Chapter 2
“Miss Smith.”
“Mr Jones.”
That was how our third annual encounter began.
The young lady had matured to the point where I no longer considered her excessively young.
She was eight years my junior, but I had to admit that plenty of young debutants of her age had been thrust in my direction, much to my disquiet.
I was not the least bit interested in a girl her age, but I could see she would mature into a pretty and engaging woman in time.
“If I recall correctly, you should be coming up on seventeen in a fortnight. Has the dreaded event occurred?” I asked, wondering whether I would get the aggressiveness of the first year, the impertinence of the second, or something new.
She laughed, and I appreciated the sound of it, especially since my second season of supposed wife hunting was going about as well as the first. My aunt, Lady Matlock, while under the influence of a startling amount of cherry, boldly declared, ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’
As for myself, perhaps I would one day be in want of a wife, but not that day, or any day soon.
I had plenty to keep me busy. I had a few friends, though most came with unfortunate appendages in the form of unwed relatives.
Such was the cost of my privilege, and I paid it either gladly or grudgingly, depending on how much I liked the friend and how clingy said relatives were.
She finally stopped laughing long enough to answer.
“Yes, the dreaded event has occurred, with somewhat surprising results.”
“Which are?” I was dying to know.
“Would you care for the good or the bad?”
“Both, I should imagine. Let us start with the good.”
She chuckled again, and her same farm boy went back to the same chair from the previous year and looked like he would go to sleep the same as he had before.
I had slipped him the princely sum of a crown both previous years, so I assumed he thought highly of me…
or at least, highly enough to avoid stopping me from doing it again.
It was not every day a farm boy got a month’s wages or more for a few hours of the easiest work of his life, and I wished him well with the proceeds.
“I enjoy balls, dancing, and most of the things I was missing. We live in a small community, so being out basically just means boys must watch their manners when they dance with me.”
“I see. Any beaus?”
She sighed resignedly. “They are rare as hen’s teeth in our village. Even my elder sister remains unwed. It is astonishing, really. She is as beautiful as I already mentioned, but she is also the kindest person I ever met. She never thinks poorly of anybody, and yet—”
I decided to see if I could get the hellion back.
“I suppose her indolent parents, surfeit of sisters, and lack of dowry does not help… or at least, I assume you would not be meeting me if you had one.”
Instead of the hellion, she just got sad, and I wanted to kick myself.
“You are correct, sir. All we have is our meagre charms to recommend us.”
“Not as meagre as you might think,” I said honestly.
She shrugged, as if the point were not worth debating, or more likely she suspected I was humouring her, so I tried another tack.
“I told you at fourteen you have no way to know what a beauty you might become. I stand by that. You are well on your way.”
That was probably the flirtiest thing I had ever said to any woman, though it was the most honest.
She showed her mercurial nature by lighting up like the sun again. “Why thank you, Mr Jack Jones!”
I laughed along, our good humour restored. She was obviously nowhere near ready for marriage, so I thought it premature to even discuss such a subject—not that anything I did in that room was the least bit proper.
“What is the bad part of being out, if I may ask.”
“The taaaaaallllking,” she said morosely.
“Every event requires discussions about where it is, and who might be there, and what we will wear, and what people will do, and who said what about whom, and all of those are repeated a dozen times or more, in half a dozen drawing rooms. After the event we do the same in reverse. Then when we are barely finished picking over the bones of that, another is announced. It is exhausting!”
I admit I howled at that one, enough to briefly stir the farm boy, though he thankfully returned to the land of nod, while Miss Smith laughed with me. She really was a clever and engaging girl.
“Pray, tell me if anything has vexed you this year, Mr Jones.”
That question soured my mood a little, but I supposed it was inevitable, so there was little point whimpering about it.
“I grew up with the son of my father’s steward. The elder was a very respectable man, but the younger—”
“—was… less?” she guessed.
“Far, far less,” I said, to which she frowned.
“Shall I assume he did all the things bad boys do—gambling, cheating, theft, seductions, and so forth.”
“All that and worse.”
She frowned, but otherwise did not run screaming into the night, so her resilience was once again proven.
“My father stood as his godfather and gifted him a gentleman’s education.”
“I suppose that seems generous.”
The way she said it made me curious. “Seems? Not is?” I asked, careful to not appear placating.
She looked reluctant to be explicit but got over it quickly.
