Chapter 4
When the Gardiners’ carriage crested the South Downs and Elizabeth saw Brighton—and the sea beyond it—both sparkling in the sun, she could not help but gasp. She sent a prayer of thanks to her aunt. To think that she owned property in such a beautiful part of the world was almost beyond belief.
They passed some of the regiment’s encampments as they neared the town—an eye-opening experience.
Row upon row of tents and swarms of raucous redcoats spread out as far as the eye could see.
After that, the town itself was revealed to them, and Elizabeth was enraptured.
It was bustling and bright, with handsome buildings surrounding large open parks where people meandered arm in arm.
It all looked so very new and smart that it seemed more like theatre scenery than a real place.
Mr Gardiner pulled down the carriage window. “Take in a lungful of that sea air, Lizzy. Tell me what you think.”
Elizabeth leant as close to the window as was possible with her young cousin Timothy on her lap and inhaled deeply. The air was salty and unfathomably fresh. “Heavenly,” she said with a sigh.
“’Tis even better down on the beach,” Mrs Gardiner said. “But we shall have to wait a little longer to explore that. Mrs Millhouse’s home is farther away from the centre than yours.”
Mr Gardiner gave Elizabeth a nod. “Not everyone is so fortunate as to own shoreward property, eh?”
The Millhouses’ establishment may not have been close to the beach, but it still had commanding views of the town and surrounding countryside and was uncommonly well appointed.
Elizabeth was given a small but cosy room on the top floor, from which she could see a steep wooded hill with some very promising paths winding beneath the trees.
Mr and Mrs Millhouse were perfectly charming and, all in all, Elizabeth felt confident of a delightful stay, but impatience to see her own house rendered the rest of the afternoon and evening interminably long.
Neither did the next morning bring her any relief, for before she could attend to any business of her own, she and Mrs Gardiner felt obliged to pay a call on the Forsters, with whom Lydia had been permitted to come to Brighton the week before.
Despite all her attempts to shock them with tales of the officers’ exploits, it seemed Lydia herself had not done anything in which Mrs Forster was not complicit, which they agreed on the way back was likely the best for which they could hope.
At long last, after a quiet luncheon with the Millhouses, the time came for Elizabeth and Mr Gardiner to wander down through the town and survey her house.
It was about a half an hour’s walk, and Elizabeth’s anticipation mounted with every step.
They passed through an open grassy area, which her uncle informed her was called the Steyne, and down onto the seafront, where a pebbly beach stretched out as far as the eye could see on either side, while ahead, the sea glistened all the way to the horizon.
The seafront properties stood far back from the beach, a wide promenade separating the two, along which fashionably dressed men and women proudly paraded.
It was quite unlike anything Elizabeth had imagined: neither quaint, like Lyme Regis, where she had visited as a girl, nor busy, like London’s ports, nor rugged, like the pictures she had seen of other coastal towns.
It was open, elegant, and grand. As though someone had scooped up Mayfair and deposited it by the sea.
She let out a long, disbelieving sigh. “I never truly understood the rage about Brighton until now. What a place!”
“Indeed,” her uncle said with a knowing smile. “Marine Parade is this way, I believe.”
“Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked. “These houses seem awfully large.”
“You remember the sum I mentioned, I trust? You have not inherited a fisherman’s cottage, Lizzy.”
Nevertheless, she continued to think her uncle must be mistaken as they passed example after example of glorious architecture.
From the descriptions in the legal papers, she had expected a dilapidated shell of a property, but the buildings here could not have been grander.
Connected in a long terrace, they were all four stories tall apiece, with bay windows and wrought iron balconies looking out to sea.
She began to think that even if her property was completely derelict, she would not complain at such a delightful situation.
This was a fortunate conclusion to have come to before they reached the house, for it saved her from being utterly crestfallen when they eventually came upon it.
There was no mistaking it; the smashed window on the third floor rather gave it away, as did the rusty railings, the cracked stucco, and the bird’s nest on one of the higher windowsills.
If those had not been indication enough, there was the heap of smashed roof tiles at the foot of the basement steps, the dirty sheet hanging across the large bay window next to the front door, and the paint that was flaking off every window frame.
For a moment, she could do nothing but gape at it in shocked silence. Her voice quavered a little when she did speak. “I—I suppose it is not so very bad.”
