Page 14

14. Friends and Relatives

“Darce, may we perchance be granted entrance to this fine den of masculine sanctuary?”

“Bingley… Richard… You may as well come in. This dog hole should be safe enough. I doubt any of us could muster any attention from a woman worthy of being pleased anyway.”

With that, the three friends entered the study in the Darcy townhouse. He had not seen Bingley since the Netherfield ball a week earlier, and his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, since he left for Hertfordshire two months earlier.

They entered, exchanged greetings, took a few glasses of port for fortification, and sat down to discuss the ways of the world, such as it was.

“Bingley, I understood you to be about three-quarters leg-shackled off in the country. Do you still plan to return?” the colonel quipped.

“That remains to be seen,” Bingley replied somewhat glumly. “I have become… concerned… about what I saw there. I have not given up, but I am… cautious… thoughtful.”

“A thoughtful Bingley must defy some fundamental law of nature.”

“Perhaps, but I suppose sufficient exposure to your contemplative cousin was likely to rub off sooner or later. We all have our weaknesses.”

“You seem a bit morose about all this introspection. Was this angel more persistent than the earlier ones? Or is your head just sore from having to work for once?”

They all chuckled, but Bingley did not deign to reply to the last part.

“No, not persistent, per se, but she was the first one I could imagine settling down with. I may even have given it due consideration if not for—”

The pause became pregnant as the other men had no idea how to deal with a pensive Bingley.

“If not for?” the colonel helpfully supplied, then kicked his boot to jar his tongue loose.

“If not for… well… several things, really. The first is that my sister swears on everything holy that Miss Bennet does not hold me in any particular regard; that she is naught but a fortune hunter. She claims women know these things, and she is also privy to private conversations. I returned to town after the ball for a fortnight, and Caroline closed up the house. I have yet to decide what to do.”

The colonel grunted at a level that was indecorous for a gentleman, but perfectly ordinary for a soldier. “I see your sister is not satisfied with running your life but has elevated her game to running your thinking as well. No wonder your head hurts.”

He waited for the reaction and was disappointed when all he got was a sigh and a shrug. He expected fisticuffs after a remark like that (even though he thought he was just stating the obvious) but got nothing—much to his chagrin.

Bingley continued with uncharacteristic seriousness. “Not exactly, but she does make a point. I am rarely certain what a woman thinks. I suspect the same is true of most men. That said, Caroline has her own agenda, so I do not necessarily trust her implicitly.”

“Very wise, but keep in mind that women have far less freedom of expression. If she chased you with a quarter the intensity you usually chase them with, she would be considered fast.”

“Agreed, but I do not think that precludes her at least giving me a hint. There was plenty of opportunity. At any rate, I decided to give it a think for a few weeks. Miss Bennet’s next younger sister, Miss Elizabeth, made a keen observation when we were discussing ladies’ accomplishments.”

Darcy laughed. “She made it whilst taking fifteen guineas off our hands in a half-hour. She bilked us like a Covent Garden sharper. It was impressive.”

The colonel laughed heartily and wondered if he might find such a woman somewhere. Then he wondered how in the world a country miss could afford those stakes, and that led him to wonder if she could afford a broken-down old colonel for a husband.

Bingley continued, “Miss Elizabeth insists accomplishments are ephemeral, and mostly worthless. They are only useful for a season or two, then obsolete for the next fifty years. She had a clever turn of phrase—called them husband bait , I think. It put me to thinking I ought to take the long view. Considering the matter for a few weeks cannot hurt in the grand scheme of things.”

Darcy weighed in. “I applaud both Miss Elizabeth’s thinking, and you taking up the yoke—but why use your sister as the excuse? If you want to abandon Miss Bennet, abandon her. The ball alone gave sufficient reasons without leaning on your sister’s rather suspect opinion. If you want to proceed with her, write to Mrs Nichols and reopen the house. If you want to think about it, write to her father that you are delayed but expect to return. At the very least, you owe it to your staff to make certain any servants were properly paid off and the house properly closed if you are not to return.”

“Oh ho! This I have to hear,” the colonel chuckled. “Now I know not what I am more anxious about—Bingley’s explanation, or what in the world has you sticking your nose in. Mayhap Bingley was not the only one interested in Hertfordshire?”

