Mr. Darcy's Daughters (18 page)

Thank goodness for that, although she feared that the whole business would continue to irk her cousin for a good while yet. This would sink her even further in his esteem. Well, it was a pity, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Charlotte’s persistent cough is causing her mother some concern,” Fitzwilliam was saying in a cold, hard voice. “This may have escaped your notice, being wrapped up as you are in your own affairs. I have therefore decided that Fanny should take Charlotte and the baby to Southend; Dr. Molloy believes they would benefit from sea air. While they are away, you will not go about in society, as you will have no chaperon.”

“That is no hardship to me, sir,” she said. And indeed, she would be thankful to be spared the whispers behind her back, the glances, the barbed comments that would be bound to come her way. The fashionable world loathed a jilt, and despite the fact that there had been no formal announcement of her engagement, society would dub her a jilt and take its polite revenge, as it did on any creature who had the temerity or unwisdom to flout its unwritten rules.

Fitzwilliam was still talking, prating away about Letitia and her sense of duty and service. “Letty,” he said pointedly, “will find plenty to occupy her during this time, taken up as she is with her good causes.” Camilla would do well to take a leaf from her book and perhaps gain in humility by so doing.

“I need no lessons in humility from Mr. Valpy,” she flashed back. “All I might learn from him is humbug.”

Fitzwilliam went over to his desk and sat down, his face flushed and frowning. “It is not your place to criticise a man of the cloth.”

“When a man is a hypocrite, I believe I must be aware of it, whether he is in orders or no.”

He stared at her with dislike. “Mr. Valpy will always be a welcome visitor to my house. You may receive no other callers; it would not be seemly.”

She made her curtsy and fled before her tongue betrayed her. As she shut the door behind her, she felt profoundly relieved; relieved that the interview was over, relieved that Fanny’s going away would give her some days’ grace before she need face the rigours of a disapproving world. It might be his idea of punishment, but she welcomed it.

Heavens, though, what a fuss the twins would make when they discovered they were to stay at home, receive no callers, be deprived of all their frivolous pleasures. What did her cousin think they would do, sit and work at their embroidery, practise their instruments and study with Miss Griffin? Letty would be no help; she would no doubt suggest they improve their minds by reading some of her dreary tracts.

Mr. Fitzwilliam left the house in an uncomfortable mood. He felt that somehow Camilla had got the better of him, and he did not like the feeling at all. Drat the girl; who would have thought she could be so obstinate? What could have happened to give her such a distaste for Sir Sidney? The more he thought about it, the more he persuaded himself that perhaps there was no more to it than a lovers’ tiff. Sir Sidney had been too forward, or not forward enough, had offended the young lady, and she, full of the Darcy spirit, had responded in a manner out of all proportion to the supposed offence.

He would call on Sir Sidney, he decided, on his way to the club. Not an easy call to make, but one that he owed the man, considering the abruptness of Camilla’s volte-face—which had been made, he suspected, with barely any attempt at politeness. Fanny had told him that when Camilla had sat down to write the note to Sir Sidney, tears flowing down her face, she had jabbed so hard with the pen that she had driven the nib through the paper in more than one place.

“And when she had finished, she could scarcely manage to attach the wafer, her hand was trembling so much, and she gave the bell-pull such a tug I thought it must come away in her hand. When Fell came in answer to the bell, she thrust the letter in his hand, bidding him in so agitated a way to take it to Sackville Street at once, not to lose a moment about it, that it quite overthrew me. What can have upset her so?”

“Pride and an ungoverned temper,” Fitzwilliam had replied, and it still seemed to him to be the only answer. There could be no substance to her insistence that there were good reasons why the relationship must be ended. Could there?

The memory of that unpleasant business with Miss Harper flitted into his mind. That had been worse, that had happened on the very eve of the wedding; at least he had been spared that. The bride-to-be had run away, had actually run away from home, the day before her wedding, and her family had been extremely tight-lipped about it afterwards. They had retreated to their country estate, hadn’t visited London again for a considerable while after that, not until long after the gossip had died down. The girl had married some neighbouring cleric in the end, he seemed to remember. A man with not a quarter of Sir Sidney’s wealth or consequence, you could be sure.

