The True Darcy Spirit (14 page)

The figure stepped out of the shadows, and walked up to them. “Your servant,” he said, bowing to Cassandra. And to Mr. Gimpel: “Unhand the lady, if you please, before I make you do so in a way that you will regret.”

It was Mr. Darcy.

One glance told Mr. Gimpel that it would be an unequal contest, and he reluctantly dropped his hold on Cassandra, who stepped quickly away from him.

“It’s none of your business, Darcy,” said Gimpel. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, barging in like that, it’s a gross intrusion on a private moment.”

Mr. Darcy gave Gimpel a look so full of haughty scorn, that Cassandra felt like applauding. However, something told her that her cousin, who looked exceedingly angry, would not appreciate the gesture.

“Come,” he said to her, hooking his arm. “I think we shall leave Gimpel to contemplate his goddess on his own.”

It took only a few moments for Cassandra to realize that the anger was directed at her, even more than at Mr. Gimpel.

“Boorish young puppy,” said Darcy contemptuously. “What are you thinking of, to be wandering about the gardens in his company?”

What answer could she make to that? “We were with others, and then, somehow, became separated. I had no idea…”

“Then it is time you began to have some idea, at least of how to behave. And what are you doing here? This is not living in seclusion, as your stepfather stipulated.”

Cassandra was puzzled for a moment, and then it came to her that
Mr. Darcy was talking about her banishment to Cheltenham. Of course, he had believed Mr. Partington’s lies, and supposed her to be living there in the company of Mrs. Norris.

“I do not think that my actions are any business of yours,” she said.

“They are indeed, for your stepfather has made them so. Please believe me when I say that I have not the slightest interest in your whereabouts, provided that you are in respectable company and living in a proper way. I assumed that was the case, that this Mrs. Norris was well able to take care of a young lady in your circumstances, and then I find you locked in an embrace with Mr. Gimpel. Do you not know that despite his youth, he is as dissipated a young man as has ever been let loose in London? He is lecherous, and feckless, and associates with a set of fellows whom I wouldn’t give house room to. He may be immensely wealthy, but as to his morals and manners, that is another matter. How came you to be with him? You say you are with others, where are they, pray? And how came Mr. Gimpel to be among them?”

“I never met the wretched man before this evening, and he forced his attentions on me. I will be more careful in future.”

“I think you must be given no opportunity to be anything else,” he said with a lofty air that infuriated her.

Horatio Darcy was himself furious, furious with Gimpel for behaving in that loutish fashion, although it was nothing unexpected in his case. He was furious with this Mrs. Norris for not taking better care of her charge, and most of all, he was furious with Cassandra. He had disliked her from the moment he had set eyes on her, as he had told himself frequently since that first meeting—a meeting that replayed over and over in his mind, which annoyed him even more.

He had found himself dwelling on the iniquities of James Eyre, and half-inclined to seek him out and give him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. Yet who could blame him? Cassandra was a beauty, if you cared for those kind of looks, which he himself didn’t, not at all, and
came with the prospect of a fine fortune, it would be a rare man in Eyre’s circumstances who wouldn’t make a pitch for such a prize. But she, she must be of a naturally bad disposition; she must have encouraged Eyre and led him on.

Such a picture of alarm and innocence as she presented, protesting that she had not intended to wander off the path with Gimpel, apparently frightened and alarmed by his ardour. All show, no doubt, he should have left them to it, he had misjudged the situation, when he glimpsed the couple from the path and saw what Gimpel was about, he should merely have shrugged his shoulders at the impropriety of it and gone on his way.

“I am so grateful to you for rescuing me,” she was saying.

She has a golden voice, he thought. One could listen to such a voice all day, and never tire of it.

He pulled himself up, frowning. What was he thinking of? A voice didn’t come on its own, and in her case, it came with what he suspected was a considerable intelligence and probably a witty tongue—he couldn’t abide a woman with any pretensions to wit. And innocent she was not; her recent and damaging escapade was proof of that. And what a way for a woman to behave, how fickle, hardly to have cast off one lover before she was entangled with another.

