Mr and Mrs Darcy 02 Suspense & Sensibility (19 page)

"I shall, thank you." His countenance took on a more
appropriate mien. "Will anyone else be of the party?"

"Only Mr. Darcy and his sister."

"I look forward to it."

"Splendid. Come round at the usual time."

Mr. Dashwood arrived an hour later than anticipated. He acknowledged his
host and hostess with an odd blend of unnecessary formality for one who enjoyed
such intimate acquaintance with them, and excessive familiarity for a gentleman
who had not yet officially joined the family. He offered no excuse for his
tardiness, but his jovial mood suggested that a previous engagement with a
bottle of spirits might have contributed to the delay.

He greeted Kitty warmly - a little too warmly, in Darcy's opinion, even
for a man affianced. There were limits to what a gentleman ought to say to a
lady who was not yet his wife, especially in the hearing of others, and declaring
that the sight of her caused him to look forward to their upcoming nuptials
with "rising expectation" was beyond the bounds of decency. The
comment, fortunately, escaped the understanding of both Kitty and Georgiana -
so far as he could tell - but Elizabeth had immediately changed the subject.

Georgiana then, through no effort of her own, captured his attention.
Mr. Dashwood expressed delight at dining with two such beautiful ladies, and
enquired why no gentleman attended her this evening.

"I have no particular gentleman I cared to invite," Georgiana
said.

"I'm sure many gentlemen would care for your particulars."

"Mr. Dashwood!" Darcy's shock was so great, it almost rendered
him speechless. "I must have misheard what you just said to my sister."

Kitty looked bewildered by her fiance's audacity. Georgiana grew flustered
and ducked her head to avoid both Mr. Dash-wood's and Darcy's gazes.

"Pardon me, Miss Darcy," Mr. Dashwood said, his expression
anything but contrite. "I am afraid I forgot myself."

"I trust it will not happen again." Darcy let the matter drop
for now so as not to embarrass the ladies further. But he intended to have a
word with Mr. Dashwood in private later in the evening.

Once at the table, Mr. Dashwood entertained them with an anecdote
peppered with so much vulgar cant that the ladies could hardly follow it - for
which Darcy was grateful, because its subject was as inappropriate as the
language in which it was expressed. The more he talked, the quieter everyone
else grew.

When a servant approached to refill Harry's wineglass, Darcy discreetly
motioned him away. Elizabeth caught the gesture and met his eyes across the
table.

Is he drunk?
she mouthed.

Darcy nodded. Inebriation was the only explanation he could conjure for
Mr. Dashwood's extraordinary behavior. Either Harry did not hold his liquor
well, or he had consumed a great deal more of it before his arrival than Darcy
had originally suspected. Regardless, Darcy now intended to draw the evening to
an early close, but tactfully enough to spare Kitty the humiliation of seeing
her fiance bounced from the house. As soon as the ladies withdrew, he would
pour Harry into his carriage and send him home.

And call upon him bright and early tomorrow morning.

The meal, however, continued longer than Darcy anticipated. Somehow,
between all the slang words and mild oaths
to which Harry introduced his
stunned audience, he also managed to eat more than Darcy had ever before
witnessed him consume. Excessive drink evidently made Harry ravenous, as Darcy
had sometimes observed in others. Mr. Dash-wood partook of every dish, indulged
in second helpings of most, and polished off three lemon ices at the end of the
meal.

"You
seem very fond of ices, Mr. Dashwood," Elizabeth observed.

"Exceedingly
fond. A shame that they're so hard to keep in the summer, just when one wants
them most. At Wes - my country home, I have a first-rate icehouse that supplies
enough ice year-round to keep the cook's larder as cold as a witch's tit - "

Or as cold
as Elizabeth's frozen expression.

" - so
I can enjoy ices, or just about anything else, whenever I like. But this
townhouse I'm saddled with has the most inadequate larder. The ice melts so
fast that flavored ices won't keep at all." He broke off, suddenly
pondering an idea. "Say, I bet a larder built deeper into the ground -
well below the house - would hold the cold better. Ha! I'm going to make arrangements
tomorrow to have one dug immediately! Then I can enjoy ices at midnight, if I
wish."