What folly. Yet what was it about the man? It was pointless to dwell on it. His duty was to see if fences could be repaired, bridges mended, breaches repaired. He walked on in a muddle of metaphors, stepping automatically across the road, even forgetting the crossing sweeper until the underfed boy began to berate him in a high, complaining voice. He tossed him a coin and stalked round the corner into Sackville Street.

Camilla’s attitude and outspokenness still rankled. Mr. Fitzwilliam, at the age of fifty, had nothing of the romantic in him. He was eighteenth-century in his outlook, and he had no idea of this modern business of marrying for love, instead of matrimony being entered into for the practical reasons of money, advancement and mutual benefit to the two families concerned.

This was not to say he was a man lacking in heart. He was truly devoted to Fanny, had fallen in love with her the very first time he met her, and felt about her in a way that he never had with his first wife, a correct, distant woman of respectable fortune, who had married him to please her family and because he was the son of an earl—a younger son, naturally; neither her person nor her portion were handsome enough to merit an earl’s eldest son. There was little affection in their marriage, and no children to bind them together; and his mourning for her, when she was carried away by consumption, had been no more than what was obligatory.

How different had been his meeting and wooing of Lady Fanny Erskine, twenty-three years his junior, a vital, warm creature. He was a fortunate man indeed to have Fanny as his wife. How he would miss her; she was not to be away above ten days, but, even so, it was too long. He could post down to Southend, or ride; it was scarcely more than thirty miles. Well, there was nothing of Fanny’s pretty ways and loving nature in his cousin Camilla.

The twins showed signs of affectionate hearts, beneath their flirtatious ways. Charming girls, as good as gold, likely to make delightful wives for whichever lucky men their fancy alighted on. Letitia, too; he could not but approve of Letty, with her womanly sweetness and concern for others. That Busby business had been shocking—however, it had all blown over, and she had shown herself to be a sensible young woman. He hoped she would find an amiable husband; she would make some worthy fellow an excellent wife.

Unlike Camilla, a shrew if ever he knew one. If she persisted in her folly, she might well rue the day she spurned Sir Sidney. There weren’t so many men of property and standing who would be willing to put up with her quick tongue and propensity to argue. Darcy had done her no good, allowing her to grow up into such an opinionated and disagreeable miss. She wasn’t as handsome as her sisters, either; she would find herself left on the shelf if she didn’t take care and mend her ways.

This curiously satisfying reflection brought him to Sir Sidney’s front door, and he was about to mount the stone steps and attack the knocker, when the door opened and Pagoda Portal emerged.

Fitzwilliam was never quite at his ease with Portal, although he liked him well enough. He knew him for a nabob among nabobs, and if his wealth had been the alpha and omega of his position in society, he would have felt better about him. Portal, though, was a man of family, with great connections, who had been sent out to India to remove him from the temptations of London. His had been a wild youth, and he had got into so many tight spots that his family had lost patience with him and packed him off in the care of the Honourable Company to sink or swim as fate dictated.

Portal’s own abilities and character had done the rest, and he had returned to an unassailable position in a world that he seemed to care very little for—perhaps it was that most of all that grated on Fitzwilliam. Damn it, the man was hardly better than a Radical, with his outspoken and very un-Tory views and his approval of Reform in all its wicked and evil shapes.

Fitzwilliam tipped his hat to him and was about to go into the house, when Portal put out a restraining hand.

“You won’t find Leigh in.”

“No? Then I shall just leave my card.”

“No point in that, neither. He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Fitzwilliam stared at Portal. “Gone where? Down to Kent, I suppose.”

“A good deal further than that. Italy, in fact.”

“Italy! Why should he have gone to Italy?”

“Town too hot to hold him. All kinds of rumours flying about.”

That was just what he’d feared. “And everyone bandying my cousin Miss Camilla Darcy’s name about, I dare say!”

“No longer, for it is set to be a bigger scandal than any jilting, I do assure you.” Seeing that the butler was still standing impassively in the doorway, he took a step back and pressed a coin into the man’s cupped hand. “Now, close that door,” he said, and drew Fitzwilliam further along the pavement. “See here, he’s taken his footman with him. That pretty boy, the olive-skinned one.”

“Why should he not take any servants he likes with him?”

“He ain’t going as a servant, that’s why. One of the other footmen, jealous, I reckon, has laid charges against Sir Sidney, and there’ll be the devil to pay if he ever sets foot in the country again.”