“It depends on whether he set him up to be a gentleman. Regardless of his defects, it would be cruel to have a boy believe he was due an elevation in station, only to have it disappear at the last minute. Nobody likes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
That idea set me back a pace. I had always believed my father was being generous. I thought he was too generous for my sake, but it had never occurred to me he might be too generous for that blackguard’s sake.
“That is a profound insight, Miss Smith. It never occurred to me that one could be too generous for the recipient’s sake.”
“Do not be cast down. It is not the sort of thing your upbringing would make you think of.”
“It certainly should! Part of my duty as a landowner is to support charities, and I may have to rethink some of my largess.”
“You have time and there is much to be said for erring on the side of generosity.”
Fascinated, I asked, “What about your background made you think of it.”
She stared at her hands a moment but regained her courage quickly.
“I was raised to be the wife of an estate owner, but such an outcome seems… unlikely. I have an overly ambitious mother and indolent father. My mother will never allow me to marry down, and my father will never exert himself to help us marry up—or even laterally. I am the master of unfulfilled hopes.”
I wanted to sigh in exasperation or smack her father but answered honestly. “I see no reason for you to give up hope. You have time, you are pretty and clever, and you have gumption.”
“I thank you for that, sir. Suppose we return to the subject of the disagreeable godson.”
It seemed I had made her uncomfortable, but I could do little to help. We were of such vastly different circles that it required the extraordinary coincidence of her grandfather buying my grandfather’s stolen pistols for us to have even met.
“My father left him ￡1,000 in his will—” I began, but she gasped, “That is extraordinarily generous.”
I sighed, and continued, truly wondering what my father was thinking, “—and the most valuable living in our gift, should he take orders.”
“He wanted to make him a clergyman?” she squeaked, stunned for once. “I hope you circumvented his ambitions. One may as well engage a fox to guard your henhouse.”
I chuckled, glad to see her restored humour.
“He asked for, and I happily gave him ￡3,000 in lieu of the living. I could have done nothing since he had not taken orders, or even finished the education my father gifted him, but I felt obliged to match my father’s wishes as closely as I could.”
She stared as if I claimed to have invented world peace.
“That is extraordinarily generous. I am not convinced it was a sound idea, but it does show you have a good heart—far better than he deserves.”
I had never been chastised and complimented in the same breath before and was uncertain whether I liked it or not. At the very least, Miss Smith had an interesting perspective.
We spoke for another half hour about this and that, and it was nice to just talk to a young woman without threat or even hint of expectations.
I finally asked, “How goes your project, Miss Smith. Have you anything for me to purchase this year.”
“Nothing to sell, Mr Jones. You might be able to advise me, but I mostly just wanted to keep our tradition.”
I was amused that three meetings counted as tradition, but I had no objections. I did not pine for the young lady’s company all year, but it was nice to have at least one pleasant encounter always on the schedule. At the very least, she made me think.
“What have you been doing, if I may ask?”
“I made a study of how my parents spend their money and set out to see if any of the funds could be recovered, in whole or in part, on my father’s demise.”
“That is smart. What have you learnt.”
“My father spends a great deal on books, then guards them like a dragon in his lair.”
“That seems a valid target.”
“This time I recruited my elder sister to the cause. I studied the entail documents like a monk with a holy book, then we went down in the middle of the night to inventory them. It is painstaking work ensuring there are no errors we could be taken to court over, so we are about finished with the project. I seek a bookseller who can estimate their value and sell them quickly when the time comes.”
I was impressed with the plan. Darcys never used entails so I had never studied them, but I thought I might before the next meeting.
That thought slightly startled me, but I saw no reason to curtail both of our one hour per year of intelligent conversations with different perspectives without expectations.
I had, at one time or another, vaguely wondered if I was risking compromise, but I thought the risk about a hundredth of what I chanced at every cutthroat London ball or house party.
“I may have a man who can help. He specialises in estate sales, and I am a frequent customer. You probably already worked this out, but you need someone who can move fast. Once the heir takes possession, it becomes exceedingly difficult to extract things, whether they are yours or not. Better to present him a fait accompli. Make him be the one chasing his tail.”
“I never thought of that, and I thank you, Mr Jones,” she said with her brilliant smile.
She carried a notebook and pencil, so I gave her the direction for my bookseller.
Darcy’s love tradition, so I carried on with ours.
“Next year, Miss Smith?”
“Same time, same place, Mr Jones!”