Mr. Darcy's Daughters (5 page)

“Other people will allow that she has reason for being so upset,” Camilla said, although she knew quite well that Fanny, with her worldly sense, was in the right of it.

“Most will find it a source of amusement at the very least, and I can assure you there will be no end of spiteful gossip on the subject. Lord, how am I going to get you vouchers for Almacks with accounts of this affair flying about the town?”

“Oh, never mind Almacks,” Camilla said snappishly. “Heavens, what does that matter?”

“It matters a great deal; this is London, and reputation is all.”

The lamplighter was making his steady way down St. James’s, setting each gas lamp into glowing life against the gathering dusk. Gentlemen walked in to spend a while at their clubs before embarking on the evening round of social and amorous engagements.

Snipe Woodhead came briskly up the steps of Pink’s club, a spruce man, who greeted friends and bowed to acquaintances, eager for news.

Sitting deep in a leather chair in the corner of the lobby, Wytton was hidden behind the sheets of his newspaper, listening, rather than reading. Snipe’s gossip was likely to be a great deal more interesting than an account of a woman taken up for highway robbery, and Wytton idly wondered what the fellow might have to talk about today. There were no great scandals running at this time, no rumours of crim. cons between this duke and that countess, no runs on the bank or alarms at the stock exchange, no riots near country seats to cause members to shake their heads and look solemn.

So the story of Tom Busby’s miraculous reappearance in the land of the living caused a considerable stir among the members.

Had he ever met Busby? Wytton thought not, but surely there was some connection there with Sophie’s cousins, those Darcy girls.

Members seized eagerly on the news.

“Busby? Tom Busby? Is he a member?”

“There’s a Sir Robert Busby belongs to Brooks. A country member, one of your squires.”

“Sir Robert is this man’s father. A Derbyshire family; Busby Hall is somewhere in Derbyshire, I believe.” Snipe Woodhead had all the old families at his fingertips. “A respectable enough estate, of three or four thousand a year. Only the one son, killed at Waterloo.”

“That’s the very point, Snipe,” cried a stocky young man with a cheerful, round face and startled eyebrows. “He wasn’t killed, after all. Young Roper saw him in Brussels, large as life. And married, married to some foreigner’s daughter!”

Trust Rampton to have heard the tale.

A thin man, a member Wytton knew only by sight, gave a crack of laughter. “That is what they are saying, Rampton, and it won’t please his father, you may be sure of it. But wasn’t he betrothed? I am sure I saw the announcement in the
Gazette
at the time. To a Darcy, one of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s girls; an excellent match for Busby, that would have been, those girls have forty or fifty thousand pounds apiece!”

So there was a connection; his memory hadn’t played him false.

There was a moment’s silence as those present contemplated the annual sum such a fortune would bring if invested in the five percents.

“Whatever you may say, I shouldn’t care to have Darcy for a father-in-law,” said Snipe Woodhead. “He’s a tremendous stickler; my word, one would have to mind one’s P’s and Q’s, no cosy armfuls on the side, you may be sure.”

An older member was quick to contradict him. “Indeed, he can be very haughty, but I remember when he was first in town, just down from Cambridge, he was not averse to a trifle of riot and rumpus.”

“That was when he was young and single,” said a new voice.

Wytton rustled the pages to allow himself a clearer view. Not that he needed to be discreet, no one was paying him the least attention. Yes, he thought he recognised that voice. It was Aloysius Harvey; when had he got back to England?

“A single man of one-and-twenty is a very different fellow from a married man with daughters; it is amazing what daughters can do to a man’s sense of morality.”

A typical Harvey observation, with three troublesome daughters of his own.

A short, dark military member—Colonel Pusey, wasn’t it?—had been listening attentively to this conversation. “How many daughters does Darcy have?”

“Four or five,” said Harvey. “All grown up, I believe; he has boys as well, but they are younger. The Miss Darcys are all in London even now; they stay with Fitzwilliam’s family while their father and mother are abroad. Constantinople, you know.”

“Are they pretty?” Pusey enquired.

“I’m not acquainted with them. You may ask Wytton if he comes in this evening; he is engaged to a cousin of theirs.”

“What, is his heiress a Darcy? Surely not, I thought she was a merchant’s daughter.”

