Chapter 26 Business and Good Deeds #2
She finally sucked in a breath and continued, “I appreciate the honour of your brief consideration. I really do! I hope this will not affect our friendship, but you must understand something.” She took another breath.
“I will never marry a man of your standing. If I marry, it will be to someone of minor means, who needs me as much as I need him. You do not need me and never will. I daresay you are flirting with the idea of wanting me, but you will never need me. I cannot put myself under the control of such a powerful man—never again. It is just something I cannot do.”
Darcy wondered who the bounder was who made Mrs Thorne so reticent.
One thing was obvious. He was a high-status individual, who was at least as bad a husband as Darcy had been.
He might even be someone the gentleman knew.
It could easily have been a friend or acquaintance.
He had never been the most social fellow in the ton, and there was no telling how many minor acquaintances were jettisoned by his mind during his bout with typhus.
Of course, he could have been a rich banker or tradesman just as well as a gentleman, so it was all speculation.
Either way, Mrs Thorne seemed to have an unbreakable aversion to high-status men, which was either unfortunate or challenging.
He asked very gently, “Did he hurt you badly? Do I pain you by speaking this way?”
She sighed, looked at him intently for a moment, then slumped her shoulders. “Circumstances hurt me. I will say no more about my husband—now or ever. That is a boundary I will not cross.”
Darcy bowed. “I will respect the boundary, Amanda.”
Neither noticed that he had slipped and called her by her given name, and it is uncertain what either would have thought about it if they had. They both stood silent, frowning ferociously, with no idea where to look after the altercation.
Darcy finally smiled in what he thought was a non-threatening way.
“Mrs Thorne, if I promise not to court you, would you allow me the privilege of a dance? Think of the advantages of our respective widowhood. We could sit in this corner and talk all night, and nobody would bat an eye. We could dance three sets, go out on the balcony alone, I could escort you home. We are unconstrained in our freedom. We should take maximal advantage of it.”
Amanda laughed, glad to see the gentleman had taken her rejection well. In fact, it was not really a rejection so much as a correction, but still it could have gone much worse. If he was even entertaining ideas, it must have stung at least a little.
“I suppose if I will dance with a boy without a single hair on his chin, I can manage one with you.”
“I assure you madam—I can grow an absolutely ferocious beard if necessary.”
With a laugh, she marked him for a set on her dance card. Ever the greedy boy, he asked for another, to which she reluctantly agreed, under the proviso that he dance several sets with other ladies during the night—since he needed the practise.
With the dances organised, she took the man around to introduce him to people she thought might be useful to him.
As they approached Mr Lymington, Darcy casually mentioned, “I was considering investing in his business, but have not finished my investigations.”
Mrs Thorne dragged him to a stop and said sharply, “Pray, do not! He has a reputation of almost making the next big something or other, but I do not believe he ever delivers. He is very clever at stringing investors along like a trout on a hook, though.”
“I thank you for the advice. Perhaps, you could comment on the other investments I am considering?”
“Of course, bring them to the shop,” she said, just before they were interrupted by a young man who had asked for the next set.
Darcy watched her go, then sought out a young lady he had asked for a set after Mrs Thorne introduced them.
She was a good dancer, and an engaging conversationist. Darcy thought, not for the first time, that there was a knack to these things, and he had mostly wasted the first decade of his adulthood looking over his shoulder and being afraid.
The young lady was not someone who harboured aspirations towards being the Mistress of Pemberley.
In fact, she gladly (though probably incorrectly) asserted that she could not place Derbyshire within fifty miles on an unmarked map.
When his set with Mrs Thorne came, they had both recovered from their earlier disagreement and went to the floor quite happily.
The dance was, by pure coincidence, one extremely familiar to him, etched in his memory for ever.
For just a few minutes, in the middle of a quadrille, he found himself almost stepping out of his own body to look at it from another angle.
Whether it was the song, the dance, Amanda and Elizabeth’s obvious similarities, her light and pleasing dancing style, or the assembly hall he could not say—but for half a minute, he felt as if he were all alone in the room with his partner, dancing to their own music, unfazed by their companions.
It was absolutely sublime.