Darcy had
long observed the ability of excess liquor to inspire new levels of genius in
its imbibers. Brilliant schemes seemed to proliferate in proportion to bottles
emptied. "I expect your landlord might object to your excavating his
house."

"Bah!
He should thank me. And if he complains too much, I'll just buy the house."

Darcy knew
full well that trying to reason with a drunk was a waste of breath. Yet he
could not help himself. "Is this not a rather expensive undertaking, simply
to satisfy impulsive cravings?"

"Perhaps,
Mr. Darcy," he said with a devilish grin, "if you satisfied your own
deeper desires occasionally, you wouldn't be so
stiff."
He chuckled. "As for me, I intend to buy many pleasures with my fortune."

Before Darcy could take issue with Mr. Dashwood's vulgarity, Elizabeth
rose to her feet. "Kitty, Georgiana - I think it's time to leave the
gentlemen and adjourn to the drawing room."

Past time. Long past time. As the ladies withdrew, Darcy regarded Mr.
Dashwood with disgust. He'd hoped to question Harry this evening about the
gathering at his townhouse, but Mr. Dashwood's present condition precluded an
intelligible interview. The interrogation would have to wait for a more sober
occasion. In the meantime, now that Darcy was at liberty to address Mr.
Dashwood man to man, he intended to subject Harry's performance to a scathing
review.

Mr. Dashwood slouched against his seat back and propped his legs on the
chair next to him. He picked up his empty wineglass. "Have you any port
about?"

"No."

"What? You're not all out?"

"I am out of a great many things at the moment, Mr. Dashwood. Patience
is chief among them."

He laughed. "This is where you upbraid me for my sins against decorum."

"Correct."

"A flea bite. But do go on, if it will make you feel better."
The younger man's cockiness provoked Darcy as much as anything had all evening.

"Mr. Dashwood," he said slowly, "you have insulted me
directly. You have insulted my wife by arriving at her home intoxicated and
conducting yourself in an appalling manner at her table. You have insulted your
fiancee and my sister with ungentlemanly allusions. Because you are drunk, and
out of a desire not to cause Miss Bennet any more upset than she has already
experienced tonight, I have made allowances for your manners beyond anything I
would tolerate from anybody else.

But I am done. I suggest you go home, sleep off your liquor, and endeavor
to devise some way of atoning for the enormous affront you have visited upon
this entire household tonight."

He rose and pushed in his chair. "Because, Mr. Dashwood, if this
utter disregard for propriety continues, I may advise Miss Bennet and her
father to rethink your engagement."

As far as Darcy was concerned, he was finished conversing with Harry for
the evening. He turned to go.

"Do what thou wilt."

Darcy jerked round, stunned by the utterance. He blinked at Mr. Dashwood.
"What did you say?"

Harry sprawled in his seat as if he hadn't a care in the world. He
rolled the stem of his empty glass between his fingers, watching the last few
drops of wine swirl in response. "Do what thou wilt."

Their gazes locked. Darcy read in Mr. Dash wood's eyes a hardness that
hadn't been there before. At least, not before the gathering in Pall Mall.
There was no mistaking him now, no need to give him any benefit of the doubt
concerning his recent activities because he himself had just removed all doubt.
Harry had indeed hosted a meeting of the old Hell-Fire Club. The only question
that remained was why.

"Did you learn that motto from your new friends? The ones who
called upon you the night before last?"

He laughed hollowly. "I would call them old friends."

"Yes, very old," Darcy agreed. "Old enough to have been
Sir Francis's cohorts - members of his Hell-Fire Club."

"You mean the Monks of Medmenham." A sardonic smile twisted
Mr. Dashwood's lips. "You surprise me, Mr. Darcy. I did not credit you
with such penetration. But what does an upstanding gentleman like you know
about the Friars of Saint Francis?"