His heiress, indeed! Wytton was stung. Merchant’s daughter? He found he didn’t relish having Sophie described in quite that way. They saw her as an object, a
res.
He saw her as all person, alive and so very charming. Charming in a way that so many women were not. Give him an enchanting face and a slender body and an innocent coquetry any day. You could keep your bewitching dazzler with the face of an angel and the soul of a harlot; he was done with fascinating women.

“I never thought Wytton would escape the clutches of Mrs. B.”

“Did he escape, or did she?” said Harvey. “I heard she found solace in George Warren’s arms. She has a pretty foot.”

This raised a laugh, and Wytton shifted in his chair. Curse Harvey for his damnable gossiping remarks.

“Wytton marries Miss Sophie Gardiner,” Snipe said. “The Gardiners are relations of Mrs. Darcy.”

“Forty or fifty thousand, you say? And is the eldest wearing the willow for young Busby, do you suppose, Harvey?”

Harvey laughed. “That won’t wash now he’s back from the dead.”

“I dare say Lady Fanny will take them about in society,” said Lord Rampton, a hopeful note in his voice.

Trust Rampton, a notorious gambler, to show an interest. He was a man well known to his friends to be on the lookout for a likely heiress.

“I believe Grandville dines with the Fitzwilliams today,” said Snipe Woodhead. “We can ask him about the young ladies if he is in the club tomorrow.”

“He’ll be no use,” said Rampton. “Tight as a button, that man, comes of all those years in the army. You will get nothing from him. I think I shall call on Lady F.; a morning call would be quite in order. Then I can get a glimpse of the young ladies. Four or five of them, you say? It’s too much to hope that they are beauties, but with portions like that, it don’t much matter.”

“My sister saw them in Hookham’s library,” said Harvey. “Miss Darcy is uncommon fine-looking, she said. The next sister is nothing to her, though perfectly amiable in appearance.”

Harvey’s sister was an ethereal blonde, Wytton recalled; no, she wouldn’t have a word of praise for a fair woman. Not that the second Darcy sister was so very fair. Her looks had made no great impression on him, she was quite outshone by his Sophie, but she did have much the same colouring. Of course, Sophie’s eyes were a softer grey and full of warmth; they held none of the unfeminine mirth that he had noticed in her cousin’s expressive eyes.

Unaware of the interest in her and her sisters, Camilla was endeavouring to bring Letty to see reason.

“You are a stranger to the tenderer emotions,” Letty said into her damp handkerchief. “You do not know what it is to love, or to be betrayed.”

Camilla’s patience was at snapping point. “For heaven’s sake, Letty, you haven’t set eyes on Tom for three years. It is not as though he jilted you yesterday—or indeed, jilted you at all, in any real sense,” she added hastily, seeing her sister’s lip begin to tremble again.

Fanny came rustling into the room. “My dear Letty, let us be done with this. It is all very affecting, and distressing, too, but he is no more lost to you than he already was. Now, Sackree will be here directly to dress you and do your hair; you must change, you know, and make yourself ready for company.”

Letitia would have none of it. She wanted to spend the evening sighing and sobbing and giving way to her feelings; she didn’t care what the world would say of her, she minded none of them, she had no intention of staying in London but would return—with her sisters—to Pemberley as soon as ever it could be arranged, where she would be away from curious eyes and could indulge her sorrow to her heart’s content.

“You may run away to the country if you wish, but I shan’t accompany you,” Camilla said roundly. “And nothing short of main force would remove Georgina and Belle from town, no, nor Alethea, either.” Her sympathy for the shock Letty had suffered had given way to irritation, and some degree of alarm. Fanny’s worldly words had had no influence on Letty, yet somehow her sister must be brought to pull herself together and show, if not a happy countenance, at least a calm one.

She and Fanny exchanged despairing looks over Letty’s bowed head. She shrugged, then sank down beside her sister. “Listen to me, Letty. If you do not come down to dinner, it will be remarked upon, I assure you it will, the tale will be all round London; people will be agog to know how you have taken the news, you may count upon it.”

“Then they should have something better to think about. They do not know me, why should I care for the opinion or gossip of a parcel of strangers? Fanny may say I am indisposed, that I have the headache.”

“Exactly what they wish to hear,” cried Fanny. “Nothing could be more calculated to set people talking. No, no, you must come down and dine, and do the civil. If but a hint of your distress gets out, a whisper of how
desolée
you are made by this news, why, you will never live it down; society will judge you harshly, and you will feel the effects of it, indeed you will.”

