Chapter 4
Two months prior, after the Netherfield Ball
The morning after the Netherfield ball, Mr. Darcy returned to town with Miss Bingley and the Hursts.
It was a sudden decision. As soon as Mr. Bingley had departed for town that same morning to take care of urgent business, the Bingley sisters told Mr. Darcy they also wished to return to London as there was nothing in the Hertfordshire countryside that interested them.
The coarseness of everything: the people, manners, fashion, and even the scenery was irksome.
The most important reason, however, was their fear that their brother was dangerously entangling himself with a country miss with overt mercenary intent—Miss Bennet was a cold and calculating woman aiming straight for their brother’s fortune of five thousand pounds a year.
Miss Bingley then looked pointedly at Mr. Darcy, as if challenging him to gainsay her implicit request to return to town with them.
Mr. Darcy was shocked, and not pleasantly, that his hostess considered leaving behind her brother’s guest in a rented country house without first soliciting his preference.
It was equally shocking and inexcusable to quit a neighborhood without taking leave.
He knew he should not expect truly genteel behavior from a tradesman’s daughter.
Although Bingley had become a valuable friend to him, must he pay the price of putting up with the younger man’s sisters and their affectations and hints of non-existent intimacies between him and themselves?
He swallowed his disgust at Miss Bingley’s high-handed way of forcing him to leave and agreed to join the exodus to town.
He also reluctantly agreed that her reasoning for leaving was sound.
Bingley could propose precipitously to a lady who, though not as bad as Miss Bingley described, had shown no particular regard for his friend’s overt partiality.
Her affections were not engaged; she was but following her mother’s machinations.
The true reason for his leaving, however, concerned another.
He, who detested dancing, had inexplicably asked a country miss of no renown to dance in a backwater town!
Afterwards—all night long—he mulled over his own danger of falling for the second eldest Miss Bennet, who was impertinent in the most fascinating way, alluring in the most unconventional fashion, and altogether irresistible.
He had asked her twice to dance. She refused him most charmingly the first time, but agreed just the previous evening.
While tossing and turning in bed, his mind was filled with the images of her light and pleasing figure moving so close to his, causing an indecent reaction from his traitorous body that he, in the privacy of his own bed, was unable to suppress.
He had to avoid looking at her large, luminous, and expressive eyes—saucy, yet good humored, intelligent, yet guileless—or he would have embarrassed himself right there on the dance floor by grabbing her and kissing her senseless.
Since becoming master of Pemberley, no woman had turned his head like that.
Yes, she was deluded by Wickham’s charms, but that simply proved her innocence…
He paused here. He was making excuses for a lady who was so obtuse in her understanding that she sided with his arch-nemesis.
What nonsense! She is by no means the only one who has captured my fancy for a short duration! And her lack of fortune and connections! It is absurd to make her out as someone extraordinary!
His mind flipped back to his youth, the summer between Eton and Cambridge.
The Darcys had been invited by the Duchess of Devonshire to Chatsworth for a summer house party.
Mr. Darcy was no stranger to the ducal family.
The Darcys and Cavendishes had been neighbors for centuries, long before the dukedom became prominent in society and politics.
While there, he was struck dumb by the beauty and charms of a young lady.
He had known her since both were children, but he had not been interested in the female set.
In fact, visits to Chatsworth were a chore due to the lack of playmates for him.
Now, though, he was eighteen, and Lady Caroline Ponsonby was one year younger.
Since she was not yet out, he caught only glimpses of her during the week he was in residence.
She embodied every ideal he had formed in his mind for the future Mistress of Pemberley—daughter of a peer, rare ethereal beauty, and last but not least, being an intelligent and well-read woman without being a bluestocking.
He was entitled to such a lady as his wife because the Darcys, though currently untitled, came from an ancient and honorable lineage and were among the wealthiest families in the kingdom, the peerage included.
While he stood on a terrace and watched admiringly the lady of his dreams frolicking in the garden with her cousins, the heir to the Dukedom, Lord Hartington, came up to him and said gravely, “Darcy, you must contain your excessive admiration for my future Duchess. I have watched you staring at her every time she is in your vicinity. As a gentleman, you should not covet your neighbor’s intended. ”
Mr. Darcy was startled by the fourteen-year-old youth’s speech. The young lord, however, looked deadly serious. Mr. Darcy was shame-faced that his admiration was so overt, and for a lady already taken, no doubt through an arranged betrothal. He immediately apologized.
“Hartington, beauty such as your cousin’s, or the Duchess’s, will always be admired. I congratulate you on your future felicity with a lovely wife.”
“Yes, Caroline is lovely in face and figure, but it is her mind that fascinates me. She speaks French and Italian fluently, and knows the classics in their original languages. Most of all, she writes the liveliest and amusing letters. I shall never be as clever. I hope she will not mind tutoring her husband too much in the many things I will be entrusted to rule. I want to be like my grandfather and become prime minister.”
Mr. Darcy, from this youthful confession, was reminded that the young man in front of him was several years younger than his fair cousin. He would find out from his aunt, Lady Fitzwilliam, whether such a match between the Devonshire heir and the incomparable Lady Caroline had been arranged.
Once he started his matriculation at Cambridge, life became too busy and far away from town for him to do anything about his infatuation with Lady Caroline.
By then, the memory of the beautiful girl had to compete with the excitement of being exposed to numerous avenues of exploration in literature, history, rhetorics, mathematics, and science.
Through his studies and new friendships with people of the same mind, the world was transforming before his eyes into something much larger, full of new ideas, technologies, inventions, and territories.
