Darcy & Elizabeth (61 page)

What the Cobbles Know

Belgrave Square was not half so foggy as those neighbourhoods near the wharves. Hence, by the time Darcy arrived at Bingley's house, Mr. Bingley was most anxious to dismount and betake his nakedness inside.

Darcy had made for the back of the house. Their descent from the saddle was hindered by reason of the agglutinate nature of Bingley's skin against the leather of the saddle in warm weather. Indeed, it took him a moment to disengage his nether-end. Darcy drew his leg across the horse's neck and leapt down, allowing Bingley room to wriggle himself loose. Jane had been beside herself with worry since Bingley's leave-taking, hence she was out the door and by his side almost before Darcy had dismounted.

“Charles! Charles!” she called. “Whatever is the matter?”

Upon seeing the lack of costume upon her husband, she thought the worst (in truth, she was not fully aware of what was worse than being cast naked into the street). Bingley was so very relieved to have gotten away not only with his life but his twenty thousand pounds, he was all but delirious with happiness.

To Jane's appeal for explanation of all that came to pass, Bingley replied, “I am not disposed to stand here in this indecorous manner and tell you the details of our evening. Suffice it to say, I am safe and all is well.”

Darcy was quite relieved himself, but had regained himself enough to inquire as to the coach and men they left in a neighbourhood that did not look altogether safe.

Jane assured him, “They have been here for some time. Nicholls is drawing Charles's bath as we speak.”

Bingley made haste for the house, hugging his boot to his chest.

“I must return Darcy's coat,” Bingley called over his shoulder as he made for the house.

Jane laughed, quite happy to have her husband home and not lying murdered and robbed in the street, then said solemnly to Darcy, “I would ask you to come in and sit down, but I know you must be in a great hurry to go to Lizzy.”

“Yes, I am. But, I shall wait until morn. I have another matter to which I must attend before returning to Kent.”

“Pray, you do not know?”

“I beg you, it appears I do not,” he said tentatively.

“Lizzy is here in London.”

“Here?” he repeated. “Where? Why?”

Jane's countenance announced many things that her voice did not. Foremost was that trouble was afoot and Elizabeth was deeply involved with it. Jane quickly explained all she knew of it. She told him things that he already knew, such as that Wickham had returned from the dead. But she also told him what he did not know. He had not been informed that Wickham had demanded money from them to leave Lydia to Kneebone. He also did not know that Elizabeth had come to Bingley's that day and set out to intercept him at Howgrave's house in order to gain his help.

The possibility that Elizabeth might have witnessed what occurred upon the steps of that house troubled him but briefly. He knew his Lizzy far too well to believe her capable of wilfully misinterpreting an altogether innocent meeting. Clearly, she had arrived behindhand of his departure. If she was not with Jane, he concluded that she had returned to Lydia's.

He dearly hoped that she had not endeavoured to go to Wickham's on her own.

“Surely she would not be so foolish as to think she could bargain with such a man,” he said under his breath. He dared not think otherwise.

Jane supplied him with Kneebone's address. He did not wait for his coach; he leapt upon the already-tired horse, bade Jane good-bye, and cantered off down the street towards Chelsea.

Darcy knew Chelsea a sight better than the wharves, hence he made excellent time. Regrettably, that speed was to the detriment of his mount. When he stopt in front of Kneebone's house, he tied Bingley's horse to the hitching post and patted the heaving horse's neck in thanks. The horse immediately began to drink from the trough. Darcy plunged his hand in the water to be certain of its temperature. It was still relatively warm from the afternoon sun. He allowed the horse to drink a bit, then walked him to another post and tied him once again. He would have preferred to have turned the animal over to a groom for a good rubdown. Indeed, he was beginning to feel as if he could use some care himself. It had been an exceedingly long and discomfiting day. He prayed that Elizabeth was sitting in Lydia's parlour awaiting him. He prayed that all the way to the door and through the vestibule.

Regrettably, Elizabeth was not to be found. What he did find was Lydia in an unusually constrained attitude and Kneebone, fraught with worry.

