Chapter 35 #2
The colonel’s lips twitched. “A serious offence indeed, but hardly the worst-case scenario. Take comfort that she has restrained herself from sending out invitations for one of her evening parties. There is no telling what sort of indignities you would be made to suffer on such an occasion.”
Darcy stared at him, horrified by the idea of Lady Carlisle hosting dinners and evening parties in his home for her insipid friends and their daughters.
“She would not dare,” he whispered, but even as he uttered the words, he could see soup and roast pheasant and mutton and puddings and cakes, card tables and cucumber sandwiches and custards and punch and ladies seated upon his drawing room sofas preening and gossiping and tittering as clear as day.
He shut his eyes and dropped his head into his hands.
“This arrangement is not working, Fitzwilliam. You must find a way to lure her back to Carlisle House before I lose my sanity. We leave for Pemberley in two days. Last night, instead of a restful sleep, I suffered a series of nightmares in which Lady Catherine attempted to drown me in a vat of singlo tea while your mother nibbled chocolate biscuits and insisted that I would learn to like it. The look in her eyes was maniacal.”
Fitzwilliam barked a laugh. “Let us hope it does not come to that.” He reached for his teacup and shook his head.
“You may be interested to know I have finally spoken to my father. He was furious, by the way, when he returned home to find my mother and most of her gowns and jewellery gone. I have told him very little beyond the who, what, why, and when of the business, but have said nothing about her staying here with you. It is only a matter of time before he discerns her whereabouts. That said, I doubt I can persuade my mother to return to Carlisle House willingly. The last time I spoke with her about it, she asked whether pigs had sprouted wings yet.”
“You are a great strategic mind and a credit to His Majesty’s army. The Major General cannot make do without you. Surely, you can think of something that will appease everyone in this scenario.”
“I would rather deal with Bonaparte than my parents at this point. Bony is a tenacious devil, but my parents are utterly impossible. I can make no promises regarding my father, but I will do all I can to persuade my mother to behave herself.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then frowned.
“Though I cannot say I favour such a resolution, what of a divorce? Is it even possible?”
“It is not. I spoke with my solicitor and several of his associates at length, as well as the bishop. Her ladyship has no recourse. There are three ways for their marriage to be dissolved, and none of them are applicable to her situation. The first option would be for your mother to take a lover, rendering your father the injured party, whereupon he could petition to divorce her based on grounds of her unfaithfulness. The second would be to have a physician declare your father deluded, necessitating a dissolution of their marriage based on reasons of insanity. The third involves impotency, which is hardly relevant in the earl’s case.
” Darcy shook his head with a look of manifest disgust. “I have learned that any man in England could cheerfully beat his wife within an inch of her life and still the lady would be bound to him by law unless the worthless blackguard decided otherwise.”
“Thank goodness that is not the issue in this case, although my father would have answered to me long ago if he were prone to violence rather than lustfulness and infidelity. Have you broken the news to my mother yet?”
“No. Not yet. I do not relish telling her she must remain married to your father when she is dead set against it. And angry. Perhaps they can yet reconcile…”
“Darcy,” said the colonel tiredly, “they have spent most of their married life reconciling. At one point my mother was even reconciled to the fact that my father would do as he pleased, regardless of whether it pained her or not. Perhaps they could have continued as they were, but you became engaged to Miss Bennet, championed her intelligence and her candour, and ignored her lack of dowry because you love her. In my father’s eyes, you are a fool.
He would have you take Miss Bennet as your mistress and marry some rich harridan instead—something we both know you would never do, regardless of your morality.
He does not understand your heart. Case in point, his alluding to taking a mistress in front of his wife.
It raised my mother’s ire something dreadful.
How could it not? It is no great secret that my father married her for her thirty thousand pounds and her noble lineage.
Not for the turn of her mind, not for her wit, and certainly not for love.
“Then,” the colonel continued, “there is the matter of Lady Harrow. However truly debase that woman is at heart, she was my mother’s friend for a long time.
You are the spitting image of my father when he was your age.
You know Lady Harrow set her sights on him simply to scratch an itch, and if she was able to twist the knife in my mother’s back a bit for failing to persuade you to marry Lady Eliza, all the better. ”
Darcy sighed. “So, no reconciliation.”
The colonel laughed without humour. “It appears unlikely.”