Darcy shook his head in disbelief. “There isnothingproper about rendezvousing with a man to whom you have not been formally introduced and whom neither of us knows. A man, I might add, of negligible honour and ignoble reputation.”
Her face contracted as though he had spoken to her in High Dutch, and she shook her head. “I refuse to believe it.”
“Oh? And pray, on how long an acquaintance is your good opinion founded?”
“At least Ihavemet him! You just admitted you do not know him at all.”
Darcy did not much care for the defiance that was blossoming along with Georgiana’s womanhood. “I knowofhim. His reputation precedes him.”
“And I have met his cousin,” Fitzwilliam piped up. “She is proof enough for me that the whole family is trouble.”
“But Lady Tuppence is lovely!” Georgiana cried.
“When did you meet his cousin? You only methimyesterday. Is he already introducing his relations? Moves fast, does he not?”
“I met her today, at the exhibition. She came to tell me that Lord Rutherford had been called away on business and wished to postpone our meeting until tomorrow. And he would not have sent her to do that if he was as awful as you say. He would have just left me waiting and wondering.”
The prospect that Rutherford’s ‘business’ was somehow connected to Elizabeth’s absence from the exhibition troubled Darcy exceedingly. “Well, it will be your turn to leave him waiting tomorrow, for you are not going back to that exhibition.”
Georgiana exclaimed theatrically, then launched into a stream of entreaties as she begged him to reconsider, impressing upon him the strength of feeling Rutherford had stirred in her. Then, perhaps recognising that this was not likely to succeed, she tried instead to persuade Fitzwilliam and him that they, too,would like Rutherford, sketching a picture of his character so detailed that Darcy began to doubt they could only have met once.
She did not mention—because she could not know—that Rutherford frequented brothels and gambling dens, that he had a reputation for being a cad, and that he had heartlessly cast off the finest woman of Darcy’s acquaintance in order to work on her. To hear her singing the man’s praises was sickening.
“If you would come with me,” she pleaded, “you would see for yourself! You could?—”
“An excellent idea,” he interrupted.
“What?” Georgiana and Fitzwilliam both said at once.
“Youare not going anywhere,” Darcy told his sister. “But I shall go, and I shall tell Lord Rutherford to cease trifling with all the people I love!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Do you see that one—the third along from the corner—with the stormy sky?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, look closely at the one beneath. The tiny one with the gilt frame twice the size of the canvas.”
Kitty peered at the painting in question, but it was too high to see clearly. Sergeant Mulhall produced a pair of opera glasses from somewhere and passed them to her with a small smirk. She looked again and snorted inelegantly with laughter. There, in the corner of the diminutive painting, was an elderly man, in all his glory, bending over to wash his hands in a stream. That took their count of bare bottoms to forty-two.
“I told you there were more to be found,” he said. “Painters are nothing but lecherous old men, really. Art is merely their excuse.”
They moved along a bit, and Kitty saw Annie step nearer to the wall behind them and look up at the same painting, her face screwed up tightly as she tried to determine what had diverted them. She wished the maid would comprehend that one did not need to be within touching distance to be an effective chaperon,but she would insist on trailing them about like a nervous shadow.
Sergeant Mulhall showed no sign of being troubled by it. He had excessively happy manners—polite without being at all stuffy. He had apologised profusely for not keeping his engagement the previous day and wholly agreed with Kitty’s lamentations about the choice of venue for this consolation tryst. They had agreed to make the most of it, though, and were both finding great pleasure in making sport of that which everybody else was pretending to take so seriously.
“Would you allow me to call on you properly, Miss Bennet?” he said abruptly.
Kitty preened with pleasure. “I would, but I must warn you, my aunt and uncle may not approve. They have rather gone off soldiers since my sister married one they do not like.”
“I shall have to work hard to change their opinion then, shan’t I?”
She smiled broadly, excessively flattered, though another thought soon obtruded onto her happiness. Where she might ordinarily have applied to Lizzy for help convincing Mr and Mrs Gardiner that not all members of His Majesty’s Army were bad news, her sister’s opinion of thisparticularofficer was such that her assistance was not guaranteed.
This, Kitty had discovered the night before, when just as she was falling asleep, Lizzy had whispered into the dark that she was sorry not to have gone with her to meet Sergeant Mulhall that day, but that she was glad of it now. Pressed to explain why, her sister had relayed a conversation she had had that afternoon with Lady Tuppence Swanbrook, who had given such a solid defence of Lord Rutherford’s character that it had cast Sergeant Mulhall’s account—and his motive in giving it—into serious question.
‘I think he might be a troublemaker,’ had been Lizzy’s conclusion, and while that would not have been enough to put Kitty off meeting any man—indeed, was more likely to make her want to meet him than not—it did make her curious to know why he had said it in the first place.
