Mr. Darcy's Daughters (12 page)

She apologised, thankfully pulling her attention back to the novel, and wondering what her cousin Fitzwilliam would think of that book. He and Fanny were another devoted couple, and perhaps it was the disparity in age, the awkwardness of a second marriage, that made him so inclined to lay down the law on subjects that her own father would never have worried about. She must buy another copy of
Frankenstein,
as soon as one was to be had, and send it to Constantinople.

“My mother will enjoy it greatly, I feel sure, and my father, too, for it is all about the Pandora’s box that is modern science, is it not? Papa takes a great interest in natural philosophy.”

When the gentlemen had left, Camilla and Alethea waited for the carriage to come and take them the short journey home, Mrs. Gardiner having made so much fuss about their walking as made it impossible to refuse her kind offer. Mrs. Gardiner had hurried out of the room to see to it, and to look for a pattern she had promised Fanny. In her absence, Sophie saw no reason to hold her tongue.

“So you have set up a flirt, cousin,” she said to Camilla.

Camilla said nothing; she had no intention of crossing swords with Sophie.

“They say Sir Sidney Leigh is dangling after you. Some people hold it was Letty he liked, but that now you are the object of his attentions. How do you like to have such a beau? He is quite old, but then—”

Her cousin’s pert look amused her; it so clearly implied how great was the difference between the bloom of seventeen and her own withered, spinster state at the age of not yet twenty.

“Letty must feel it, with all the unhappiness she had about Tom Busby, and now that all turns out to be a hum, and she is left on the shelf. Not to be married at one-and-twenty! It must upset her dreadfully every time she thinks about it.”

“Since Letty has too much sense to think any such thing, it does not distress her at all,” she said, wishing Mrs. Gardiner would come back into the room and put an end to Sophie’s ill-natured comments.

“Of course, there is no abbey in the case with Sir Sidney. He does not have an abbey. Only a country house, I believe, something quite modest. Do you know what his income is? Wytton has thirty thousand a year, and it could be more, Papa says, if he would but attend to his estates instead of gallivanting off abroad.”

Alethea had been listening to her cousin with undisguised contempt. “How vulgar you are become, Sophie,” she said. “All this talk of flirts and money. Have you nothing better to fill your mind? Perhaps a few hours every day reading and applying yourself to your music would do you good. How is your playing? Have you made much progress since last we heard you?”

Sophie flushed; she was no musician. “Oh, we know how very superior your performance is.”

“Thank you,” said Alethea, with exaggerated gratitude.

“It is wrong to tease Sophie so,” Camilla said when they were tucked up in the Gardiners’ carriage.

“How saucy and bold she has become; you didn’t tell me what she was like. Goodness, though, the way that Mr. Wytton looks at her as though at any minute he would gobble her up! She won’t be able to play off her tricks with him once they’re married, you may be sure. She’s like a gazelle who has caught hold of a tiger’s tail and thinks it’s a toy.”

“Do you see Sophie as a gazelle?” said Camilla, rather startled by her younger sister’s perception.

“Well”—considering—“to look at, yes.”

“And Mr. Wytton a tiger?”

“Just like a caged beast,” said Alethea with a peal of laughter. “Like a caricature of some animal dressed up in coat and stock.”

“Like an animal? Oh, no, Sophie, he seems to me to be a very civilised man.”

“He is, do not mistake me, but the rooms and minds of London society are too constricting for him. I expect he is more at ease among his male companions, people of his own kind. Sophie will see little of him when they are married. She will not mind. She marries him for his abbey and his thirty thousand a year, not for the virtues of his intellect and character.”

“Alethea!”

“Don’t be priggish, Camilla, it don’t suit you. You know I’m right.”

The next Sunday, the girls went to divine service in different places. Fanny was privately relieved; the five striking-looking girls had on previous Sundays attracted a good deal of attention at the Belgrave Chapel, where she and her husband worshipped on most Sundays. Fitzwilliam had not liked it, and it had quite destroyed the peaceful pleasure she usually took in going to church, listening to a sensible sermon, meeting friends and walking home afterwards on her husband’s arm.

