The Matchmaker’s Mistake
EXCERPT
Fitzwilliam Darcy had suffered many indignities in his life, but the worst was being informed that he was on the verge of proposing marriage.
Miss Bingley said the words just as the carriage rolled into London.
“Your mother will be so pleased.”
She spoke with the quiet certainty of a woman laying down a trump, as though the matter had been settled and she had only been awaiting their return to London to announce it.
Darcy, who had been gazing out of the window at the grey November outskirts, pretended not to hear, because as a gentleman he could not say what he was truly thinking.
He maintained that pretence for the remainder of the journey, which had taken another twenty-three minutes.
He had counted.
When the Hursts’ carriage at last deposited him at Darcy House, he stood on the steps while his trunks were unloaded.
The knocker had been recently polished, and he stared at his distorted reflection in the brass for a moment before checking the windows.
The lamp in the morning room burned brighter than the grey November day required.
His mother would be waiting.
Lady Anne Darcy was the most formidable matchmaker in London and had been for the better part of two decades.
Hostesses wrote to her about their daughters.
Dowagers consulted her before approving suitors.
The Morning Post, in a moment of unguarded wit, had once printed the phrase The Darcy Register in reference to the private list she was rumoured to keep, and several ladies of his acquaintance had asked him, quite seriously, whether he knew where she kept it.
He did not. No such list existed, so far as he knew.
Every name, every connection, every half-promising match in three seasons of London society was filed away in his mother’s extraordinary mind.
What exasperated him was that she would never say so.
A single well-placed denial would have dispelled the myth but she declined to offer one, because his mother knew a reputation one has not claimed only increased the mystery.
Her method was, by her own description, simple.
She believed that proximity through friendship was the surest path to matrimony.
She had married her best friend’s brother, and she had told Darcy the story his whole life, always warmly, always as if bestowing a gift.
It was a lovely theory. It had produced a happy marriage for his parents.
It had also just produced six torturous weeks in Hertfordshire for him.
Darcy had suspected his mother was up to some mischief in September, when she had been nearly giddy over his trip to Netherfield.
He had said nothing then, because saying anything would have required explaining why her scheme could not work, and she would have listened, and smiled, and sent him off anyway.
Better, he had reasoned, to let her aspirations come to nothing and return to London with every expectation quietly quashed.
He had not anticipated that Bingley’s unmarried sister would be aware of his mother’s plan.
Miss Bingley, it turned out, had gleaned something.
His mother was never direct when she could be oblique, but Miss Bingley had spent her time at Netherfield being elegantly, exhaustingly hopeful.
And now, despite his refusal to show her anything more than the barest of civilities due to her as his hostess, she was clinging to wildly unwarranted expectation.
He was not even remotely tempted to propose to Caroline Bingley. Temptation had made itself known at Netherfield. But it had not involved Miss Bingley.
“This is ridiculous,” he grumbled, and walked up the steps.
Hewitt opened the door for him and once inside, Darcy surrendered his coat, hat, and gloves. Mrs. Paulson appeared from the back stairs, placid as always.
“Lady Anne is in the morning room, Mr. Darcy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Paulson.”
He had hoped to refresh himself and consume at least one large brandy before this conversation. He had not even written ahead to say he was leaving Netherfield a fortnight early. Miss Bingley, however, might have.
Well, there was nothing for it now but to straighten his shoulders and climb the stairs.