Page 31 of An Offer of Marriage (Engaged to Mr Darcy #7)
IN VINO VERITAS
D arcy’s annoyance with her touch was like a dash of ice-cold water on the burgeoning good feelings Elizabeth had in the evening.
She liked the opera, she was enjoying Darcy’s few little jokes, and she believed they had looked convincingly loverish to anyone who cared to look.
And then she had taken it too far, touching him as a wife would.
She had presumed too much on the little crumbs of kindliness offered. He was disgusted by her.
She could not look at Saye; she imagined she would be met with either satire or pity, neither of which was agreeable to her. Tears stung at her eyes and she opened the libretto, staring blindly at it in hopes of seeming like she was reading.
“May I get you some wine?” Saye enquired.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“Have some wine,” he urged. “My little friend did not spill out all his delights and can flavour it very nicely for us.” Moving his jacket to one side, he showed her where the flask had been tucked away. What he had within it was anyone’s guess, but it had smelt very strong when it spilt.
“I cannot think Darcy would be very happy with me if he returned from wherever he went to find me drunken.”
“He left you in my care and thus took his chances.” Saye rose and walked towards the curtained entrance to the box.
Elizabeth knew a small table with wine was on the other side of it.
As Saye disappeared out of the curtains, they were parted for two others to allow themselves in: Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst. Elizabeth rose to greet them wishing, desperately, that Darcy was there.
“Dear Eliza!” Miss Bingley cooed, extending her arms. “How do you do?” The last was echoed by Mrs Hurst.
“Miss Bingley, Mrs Hurst, it is very good to see you,” Elizabeth replied. The lie moved across her lips with all the ease of sandpaper, but the two sisters seemed to take it in earnest.
“It is good to see you as well,” said Miss Bingley with a little titter. “But where has your husband gone?”
Elizabeth paused a moment. “He stepped out but will return shortly.”
“Well! You have been quite the talk of the town!” Miss Bingley used her arm to gesture over the floor beneath them. Elizabeth followed the path of the arm to see that no one at all was paying them any mind. No doubt Miss Bingley would be disappointed by that.
“Marriage to a bachelor as eligible as my husband once was is certain to bestir some of the tongues,” Elizabeth said with agreeability she did not feel. “Soon enough we will be old news, I am sure.”
“I surely hope so, for dear Jane’s sake if none other. These scandals do tend to linger, unfortunately.” Miss Bingley cast her sister a look, and after a giggle, Mrs Hurst nodded soberly and added,
“We would not wish our brother and dear, sweet Jane to be overshadowed by such tattle!”
Elizabeth felt a flush of hot anger but resolved to be civil. “I am sure a gentleman marrying a gentleman’s daughter is hardly a scandal,” she said evenly.
“Of course,” said Miss Bingley with feigned staunchness. “And I would have you know that never for a minute did I believe you seduced him.”
“No, nor I,” Mrs Hurst agreed.
“Of course I did not seduce him, nor did he seduce me,” she said as calmly as she could through her humiliation. “Nor am I with child, nor any of the other scurrilous nonsense that has gone about.”
At this moment, Saye joined them, handing Elizabeth a glass of wine as he said, “Seduction? I must have my share of this conversation, for it is above all things my favourite subject.”
Elizabeth took a deep drink of the wine then coughed. Whatever Saye had put in her wine was potent stuff indeed. She could not have spoken if she wished it—but neither did she wish it for fear she might lose her composure.
Saye was giving Miss Bingley a look, and Miss Bingley was provoked to speak by it. “I was simply assuring Eliza?—”
“Mrs Darcy,” Saye said with agreeable hauteur. “My cousin does not wish his wife to be referred to in such a vulgar way, certainly not in the middle of the opera house.”
“Miss Bingley was acquainting me with the fact that she heard that I seduced my husband to make him marry me,” Elizabeth said, finally finding her voice.
Saye burst into a loud, likely feigned guffaw that drew the attention of some of those within earshot.
He even slapped himself on one leg. “Darcy should wish you had!” he replied heartily.
“Your sources have grievously misled you, Miss Bingley, for it was not seduction which prevailed. No, it was love, ardent love, which provoked my cousin into matrimony.”
“Of course,” said Miss Bingley. “I only wished her to know?—”
“Who was it?” Saye asked, suddenly looking every inch the nobleman. His aspect made even Elizabeth a little nervous, and she took another smaller drink of her wine.
“Who was…what?” Miss Bingley gave an uncomfortable-sounding titter.