Light began to dawn on Fitzwilliam. His eyes started from his head, and he looked at Portal, aghast. “Italy! Footman! Pretty boy! You don’t mean to tell me—”

“I do, I do indeed. The man’s a sodomite. Your cousin has had a lucky escape, Fitzwilliam, a very lucky escape. He might have married her, and what a wretched business that would have been, and it would all have come out, sooner or later, bound to have done, the way the fellow’s been carrying on. Only think of the scandal then!”

Fitzwilliam thought, and went pale. “Good gracious. I can scarcely believe it. Are you telling me, seriously telling me that Leigh is—that he—I would never have credited it, never. Why, he’s one of us! If it’s true, sir, then he should be hanged, that’s what, hanged. If he were in the army, he’d be shot for it, and good riddance.”

“Oh, I don’t think one should make a hanging matter of a man’s inclinations,” said Portal annoyingly. “Only if you’re that way, you do need to be discreet. Society don’t like it, the ladies don’t like it, and the law don’t like it.”

“The ladies!” cried Fitzwilliam. “You see, Portal, you must be mistaken. The ladies have always had an eye to Sir Sidney. Why, Camilla herself was quite in love with the man. So Lady Fanny tells me, and she always knows.”

“It isn’t unknown.” Portal’s tone was dry. “Many a sodomite is a married man with a family.”

“Disgraceful. I never heard of such a thing.” A thought occurred to him. “My God, he’s a member of Pink’s. He’ll be drummed out of the club, of course; we can’t have that kind of creature as a member.”

Portal looked at him with commendable gravity, although his mouth twitched. “No, that would never do.”

“So that’s why Camilla—but how did she find out? No innocent girl knows about such things, who would have told her?”

“Who indeed?”

Fanny and her entourage bowled away from the house on a misty spring morning; she, Charlotte, the baby and the nurse in the chaise, with Dawson and a nursery maid following behind in a second carriage amid any number of boxes and trunks. A manservant accompanied each carriage; Mr. Fitzwilliam was not one to risk his wife being attacked or insulted anywhere along the road. Fanny had protested that little danger was likely on the way from London to Southend, but he had taken no notice.

“It is small enough protection; my mother, you must know, never travelled without she had at least two footmen and a manservant in attendance, beside her own maid.”

Fanny was glad rather than otherwise that the late countess had been laid to rest in the immense and hideous family mausoleum some years before she had met and married Fitzwilliam. She was inclined to think that she would have found her ladyship’s ways oppressive. Herself the daughter of an earl, she was familiar with the fads and fancies of the grander end of the aristocracy—not that her own mama, a delightfully eccentric and intrepid woman who loved to travel abroad in the most unpropitious of circumstances, having not an atom of womanly fears about her, was in any way like her dear Fitzwilliam’s mother—but she was happier to arrange things in her own, more rational way.

She had some sense of guilt at leaving the five Darcy sisters on their own, but Charlotte’s welfare must come first, and they could come to no harm. Like Camilla, she was aware that a few days out of the world—and for a good reason, and one generally known to have the virtue of truth—would be of great benefit both to Camilla’s peace of mind and to her reputation. Except that some malicious souls would always be ready to mock her cousin for being so gullible as to fall in love with such a man. And knowledge of her attachment to Sir Sidney would deter other, more eligible men from pressing their suits. It might well be that Camilla and her sisters would, after all, have to end their first London season as single women, despite her best efforts. Then their parents would be back; she shuddered at the thought of attempting to explain to Darcy exactly what had happened between his favourite daughter and such a sad creature as Sir Sidney Leigh had turned out to be.

Still, that was well in the future, and Fanny, blessed with the happy temperament of one not inclined to seek out misfortune, banished the uneasiness from her mind and settled down to attend to Charlotte’s fretful coughing.

The Darcy sisters waved Fanny and the children away with mixed feelings. Letitia approved of Fanny’s maternal fears, only warning the others, in a lugubrious undertone, that she did not hope to see Charlotte much improved on her return, that the cough was of a worrying kind that must give rise to the greatest concern for the child’s health. Besides delighting in the thoughts of serious illness, she was pleased to find herself in charge, as she saw it, of her younger sisters. She was the eldest; she alone of them was of age; it was natural that the charge of them should fall on her capable shoulders.

