Free Jane and the Wandering Eye by Stephanie Barron

a figure!—Better suited to ride bareback at Astley’s, I should think, than to promenade in Bath!” 14
    “Indeed he
does
pay too much attention to matters of dress,” Eliza conceded. She was vulnerable on the point, in having made her attire the primary occupation of her life these twenty years at least. “I learned only last month that he possesses no less than forty waistcoats.”
    “It is fortunate, then, that he is much at Carlton House—where such profligacy may go unremarked.”
    “But you must own, Jane, that the notion of capturing the likeness of an eye in oils is utterly singular. In this, at least, you must confess Cosway’s peculiar brilliance. For it was entirely his own invention, I believe.”
    “The likeness of an
eye
? This has become his particular art?”
    “Of course! He began it with Maria Fitzherbert. The Prince conceals the image of her eye in a golden locket, that he is said to wear next to his heart. Even
you
must be aware that such intimate likenesses of a
chère-amie
, when worn about the person, are the last word in fashion. Observe.” She unbuttoned her dark grey pelisse and drew forth a pendant chain. “I myself have taken to wearing an eye.”
    “Eliza! You
would
not!”
    The Comtesse shrugged with infinite grace. “It is no more than any lady of good society would undertake, I assure you. And isn’t it fetching? Though Richard Cos-way is much above my touch, I fancy that Engleheart is equally presentable. 15 I particularly admire the set of the brow. Quite a rogue, he must have been.”
    “Who, pray?”
    “The gentleman who sat for the miniature, of course!”
    “Then you are wholly unacquainted with him?”
    “Naturally!” she rejoined blithely. “Would you suspect me of an intrigue against your dearest brother?”
    “But, Eliza—to wear such a token, is to suggest to the world that you carry a
tendre
for a lover! I wonder Henry can bear it!”
    “It was Henry who made a present of it to me,” Eliza retorted equably. “And he thinks the notion very good fun, I do assure you.” Her expression of amusement faded, and I saw that her interest was already claimed by another. She seized my arm in pleasurable agitation. “There, Jane! By the Visitors’ Book! It is the Earl! But to whom does he speak with such urgency?”
    I followed the direction of her eyes. “To Mr. Hugh Conyngham, Eliza—the principal actor of the Theatre Royal.”
    1 The Vyne, in Sherborne St. John, Hampshire, was the ancestral home of the Chute family and their entailed heirs; Jane’s eldest brother, James Austen, was vicar of the parish from 1791, and frequently hunted with William-John Chute, master of the Vyne foxhounds.—
Editor’s note.
2 This opened for the 1805 season, despite Portal’s death.—
Editor’s note.
3 Sir William Reynolds, a former schoolmate of Austen’s father at Oxford, was the baffled justice last encountered in
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.—Editor’s note.
4 Mantua-maker was the eighteenth-century term for dressmaker. Jane betrays her age by employing it here. It derives from the mantua, a loose style of gown common in the second half of the eighteenth century, made of silk from Mantua, Italy.—
Editor’s note.
5
Wheelers
is a term connoting the horses closest to the carriage wheels—in a team of four, the two harnessed first within the traces.—
Editor’s note.
6 Eliza Austen was born Eliza Hancock, the daughter of Philadelphia Austen (the Reverend George Austen’s sister) and Tysoe Saul Hancock, a surgeon with the East India Company. While in India Philadelphia Hancock was rumored to have “abandoned herself to Mr. Hastings.” Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal from 1772 to 1785, served as Eliza’s godfather and placed 10,000 pounds in trust for her; Eliza later named her only son Hastings. It was commonly believed, though never acknowledged, that Eliza was Warren Hastings’s daughter.—
Editor’s note.
7 James