“Who was it that said Elizabeth seduced Darcy to make him marry her?” Saye enquired, stepping towards Miss Bingley. “I mean to cut them henceforth.”
“Cut?” Miss Bingley asked, her voice suddenly higher.
“Yes, cut. You know, ignore them in society, enrobe them in ignominy, turn them into outcasts.” He quirked a brow at her.
Miss Bingley looked a little panicky. “I assure you, good sir, that nothing?—”
“Good sir? You have the wrong fellow, Miss Bingley.” Saye laughed in a mean way.
“I am not a good sir. I am a spoilt, arrogant, and sometimes vindictive sir, and I wish to know at once who it is that is saying such vile things of my dear cousin Elizabeth because I mean to cut them so completely their children will not be received.”
Miss Bingley appeared wholly taken aback and more than a little alarmed. She actually looked to Elizabeth herself, as if wishing for assistance; Elizabeth looked away, indulging in another sip of the wine. It was going down easier now, she noticed .
“You know, Miss Bingley,” said Saye, “if you cannot name your sources, I shall have to conclude it was you who began the rumours.”
“No, no, it was not me…a saloon, um, Lady Hortense?—”
“Lady Wexford’s daughter?” Saye raised one brow. “I shall see to it that she never sets foot in Almack’s again.”
“No, no,” Mrs Hurst hastened to say. “We do not mean to lay it at the door of anyone in particular. It was more of a?—”
“A general sort of thing,” Miss Bingley said. Her entire countenance and her chest had turned an unattractive red colour, Elizabeth thought, suppressing another grin behind a swallow of wine.
“But you must remember someone who told you,” Saye insisted, taking a step towards her.
“I-I cannot rightly say,” she stammered.
“Then perhaps you ought to say nothing at all,” Saye said coolly, stepping back.
The silence that descended was awkward to say the least. It was Elizabeth who had mercy on the sisters, saying, “But Jane and Bingley’s wedding is something to anticipate, I am sure.”
“Yes,” said Miss Bingley sounding relieved. “Yes, it is. Your mother has done wonderfully with all the arrangements for the breakfast.”
“My mother has always been an excellent, and very welcoming, hostess,” Elizabeth replied and permitted the conversation to be steered into a bit of benign wedding tattle.
Saye moved away from the three, re-taking his seat and drinking his wine, evidently uncaring that the ladies were yet standing. Now he looked over his shoulder to them and said, “One bedchamber, Miss Bingley.”
“I beg your pardon, sir? ”
“See to it that Mr and Mrs Darcy are not separated at night,” he said. “Darcy will not stand for it, I assure you of that. He cannot bear to be away from her, not even to sleep! Ah, nothing worse than a man in love—you may know the truth of it yourself someday. Maybe.”
“Yes. Maybe,” Miss Bingley said, looking a little ill.
“But probably not,” Saye added with a little wink that seemed teasing.
Miss Bingley gave a sick-looking smile. “One bedchamber, then.”
“Excellent,” said Saye, turning his attention back to the floor.
Elizabeth knew not whether to laugh or cry at his machinations.
Darcy would not be pleased, to be sure, and as for herself?
What if she took ill? The episodes struck her both sporadically and erratically; sometimes it seemed related to what she ate, other times she could not have said what caused it.
Regardless, herself over a chamber pot was not a scene she would like to create in front of her already disgusted husband.
Miss Bingley bid her farewell and all three ladies curtseyed, the two sisters moving off with far less aplomb than they had entered with. Elizabeth took another deep draught of her wine. It filled her chest with a very pleasant warmth.
She moved slowly back to her seat, wondering if Darcy had abandoned her completely. Saye would return her home, she supposed.
“Those two are overdressed mushrooms and I loathe them,” Saye informed her. “I am dearly sorry they are to be your relations.”
“I daresay they are not…” Elizabeth stopped and then grinned. “Never mind that. I was going to be ladylike and say th ey were not all bad, but in truth, I really rather think they are.”
“Ha! There’s a good girl.”
“But I wonder where Darcy has got to? I fear he was displeased by my attentions.”
“He looked well-pleased to me, or had at least the beginnings of it,” Saye replied with a little snicker that she was not sure she understood.
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, do not mind me.” Saye reached into his pocket and withdrew the flask again.
Elizabeth protested immediately. “None for me. I confess it seems, already, to be going to my head.”
“That,” Saye informed her, pouring in a generous dollop, “just means it is working. Now come, drink up, I wish to tell you about all the other people I hate, starting with that pompous-looking fellow in the second box.”