Mr. Darcy's Daughters (19 page)

Whom did Belle and Georgina have any feelings for? There must be someone, for ever since they were thirteen or fourteen, some man or other had been the object of their affections. They were not essentially wicked or corrupt or cold-hearted, merely young and thoughtless and given over to their own pleasures; spreading their wings and testing their powers.

Camilla had a shrewd idea that in a year or so, Belle would have lost much of her pert wildness and desire to tease anyone who tried to impose any authority over her. She had a warm heart hidden deep beneath her frivolous ways, a much warmer heart, Camilla believed, than Georgina. Georgina was the single-minded one of the twins, and Camilla did not care to think what might be the consequence of Georgina setting her heart and mind on an idea—or a person.

There could not have been a worse time or way for the twins to be let loose in London. Heavens knew what they might not get up to in the next week or so—and despite Letitia’s smug assumption of authority, neither she nor Fitzwilliam would be capable of restraining them. They would run wild, it was inevitable. Perhaps she should speak to Aunt Lydia; indulgent she might be, but surely she was worldly enough to prevent two such very young ladies stepping over the invisible boundary of what might and might not be tolerated in the unforgiving milieu of the polite world.

Her mind ran on; she wanted to think about anything and anybody except Sir Sidney Leigh and the blow he had administered to her heart.

Alethea, what was making her so happy and good-humoured? She was growing up, of course, that was part of it; growing out of the awkward age. Her singing lessons were an obvious source of joy and inspiration, and yet there was more, an imp of mischief in her eye, as though she knew something her sisters did not. It was no good questioning Griffy; she would not discuss Alethea, the last and best-loved of her pupils, with anyone. General assurances and remarks on her charge’s untidiness were all you could expect from Griffy on that subject.

Camilla found herself at Mrs. Rowan’s door, and all thoughts of her sisters, their clerical followers and Alethea’s secrets vanished as she remembered how short a time it was since she had paid her last visit to this house, how happy she had then been, and how different her situation now was.

She should not have come. It was a mistake. It was too soon to return to the scene where her hopes, her very future, had been tumbled to the ground by a few brutal words. Here were many of the same people who had observed her discomfiture, and who would know—all London must know—what lay behind her hasty and distressed departure.

Too late to turn and run, impossible to blurt out an apology and leave. Her own stupidity had brought her to Mrs. Rowan’s house; what foolishness to be so affected by a trivial act of kindness and to march into this lion’s den. Here was Pagoda Portal, coming forward with a cheerful smile on his face, as though nothing had happened; how could he look like that? Mrs. Rowan was full of eager greetings; how good a friend in truth was she? Had Camilla built too much trust on the slender foundation of a slight former acquaintance? She had felt an immediate liking for Mrs. Rowan upon meeting her again—but she had felt a pretty immediate liking for Sir Sidney, too. What did that say about her judgement?

Mr. Layard was there, beaming at her. He was treating her like a child who has fallen over and is being picked up and consoled, she decided unreasonably. At least Mr. Wytton preserved a cold countenance, and favoured her with no more than a distant smile and a polite bow.

A lifetime of training came to her aid. The manners, decorum and pride instilled in her since she could toddle—and much resented and resisted through the years of her tomboyish girlhood and hoydenish adolescence—now proved their worth. No one seeing her in that room, old friend or new acquaintance, could have known how unsettled and disturbed her mind was. She smiled, chatted, listened, ate, drank, all with unaffected poise. She surprised herself by the ease with which she behaved like this, and was amazed to find how it was possible to detach herself, to be as much an onlooker to the performance as anyone else in the room. Her social being triumphed; her inner being was momentarily stilled.

Despite the misery tugging at her heart, she felt a sense of achievement. It was an astonishing discovery, that her pretence could be so convincing. This must be how women managed to hold their heads high in the face of all odds, smiling through faithlessness and betrayal, defying the world to prove that a marriage was a failure, children a disappointment, money a concern.