“Mrs. Darcy left several hours ago to meet Mr. Wickham. I have vehemently chastised myself for allowing her to keep me from accompanying her,” he said wretchedly.

Darcy was unimpressed with what he conceived as belated remorse. To learn that his Lizzy had taken it upon herself to go bargain with George Wickham in the worst of neighbourhoods…

“My God,” Darcy declared.

The realisation just hit him that the woman he had seen exiting a coach in front of Wickham's lodging
had
been Elizabeth. It sent a shock through him so strongly that he had to take a step back. Quickly, he thought to ascertain that certainty.

“Did she take her carriage?”

“No,” replied Kneebone dolefully, “she hired a coach.”

Darcy caught himself before he let out a curse. If he stifled it outwardly, he did not inwardly. He cursed again and again in his mind.

“What did she hope to accomplish?” he asked fretfully.

Kneebone withdrew Wickham's note from his waistband and handed it to Darcy.

“Ten thousand pounds,” he read, then said, “He does not think his silence cheap.”

Suddenly, Lydia entered the conversation, “No, he does not. And what does Lizzy take to him, I ask you? A pittance of what he asks. I cannot imagine what she is thinking.”

Disinclined to believe Lydia the best purveyor of information, Darcy turned to Kneebone for an explanation.

In offering it, Kneebone said, “Mrs. Darcy took her leave earlier in the day. It was my information that she intended to seek her family's aid in paying Wickham his vile demand. When she returned, I assumed she was unsuccessful, for she took her coach, sold it with the horses, and sent her coachmen away. The five hundred pounds she received, I matched. She intended to offer that to Wickham in exchange for his giving up his right of husband to Lydia.”

“Would this all not have been necessary had Lydia simply denied Wickham as a husband?”

Pointedly, he looked at Lydia. He knew what Mr. Phillips had written Elizabeth. She had showed him the letter. In the silent intensity of his gaze, Lydia turned away. Darcy was thoroughly disgusted with her. He was not altogether happy with Kneebone either, but he knew that man had his hands full with the wife he had chosen and lent him a small bit of allowance for it. He also gave him allowance because he endured a certain amount of guilt himself. He felt sure that part of Elizabeth's reason for going to Wickham herself was in his defence. He had made no effort to conceal how the very thought of Wickham unstrung him.

“My horse is spent. Do you have one?”

Kneebone shook his head, “A coach for hire can usually be found upon the corner.”

Darcy said nothing, but took another look at Wickham's note before wadding it up, tossing it upon the table, and taking his leave.

Kneebone stopt him, offering a long great-coat. “Here, sir, you will find the air has a chill this time of night.”

Darcy realised then that he had not retrieved his frock-coat from Bingley. “I thank you.”

Kneebone was almost as tall as Darcy. He was thinner, but the coat was generously cut. Had Darcy bothered to notice the tailoring, he would have approved.

Upon the steps, he stood a moment donning his gloves and endeavouring to allow his eyes to adjust to the dark. In the distance, he saw the glow of a pipe and the outline of a horse and coach. He knew the hour was late, but was uncertain of the time. He should have checked his watch in the light before he left.

He was also glad that Kneebone had loaned him the great-coat—the wind was picking up.

“Mr. Darcy?” a voice said out of the dark.

Designs Most Fowl

In hindsight it was not altogether astonishing to those who remained behind at Pemberley that their disgraced servitor, Cyril Smeads, had taken surreptitious leave. Even he recognised the untenability of his actions. However, that upon his leave-taking he had hied not only to Kent, but to the estate of Rosings Park was compleatly unanticipated. They were quite unwitting of Cyril Smeads's connection with Lady Catherine. In believing he would find refuge there, however, he exposed the depth of his betrayal of the Darcys and their privacy. His reason for making for Kent, nonetheless, fell to a sizable misapprehension. It was his understanding that his office of Lady Catherine's spy would be rewarded. Because he had been exposed whilst under her covert auspices, he believed that she owed him a position within her household.