Belle and Georgina at first said they would not go to church at all. It was a bright, windy day. “It is exceedingly tiresome, this breeze does make the feathers in my hat blow about so,” Belle complained.

“And it whips up such colour in one’s cheeks, I look like a milkmaid wandered in from the fields,” said Georgina.

“We can read over the service at home,” Belle offered.

Mr. Fitzwilliam, however, would have none of it. He was strict in such matters, and to church they must go.

Alethea had expressed a desire to go to St. Paul’s. She wished to hear the choir. She looked daggers at Fanny when it was suggested that the twins should go with her, but they declined; nobody of fashion went to St. Paul’s, they said; only dowdy, dreary people would attend the service there.

“I shall be dowdy and dreary, then,” said Camilla. “I intend to go with Alethea; she should not go there on her own.”

Letitia didn’t want to go to St. Paul’s, either. Instead, to everyone’s surprise, she announced her intention of going to St. Botolph’s. Captain Allington had told them of a fine preacher there, did they not remember him talking of it?

Camilla remembered the conversation perfectly well. Captain Allington had remarked that he sometimes accompanied his aunt Roland to church—“Expectations, you know; I have hopes in that direction. My aunt is rich and has no children.”

How odd that Letitia should want to go, for the captain had described the preacher as the type of clergyman who shook your conscience about and warned that you were teetering on the brink of damnation. “He’s devilish hot against Sunday travel and all that kind of thing, too,” he had said. “He preaches the sort of sermon that makes you glad when it’s all over.” Camilla could sympathise with that; she all too often felt glad when a sermon was over, but not necessarily because she had smelt fire and brimstone coming from the pulpit. Letty must be in an unusually bleak frame of mind to choose such a service—which was surprising, because she had recently seemed in better spirits.

That left Belle and Georgina quarrelling over where to take themselves. They finally decided on the Chapel Royal. Mr. Fitzwilliam didn’t like that idea at all, but was reassured by Miss Griffin’s promising to go with them and make sure they behaved properly in such a fashionable and august congregation—for one or two of the royal family often attended service there.

Camilla had not been to St. Paul’s before, and she was overwhelmed by the immensity of the nave and dome. They had arrived early, so as to be able to view the building, and she wandered about, happy to find the memorial to John Donne, whose sermons she was very familiar with and whose poetry, both sacred and profane, she greatly admired—preferring it indeed to that of the nature poets so admired by most of her contemporaries. Then they were approached by a black-robed verger, who informed them they would have time to visit the crypt and see Nelson’s tomb before they needed to take their places for divine service. So they descended into the crypt under his guidance, and she stood, much moved, by the newly finished tomb of the great hero, while Alethea, who cared nothing for battles and naval officers of whatever distinction, prowled about among the dusty relics.

Camilla enjoyed the singing at St. Paul’s, although her sister was more critical. Alethea sang the hymns with unself-conscious enjoyment, turning heads up and down the line as her voice rang out. As they filed out after the service, a man in a clerical collar came up to Camilla and complimented her on her sister’s singing. “Forgive me intruding upon you; you are surprised to be accosted by a stranger, but I have the pleasure of being acquainted with Miss Darcy, and I noticed you at Almacks, although we were not introduced. She spoke of a younger sister with a fine voice, and so I thought, this must be that sister.”

She was somewhat surprised to be addressed by a man she did not recognise—did Letty know any clergymen in London? Then she had it: This was the man her sister had danced with at Almacks, the friend of Lord Rampton. She searched in her mind for his name; surely Letty must have mentioned it. “Mr. Barcombe, is it not?”

He bowed. “At your service. May I present you to my sister, Mrs. Seton? Louisa, this is Miss Camilla Darcy.”

The woman beside him smiled and held out her hand. She was very like him, not tall, but with elegant features and a sense of style about her.

“This is my youngest sister, Alethea,” she said.

