CHAPTER TWO
Two days later, Saye and Colonel Fitzwilliam were at their club, playing a game of cards, when Darcy entered. He took a seat at another table, selecting one of the broadsheets and reading for some time while they finished.
Fitzwilliam arrived first at his table, taking a seat and motioning to the server for a drink. Saye soon followed. Both brothers regarded Darcy carefully, no doubt seeing the evidence of sleepless nights and a headache brought on by too much brandy and too little food. They also might have observed that his man had not shaved him very well, if at all. A faint shadow of a beard extended over the lower part of his face.
Darcy, for some moments, regarded them in return. At last he said, “So this cousin of mine, must he be bearded?”
Within the hour the three gentlemen were at Darcy’s tailor, offering the man a commission which puzzled him exceedingly.
“You want two suits of in ferior quality, made in the fashion of two or three years past?” Mr Bridgewater enquired, his bemusement plain.
“Yes,” Saye replied impatiently. “And take care you do not fit him quite perfectly. In fact, my brother here will stand in his stead at the fittings.”
Darcy, who was already regretting the scheme, said, “This is foolish. Let us leave and tax this poor man no more.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr Darcy!” Bridgewater mistook Darcy’s aggravation as being aimed at himself. “I assure you it will be my honour to fashion these suits for you. I was only unsure of your wishes but now I understand completely.”
Fitzwilliam decided to speak up. “It is for a caper…of sorts. Some old university mates, a lark, so to speak.” He gave the man a conciliatory smile. “Darcy is always so well turned out, of course...to wear an outmoded, unfashionable suit…”
“Something more in the way of a country style,” Saye mentioned.
“To wear a country-styled, outmoded, less elegant sort of fashion will be exceedingly amusing to us all.”
“Yes indeed,” the tailor agreed enthusiastically. “And you would like two such suits?”
“Two,” Fitzwilliam confirmed, while Saye, who had been studying the samples of the less expensive materials, pointed to two he thought would serve well.
Darcy, watching it all, shook his head, wondering if it was merely an exercise in futility, or if it would prove to be the thing that made Miss Elizabeth Bennet despise him forever.
“Darcy, I will be first to admit, I find this notion exceedingly puzzling.”
Bingley had come to Darcy's house in response to his friend’s summons. Once there, Darcy had made a clean breast of his errors with regards to Jane Bennet’s true attachment to his friend, and had explained the forthcoming scheme to him. Bingley appeared delighted by the former and utterly bewildered by the latter.
He was agreeable to the idea of returning to Netherfield but the particulars of the scheme seemed to elude him. “Would I be required to have a beard as well? For I must say, I do not care for them and it is not so easy for me to grow one.”
“No, no, only I shall wear a beard.” Darcy explained.
“It still does not come in anywhere close to here.” Bingley gestured at his cheeks. “I thought surely by the age of three and twenty I should not have the downy cheeks of a callow youth but?—”
“You do not need to have a beard, Bingley. Only I require a change in appearance.”
“I could probably be shaved on alternate days and still have the smooth cheeks of?—”
“You do not need a beard, so it does not signify.”
“…a youth. My man did say, however, that many times?—”
“Bingley!”
Bingley finally stopped ruminating on his difficulties in growing facial hair and looked up at his friend.
“I need a beard because I wish to convince Elizabeth that I am—” Darcy swallowed hard “—my cousin. You will still be Charles Bingley. Your only part in my little farce is to remember that my name is Mr William Darcy, and I am a barrister.”
“How is it that we are friends? From university?”
“Um…yes. Yes, from university. Mr William Darcy is…he is younger than Fitzwilliam Darcy by…by two years. Or shall he be older? Or the same?”
“The same seems less likely,” Bingley observed reasonably. “And if he were older, I might not have known him at university.”
“You might have met him at Pemberley. He resides there, in one of the houses.”
“To be sure,” Bingley replied. “Although…”
“What?” Darcy asked.
“What about Wickham? It is one thing to perpetrate such a story on those with whom your acquaintance has been limited, but Wickham knows perfectly well you have no cousin named William Darcy, a barrister who lives at Pemberley.”
“What irony it would be to have my lies shattered by Wickham,” Darcy grumbled. “However, I am assured by Fitzwilliam that in a fortnight the regiment shall remove to Brighton for the summer. Mr William Darcy cannot appear at Netherfield until then.”
Darcy leant forward. “I must put aside my little scheme for a moment and beg your forgiveness for interfering with Miss Bennet. I should have encouraged you to seek the truth of the matter for yourself.”
“The fault is wholly my own.” Bingley cast his friend a rueful grin. “You have always given me excellent advice but I must learn to use my own sense as well.”
He chuckled. “For example, in this, your second attempt at love, I shall not follow your example. Though I am commonly the fool in love, in this instance, we shall let that be you.”