And they would not find her wanting in her duties. Already she had schemes for reading and study of languages set out for the twins. Alethea might safely be left to Miss Griffin’s care, and indeed, although she would never have admitted it, she was too intimidated by her youngest sister’s forceful personality to assert herself in that direction.

As for Camilla, she would need to recover from the shock she had suffered. Of course, she did not have much sensibility; she would not have to endure the torments of a more sensitive woman. Letitia knew that Camilla had never fully entered into her feelings about Tom Busby’s demise—or the blow of his reappearance. Perhaps now she would begin to understand a little of what she, Letitia, had been through. “You will want to rest, Camilla,” she said. “A period of calmness, of reflection, will be beneficial, essential, even, before you venture out to take your place in the world once more. And I think that when you have had time to think the whole matter through, you will agree with me that we should all be better off at Pemberley, away from the false delights of society.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Georgina pertly. “Nothing will get me back to Pemberley before the summer. And as for Camilla keeping indoors, in a darkened room, if you had anything to do with it, it would be a dreadful shame. Let her go about and enjoy herself. There are plenty of eligible men to be met with; a new love is the best way to drive out the old. As you would have found out if you spent more time with Captain Allington and less with that dismal clergyman.”

Letitia rounded on her sister, eyes narrowed, a lecture on the tip of her tongue.

“Save your breath,” said Belle. “For neither of us will listen to a word you have to say. See if you can keep us under your thumb!”

“Well!” said Letitia. “Let us find out what Mr. Fitzwilliam has to say about this.”

“He has gone out, to his club or Parliament or wherever he goes. We shan’t see much of him while Fanny is away, I warrant you. He won’t trust himself in our company. So many females will alarm him; he is always uneasy about us, darting glances at our bosoms and then feasting his eyes on Fanny. He is a moral man, he will keep his distance and preserve his reputation.”

“And he’ll be off down to Southend to share Fanny’s bedchamber before two or three days are passed,” added Georgina, with a peal of laughter.

Now Letitia was truly scandalised. That her younger sisters, innocents of seventeen, should speak like this. Think like this, even; it was beyond anything. Such indelicacy of mind and speech. Such impropriety.

She found herself addressing an empty room. Belle and Georgina had gone laughing up the stairs, and Camilla, taking advantage of Letitia’s discomfiture, had made good her own escape, running past the twins and up the next flight of stairs to the nursery, where she might be safe from her sister’s preaching. Miss Griffin had never had any time for Letty’s moralising, and the governess was one of the few people Letty went in awe of.

True to his word, Fitzwilliam had left firm instructions with the butler that the Miss Darcys were not at home during Fanny’s absence. With certain exceptions, which was why Camilla, sitting at the pianoforte and absorbed in a new piece, saw to her astonishment—and displeasure—that Mr. Valpy was being shown into the drawing room. A consoling smile spread over his face the instant he realised that the room was not, as he had at first supposed, empty. Advancing on her, he addressed her in a low tone, which might have been suitable for some grieving widow, but which made her want to laugh.

“My dear Miss Camilla, how glad I am of this opportunity to offer you some few words of comfort.”

The fewer the better, she thought, determined to stay seated at the instrument rather than rising to greet him.

“We receive no callers at present,” she said civilly but without any encouragement in her tone. “My sister is occupied upstairs.”

“Ah, indeed, at a time like this, you do not wish the world to intrude upon you. I understand, I do understand,” he exclaimed, drawing closer to her than she quite liked. “I would not disturb Miss Darcy in her tasks, but you must not think of me as any mere caller, for a clergyman is bound by his professional duty to succour those sore at heart.”

Her eyebrows rose. “I do not believe my sister is sore at heart.”

“You misunderstand me. I refer to your own predicament, the sad business of that man whose name should never again be mentioned among righteous people.”

“You mean Sir Sidney Leigh? I thank you, but I am in no need of consolation.” She slid off the stool on the other side to where he stood, and edged round the pianoforte. In a second she had reached the bell and pulled it, and when the servant answered it, she desired him to tell Miss Darcy that she had a visitor. Following the man to the door, she turned, gave the slightest of curtsies and said, “You will excuse me, I know, for I, too, have duties. My sister will be down shortly.” She escaped from the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

The footman was summoning a maid to carry the message to Letitia’s bedchamber. “Be quick, for heaven’s sake,” Camilla said. “Mr. Valpy may become restless and start to roam; he is quite capable of visiting the kitchens and preaching to the chef.”

