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