Read Jane Austen Mysteries 10 Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron for Free Online Page A

that after several days in the gentleman's sole company, her reputation should be utterly ruined, Miss Twining cried--she pled for his lordship's mercy--assured him that she could not love him; but her shrinking only inflamed Byron further. He was unaccustomed, it seemed, to rejection; the adulation of all the Polite World having convinced him that Miss Twining must be hoping for just such an avowal of ardent love.
    "Marriage?" Henry repeated, all astonishment. "I had not thought Lord Byron much taken with the married state--unless it be to persuade those ladies already shackled with it, to break their sacred vows! He did you a decided honour, Miss Twining, in thus singling you out; you should be the wonder of your acquaintance, did they know of it. To make a conquest of Lord Byron!"
    "Do not be so tiresome, Henry," I retorted crossly. "You must know that she abhors the man!"
    Outside Lewes, Byron overmastered her, and assured Miss Twining that she should not prove so missish within a very few hours--for her honour depended entirely upon marriage, as she should be brought to understand. She screamed for the coachman's aid, at which Byron laughed diabolically, and gagged her mouth.
    "And if you had not heard me moan, Miss Austen," she concluded, "I should be entirely ruined. How I am to face Papa, I know not! He is sure to blame me--to be most frightfully angry--for fast behaviour in a female is what he cannot condone, and try as I might, I cannot regard my behaviour today as anything other than fast. "
    "We shall engage to put the matter before Papa in the proper light," I told her. "He should do better to set the whole of the blame at Lord Byron's door--and I shall urge him most forcefully to do so. His lordship must be called to account for his insult, or no young female in Brighton shall be safe! Your father's interview must be absolutely discreet, however--the preservation of your reputation demands it. Is it known where Lord Byron lodges, when he is in Brighton?"
    "He keeps a suite of rooms at the King's Arms, against those occasions when the whim overtakes him to sail. He has been staying at the King's Arms a good deal, of late.... Oh, pray that he never returns!" Miss Twining cried.
    "Undoubtedly he shall not," I agreed, "--gentlemen being loath to admit their losses, you know; Lord Byron shall find other fish to fry in London."
    "The blackguard," Henry commented coolly. "And now, Jane, the team is put to--if we make haste, we might be in Brighton within the hour. Miss Twining, you will of course accompany us?"
    L ADY O XFORD'S CHAISE, WITH ITS OUTRAGED OCCUPANT , was nowhere in sight when we ventured into the stable yard. But I could not help noting, as Henry's curricle bore us away, two lengths of soiled linen lying trampled in the mud.



CHAPTER FOUR
Pleasures of a Prince
    7 M AY 1813, CONT .
T HE C ASTLE I NN , B RIGHTON

    I FIND PROXIMITY TO THE SEA A DELIGHT ABOVE ALL others--one that is especially dear, in being the more generally denied. Some two years' residence in Southampton, and the example of my Naval brother Frank, taught me a degree of comfort with quays and small boats, the bustle to be found on every sort of waterfront, and I sometimes yearn for the vigour of that life in my present, quieter abode at Chawton. The desire for fresh salt air and the constant tumult of the tides overwhelms me, some once or twice, of a hot Hampshire noon. My acquaintance with watering places, however, is not great--on two occasions I have been at Lyme, so sweet in its autumnal association with vanished romance, that I wish still for another glimpse of the Cobb and the bathing machines at Charmouth. 3 Of Teignmouth and Sidmouth I have seen a little, and Ramsgate in Kent, and Worthing but twelve miles west on this same Sussex coast. Yet I have never braved the mettle of Brighton, at once the most breathtaking and outrageous resort of the present age.
    Breathtaking, indeed, from the moment our curricle began its descent from