Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Angus, no!”
“Angus, yes.”
“Thank you for cheering me up so splendidly! The thought of Caroline and Louisa relegated to Kensington is delicious.”
“Yet she isn’t the crux of the matter between you and Fitz?”
“It’s easy to see that you’re a journalist-pick, poke, pry, chip, hammer, chisel.”
“That is no answer, Elizabeth.”
“I think Fitz has a mistress,” she blurted.
Jane’s response had been instinctive and horrified; his was calm and considered. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“The Darcy pride. Also, Fitz is in the vanguard of what he calls ‘moral improvement’-a shocking prude, your husband! If he had his way, he would legislate a man’s right to a mistress out of existence. But since he cannot do that-even archbishops have mistresses-he will make the punishment for harlotry more far-ranging as well as more severe. His first order of business will have been to make sure his own life is above any suspicion. No Augean stables for Fitzwilliam Darcy! He intends to crack down on mistresses as well as common prostitutes.” Angus took her arm and tucked it through his own. “As proprietor of the foremost political paper in the kingdom, my dear, I am in a position to know everything about every important man. Whatever is going on between you and Fitz is very much your own business, but I can assure you that there is no third party involved.”
When they came beneath the small library windows, Fitz emerged to join them.
“I see you’re feeling better,” he said to Elizabeth.
“Thank you, yes. Visiting Jane turned out to be rather a wearying ordeal. She was upset about Lydia, but Mary’s plight left her prostrate. I came home with a frightful headache.”
Angus released Elizabeth’s arm, bowed to her, and walked away in the direction of the stables. The sound of Charlie’s whoop came clearly; both parents smiled.
“You missed Caroline’s departure,” Fitz said.
“The headache was quite genuine, if you are implying that it was a ploy.”
“Actually, no, I was not,” he said in tones of surprise. “I knew where you were going, and what your reception would be. The Bingley ladies understood. They know Jane too.”
“I hope you don’t think I regret what I said to Caroline,” Elizabeth said, voice hard. “My detestation of that-that sad apology for a woman has reached its zenith, and I cannot bear to see her. In fact, I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago.”
“Because it involved an unforgivable insult.”
“Sometimes the thickness of a hide makes an unforgivable insult necessary! Her conceit is so monumental that she believes herself to be perfect.”
“I dread telling Charles Bingley, and won’t spare you.”
“Do your worst,” she said, sounding unperturbed. “Charles isn’t a fool. The vagaries of family gave him a malignant sister, and he knows it well. When those same vagaries gave you unacceptable relatives by marriage, you removed them from your life. What is so different about my removal of Caroline Bingley? Sauce for the gander, Fitz.” She shot him a minatory look. “Why did you provide so poorly for Mary? You’re immensely rich and could easily have afforded to compensate her properly for the seventeen years of peace she gave you. Instead, you and Charles agreed on a paltry sum.”
“I had naturally thought that she would come to live with us at Pemberley or Jane at Bingley Hall,” he said stiffly. “Had she, over nine thousand pounds would have yielded her an income well in excess of her needs.”
“Yes, I do understand your reasoning,” she said. “However, when she refused those alternatives, you should immediately have settled a much larger sum on her. You did not.”
“How could I?” he asked indignantly. “I insisted that she think about her situation for a month, then come back to me. But she never did come back to me-or inform me of her plans. Just hired an unsuitable house in Hertford and lived without a chaperone. What was I to make of that?”
“Since Mary is a Bennet, the worst.” Nodding regally-thus depriving him of the opportunity to do so-Elizabeth walked into the house and left him to go wherever he pleased.
At a loose end after the unsatisfactory conclusion to their investigations, Angus, Charlie and Owen scattered like balls on a billiards table. Angus returned to the company of those in his own age group, Charlie suffered a fit of guilty conscience and went to his books, and Owen decided to explore Pemberley.
Charlie could understand a stranger’s desire to see peaks, tors, rocking stones, gorges, cliffs, tormented landscapes and caves, but, having grown up at Pemberley, never thought it worth a tour of its sights.
The Welsh countryside was wilder than Derbyshire, at least in its north, so the Welshman took profound delight in the lush woods that lay between the palace-he could never think of it as a mere house-and the tenant farms that lay in the Darcy purlieu.
What fascinated him were the English oaks, incredibly old and massive. His reading had led him to believe that none had survived the ship-building that started with the eighth Henry, or the huge increase in house and furniture construction, but clearly the oaks of Pemberley’s woods had never experienced the axes, saws and wedges of tree- fellers. Well, he thought, within the bounds of this mighty estate, the King’s word would not count for half as much as the word of a Darcy, especially were the King a pop-eyed German nobody.
The situation among the Darcys fascinated him too, for he was as sensitive as educated, and could feel the tensions that tugged at civilities like a strong tide at an old jetty. It went without saying that he adored Mrs. Darcy, though closer and longer exposure to Mr. Darcy had softened his initial detestation. If one was a great man, he reflected, one probably knew it, and acted not the part but the essential truth of it. Angus said Mr. Darcy would be prime minister, possibly shortly, and that made him a demigod. However, he would not be easy to live with.
The good thing was that Charlie and his father were building a rapport that certainly had not existed when Charlie first went to Oxford. Most of that was due to maturation, but some of it to the lad’s natural tendency to see all sides of a question-a quality that made his scholarship formidable. The year away had seen him move farther from his mother, and that too was a good thing. She was a reminder of a painful childhood that he was rapidly outgrowing.
“Ho there!” said a young and very imperious voice.
Startled, he looked around, but could see no one.
“Up here, dolt!”
Thus directed, his gaze found an oval face framed by a mop of disordered chestnut curls; two eyes of a colour he could not discern glared at him.
“What happens now?” he asked, having three sisters of his own. For Charlie’s sister she certainly was, with that hair.
“You get me down, dolt.”
“Oh, are you stuck, scruff?”
“If I were not, dolt, you wouldn’t know I was here.”
“I see. You mean you would have pitched stones or nuts at me from your hiding place.”
“Nuts at this time of year? You are a dolt!”
“How are you stuck?” he asked, beginning to climb the oak.
“My ankle is wedged in a crevice.”
“That’s the first elegantly phrased thing you’ve said.”
“A fig for elegant phrases!” she said scornfully.
“Oh, dear. Definitely inelegant.” His face was now level with her feet, and he could see the wedged ankle. “Take hold of a stout branch with both your hands and give it all your weight. Once your legs aren’t bearing your weight, bend your knees. My, you have got it stuck!” When he lifted his head he realised that he was looking straight up her skirts, and gave a cough. “When you’re free, kindly gather up your skirts. Then I may help you down while preserving your modesty.”
“A fig for modesty!” she said, starting to go limp at the knees.
“Just do as you’re told, scruff.” He put his hands around her lower leg and eased the foot sideways until it came free.
Instead of preserving her modesty by bunching her skirts around her closely, she gave a wriggle that perched her on his shoulders, then slid down his length and eventually reached the ground. There she waited until he stood
