CHAPTER 9 #2
“I am making inquiry because he is a solicitor. The rescue only brought the fact to my notice.”
Beaker looked at her as though this were not all she meant, and perhaps not all she knew she meant.
Elizabeth looked back with the expression Mrs. Marwood had once called her most expensive face: perfectly civil, perfectly composed, and prepared to give away nothing that had not been properly invoiced.
“I know very little of him,” she said. “I know he can stop horses, retrieve dogs, keep his head in danger, and answer like a sensible man under questioning. He also has a profession. This already places him above a great part of society.”
“What do you want of him?” said Beaker.
There are moments when a woman must decide whether to answer plainly or only sufficiently. Elizabeth, who was not stupid and not yet prepared to be laughed at by old men she liked, chose the second.
“I am considering whether he may answer well in business.”
Hartwood, who had the better manners and the warmer heart, saved her from further precision.
“He may indeed,” said he. “If it is the Mr. Darcy I suppose, you could do considerably worse.”
Beaker tapped the card once upon the desk.
“He was with Brentwood.”
That was enough, in Beaker’s voice, to count as a character reference.
Elizabeth leaned a little forward.
“You know him, then?”
“Know of him,” said Beaker. “Mr. Brentwood spoke well of him. Which is not a thing to be thrown away, because Brentwood spoke well of very few men and no paper at all.”
Hartwood nodded.
“He is a rising young man. Serious. Exact. Perhaps a little too grave for comfort, but one does not employ a solicitor to improve the music in a room. If Brentwood trusted him, that matters.”
“And the name?” Elizabeth asked. “You do not look at it as if it belonged to nobody.”
The two men exchanged a glance.
It was brief. Too brief to be meant for her, and therefore immediately interesting.
Hartwood shifted in his chair.
“There has been some family unpleasantness.”
Beaker added, with the dryness of one who neither trafficked in gossip nor encouraged it in others, “We know nothing worth repeating, and would not repeat it if we did.”
“Only,” Hartwood continued, “that his circumstances are narrower than they ought once to have been.”
Elizabeth looked at the card.
She had known it.
Not the circumstance, of course. Not the facts.
But something in him had had that air: not weakness, never weakness, but the guarded pride of a creature once mishandled and now too proud to flinch before the next hand.
Sad eyes, she thought, though the phrase was far too simple for so severe a gentleman.
Poor creature was worse, and yet some part of her, trained very young upon beetles, birds, snakes, and all indignant objects in need of rescue, accepted it instantly.
“By fault?” she asked.
Beaker’s eyes came to hers.
“We do not know.”
“Then by report,” said Elizabeth.
A faint approval touched Hartwood’s mouth.
“That is the fairer phrasing.”
“Reports are often the cheapest article in circulation,” she said. “And usually the worst made.”
Beaker looked down at the card again.
“Whatever the difficulty at home, his conduct has been entirely respectable. He has worked hard. Kept himself clean of nonsense. Brentwood helped him. Judge Darcy had something to do with his first placing, I believe.”
“Judge Darcy?”
“A relation,” said Beaker. “Uncle, if I recall. He did not train the young man himself, but helped him into the right hands. Brentwood then made something of him. Or rather, allowed him to make something of himself.”
Elizabeth considered that.
The gentleman of yesterday had been grave, handsome, convenient, and had looked, most inconveniently, as if he belonged by a fire.
That was plenty of information for one evening.
Now he became something else as well: a man of a good name but narrowed circumstances; a man with family unpleasantness no one respectable would repeat; a man working hard under the eye of those who did not praise easily.
She liked that less than she expected.
Or rather, she liked him more for it, which was inconvenient.
Hartwood put the card back on the desk.
“If you wish my opinion, Miss Bennet, he is exactly the sort of younger man one would not object to seeing brought gradually into affairs of consequence.”
The sentence hung for a moment.
Elizabeth looked at both gentlemen.
“You say that as if you mean to be rid of yourselves.”
