“Does she have the money for this quest?”
That gave Charlie pause; his face screwed up in the effort of remembering something unconnected to Latin or Greek. “I am not sure, Owen. Mama said she had been provided for, though I fancied she deemed the provision niggardly in view of Mary’s sacrifice. See? She says she is living in Hertford—because Shelby Manor has been sold, I suppose. Oh, it is too bad! Pater could afford a dozen Shelby Manors to house Mary for the rest of her life!” He wrung his hands together, anguished. “I don’t know her circumstances! And why didn’t I ask? Because I couldn’t face a scene with my father! I’m a coward. A weakling! Just as Pater says. What is wrong with me, that I cannot face him?”
“Come, Charlie, don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you cannot face him because you know it will accomplish nothing, perhaps even make a situation worse. As soon as the post is moving again, write to your mother. Ask her what Mary’s situation is. She is not travelling until May, so you have a little time.”
Charlie’s brow cleared; he nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Oh, poor Mary! Where does she get these zany ideas? Write a book!”
“If her letter is anything to go by, she gets her ideas from Argus,” Owen said. “I admire the man immensely, but he is no friend of the Tories or your father. I would keep this from him if you can. It never crossed my mind that ladies read the Westminster Chronicle, least of all your aunt.” His eyes twinkled. “Whom, I note, you have no difficulty in calling plain Mary.”
“Well, I have always thought of her as plain Mary, you see. Oh, how I used to look forward to those holidays with her at Shelby Manor! Mama used to take Grandmother to Bath once a year, and I stayed with Mary. The fun we had! Walking, going out in the trap—she could talk about anything and was game for anything from climbing trees to pot-shotting pigeons with a catapult. With Pater snapping at my heels when my schoolmasters were not, my weeks with Mary remain the most wonderful part of my childhood. She loves geography most, though she is no mean historian. It amazed me that she knew the common and botanical names of all the mosses, ferns, trees and flowers in the woods.” Charlie’s perfect teeth flashed in a grin. “I add that—spread this no farther, Owen!—she was not above tying up her skirts to paddle down a stream in search of tadpoles.”
“A side to her that you alone were privileged to see.”
“Yes. The moment others were around, she turned into an aunt. A maiden aunt, prim and prissy. Having seen them splash through many a stream, I can vouch for her legs—very shapely.”
“I am intrigued,” said Owen, deeming it time he reverted to a tutor. “However, Charlie, the weather has set for some days, and Virgil is still stuffed. No Horatian odes until he is as empty as an English pillowcase drying on a line. Virgil now, a letter to your mama later.” T more delightfully than Mary expected. Though she could receive no gentleman callers, Mrs. Markham, Miss Delphinia Botolph, Mrs. McLeod and Lady Appleby came often to her house, privately deploring its musty atmosphere and dark outlook, not to mention privately speculating as to why dear Miss Bennet had no lady’s companion. Enquiries met with a stone wall; Miss Bennet simply said she had no need of one, and changed the subject. However, if a carriage was sent for her or she hired one of her own, she could attend private dinner parties and receptions. There were always enough unattached gentlemen, and Mr. Robert Wilde had dropped unsubtle hints that he would very much like it were he to be seated beside Miss Bennet at a dinner table, or care for her on other kinds of occasion.
Wriggled brows and winks flew from face to face; it was no mean thing for a thirty-eight-year-old female to charm such an eligible bachelor as Mr. Wilde. Who seemed not to care that he was her junior by a good six or seven years.
“Clever of him,” said Miss Botolph, whose sixty years meant she experienced no pangs of jealousy. “One hears that she has an adequate income, and if he snares her, it will elevate his station. She is Darcy of Pemberley’s sister-in-law.”
“I could wish she dressed better,” said Lady Appleby, a keen reader of ladies’ fashion magazines.
“And I, that she did not come out with those truly peculiar remarks,” from Mrs. Markham. “I do believe she was seen in deep conversation with a Gypsy.”
The object of these observations was seated on a sofa with Mr. Wilde in attendance, her plain black gown so old that it had a greenish hue, and her hair scraped into a bun without a single curl to frame her face.
“What did you learn from the Gypsy?” Mr. Wilde was asking.