“I admit that I have an interest in Hertfordshire, though not of the matrimonial variety, which I will expound on presently… but let us not confuse poor Bingley with too many topics at once.”

Bingley laughed, returning a bit to something approaching his customary humour.

“I was becoming quite enamoured with Miss Bennet, but blood and thunder, did you notice her family at the ball?”

Darcy ground his teeth. “That I did! I had finally gotten more or less into Miss Elizabeth’s good books, or at least out of her bad books. I danced the supper set and dined with her, but—”

“OH HO!” the colonel bellowed before he could even finish. “You danced the supper set? Voluntarily? ”

“Yes, well—”

“This I must hear!”

“I would be done by now if you had not interrupted.”

“Carry on, good sir. Pray, carry on. I am all ears.”

“We are not finished with Bingley yet.”

“I believe I can keep track,” Bingley said. “Besides that, they are sisters, so the two stories are related. Might as well give the colonel the whole picture.”

The colonel laughed while Darcy sighed. “You just want me to shoulder the load.”

“And who better?” Bingley said, mostly back to his normal mood, which may or may not have been helped by his second or third glass of port.

Darcy looked pensive while the colonel said, “So… the Misses Bennet?”

“It all started at the assembly, at least I thought so for the first month.”

Bingley sat up curiously, “Do tell! If you know more, it is news to me.”

Darcy wondered how much to actually tell his friend. The man was trustworthy, but every person who knew about Georgiana was one more person who could slip at an inopportune time, and his sister becoming aware would be a calamity beyond measure, so discretion should be the order of the day.

“It was a country assembly, probably much like any other when there is new blood for the matchmakers. Naturally, Bingley went to the handsomest woman in the room . The eldest Miss Bennet is not exactly to my taste, but she is handsome by any measure.”

“And you stalked around the edges like a prowler.”

“Not quite. You remember Mr Gardiner?”

The colonel’s interest was piqued as he poured one more glass. “He of the insipid-fortune-hunting Cheapside nieces?”

“Exactly,” Darcy said while Bingley’s ears perked up like a hunting dog. He had never heard a peep about any of that.

Darcy told a sanitised version of the Cheapside story, omitting the inconvenient fact that he was there because the man rescued his sister, from an ill-thought-out elopement. Instead, he focused on his own faux pas. Fortunately, Bingley was too fascinated with the story to question such minor details as why he might agree to meet such nieces in the first place.

“Believe it or not, I returned hat in hand a week later to apologise, but Mr Gardiner said his niece had returned to the country. I spoke to him for an hour or more and he gave some excellent advice. I decided to listen, for once in my life, and try to be a better man. Naturally, that meant I should dance with the ladies. After all, they outnumbered the men by a noticeable margin, and it is the duty of a gentleman.”

The colonel jumped up out of his seat and put his hand on Darcy’s forehead before sitting back down. “No fever… must be madness.’

Darcy chuckled but allowed him his amusement.

“I was unaware you even knew how to hold your hat in your hand, Darcy.”

“One must start somewhere.”

The colonel shrugged, more aware than Bingley about the reason for his cousin’s reformation but unwilling to discuss it in present company.

“Bingley proposed I dance with the next younger sister, a prettyish lady of about twenty. I had no objection to the scheme, but she disappeared before I could ask, so I chose another.”

“Right civilised of you,” Bingley quipped, then he laughed a bit and took up the story.

“Miss Elizabeth spent weeks mostly shunning Darcy for reasons known only to her. She was smooth, clever, subtle, and well-mannered about it, but by the time her sister got caught in the rain coming to dinner at Netherfield a month later, they had not even been introduced, nor had she spoken a single word to him. She even declined a dance without speaking to him.”

“That is unprecedented! Like waving red meat in front of a hungry wolf.”

“Do not be crude,” Darcy snapped, which surprised the colonel, who examined his cousin intently. He had never gotten tetchy about a woman before, so his reaction was interesting.

“Go on.”

“Miss Bingley, in a fit of even worse than usual manners, implied Miss Elizabeth avoided playing cards with us because she could not afford the stakes, whilst Hurst implied that she lacked the skill or temperament.”

“Hardly any great stroke of cognition when she was a country miss, and Hurst is little more than a professional gambler.”

