Chapter 13
By eight o’clock Darcy had his coat on, his hat in his hand, and one foot out his front door. He was very nearly safe.
“You are going out,” said his mother from the foot of the stairs.
Darcy closed his eyes. He had been so close. He turned to address her. “I am,” he said. “I have business with my saddler.”
“Before you go . . .” His mother descended the last two steps and regarded him with some scepticism. “I hope you will be at home on Thursday. The Finches are in town this week, and Lady Finch has written that she means to call.”
His mother had not mentioned the daughter. But there was always a daughter. “You do not require me for such a call.”
“Fitzwilliam,” she said with a little sigh. “Do not be tiresome.”
He set his hat down on the table. “I am endeavouring to be useful. If you and Lady Finch wish to speak of the chairs she has ordered for her new home in Berkeley Square, I can add nothing to the subject.” He had no idea whether Lady Finch had ordered new chairs, but she did seem to be in a constant state of refurbishing something or other.
“She may not speak only of chairs.”
“Curtains?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.
His mother lifted her own.
“Carpets?” he suggested.
His mother frowned, apparently not appreciative of his teasing. “Her daughter is with her.”
“Ah,” said Darcy. “A call, then, only in its broadest sense.”
His mother came down the remaining step and drew her shawl more closely about her shoulders, though the hall was not cold. “Miss Finch is a very accomplished young woman.”
“I am sure she is.”
“She plays.”
“Most young women play.”
“She sings.”
“Most young women are said to.”
“She has a pleasing temper.”
“That is always what is reported before an introduction but is often not the case at all.”
“She has thirty thousand pounds.”
He paused to nod seriously. “I wonder you did not begin with that. It is the one accomplishment no one ever disputes.”
His mother’s mouth tightened, but not enough to conceal that she wished to smile.
“Sometimes,” she said, “one must meet a few wrong matches before one is willing to recognize the right one. Miss Macomber I brought to show you I was in earnest. Lady Honoria I brought because her mother has been describing her to me these two years and I wished to see her for myself. Neither of them was ever going to be yours. You knew it. So did I.”
Darcy crossed his arms.
“Miss Finch is not that,” his mother said. “Miss Finch I have chosen.”
“And what, precisely, am I meant to learn from Miss Finch?”
“That she is handsome, sensible, well-connected, and not at all responsible for your dislike of being matched.”
“Does she know she is coming to be examined?”
“She is coming to call with her mother. You are to appear by chance.”
Poor Miss Finch. Darcy looked over his shoulder at the now-closed door. The winter morning and freedom waited just beyond it.
He closed his eyes. “I will be here on Thursday.” He bowed. “Good morning, Mother.”
His mother went back up the stairs. Georgiana was on the landing with a book in her hand. “Was that about Thursday?”
“It was.”
“Miss Finch.” She came down three steps. “Mrs. Paulson had it from Lady Finch’s woman on Monday. I did not know whether I ought to tell you.”
“You ought to have told me.”
“Mother thought you would go to Derbyshire.”
Darcy considered it. “I might have.”
Georgiana just looked at him. “She might be pleasing.”
“She will be handsome and accomplished,” he said. “I know enough of Mother’s skill to say that I shall probably like her. But it will come to nothing.”
“Why?”
He was not prepared to admit to the real answer. “Because I am difficult. Everybody says so.”
“You are not difficult.” Georgiana tucked the book under her arm. “You are only decided.”
He chuckled, pleased that she was attempting to defend him and amused at the way she had done it. “That is the same thing, though you have said it politely.”
She went up. Darcy watched her go, then took his hat from the table where he had set it down a few minutes earlier.
By the time he was finally able to walk through the door, Richard was standing by the coach, his gloved hands tucked beneath his arms against the cold.
Darcy stopped on the step. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.”
“You might have come in.”
“I might,” said Richard. “I might also have volunteered for a court martial, but I am unlikely to do so.”
Darcy gave him a flat stare and set his hat firmly on his head.
Richard studied him more closely. “How bad?”