“Fascinating, sir! It seems they believe themselves the descendants of the Egyptian pharaohs, and are doomed to wander until some paradise or prophet arrives. What he was really trying to do was to separate me from my sixpences, but he did not succeed. His eyes hungered for gold or silver, not food. I went away convinced that his tribe, at least, is neither impoverished nor discontented. He said they liked their life. I did learn that they move on when they have fouled their camp site with rotten food and bodily wastes. A lesson some of our own hedgerow people should learn.”
“You say they like their life. But you do not like yours.”
“That will change in May,” said Mary, nibbling a macaroon. “This is very good. I must ask Mrs. McLeod for her cook’s recipe.”
“That’s a relief!” cried Mr. Wilde, forgetting that it was not polite for new acquaintances to contract words.
“A relief. In what way?”
“It says that there will be an end to your travels. That one day you will command the services of your own cook.”
“I do that now.”
“But do not entertain. Therefore, no macaroons.”
“I am reproved.”
“Miss Bennet, I would never dream of reproving you!” His light brown eyes grew brighter, gazed into hers ardently, and his whirling mind quite forgot that they were in Mrs. McLeod’s drawing room with ten other people. “On the contrary, I ask for nothing more of life than to spend it at your side.” He took the plunge. “Marry me!”
Horrified, she wriggled down the sofa away from him in a movement so convulsive that all eyes fixed on them; all ears had been flapping far longer.
“Pray do not say it!”
“I have already said it,” he pointed out. “Your answer?”
“No, a thousand times no!”
“Then let us speak of other things.” He took the empty plate from her nerveless fingers and smiled at her charmingly. “I don’t accept my congé, you understand. My offer remains open.”
“Do not hope, Mr. Wilde. I am obdurate.” Oh, how vexatious! Why had she not foreseen this inappropriate declaration? How had she encouraged him?
“Will you be at Miss Appleby’s wedding?” he asked.
And that, concluded the satisfied onlookers, is that—for the time being, at any rate. Sooner or later she would accept his offer.
“Though if she plays too hard to catch,” said Miss Botolph, “she may find her fisherman has waded far upstream.”
“Do you know what I think, Delphinia?” asked Mrs. Markham. “I think she does not give tuppence for matrimony.”
“From which I deduce that her situation is easy and her way of life settled,” Miss Botolph answered. “It was certainly so for me after my mama died. There are worse fates than a comfortable competence and a maiden existence.” She snorted. “Husbands can prove more of a sorrow than a blessing.”
An observation that the married ladies chose to ignore.
Argus put down his pen and viewed his latest effort with a slightly cynical eye. Its subject was actually rather silly, he thought, but comfortably off English folk, particularly those who lived in cities, were incredibly sentimental. Not the most vivid, emotive prose could move them to pity the lot of a chimney sweep, but if one substituted an animal for the human being—ah, that was quite a different matter! Many a tear would be shed when this letter appeared in the Westminster Chronicle! Pit ponies, no less. Permanently blind from a life spent underground, their poor shaggy hides furrowed with whip marks…
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It amused him to do this sort of thing occasionally, for Argus was not what he seemed to his readers, who in their fantasies pictured him starving in a garret, worn to bones by the sheer force of his revolutionary ideals. Ladies of Miss Mary Bennet’s kind might dream of him as a fellow crusader against England’s ills, but in truth his epistolary zeal was fired by his desire to make life uncomfortable for certain gentlemen of the Lords and Commons. Every Argusine letter caused questions to be raised in both Houses, provoked interminable speeches, obliged Lord This and Mr. That to dodge a few rotten eggs on that perilous trip between the portals of Parliament and the cabins of their carriages. In actual fact he knew as well as did the most conservative of Tories that nothing would improve conditions for the poor. No, it was not that which drove him; what did, Argus had decided, was a spirit of mischief.
Closing his library door behind him, he sallied into the spacious hall of his house in Grosvenor Square and held out a hand for his gloves, hat and cane while his butler draped a fur-collared cape about his broad shoulders.
“Tell Stubbs not to wait up,” he said, and ventured out into the freezing late March night wearing his true guise; Argus existed only in his study. His walk was very short; one side of the square saw him reach his destination.