“True, I suppose. She claimed satisfaction with her book, but they could just not let it go. She eventually seemed to lose her temper and snapped that if we were going to whinge all night, she may as well play. She called for Brag with five guineas as table stakes.”

The colonel whistled in admiration, since he had as good of an idea of how much a country miss was likely to have for allowance as anyone. Nobody but a suicidal madwoman or heiress wagered with months’ worth of allowance, ergo the woman must have more of the ready than would be expected.

Bingley laughed heartily. “She then proceeded to educate Caroline on what an accomplished woman was, whilst converting her five guineas to over twenty in less than an hour. I ended the night with a single guinea out of five.”

“One more than I had,” Darcy grumbled.

The colonel whistled in admiration again. “I would pay good money to see that.”

Darcy continued, “You can just imagine how that got my attention. She did all that while still avoiding saying anything directly to me. I did make some progress though. If I asked a question, she would deign to reply to the whole table if she felt like it.”

“More like if she found it useful for her card play,” Bingley quipped. “We were like lambs to the slaughter.”

“So how did she go from refusing to speak to you to the supper dance?” the colonel asked enthusiastically.

Darcy frowned till his teeth hurt.

“Your brother happened!”

“MY brOTHER!” the colonel bellowed, as was his custom when the viscount was mentioned. “What has that scapegrace done now?”

He had not spoken a word to his brother in over five years and had not had a good opinion of the blackguard for at least a decade.

