Chapter 4
Four
“And where is that tradesman friend of yours tonight? Do you not generally drag him to these things?”
Darcy did not deign to look back at his cousin Viscount Marbury and continued on through the curtain that separated him from the interior of his theatre box. “I suppose you mean Bingley. He is indisposed tonight.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam, who did indeed turn back to share a smirk with him, answered, “Is he lovesick again, then? Who is the lucky lady this time?”
Darcy sighed, settling himself into his preferred seat.
It had been more than two months since Bingley had last seen Jane Bennet and at least that long since anyone had seen him smile properly.
From November to February, he had stewed in the doldrums, and Darcy was at a loss as to how to bring him out of it.
Bingley had never nursed a failed tendre for more than a week ere to his flirtation with Miss Bennet, but her ethereal beauty and sweet disposition had apparently infected him with a passion that was not easily cured.
Witnessing his friend’s acute misery week after week bolstered Darcy’s decision to keep them apart whilst the calculating country miss remained in town; clearly, Bingley was so weakened by his own besottedness that he might do something rash were they to meet again before his feverish infatuation abated.
“You would not know her. They met in Hertfordshire.”
“Hertfordshire! What the devil was he doing there?” grumbled Marbury as he took his seat.
He placed himself in one of the prime spots to see and be seen and seemed to lose interest in his own query as he cast his gaze about the space.
“I say, is that not Harriette Wilson? They say she has turned Prinny’s head. ”
Darcy sniffed even as Fitzwilliam chuckled. He did not make a point of familiarising himself with courtesans, even if they hobnobbed with royalty. “I am sure I do not know. As for Bingley, recall that I mentioned he took a house there in the autumn.”
While Marbury observed the lady in question with his opera glass, Fitzwilliam replied, “Nether-something, yes?”
“Netherfield. It is an easy distance from town, and I felt it a good property for him to begin with. He aims to purchase in a few years, and it would benefit him to see what estate management is about before making a permanent choice.”
“Purchasing an estate will not wash the stink of trade from his hands,” scoffed Marbury, still squinting through the glass.
Darcy bristled. “Bingley is as much a gentleman as any other I know.” And far more the gentleman than some.
“You say he met a lady there?” Fitzwilliam interjected just as Marbury opened his mouth to reply. The viscount ceded the conversation to his younger brother with an ill-natured grunt. For a soldier, the colonel was remarkably talented at keeping the peace.
“Indeed. She is much like you are imagining—blonde, blue eyes, statuesque—and he became quite smitten with her. We were forced to leave the neighbourhood rather precipitously lest he find himself beholden to making her an offer.”
“It is just like Bingley to get himself in that sort of scrape,” Fitzwilliam said with a chuckle. “I take it she was not suitable if you felt the need to rescue him from fair damsel?”
“I should say not,” Darcy scoffed. “The lady herself was genteel, but her family was atrocious. Five sisters, all out, and the parents do nothing to curb their behaviour. Wild, ungoverned, vulgar…Bingley is fortunate to have made his escape when he did, else he would become the laughingstock of society.”
“A shame that a singular rose should grow amidst a tangle of thorns.” Fitzwilliam shook his head.
As if pricked by one of those thorns, Darcy felt a pang of guilt. “They were not all as bad as that. One of her sisters was…” How even to describe Elizabeth without giving away his own tendre? “Witty. Charming. Clever. Quite as lovely as her elder sister, in her own way.”
Fitzwilliam smirked at him, his left eyebrow rising knowingly. “Oh ho, do I detect a hint of fascination for this mysterious younger sister?”
The tips of Darcy’s ears began to burn as he quickly denied, “Of course not! It is merely unfair to paint her with the same brush as her sisters. She was always ladylike in my presence.” If somewhat impish, he might have added, but dared not lest he incur greater teasing from his cousin.
“Methinks you doth protest too much, but I digress for now,” Fitzwilliam said with a lazy wave of his hand.
“You do realise that Bingley would have been marrying the lady and not her entire family, do you not? Certainly, there would be a connexion, but he need not parade them in front of the ton. If this angel was as genteel as you say, why should he not propose?”
“Because I have grave doubts regarding her affections towards him. Not only is her family unrestrained, but their estate is entailed to a distant cousin—who is our aunt’s idiot parson, by the bye—and none of the daughters have any dowry to speak of.
I have heard that they are entitled to only a thousand pounds apiece upon their mother’s death, and nothing at all saved by their father. ”
Such recklessness was abhorrent to Darcy.
How could any man, a father no less, do so little to prepare for the future?
Mr Bennet presently appeared to be in good health in the rare instances Darcy had been in company with him, but there was no guarantee that such would always be the case.
As a man in his middle years, one would think him more aware of his inevitable decline than that.