To her surprise, Mr. Wytton came over and addressed her. “I was just at the Gardiners’,” he said abruptly. “Mrs. Gardiner and Sophie were going out, I believe, to pay a visit to Aubrey Square.” He paused, looked at her intently. “She has heard something of your recent trouble, although not from you, I think.”

She was flustered. “No. That is, I was planning to write—Thank you for informing me of this, sir. I shall go home at once. I hope I may be there before them.”

His rather severe face softened into a reluctant smile. “No fear of that, Miss Camilla. For they plan to call at one or two shops on the way; there are some ribbons from France newly come into the haberdashers, and Sophie can spend half an afternoon choosing ribbons.”

She smiled back at him, thinking how much better he looked when his face lost its moody expression.

Mr. Layard joined them. “I heard Wytton being hard upon Miss Sophie,” he said, winking at her. “How does he expect her to look so pretty and elegant if she isn’t to be allowed time to pick out the nicest fripperies to wear? I dare say you take your time over the choice of a ribbon, and you have a mind that goes beyond female adornment.”

“Not quite half an afternoon,” she said, laughing. “However, one should have one’s mind quite on what one is doing, and therefore, when ribbons are the matter in hand, it is perfectly right to give them their proper attention.”

Wytton gave her a sardonic look and yielded his seat to his friend, who sat himself down at once and proceeded to amuse her very much indeed with an absurd account of his attempts to match a green ribbon for his great-aunt.

“And the end of it was, when I had gone to all that trouble, and was feeling I had acquitted myself excellently, just as a man with an eye to a will ought, she turns up her nose—a nose like a parrot, my great-aunt has—and announces that she has gone off the colour green, has decided it don’t become her in the least, and she wished she had desired me to find her a blue ribbon.”

“The moral of which is, Mr. Layard, that women are best left to themselves when ribbons are in question.”

“Not at all, not at all. I have a keen eye for colour and excellent taste. I am your man if ever you need an eye cast over ribbon or a length of silk.”

The smile faded from her eyes, and her face clouded. It came back to her with shocking clarity, the scene in Sir Sidney’s house on the night of that dinner party, with Lady Delamere declaring how good a judge of a silk or a damask her brother was.

Layard stared at her in surprise. “Why, whatever have I said to make you look like that?” he demanded. “I was only funning, you know.”

She shook her head. “Of course. It was just that you reminded me of someone, for a moment. It is nothing.”

Wytton, although he had moved away, had obviously been listening to their conversation. He drew closer, seemed about to speak, hesitated, looked intently at her and then, in a jesting tone, told Layard he had best hold his tongue, for a man with worse taste was not to be found in London, and Miss Camilla had much better look out for her ribbons and satins herself. Then he took his friend by the elbow, gave her a quick, slanting, conspiratorial smile and led him away.

She was left with the distinct impression that Wytton had known at once and precisely why the reference to choosing silks had bothered her, and that without pitying her in the least, he regretted her unease and had therefore deflected his friend’s questions—all without seeming to take any particular notice of what was being said.

Had she misjudged the man? Perhaps there was more to him than at first appeared. Then a thought occurred to her and brought an involuntary smile to her lips: It would go hard with Sophie if she had to try to keep pace with a husband who was not only far her intellectual superior, but who was also capable of such quick-witted insight into the feelings and reactions of others.

Lady Warren was in her boudoir, a rose-coloured room of great elegance in its hangings and furnishings, and comfort in the plump plush of the button-backed chair and chaise longue. She kept fashionable hours, and had been at the opera until one in the morning before going on to a series of late parties, where they were still dancing at past three o’clock. Accordingly, she had risen late, and now sat in a cascade of lace and ribbons, her feet set on a little embroidered stool as she planned the day ahead.

She took no notice of the distant rap of the knocker. If it were a message or a note, it would be brought to her; if a caller, the ignorant fool would be sent off in short order by her admirably trained servants, as politely rude in their own way as she herself was to those she despised or who stepped outside the uncodified but inflexible rules of her fashionable world.