His tirade was interrupted by a knock on the door, and the timely arrival of Soams with a tea cart.

~~~~~

Darcy always marvelled at his butler’s sixth sense. The man had a knack for knowing when a group of men should have some sustenance, requested or not. He sometimes speculated the man’s hearing was simply good enough to hear glass clinking and detect when the ratio of spirits to food was likely to lead to disagreeable tasks for butler and valet, or he had some other sensibility. That said, he could just as well have determined that three men in a room for an hour were almost certainly up to no good, and they should probably be interrupted.

Either way, the intervention was timely. The men tucked into a simple cold meal of bread, meat, cheese, lemonade, and strong coffee. They deferred all serious discussion as they ate, so had to fall back on the age-old male conversational gambits of boasting and exaggerating.

Eventually, the meal came to a close, so they reluctantly continued.

“All right,” the colonel finally said. “What has Andrew done this time?”

With that, Darcy spent the next ten minutes describing the confrontations, first with Miss Elizabeth and thence with the viscount, along with the entirely pointless effort he had made with the earl to rein his cousin in.

The colonel asked, “How could you not know Andrew was a rogue?”

“I suppose I never really thought about it. I have spoken maybe a hundred words to him in the last decade. I mostly ignore him, and he rarely if ever comes into my presence. I nearly came to blows with him my last year at Cambridge over his attempt to weasel me out of enough money to pay some gambling debts, and I have steadfastly ignored him ever since.”

Bingley said, “Even if you did not know specifically that he was a seducer of the worst order, you must have suspected it.”

“I had the mistaken belief that since his father and brother were honourable, he would at least keep himself within reasonable limits. It turns out I was misinformed.”

The colonel asked the operative question. “Had you known, would you have done anything different? You have known Wickham’s proclivities for years, and you not only allowed him to continue, but even cleaned up his messes.”

Darcy sighed. “I suppose I did. I wonder how much responsibility I hold for the damage he did to the world.”

“Did he ever force anyone?”

“If I knew he had, he would have been in debtor’s prison years ago. He is a seducer, but he never had to stoop quite so low.”

Fitzwilliam said, “We all know dozens of such men, but I do not know what we are supposed to do about it. We cannot fix the entire race of mankind.”

“No, but I suppose we have some responsibility for those close to us. I admit that I have probably done more than many men of our class to help the victims, but less than is possible… perhaps, even less than is reasonable.”

“You could beggar your estate, and it would be a drop in the ocean,” Fitzwilliam asserted.

While Darcy thought about that a minute, Bingley made a surprising observation.

“I wonder if that applies to the women in our lives.”

“What do you mean?” Darcy asked. Like most, he assumed most evil in the world was perpetuated by men, a not unnatural surmise.

“Caroline likes to gossip, and I know she has made life miserable for more than one woman she considered her rival. Should I be calling her to account, or trying to undo her damage?”

They thought about it a minute, and finally Darcy said, “I suppose you should call her to account, though how you might go about it is a mystery to me. I cannot even control my sister who is not yet out.”

“I control her purse strings.”

“Keep in mind that she can just as easily aim her sharp tongue at you, or someone important to you,” Darcy warned.

Fitzwilliam said, “Who is to say she has not already done so? It would be the work of a moment to shatter Miss Bennet’s hopes and dreams… if she had any in the first place.”

Bingley looked startled.

Darcy said, “If she did, it is probably correctable if you are still interested in her. If so, just follow one of my earlier suggestions.”

“Either one would raise expectations. If I am not prepared to satisfy them, I could do more harm than good.”

“If you want to live a risk-free life, you could sit around this room until the end of time—or until Soams gets tired of your stink,” the colonel bellowed with great laughter.

They all went along with it and decided to defer the discussion of what they owed to the world in reparations for the evils of their sex until another time.

The colonel moved back to a topic they could productively discuss.

“You were telling me about Miss Elizabeth and my brother.”

“Oh yes,” Bingley said enthusiastically. “Talk about confronting the tiger. When she was introduced to the viscount, she got over her Darcy-shunning policy in a trice.”

“Tell me about it?”

Darcy said, “Keeping in mind she had yet to say a word to me, when she was introduced to Andrew, she made the barest greeting then made herself scarce. Then she accosted Bingley and I in the dining room during the separation and told us without preamble she and her sister would leave at dawn, with or without our help.”

Bingley laughed, “Darcy challenged her about the practicality of that plan, and she basically said that getting up at five to walk three miles home in the dark to get her father’s coach was well within her capabilities and would be preferable to staying in my house. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Darcy laughed. “This is a bit out of sequence, but the next morning I asked her why she had taken such a dislike to me, and she said she never had. She was entirely indifferent!”

“Zooks, I bet that hurt!” The colonel laughed.

“I suppose it did sting, but it was refreshing in a way. After being chased for a decade, being thoroughly ignored has much to recommend it.”

“HA! But, back to the feather knocking.”

Bingley continued, “We had to drag it out of her for obvious reasons, but she eventually told us she knew all about your brother. She had, in fact, held one of his natural daughters in her own hands.”

“Gutsy move, if you ask me,” the colonel replied with respect.

“Just the start. She said she would protect her family and friends but could care less about Caroline because she was neither. Tore the hide off her pretensions, which I bet my sister would have been unhappy to hear.”

“She gave us a lecture on unbalanced risks. We will have to speak at length about that later,” he added, with a look indicating there was more to be said on the subject vis-à-vis their ward.

Bingley continued, “Then she told us how to set a trap for the scoundrel.”

“Damme. Sounds like either my kind of woman or someone I should hide from. No wonder you took a fancy to her, Darcy.”

“Yes… not that complicated when you get right down to it.”

“So that is how he ended up with a lost tooth and broken nose.”

“Yes. The missing tooth was probably swept up from the floor of Miss Elizabeth’s bedchamber the next morning.”

“You were in her bedchamber? Are you suicidal?” the colonel asked worriedly.

“She obviously was not there. She had already moved herself and her sister… without telling Caroline.” Bingley laughed.

“Did the maids know that?” the colonel reiterated.

“Be easy, colonel,” Bingley soothed. “We were cautious and ensured no gossip ensued. Miss Elizabeth took care of her sister, but we thought we should show we could at least follow her lead without stuffing it up. All is well.”

Darcy continued, “The next morning after explaining her complete indifference to me, she suggested I just beat my head against a rock instead of speaking with your father. Said it would hurt about the same and accomplish just as much.”

“Even I know that!”

“I did to, but the die was cast by then. It was my duty to try.”

“Worth a try,” the colonel said. “I am still a bit unclear about how that led to a supper dance. The path is not very clear.”

Darcy chuckled. “Just before she left, she gave me my shilling back and said we were even.”

It took a minute for it to sink in, but then the colonel laughed hard enough to spill his drink. Fortunately, it was on a hardwood floor that had already seen gallons of port in the past, and would no doubt see more in the future, so it was not a calamity.

Bingley asked in confusion, “What shilling was that?”

The colonel took pity on him. “The elder Bennet sisters were the so-called insipid tradesman’s nieces from Cheapside,” he said before he continued laughing with Darcy.

Bingley joined in a minute later. “That explains a great deal.”