He knew this to be unfair; his reasonable self told him that she had not shown the least inclination to respond to Gimpel’s advances. But he wanted to feed his anger, so he told himself that she had probably had a stream of lovers, that tale of the painter, what was his name, Lisser, and the mishap in the shrubbery that Mr. Partington had spoken of, that was probably quite her usual behaviour.

Well, he’d write to Mr. Partington, and express in the strongest terms his disapproval of Mrs. Norris bringing her charge to London; letting Cassandra be out anywhere in London was ill-advised, and as for Vauxhall! She should be repenting of her errors, not enjoying the music and lights of a pleasure garden.

Even as these thoughts flitted through his head, he felt the injustice of them. He almost spoke them aloud; he wanted to lash out at Cassandra, to wound her.

Against his will, against all his instincts, he had been impressed by her when she came to his chambers. While knowing that she was making a mistake, and wholly disapproving of any woman taking such a rash step, and then refusing the offer and security of marriage, he had to admire the steadfastness of character which made her insist that she would only marry a man who cared for her as she was, and not for her fortune.

In normal circumstances, such a stand would be praiseworthy, but of course, once a young woman had cast caution and propriety to the wind as she had done, there was no choice left to her. Yet she had decided that there was, going against reason and custom. Well, she was paying for it now, perhaps after this incident, she would discover just how very ill-equipped she was to look after herself, even for the space of half an hour on a summer’s evening.

They had reached the Broad Walk once more, even more crowded with people than it had been before. Cassandra took her arm out of his. “Thank you for your escort, but I need trouble you no further, I can easily find my way back to my supper box from here.”

Mr. Darcy took no notice, and stayed at her side as she increased her pace, walking noticeably faster than the more leisurely pleasure-seekers around them.

“Don’t worry,” he said drily. “I have no wish to inflict my company on your party.” Although he would like to get a look at this Mrs. Norris…No, he wouldn’t. It really was absolutely nothing to do with him, he must keep reminding himself of it, and there was Cassandra very much of the same way of thinking; she clearly wanted to have her own way in that, as in so much else. How had Mr. Partington brought up such a headstrong stepdaughter? Her mother must have been very much at fault to let her grow up so independent-minded.

“Now I really must beg you to leave me,” Cassandra said, as they came near to the main arena, where an orchestra was busy tuning up for the next performance. “I can come to no harm here.”

“I think you could come to harm anywhere, Miss Darcy,” he said coldly. He bowed, and watched her walk quickly away towards the
boxes. He turned, bumping as he did so into a tall, languorous-looking man who was sauntering alone with a jaunty air. “Why, Jack, good evening to you.”

“Horatio! What brings a hardworking lawyer to this site of frivolity and wickedness? Ah, accompanying the dazzling Lady Usborne, of course, why didn’t I think of it? You’re out of your league there, dear fellow, definitely walking in a dangerous place there. Oh, I dare say there’s no harm in her ladyship, beyond her not being too strong on the moral side, but Lord Usborne is an ugly customer if crossed.”

“Do leave my private affairs out of the conversation, Jack, there’s a good fellow. Lord Usborne and his wife ceased to care for one another years ago, it is a hollow marriage, as most of them are.”

“Is that why you haven’t married? Well, things are not always what they seem within a marriage, that’s one thing that an ill-spent life has taught me.”

“I don’t marry because I can’t afford to keep a wife, and if I could, I’ve never met a woman I should wish to set up house with.”

As Darcy spoke, his eyes were on Cassandra, just going into a box on the first level. Jack followed his gaze.

“What a pretty creature,” he exclaimed. “Horatio, you dog, Lady Usborne on one arm, and chasing after a dazzler with the other.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell you what, she puts me in mind of Mrs. Wytton, now there’s a happy bride, and a devilish contented husband, too; Wytton’s quite lost all his quick-tempered and bearish ways since he settled down with her. She’s a cousin of yours, ain’t she? Is this girl a relation? Don’t I know that woman she’s talking to?” His eyes narrowed.

Damn Jack and his impertinence. “That’s one Mrs. Norris, who’s supposed to be her chaperone, although she isn’t much good at it, if you ask me.”

