Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

walked swiftly back out into the yard, in the direction of the outbuildings.
    It is in the nature of treasure chests to yield their contents unwillingly. I expected a lengthy engagement with the lock that dangled from the hasp; expected to be reduced to stratagems and tears, blood flowing from my ravaged fingers--but in the event, the key turned in a well-behaved fashion and released the heavy iron pad easily from its bolt.
    Barely breathing, I lifted the trunk lid with care.
    From Lord Harold's last testament--his wish that I might bring order to his correspondence and somehow construct a narrative from a chaos of events--I had anticipated much con-fusion of parchment. But it seemed that this morning all my cherished notions were to be o'erthrown. Before my eyes was a compartmented cabinet, as neatly arranged as a solicitor's desk, and filled with all manner of letters bound up tidily in varicol-ored ribbons. In one area of the cabinet was a place reserved for leather-bound copybooks; in another was a grouping of ledgers. Several rolled documents, when unfolded, were re-vealed as ships' charts and battlefield maps--at a glance, I could discern the entrepots of the Indian Ocean, and a plan of the city of Paris.
    One last despairing hope was finally laid to rest. I had not allowed myself to form an idea of a single piece of paper, hastily 42 ~ Stephanie Barron
    scrawled with the word Jane and sealed in black wax. But the idea had formed itself even so. I longed for a parting gesture from the man--a bit of foolscap I might carry in my reticule like a relic of the True Cross. But there was nothing. How could there be? Lord Harold had written his will in anticipation of that duel; but never had he truly believed he would die.
    I reached for a packet of letters at random and slid the first from beneath its bonds of faded blue silk.
    It was dated January, 1770, Eton College--and bore the di-rection of Eugenie, Duchess of Wilborough.
    My dearest Mamma--
    I must thank you for the box of comfits you sent down with Attenborough, for they have made me the toast of the form, as you might expect. My brother would have denied me the whole, but that I hid the parcel amidst the soiled linen until he was safely away in his own house, and brought out the feast last evening with a stub of candle that I had secured in my gown.
    I received twelve lashes across the buttocks this morning when the Crime was discovered, but care nothing for that; my alienation from the Realm of College at present merely affords me the occasion to compose a proper letter of thanks to my most Beloved Mother . . .
    Such assurance! In 1770, he had been all of ten years old--and I was not yet born. I held the childish scrawl between my fingers and tried to imagine him: thin, lanky, with a shock of blond Trowbridge hair. He had cultivated even then the talents of a spy.
    I ran my fingers swiftly through the packet: there were more than twenty letters preserved from Eton days. Had the blue satin ribbon been Eugenie's? I folded the missive carefully and Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 43
    returned it to its place, selecting as I did so another quantity of envelopes.
    Calcutta
    17 August 1784
    My dear Fox--
    I received your last, written nearly six months ago, only yesterday; and must assume that the news of Whig politics it contains is now irrelevant. I cannot read your strictures on my respected employer, however, without offering this response.
    You speak of crimes--of offences that stink in the eyes of the Nation--with all the fervour of one unduly influenced by Edmund Burke. And yet, of what can you honestly accuse him? Mr. Hastings has engaged in all manner of peccadilloes: a devious military campaign against the Afghans; a bit of extortion in the matter of Benares; an injudicious killing of a native ruler; a duel in which he failed to despatch his principal enemy and thus ensured the man would poison his Company's councils ever after. But against this accounting is all