Page 6 of A Good Memory is Unpardonable (Frolic and Romance #2)

Five

I know by now when and where Fitzwilliam is penning his portion of our memoirs because I caught him acting very suspiciously when I awoke this morning.

He was speaking hurriedly, asking if I would not like to call my maid and trying to divert my gaze out the opposite window to admire the rain.

As rain is no novelty this time of year, I was naturally on the alert.

When his valet invited him away for his shave, I took the liberty of peeking under the bed. Lo and behold, I found his journal. It is now my privilege to set the record straight on one or two things that he has misrepresented.

I won that game of chess.

And the one after that.

He did claim a victory over me later in the week, but I blame that on the fact that my father had sharpened his skills before our rematch. Even now, I win more often than not, and I wonder how on earth Fitzwilliam gained his reputation for being a formidable player.

Oh, and I never meant to flirt with him. It does sound like that from the way he has set it down, but I speak the truth. I had had quite enough of marriage and felt no desire to put myself in that way again, though I was perfectly content to lead others down the primrose path.

But I digress.

Fitzwilliam proved to be a willing lamb to the slaughter for all the preening mamas in Meryton.

I believe that I alone appreciated the sacrifice it must have been for him, because Charles did not yet know him well enough, and neither he nor Caroline could conceive of a differing perspective to their own.

I am naturally a garrulous person, but Jane once told me that a retiring character—Mary was her example, but Fitzwilliam fits the illustration perfectly—when forced into much company, would feel just as miserable as I would if locked away for days with no company at all.

And so, when Mr. Darcy would retreat to some sanctum at Netherfield for an hour or two, I made certain that the servants did not betray his whereabouts to my brother or sister-in-law.

For one thing, I liked Charles far too well to permit his boisterous personality to drive away a friend of such material usefulness.

Charles had steadied remarkably in the year since I had known him, and to some degree, Fitzwilliam was responsible for it.

But watching Fitzwilliam at the Assembly later that week, gamely taking to the floor for set after set, gave me a new appreciation for him. Perhaps I was the only one by the time the dust had all settled on the dance floor, and even my approval was tested afterward.

He did escort the proper number of ladies, but he seemed little charmed.

The silly dolt spoke tersely to most of them, a thing for which he was judged prideful and above his company by the Meryton Mamas, as I had taken to calling them.

They did not notice how his complexion was slightly paler with each new lady he met.

I think the man went half an hour at one stretch without taking a proper breath.

By the time we rode home that evening, he had run out of words entirely.

Even now, comfortably married for two decades and still firmly affixed in my own mind as the giddiest fool who ever draped herself on her husband’s arm, I hold to the belief that he is allotted a limited number of utterances per day.

Someday, I imagine I will be bored enough to count them and settle the matter.

When the quota is reached, there is nothing left but sarcasm.

So it was on the way home that night.

“I declare, I have never seen prettier girls in my life! Some of them uncommonly agreeable,” Charles bubbled. “Breeding, elegance, beauty—why, Meryton is abounding in fine ladies! Do you not agree, Darcy?”

“Bingley, you continue to astonish me. I saw little beauty and no breeding at all,” Fitzwilliam snapped.

I flashed him an indignant look, and he grudgingly added, “Present company excluded.”

“Quite right, Mr. Darcy,” Caroline purred. I absolutely hated it when she did that, and she knew it, so I tried to look the other way. “We were certainly a long way from Grosvenor Square, were we not?”

“No, no,” Charles interrupted, “that will not do. I refuse to believe the location is sufficient indictment of the lovely people I met tonight to earn them my disdain. Come, Darcy, did you not see a single lady to catch your fancy?”

He slid a cautious look my way again, and I could almost see the scales in his mind upon which he was stacking his words. “I would not confess it if I had.”

Charles was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be as fastidious as you for a kingdom. What about that girl you led out for the first set? Tell me she did not take your breath away, man!”

Fitzwilliam narrowed his eyes, probably trying to recall who it was. “Apparently not.”

“If you are struggling to make heads or tails of that string of mediocrity, perhaps I may be of some assistance,” Caroline offered.

“I believe that was the lady I asked you about. Everyone was declaring her a beauty, but I saw nothing in it and sought a gentleman’s opinion.

I distinctly recall what you said, for I thought it so clever! ”

Fitzwilliam squirmed—do you see, I said before that was a habit of his. “There is no need to repeat—”

“Nay, let us hear it!” Charles cried.

“Yes, Mr. Darcy, do let it be heard, for it was most diverting. You said ‘She, a beauty? I should have as soon called her mother a wit!’”

Fitzwilliam cleared his throat and fidgeted with his cuff links. “It means nothing,” he mumbled, with a nervous glance my way. “As a matter of fact, I do not even recall whom it was that I supposedly insulted.”

Caroline snickered, and Charles looked worried. All eyes fell to me.

“Jane,” I whispered. “That was Jane you danced with first.”

No one spoke again.

I refused his hand out of the carriage that night.

Just like I refused to let him take my wrap or see me upstairs.

He must have known better than to request a chess rematch, though we both confessed later that it was many hours before we were calm enough to sleep, and the game would have done us good.

I shall save my descriptions of our reconciliations for another time because they were far too numerous and complex in those early days for me to begin on even one of them here. All I will say in this entry is that Fitzwilliam can be... very persuasive. When he wants to be.

And now I must put away my writing because I hear my husband walking this way.

Not only am I suddenly in mind for a bit of his sort of “persuasion,” but I am still under the illusion that he does not know what I am doing in the hothouse.

He claims no curiosity about what I am planning to write, but yesterday I caught him casually glancing in my escritoire.

“For a penknife,” he said. “Mine is dull.”

I doubt he will ever suspect to look behind the palm bush.

Just as he never thought I would look under the bed, but I maintain that mine is the more imaginative hiding place.

He must have felt too exposed after this morning, however, and now I shall have to “not look” for his journal all over again.