Hartwood gave the little smile of a man who has lived long enough to prefer honesty where vanity serves no purpose.
“My dear, we mean only that no one handles another person’s affairs forever.”
Beaker said, “Mrs. Marwood died suddenly.”
It was the kind of plain truth he always preferred: no embroidery, no sentimental fog, no comfort beyond usefulness.
Hartwood folded his hands over his stick.
“We are old, Miss Bennet. Better to choose someone younger while we may still oversee the transition than leave you scrambling later.”
Elizabeth was quiet a moment.
This, because it was true and not new, did not wound her.
It only settled something already half acknowledged.
Mrs. Marwood had died before the house had done learning that she was mortal.
It was no great strain to suppose that Beaker and Hartwood, who had once seemed part of the permanent machinery of existence, might also one day disappoint it.
“So,” she said at last, “you do not oppose the idea.”
“Oppose?” said Hartwood. “No.”
“Encourage?” asked Elizabeth.
Beaker regarded her for one dry second.
“With caution.”
Hartwood laughed.
“With approval, if you must force the word. You need not hand him all your affairs at once.”
“The leases would do,” said Beaker.
Elizabeth looked from one to the other. “The leases?”
“The heaviest part of the work,” said Hartwood, “and the least likely to flatter him.”
“Also among the least profitable,” said Beaker.
“Mr. Beaker, you recommend him a trial by tedium.”
“By accuracy.”
Hartwood smiled. “A portion only, under our eye. If he does it well, you will know something useful of him.”
Elizabeth looked down at the card.
“Whether he is thorough?”
“Whether he is thorough when the work is dull,” said Beaker.
Hartwood added, more gently, “And whether he receives useful employment without mistaking it for condescension.”
That interested Elizabeth very much.
“You are very decided,” said Beaker, “for a lady making only an inquiry.”
“I am often decided before I am informed.”
“Yes,” said Beaker. “That has been observed.”
Hartwood’s eyes, kinder and more dangerous than Beaker’s, rested on her face for one second longer than was necessary.
“Take care, my dear.”
Elizabeth lifted her brows.
“Of Mr. Darcy?”
“No,” said Hartwood. “Of your own speed.”
That was so near the truth that Elizabeth immediately found it impertinent.
“I am in no haste.”
Beaker looked at the card.
“No?”
“No. I am only making arrangements.”
Hartwood returned the card to her.
“Then arrange cautiously.”
Elizabeth took it back, very conscious of the card touching her glove.
“Always.”
Neither gentleman believed her.
It was one of the disadvantages of being loved by old men of business; they had known her too long to be reassured by the tone in which she said what she intended them to believe.
She left them soon after, with the uncomfortable suspicion that at least one of the two old gentlemen knew perfectly well that no young woman came so briskly to inquire after a solicitor merely because he had rescued a dog.
Back at Portman Square, she found the household already in a state of organized gratitude.
The hamper had been her idea. The speed and scale of its execution belonged to the house.
Mrs. Albright had taken the matter up with the grim competence of a general receiving late intelligence before battle.
The cook had contributed little savoury pies.
There was a round of good cheese, two pots of preserve, a packet of tea of a better quality than one sent ordinarily to acquaintances, some biscuits, fruit, and several other solid comforts which, taken together, suggested that Lord Pomington’s rescue had elevated Mr. Darcy at once into the class of men who must not be permitted to go hungry if female administration could prevent it.
Mrs. Doddridge sat beside the table with the basket before her, ensuring that nothing breakable was placed beneath anything heavy and that the napkin folded over the top was neither ostentatious nor mean.
Pom-Pom sat beside the basket, staring into it with great attention and no visible generosity.
“He behaves,” said Elizabeth, “as if he had himself selected every item.”
Mrs. Doddridge adjusted the corner of the napkin. “His lordship has firm opinions on baskets, miss.”
“He has done nothing but nearly die.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Yet he contrives to look like a patron.”
Mrs. Albright, who was placing the tea in its paper, said, “His lordship has had an exerting day.”