The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley (the reading list book txt) 📗

her think that he meant even himself. Yet he did not know that she had seen him with the thief, so why would he want her to fear him?

“Do you know how to swim, Miss Bennet?”

“No.”

“Then you would do well to take especial care and not go into the ocean alone. Even a strong swimmer can be carried away by a powerful current.” He gave her a disdainful look and then stepped out of the water and headed back towards his shoes.

Mary stood quickly and brushed the sand off her dress. She turned away from the ocean, but then looked back. Withrow thought she was a fool; he thought she was fearful. Neither was true: she simply lacked knowledge in certain areas, and maybe she was a little fearful, but she could overcome her fears.

She walked slowly up to the ocean, contemplating the pattern of how the water moved up and down, then leaned down and dipped in her hand. It was bitingly cold, yet pleasant somehow, and she liked the movement and the energy of the water around her fingers.

After standing, she wiped her hand on her dress. Withrow was still walking towards his shoes. She did not think Withrow had seen her touch the water, but she had not done it for him. She had done it for herself.

She managed to catch up to him as he finished putting on his shoes. He had been more relaxed at the water, and they had spoken more to each other than they normally did, so she thought she might ask him about Lady Trafford’s chart and tell him about how she had looked in the family Bible and initially thought they were not related. She wanted to observe and analyze his response.

“Mr. Withrow—”

“I apologize, Miss Bennet, but I have no more time for conversation or amusement. I have lost too much already. If you will excuse me, I must be going. Can you find your way back to the castle by yourself?”

“Of course,” said Mary. He inclined his head towards her and then set off at a jog.

Mary watched him go but did not immediately follow. Madame Dieupart had sent word that she was ill, so Mary had no lessons today, and no reason to rush back to the castle.

Mr. Withrow ran quite quickly. He was one of the most unusual people she had met: cordial and almost charming one minute, and then harsh and abrupt the next. She still could not make out his character.

Rather than return to the castle, she walked farther up the beach, staying at least ten feet from the water; she had touched it once, but had no need to do so again. There were some larger rocks, boulders almost, though she had no notion of how they had gotten there. Surely the ocean was not strong enough to move a boulder! But then again, maybe it was. She needed to find a book on the subject. Past the boulder was the larger part of a tree, a downed tree, stripped of leaves and smaller branches. The bark looked as if it had all been rubbed off, and the surface felt smooth beneath her fingers. In the distance was another boulder, and beyond that, something else that she could not make out.

As she approached, she was filled with a sense of foreboding. It seemed like she should recognize the shape in front of her—it was a familiar shape—and yet her mind refused to put a name to it as she stepped closer, closer, closer.

A few feet away, she finally recognized what was before her, or at least she recognized parts of it. The back of a shirt, a man’s shirt. There was no coat on top of it. She recognized breeches, men’s breeches. And hair, short brown hair. But the shirt, the breeches, the hair, these were not discrete objects. They were part of something larger.

It was a body.

The water lapped at the body’s feet—the man’s feet. He must have been washed ashore.

She knelt in the sand. Perhaps he was still alive, perhaps he simply needed his face out of the sand so he could breathe. She tugged on his body, flipping him over, and then scrambled away.

The man was dead. His face was discoloured, a dark greenish colour. His eyes were gone, missing entirely, and his empty eye sockets seemed to stare up at the cloudy sky.

Chapter Nine

“On Saturday last as Mr. Snasdale, a shopkeeper of Creake, and his apprentice, son of Mr. Samuel Cocksedge, of Larling, were walking out in the afternoon, they met with a boy who was keeping off crows. Mr. S. borrowed his gun to shoot at a rabbit, and whilst in the act, his apprentice crossed at the time, and received the contents of the charge in his head. He languished but a few hours after the melancholy accident. The young man was only in the fifteenth year of his age.”

–The Sussex Weekly Advertiser, Lewes, England, September 13, 1813

Mary could not take her eyes off the body; it both revolted her and commanded her attention. Since she could not look away, she would at least not dwell on the empty eye sockets, or the question of what had happened to the eyes. She focused instead on the mustache and the short beard, and then on the clothes, which led to the realization that she recognized the man.

It was the thief.

The dead man was the thief who had stolen her family’s mourning rings, who she had seen with Lady Trafford’s carriage in Meryton, and who had met with Withrow in the forest on her very first day at Castle Durrington. She had seen him, alive, a few days before, and now he was dead.

A morbid sense of curiosity overcame her. She approached the body again. Yes, his mustache and his beard were exactly the same as they had been when she had seen him last, and despite the discolouration of the skin and a certain puffy appearance, perhaps