“Next one is on Thursday.”
“Ah. Where are we headed this morning?”
“The saddler.”
Darcy climbed into the coach. Richard followed and settled opposite, then took one look at Darcy’s expression and laughed under his breath. “Poor devil.”
“I am not in want of your pity.”
“No. You are in want of rescue, but I have no intention of catching my aunt’s eye long enough to provide it.”
The coach lurched forward. Darcy watched the grey street roll past. “She asked me,” he said after a moment, “if there was anyone.”
He glanced back at his cousin in time to see the amusement disappear from Richard’s face. “And?”
“I said no.”
Richard nodded once. “But . . .”
“It was true, but only because I have made it true.”
Richard leaned back against the squabs. “Ah.”
Darcy tipped his head back to gaze at the roof of the coach. “I am not in humour for this.”
“No,” said Richard. “You are in humour for bolting out of the house and pretending that you require the saddler’s immediate counsel when it is too cold to ride.”
Darcy glared at his cousin.
Richard lifted both hands. “I commiserate. Truly. But you ought not have handed your mother the fowling piece. If you have told my aunt that there is no woman you have met whom you like, you cannot be astonished when she attempts to rectify the deficiency. It is what she does, Darcy.”
Darcy turned back to the window. The truth of it sat between them, extremely unwelcome and not at all improved by Richard’s having spoken it. “I know,” he said.
His cousin was quiet while the coach rattled through a turn. “You made it true,” he said at last. “That is a curious way to have put it.”
“It is the accurate way.”
“You were six weeks in Hertfordshire and came home a fortnight early. In December you told me there was no Hertfordshire question.” Richard stretched his legs across the coach.
“Your mother asks whether there is anyone, and you answer no, but you tell me now that you did something to earn that no.” He tapped the window frame.
“I may only be a soldier, Darcy, but I am not blind.”
“You have never been only a soldier.”
“No, but it is often beneficial to be thought so.”
They passed the length of a block without speaking.
“I shall not ask her name,” Richard said. “I have been introduced to two women from Hertfordshire, but I suppose you have met others.”
“Thank you.”
“But I must ask one thing.” The idleness had gone out of his voice. “Do you think my aunt knows?”
She knew that he had insulted Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Hertfordshire. What she did not know was that he also admired her. “No.”
“Then she will not have it from me.”
Darcy turned from the window, a thank you on his lips.
Richard lifted a hand. “Do not make a ceremony of it. My motives are entirely selfish. The day my aunt succeeds with you is the day she brings her guns round to bear on me, and I have too much respect for her aim to hasten it. Your secret and my liberty march together.”
Darcy would not force Richard to say it, but they were like brothers. He knew Richard could be counted on to help him. “That is not your reason.”
“It is the primary reason.” Richard crossed his arms. “Wake me at the saddler.” He tipped his hat over his eyes and arranged himself against the squabs. Within a minute he was asleep, or at least pretending to be.
After the saddler in Long Acre, which had, after all, been only an excuse for leaving the house, Darcy directed Anders to drive them to Hyde Park.
Three days ago, Bingley had mentioned, with no idea what he was doing, that Mr. Gardiner had business in this part of town on Tuesday each week, and that when the weather allowed, his wife and nieces often walked in the park until he was finished.
It had been said in the middle of a long and happy account of Miss Bennet’s opinion of the park, and Darcy had silently tucked the bit of knowledge away.
“You are very quiet, even for you,” Richard said.
“I am thinking about girths.”
“You are thinking about a girl.”
Darcy said nothing.
Once there, they walked the length of the water and back. Darcy observed every party that came towards them, including nursemaids with their charges, an elderly gentleman with an elderly pug, and two officers having a friendly dispute.
None of them was Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
He had known she would probably not be here. He had told himself so. And still he hoped. It was, he thought, a ridiculous way for a man to spend his Tuesday morning.
He was spared the necessity of walking back to the carriage by a voice from the broad footpath—a young woman’s voice, light and quick, carried clearly in the frosty air.