“I know you are being brave, but believe it or not, I agree,” her uncle replied. “Shall we have a look inside, see what we are really dealing with?”
With a nervous nod, Elizabeth climbed the front steps.
The key fitted and the handle turned, but the door would not budge; Mr Gardiner was required to barge it open with his shoulder to get it wide enough for them to squeeze inside.
The impediment turned out to be a roll of carpet, but Elizabeth paid it little heed as she stepped over it.
Her attention had been stolen by the scene before her as she passed through into the vestibule.
The space was far larger than she had guessed from the front elevation.
Alabaster pillars supported an arched entrance into a sun-drenched atrium, around which wound a stone staircase that seemed to climb all the way to the heavens as it wound upwards out of view.
Sculpted plasterwork blanketed the ceiling and surrounded the doorways.
All of it was damaged, but one could still see what the effect must once have been.
“This must have been spectacular in its heyday,” she said with awe, twirling slowly as she took it all in. It was necessary for her to twirl slowly, for there was otherwise a high risk of tripping over the rubble of broken furniture, crumbled plaster, abandoned tools, and smashed ornaments.
Something crashed loudly behind her. With a yelp, she whipped around—duly tripping on a toppled bust—to see her uncle holding a door handle. The door to which it had been attached moments before was now lying flat on the ground before him, small plumes of dust rising up around its edges.
He winced contritely. “I do apologise. I did not realise it was only propped up.”
Elizabeth laughed lightly and shook her head.
“It looks as though quite a lot of things are only propped up.” She walked past him, over the recumbent door, into the next room.
It was like a cave; the high ceiling and want of furniture meant that every little sound ricocheted wildly about, while the sheet hung over the window cast everything into a deep gloom.
“Can you recall what it said in the papers about how long the house has been unoccupied?” she asked as she walked to the window. “It must have been mentioned, but I confess, I did not pay much heed, for I never truly considered the consequences of an abandoned property.”
She did recall the part that had explained the legal tangle which led to the abandonment—a cousin had tried to argue that the house ought to have been left to him.
Aunt Bennet had not wished to invest in the upkeep of a place that might eventually be given to another.
Evidently, she had eventually prevailed, but the battle must have waged for some years with the property standing empty all the while.
“I cannot recall either, but looking at it, I should guess a decade at least,” her uncle replied.
Elizabeth gripped the sheet and gave it a sharp tug.
It gave up its hold without resistance, billowing to the floor in a cloud of dust and saturating the room with sunlight.
She was at once delighted and aghast. The room was beautifully proportioned and perfectly designed to make the most of the spectacular view—but it seemed to be clinging by its very last nail to any structural integrity.
It looked as though something exceedingly heavy had fallen through the house, leaving gaping holes in both the ceiling and the floor.
She walked as close to the edge of the void as she dared and peered in. “Oh, what a shame!” A pianoforte lay in a mangled heap below.
Mr Gardiner took hold of her arm and pulled her back from the brink. “Come away before it is you who falls through the floor!”
This pattern was repeated in every room through which they walked.
They were by turns delighted by the proportions and elegance of the house, then horrified by the degradation it had suffered.
There was some evidence of trespassers, with the windows to the basement boarded up to show for it, but most of the damage seemed to have been caused by time and disuse.
When her uncle decided they had better not venture to the uppermost floor until the stairs to it had been reinforced, Elizabeth said despondently, “I do not think I have ever seen a house so neglected. I cannot help but feel sorry for it. For such a gorgeous home to have been left to go to ruin seems shameful. I wish I could be the one to return it to its former glory…but perhaps Papa was right. This feels beyond my capabilities.”
Mr Gardiner gave her a sympathetic smile. “Do not make any hasty decisions until we have spoken to Mr Mullens.”
Mr Mullens was one of the men Agatha had instructed to carry out the work, and her uncle had arranged a meeting with him two days hence.
It would be Elizabeth’s first opportunity of dealing with those labourers her father was convinced would cheat her.
She had been determined not to be intimidated, but having seen the nature of the beast, she felt vastly ill-equipped to discern the difference between necessary and extraneous work.
She picked up a piece of plaster from the nearest windowsill—a decorative spiral with a trace of gilding still visible in the crevices.
It made her think of Agatha, old and frail but with traces of a long-lost magnificence still visible to those who took the time to look.
She tucked it into her reticule and took a deep breath.
“You are right. It is far too soon to admit defeat.”