The True Darcy Spirit (11 page)

“I have what I had as a girl, my husband was not in such circumstances that he could be buying me jewels.”

“What a pity, with your looks you pay for dressing. I shall lend you some pieces. No, no, do not refuse, they are mere trinkets, but I can assure you, you need a sparkle around your neck and at your ears for any evening party in London. I will fetch you a diamond cross, you may wear it about your neck on a velvet ribbon.”

Cassandra was not inclined to wear Mrs. Nettleton’s diamonds about her neck. She smiled her thanks, shook her head, and put on her string of pearls.

“They are mighty fine ones,” Mrs. Nettleton said.

Too fine for a clergyman’s daughter, Cassandra realised. “My godmother gave them to me, upon the occasion of my marriage. I value them highly.”

At eight o’clock, Cassandra was in the drawing room with Mrs. Nettleton. “Here we are,
rayonnant,
” Mrs. Nettleton said with a laugh, “and no other guests are come. Hark, there is a knock on the door.”

Cassandra was presented to a Lord Usborne, a tall, clever-looking man with a saturnine face, who looked her up and down as though she were a racehorse, she thought indignantly. He was joined by a Colonel Palmer and a young and beautifully dressed Mrs. Palmer, who lacked refinement in her vowels, but made up for it in her jewels. Close on their heels came a Mr. Harry Fanshawe, a goggle-eyed young man in the elegant evening uniform of the Tenth, who had a lopsided smile and very blue eyes. He slid an arm around Mrs. Palmer’s waist and gave her a kiss upon her cheek, then greeted Mrs. Nettleton with a most affectionate hug and a merry quip about his lateness. Cassandra, startled by this familiarity, was even more startled
when he took and held her hand, gazed into her eyes, and murmured, “Enchanting, utterly enchanting.”

They went in to dinner, Mrs. Nettleton telling Lord Usborne to take Mrs. Kent in. He sat beside her, through the excellent dinner, and plied her with wine, of which she drank very little, and questions, which she tried not to answer. Was she but lately come to London? Where was she from? Her husband was an ex-soldier? What regiment? Who were her family, a daughter of a clergyman, Mrs. Nettleton had said, where had he had his parish?

Cassandra grew more and more uncomfortable, and was finally provoked into telling his lordship that she considered a stream of questions to be no sort of conversation. He laughed, and said he liked a woman who could hold her ground, and then turned to talk to Mrs. Nettleton. This left her with Colonel Palmer, who was on her other side, and who was, Cassandra felt sure, fondling his wife’s leg beneath the table.

Cassandra might not have been out in the world, but she had a strong notion that this was not the kind of dinner party that, for instance, her cousin Camilla would attend, married woman or no. There was a looseness about the talk, which she much disliked; however, as though sensing this, Lord Usborne, showing himself to be better bred than either of the other two gentlemen, toned down his remarks, and began to talk about painters of the day in a sensible and well-informed manner, “for Mrs. Nettleton has told me that you are an accomplished artist yourself, and take a great interest in the subject. Tell me, are you also a musician? Might we have the honour of hearing you play this evening?”

Mrs. Palmer pouted and looked not best pleased at this suggestion; she for one didn’t want to listen to some long, dull sonata, she informed the company.

“Do not concern yourself,” Cassandra said. “For although I was well-taught and indeed can play a number of long and dull sonatas, I have no real talent upon the pianoforte, nor upon any musical instrument, and have no wish to inflict my very moderate playing upon any company.”

Lord Usborne began now to talk about music to Cassandra; it was almost as though he did not believe that she ever had learnt to play. “So much accomplishment for a clergyman’s daughter,” he said mockingly. “Do you play Clementi, or Cramer, or perhaps the compositions of that admirable young composer Mr. Field?”

Cassandra did not choose to be patronised. “I have learned several Clementi pieces, but Cramer is too difficult for me to do justice to, since a high degree of execution is necessary to be able to play his compositions, and I have it not.”

