Free Jane and the Barque of Frailty by Stephanie Barron Page B

at his bow; allowed him to kiss my gloved hand; and resigned myself to an interval of conversation entirely in the French. But my thoughts were running along different lines. If the Comte could violate every rule, why could not Jane? The old roué had done nothing to attach my loyalty.
    “What a very charming young woman you were speaking with just now, Comte,” I said with an air of benign vacancy. “An accomplished one too! Such an air of dash! And such command of the reins! I was quite overpowered. Pray tell me her name—I long to know it.”
    Eliza gave a tiny squeak, and for an instant I thought the old Frenchman would pretend not to understand me.
    “You have not been very long in London, I think,” he observed in heavily-accented English. “It is most improper in you to enquire, Miss Austen. But me—I have never been one to observe the proprieties. Her name is Julia Radcliffe—and if she were not the Devil’s own child, I should call her une ange! Now forget the name, if you please—or your so-good brother Henri will accuse me of corruption!”
    I affected a look of bewilderment, and Eliza turned the conversation; until at reaching the tollgate at the western edge of the Park, the Comte bowed, and went his own jaunty way.
    “Julia Radcliffe!” Eliza burst out once the Frenchman was beyond hearing. “No wonder he insists upon divorce! Marriage is the only card he holds!”
    “What do you mean, Eliza?”
    “I have it on certain authority, Jane, that Julia Radcliffe—for all she is the merest child—is the Highest Flyer in the present firmament, the most sought-after Demi-rep in the Beau Monde—and that she should even look at d’Entraigues is beyond wonderful! Our Comte has never been very plump in the pocket, you know, since the Revolution—and it is certainly not he who pays for those matched greys. Marriage is all such a man may offer—and indeed, all Julia Radcliffe might value! Money she has; the hearts of a legion of Bond Street beaux are already in her keeping; but respectability, my dear—the certainty of a name and protection to the end of her days—is a prize no Demi-rep may command. Harriette Wilson once thought to be the Duchess of Argyll, I believe— but in the event, Argyll considered of what was due to his station, and dropped his handkerchief elsewhere.”
    “Men are such fools, Eliza,” I said, gazing after the old Count.
    “To be sure, my dear. Else they would never be so amusing. Only consider of your Willoughby! He should be enslaved to a Julia Radcliffe—she was a girl of very good family, you know, until just such a young gentleman gave her a slip on the shoulder. There is a child, I believe, somewhere in Sussex— However, none of the Radcliffes will notice her now.”
    “She does not seem to pine for the lack,” I observed, and stepped through Hyde Park gate.

Chapter 7
The Man Who Did Not Love Women
    Thursday, 25 April 1811
    ∼
    T HE SPRING RAINS DESCENDED UPON L ONDON AN hour before dawn, sluicing across the roof tiles and gurgling in the gutters, so that I dreamed I lay at the edge of a country brook in the wilds of Derbyshire. As is common with such dreams, I lived and breathed the air of the place while yet cognizant I was but a visitor—that my time and purpose were not of that world. I knew full well that I dreamed. When the elegant figure of Lord Harold revealed itself, therefore, under the shade of a great oak—silent yet welcoming, completely at its ease—I perceived with anguish that this was a memory: for we two had walked once through the woods and fields near Chatsworth. He fell into step beside me, companionable as ever; restful in all he did not need to say. When I told him impulsively that I loved him still, he kept his eyes trained on the middle distance, a derisive smile on his lips.
    I awoke with a start, seared with thwarted yearning, and the dissatisfied knowledge that I should have preferred to walk forever in that enigmatic presence. He