The future promised to be dazzling. He could not wait to put his studies behind him and step out to embrace the brave new reality.
During his last year at Cambridge, Lady Caroline married the Honorable William Lamb, whom Darcy admired.
William Lamb was heir to a viscountcy that many believed to have been created for his father because of the machinations of his mother, whose liaisons with many powerful persons at court and in government were well known.
In fact, Mr. Lamb himself was believed to have resulted from one of these liaisons.
Despite this scandalous connection that was never openly discussed, fearing the influence of his mother, he was widely considered a rising star in Parliament.
With his mother’s help, he would certainly go far.
So there was no prearranged match between Hartington and Lady Caroline, after all! No matter, I am too young to think about marriage, but I now have a real-life model for my future wife and mistress of Pemberley.
Once he was finished with Cambridge, he had to forgo his grand tour because of his father’s rapidly declining health.
After his father’s death, he had to devote all his energy to whipping Pemberley back in shape.
His father’s sustained poor health had caused a decline in Pemberley’s fortunes.
If not for the faithful and competent service of their long-time steward, Mr. Wickham, the situation would have been far worse.
The Pemberley estate had been the culmination of hard work of many generations.
A temporary setback would not hurt the fundamental soundness of the estate, but for a young man of two-and-twenty, it was a Herculean task.
He had no choice but to send his sister to school in town.
The master of Pemberley, out of gratitude to the elder Mr. Wickham’s loyal and wise management of the affairs of the estate, turned a blind eye to the increasing profligacy of Mr. Wickham, the son.
The elder Mr. Darcy, on his deathbed, still held out hope that George Wickham would reform in time.
He therefore conditionally reserved the lucrative living of Kympton for young Wickham when it fell vacant.
Mr. Darcy, the younger, could not agree with the father.
During the years they were together at Cambridge, he saw with his own eyes the moral decline in the companion of his youth.
Fortunately, after senior Mr. Darcy’s death, young Wickham demanded to be compensated for giving up his claim to the preferment.
For three thousand pounds, the new master of Pemberley was glad to be rid of the steward’s son, whose life had spiraled down to a depth completely devoid of decency.
By the time he put Pemberley’s affairs in order, he had been three years away from society.
His occasional participation in local hunts and house parties in Derbyshire and at his Uncle Fitzwilliam’s grand estate in Yorkshire could not have equipped him to face the fashionable set of the ton.
Fortuitously, he ran into Mr. Charles Bingley at his club one day, and they became fast friends virtually overnight.
Mr. Darcy had met Mr. Bingley at Pemberley when the younger man had visited Pemberley with his tradesman father to buy wool.
Darcy was struck by the open and amiable character of the young man, who was starting at Cambridge, the first in his family to attend university.
Mr. Bingley had just finished his degree and was casting about for a career as a gentleman, as his father did not wish him to be in trade.
With Bingley by his side, Mr. Darcy felt far more at ease when stepping into a ballroom.
He had intended to find a suitable lady to marry, and Almack’s was as good a place as any to start the process.
After all, his sister, Georgiana, was about to finish at her seminary, and he needed a wife to guide his sister into society.
He did not know his sister well because of the long years of physical absence.
The task of taking care of his fifteen-year-old sister did not seem merely daunting—it was impossible!
His foray into the marriage mart was not encouraging.
One affected, uninteresting, uniformly uninformed debutante after another paraded themselves before him, introduced by his aunt Lady Fitzwilliam and other family friends.
Were they beautiful? Yes, at least a few were attractive enough, but not the sublime beauty he now demanded for his intended.
He wanted another Lady Caroline Lamb. Was it too much to ask?
Lady Caroline came on the scene a little too early for him and did the damage of raising his expectations for a match to a height that none of the ladies currently available could ever dream of reaching.
Soon after Darcy and Bingley became close friends, Bingley’s father died unexpectedly.
When Bingley came back to town after the funeral, he was the proud owner of a legacy worth a hundred thousand pounds, all in liquid cash from the sale of his father’s business.
He had also inherited the care of a younger sister, who, though of age, attached herself to her brother as she had heard of her brother’s close friendship with Mr. Darcy, the young and well-connected master of Pemberley.
Miss Bingley had gone to a well-regarded seminary and had worn her dowry of twenty thousand pounds as a showy cloak to distract attention from her roots in trade.
Many girls at her seminary were quite merciless when it came to excluding girls of lower circles from their cliques.
Miss Bingley, like her brother, had never set foot in the first circles in town before Mr. Darcy opened the doors for them.
Once she started feeling more confident, and especially after she had visited Pemberley with her brother, her aspirations of becoming mistress of such a grand estate surged.
Her fawning over Mr. Darcy and preening in front of him had become intolerable to the gentleman.
After speaking with Bingley about Miss Bingley’s conduct toward his person and the impossibility of her achieving her goal, Mr. Bingley assured Darcy that he would always be on his best friend’s side.
In the meantime, he would try to dissuade his sister from unwanted behavior.
Mr. Darcy, for his part, was resigned to the fact that a price had to be paid when he sought friendships with the lower classes.
Mr. Darcy looked at the clock in his study. It was well past midnight. Agh! This country nobody had cost him sleep as well. He sighed and mumbled to himself, “This infatuation needs to stop, and soon.”
He knew his duty to his family name. Marrying a woman without fortune and connections would never be acceptable to himself or his family.
Mr. Darcy nipped out the candle and went to bed. He needed to be in good shape for the impending confrontation with Bingley, who must have been livid that his friend and family had conspired to change their plans without consulting him first.