Alethea gazed disapprovingly at Mr. Barcombe’s clerical garb; she was apt to be suspicious of clergymen. The little group stood to one side to let some other worshippers pass, and then moved into the space under the dome.

“You have two other younger sisters,” said Mr. Barcombe, a trifle awkwardly. “I met them, I believe, in the park. Twins, are they not, but not so very alike? One dark and one fair.”

Alethea favoured him with one of her perceptive glances. “Belle is the fair one and Georgina is dark. They have the same colour eyes, otherwise they aren’t much alike. Except they’re both very silly,” she added under her breath.

Camilla gave her a warning look, but Mrs. Seton had overheard the remark and seemed amused by it. “How charmingly you sing,” she said to Alethea. The two of them walked on ahead, talking music as they went.

“My sister is a keen musician,” said Mr. Barcombe. “She holds musical soirees in her house in Park Street. I am sure she would be delighted if you and your sisters—I am sure all your sisters are musical.”

She liked him, for all that he seemed to have been bowled over by the twins; she wondered which of the two had captivated him. “Georgina and Belle play the pianoforte and harp together,” she said, helping him out.

“The harp? How enchanting. Then I feel sure—and perhaps Miss Alethea?”

“Alethea is still in the schoolroom, so although she loves to listen to music, she cannot go out to parties.”

“Oh, but a private party is different; she may attend a private party. My eldest sister’s children are often there, a girl of fifteen and a boy of sixteen, when he is home from Harrow, that is. They are both musical.”

She smiled and said what was proper, deciding it was better not to go into the question of whether the twins should go to such parties, never mind Alethea, and they made their way out through the great doors and down the steps to where the carriages were waiting.

“May I do myself the honour of waiting upon you and your sisters?” Mr. Barcombe enquired, as he handed them into their carriage. “If Mrs. Fitzwilliam has no objection.”

“He’s nutty on Belle,” said Alethea confidently, as the carriage started forward. “What larks, only he seems quite nice. Belle will chew him up and spit him out, just like she does everyone.”

“Alethea!”

“Don’t ‘Alethea’ me. I don’t know what’s come over you since we arrived in London; you’ve gone all prosy.”

“Have I? Oh, dear, I do not mean to be.”

“I thought if I mentioned it, you might do something about it,” said Alethea in a kindly way. “Letty’s quite enough, without you going on at one as well.”

Letitia had been delighted by her hellfire sermon, and was wanting to tell them all about it when she returned to Aubrey Square. The Reverend Valpy, she said, was an excellent preacher. And Captain Allington had been there, waiting upon his aunt. “Who,” she said, with a spurt of humour, “appeared to be wearing a dead pheasant in her hat!”

Fanny laughed at this, saying that feathers were fashionable, which they knew, but that too many could give a very odd appearance, as she had warned them.

Belle and Georgina were full of the excitements of their visit to the Chapel Royal. They had seen a saturnine royal duke, and as for feathers, the hats that the Miss Berrys were wearing made them stare. “Not only feathers, but fruit. Imagine!”

“Now, my loves, you must not say a word against the Miss Berrys,” said Fanny. “Their salon is the very smartest place to go, they have entertained everyone who is anyone this past age, and it does not do to get on the wrong side of them.”

“Oh, stuffy people, I dare say,” said Belle. “Only listen, after the service, this woman in a ravishing green silk dress and a velvet pelisse came up to us and said she was our aunt. Our aunt Lydia, who had not seen us since we were in the nursery! Now, what do you think of that? Are you not amazed? For I am sure I do not remember her at all, nor Papa and Mama ever speaking of her.”

No, thought Camilla, for although her mother retained an affection for her younger sister, her father had little time for her. She had an idea that Papa had much disliked her aunt’s husband, Mr. Wickham; that there had been some major disagreement between them, which lingered even after the unfortunate man had been killed in Spain.