Cassandra longed for the dinner to come to an end, so that she might escape from Lord Usborne’s questions and civilities. At last, Mrs. Nettleton rose, told the gentlemen not to linger over their wine, and took Cassandra and Mrs. Palmer up to the drawing room. There Mrs. Palmer flung herself upon a sofa, and yawned prodigiously. “I swear, Mrs. N., I have never spent a more tedious time in your house, with this talk of painting and music. All on account of this genteel Mrs. Kent”—here she shot a look of dislike at Cassandra—“I wonder you consider it worth the effort.”

A footman came in with the tea tray, and, to her astonishment, Cassandra saw Mrs. Palmer give him a broad wink. Mrs. Nettleton’s mouth lost its cheerful curve and she frowned at Mrs. Palmer before abruptly dismissing the footman.

“Mrs. N.’s footmen always have the finest calves of any servants in London,” said Mrs. Palmer, sitting up to take her tea. “I do hope the gentlemen are not much longer, for we are very dull here.”

Cassandra agreed with her as to the dullness, but not with her desire to have the gentlemen appear. However, they came in soon after, in good spirits. Mrs. Nettleton at once desired the Palmers and Mr. Fanshawe to join her at the card table, and told Lord Usborne that he might entertain Mrs. Kent while they played a hand or two.

“You do not care for cards, Mrs. Kent?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“No.”

“Ah, that is a London habit we shall have to accustom you to; I assure you, everyone in London is a gamester these days.”

She smiled politely. “I am not in a position to gamble, even for low stakes.”

Lord Usborne began to speak in a more confidential tone. “You are in a difficult situation, how fortunate for you that you met Mrs. Nettleton, who can show you how to go on in London, for it can be a hazardous city for those unfamiliar with its ways. And you have no family or acquaintance in London, I believe?”

“Not at present, no.” And she was beginning to wonder just how fortunate she was in her meeting with Mrs. Nettleton, if it obliged her to spend many evenings like this.

“Tell me, have you seen much of the neighbourhood? Or of the rest of London? You must allow me to show you some of the sights, I am acknowledged by my friends to be a notable guide to the city. Let me call for you tomorrow, in the afternoon, in my curricle. Should you care to look at pictures, I can gain admittance to many of the best private collections.”

Cassandra thanked him, and declined, but he would not take no for an answer. He raised his voice. “Mrs. Nettleton, here is Mrs. Kent declaring she will not drive with me, I rely upon you to change her mind. She may command me to go wherever she chooses; now, is that not a reasonable offer?”

At last the evening was at an end. Two of the gentlemen were going on to their club, and Mrs. Palmer was twining herself affectionately around the colonel, telling him that he must call his carriage, that she longed to go home, and, with a languishing look, to bed.

Mr. Fanshawe seized Cassandra’s hand again, and carried it to his lips. Lord Usborne bowed gracefully, and said that he would be outside the house the next afternoon, at five o’clock. “You will persuade her to come, will you not, Mrs. Nettleton?”

Before Cassandra could utter another protest, the gentlemen were gone, and Cassandra was finally able to escape upstairs after bidding Mrs. Nettleton a rapid and polite good-night, saying that she was much too tired to think about what she might do upon the morrow.

The morrow brought her landlady into her room behind Betsy, who was carrying Cassandra’s morning dish of hot chocolate. Mrs. Nettleton had a purpose to this untimely visitation, she was there to tell Cassandra she must not be a goose and turn down Lord Usborne’s civil offer.

“For he is a man of considerable influence, you must know; related to quite half the House of Lords.” If anyone could find her teaching positions in the households of the haut ton, then it was he.

“Indeed?” said Cassandra drily. “I cannot believe that any mama would expect to employ a drawing teacher recommended by a man, however well-connected.”

