Love Then Begins (23 page)

“Right, boys,” he muttered. “I’m sure you know this one.”

And he struck up a tune on the flute. At first the musicians stared at him, then they blushed and then a few of them laughed.

“Well, come on then!” Baugham said and took a short pause from his work, waving his hand to get them to follow his efforts with some singing. “A little enthusiasm, gentlemen, please! We are on a mission of peace here!”

The man with the fiddle followed, but it took some minutes of his lordship’s encouragement before the now fluteless man and his friend the second fiddler could bring themselves to obey him.

“
. . .
in working a joke, as will lather like soap, and ye hair of her joke, will draw more yn a rope
,” they sang timidly and would have gone on doing so had not a big-bellied man with a tankard hanging on a string around his neck given a great howl of a laugh, struggled to get to his feet and joined them, dragging his thin and obviously already inebriated friend with him for the chorus.

“The first that came in was an English boy,”
the belly man then started up enthusiastically and with his large and booming voice he attracted the attention of quite a few bystanders. The familiar tune and the more than familiar words caught their ear and soon a few more were singing along and ignoring the fight, which seemed to also have slowed down.

“Then hastily came in a Hilland man,
His chanter and pipe both in his hand,
To her black joke, and belly so white,”

They all now sang, women and men, looking at each other in mirth and titillating conspiracy. This was better than a fight! This was better than drinking on the lawn! This was singing a bawdy tavern song outside Pemberley House!

Baugham grinned and tried to catch Darcy’s eye across the crowd. He managed to send him a wink as Darcy finished dragging one of the fighters out of the mêlée which was now looking ever more immovable and stale, and depositing him by a tree with a rag attached to his bleeding nose. All he could see was Darcy shaking his head at him with a defeated look and then his attention turned to the women.

Before Darcy could reach them, Baugham jumped up on an over-turned barrel and gestured for the fiddlers to walk about. They were cheered and the singing grew ever louder. Seeing Darcy taking the arm of his wife and sister, Baugham abandoned his post and walked through the crowd.

“Now then!” he said cheerfully. “If this little tune doesn’t make you want to swing your skirts and tap your toes, I don’t know what will! Fancy a turn in the hay barn, my sweet?” he asked an old lady, reluctantly humming the words.

He had picked his co-conspirator well, for she gave him a toothless grin and then sent him a kiss.

“Don’t mind if you do, what mother?” a man cackled.

“Well, we can’t have your dainty feet and silk slippers on this turf, can we?” Baugham continued and walked on to wink his eye at a younger woman sitting on the ground. “Time to show those fine ankles in a ballroom. Or would a barn be a more familiar setting for them, do you think?”

The laugh that followed convinced Baugham that it was time to reap what he had sown and he paired up the old lady with his fluteless friend, pulled up the young woman from the ground and attacked the chorus of his tune before leading them on again. Then he swept past his wife and the Darcys.

“Time to dance, I think!” he said breathlessly to Darcy. First he was met with silence but then Mr Darcy said, “I’ll send Palmer around the coaching stables.”

“We’ll take the long way then,” his lordship answered. “So, ladies, this is where you get to do your bit!”

To Holly’s great surprise, she was swept away with Elizabeth and Miss Darcy in the direction of the stables. She tried to ask her husband what was going on, but he was back to playing his flute and the people were skipping and singing and rolling past her and the now forgotten brawlers and he just smiled and winked at her. Miss Darcy trailed readily behind Lord Baugham, but kept her thick shawl tightly wound around her. Holly watched Elizabeth give her husband one quick look and then sided up to her.

“Dancing? In the barn?!”

Elizabeth shrugged. “It is better than fighting on the lawn, I dare say. Although if they do insist on performing all ten verses, I suppose only marginally so.”

“He fancy’d himself very fit for ye game,”
the crowd sang as they followed the fiddlers down the slope, “
She sent him to Holland all in a flame . . . ”

The cousins exchanged a horrified glance. “Better get them to the stable and the jigs quickly,” Elizabeth said and Holly nodded as they hurried on.

A
FTER A LITTLE TOUR AROUND
the stables and past the massive yew hedge that obscured the auxiliary buildings from the main house, Baugham had almost exhausted the capacity of the merry Lambtoners to keep up their rendition of The Black Joke. What they found when they turned the corner to the hay barns was that Mr Darcy and Palmer had somehow managed to open all the doors, pull out all the wagons, sleighs and carriages to free the large storage room, procure several burning torches to light the yard, haul one large, sturdy cart to serve as a stage and light at least ten lanterns to illuminate the indoor space. The floor was still dirty, the dust swirled around in the air as testament to the enormous activity that had just taken place before the crowd arrived and Mr Darcy was standing in his shirt sleeves giving orders about bringing benches from the stables to put around the walls.

He looked up at the approaching procession. A long line of dancing men, women and children, some of them singing, others walking arm and arm with their companions, filled the barn from one wall to the other. Some preferred to stay outside and he could hear the clinking sound of tankards and bottles accompanying the singing.

Those filing into the shed waited and skipped in time to the music as they looked around them and the fiddlers took their place on the cart. Lord Baugham walked into the middle of the floor where Mr Darcy was already standing, still bravely blowing out the tale of the various men looking for fun and pleasure in private places, until he came to a halt.

At once, the fiddler followed him and the crowd watched as his lordship took a deep bow in front of Mr Darcy.

“Our host,” he said loudly. “What shall it be, Darcy? A jig, a cotillion or shall we go straight to it and do a Maggot?”

A smile played on Mr Darcy’s lips.

“The Maggot it is then!” Lord Baugham said, bowed again and backed out of the middle.

