Page 1 of A Fortune Most Fatal (Miss Austen Investigates #2)
CHAPTER ONE
Kent, England, 8 June 1797
In the dimly lit dining room of the Bull and George inn, Dartford, Jane wrings her hands and paces. It takes thirteen steps to travel the narrow space between trestle tables, pushed up against bow-fronted windows, to the inglenook fireplace at the rear of the smoke-filled room. The distance is not enough to dispel the nervous energy from her limbs, forcing her to turn and begin again. Bunches of dried hops, suspended from worm-eaten beams, brush her forehead as she passes. The crisp flowers snap against her bonnet, dispensing flecks of broken petals onto the shoulders of her tawny pelisse. “I can hardly believe this has happened.” She presses her forehead to the smeared glass.
Outside, the moonlit highway is deserted. Her stomach clenches at the thought of her father and brother forced out into this wilderness. All but the most intrepid of travellers take care to conclude their journeys by sunset. Highwaymen are known to work this stretch of road.
“Please, try to remain calm.” Mrs. Austen sits on a hard-backed bench, beneath the window, her woollen cloak gathered tight around her narrow shoulders. Unlike her daughter, she has removed her bonnet, and balances it on her knee while she worries the ribbon with her fingers.
“Calm?” Jane’s voice is shrill. “My sisters are gone, Mother. Stolen. Abducted. They could be anywhere by now. Who knows what disreputable hands they may fall into? You heard the landlord. The post-chaise is on its way to Gravesend, its passengers bound for a ship to the West Indies. They’ll be lost forever, ruined!”
Mrs. Austen purses her lips. “Must you be so melodramatic, Jane? Your father and Neddy gave chase on horseback as soon as we realized the mistake. They’re sure to catch up with the other party within a few miles. You’ll have your manuscript back forthwith.”
Jane rests her hand at the base of her throat and swallows. The Sisters is her latest composition. Like everything else in her writing box, it is destined to cross the Atlantic, should her father and brother not retrieve it in time. “Good Lord, what if the coachman mistakes Neddy and Papa for robbers and fires his pistol? They’ll be killed!”
“Stop being ridiculous. Sit down at once and take a sip of brandy.” Mrs. Austen swills her drink in its tin cup. “It’s rather good. Reminds me of what your cousin Eliza used to send us from France.”
“Dark days are coming,” cries a ragged old man from across the room, causing Jane and her mother to startle violently. He is the inn’s only other patron. Hitherto he has sat quietly, warming his ancient bones beside the dwindling fire, a clay pipe clenched between his teeth. “Judgement must be nigh if an honest soul can’t pass a journey in peace. I thought to come by road, as the sea is turning against all who would sail on her. A cutter went down off the coast of Harty not five nights since.”
Jane squeezes her eyes shut, trying to block out the old man’s ramblings. The foul stench of tobacco clogs her throat, threatening to choke her. “I should have known to take better care of my writing box. What was I thinking, letting it be strapped onto the roof of the coach when it could have been inside with me? Then it would never have been confused with the other passenger’s luggage.”
“The crew was up to no good, I expect.” The old man scratches his steel-grey beard and continues his nonsensical monologue. “No one sails this way in a storm. Not unless they’re trying to escape paying their dues. God alone knows what the skipper saw in those waves to make him attempt such a sharp turn without so much as readying the sails. Unless it was his own fate crashing towards him.”
Mrs. Austen swivels her spare frame towards her daughter. “Jane, I know your writing is important to you. Increasingly so during the last year, ever since your disappointment over—”
Jane balls her fists at her side. “If you so much as say his name, Mother, I swear I’ll combust on the spot.” Why must Jane’s parents insist on reading any slight alteration to her mood as some aching regret over the loss of her former suitor? She knows she did the right thing in refusing Mr. Lefroy’s lacklustre proposal, especially in the face of such violent objections from his relations. To marry without the blessing of his great-uncle and patron would have been to the detriment of both their futures, no matter how fond of each other they were. It is only natural she should wish that circumstances had been different—or that they might become so in time. Ever since Tom’s departure, she has tried her utmost to perform her duties to God and her family, and to seek solace in her compositions. It is not her fault her heartbeat occasionally trips over itself when she passes a fair-haired stranger in the street at the unlikely possibility it might be him.
“As I was saying, I know your work is important to you, but I shall not pay for a separate stagecoach ticket for your writing box. It should have been perfectly safe on the roof with your trunk and the rest of our luggage.” Mrs. Austen folds her arms against her flat chest.
“But it wasn’t, was it? Because while we were busy reacquainting ourselves with Neddy, all my belongings were redirected to the West Indies. You don’t understand. Everything I hold dear is locked away in that box. It’s not just The Sisters. My only copies of Catherine and First Impressions are in there too.”
The old man grips the handle of his hazel walking stick with his gnarled hand and beats the tip against the stone hearth. “Tossed and turned like it was no more than a toy. Mast broke first. Snapped in two like a blade of straw. We could hear the sailors’ screams. But we can’t do nothing, not when the sea decides she’s going to make you hers.”
Mrs. Austen angles her knees towards the window, proffering her back to the inn’s noisy patron. “Even if the very worst happens, and we fail to recover your luggage, you can always redraft those compositions. They’re your creations, born out of your own head. You’ve spent so long locked away in your dressing room hunched over them that every word must be etched onto your memory by now. And if you were forced to rewrite them, they’d probably turn out even better.”