“It may be so in the country for all I know, but allow me to know better than you how we go on in London. Let Lord Usborne but mention your name to a few ladies of quality, and you will find a host of enquiries come your way. Now, we must decide what you are to wear this afternoon, for if you are to drive out with a gentleman of fashion, you must be seen to look your best.”

The trouble was, Cassandra reflected, as she searched for the words to resist Mrs. Nettleton, that somehow the energy needed to be resolute had left her. She was not sleeping well, tossing and turning and reliving the events of the last few weeks in a distorted, unhappy fashion. In her dreams, James became a monster, which he was not,
and the journeys she had made, from Rosings to London and Bath, and then from Bath to London, became nightmarish excursions, fanciful versions of the more prosaic reality.

It was as though her betrayal by James, her double betrayal, she supposed, had left her drained of feeling and therefore without the strength of character that she so desperately needed if she were to make her way in the world.

It was, in the end, easier to acquiesce. Mrs. Nettleton gave up her demand that Cassandra go for a drive alone with Lord Usborne; she would accompany them, she declared. She had her own carriage, of course, but a drive out with a gentleman, and such a handsome one as Lord Usborne—did not Cassandra find him a very handsome man?—must always be a greater pleasure.

The day was bright and sunny, but without the heat of the last few days. Mrs. Nettleton pressed a shawl on Cassandra. “Cashmere, you know, but feel how soft and warm! For your pelisse is sadly out of fashion, and it is not quite the thing for you to be wearing muslins all the time, like a miss. Did not you have wedding clothes made upon your marriage? I did not like to mention it, but it is certainly not quite the thing for you to dress quite so young and maidenly.”

That had not occurred to Cassandra. Secure with her mother’s band around her finger, she hadn’t given her clothes a second thought, and had dressed just as she had always done, in the light colours and fabrics of her girlhood. Now she cast her mind back to Emily’s preparations for her wedding to Charles Egerton; it gave her a pang, to think that she would not stand at the church door to wish her oldest friend well on the threshold of her new life as a married woman. The pretty muslins were to be replaced by the richer silks and patterns of the young married woman; Emily had delighted in her new clothes as they were sent home.

It was a change marked in so many ways, the passage from girlhood to womanhood symbolised by the vows and the separation from the childhood home. How different had been her own transition from one state to the other, leaving Rosings a girl, setting up in London as a woman, but with none of the rituals that should have accompanied
such a step. She ran her mind over her meagre wardrobe. There was no question of her buying new clothes, yet somehow, she must contrive. She could not, she now saw, present herself at a house, seeking employment, dressed like a well-bred miss from the country. She had told herself that it would be well to dress plainly, but there was plain and plain.

How complicated it all was. How agreeable to be a savage and not to have to spend a moment thinking of what to wear.

Now Mrs. Nettleton, seeing Cassandra’s hesitation, saw her opportunity. Dresses were brought out from the clothes-press: “This will fit you very well, is it not smart? Indeed, my niece will not mind at all, she left it here because she felt it never suited her so very well. She has not your colouring, she is very fair, and this bronze stuff did her no favours.”

Could there be any harm in borrowing a dress? Again, she could not summon up her powers of resistance, it was much easier to say yes. And how well she looked in the gown, with its small tucks and ruffles and a waist lower than she was used to. Mrs. Nettleton exclaimed, as did Betsy; they exchanged looks of complicity, but Cassandra, whose senses were not as keen as they should be, did not notice.

She did notice, observing herself in the long glass, that she appeared older. It was remarkable the change that an item of clothing made. And it would do well for her to look older, both for maintaining the fiction of her widowhood and for obtaining work.

She thanked Mrs. Nettleton, and was in the drawing room dressed in the bronze gown, and in a dashing bonnet that went with it, when his lordship arrived on the dot of five o’clock. He bowed when Mrs. Nettleton said that, with his permission, she would drive out with them, handed them both into the open carriage, and told the coachman to drive on.

