Jane and His Lordship's Legacy by Stephanie Barron

died; but his father believed he would, the fever from the wounds having put him on a kind of death-bed; and when one report of the heir’s passing was put out, damnably unproved, the Viscount St. Eustace suffered a fit. In short, the old man was carried off in a matter of hours—and Benning is now Viscount, and must be called by his title, the prospect of which he used to dangle sneeringly before me, all those years ago in school, when he called me a commoner and a spy who should end in the gutter. I hated him then and I hated him that morning when we met in the duelling ground at Hampstead Heath. I wish that I had killed him; his brother is a better man, and like all second sons, I wish him greater justice.
    No—if I regret anything at all, it is the stupidity and the waste of those London days. The harlots lounging in the arches of Covent Garden, the befuddlement of drink, the desperate crying of a heart that loved only Horatia, and knew her to be pledged to another. She will be a Viscountess these five months or more, and great with child—tho’ it shall not be Benning’s. I have that satisfaction at least.
    And so to exile. Mr. Hastings awaits. “He shall be your envoy to a better life,” His Grace the Duke told me sternly; “pray that you do not return having disgraced him.” The burden is more likely to be reversed. I have heard a little of Mr. Hastings: how he fathered a girl by one partner, and wrested his wife from another; how his slow ascent above his fellows has been managed with cunning and industry. Hastings is a man after my own stamp—a self-made creature, who owes his reputation and fearsome respect to no title or gift of birth. I shall profit by Mr. Hastings; I feel it in my blood.
    And we shall both return to England invincible.

Chapter 8
    The Man Who
Drank Deep
    5 July 1809, cont.

~
    T HE G EORGE I NN SITS IN THE VERY MIDST OF A LTON ’ S H IGH Street, not far from its rival, The Swan, where Mr. Chizzlewit had undertaken to lodge. I had quitted Mr. Barlow’s house only yesterday morning in Joseph’s pony trap; but a revolution of thought and feeling had occurred in the interval that far outstripped a single turn of the globe. I left the George an impoverished and dependant relation; I returned but four-and-twenty hours later an Heiress who had excited the Notice of the Great. Moreover, I had discovered a body—one mysteriously dead; and this must always lend a lady distinction. Mr. Barlow himself handed me down from Mr. Prowting’s gig, and bowed over my hand to the admiration of a group of tradesmen gathered especially for the coroner’s panel. The escort of a local magistrate could only add to my consequence.
    “I’ve put the crowner in the back parlour as Mr. Austen always uses come Quarter Day,” Mr. Barlow confided to me in an undertone. “I hope as it will suit. I do not know what Mr. Munro may be accustomed to, in Basingstoke.”
    This being a market town where any number of London parties were used to change their post horses, at a quantity of inns bearing the names of Wheatsheaf, Angel, Maidenhead, and Crown, I did not wonder at Mr. Barlow’s quailing before so awful a figure as a Basingstoke man; but I bestowed upon the publican a smile and said, “Any room my brother elects as adequate for his business cannot possibly disappoint.”
    We were ushered within, and conducted through the public room to a chamber at the rear of the building, where Mr. Barlow had set a scrubbed oak table and an arrangement of chairs. Always a hospitable man, he had placed a jug of ale on a serving tray and provided a baker’s dozen of glasses for Mr. Munro’s Chosen. These individuals were standing about uneasily near the plank table, waiting for the coroner to appear—and uncertain whether it was permissible to drink the ale until he did. Half the chairs provided for those of us who came to gawk were already filled with people of the town. There was a little bustle of expectation when we