“My dear Angus,” said Fitzwilliam Darcy, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Do come into the drawing room. I have a new whisky for you—it takes a Scot to deliver a verdict on a Scotch whisky.”
“Och, I’ll give my verdict happily, Fitz, but your man knows his Highland malts better than I do.” Divested of cloak, cane, hat and gloves, Mr. Angus Sinclair, secretly known as Argus, accompanied his host across the vast, echoing foyer of Darcy House. “Going to try again, eh?” he asked.
“Would I succeed if I did try?”
“No. That is the best part about being a Scot. I don’t need your influence, either at Court or in the City, let alone the Houses of Parliament. My wee weekly journal is but a hobby—the baw-bees come from Glasgow coal and iron, as you well know. I derive much pleasure from being a thorn in the Tory paw, stout English lion that he is. You should travel north of the border, Fitz.”
“I can tolerate your weekly journal, Angus. It’s Argus who is the damnable nuisance,” said Fitz, leading his guest into the small drawing room, blazing with crimson and gilt.
No doubt he would have continued in that vein, except that his ravishing wife was coming forward with a brilliant smile; she and Mr. Sinclair liked each other. “Angus!”
“Each time I see you, Elizabeth, your beauty amazes me,” he said, kissing her hand.
“Fitz is making a bore of himself again about Argus?”
“Inevitably,” he said, heart sinking a little at her use of “bore.” Too tactless.
“Who is he?”
“In this incarnation, I know not. His letters come in the post. But in his original, mythical incarnation, he was a huge monster with many eyes. Which, I am sure, is why the anonymous fellow chose his pen name. The eyes of Argus see everywhere.”
“You must know who he is,” said Fitz.
“No, I do not.”
“Oh, Fitz, do leave Angus alone!” Elizabeth said jokingly.
“Am I making a bore of myself?” Fitz asked, a slight tinge of acid in his voice.
“Yes, my love, you are.”
“Point taken. Try the whisky, Angus,” said Fitz with a tight smile, holding out a glass.
Oh, dear, Angus thought, swallowing a potion he detested. Elizabeth is going to embark upon yet another of her poke-gentle-fun-at-Fitz essays, and he, hating it, will poker up stiffer than any iron implement ever forged to tame a fire. Why can she not see that her touch isn’t light enough? Especially given its object, thinner-skinned by far than he pretends.
“Do not say you like it, Angus!” she said with a laugh.
“But I do. Very smooth,” Angus lied valiantly.
A reply that mollified Fitz, but did not raise him in his hostess’s esteem; she had been hoping for support.
It was a private dinner; no other guests were expected, so the three of them sat at one end of the small dining table in the small dining room, there to consume a five-course meal to which none of them did justice.
“I publish Argus’s epistles, Fitz,” Angus said as the joints were removed and the syllabubs came in, “because I am so tired of this waste.” His rather crabbed hand swept the air above the table. “It is de rigeur to serve me a gargantuan dinner, though I do not need it, and have eaten but a wee bit of it. Nor has either of you made greater inroads. All of us would have been content with a loaf of bread, some butter, some jam, some cheese and a winter apple. Your staff and all their relatives wax fat on your leavings—so, probably, do the ravens in the square gardens.”
Even knowing Fitz’s detestation of excessive loudness, Elizabeth could not help her burst of laughter. “Do you know, Angus, you and my sister Mary would get along together famously? That was exactly the kind of remark sets people’s backs up, but you care as little for our feelings as she would.”
“Whose wife is she?”
“Nobody’s. Mary is unmarried.”
“A spinster enamoured of Argus!” Fitz snapped.
Startled, Elizabeth’s eyes flew to his face. “How do you know that?” she asked. “I certainly do not.”
She had taken care to say it lightly, almost jokingly, but he would not look at her, and his face had gone very impassive. “I know it from Mary, of course.”
“Does she live in London?” Angus asked, shrewd blue eyes taking note of the sudden tension between them.
“No, in Hertford,” said Elizabeth, rising. “I will leave you to your port and cheroots, but do not, I beg you, linger over them. There will be coffee in the drawing room.”