“We are going to the park,” Mrs. Nettleton whispered in Cassandra’s ear. “This is the fashionable hour to drive out, and to see and be seen.”

This brought Cassandra no joy. There was no one she wished to
see, and she most certainly did not want to be seen by anyone who knew her, but who was there to recognise her?

She was unlucky. As the carriage turned into the park and began to bowl along at a steady pace, amid a stream of other carriages, men and women on horseback, and pedestrians, all dressed in what Cassandra could see were fashionable outfits, a carriage came the other way, driven by a man in the same livery as Lord Usborne’s coachman. She heard him say, very low, “The devil take it,” then he took off his hat to the occupants of the other carriage, a lovely woman, with dark hair and a beautiful complexion, her extravagant hat dancing with feathers. And, beside her, Mr. Horatio Darcy.

Colour flared into Cassandra’s cheeks, and as the carriages passed, she put up a hand to shield her face from sight. Thank God, Mr. Darcy seemed as anxious not to look into their carriage as she was to avoid his gaze. Thank goodness she had been wearing Mrs. Nettleton’s clothes; there was a good chance that Mr. Darcy might, had he looked that way at all, have noticed nothing but a woman with her head turned away.

The carriages were past each other. Lord Usborne frowned; Mrs. Nettleton raised her eyebrows at him, but said nothing.

If her cousin were driving with a lady clearly known to Lord Usborne, and he had noticed Cassandra, then might he be able to trace her through this connection?

She pulled herself together. He had not seen her, and if he had, why should he want to trace her? He had done what he had been asked to do, had carried out what he clearly felt was a disagreeable task, and that was an end of it; he would take no more interest in her or her affairs than if she had been a stranger.

A letter that came the very next day, however, caused a renewed sense of alarm. She had gone to the Receiving House in St. Martin’s Lane with no expectation of there being any correspondence for her, but it gave a purpose to her walk, and she needed to get out of the house.

To her annoyance, Mrs. Nettleton, who seemed to have wide
views as to the duties of a landlady, insisted that she take Betsy with her. “It will not do for you to be walking around London unaccompanied, not a beautiful young woman like yourself. And you are not yet familiar with London, you do not know where you can go safely and the places you should avoid, for fear of unpleasantness or molestation. London is awash with thieves and other hazards, and Betsy, who is born and bred a Londoner, will be of the greatest use to you. And she will be pleased to go with you, is that not so, Betsy?”

Betsy bobbed a curtsy, and she did look pleased, for, as she told Cassandra once they had set out, she would much rather be out walking in the streets than slaving away at number seven. And, to Cassandra’s chagrin, she at once proved her worth and Mrs. Nettleton’s words of warning.

“No, miss, I mean, ma’am, you cannot go that way.”

Cassandra consulted her map. “Look, it is much the most direct route.”

“I can’t read no map, but I do know that Mrs. Nettleton would skin me alive if I let you walk up St. James’s Street, for it is a thing ladies had best not do.”

“Why ever not?”

“It is where all the gentlemen’s clubs are situated, and they sit in the windows and ogle the ladies with their eyes and glasses. And besides, there are, well, houses there, that aren’t quite respectable.”

“What kind of houses?”

Betsy’s face took on a cunning look. “Perhaps you wouldn’t know about them, coming from Bath, so Mrs. Nettleton told me. Betsy lowered her voice and looked around, lest anyone going past might hear her. “Bagnios. Seraglios, they call them sometimes. Where the nuns live.”

“Nuns?” Now Cassandra was utterly confused. How had nuns crept into the conversation? “Are they religious houses, then?” How could a religious house be called a seraglio, it made no sense.

That brought a peal of laughter from Betsy. “Houses of love, that’s what they are, and the women in them, those are the nuns, not at all respectable.” A wistful tone came into her voice. “But very fine
looking, and they have everything they want, in the way of clothes and jewels, and some of them end up rich and living in Belgrave Square, so they say. I wish I had the looks to be one of them,” she added with a sigh.

