And out she stalked, outraged, quivering, to weep all the way home to Pemberley. There she went straight to her rooms and told Hoskins to draw the curtains.
“Convey a message to Mr. Darcy that I am laid low with the migraine, and will not be able to say farewell to Mrs. Hurst, Miss Bingley, and Miss Hurst.”
“I don’t wish to pry, Elizabeth, but are you quite well?” Angus asked the next morning when he found his hostess walking her favourite path through the woods behind Pemberley’s river.
She indicated the dell in which they were standing with one hand. “It’s difficult to be down in spirits, Angus, when there is such beauty within half a mile of the house,” she said, trying to deflect him. “It’s too late for flowers, but this spot is perfect at all times of year. The little brook, the dragonflies, the maidenhair ferns-delicate beyond imagination! Our gardener says that such tiny, lacelike leaves and fronds are peculiarities of the maidenhair that grows in this dell only. I know people who go into ecstasies over peacock feathers, but I would rather a frond of this exquisite fern.”
But Angus was not to be deflected. “We live in an age when the personal is exceeding private, and no one is more aware than I that ladies don’t confide in gentlemen apart from their husbands. However, I claim the privileges of one who would enter your family. I’m in love with Mary, and hope to marry her.”
“Angus!” Elizabeth smiled at him in absolute delight. “Oh, that is good news! Does she know you love her?”
“No. I did not declare my suit when I stayed in Hertford for ten days because I could see that she wasn’t ready for proposals of marriage.” His eyes twinkled. “The local solicitor tried his luck, and was turned down most emphatically, though he is young, affluent and handsome. I took my cue from him, and presented myself to Mary as naught save a good friend. It was the right ploy, in that she held nothing back from me about her ambitions and her ardent devotion to Argus the letter writer. In one way, girlish dreams, yet in another, valid aspirations. I listened, offered what advice I thought she would take, and mostly held my tongue.”
Elizabeth found a mossy boulder and sat on it. “I would be so happy to welcome you into my family, Angus. If you did not declare your suit, I’m sure your instincts were right. Mary has never had a high opinion of men, but how could she resist a man as personable and intelligent as you?”
“I hope not forever,” he said, a little wistfully. “I have gained her trust, and hope to gain her love.” Which was all he could say; the identity of Argus had to remain his secret.
“Why did you choose her to love?” Elizabeth asked.
His brows flew up.
“But why travel on the stage-coach, why stay at inferior inns?”
“I don’t quite know, but I suspect it may have been in order to appear an impoverished governess. People don’t talk to their betters, Elizabeth, therefore Mary resolved not to seem a better.”
“How remarkably well you know this Mary! You tried to tell me that I didn’t know her at all, and I reproved you. But I was the ignorant one, not you,” Elizabeth said, sighing.
Angus pulled a face. “There’s one factor I failed utterly to take into account,” he said, “and that is her natural attraction for disaster. For that, I can find no logical explanation. The very poorest of governesses travel by public coach and stay at mean inns, but they aren’t set upon or abducted. Even the wee bit we know of her journey from Grantham to Nottingham confirms this tendency-she was harassed by five yokels, who pitched her into the mire of a coach yard and laughed at her plight. Her adventures are appalling! What caused them to be so? Her beauty? The guineas in her purse? That prickly misanthropy? Or simply a combination of everything?”
Elizabeth frowned. “She never got into trouble as a girl, though my father despised her. He persisted in lumping her with Lydia and Kitty as one of the three silliest girls in England. Which wasn’t really fair. She persisted in singing atrociously at functions, but while everyone, including Papa, complained about it behind her back, no one ever told her to her face. Which indicates that her mind heard the notes as true, rather than demonstrates stupidity. Mary wasn’t the kind of girl who excited admiration, but she wasn’t silly. She was earnest, hardworking and scholarly. Qualities that made her dull, though Lydia would have said, boring.”
She got up and began to walk, as if suddenly very uncomfortable. “In fact,” she went on, “the worst one could say of Mary then was that she had an inappropriate and unreciprocated passion for our cousin, the Reverend Mr. Collins. The most frightful man I have ever met. But Mary mooned and moped in his presence so obviously that I, for one, decided that our cousin wanted a beautiful wife. Mary’s face was covered in suppurating spots, and her teeth were crooked.” She laughed. “He didn’t get a beautiful wife. He married Charlotte Lucas-a very plain but eminently sensible woman. And when he did, Mary very quickly got over him.”
“Oh, I imagine that what attracted Mary to your cousin was his calling. She told me that in those days she was very religious.” Unwilling to torment himself to the point of tears, Angus returned to the subject of Elizabeth herself. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for Mary at this moment beyond Fitz’s measures, so let us change the subject. I’m more concerned about you, my dear. I esteem your friendship greatly, just as I do Fitz’s. But only an unobservant man of low intelligence could fail to see that you’re unhappy.”
“Purely on behalf of Lydia and Mary,” she parried.
“Rubbish! You have offended Fitz.”
“I am always offending Fitz,” she said bitterly.
“Is it to do with Caroline Bingley? I was told what you said.”
“She’s a secondary issue.”
“You did offer her an unpardonable insult.”
“And would be glad to do so again. My friendship with you is a mere ten years old, Angus, but I have had to put up with Caroline Bingley for twenty-one years. Fitz’s friendship with Charles Bingley is of such a nature that he’s prepared to suffer Caroline. So I’ve sat mumchance under her insults for so long that I suppose there came a straw that broke my back. I lashed out. Yet so hypocritical is our English society that veiled insults are tolerated, whereas frankness never is. I was frank.”
“How much does Charlie have to do with this?” Angus asked, thinking that it would do Elizabeth good to be- frank.
“A great deal. She sowed the seeds of discord between him and his father by implying that Charlie’s tastes in love are Socratic. And she spread it all over London! Instead of blaming Caroline, Fitz blamed Charlie. It is his face, of course, and the silly effect it has on some men who are indeed Socratic. But he’ll grow out of his youthful beauty-it’s beginning to happen now, in fact. If this business of Mary’s has anything to recommend it, it is that Fitz and Charlie are getting on together at last. Fitz is beginning to see that the reputation Caroline gave Charlie is undeserved.”
“Yes, you would be better off if Caroline were not a part of your lives,” Angus said. “However, she is Jane’s sister-in-law.”
Squaring her shoulders, Elizabeth marched on without seeing anything around her. “I may have offended Fitz unforgivably, but at least I have made it impossible for Caroline to be anywhere I am. That is why Fitz is so angry.”
“Well, Lizzie, a lot of people in London have put up with Miss Caroline Bingley because you and Fitz do-you’re leaders in society far beyond Westminster. When these people notice that Caroline no longer has the entrйe to a Darcy function, I predict that invitations to the best houses will cease. In a year’s time, Caroline and poor Louisa will have to retire to Kensington, with all the other tabbies.”
