Page 32

MERRY MORTIFICATIONS

E lizabeth’s family all turned to look when she entered the parlour. She felt herself colour under their inspection, but it was evidently not enough to assuage her sister’s concern.

“Oh, Lizzy, you still look terribly pale. Are you sure you are well enough to go?”

“I daresay if I am pale, it will only make me look more fashionable.”

In fact, she did not feel equal to the task before her.

She had not formed a particularly high opinion of Lady Rothersea during their brief introduction.

Knowing that she was to be the entertainment for the evening, and that the foundation of everyone’s interest was her supposed alliance with a man who, in truth, wanted nothing to do with her, was enough to make her feel truly unwell.

The contrivance of having taken ill whilst visiting Miss Darcy had proved vastly convenient, for two days of enforced bedrest had given her time to digest Mr Darcy’s awful revelation in private.

Thoughts of her mother’s wickedness had plagued her throughout.

She was incensed and dismayed on behalf of all her family, and eaten up with worry about what it could do to their reputations if it were ever exposed.

Attending the soiree of a self-confessed gossip with friends and connexions throughout the nobility did not seem the safest way of avoiding discovery.

She took Jane’s hand. “I do wish you could come with me.”

Jane gave it a comforting squeeze, but it was Mr Gardiner who answered.

“A little Dutch courage is what you need. What will it be—sherry?”

Elizabeth would usually decline, but not this day. She nodded and gulped down her uncle’s offering with inadvisable haste and savoured the warmth that lingered in her belly as she settled into the carriage and set off towards the countess’s home.

She knew not what to expect of the evening; the term ‘soiree’ was such a vague one.

Her one assumption was that it would be an intimate affair, for her ladyship had said no gentlemen would be in attendance, and Elizabeth’s own circle of acquaintances was not of a size as could give her any expectation of a gathering larger than ten or twelve ladies.

It was somewhat surprising, therefore, to be shown into a room where more than double that many women were assembled.

A string quartet was set up in one corner, and the musicians played music lively enough for a jig.

No one was dancing, but it lent an energetic air to the room.

Card tables were set out, and games—some of them raucous—were in full swing.

Those who were not playing were sitting about, talking and laughing.

Elizabeth saw it all with pleasure, for she was more used to seeing a restraint amongst the ladies of the ton that had convinced her none of them had a whit of character between them.

Lady Rothersea detached herself from a group of her friends and came forwards with an unexpectedly warm and welcoming smile.

“Miss Bennet, I am delighted you could join us. Allow me to introduce you to everyone.” She took a glass of wine from the tray of a passing footman, handing it to her as they went.

There followed more introductions than Elizabeth had a hope of remembering.

At every moment, she was convinced one of the ladies would ask her about Mr Darcy, but nobody did.

Instead, there was a steady stream of chatter about people she had never met.

She listened with a vague sense of self-reproach.

It was gossip, but not of the sort she had expected.

It was neither mean nor degrading—at least no more so than it ever was to speak about someone behind their back.

It bore every similarity, indeed, to the sort of talk that circulated in the parlours of Meryton.

Elizabeth was not sure why she had assumed the gossip of the ton would be crueller than in her own circle.

She was more than a little ashamed to comprehend that it was probably because these women were rich.

She made a concerted effort to discard such prepossessions and, as the evening wore on, felt less and less guarded and more and more able to enjoy herself.

“Lady Rothersea certainly knows how to entertain,” said a Mrs Tattersall to the group in which Elizabeth found herself some hours later.

“I had the misfortune of attending an At Home with Lady Caroline Gerrard last week. At least, she called it an At Home, but if you ask me, it was closer to how a funeral must be. Still, at least her daughter was well dressed, thanks to Miss Bennet.”

“Me?” Elizabeth said with a start. “You must forgive me—I am not acquainted with a Miss Gerrard.”

“You helped her avoid Mrs Appleby’s fusty old lace collection a few weeks ago.”

“Oh—the young lady in the dressmaker’s shop? Yes, she was terribly concerned with what her mother would prefer her to wear.”

“And well she might be. Lady Caroline is a termagant. But then, mothers can be bothersome, can they not?”