"Enough to know that you flirt with danger if you seek to rekindle
those fires." Darcy leaned toward him, resting his hands on the table. "What
are you about, Mr. Dashwood? What
attraction could that immoral organization hold
for you, that you would jeopardize your reputation and honor to experiment with
it? Those men you welcomed into your home are honorless scoundrels."

"They are men who know how to live. Not stiff-rumped pansies afraid
of their own desires, who never act or speak but in deference to what might
cause offense to their equally prudish acquaintances. Cowards who let 'I dare
not' wait upon 'I would.'"

Such as himself? The insinuation was obvious.

Recognizing Dashwood's final words as an allusion to
Macbeth,
Darcy
responded in kind. "'I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do
more is none.'"

He was not about to sit in his dining room engaging in literary ripostes
with an intoxicated fool. But he also was not yet prepared to abandon his
attempt to redirect Harry's misguided steps - if not for Mr. Dashwood's sake,
for Kitty's. With effort, he reined in his growing anger.

"Mr. Dashwood - Harry - trust me. You do not understand what you
are getting yourself into by associating with - "

"Mr. Darcy, it is you who do not understand. You think yourself so
wise in the ways of the world. But I have done more and seen more than you ever
will; I have tried things you haven't the courage to imagine. I have not solicited
your advice, nor do I need it."

Darcy clenched his fists in frustration. The confidence of one-and-twenty!
Would that every young man entering his majority truly possessed the wisdom he
thought he did. Unfortunately, it was apparent that only hard experience could
teach Harry what he needed to learn. The best Darcy could hope for was to save
Kitty from the carriage wreck Mr. Dashwood seemed intent on making of his life.

"I thought you a better man than this, Mr. Dashwood. I thought you
a gentleman. But if you persist in clandestine
proceedings
and unpardonable public behavior, I shall have no choice but to dissuade Miss
Bennet from allying her future with yours."

"As I said, do what thou wilt." He set his wineglass on the
table upside down. Blood red droplets rolled down to stain the white linen. "I
intend to."

Fifteen

"His
character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than both."

-
Colonel
Brandon to Elinor,

Sense and Sensibility,
Chapter 21

Elizabeth
waited in the drawing room with Kitty and Geor-giana for the gentlemen to
rejoin them. She expected Darcy and Harry would be closeted either a very short
time or a very long time, depending on Mr. Dashwood's degree of inebriation. If
their guest was too drunk for questioning, she doubted Darcy would have much
else to say to him tonight.

"Lizzy, Mr. Dashwood seems so altered this evening. I feel as if I
hardly know him."

Kitty's words echoed Elizabeth's thoughts. She wanted to reassure her
sister, but hardly knew herself how to explain Harry's conduct. Drunkenness was
no excuse - he should not have so compromised himself in the first place, let
alone called upon his fiancee in such a state. But beyond that, the changes in
his manner seemed to exceed the effects of liquor. Elizabeth had not been
exposed to many men that far gone into their cups, but even so, she sensed
something different in Mr. Dashwood, a more fundamental alteration that had
taken hold before the alcohol and that would remain after his head ceased to
ache in the
morning. She'd perceived it earlier today at Grafton House, and could
not yet define it, but it was there.

To Kitty, she merely said, "I am sure his devotion to you is
constant. Rest easy in that." But the statement rang hollow in her ears,
echoing her own uneasiness.

Mr. Dashwood and Darcy soon entered. One look at Darcy revealed to her
that they had argued - she could read it in the tense line of his jaw. What an
unpleasant evening this was turning into all around.

"Miss Bennet, I'm afraid I must take my leave."

Mr. Dashwood's announcement disconcerted Kitty, who glanced uncertainly
from him to Darcy and back.

"So soon?"

"Unfortunately so." Harry raised Kitty's hand to his lips. He
then turned it over and kissed the inside of her wrist, lingering over it long
enough to make everyone in the room fidget.
"Bon-soir, ma
cherie."