’t want to marry a man like that, she thought.
She did not. The infatuation, it wasn’t that sort of infatuation.
So, that was, perhaps, the danger.
Because, would a man like Byron do that with her? Would he have a sordid affair with her?
Yes, in an instant, no thought, no questions asked. She did not get the impression that Byron was very choosy about that sort of thing, but men never were.
Women, on the other hand, were not afforded the option of not being choosy. They must be quite careful about which men they associated with, for if they were not, it was calamity. There was much more risk in it for women than there was for men.
You’re not considering this, she scolded herself.
Well, she was considering it, but she wouldn’t do it.
Jane had never so much as kissed a man. She likely never would, and this sometimes seemed a bit of a pity to her, that she would be denied all of the experience of it, simply because it wasn’t considered proper.
When she was younger, she had been much more inclined to follow the rules.
Now that she was older, she felt differently.
So, perhaps, in the right situation, with the right man, and if such a thing were quite plainly kept secret from absolutely everyone—most especially from her mother and Cassandra—then maybe she would indulge.
He’s entirely the wrong man for that, she thought to herself.
Even so, the infatuation was there, and she must be on her guard, must make sure that she did not let herself slide into Byron’s clutches.
When she arrived home, he helped her down from her horse, and he said he’d take this one back with him, and she wondered if his intention in all of this was to keep his horses together.
He had to touch her to help her down, and he touched her in too many places. He didn’t just clutch her hand but he put his other hand on her waist and it was heavy and male and large, and she should have told him to move it, but she didn’t.
Instead, she stood there, next to the horse, clutching his hand, looking up at him in the darkness while he searched her gaze. What he was looking for there, she wasn’t certain.
“You have to be honest with me.” Her voice was hushed. “If you killed her, I need to know.”
“You think, if I had actually murdered a woman, I would simply confess it to you because we are standing together in the cover of darkness?” His lips quirked into a smile.
“Can you not deny it, then?”
“As you say, Miss Jane, my memory of the night is patchy. I can’t say what I did.” He was rueful. He looked over her head, now, not into her eyes.
She squeezed his hand. “Well, it was likely poison. That’s, as you say, cold and calculated. So it would not point to being something one did while being too drunk.”
His gaze returned to her. “Just so,” he said softly. “Thank you for that.”
She smiled at him.
He smiled back.
Then, abruptly, he let go of her. “Quite sorry. I don’t know what I was doing there.” He backed away, brushing at his clothes. “You’re back home, safe and sound. I suppose I shall take my leave of you.”
“Yes, good night,” she said.
“Good night.” He went back to mount his horse.
“Lord Byron?” she said.
He looked up. “Yes?”
“What you said before, about coming to call upon me and the two of us going to town to ask more questions? You didn’t really mean that, did you?”
“I thought you didn’t want to accompany me,” he said. “I thought you didn’t wish to help, that you wanted your life planned out and not all full of horrid surprises.”
“Well, if we are planning it now…”
His smile widened. “I shall come early, then.”
“And for you, that means, what? Eleven-thirty?”
He laughed, climbing up onto his horse. “Likely about that, yes.”
“WHAT I DON’T understand, however,” said Cassandra, who was pacing in the sitting room while Jane sat down on a couch and looked on, “is why you’ve agreed to help him tomorrow?”
Jane didn’t really know why she’d done that either. She did not think that she was trying to angle herself into some kind of sordid affair with Lord Byron. She wasn’t even enticed by that idea, infatuation notwithstanding. “I think it’s the puzzle of it, actually, as awful as that sounds.”
“The puzzle of what?” said Cassandra.
“Of what happened to poor Miss Seward,” said Jane.
“That’s why it’s awful, of course. Turning someone’s death into a puzzle to solve, it’s abominable, but I do think that’s why I’m drawn to it.
Oh, Cassandra, there are ever so many ragged edges to all of it.
Anne Seward may have had a lover, but we don’t know who it is.
Mr. Hardy may be lying about whether he was there last night.
We don’t know if she was poisoned or not.
I need to sew these all up, and then, once I have, I’ll be done with it. ”
“Well,” said Cassandra, “I have to admit, it’s all very bewildering.”
“It is that,” said Jane. She shrugged. “Anyway, likely, Byron will drink too much tonight with Beaumont, and then not come tomorrow at all, and my expectations will be dashed.”
“Or you could just go out and solve the puzzle of it yourself, without him,” said Cassandra.
“Oh, of course,” said Jane. “And that would be just as good, all around. Why, I don’t even care if he comes by or not.”
Cassandra rounded on her, fixing her with a look full of a mixture of concern, horror, and the worst part—pity.
Jane looked away.
Maybe it was part of the reason to write the books, in the end. If you couldn’t have love in your actual life, you could imagine love. Writing about falling in love, it had to be nearly as good as actually doing it.