Praying this was not an allusion to her own disgraced parent, Elizabeth did her best to disguise her panic as she replied, “Yes, but then, mothers are rather like funerals too. We are all doomed to have one.”

After a somewhat stunned pause, Mrs Tattersall and several of her friends gave in to laughter. “Yes, I suppose we are. And I know Miss Gerrard was grateful for your intervention with hers.”

Elizabeth took a large sip of wine, and then another, as she waited for someone to change the subject.

A different lady—one of the youngest in attendance—obliged her, smiling eagerly as she said, “Speaking of elegance, may I say, your gown is quite charming. I do so admire you. To have the courage to wear something so utterly out of keeping with the fashion of the day?—”

Elizabeth could not constrain the small huff of incredulous laughter that escaped her.

The interruption made the young lady realise her error.

“Oh no, that came out all wrong! I do apologise. I was going on to say that, whilst it is not necessarily à la mode, you wear it so beautifully as to put to shame all our pretensions to dressing finely. That is…well, I…I wish I had your éclat.”

“Are you insulting my guest of honour, Helena Bryant?” Lady Rothersea called from the nearest card table.

“Not deliberately, Cousin. I have misspoken, as usual.”

“It is well,” Elizabeth assured her. “You have more than made up for any injury with your pretty compliment. And you are right, this gown is a year old—but I like it very well. I own, I am not much beholden to the fashion plates, nor do I dress with any mind to impressing others—only to please myself.”

“It is clearly not only yourself you are pleasing. Nobody in their right mind would try to fault your sartorial choices when they have secured you such an admirer as—” The woman who had said this—Lady Marling, Elizabeth thought—stopped abruptly when she received an elbow in the ribs from Mrs Tattersall.

Elizabeth supposed it was inevitable that the subject would arise at some point and only wished it had done so before she polished off three glasses of wine. She was much less able in her present state to guard against the flood of feelings that accompanied the allusion to Mr Darcy.

“Are we to evade the matter all evening?” Lady Marling enquired testily. “Miss Bennet must know we are all impatient to hear her story.”

“She does,” said Lady Rothersea, still attending to her cards. “But you might exercise a little subtlety, my dear.”

“You may exercise as much or as little subtlety as you please, madam, it will not change the story I tell you,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, yes, you and Mr Darcy are not involved in any way. That is exactly what we expected you to say,” Lady Marling replied. “But we are all friends now. You need not persist with the ruse.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “It is not a ruse.”

“Come now, Miss Bennet,” said Lady Rothersea. “You know I witnessed your quarrel last week. People who are not intimately acquainted with each other simply do not argue like that.”

“And I hate to tell you,” added Miss Bryant, “but you were seen embracing on Henrietta Street earlier this week.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank. An embrace was a far cry from the real reason Mr Darcy had been obliged to prop her upright that day. “That was not what it seemed. I took ill at his house, and?—”

“You have been to his house?” asked Mrs Tattersall.

Elizabeth could have kicked herself. “Only to visit his sister.”

“His sister?” pressed someone else—Lady Harriett—drifting over to join in the interrogation. “Who is not yet out and does not live with him?”

“Pardon?”

“Miss Darcy has her own establishment in Portman Square, where she lives with her companion.”

Elizabeth swallowed a groan. She was all too aware that Miss Darcy’s invitation had been a scheme, concocted to allow her brother to impart his damning information.

Four days had passed with no return call, and whilst she was disappointed, she was not surprised.

Mr Darcy would never allow his sister to set foot so near to Cheapside to visit the family of a known adulteress.

The discovery that the sweet and innocent young lady had been summoned from her own home to be embroiled in the contrivance somehow made the situation still worse.

She shrugged helplessly. “What can I say? She wished to meet me at Berkeley Square.”

“How deliciously convenient,” said Mrs Tattersall.

“Truly, it is not.”

“I cannot comprehend why you are persisting with this charade,” Lady Rothersea said. “It is the coup of the century. Mr Darcy has had more caps set at him than the Prince Regent has had hot dinners. Your reluctance to crow about it is unfathomable to the rest of us.”

Elizabeth knew not how to reply. None of them believed her when she spoke the truth, but she would not bind herself with a lie to a man who hated her. “There is nothing to crow about,” she repeated wearily.