Yewdell, however, was not of a like mind. Had he not been privy to Smeads's reputation of boundless arrogance and unrivalled disputatiousness, it was still doubtful that he would have looked upon such a notion with a kind eye. Although she monitored every expenditure, in matters of servants, Lady Catherine gave ear to Yewdell's opinion.

His advice was succinct, “Pray, if I may suggest, your ladyship, that we pay heed to the single truth we know of this Smeads—his loyalty is easily bought.”

Lady Catherine did not reply. Recuperation from childbirth required of Georgiana a lengthy sojourn at Rosings Park—Lady Catherine her most attentive aunt. Even had Smeads been compleatly trustworthy, with the Darcy kin visiting she dared not chance him being seen. Her answer to his entreaty thereupon was one of omission. She refused to see Smeads at all.

It was during Georgiana's stay that another drama unfolded—this not so furtive. That Sir Winton Beecher was at the centre of one was no great astonishment. It was a tad unexpected that the consort in this affair was a long-standing (if not altogether inventive) husband-hunter, Miss Caroline Bingley.

Moreover, this alliance all but came about through the agency of a detestable fowl.

***

Once the hordes of consolers, comforters, and those who inevitably came only to gawk left the family to mourn on their own, the air of reflection and familial solidarity dissipated with great rapidity. Had Lady Catherine's proposal to Elizabeth gone better, perhaps her ladyship would have been in better humour. As it did not, she was not. In her sullenness, she occasionally cast a disputatious look at her son-in-law. He, in turn, refused to rise to the bait. To Beecher's way of thinking, he did his part and felt he should be duly compensated. If that Mrs. Darcy would not fall for her ladyship's schemes, that was very unfortunate, but no skin off his aristocratic nose.

Not surprisingly, Lady Catherine saw it quite differently. She felt herself assaulted upon all sides by incompetent and avaricious agents—first Smeads, then Beecher. The monetary arrangement to which she had agreed for Beecher to join forces with her to induce the Darcys to commit to a future union betwixt their families was based purely upon results. As their combined efforts were not met with success, she believed their arrangement null and void. Words and looks were exchanged with enough regularity to keep the animosity at a peak.

Eventually, Beecher was content to sulk in silence. Lady Catherine's temper, however, was not so easily quieted. Although their joint venture of persuasion had been thoroughly quashed, Lady Catherine did not give it up with any part of good grace. Rather than understand her proposition was ill-advised, she blamed their lack of success wholly upon Beecher. (In lieu of an introspection that might suggest her unhappy with him for higher crimes.) Her esteem of her daughter's twit of a husband had never gone beyond gratitude for the motility of his seed. She had thought, however, that the effortlessness with which he had charmed her daughter would translate into similar success with others of her sex. She then saw an error in her judgement—not a feeling that she enjoyed. It brought to her recollections of past miscalculations of a humiliating nature. If she was once again to be foiled by her nephew's wife, she preferred to have a scapegoat upon which to heap the blame.

“It was, after all, my opinion early on that Anne's passing alone would not soften that lady's heart. Anne was nothing to her,” Beecher said inadvisably. “Moreover, it has been my experience that one must not reveal one's hand prematurely.”

Reminding her of his gaming ways and saying “I told you so” in the same breath did not endear Beecher to her ladyship. Indeed, she was most displeased. The only part of her scheme that went right was having obtained Darcy's qualified agreement. Because of that small triumph, Lady Catherine chose to leave it alone for then and pursue it upon another occasion. In the meantime, she had sweet Georgiana and her lovely nephew, Fitzwilliam, to keep her thoughts occupied. Although her design for her own daughter's future with Darcy had been thwarted, Georgiana's was still a match by which she was most pleased. In truth, Fitzwilliam's conviviality endeared him to her in a way that Darcy's reticent nature never could. But then, marriage had nothing to do with companionability and everything to do with condition.

