Chapter 42
A FIERY LOVE
The earl had more than his title to recommend him—he was tall, like Darcy, with a commanding presence honed by generations of blue blood.
When he strode towards the musicians’ platform with definite purpose in his eyes, more than one person paused to see what he was about.
With a gesture from him, the music came to an abrupt halt, and everyone on the dance floor and its surrounds turned towards him immediately.
Even the murmuring stopped as he began to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lord Matlock said in his carrying voice.
“Tonight, we gather not simply to introduce the fine Bingley family to the neighbourhood, nor to just appreciate good music and excellent company. We come to celebrate a union so new, not even the papers have yet heard of it. My esteemed nephew, Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, has taken a bride from amongst your own. Mrs Elizabeth Ashwood shall henceforth be known as Mrs Darcy.”
“No-oo!” shrieked a woman from towards the back of the ballroom.
Several people swivelled around, fruitlessly trying to locate from whence the protest had come, but Elizabeth knew immediately—she recognised that shriek.
Evidently, not everyone in the building had been aware of the Darcys’ marriage…
but Fanny Ashwood had finally discovered it, just now.
The rest of the room, however, applauded and even cheered.
Darcy held up her hand, then bowed to her and the company. “Did you hear that?” he murmured.
“’Twas Fanny,” she whispered back, keeping her smile in place.
Mr Bingley stepped forwards to call the supper dances and at last, at last, Elizabeth was in the place she most wanted to be—with her husband.
The music resumed, she and Darcy were crossing towards a set forming, when from the direction of the doors opening onto the terrace, they heard shouting.
It drew their attention, along with that of several others.
“Wait here,” Darcy ordered.
“I do not think so,” she replied.
With an impatient scowl that was not at all lover-like, he grabbed her hand as she commenced moving towards the terrace doors. “Stay with me,” he said, revising his command.
It was not at all easy, for everyone near them had the same thought.
The earl, with the colonel and Mr Bingley not far behind, were right behind them, struggling to get through the congestion.
“Make way,” Darcy demanded and for the most part was obeyed, finally pulling her through the snarl of people clogging the doorways and out into the open air.
She saw, then, what the commotion and crowds had hidden.
The flagstone terrace spread out before them in a spacious semi-circle, ending in wide paved steps leading down to the gothic temple folly. There should only have been lawns before it, with nothing much to see except darkness.
Instead, on the grounds before the temple, an enormous bonfire now raged, ringed by children—all wearing some sort of white tunic—dancing and singing. Their performance was not done very tunefully or gracefully, Elizabeth noted.
“Dash it, if this is Caroline’s idea of entertainment, we shall have words,” Mr Bingley muttered, coming up behind them with Colonel Fitzwilliam on his heels. “The lawns will be ruined by that fire, and it is far too close to the folly—if it catches, she shall pay for it from her pin money, I vow.”
“The stonework will not catch,” the earl said drily, reaching them at last. “But it does present a dramatic effect.”
Dramatic effect. The words rang in Elizabeth’s ears, and she searched through the sparks and smoke and flames for what—who—she expected to see.
And there she was.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “In the tower of the temple.”
Within the turret, the small, veiled face of a person in white stood facing them, arms outstretched as if embracing the flames.
“Devil take it, that must be Anne,” Colonel Fitzwilliam snarled.
“Get her out of there!” his father urged. “If she jumps from that tower…” He let his sentence fade.”
The colonel and Mr Bingley raced towards the folly.
“I do not think there is much chance of it,” Elizabeth said. “I believe the aperture is too small.”
“I pray you are right,” the earl replied worriedly, hurrying away after them.
“Do you not wish to join in the rescue?” Elizabeth asked her husband, who frowned after them.
“What? Oh. She has planned this demonstration to garner my attention; I feel that it would be the worst thing in the world for me to reward her with it. I had best stay back—she doubtless believes I am here, but I shall not confirm it for her.”
