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Jane and the Waterloo Map: Being a Jane Austen Mystery - Hardcover

Buch 13 von 15: Being a Jane Austen Mystery

Barron, Stephanie

 
9781616954253: Jane and the Waterloo Map: Being a Jane Austen Mystery
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1616954256 ISBN 13: 9781616954253
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Jane Austen turns sleuth in this delightful Regency-era mystery
 
November, 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has come and gone, leaving the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, high-flying banker, is about to declare bankruptcy—dragging several of his brothers down with him. The crisis destroys Henry’s health, and Jane flies to his London bedside, believing him to be dying. While she’s there, the chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent invites Jane to tour Carlton House, the Prince’s fabulous London home. But her visit takes a startling turn when Jane  stumbles upon a body—sprawled on the carpet in the Regent’s library. The dying man utters a single failing phrase: “Waterloo map,” sending Jane on the hunt for a treasure of incalculable value and a killer of considerable cunning.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Francine Mathews was born in Binghamton, New York, the last of six girls. She attended Princeton and Stanford Universities, where she studied history, before going on to work as an intelligence analyst at the CIA. She wrote her first book in 1992 and left the Agency a year later. Since then, she has written twenty-five books, including five novels in the Merry Folger series (Death in the Off-Season, Death in Rough Water, Death in a Mood Indigo, Death in a Cold Hard Light, and Death on Nantucket) as well as the nationally bestselling Being a Jane Austen mystery series, which she writes under the penname Stephanie Barron. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

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Chapter One 

There can be few things more lowering to the female sensibility than to be caught in a shower of rain at exactly the moment one most desires to appear to advantage. It is not that I care two straws for His Royal Highness the Prince Regent’s good opinion; indeed, I should regard the admiration of such a roué as bordering upon insult; but there is an undeniable duty to answer a summons to Carlton House that demands the donning of one’s best carriage gown, the coiffing of one’s hair, and the hiring of a suitable chaise.
     To be thoroughly drenched, therefore, in the simple act of gaining that chaise, is a rebuke to misplaced vanity and expence. As I shivered on the threshold of the palace, my elegant boots
damp at the toes and my curls lank upon my brow, I could not bear to look at Manon hovering two steps behind me. My brother’s French housekeeper had deplored this visit from the outset. She had no opinion of the Royal House, and appeared certain that all I should achieve by accepting the Prince’s invitation was ravishment at his hands. She had insisted, therefore, upon
accompanying me—my brother Henry being as yet too ill to leave his bed.
It was because of Henry—who else but Henry?—that I was known to Carlton House at all.
     I arrived in London a month ago, expressly to negotiate the terms of publication of my latest novel, Emma—an eventuality by no means assured. It has not been enough that my earlier works were generally admired, and briskly sold, nor that the third of these—Mansfield Park—has exhausted its first edition. My publisher, Mr. Thomas Egerton, refused a second edition of the latter, and spurned my fourth book entirely. I am inclined to attribute his disaffection to the dislike felt by some readers—and perhaps Egerton himself—for my saintly Mansfield heroine, Fanny Price. Where the arch and impertinent Lizzy Bennet found favour among the abandoned inhabitants of the Metropolis, Fanny was simply too good to be entertaining. Egerton must have feared that my spoilt and headstrong Emma should be similarly received; but in this he showed the limitations of a journeyman publisher. I suspect that Emma will prove the darling of the frivolous ton.
     Another lady might have read in Egerton’s rebuff the instruction of Providence, and left off writing such dubious stuff as novels; my brother James, in his role as Divine Intermediary, counseled as much. He regards the indulgence of novel-reading as a dangerous diversion from Duty, particularly among women. To embrace the scandalous project of actually writing such books—and profiting by them!—is to tempt Satan. I would not have had James learn of Egerton’s defection for the world, but my mother let slip some part of the intelligence, when relating the news of my journey to Hans Place.
     My beloved Henry, far from scolding my arrogant proclivities, actually encourages them. In the face of Egerton’s stupidity, he proposed that we approach none other than the illustrious Mr.
John Murray, of Albemarle Street, founder of the Quarterly Review. As Murray is well known to publish Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, the hubris of this notion was staggering. Only Henry could assume that a tale dismissed by an Egerton might be coveted by a Murray; our Henry has been tilting at windmills all his life. But in the event, his wager answered: Murray deigned
to glance at my Emma. It seems he was a little acquainted with Lizzy Bennet, and found her charming.
     All matters of cost and gain being uncertain in these straitened months after Wellington’s great victory, however, Murray proved cautious. He required a second opinion—none other than that of the Quarterly Review’s editor, Mr. William Gifford, who found “nothing but good” in my manuscript, and offered to edit it for publication. Emma having survived the scrutiny of so critical a reader, Murray offered me his price: £450 for the copyright.
     For Emma alone, this should have proved acceptable. But being a rogue as well as a man of letters, Murray demanded the rights to Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility as well. Such
terms being likely to beggar me, I refused them. Miss Marianne Dashwood and Miss Mary Crawford cost me too much effort in their fashioning, to be cast upon the world for a pittance.
     The delicate business was complicated by my brother’s falling ill, of a trifling cold. He attempted to dictate from his bed an indignant letter to Mr. Murray, protesting the publisher’s
terms, but was unequal to completing it. Henry’s indisposition turned to something far more dangerous by the third week in October—a low fever that worsened every hour. I had little time
or thought for business. Days passed with no improvement in my brother’s condition. He was delirious and wandering, his pulse depressed.
     The excellent Mr. Haden, our surgeon, bled Henry copiously, but urged me to inform my family of the gravity of his illness. I was so alarmed by Haden’s sombre looks as to send Express to James at Steventon and Edward in Kent, that Henry’s last hours might not go unwitnessed by those he loved. Indeed, so wrapped in misery was I, and so deprived of sleep, that I required the
presence of others to support me.
     James collected Cassandra on his way to London, which suggested he was not so entirely bereft of sense as I usually judge him. They were all three arrived in Hans Place by the twentyfourth of October, so that Manon and her mother had their hands full of Austens. Edward immediately urging the services of a more experienced man than Mr. Haden, Dr. Matthew
Baillie, the Court Physician, was summoned—and so answered his patient’s need, that by the thirtieth October, Henry was on the mend.
     I cannot describe the exquisite relief of being spared my particularly beloved brother. Suffice it to say that when the crisis was observed to have passed—a little before dawn on
the twenty-ninth October—that Cassandra and I, who had been sitting up together at the bedside, neither being willing to fail in the final moments of Henry’s life, fell into each other’s
arms and wept.
     It was some days before the patient could stand, or consume more than a little thick gruel. By the first week of November, however, Edward was gone back into Kent and James into Hampshire, taking my sister with him. I remained here in London to nurse Henry—and see what could be done with my difficult Emma.
     I wrote directly to John Murray and desired him to wait upon me in Hans Place. He was so good as to appear the following morning, and the briefest of conversations secured our mutual
satisfaction. I am to retain the copyright of Emma, publishing the work at my own expence; and Mr. Murray is to take ten percent of the profits, for his trouble in putting out the volumes.
As I followed a similar course with all my dearest...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616954256
ISBN 13 
9781616954253
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar