The True Darcy Spirit (32 page)

“You need to marry a young lady of intelligence and character, and of good family, well brought up, naturally. Her fortune need not be large, a man always wants to put more into a marriage than his wife brings, it makes for a much more equal relationship. Find her, and bring her to me, and then I shall settle the deeds of Caldwell House upon you.”

While Horatio Darcy’s agent was sailing back across the Atlantic, bearing the news that, wherever the letters were, he was certain that they were not in the possession of Mrs. Harriet Morris, Lady Usborne, back in London for the autumn round, had been pursuing her own enquiries.

Her informer, Usborne’s groom, hadn’t said anything to Lady Usborne about the interrogation by Ratchet as to the whereabouts of some missing letters, for the simple reason that she had not asked him. He reported to her on his lordship’s movements and that was all, nothing had ever been mentioned about letters, which were, as he’d pointed out to Ratchet, nothing to do with anyone who worked in the stables; if he was going to come round pestering servants with a pack of fool questions, then he was looking in the wrong direction. He, Peters, had never set foot in his lordship’s study, nor didn’t ever expect to. For why? Because he was an outdoor servant, that was why. Ratchet could take himself and his long nose elsewhere, let him go snooping round the maids and let him get on with his work.

And it was one of these maids, who had thought nothing of it at the time, who happened to ask Lady Usborne, as she reverently put away a gown new come from the dressmakers, if those letters his lordship had mislaid had ever turned up. “For that Ratchet was asking ever so many questions about them, a while back.”

Letters to Lady Usborne meant love letters, and for her husband to keep letters bound in a ribbon in his study boded ill; it sounded much more serious than any of his dealings with the demi-mondes. Further discreet enquiries convinced her that the slut Harriet Foxley had been the most likely person to have removed them. Had she written them? No, why should she? She wasn’t in love with Lord Usborne, and any missives penned to him by his pretty pigeons, as she scornfully called them, would, she felt sure, have been swiftly consigned to the flames of his study fire.

So why had she taken them? To have a hold over him? To blackmail him? To sell them to some weasel hack who dealt in passing scandalous items to the newspapers?

Yet, as far as she knew, none of these things had happened. Lord Usborne’s frowns were to do with Prinny, she was sure, and she was quite right about that, even though she wasn’t to know that the prince was pressing Usborne to know when he might have sight of the letters, which in the royal mind were going to solve all his problems regarding his divorce and remarriage.

She rang for her maid, and gave instructions for Peters to bring her carriage round immediately. Then, well away from listening ears, she told him what she wanted him to do. First, he was to find out where this Harriet went to when she had left his lordship.

“No trouble about that, my lady, for I know where she went.”

“Do you? Then you are to go there directly, and see if you can find out where she is, and if by any chance any of the servants there, if there are servants, I know nothing about that part of town—it is in town, I suppose—have seen or heard of a packet of letters. A maid waiting upon her might have noticed them.”

“It’s quite a respectable area, my lady, although not one you’d ever venture near. There’ll be servants kept, right enough.”

And her enquiries, which cost her a guinea as compared to the considerable sums laid out by Horatio Darcy on his lordship’s behalf, were far more successful than those carried out by Mr. Darcy. Peters, whose pleasant ways served him well, came back with the news that
Harriet Foxley had left that address several weeks before, to sail to America.

Good riddance, Lady Usborne said to herself. Would that all her husband’s fancies might take themselves off to America.

And that, before leaving, Harriet had instructed the boy who ran errands for everyone in that street to take a little casket to an address in Covent Garden, where it was to be placed in the hands of one Mrs. Kent, or, failing that, her maid, Petifer.

“Petifer,” Lady Usborne repeated. “Very well, Peters, I leave it to you to find out if they are still at that address, or, if not, try to obtain their present address.”

Cassandra had, through Henry Lisser’s good efforts, received a commission to paint an attractive young opera singer.

“She has not yet made her name, but she has an exquisite voice, and an equally lovely face, and will, I am sure, go far in her profession. You are just the person to paint her portrait; I know that you will capture her to perfection. Then we shall arrange to have an engraving made, for she is to play Polly in a revival of
The Beggar’s Opera,
and I predict she will be the rage of London this autumn, people will flock to buy the engravings.”

Cassandra was always taken aback by how practical a man Henry Lisser was; not in the least the airy-fairy, head-in-the-clouds artist of popular imagining, but an astute man of business as well as a very fine painter.

“We have to have the money to do the work we want to do, as well as to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table,” he told her. “Fat commissions are good, but not always easy to come by, and each new painting takes its time. So we need to find every way possible to earn extra income from our work, and engravings should be the stock-in-trade of every artist whose work lends itself to the medium.”

Miss Kennedy was delighted with her portrait, and sent round the offer of a box for a performance of
Dido and Aeneas,
in which she was singing.