She had been surprised by Georgiana's marriage to Fitzwilliam, but only a little disappointed. A titled husband would have suited a lady of her station better, but a husband from their own family ranks was still suitable. It was yet possible that Fitzwilliam would earn a title for his heroics—if he would only accept. That was one of his few failings—he eschewed acclaim. Nonetheless, she saw it as providential that Georgiana was taken to the straw within her walls. Lady Catherine was well aware of the affection Darcy held for his sister. Georgiana giving birth within the august halls of Rosings Park and naming her daughter Anne was another link in her chain of renewed family unity. She intended to keep the dear girl with her as long as possible. In doing so, she was not above invoking her dead daughter's memory and a mother's broken heart. Lady Catherine had been almost stunned at how well that ploy had worked on Darcy. At one time she had believed him to be a man unmoved by such pathos. She supposed that a decline in what had been his finely honed sense of perspicaciousness was inevitable. It was an observation not unfamiliar to her. Once a man fell under the throes of womanly wiles, all good sense went missing.

Although Lady Catherine despised womanly wiles when she perceived them to have been employed by another, she was not so resistant to such ploys as to scruple to use them herself. Regrettably, she was compleatly unaware that she had never quite mastered the art. Hence, when attempting to engage in such tomfoolery, the effect was betimes lacking. (The expression upon Darcy's countenance when she had endeavoured to weep was one less of compassion than appalled incredulity.) She had bruised her dignity in resorting to such a device, but was disinclined to argue with success—Darcy had capitulated. Two can play that game, Miss Bennet!

As she mused over that marginally successful ruse, Lady Catherine looked again upon Beecher. Summoning the thought of her illustrious nephew, the comparison did not do Beecher's aspect any kindness. As he sat slumped in his chair nursing his wineglass, powdered and curled to perfection, she had to repress the desire to whap him atop his head with her fan.

As if divining her thoughts, Beecher set down his drink and looked upon her.

“What?” he said impatiently. “What?”

“You, sir, ask questions no better than you answer them.”

At that nonsensical response, Beecher stood and walked the length of the room. There, he reached out and imperceptively corrected the hang of the frame for one of his water-colours. Upon his return, he passed by Henry's perch, and as if doing a bit of divining of his mistress's thoughts himself, Henry let out a screech and took flight in Beecher's direction. The tether kept Henry from doing any damage beyond a loss of dignity—at the feather-flapping squawk, Beecher leapt two foot into the air and did not regain his composure gracefully.

“That bloody bird!” Beecher squawked (doing a passable, if unintentional, imitation of Henry). “He does that again and I'll have him for supper!”

With all her considerable hauteur, Lady Catherine rose to her feet.

“You, sir,” she announced, “have said quite enough! Begone from my sight!”

It had not been Beecher's design, but being banished from her ladyship's presence was no great punishment. Indeed, he thought it not altogether unseemly to betake himself from her presence and all the way to London—an atmosphere far more to his liking. There, people of condition were happy for his company.

Unbeknownst to him, however, perched upon the footboard of his coach as he hied for London was the lately unemployed Pemberley servitor, Cyril Smeads.

***

It had long been Caroline Bingley's habit to troll the matrimonial waters employing the time-tested method of winnowing out eligible husbands by perusing the newspaper's weekly obituary column. Had she not been apprised beforehand that the death of Darcy's young cousin left a grieving widower, she would have honed in on him regardless. Other than his relative youth, she was attracted to Lord Beecher for the same virtues as had been Lady Catherine—he was titled and kept a carriage. Of the more questionable of his attributes, she remained blissfully unaware. Had she been witting, they would not have served her purposes as they had Lady Catherine's. Gambling was a vice that would have troubled her, but a mistress simply meant that was one obligation she would not have to fulfill. (Fertility not only served no purpose for her, it was undesirable.) Caroline wanted only the title (and the yellow livery was quite nice). Indeed, his turn for foppish wardrobe and London society was all she desired in a husband.