“Mrs. Norris, eh? Funny, I could have sworn…”

But his attention, never very constant, was distracted by the sight of another old friend in the crowd, and he made an abrupt departure,
calling out to Horatio that he’d seen Urquhart over there. “He owes me a pony, let’s see if I can’t get him to buy me supper.”

Supper! Horatio had never felt less like eating the chicken and ham that Vauxhall was famous for. Nor did he much care to return to his mistress, who would be waiting for him in another of the groves; she had come with several friends, but made an assignation with him at a favourite spot. She loved these elements of intrigue; Darcy was beginning to feel that there might be something to be said for the calm of a domestic life, such as the Wyttons enjoyed. Only for a moment, though, there was no question of that for him for many years, if at all. Wytton was an eldest son, with a considerable estate and no financial worries, he was well able to afford a wife.

Jack had often suggested Darcy try his hand at an heiress: “You’re a good-looking fellow, with pleasing manners when you’re not on your high horse about something. Why waste your time and talents on a Lady U., when you might collar a thirty- or forty-thousand pounder?”

Because he didn’t choose to. In a world where no one bothered about money, except as to how to spend it, Horatio had very different views from the norm. He had no wish to live on a wife’s fortune. Naturally, upon marriage, his wife’s money would become his, for married women could own neither property nor wealth of any kind, everything they had was deemed to belong to their husband, but still, the inequality of such a match would always leave a sensitive man at a moral disadvantage.

No, he would prefer to make a name and fortune of his own, like an honest man. Like some lowly cit, he said to himself with dissatis-faction, wishing for a moment that he could share some of Jack’s insouciance. Jack would marry an heiress tomorrow, if he could find any father fool enough to permit it, for although Jack was the eldest son of Lord Frinton, he would inherit all his father’s debts, which were even bigger than his own. He would find some wealthy merchant or banker, though, in the end, a cit out in the market for a title for his daughter. That was the way of the world, no point railing against it. He wasn’t going to give that dratted woman another
thought, he told himself, as he glanced again at the box where she was sitting with her friends. If Mrs. Norris wasn’t going to look after her properly, that was her lookout, and shame on Mr. Partington for not taking better care of her in the first place.

Cassandra was still feeling shaken, and also angry at letting herself be so unwary as to end up in a compromising situation with that dreadful Mr. Gimpel, and even more angry at being discovered by Mr. Darcy. Hateful man, with his superior ways; yes, she was glad to have been helped out of a fix, but why had it had to be that man, of all the men in London who was there at that moment?

Fate, she thought bitterly. Wasn’t that what the legends that her papa had loved to tell her were all about? Mortals struggling in vain against the devices of the gods?

That brought her sense of humour back. Whatever Mr. Darcy was, he wasn’t any kind of Olympian god, just a prejudiced man, as one from his background would be. She would put him and the whole incident out of her mind. So when Mrs. Nettleton questioned her as to the whereabouts of Mr. Gimpel, she replied in a tolerably even voice that he had gone off to find some other acquaintance.

“I dare say he will be back shortly,” said Mrs. Nettleton comfortably. “I am pleased to see the two of you getting along so well together,” she added, with an arch look.

“We do not get on at all,” Cassandra said; best not to leave any doubt in Mrs. Nettleton’s mind on that score. “He is an ill-behaved man; I do not care for his company in the least.”

“Fie, so high and mighty,” cried Mrs. Nettleton. “Let me tell you, that for a girl in your circumstances…” She stopped abruptly, her face suddenly wreathed in smiles.

Cassandra turned to see who had wrought this transformation in her, and found herself face-to-face with Lord Usborne.

Mrs. Nettleton greeted him with effusiveness, begging him to sit down and join them, the famous wafer-thin ham would be arriving shortly, and Mr. Josbert had been so good as to order several of the
tiny chickens, besides a quart of arrack. But perhaps he was in another box, with other company?

Lord Usborne said that was so, and it looked for a moment as though he were about to take his leave, but something decided him against it, and he drew out the chair beside Cassandra, and began to talk to her, about the spectacles on offer. “Wait until you see the cascade, they will ring a bell shortly, it is nearly ten o’clock, and then you will see a remarkable sight.”