“You’re lucky in your wife, Fitz,” Angus said, accepting a port. “The most beautiful, vital creature.”
Fitz smiled. “Yes, she is. However, there are other ladies equally entrancing. Why not espouse one yourself? What are you, forty? And unmarried. London’s most eligible bachelor, they say.”
“I beg to differ about the ladies. Elizabeth is unique.” Angus puffed at his slender cigar. “Is the spinster sister in her mould? If she is, I might try my luck there. But I doubt it, else she’d not be a spinster.”
“She was called upon to look after their mother.” Fitz grimaced. “Mary Bennet is a silly woman, forever quoting someone else’s noble Christian thoughts. Though at her last prayers years ago, she has found a new god to worship—Argus.” Darcy leaned both elbows on the table and linked his hands together; a habit of his to make other men think him relaxed, unworried. “Which leads me back to that vexed subject. It will not do, Angus, to keep on publishing this fellow’s pathetic crotchets.”
“If they were in truth pathetic, Fitz, you would not be half so perturbed. It’s not London eating at you, is it? London has always been a stew, and always will be a stew. No, you fear some revolution in the north—just how far do your interests go?”
“I don’t dabble in things beneath the notice of a Darcy!”
Angus roared with laughter, unoffended. “Lord, what a snob you are!”
“I would rather say I am a gentleman.”
“Aye, an occupation all of its own.” Angus leaned back in his chair, the hundred candles of an overhead chandelier setting his silver-gilt hair afire. The creases in his lean cheeks deepened when he smiled; they made him look impish. Which was how he felt, more intrigued with Fitzwilliam Darcy tonight than ever he had been. There were undercurrents he had not suspected—was that perhaps because Elizabeth was on a rare visit to the south? Most of his acquaintance with her had taken place at Pemberley during the house parties Fitz enjoyed having; she was, for all her beauty, not fond of the fleshpots of London society. A Court reception had brought her, and he counted himself fortunate that Fitz’s curious fixation upon Argus had produced things like an intimate dinner for three.
“It is no good,” he said, tossi
ng back the last of his port. “Argus will have his forum for debate as long as I own the Westminster Chronicle—and you do not have sufficient money to buy me out. That would take the funds of a Croesus.”
“What a pleasant dinner,” Elizabeth said to her husband after their lone guest had departed. She commenced to climb the left-hand fork of the stairs above a splendid landing halfway up, Fitz by her side, helping her with her train.
“Yes it was. Though frustrating. I cannot seem to get it through Angus’s head that it is Argus and his like will bring us down. Ever since the American colonists started prating about their democratic ideals and the French started cutting off the heads of their betters, the lower classes have been rumbling. Even here in England.”
“A nation of shopkeepers, Bonaparte called us.”
“Bonaparte has failed. Sir Rupert Lavenham was telling me that his grand army is lost in the Russian snows. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers frozen to death. And he has left them to their fate—can you believe that, Elizabeth? The man is an upstart, to have so little honour.”
“No honour at all,” she said dutifully. “By the way, Fitz, when did Mary tell you she was enamoured of Argus?”
“When I saw her in the library the morning we left. We—er—had a little falling out.”
They had reached her door; she stopped, her hand on its lever. “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”
“They are not your affair.”
“Yes, they are, when they involve my sister! What kind of falling out? Is that why she is living in Hertford? Did you make her feel she is not welcome at Pemberley?”
His dislike of being criticised made him answer sharply. “As a matter of fact, she absolutely refused to come to Pemberley! Or even to have a companion! It is the height of impropriety to live unchaperoned! And in Hertford, under the eyes of the people who have known her for years! I have washed my hands of her, frittering away her jointure on some quest put into her head by the letters of that fool, Argus!”
“Not a very generous jointure at that,” she countered, eyes flashing. “As I know for a fact that brother Charles contributed a full half of it, Mary has cost you less per year than you spend on stabling your carefully matched curricle horses! And I do not mean the bays plus the greys, I mean one team only! Two hundred and fifty pounds a year! You pay your valet that much, and your horse master more! When it comes to yourself, Fitz, you spend. But not on my poor—literally as well as metaphorically—sister!”