So she was surprised to hear a loud
rat-tat
on her own door. It opened at once and the very personification of the world of fashion walked in without any further ceremony. Lady Warren gave a shriek of delight, kicked away the stool and held out her arms. “George! My dearest boy! I had no idea you were back in England, not expected before next week at the earliest. How well you look!”

“Yes, I dare say, but don’t come too close; it took the devil of a time to get my neck cloth right this morning. Nyers was seasick for almost the whole of the crossing, and it’s made him tetchy and evil-fingered. Valets aren’t supposed to suffer from seasickness—did you ever hear of such a thing? I was obliged to speak very sharply to him.”

Lady Warren paid little attention to this speech, and indeed, George Warren’s immaculate, dandified appearance gave the lie to any suggestion of shortcomings in his gentleman’s gentleman. She had given the bell-pull a vigorous tug and was now issuing instructions for coffee—had he breakfasted? No?—and for a breakfast of a size and quality befitting the appetite and importance of Lord Warren’s only son.

They gazed upon each other with great mutual satisfaction. George was of middling height, with a distinctly handsome face, a good figure and an air of bored superiority. He for his part approved of Lady Warren’s foaming cream and pink peignoir and her still-pleasing countenance; he couldn’t abide a woman who let herself go.

Despite the evident affection between them, they were not related by any ties of blood. Lady Warren was his stepmother, his own mother having died shortly after he was born. As Caroline Bingley, of no particular family and with a good but not exceptional fortune of twenty thousand pounds, she had married plain Mr. Warren, who was at that time several steps removed from the title held by his great-uncle. It was considered by her friends and family to be a good if not a brilliant match. She had been a fine-looking girl, as she was now a well-looking woman, but there had always been a coldness in her manner that tended to put men off; she had been glad to catch Mr. Warren.

Her marriage had been a success in its chilly way, with a good deal of well-bred indifference on either side. Her husband’s unexpected accession to the title—after war, influenza and one toss too many in the hunting field had carried off the more immediate heirs—had delighted them both, and gave them plenty of scope for leading the selfish, indulgent lives that suited them best.

The union had brought her no children, but since one of Mr. Warren’s intentions on marrying again had been to provide his son with a mother, she had never felt the lack of progeny. Little George, then eight years old, had charmed her at sight, and a strong attachment remained between them, despite all the usual stages in a young man’s upbringing designed to sever him from close family ties: Harrow; a spell in the army, although never anywhere that he might see any dangerous action—he was far too canny for that; and, since the peace, European travel.

Now he was just returned from Italy, and his first visit in his native city was this one, to his stepmother. No one better than Lady Warren to bring him up to date on all the latest news, scandal and gossip; no one less inclined than George to set forth into the social whirl without having its state, fashion and current mood at his fingertips.

Overt and, more interestingly, covert, connections and liaisons were discussed: this one’s rise in wealth and status, that one’s discredit and decline, were laid out on the tablecloth alongside the cold beef and ham, and the misfortunes of many of their friends, family and acquaintance were brought forth to be relished and laughed at.

“And so your brother stays mewed up in the country, Caro, with that beautiful wife of his, so absurd with her good nature and refusal to believe ill of anyone; just as well she don’t come to London, they’d eat her alive. And I can see Bingley in a pair of gaiters, attending to his land and tenants; do you suppose he goes out in a smock?”

“It is all Jane’s fault, it is all the fault of his marrying so ill,” cried Lady Warren. “She has such a great deal of influence over him, she has quite turned him to her provincial ways. With his fortune and address he could have lived in London like any fashionable gentleman, and married a woman of consequence and fortune. Instead of which, what did he do but choose Jane Bennet and now see what has become of him, settled down to a life of rustication; I have no patience with it, none at all. I never see them nowadays, you know, since they seldom come to London, and it is so dull at their house. And Derbyshire, you know, is quite the most disagreeable of all countries; no one would go to Derbyshire unless it were to visit Chatsworth, and it’s vastly dull even there, so everyone says.”