“That is probably wise. How did she even accomplish all this? Why did no one stop her?”
“Probably using the excuse that it was all part of the entertainment. If she claimed it with enough confidence and brought enough hired help of her own, people would have believed her. But what is she up to? She does not plan to simply stare down at us, I would wager.”
“I daresay she will have barricaded herself in there—they will not find it easy to extract her,” Elizabeth told him. “Wait…who—what is that?”
Six men, dressed all in black, had paraded in amongst the children carrying what, at first, appeared to be a prone, unconscious man.
Quickly however, Elizabeth amended her first impression; it was not human at all, but a sort of manikin—a stuffed scarecrow garbed in the fine clothing of a gentleman, with a garishly painted pasteboard face.
“The mystery of my stolen clothing, solved,” Darcy growled.
The gathered crowd, plainly believing as Mr Bingley had initially done, that these odd happenings were part of the entertainments, had flocked to the terrace as an audience congregating for a play.
Thankfully, there were a great many who had not realised what was happening outside, for the music continued indoors.
Darcy and Elizabeth moved down the steps, much nearer the children, but still in the shadows.
At that moment a shrill whistle came from the temple’s tower; as if it were some sort of signal, the children stopped their dancing, and the men in black, their ghastly figure held aloft, stepped closer to the flames.
The small figure staring down from the tower threw back the white veil covering its face.
“’Tis Anne all right,” Darcy murmured.
“What is that thing she is holding?” Elizabeth asked, for the woman had drawn some sort of instrument to her lips.
“I think it a hailing trumpet,” Darcy replied, staring up at her intently. “Like they use on ships, to amplify the sound of command even during the great noise of battle.”
As they watched, they saw Bingley, the colonel and the earl exit the lower level of the tower; obviously, they had not been successful in reaching Miss De Bourgh. Mr Bingley dashed off towards the house while the earl and Colonel Fitzwilliam sped off in an opposite direction.
“I suppose she means to have her say, no matter what,” Elizabeth remarked.
“She means to ruin herself before the entire world,” Darcy muttered.
“I do not know about that—you all know it to be her mostly because we were expecting it to be her. Despite the crowd out here, most are still dancing within.” But at that moment, Miss de Bourgh began to speak into her trumpet.
Whatever the instrument’s utility during battle, the sounds that emerged were not all that distinct, shouted from a gothic tower two storeys above the ground. Still, Elizabeth heard her well enough.
“Mourn with me the heart’s futile shame
An innocence, rashly tossed away
By man’s fickle passion spurned—
Watch it fired, vainly on display.
From love, to smoke and ash and coals it burns
And holds lost joy forever on its flame.”
She gave a cackling, witchy sort of laugh, and the men tossed the effigy into the flames. It must have been smeared with something highly combustible, like pitch, for it burst immediately into a spectacular conflagration.
There were a few gasps. “Die, dreams, die!” shouted the figure in the tower. “Die, Fitzwill—”
Elizabeth immediately began clapping and cheering, as though this was the entertainment everyone believed.
The rest of the ‘audience’ quickly joined in, although there was something of confusion as to what it all meant.
Still, it was a jovial crowd, who had partaken liberally from Miss Bingley’s refreshments.
And though Miss de Bourgh continued with her terrible poetry, and Elizabeth could make out her name as well as others of the family, it mostly sounded like a disjointed howl through the yelling and cheering—which she and Darcy encouraged every time it seemed to be fading.
Finally, Miss de Bourgh seemed to realise that her demonstration was not amounting to anything romantic or dramatic, either one.
With a theatrical gesture, she tossed some papers into the air, where they were, thankfully, consumed by the flames.
Plainly abandoning the idea of poetry, she began yelling into the trumpet.
“Eliza—” she began, but her shouts tore into incoherent pieces as the swirling smoke from the fire filled her tower room at last, and the only sounds to emerge were viscous coughs and gasps from above.