Chapter 12
“You spent last winter in Venice, did you not, Lady Summerhill?” Darcy prompted the auburn-haired woman sitting across the Darcy House supper table from Lord Grantchester. “Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble were there in the spring.”
The soup course finished, footmen and maids rapidly cleared used bowls and cutlery from the table and replenished the wineglasses of the ten guests.
Tonight, the Bingleys, the Hursts, Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble were joined by three ladies of Darcy’s wider acquaintance.
All three were well-educated, well-travelled and sophisticated women in their thirties, two widows and one an unmarried lady of independent means.
Georgiana was dining out, not by chance.
Though Darcy certainly was not ashamed of his intentions for the evening, neither was a gathering of such sophisticates one at which his shy young sister could have felt at ease.
“Ah, I should have stayed on a few months longer if I had known I could have such good company,” answered the Dowager Marchioness of Summerhill, a discerning collector of renaissance sculpture, both on her own account and for the Summerhill estate collection on behalf of her fourteen-year-old son.
“Lord Keeble has a good eye for art, and we might have joined forces.”
“Perhaps next year,” Lord Keeble suggested. “I should very much like to see your family’s palazzo and art collections, Lady Summerhill.”
“Let us pin it down now. Winter or spring?” Lord Grantchester put to Lady Summerhill. “I shall be marrying in the summer, so best not plan any travel during those months. The mosquitoes are dreadful in Venice then, anyway.”
“Autumn, and bring your new wife with you,” Lady Summerhill responded with a chuckle.
“I shall entertain the new Countess of Grantchester, if you two will represent me at the auction houses. They do not always take servants seriously, I find, and God forbid a woman should bid herself. It is the only time I miss my husband, or think of acquiring another one.”
“Lady Summerhill,” Lord Grantchester reproved her laughingly. “What a thing to say! Especially with unmarried ladies present.”
“I take no offence,” Caroline Bingley assured them. “While every woman likely wishes a first husband, many do not wish a second.”
“I shall marry you, if you are ever serious about a second husband, Lady Summerhill,” offered Lord Keeble gallantly. “After all, I don’t see why Lord Grantchester should achieve married respectability and not me.”
“Propose to me in Venice, Lord Keeble, with a generous marriage contract drawn up, and perhaps we can come to terms,” Lady Summerhill laughed. “Or at least the four of us can tour the Italian lakes together. I’m sure Lord Grantchester will not object to a foursome for his honeymoon.”
“The more, the merrier, Lady Summerhill,” Lord Grantchester agreed affably.
While Darcy personally found such levity around marriage mildly distasteful, he supposed himself to be in a minority of one at the present supper table, its guests purposefully chosen by him to create exactly this kind of atmosphere.
Or possibly he was in a minority of two, Darcy reconsidered, looking at Charles Bingley’s unsmiling face. Sipping his wine, Darcy nodded to a footman that they were now ready for the roast beef.
“Unfair, my dear Lady Summerhill!” complained a buxom, blonde-haired woman, sitting beside the monosyllabic and already wine-addled Mr Hurst, who offered no conversation whatsoever.
“Too unfair to keep your new husband on the Continent where the rest of us cannot share him. The ladies of the ton cannot do without Lord Keeble in London, you know. The Season would fall apart.”
“I thoroughly agree, Lady Jefferson,” put in Mrs Hurst. “Do not let Lady Summerhill take Lord Keeble away from London for months on end. As a dancing partner, I have heard hostesses say that he is worth three other gentlemen. No ballroom would be the same.”
“Oh, very well. It seems I must let you alone, Lord Keeble,” conceded Lady Summerhill with mock regret. “By popular demand, our engagement is scratched before it has even begun.”
“Why not marry me instead, Lord Keeble, if you are really determined to keep up with Lord Grantchester?” asked the third lady, a pale and raven-haired woman with striking emerald eyes.
“I am always in London, so you need not deprive wider society of your company. I require little except a man with bright eyes and elegant form to walk me into balls.”
“That does not sound too taxing, does it, John?” Lord Keeble asked Lord Grantchester. “After all, I am known both for my fine eyes and my elegance, as well as my dancing.”
“You are making him vain, Lady Sophia,” warned Lord Grantchester. “Anyway, didn’t you once tell me that you thought men were like dogs and ought not to be let alone in the house? Have you changed your mind, or would your husband have a basket in the servants’ quarters like your pets?”
“I have not changed my mind at all, Lord Grantchester, but there is a very comfortable Persian rug that Lord Keeble might lie on in the library,” Lady Sophia Kettering responded with smiling gravity.