When espying Beecher sporting a black band and salving his poor wounded bosom in the card rooms at Almack's (Boodle's still held markers for him that Lady Catherine had not yet settled), Caroline made a beeline for him, the recuperation of his heart much upon her mind. Long past her bloom, had Miss Bingley not employed the name of Darcy as one of her connections, Beecher would not have been half so ready to have her be his chief consoler. Quite expeditiously (and with the help of copious amounts of wine), Miss Bingley's hand was stroking his waistcoat and his arm snaked about her waist. Although it was certainly observed, no one within their milieu actually raised an eyebrow at their familiarity. Although mourning demanded any new alliance be kept in confidence for a full year, society overlooked a husband's lack of dedication to a spouse's memory with far greater tolerance than a wife's.

All might have gone without mishap had Beecher's vice of gambling not been so intimately intertwined with that of drink. But as a man who clearly did not own the intuitive mind required to be successful in games of chance, luck absolutely fled from his side as well when he was in his cups. Caroline remained constant to him during his trial, for she had been so dedicated to her search for a match that when at last one was at hand, she was not inclined to allow him to slip through her fingers. Indeed, she allowed herself to be escorted to the tables each night, but did not play herself. She draped herself across the back of his chair, but she could do nothing to avert the catastrophe she saw unfold as hand after hand went greatly to the bad.

Although it was a precipitous decline, one particular hand incurred a deficit so substantial that Beecher could not leave the table without writing out an acknowledgement of debt promising several of his prize racing ponies as collateral.

The key to the misunderstanding that came about was whether the horses in question actually resolved the debt or were held in abeyance until Beecher could cover his wager. Beecher had believed them security. Therefore, first he cajoled, and when rebuffed, Beecher begged his creditor to relent. As he held the horses in far greater esteem than he ever felt for a mere wife, the prospect of losing them sent him into a plaintive keen sufficiently pitiable to have unmanned Herod. However the gentleman was not Herod, but Alphonse Parr. He was not a man of sport, but of business. Parr had, without compunction, evicted widows and orphans from his properties. Beecher, however, was unknowing of Parr's disposition and when the man insisted upon taking possession of the precious mounts, Beecher slapped him across the face with his glove. Unfortunately, he did this in a public hall and all about the room gasped, knowing well what that meant.

Even Miss Bingley exclaimed, “Dear God in heaven!”

At Beecher's attack, Parr demanded, “Name your weapon, sir!”

From the wavering expression of effrontery upon Beecher's countenance, it appeared that he may have reconsidered the depth of his injury. As a gentleman, Beecher knew that if he did not appear to defend his honour, his societal death would precede his actual one. Parr's nose curled just a bit, as if he had detected the odour of fear that was then emanating from the area of Beecher's spine.

Gathering himself just a bit, Beecher boomed, “Pistols,” with a far greater degree of certainty than he felt.

His choice of gun rather than blade was precautionary—his shooting experience was limited to toting a long gun on his shoulder during the odd grouse hunt. (He had taken out a pistol once or twice, but had never actually shot anyone—he was, after all, a gentleman.) However, he had never wielded a blade of any kind. He thought no better of taking exercise with a foil than he did of those bloody grouse hunts to which he was occasionally coerced. With a gun, he had reasonably presumed that he had at least one chance to hit his opponent. Feint and parry were compleatly foreign to him.

There was the issue of a second. Beecher had not the happy manners that made for fast friendship of other gentlemen. If he had incurred this engagement in the county of Kent, Lady Catherine's connections would have made it far easier to marshal someone to stand with him. As it was, Miss Bingley had been pressed into service of supplying him one. Caroline had the audacity to think her brother a candidate. She pleaded with Jane to speak to him, but surprisingly Jane refused, citing Bingley's keeping to his room due to some business he had endured upon the wharves. (Caroline's memory of her recent denunciation of her brother had conveniently failed her, but Jane's would not be so forgiving.) Beyond those monetary, Caroline had little time for the particulars of her brother's affairs and scurried for the more sympathetic ear of her sister Louisa. Mrs. Hurst was happy to dragoon Mr. Hurst to do the job—as being the keeper of the Flask of Courage was an employment that merged quite nicely with his own proclivities.