“Will you accompany me?” Cassandra asked Henry Lisser, who was, she knew, fond of music. “And perhaps the Hopkirks would like to make up our number.”

“I have to write a note to John Hopkirk,” said Lisser. “Shall I add a message about the opera?”

He sat down at his desk, a rolltop one with pigeonholes containing neatly stacked letters, and drew out a sheet of notepaper. As he reached for a pen, his sleeve dislodged a letter that had been tucked beneath the blotter. He quickly pushed it back again, but not before Cassandra had caught sight of the handwriting, and had recognised it.

Belle writing to Henry Lisser! She went cold at the thought. How could Belle be so rash, and how had Henry Lisser, who must know that correspondence between any single man and young lady was out of the question unless there were an engagement, allowed himself to be drawn into anything so unwise?

Upon his return from Dorset, one of Horatio’s first acts was to pay a call on his cousin Camilla to deliver some seeds that Mrs. Shawardine had promised her, and to carry greetings and general goodwill to Camilla, who was her goddaughter.

“No sign of her breeding yet, I suppose?” had been Mrs. Shawardine’s parting words to Horatio.

“As to that, ma’am, I would hardly know.”

“In the end, it is a thing no one can hide, as many a young lady has found to her cost. However, I am in regular correspondence with her father and mother, and they would have told me if it were the case.” She paused. “I like Camilla, she has a head on her shoulders. She married an all-over-the-place man, now here, now there, now in Greece, now in Egypt, but I dare say he will settle down now he is married.”

Horatio Darcy doubted it, but he thought it wiser not to say so, and took his leave with real affection that hid the turmoil in his heart.

Cassandra had all Camilla’s brains and more than her beauty, and
she was undoubtedly a young lady of character, and from as good a family as his or Mrs. Shawardine’s.

But her reputation! If Mrs. Shawardine had not already heard of it, and she had not mentioned Cassandra’s family except in a glancing reference to “poor Thaddeus, why ever he married Anne de Bourgh, I shall never understand”; she seemed not to have much interest in that branch of the family or in Cassandra.

Yet her running away with Eyre must be generally known, at least within the family, and it would undoubtedly come to Mrs. Shawardine’s ears, sooner or later. A young woman who ran off with a man, especially a young lady who had let down the sacred name of Darcy, would not meet Mrs. Shawardine’s exacting standards for a bride.

In fact, were there to be any chance that Cassandra might return his affections, of which he was not at all sure, then marriage to her would mean an end to the hopes that had been raised during his visit to Dorset; farewell neat estate, farewell the seat in the House, farewell a most promising fillip to his career.

Worse, Cassandra might become aware of it; if she had the least hint that he had made a sacrifice in order to…But his thoughts were running away with themselves. Was he such an arrogant man as to assume Cassandra would welcome his suit, that she would now or at any time wish to marry him? It was true that she had treated him with a great kindness in their most recent meetings, and there had been friendliness in her attitude on those drives, but what did this mean? Perhaps just that she felt more secure, had reconciled herself to a life outside the Rosings pale, and, once she knew he was acting in a personal capacity and not as a lawyer, the mistrust she had felt about him had been put aside.

Mrs. Wytton was at home.

Horatio Darcy was shown upstairs to the light-filled sitting room, its pale walls offset by the rich Turkey carpets on the floor.

“A notion I picked up from Henrietta Rowan,” she said. “Have you visited her apartments? My parents, who have spent some time in Constantinople, assure me that she has caught the oriental style to
perfection, while suiting it to the English climate and way of life. You have been down in Dorset, I hear, tell me how you got on.”

Horatio was reticent at first, until it became clear that Camilla had had a letter from her godmother and knew all about Mrs. Shawardine’s plans for him. “Everyone is so pleased, it is a great chance for you to advance yourself.”

“I am most grateful to her, it was entirely unexpected.”

“It wasn’t unexpected, however, that Frederick would make the country too hot for himself, and have to go abroad on a repairing lease. Not that there is much hope of repair, one gathers. So, with this excellent news from Mrs. Shawardine, as regards your prospects, if not Frederick’s, why do you look so long in the mouth?”

She rang the bell, and ordered coffee. “I know what it is,” she continued. “It is the matter of the wife. Mrs. Shawardine wishes you to marry well; she is a hearty advocate of marriage for everyone. She is always telling me that the sooner Belle is married, the better. You would not like to marry Belle, would you?”

Horatio looked at her in some alarm, and then saw that she was joking.

“I fear,” said Camilla, “that my sister is in some kind of a scrape, which in her case nearly always has to do with romantic feelings for a man, and generally one who is too old or too young, or too poor, or too something. I simply hope that it is not a question of a man who is too married.”

Horatio was thoroughly taken aback, and his cousin laughed at him. “You are not a realist, I find. You do not like to call a spade a spade.”

“But your own sister, you can hardly…”

“You have no sisters, Mr. Darcy,” said Camilla, as though this clinched the argument. “No, Belle would not do at all for you. Perhaps you wish to remain a bachelor, enjoying the delights of the single life.”

If she wanted to be blunt, then he would be, too.

“If you refer to Lady Usborne, I have not seen her since her return to London, nor shall I.”

“A tiff?”

Really, Camilla was impossible.

“No, I shall not tease you, for you are being very frank, which I like. So you have a young lady in your eye, and you fear that she will not meet with Mrs. Shawardine’s favour?”

Camilla was a great deal too sharp, how did Wytton keep up with her? How could he broach the subject?

Camilla was eyeing him thoughtfully.

“The young lady who has captured your heart, for I see that there is such an one, it would not by any chance be Cassandra, would it?”

He almost jumped out of his seat. Damn it, how had she known?

“Oh, I saw it coming. You were so cross with her, and then so angry about the Lord Usborne business, out of all reason angry. There had to be more to it than the good name of the family and all that kind of thing. So, have you told her?”

“Told her what?”

“That you are in love with her?”

This was a preposterous conversation. It had its humorous side, but he was wishing that he had not come.

“I have no idea of what Cassandra’s sentiments are, towards me or anyone else. I have no reason to suppose…”

“Are you afraid that she is still in love with James Eyre? It seems a callous heart that will not grieve for a lost love, but I believe it was as much wild infatuation, and a desire to escape from some very unpleasant circumstances, that had as much to do with it as any great depth of attachment. There was another man, in the background, was there not?”

“The painter, Henry Lisser,” said Horatio grimly.

Camilla seemed surprised. “I did not know about that. What I heard was that Mr. Partington and his sister had plans to marry her off to a local squire, for whom it was clear that Cassandra would be very unlikely to have any feelings, he sounds a dull dog. He was Eyre’s friend, that is how she met James Eyre.”

“How do you know all this?”

“From Cassandra herself, and from a word here and another
there, one picks up information, you know, if one is listening out for it, and Cassandra interests me greatly, I have an admiration for her, and besides, I like her, and would very much like to see her comfortably settled. Were you to marry her, would you try to put a stop to her painting?”

This was a question Horatio Darcy had not asked himself. A painter for a wife? That would be considered eccentric, indeed. “I think that to separate Cassandra from her palette and oil paints and canvases and brushes would be to trample on her soul,” he said, with an honesty that surprised him. “I would never choose to attach myself to a woman who had such a streak in her nature, but Cassandra has, and it is part and parcel of her being. Besides, why should not a woman paint? You do not have to wear breeches to wield a paint brush.”

“Oh, bravo,” said Camilla, clapping her hands. “You have come on a lot, Cousin; almost, I feel you may be worthy of Cassandra.”

“That is all very well, but what if she will not have me?”

“And what if she does have you, and the price you pay is a dowerless wife and an angry aunt? Resentment, at the damage to your prospects, is not a good foundation for a happy marriage.”

“It seems a hopeless business.”

“That is hardly fighting talk, Cousin. Have you any reason to suppose that Cassandra might welcome an offer from you?”

He told her about his excursions with Cassandra, and the lessening of her initial hostility. “It is hardly much to go on.”

“You must tell her how you feel.”

“She will back away, refuse to see me, perhaps even leave London, she has some idea of a trip to Italy, she would like to go to Rome.”

“Rome is the very place for you to honeymoon; Mr. Wytton has a great many friends in Rome, and will give you an introduction to as many as you want.”

“Talk of honeymoons is premature.”

“You are right. You need to go away and brood on whether your ambition or your heart is to determine your immediate future. Only
remember, that advancement may come in various forms, and if not now, then later. Everyone says how able you are, and so you are bound to succeed in due course. Whereas, once you turn your back on Cassandra, she will be lost to you for good.”

“There speaks a woman, and from the heart.”

Camilla nodded her head vigorously, and poured him more coffee. “We will talk no more about it, except that I will undertake to see if I can fathom the secrets of Cassandra’s heart, and see if you have any place in that unruly organ. If you do not, if she regards you with dislike, or worse, with indifference, then your decision is made for you.”

This didn’t bring much comfort to him.

“In return, will you do something for me?”

He looked at her warily; something told him that a courteous “I am yours to command” might not be wise in dealing with his cousin.

“You need not look like that, it is nothing so very much. It is only that Mr. Wytton was to accompany Belle and me to the opera tonight, at the Theatre Royal. Belle is but recently returned to London, and she is moping; it is a scheme to raise her spirits. However, Mr. Wytton has been called away on business, there is some dispute about a boundary at the Abbey, so he will not be back in time for the performance and his seat is going begging. But it is of no consequence if you are otherwise engaged, for Pagoda Portal and Henrietta will be there also, so if you feel…”

He rose to go, bending over her hand with real affection. “I should be honoured.”