The footman looked horrified. He was well aware what a temperamental man the chef was, him being a Frenchie and a Roman Catholic, apart from having strong opinions against anyone who came traipsing into his domain. Sally was despatched upstairs with an injunction to look lively, and he turned back apologetically to Camilla. “Fell told him you was none of you at home, Miss, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, said that the master had desired him to call, that he was a man of the cloth, not come on a social call.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said warmly. “Goodness, I can hear him coming to the drawing room door. Tell him Letitia will be down directly, and that I am gone out.”

“And are you, Miss?” the footman called down the stairs after her flying figure.

“Yes,” she replied.

“And, Miss, there’s a note just come for you. I didn’t like to bring it up while you were with Mr. Valpy. It is on the table in the hall.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That was quite right.”

Notes held no excitement for her now, no lift of the heart at the expectation of it being from anyone who might have any interest for her. She did not at once recognise the handwriting, which was a firm but feminine script. She broke the wafer and unfolded the paper.

It was from Mrs. Rowan. She sighed. She had received a courteous note from Mr. Portal, apologising for causing her such distress, but had not felt any desire to answer it. It was not his fault, she knew she could in no way blame him; in fact, she owed him a debt of gratitude. Even so, she had no wish to see him or to return to Mrs. Rowan’s elegant rooms, where formerly she had passed such pleasant mornings and afternoons.

They would all know her predicament, they would laugh at her behind their hands—bad—or sympathise with her—worse.

She ran her eyes down the even lines. It was overflowing with kindness and goodwill, and it brought a tightness to her throat.

“Do not kill the messenger, I beg of you,”
Mrs. Rowan had written.

It was a kind note, and Camilla was moved by its warmth; she had not experienced much kindness of late. It would be heartless to refuse, and besides, where else was there for her to go? To the library, or to the shops in Bond Street—where she would be bound to run into all the people she least wanted to see at present? No. A walk in the park, at this unfashionable hour? There would be little pleasure in that; she had no desire to roam amid the painful beauty of the spring flowers and budding leaves.

She made up her mind: She would walk round to Park Street. She was about to summon Sackree, then hesitated. She would go alone. Fanny would be horrified if she knew, but Fanny was in Southend. She might meet Fitzwilliam—unfortunate if it were so, but unlikely. So she buttoned herself into her pelisse, it being a chilly day for all the signs of spring, and nodded to the alarmed-looking maid who came into the hall as soon as she heard the front door open, and stood hovering by the entrance.

“Are you going out alone, Miss Camilla? Should I not call Sackree to you?”

“There is no need. I am not going far,” she said, and whisked herself out of the house before the maid could call upon any higher authority.

As she walked briskly along, relishing the freedom and invigoration to her spirits that the movement brought her, clergymen crept unbidden into her thoughts. How could Letitia support Valpy’s company? How could she listen so eagerly to his slippery, sententious views on religion, society or anything else? How could Fitzwilliam, a man of experience, be so deceived in him?

And then there was the problem of Barleigh Barcombe, a man cut from a very different clerical cloth, who in his way was just as misguided as any Valpy. Whatever had possessed a man of Barcombe’s intelligence and sense and position to develop a passion for so unsuitable a creature as Belle?

Belle was as pretty as she was wilful, and her wistful and fragile air had deceived other men than Barcombe into misjudging her, convinced that she needed protection from the cruel winds of the world and that he alone was the man to offer that protection. Absurd; Belle no more needed protection than did a cat. Throw her how you might, she would land on her feet; look for her where you expected to find her and she would be gone; affront her and she would turn on you; give her the opportunity and she would tear a man’s heart to shreds—kitty playing with a mouse.

No, Belle was not at all a suitable person for poor Mr. Barcombe to lose his heart to, and how Belle mocked and scorned him. She did it, too, with casual indifference; there was no trace of affection in her wholehearted dismissal of him and his attentions, no cruel words concealing a hidden liking.

Georgina was more polite to him than her sister. Since he took no more than a civil interest in her, she returned the compliment, merely laughing heartily at his folly and teasing Belle about her unwanted suitor.