This was an old grudge, and it put Lady Warren in mind of an especially juicy tidbit of gossip she had neglected to mention. “By the bye, did you hear that Mr. Darcy is gone to Turkey, and his tiresome wife with him—can you believe such a thing? His daughters are all come to London for the season. They stay with Lady Fanny Fitzwilliam—they are cousins, of course.”

“All the Darcy daughters?” asked George, inspecting the ham through his quizzing glass before carving himself several slivers. “Ain’t there a tribe of them?”

“Five. One still in the schoolroom, thankfully. The two eldest are officially out—soon to be on the shelf, if you ask me, twenty-one or twenty-two at the very least. The next two are twins, and I am convinced they take after their aunt Lydia; I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear of either of them that she had run off with some unworthy fellow. Oh, yes, those young ladies are surely destined to throw their bonnets over the windmill. Only listen, George, the eldest girl, Letitia, has been made to look such a fool. Did you ever hear of Tom Busby?”

George Warren listened with rapt attention to the tale as he ate his breakfast, only breaking into his stepmother’s stream of talk to call for more coffee and demand that the servant stoke up the fire. “Capital!” he cried when she had finished. “Lord, I wonder how that will strike Darcy, him being so damned stiff and proud. She’ll never get a good husband now, not once she’s been made a laughing-stock.”

“Captain Allington has been very assiduous in his attentions; he’s after her fifty thousand pounds, naturally, but he won’t get it, let his hussar’s whiskers be ever so handsome. He’s going to be elbowed out by one Reverend Valpy, that is what will happen there.”

“Valpy? Never heard of him. Well, if she marries a clergyman, it’ll serve her right. Fifty thousand pounds, eh? A tidy fortune. What about the rest of them?”

“They each have fifty thousand pounds, and very likely more, for Darcy is grown so rich there’s no bearing it, the hateful man.”

There had been a time in her salad days when Lady Warren had striven hard to engage the affections of Mr. Darcy, and she had been mortified when he married a nobody in the shape of Elizabeth Bennet. She had never forgiven Mr. and Mrs. Darcy this affront, and George knew perfectly well the animosity that she felt towards them.

“Heigh ho,” he said. “Shall I have a tilt at one of the sisters? Fifty thou ain’t to be sneezed at.”

“No, you shall not,” said Lady Warren instantly. “For Letitia, as I told you, is going to marry this Valpy; besides, my dear friend Lucy Ancaster will be bringing her daughter out next year, eighty thousand pounds, no less. The girl has always had a soft spot for you, ever since you knocked her off her pony and abused her so.”

George frowned at the effort of remembering the Ancasters’ daughter. “I have it; brown little thing, all teeth and eyes. Lord, is she ready for her come-out? Eighty thousand, you say; well, well, that might be worth waiting for.”

“Let me tell you the cream of the jest about the Darcy girls. The next sister, Camilla, is a sharp, witty young woman, who would be guaranteed to make any man’s life a misery. She has just jilted Sir Sidney Leigh, all in the most scandalous manner; the whole town is in an uproar over it. She made no secret of her preference, eyes fixed on him at balls, simpering and smiling whenever he looked her way, appalling behaviour, so ill-bred.”

“Hold on, Caro,” said George. He wiped his mouth and sat back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “Sir Sidney is a terrific swell, but he has some funny habits. He don’t like women much, not to put it plainer.”

Out in the world, Lady Warren took care to keep a genteel kerb on her tongue, aware of the new decorum of language that had fallen on society. But in private, and among her intimates, she was accustomed to express herself in the more forthright terms of the previous century. “The man’s a sodomite, which no one dared say, even if they suspected it, and one has to admit that he was very discreet about his perverted amours. It’s all come out now, and of course that is why Maria Harper left him at the altar, all those years ago; the Lord knows how she found out, she’s such a fool of a woman—but she did. No, Sir Sidney don’t like women, it turns out, but he needs an heir just the same, and he wouldn’t be the first of his kind to make a marriage of convenience. It gives that type of man some cover of respectability, you know, for there is nothing people hate more than a sodomite.”