“He must share it with my German sheepdog, Rex, but I believe your friend is house-trained, far more than many men.”
As she spoke of “many men”, Lady Sophia’s eyes glanced over Mr Hurst with dark amusement, and Darcy winced slightly for Louisa Hurst. Mr Hurst might be the youngest son of Viscount Irving and his mother a renowned society beauty of the previous generation, but he was a bad bargain as a husband.
Darcy knew that Louisa Hurst had been warned against him and married him nonetheless.
It was a shame, but could not be undone now. In another world, Bingley’s older sister would have made a far more appropriate wife for Lord Grantchester than Jane Bennet, and been happier in such a marriage too.
“Surely, you cannot tar all men with the same brush, Lady Sophia?” Caroline Bingley now objected in almost coquettish tones, entering into the fray of the jesting around the table in a way that did not bode well for Darcy’s temper.
“Mr Darcy, for instance, you must concede, is vastly superior to the average in the ton.”
“Ah, one should never joke about Mr Darcy, Miss Bingley,” Lady Sophia demurred, shooting an apologetic look to Darcy, whom she knew would not welcome such personal remarks. “It is best always to think of him in a class of his own.”
“On that we can agree,” replied Miss Bingley with a flirtatious smile towards Darcy. “I too consider Mr Darcy in a class of his own.”
“Lady Jefferson, have your musical salons been well attended over the summer?” Darcy asked her, deciding it was best to ignore Miss Bingley’s overtures rather than attempt to address them.
“The last one was marvellous, Mr Darcy. We had Miss Maria Bernoulli, the renowned soprano from Rome, with a voice of real strength and sweetness. She is presently touring England and then the opera houses of Europe. You must try to see her if you can.”
“Isn’t she in Mozart’s Magic Flute at Covent Garden?” asked Lord Grantchester, who loved light opera.
Mozart, opera, and music in general being a subject beloved by most of the supper guests, this opening carried them all through the main course and pudding without difficulty.
“I do not think the gentlemen shall sit over port tonight,” Darcy announced once the final plates were cleared.
“Good idea, Darcy,” agreed Grantchester. “We’ve drunk enough tonight. Mrs Hurst is going to play for us on the pianoforte, and Lady Jefferson is going to sing. That should be more pleasing than any amount of port. Well, more pleasing to most of us…”
Everyone rose from the table except Mr Hurst, who had by now drunk himself into a stupor and would need to be discreetly removed. It was a predictable development, but tiresome, a thought that Darcy could also see written on Bingley’s face.
“Grantchester, Keeble, do escort all the ladies to the drawing room,” Darcy requested in neutral tones. “Bingley and I will follow shortly.”
No one dallied, and Darcy and Bingley were soon alone with the drunken Hurst, who had now laid his head on the table and begun to snore softly.
“I say we put him in the carriage and send him home,” volunteered Bingley with some disgust for his brother-in-law. “If you put him in the library or a bedroom here, he will only make a mess for your servants and embarrassment for my sister. Louisa can leave with Caroline and me later.”
Darcy nodded his assent to this plan, and Hurst barely stirred as they each took one of his arms and pulled him to his feet, giving orders to a footman to fetch Hurst’s coat and ready his carriage.
“I’m sorry, Bingley,” Darcy told his friend as they manoeuvred the unresisting Hurst down the steps. “I don’t think you’ve enjoyed tonight at all.”
It had not been Bingley’s kind of evening, or his kind of people, but Darcy had wanted Bingley’s sisters there and could hardly have excluded his friend. Bingley gave a very long sigh and adjusted the weight of his brother-in-law as he considered Darcy’s statement.
“Where are we going?” demanded their burden, suddenly half awake and confused.
“Home to bed,” Darcy told Hurst firmly as they continued to haul him into the carriage and arranged him on the seat.
Hurst’s moment of lucidity passed as soon as it had arrived, and he curled up on the coach seat before Bingley had slammed the door. Likely he would fall on the floor as soon as the coach set off, and it would serve him right.
“Berkeley Square,” Darcy ordered the driver and passed the man some coins for his undoubted trouble in getting his master out of the vehicle at the other end.
It wasn’t until the carriage was turning the corner that Bingley finally addressed Darcy’s remark.
“It is no good, Darcy,” his friend said resignedly. “What you tried to do tonight was pointless.”
“Yes. It probably was,” Darcy conceded, the heaviness of failure sitting equally upon his shoulders.