Page 1 of A Debt Inherited

PROLOGUE

The Snare

Decipimur specie recti

—Horace, Ars Poetica

At The Stile

Oakham Mount, July 1812

Kerr waited below the crown of Oakham Mount, where the path narrowed between hedge and ditch. He had dressed for the hedge: brown coat, dark waistcoat, buckskin breeches dulled with earth at the knee, and boots rubbed free of shine. A strip of old leather bound each leg close below the knee, lest cloth catch upon thorn or bramble. He kept still beneath the ash boughs and watched the rise. From there he could see the stile, the bend in the lane, and the strip of open ground where a lady must slow before the ascent.

The morning had settled dry and close, the July heat already lifting the smell of grass, dust, and crushed leaf from the path. He did not move when a blackbird broke from the hedge, nor when a cart rattled faintly along the lower road. Movement drew the eye; stillness let the eye pass over him. The place would serve. Not at the crown, where wind and sky made witnesses of everything, but here, where hedge, ditch, and bough turned a man into another piece of the country. A lady must look to her feet at the stile. One step checked, one hand lifted, and the hedge would take her.

A breeze rattled the leaves above him. A thread of lavender and something else—sharp, perhaps lemon—hung in the air for a moment.

Then came voices. His mouth tightened.

She had not come alone. Yesterday, she had.

The first voice came quick and low, amusement tucked within it. He had heard it the day before. The other answered higher, more measured, answered as though every word had first been weighed.

Two heads rose beyond the hedge, one bonneted and one bare. The latter held her own bonnet by its ribbons as they approached the stile: fawn muslin beside serviceable brown, one lady proper for a morning call, the other dressed for distance.

The bare-headed lady turned towards the rise.

“Charlotte, must you truly leave tomorrow?”

Miss Charlotte Lucas. He recognised the name.

“I must, if I am to reach Hunsford before Mr Collins has rearranged every shelf in my absence.”

“With Jane in London, my younger sisters at Brighton, and Papa’s cane forbidding all ambitious exercise, you are the last person within walking distance who speaks sense.”

“Then Meryton is in graver condition than I had supposed.”

“I shall miss you.”

“And I you.”

Kerr watched them cross the stile and continue up the rise, their voices receding until the hedge kept only fragments. They reached the crest and passed beyond his sight.

He remained beneath the ash boughs until the last trace of lavender had gone from the air.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet would be alone tomorrow.

PART ONE

Prudence

Sapientia prima est stultitia caruisse

—Horace, Epistles

Chapter 1

Trinity College, Friday, October 19, 1781