Chapter 7
After being told—or rather laughed at—by Saye that he had grown stout, Darcy tried, quite earnestly, to avoid Benjamin and Gerald’s, but Thursdays were difficult.
The fateful assembly in Meryton had been on a Thursday.
Elizabeth had rejected him on a Thursday.
He had come to thoroughly despise Thursdays.
To permit himself the sweet comfort of a cream ice on that day had seemed, therefore, not terribly egregious, and in any case, he had been exercising vigorously for a se’nnight.
“Mr Darcy, sir,” said Mr Gerald Green as he handed him his usual order. “How good you are to us. I hope you know how very appreciative we are for your patronage.”
Darcy took the glass bowl of rich chocolate cream ice with burnt almonds and a unique coffee and chocolate sauce on top. “Thank you.”
“I hope you will not feel it an impertinence that we have chosen to name this particular concoction for you?” Mr Green smiled as if he believed Darcy would be delighted, but in truth, he was embarrassed.
Perhaps sensing his customer’s chagrin, Mr Green hastened to add, “We have done so for many of our esteemed patrons. You see?” He held out a page on which a variety of combinations were written and named.
With relief, Darcy espied The Lady Jersey, The Regent, and The Lord Byron.
He was not the first of the ton to have his favourite concoction named for him, but nevertheless he prayed Saye would never learn of it.
He ate his confection at one of the small tables by the windows, staring sightlessly outwards while he morosely considered the morning after his proposal when he had given Elizabeth his letter.
Had she read it? Had she learnt to think better of him?
Or had it made her hate him even more? He arrived at no greater understanding than he had on any other of his multitudinous retrospections on the same subject.
With a heavy sigh, he pushed his empty bowl aside and exited the shop.
“Well, well, well,” said a familiar voice.
He looked up to behold Saye standing beside his curricle. “What on earth are you doing down here?” he asked. “Not your usual haunt at all.”
Saye ignored him. “How many times this week, then? Four? Five?”
“Once,” Darcy replied. “And in any case, here you are, meaning to have a bit of indulgence yourself, it seems.”
“Not at all,” his cousin replied loftily. “With a seaside sojourn approaching, I should not like my own coats refusing to button. A man never knows when the ladies might spy on him while sea-bathing in the nude.”
Darcy rolled his eyes. “Then what do you do here?”
“I followed you. I was coming to yours when I saw you drive off in your curricle. You had a furtive air that seemed promising. May I?”
The last was said with a gesture towards the small bag in Darcy’s hand. The proprietor had insisted on giving him some of the biscuits they often served alongside the cream ices as he departed.
Darcy handed the bag to his cousin, presuming Saye meant to take one. Instead, his cousin opened the bag and blew his nose directly into it. He then refolded it and extended it towards Darcy, who merely stared at it, horrified.
“You are welcome,” Saye told him, shaking it impatiently.
When Darcy did not take it, he huffed indignantly and handed it to a passing urchin, who snatched it and ran away.
“Now let us get back to your house and get that man of yours busy with the trunks. I see now that nothing but removing you from London will do. She is not in town, is she?”
“Who?”
“The lady who has broken your heart.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Darcy began to climb into his curricle, doing his best to pretend that his heart had not begun hammering at a rate of knots at his cousin’s words. “What are you doing?” he asked when Saye moved to enter along with him.
“Having a ride with you,” his cousin replied. “I have already paid a boy to take my own horse to Mayfair for me, so you must drive me. We can talk about her on the way.”
“There is no her,” Darcy protested.
“Is she in town? Or did you meet in Kent?”
“You speak nonsense.” Darcy did not say any more while he and his cousin settled themselves in their seats and he began to drive away from the shop. He had no wish to speak of Elizabeth to Saye. He did not wish to speak of her to anyone. What good would it do?
“I cannot help you if you will not confide in me.”
Darcy, his attention on steering the curricle successfully onto the main street, unthinkingly said, “You cannot help me anyhow—it is in every way impossible.”
“Ah! So you are pining over a woman. What did she do? Accept someone else?”
Darcy treated his cousin to another extended silence. “There is no use telling you about it, for it is not likely I should ever see her again.”