“He’d better go to Italy; plenty of pretty boys in that country, and they ain’t so particular over there.”

“That is exactly what he has done,” his stepmother said triumphantly. “Packed up and gone, couldn’t stand the scandal, reputation ruined. Of course, it would not have come out, whatever they say about a footman laying evidence against him, if Miss Camilla Darcy hadn’t fancied him so wildly and made such an exhibition of herself—unofficial betrothal, family party, Sir Sidney’s sister up from the country, everything as it should be, and then pouf! all off, and London ringing with the talk of it.”

“I like Leigh,” said George, picking at a molar with an ivory toothpick. “We belong to several of the same clubs. Very knowledgeable man, he’s put one or two good things my way—objets d’art, you know, he’s a notable connoisseur. It don’t seem right that some provincial miss should have him run out of town.”

“One cannot approve of sodomy,” said Lady Warren. Her moral sense might not bear close scrutiny, but there she was quite definite. “Everyone must be disgusted by such beastliness.”

“Oh, in your position I suppose it is so, but when one is a man of the world, one can take the larger view. Attitudes abroad are very different, as I told you. In any case, some of these men are cultured fellows, like Leigh, in fact, and can be entertaining company. One or two of my friends from school—but I shan’t go into that,” he said, recollecting himself. “It’s all absurd, this talk of hanging them and so forth; you can’t do that kind of thing to a gentleman, not these days, it ain’t civilised. So one of the Darcy girls is responsible for his disgrace, is she? I don’t like that, it don’t seem right at all.”

“She has hardly come well out of the affair herself, which is no more than she deserves. Mud sticks, as the saying is, and she was a great deal too forward in showing her affections, and doesn’t she look silly now, when it is obvious to everyone that he didn’t care tuppence for her; it was the footmen he fancied.”

“Even so, the opprobrium will rest mostly on him. Miss Camilla Darcy is well-connected, rich—is she pretty?”

Lady Warren shrugged. “If you like those kind of looks. I don’t admire her myself, and she is not the equal of the three other sisters. The youngest one is no kind of a beauty at all, but she is a mere girl, so it doesn’t signify.”

“Well, Caro,” he said, rising from the table. “I rather think we might have some fun with this Camilla. Would that please you? I dare say you’d like to see her father’s haughty nose put out of joint for once.”

“I would indeed,” said Lady Warren with great enthusiasm. “But do be careful, George. I wouldn’t for the world have you fall in love with her.”

“Fall in love? What do you take me for? No, no, there will be no danger of that, none at all. I shall simply set out to hit her where she is most at risk—her reputation, ma’am. You know better than anyone the power of rumour and gossip, and what excellent sport to bring about her ruin without her having a notion of what’s afoot.” He rubbed his hands together. “I came back to England at a very good time, I see. What fun we shall have. I shall need your assistance, Caro.”

Lady Warren, her heart as cold as her stepson’s, her eyes full of malice, smiled as he bent his elegantly tousled head to kiss her cheek.

“Arrange for me to meet this piece of nature, if you will.”

“Nothing could be easier,” said Lady Warren instantly. “Lydia Pollexfen, who is their aunt, gives a rout, and they are invited and will feel obliged to attend, even though there is little love lost between Lydia and the Darcys, I can tell you.”

“Ah, Pollexfen, Prinny’s friend.”

“Yes, and Lydia is very fast, and it will do those girls no good to be seen much in her company, aunt or no aunt. I believe the eldest two see very little of her, but the twins are much taken with her circle. They are headstrong, foolish girls, with heads full of frivolity and romantic notions. However, on this occasion I know that you may be sure of seeing Camilla Darcy among her guests; she told me it would be so.”

“Then arrange an invitation for me. We shall begin our little game directly, and don’t I wish she may enjoy it.”