“Naturally,” I murmured.
“You are wondering about the death of the Princess,” Manon surmised. “It piques the interest, no? How such a one — with everything at her command, all the world in her favour — should do herself a violence. It is the artist in you. I perfectly understand.”
“The artist?” I repeated. I had never considered of myself in such exalted terms.
“La romancière,” she explained. “Madame Henri, she has told me of this book you have written. I have a great envy to read it one day soon, when the pages they are printed.”
There are times when the charming Eliza is too much of a rattle. “I had not wished my authorship of the novel to be known,” I faltered. “It is a great secret, Manon—”
“But of course,” she replied. “You should rather ride the horse bareback at Astley’s Amphitheater, non, than be seen to ridicule all your acquaintance so acutely with your pen? I shall say nothing, me. I shall be dumb as a post. But all the same, I comprehend your interest in the dead one et ses affaires. It is in the nature of writers to paint life in all its violence and glory. Naturally you wish to know why it was necessary that the Princess should die.”
The branch of candles on my dressing table sent flickering shadows across Manon’s face, but her eyes were firmly fixed on the task at hand — the taming of the short front curls about my temples — and her countenance was serene, as tho’ she talked only of the weather, and not my soul. It is true, nonetheless, that all my life I have wished to plumb the workings of the human heart — have sought to know the inner yearnings of my fellows through word and observation — and have found a sort of command of nature, in my ability to dispose of my acquaintance with the swift composition of an acid line. Was it mere vulgar curiosity, then, that animated my thoughts on the subject of the maid and her mistress? Was I to be self-condemned as no better than the Comtesse d’Entraigues, with her endless rapacity for gossip?
An image of Evgenia Tscholikova as I had glimpsed her in life — the earnest gaze fixed upon Lord Castlereagh’s box — and the idea of the lady grown rigid in a pool of her own blood on the London street, arose before me as tho’ reflected in the shifting candlelight. An echo of the maid Druschka’s words, guttural with misery, rang in my ears: It’s all lies. All lies.
“What do you know of the Princess?” I enquired.
Manon shrugged. “What everyone must know. She was born to the noblesse — she graced the Tsar’s court at fifteen — she married a man of exalted position whom she knew not at all, and was miserable as a matter of course. She travelled with Prince Tscholikov to Vienna, where he was envoy to the Court; and there she fell in love with a man. Disgrace and ruin followed. She journeyed to Paris, alone and almost without means. Her brother succored her. And so, at the last, she came to this country — her bloom fading, her hopes gone, a woman not above thirty who must establish her credit amidst a sea of foreign faces and tongues. It has happened, vous savez, to others before.”
“I suppose such a history might well end in suicide.”
“Bah,” Manon said briskly. “That is like your Englishness. Always the propriety, out? But I, who have seen the world — I tell you that nothing, not even the shameful letters published without warning in the newspaper — is so terrible as death, mademoiselle.”
I thought of the Terror: of the young girl Manon had once been, of an entire world lost to the guillotine.
“The man in Vienna — was that Lord Castlereagh?”
“Who knows? He is but the most recent in a string of lovers, perhaps. A woman denied all happiness will snatch at anything. But me, I should not snatch at Lord Castlereagh. He is … du glace.”
Ice. I recollected the studied indifference of the former Minister of War: he who had nearly killed a fellow Cabinet member defending his honour; he who could brave the ridicule of the press with insouciance. Ice was required of a man who must send entire regiments to their deaths; had he also sent the Princess to hers?
Manon’s hands stilled, and she smiled into the mirror. “There,” she said. “C’est fini. Does it please you?”
She could not restore lost youth, or conjure me a Beauty; but she had accomplished, all the same, something on the order of a miracle. My dowdy cap was discarded, my locks brushed with pomade until they shone, and my headdress as smart as my means would allow. The band of bugle beads bound about my forehead exactly matched those on the flounce of my dress. I would never be mistaken for an Incomparable — but as a secret scribbler of novels, a Bluestocking of a certain age come upon the Town — I would certainly do.
“Thank you, Manon.”
She curtseyed, once more the modest servant. “I shall call in Hans Place tomorrow,” she said with a sidelong glance, “to pay my respects to the Princess Tscholikova’s household. Who knows what Druschka may tell?”
“Who knows, indeed?” I replied.
OUR DINNER GUESTS ARRIVED AT HALF-PAST FIVE: MR. Henry Egerton, whose principal virtue appears to be that he is the son of a clergyman resident in Durham; and Mr. Henry Walter, a serious young man of philosophic and mathematical stamp, who ought to have quitted London this morning, but stayed to eat sole in my brother’s house. Eliza would wish to have nothing to do with Mr. Walter, as he is the nephew of her cousin Philadelphia — a prudish woman whose disapproval of Henry’s wife is rooted in envy — but the most common family feeling dictated that Mr. Walter being in London, Mr. Walter must be invited to Sloane Street. And so he was placed at Eliza’s right hand, and Mr. Egerton at mine, with the Tilsons to balance the table.
Mr. Egerton fell to my lot, and as he was barely half my age, and fatally tongue-tied, I found him heavy work. Having enquired where he had studied, and what poets he preferred, and whether he hunted a good deal or even at all — I left him to demand how I liked my visit to London, and whether I had yet penetrated the British Museum, or been favoured with a glimpse of Mrs. Siddons. This last bow, drawn at a venture, struck home — and I was able to speak with animation of Macbeth until the covers were removed and I turned with relief to the partner on my left, Mr. Tilson.
“You have won an admirer, Jane,” he observed. “Mr. Egerton is overflowing with admiration — to the extent of apparent apoplexy. But do not be throwing yourself away upon a man with so little conversation; you would be sadly wasted. You require a partner whose cleverness equals your own — and not half a dozen exist in the entire Kingdom.”
None, I thought, since Lord Harold’s demise; but said only, “Flatterer. I could wish that your praise did not depend upon the abuse of my neighbour — for there can be no harm in him; he has not lived long enough to run to vice. If you must abuse somebody, let it be my cousin Mr. Walter — whom I cannot love, however worthy his achievements may be. He is a scholar, you know, dedicated to the education of Youth — and will bore the unfortunate Eliza to distraction.”
“A prosy individual,” he agreed, “and unbearably full of consequence for a sprig of his years — he cannot be more than four-and-twenty. But his relation to yourself I may comprehend. Mr. Egerton I do not comprehend at all. Why is he of the select few invited to dine this evening?”
I saw that for all his playfulness, James Tilson was anxious. “I believe him to be nothing more than the son of an old family friend. What is it you fear, Mr. Tilson? That my brother is got among thieves and adventurers?”
My companion said nothing for a moment, his brow faintly furrowed. “You hold your brother in esteem and affection, my dear Miss Austen — as certainly do I. I will not scruple to say that Henry Austen is dearer to me than any but my own family. But I will also state that his judgement — so sound in most cases — has of late seemed wanting. There is a sort of recklessness in Henry … a desire to circulate among the Great … and if this fellow Egerton is another of them, I thought—”