Further, being hale and hearty did not prevent him from suffering a horrible accident, nor would it safeguard Longbourn from the threat of other unexpected tragedies—poor crop yield, epidemics, and so on.
Really, it was no wonder the man’s wife was so nervous all the time; in her position, Darcy might have succumbed to a few fluttering attacks as well.
Fitzwilliam emitted a low whistle. “Not a favourable circumstance, I grant you, but being poor does not necessarily make her devoid of proper feeling. Could she not have cared for Bingley in spite of his money?”
“I watched the pair of them closely and saw no symptom of particular regard on the lady’s side.
I have a strong suspicion that her mother was the one who put her up to capturing Bingley in the first place—you should have heard the way she spoke of the match to all and sundry!
” Darcy’s nose wrinkled as he recalled Mrs Bennet’s drunken display at Bingley’s ball.
Much as he sympathised with her for being the wife of a useless husband, it did not excuse her vulgarity. “Disgraceful.”
“You would visit the sins of the mother upon the daughter? I say, that is not quite fair, Darcy.”
“No?” Darcy countered with a scoff. “Well, it was not her mother who arrived in London last month for the purpose of hunting down Bingley. It was the daughter who turned up, in open defiance of hints that she was unwelcome, in Grosvenor Street to call upon his sisters. Miss Bingley was rightfully appalled.”
Fitzwilliam’s eyebrow lifted again, this time in apparent scepticism. “Miss Bingley reports, eh? And since when is she a trusted source?”
“I own that her judgment is often clouded by her own interests,” Darcy ruefully conceded, “but in this cause we are united. Bingley is still too heartsick to know his own good. Were he to hear of the lady’s arrival in town, he might do something unwise.”
Sitting up abruptly, Fitzwilliam glowered at his cousin. “What? Do you mean to say that you have hidden the lady’s presence from him?”
Darcy straightened in his own seat, plucking delicately at his cuffs as he replied, “It was done and done for the best.”
“You do not think yourself rather high-handed in arranging your friend’s affairs? Would you countenance someone acting on your behalf in such a way?”
Bristling, Darcy snapped, “I would never require such intervention. I have been trained in my duties since birth and know what is expected of me in choosing a wife”—he choked slightly at this oblique reminder of what he had been forced to leave behind in Hertfordshire—“while Bingley was not born a gentleman and requires a guiding hand.”
Fitzwilliam’s reply was no less heated. “He is not an infant, nor an invalid. If there is anything a man ought to be allowed to choose for himself, it is his bride! You will not see it, but you have behaved in the same manner as the lady’s meddling mother, except you have less of a right to do it.”
“Oh, leave off,” groused Marbury, setting aside his opera glass to glare at the pair of them. “So Darcy did his friend a good turn and saved him from an imprudent marriage. I say well done, even if conducted on behalf of a tradesman.”
“Bingley is not a tradesman,” Darcy countered. “His father was in trade. His son means to elevate them all into landed gentry.”
Marbury flippantly waved this argument away.
“It does not matter. Either way, the pup does not know his snout from his tail”—he paused here to laugh at his own quip—“and it sounds as if Darcy has preserved him from a low connexion, one he does not need if he means to quit the sphere he was born into. If the girl is pretty enough, he can always take her for his mistress after he has married properly.” Having said his piece, Marbury took up his glass again and returned to leering at the box holding the reputed courtesan.
A sick feeling sprouted in Darcy’s stomach at his elder cousin’s defence. Generally speaking, any matter advocated by Marbury tended to be something that Darcy avoided, and vice versa. To be championed by an inveterate rake did nothing to console him as to the rightness of his actions.
Fitzwilliam shook his head in his brother’s direction before turning back to Darcy. “I still maintain that you have treated Bingley ill. You have no right to decide on the propriety of your friend’s inclination or determine and direct the manner in which he is to be happy.”
“So you say, but I have no cause to repine. Indeed, I rejoice in my success! I have done my friend a kindness.”
“A kindness! As if any scheme involving Miss Bingley could be considered such.” Fitzwilliam snorted, and Darcy could not deny his cousin’s derision was well founded.
“I cannot say whether the lady in question is true or false, but I will say that you have done Bingley a great wrong in not allowing him to decide her worth for himself. I know you meant well, but your judgment alone is not enough.”
Although Fitzwilliam’s arrow regarding Miss Bingley had struck its intended target, Darcy remained obstinate in feeling his own actions correct. “On this point, I fear we must agree to disagree.”
“I suppose we must,” Fitzwilliam conceded. He shook his head and slumped back into his seat. “Let us change the subject. Which play are we here to see?”
Darcy picked up the playbill and grimaced. “Julius Caesar.”
Fitzwilliam guffawed. “How perfect!”