Camilla saw that her sister, determined to abjure society, was unmoved. “How they will laugh at you! Imagine how cross Papa will be when the news reaches him that his daughter is the laughing-stock of London.”

Letty bounced up from her chair, her wet handkerchief abandoned, her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving. “Laugh! Laugh at me? They shall not do so.”

Fanny was quick to take her cue. She shook her head sadly. “Camilla is right, indeed she is. I should not care to be the butt of such ridicule myself; although I am the most easygoing of creatures, that, I admit, would upset me greatly. To be considered a joke—It is not to be thought of.”

Thank goodness, their words were finally reaching the mark. Laughter, ridicule, a joke? Letty took herself far too seriously to be able to dismiss the possibility of being an object of derision—a possibility that had never occurred to her, lost as she was in the image of herself as a wronged figure of enduring love.

Letty collapsed with some grace on to the nearest sofa. “Send Sackree to me,” she said in weak tones. “I shall try to endure this ordeal, although God knows, it will be hard.”

Camilla took Letty’s hand. “Fanny will be so grateful to you,” she whispered into her ear. “Only think how she would blame herself if you were to become the talk of the town, and how bad you would feel for ruining the first party she has given for us. Papa would not be pleased at all, you know.”

With these final words, she led Fanny quickly from the room.

“Do you think we should stay with her?” Fanny asked.

“No, for she would feel obliged to keep her face as long as can be; she needs to compose herself into some semblance of normality.”

And, she might have added, if sisterly loyalty hadn’t prevented her, that Letty needed to work herself into the new role of distress valiantly hidden for the sake of others.

Fanny’s dinners were usually successful, thanks to an excellent cook and her talent for choosing guests who were well matched. Tonight’s was not one that she would recall with any satisfaction.

She had worried about Letitia all through her own toilette. Would she break down? Would she disgrace herself and her sisters through a display of emotion in front of others? Would she play her proper role?

Camilla had wondered this, too, but Miss Griffin, summoned to help her dress since Sackree was attending to her sister, had no doubts. Letty knew very well what was expected of her, and the difference between private and public behaviour. She had, after all, been bred up from childhood to company manners, had all the Darcy self-control within her powers; in the end, the governess declared, pride would carry her through.

“And it is her pride rather than her heart that has been most affected, I may tell you,” said Miss Griffin, as she fastened the tiny hooks at the back of Camilla’s bodice. “For all her tears and protestations of undying love.”

“Do you not believe in undying love, Griffy?”

“Not outside the pages of a novel. Now hold still, or you will never be ready in time.”

“Will Alethea come downstairs to sing?”

“She says she would rather not.”

“It would annoy Letty if she were to join the company, even at Fanny’s invitation.”

Miss Griffin thought about this as she set a jewel in Camilla’s hair. “Better angry than sad, is that it? I shall just mention that to Alethea. Only there’s no persuading her to do what she does not want to, as you very well know. Not when it comes to music.”

At first, it seemed that all would go well. Letitia came down looking even more beautiful than usual, her eyes lustrous from all the tears, but without a trace of the puffiness or redness about her eyelids that might have been expected. She held herself straight with her head high; she was grave, but not sullen; she even smiled at a sally from Sir Sidney Leigh, who stood talking to her before dinner was served, and she went through the round of introductions with composure and ease.

Which allowed Camilla to relax and survey the assembled company. Her heart had lifted when Sir Sidney came in. He was just as good-looking as she had remembered, his excellent figure set off by the well-cut black coat he was wearing. He looked to be in a good mood, saying something to Fitzwilliam that made his host laugh and brought a smile and most flirtatious look from Fanny in response.

Well, so Fanny found Sir Sidney attractive; what was surprising about that? Or about Sir Sidney leaning down towards his hostess with an amused expression in his eyes and making what must be some outrageous remark, to judge by her sudden laughter?

Camilla’s slight feeling of chagrin vanished as Pagoda Portal surged into the room, his twinkling, amorous eyes resting with evident enthusiasm on Letty’s bosom and then fastening themselves with a connoisseur’s approval on the twins. Belle and Georgina sat beside one another on a small sofa, all smiles and inviting glances; even Mr. Fitzwilliam had a softened look on his rather stern countenance as his gaze fell on his young cousins on their sofa.