“Why not?”
Because she loathes me. “She lives in Hertfordshire,” he said. “And her father is not much inclined to bring her to town.”
“Hertfordshire is a mere skip up the road. Surely geography is not your only impediment?”
“I do not wish to speak of it,” Darcy replied shortly.
The roads were rather emptier than he had expected, but he fixed his eyes on them as if they were teeming with carriages and pedestrians run amok.
It was no good, for Saye was conspicuously silent, and Darcy could very nearly hear his brain working.
His cousin was not likely to cease in his efforts; he knew that.
He would poke and prod and eavesdrop and pry… It was exhausting just to think of it.
“She refused me,” he conceded, “and I shall say nothing more of the matter than that.”
“Refused you? Is she mad?”
“No, she is not mad…only it seems that she never really liked me very well.”
Saye laughed. “Oh-ho! So there you were, hat in hand, well prepared to play the lover and instead—”
“Instead nothing. We are nothing to one another and never will be, and I tell you again, that is all I shall say.”
“Why does she dislike you? What did you do to her?”
He repressed a growl of frustration at his cousin’s tenacity. “I behaved badly,” he admitted. “Arrogantly, selfishly… I really do not wish to go into the particulars. She despises me. Enough said.”
“And she told you that she hated you in response to a marriage proposal?”
“A marriage proposal that came hard on the heels of her finding out I had interfered in a romance between Bingley and her sister. A marriage proposal in which I insulted her and her family. Now will you please leave it be?”
“I suppose I should have allowed you to eat your biscuits,” Saye told him soberly. After another brief pause, he added, “Perhaps you will find someone else to catch your eye in Brighton.”
To this Darcy made no reply. Elizabeth was incomparable, and he would never find her equal, not in Brighton, not in London. Not in any place in the world.
Work on the house, under the guidance of Mr Tucker, took on a breakneck pace.
Jobs large and small were unfolding everywhere under his watch, from the scaffolding that had been erected at the front and back of the house, to the sweeping of every chimney.
He very kindly did not demote Mr Mullens, allowing him to perceive himself as the man in charge.
But he quietly hired additional men, including a large group who came each day from Pyecombe in a farm wagon, and divided them all into crews based on room.
But no matter how quickly the work proceeded, there was no pretending that it could be ready in a mere month.
Elizabeth was not overly worried about it; Mr Tucker must surely be reporting to Lord Saye and informing him of the difficulties, most of which she understood were of the usual sort—shipments of materials delayed, complications to seemingly simple repairs, excesses in expense, and the like.
“Why is it,” she asked her uncle as they walked to the house one morning, “that despite seeing a multitude of places where the costs have been underestimated, one never seems to see an overestimate? Not once has someone said, ‘Excellent news, Miss Bennet, but we seem to have found a better price on the wood for the floors’.”
Mr Gardiner only chuckled, entering the house behind her. “That, my dear, is always the way of it.”
Elizabeth stopped in the vestibule. “Do you hear that sound—like running water?”
Mr Gardiner met her eye. “I do, unfortunately.”
With dread, Elizabeth remembered the heavy rains the night before, which had tapered into a mere misty drizzle that morning.
“Let us do a search of the upstairs rooms,” Mr Gardiner advised.
Elizabeth nodded and led the way thither.
“Bloody hell!” she cursed quietly as she entered one of the bedchambers on the uppermost floor. There was a heap of plaster on the floor and a determined stream of rainwater coming through the ceiling.
“Elizabeth!” Mr Gardiner arrived just in time to hear her curse.
“Forgive me, Uncle,” she said, still staring in dismay at the hole in the ceiling.
“I daresay you are spending too much time in the society of working men. Perhaps you ought to go to a few dinner parties, an assembly or two, to remember your place.”
She did not reply. It had become a gentle, then a not-so-gentle, refrain from the Gardiners as well as Mrs Millhouse.
The social life of Brighton was gaining momentum almost as quickly as Elizabeth’s house repairs were.
There were, as Lydia had gleefully proclaimed, balls every night, card parties, walking parties…
If there was an hour to spare, a party was organised within it.