He threw the flute in a bold arch across the room to its owner and walked past the fiddlers telling them to keep the beat nice and sharp and don’t stop until you have to. Then he backed all the way down to the entrance where Mrs Darcy, Miss Darcy and Lady Baugham stood, breathlessly waiting for whatever was to come next and not quite certain they should be there at all in the first place.

Mr Darcy was what came next. He walked up to his wife, bowed before her and reached out his hand. At first she looked at it in surprise but then something in her eyes lit up and she quickly divested herself of her thick fur lined coat, gloves and muff, throwing them at her two attending ladies until she stood before him mirroring his casual appearance but for her bear skin hat.

Carefully she put her hand in his and so they stood for a moment, seemingly lost in something that was hard to know whether it was hesitation or awe and then Mr Darcy bowed once more before he turned to the musicians on the cart behind them and the fiddler realised this was his cue.

“Ladies and gentlemen, wives and husbands, girls and boys! This is Mr Beveridge’s Maggot!”

There was a cheer among the spectators as Mr Darcy walked into the middle with his wife and they took their positions. Holly could clearly see some words were exchanged between them though it was impossible to hear them, but a moment before the music started Elizabeth broke out in a brilliant smile, her eyes sparkling as she looked at her husband and then mouthing the single word, “Yes.”

Not really knowing why, Holly found herself smiling, too, and her smile only grew at the approach of his lordship, carrying two steaming mugs.

“Something to warm you up again, my dear?” He gave her a disarming smile along with the mulled wine, “I must say, I am enjoying the spectacle of seeing my friend Darcy leading a dance among the savages. Until we can find some dark corner in which to resume our interrupted conversation, that is.”

“You are incorrigible, my lord,” she smiled over her cup, but had to admit that he looked particularly irresistible at the moment. “But you must do something for me first.”

“Anything,” he twinkled over his own cup.

“Ask Miss Darcy to dance,” she nodded to where the young lady was smiling and tapping her foot as she watched the scene before her.

“Ho-olly,” the dashing, irresistible man turned into a whining toddler before her eyes, “I don’t want to. How am I supposed to after what you said last night? You said not to be charming, but I haven’t been
trying
to be charming and now I don’t even know what to say or—”

“Oh for goodness sake, stop fussing!” Holly laughed. “I also told you to be nice to her and it’s obvious that she wishes to dance. And . . . ” she smiled seductively, “I am reasonably certain that by the time your dance is over, I will have finished this drink and will be quite . . . warm, indeed.”

He leaned in and kissed her nose, “Now who’s being incorrigible? Very well, I’ll ask her to dance, but I cannot promise not to be unwittingly charming and clever, however hard I try to avoid it.”

“I know you can’t, and I love that about you. But,” she ran her hand down his side and slipped it into his coat pocket, pulling out the cravat he had hastily stuffed in it earlier, “the case being such, I think we need to make you a bit more presentable for the occasion.”

They stole behind a few piled bales of hay, and before she could begin, he kissed her long and soundly. Whether this was an attempt to make her forget her intentions was a matter of debate, but he very nearly succeeded. If it had not been for the cravat that was still in her hand getting tangled in his undone coat buttons, he would have.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she pulled away, tossing the cloth at him while putting some distance safely between them. He pulled a face, but buttoned and tied and, after downing his drink in two swallows, tugged on his waistcoat and walked to the dance like a man going to the gallows.

The fiddlers were doing their utmost to keep to his instructions. Within two minutes of Mr Darcy standing up with his wife, the melody had been irresistible to the onlookers and women young and old were dragging reluctant men out of corners and away from their companions and tankards to join in. The shed was warming up and shouts of laughter and stomping feet admirably kept up the competition with the musicians.

Sipping her drink in the protection of the hay bales, Holly watched her husband stiffly approach Miss Darcy, saw Miss Darcy turn a beaming smile upon him, say an enthusiastic “Yes!” and eagerly take his offered arm. In the course of the half hour of the dance, his stiff reserve softened somewhat but the conversation remained scarce and his lordship was obviously exercising great care
not
to be particularly witty or engaging. He lasted until the final turn, when he leaned in and said something that immediately had them both laughing, but he stiffened again when she turned her bright and admiring face to his. He looked over at Holly with a panicked expression and while the last chords of the song still hung in the air, he handed his charge over to her brother with a look of immense relief.

“There!” he said. “But I really must thank you and claim an old married man’s need for rest now.”

Miss Darcy just beamed at him. “That was wonderful!” she said. “This whole place is wonderful! You are wonderful!”

Baugham raised his eyebrows.

“In thinking of it,” Miss Darcy hastily added. “I never thought I could have so much . . . fun! I mean, look how it all started out.”

Her sincerity made both men exchange a smile and Mr Darcy happily asked his sister for the next turn.

“Oh no!” she said, her eyes shining and her cheeks flushed. “Oh, no thank you, brother! I’m quite content. I don’t think . . . I don’t think I shall dance any more tonight.” She gave his lordship a shy smile that made his heart sink a little again.

“I think I’ll just go home now,” she continued happily. “It has been perfect!”

She gave a little skipping turn out of pure, childish and innocent joy and it was such a delightful sight she received a kiss on the cheek from her brother and another one from Lord Baugham and so it was safe to say, Miss Darcy’s happiness was complete and perfect as she ran all the way home to her bed, her dog and her journal.

Baugham looked after her and then came sauntering back to his wife, shaking his head ruefully.

“You just cannot help yourself, can you?” she said in a stern voice, but her eyes were laughing as he returned, looking slightly bewildered.

“I need a drink,” was his only reply.

“I think we can manage something better than that,” she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him out the door and into the darkness of the night.