Georgina took up the story. “She is not at all plump, not in the least bit like Aunt Kitty; she is very slender and lively. She had a vastly smart bonnet on, and was with a dark man, quite short, a good deal older. He is her husband, for he said he was our uncle, which of course he must be if he is married to her. He was very struck with Belle, looked her up and down in that just-so way men have, and bowed over her hand. Aunt Lydia laughed at him and said she would have to watch him with such pretty nieces about. Then she asked if we were all come to town. She did not know of Papa’s going abroad; however, she didn’t seem to mind his not being with us.”

“I have her card,” said Belle, producing it with a flourish. “She wants us to call, and indeed, may we, Cousin Fanny? For she is our aunt, and she promises to take us to all kinds of exciting places.”

Fanny exchanged anguished glances with her husband, who frowned, said it would be proper for all the girls to pay a morning call on their aunt, under the chaperonage of Fanny, but that no further acquaintance than that would be necessary or indeed suitable.

Letitia and Camilla, seeing Belle and Georgina about to embark on arguments, pleadings, protestations and all the other weapons of persuasion in their considerable armoury, quickly turned the conversation into other channels, speaking of sermons, music, the people attending the services and the clothes they had seen, and quelling their sisters with fierce and uncompromising looks every time they threatened to open their mouths.

Alethea, who could no longer contain herself and was overcome by laughter, was escorted from the room by Miss Griffin, and she went uncomplainingly, promising to play to her governess all the music she had heard that morning, and asking in a loud voice if she did not agree that the twins were the most odious girls in the world.

That night, Fitzwilliam came early to his wife’s chamber, his lips prim and his brow furrowed. “I do not like this connection at all, my love,” he told her, sitting himself down before her fire and stretching out his hands to the flames. “That was an unfortunate meeting of the twins with Lydia Pollexfen. They were bound to meet sooner or later, but even so, I cannot be altogether happy about the acquaintance. Francis Pollexfen is all very well, and an intimate of the Prince of Wales; he moves in the highest court circles, to be sure, but he is a roué, a man of very doubtful reputation. And does not his wife gamble, and keep company with Lady Aldernay and her set? I shudder to think what Darcy would have to say if he were to discover his daughters mixing with such people as these.”

Fanny was applying cream to her soft cheeks. “You are quite right. It would be a most unsuitable set for the girls to get into. I have no worries about Letty and Camilla. I believe they know something of their aunt Lydia’s history, and they will take care not to be drawn into her circle. But the twins! They are so young, they are attracted by everything that is lively and fun, and who can blame them? Do not worry, I shall take good care of them, and they will only attend such parties and outings as I say they may. They will obey me, you know, for if they do not, they will find themselves back in the schoolroom.”

“I had no idea it would cause so many difficulties to have the girls to stay,” grumbled her husband, taking off his robe and climbing into bed beside her. “I am sure I hope our little girls will not grow up to be so hard at hand.”

“Darcy’s daughters are not hard at hand, they are the best-natured girls in all the world, I do assure you. Young ladies are like that at this age; you will find ours just the same.”

He blew out the candle and slid closer to Fanny. “My dear, I hope not.”

Camilla, in her solitary bed, had not extinguished her candle, but was reading the forbidden volume of Boccaccio. Then her eyes grew tired, and she put the book down on the table beside the bed. She lay there, her mind soothed by the candlelight and the flames from the fire, which sent shadows dancing around the room. The coal hissed and crackled as it burned, and the window-panes rattled behind the shutters in what had turned from a breeze into a strong wind, an equinoctial gale. Did they have the equinoctial winds in Constantinople? Would Mama and Papa be lying in some richly adorned chamber, with strangely fashioned windows, and the wind howling outside, perhaps in some extreme Oriental fashion?

Letty would be fretting over the wind, as she always did. She had gone to bed, shaking her head, full of doubt that they would all come safely through the night. Window-panes could shatter, tiles be torn off, letting in rain, bringing ceilings down from the force of water. And outside! Chimney pots might come tumbling down into the street, to the peril of those walking below. True, there was not the danger from falling trees and flying branches that was to be expected in the country, but then shop signs in town swung about so violently, and had been known to come hurtling off their fastenings, positively decapitating any unfortunate who stood in their way.