And thus far, Elizabeth had attended none, obstinately refusing to give any reason other than that she found a peculiarly enjoyable preoccupation in her house, derelict as it was, and could not comprehend being in a ballroom, trying to be an agreeable partner for a set while secretly thinking about floor joists and paint colours.
This was not the whole truth, though neither was it untrue.
Particularly at that moment, with water running through the ceiling.
Excusing herself, she ran off to find some buckets.
She had only just reached the stair from the first floor when she heard a querulous voice at the front door demanding to be led to wherever Miss Bennet was hiding herself. She inhaled deeply and finished her descent.
“Lady Preston, how wonderful that you should call,” she said with a smile. “Will you introduce me to your friend?”
The dowager had not come alone but stood with a slender young gentleman who wore an aubergine coat and hat, and a cravat with an enormous ruby-studded pin through it. His ring, too, held an enormous ruby.
“Friend!” The lady snorted. “More like a pretentious fop. My nephew has spent too much time on the Continent and fancies himself a dilettante.”
Far from being offended, the nephew appeared to be repressing a grin at this assessment. “Indeed I do,” he said with mock gravity. “Why do you suppose I wear such enormous cravats? They hide a multitude of sins.”
He bowed to Elizabeth and said, “I am Mr Benoit-Antoine Hartham, ma’am, and you are?”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” She curtseyed while Lady Preston muttered something about how no one in their right mind ought to be proud of a French name these days, and she thought he ought to call himself Benedict.
“May I applaud you for your excellent foresight in restoring this charming home?” said Mr Hartham with a smile. “It has long been a favourite of mine.”
“Has it?” Elizabeth enquired. “You might be saddened, then, to see the state to which it has descended. I do not know when it was last inhabited, but the decay is considerable.”
“It is the sea air,” he informed her. “Wonderful as it is, it rusts and decays and pummels a house with vigour. Something that would last a decade in the middle of the country loses ground in a year here.”
“There you go,” Lady Preston announced. “I knew you two would get on. Benedict, ask Miss Bennet for a dance.”
“This minute? I fear we have no music, Aunt.”
Her ladyship rolled her eyes. “In my day,” she said to no one in particular, “a man did not need to be told how to court a lady.” Her gaze sharpened on Elizabeth.
“I am talking of the ball tomorrow night. Lady Rosse in Brunswick Place. You will not have been invited, but I have already told Lady Rosse that Benedict will be accompanying his friend.”
Elizabeth’s mouth fell a little agape. Was the whole world conspiring to get her out into society?
Her family was one thing, but what did Lady Preston mean by making such arrangements on her behalf?
They had only met once before! She supposed it might be meant kindly, but it was hard to tell.
And as for her talk of courting? That idea must be quashed instantly.
“I thank your ladyship, for the compliment of your consideration, but—”
“Good! Then it is all settled.” Using her cane, she gave her nephew a little poke. “Now, I am tired and in need of my breakfast. Help me walk home. Those steps outside—” She pointed her cane at Elizabeth. “—could make a person fall to her death!”
“There are only three of them. I doubt very much whether a fall would do more than twist your ankle,” said Mr Hartham patiently.
He nevertheless offered his arm, and Elizabeth noticed the lady leant on him heavily.
“Miss Bennet, it has been a delight,” he said over his shoulder.
“I shall call again, in a little bit, to learn your direction and perhaps to prevail upon you for a tour of your charming property.”
They were very soon out of the door, and Elizabeth was left shaking her head.
She had the notion that every meeting with Lady Preston would end in the same way, for she was quite the most bewildering creature.
It could only be hoped that she would not be too offended when Elizabeth refused to go to the ball.
The truth was that she could not even begin to imagine merry-making and flirting at such an event when Mr Darcy refused to leave her thoughts.
When her mind was fixed on her house, she could forget him, but at a ball?
He would confront her at every turn, she was absolutely certain of it.
Besides, though she knew him but little, Mr Hartham had not seemed inclined towards her at all.
He would no doubt be relieved to be freed of any obligation to a woman whose only connexion to better society was a falling-down house and a short acquaintance with his ill-humoured aunt.