Naïve, Cassandra might be, but she was not a fool, and her acquaintance with Mrs. Croscombe had taught her things that many a well-brought-up young lady would have no knowledge of. Betsy was talking about houses of ill repute, where women sold themselves for gain.

A chill came over her, and she began to walk away from the forbidden territory. Suddenly, she yearned for the familiar park and lanes and fields of her native Kent. It was odd, that in London, there were clearly boundaries far more defined than those in the country, where it was a matter of who owned the land. Here, such a street belonged to no one, but to walk along it was to commit a trespass of another kind.

At the post office, she told Betsy to wait outside. Betsy at first looked stubborn, but Cassandra was firm. “I merely go in to make an enquiry, no one will approach me or trouble me in there, and I shall not be long.”

And there was the letter, from Emily, she recognized the writing at once. She tucked it into her reticule; she longed to read it at once, but did not want Betsy to know that she had a letter, she would wait until she could be alone. If Betsy knew there was a letter, then Mrs. Nettleton would find out about it, also, and then she would question Cassandra, in the most friendly way, and yet it was an intrusion into her private life that Cassandra was not at all happy with. She would have the luxury of reading the letter that evening, in her bedchamber.

My dearest Cassandra

I have heard some news of you that I can hardly believe, that you are not to be married, and that you have been cut off from your family? Can this be true? Mama will say nothing, although I am sure she is in Mrs. Partington’s confidence. She has not forbidden me to write to you, and I am glad of it, for I
would certainly disobey. What, not communicate with my dearest friend—and if you are, indeed, in trouble, then you will have need of a true friend. I will tell you what I know, and then please write to me, by return, to tell me the truth of the matter.

This is what I know: Yesterday, while I was out walking with Charles, a horseman came past. He was a tall, fine-looking young man, and he stopped briefly to exchange greetings with Charles, with whom he is slightly acquainted, it turned out, and he bowed to me, before going on his way.

“Who is that?” I enquired, when he had ridden on.

“It is Mr. Horatio Darcy. I know him from my schooldays. He is a lawyer now, in London, a mighty clever fellow who will doubtless make a name for himself. I wonder what brings him to these parts.”

I said that perhaps he was going to Rosings about a legal matter—I at once thought of you, and settlements and so on.

My dear Charles said, yes, he might well be there upon some legal matter, some family business, because of the family connection. Well, I was quite correct in this, for I learned from John, our groom, who is courting Mary, the parlourmaid at Rosings, you remember, that the horseman, this Mr. Darcy, did indeed arrive at Rosings, and was closeted with Mr. Partington for quite half an hour, and I gather that voices were raised—Mr. Partington’s was, in any event.

And then this young man, who appears to have a very forceful character—I can believe he is indeed a relation of yours—waited upon your mother, although it seems that Mr. Partington was not at all desirous that he should do so.

One should not eavesdrop, but servants always do, and one should not listen to servants’ gossip, so Mama is always telling me, but one always does. The story they are all telling is that Mr. Eyre will not marry you without a fortune, and that Mr. Partington agreed to a dowry, and that now you say you will not marry him after all. Can this be true? And that
you are going to live with one Mrs. Norris, and that you will never be permitted again to cross the threshold of Rosings, for “as long as you live,” were Mr. Partington’s harsh words.

I do so hope that all this is a mistake and there is some confusion here. I am concerned lest you are gone out of London to this Mrs. Norris, and my letter will not reach you. If it does, pray write to me at once, to tell me how things are with you, if there is anything you need, if there is anything I may do to assist you, in as far as I am able.

I am sure that if you are not to marry Mr. Eyre, you have a very good reason for it, but, oh, Cassandra, are you sure what you are about? To elope with a man is a rash step, but not to marry him will carry consequences far more awful—but you don’t need me to tell you this.