“Rewrite them?” Jane splutters, indignant at her mother’s casual dismissal of her achievements. She has spent the last eighteen months labouring over each word, deliberating every sentence, writing and rewriting every paragraph of her compositions until the drafts are as near perfect as earthly hands can make them. Catherine and First Impressions are full-length novels. Both are longer, more serious and, dare she say it, far superior to anything she attempted in her youth. Her previous works were girlish trifles, mere skits to pass her time and amuse her family. She has only recently commenced work on The Sisters , but she hopes it will be her most accomplished delineation of human nature yet. “Where would I find the time for that, given I’m committed to playing nursery maid to Neddy’s brood all summer?”
Mrs. Austen narrows her eyes. “That was your choice, Jane. You volunteered to go to Rowling in Cassandra’s place.”
“How could I not?” Jane bites back tears as she turns her face to the window. Mrs. Austen is reflected in the glass, blinking into her lap.
A full moon has not yet passed since Cassandra’s fiancé’s ship returned to Falmouth and, rather than carrying her beloved Mr. Fowle safely home, brought the news of his tragic demise. Poor Mr. Fowle. He’d only just reached San Domingo when he was struck down with yellow fever. All these months Jane’s sister had been excitedly sewing her trousseau and recording her mother’s receipts in a household book of her very own, while his lifeless body had been drifting in the waves after burial at sea. In an instant, the knowledge washed away Cassandra’s sunny temperament, her natural optimism sunk forever beneath the burden of her grief.
And so Jane volunteered to go to Rowling to assist Neddy’s wife, Elizabeth, in the safe delivery of their fourth child. Cassandra was present for the birth of all three of their older children. Before the news of the tragedy broke, Elizabeth wrote to say she dearly hoped Cassandra would join her again, as she’d be lost without her help. Alas, this time she will have to find her way with only Jane to guide her. Stricken Cassandra remains in Hampshire with their eldest brother, James—the pair of them equally inconsolable in their grief. Mr. Fowle was not only Cassandra’s fiancé but James’s best friend and a firm favourite with the entire Austen family. James’s wife promised to take good care of him and Cassandra while Jane’s parents escorted her as far as Dartford to meet Neddy. Mary Lloyd, or rather Mrs. James Austen (it’s been several months since the wedding but Jane still has to correct herself), is also expecting. Given her condition, Jane hopes Mary will remember to preserve herself too.
To Jane, Mr. Fowle was already more of an honorary brother than merely another of the many schoolboys who grew up alongside her at Steventon Rectory. She pictures his smiling countenance when, as a boy, he patiently taught her and Cassandra how to swing a cricket bat and catch their brother’s merciless throws without breaking all their fingers. An aching lump forms in her throat at the thought of that same handsome face tossed asunder until it was destroyed by the Caribbean Sea.
Everyone congratulates Jane on her selflessness in offering to attend her sister-in-law. They do not know she is going because she cannot bear to look upon Cassandra’s agony. Her sister’s sobs are a dagger to her own heart. If Cassandra can be undone by love, then what chance has the more easily dejected Jane? Only a fool would risk indulging in hopes of lasting happiness after witnessing first-hand the agony of having one’s expectations so cruelly dashed.
The old man takes a rasping breath, recalling Jane from her reflections. “Every one of those poor souls perished that night. All the crew drowned. Must have been twenty men at least, onboard a ship like that. If the skipper had lived, he’d be up in front of a justice by now—with a noose around his neck.”
The sorry tale further reinforces Jane’s melancholy over the fate of Mr. Fowle. She tips her head towards the chunky oak beam across the fireplace and mutters under her breath, “I do wish he’d desist from that racket.”
“Quite.” Mrs. Austen wriggles in her seat. “His prophecies of doom are hardly helping matters.”
The front door swings open and a blast of cool air rushes in, extinguishing the fire and casting the old man into darkness. Neddy strides towards Jane. His golden curls flow over the collar of his blue velvet frock coat and his genial face beams in the darkness. “We have it!” He grasps a mahogany box to his chest as if it weighed no more than a sheet of paper. “The coachman was most apologetic about the confusion. Father and the innkeeper have your trunk, but I thought you’d want this straight away.” He slams the box onto the table.
Relief floods through Jane as she digs around in her pocket for the tiny brass key. As she unlocks the lid and flips it open, the box is transformed into a green leather-topped writing slope. She hooks a finger into a brass pull and lifts away a section to reveal a cubbyhole. Inside, safe and sound, is The Sisters ; the first sketches of the Misses Dashwood are contained within their letters to each other. Letters that Jane has lovingly composed as the start of her new story. Her shoulders fall away from her ears and her entire body turns limp.
Losing her writing box, and all the work contained within it, would have made an ominous start to her journey. Given Jane has never before ventured as far from home as East Kent, and has never travelled anywhere without Cassandra beside her, she is already full of trepidation as to how she will navigate the days and weeks ahead. She can lay claim to no natural inclination to be present at the birth of her newest niece or nephew, and being entrusted with the safety of her sister-in-law throughout her delivery is a daunting prospect. As agonizing as it was to witness Cassandra’s suffering, being separated from her beloved sister is bound to bring its own torment. But surely Jane can withstand any trial, so long as she has her characters by her side.