“From Hertfordshire. Estate entailed upon a cousin. Four sisters and no money. Yes, yes, I am aware.”
Darcy sat up straighter. “How?”
His cousin waved a hand. “Oh, you know how it is. Once someone gets a whiff of intrigue, all the details come out…including the uncle in the City.”
“Will you still tell me she is a catch?”
“In any other circumstance, no, of course I wouldn’t. But people are mad for her. They like it when the rules are broken. Not regularly, but now and then, and especially when the one breaking them is as renowned a stickler as you. And those who do not approve still love the scandal of it.”
“And a scandal it would be when it was discovered that her other uncle is a country attorney, and her mother is a—” Darcy stopped himself before he revealed too much and said instead, “A complete stranger to propriety.”
“Ha! The mother!” Cunningham cried, chuckling at the mention. “Nowshesounds like a riot! I do not know about you, but I wish I had been there to see her set down that dandified buffoon, Aemon Lions.”
“I was there. Nobody thought it was funny at the time.”
“Of course they did—they were all just too priggish to admit it. Everybody knows the man is a preposterous fop.”
“If you heard about that encounter, then I presume you also heard that she slighted Lady Shefford?”
“Anyone daring enough to take down that militant in public is a legend in my eyes. And not just mine! Lord Salinger found it hilarious.”
Darcy lifted his glass and peered into it, then sniffed the contents, seriously questioning what Cunningham had put in his drink. “Mrs Bennet’s behaviour that day was nothing short of savage. On any ordinary day, polite society would have blackballed her—with Salinger leading the charge.”
“Yes, well, polite society is predisposed to approve of the mother on account of them being completely enamoured with the daughter.”
“What do you mean enamoured? All they know is that she has been seen with me once or twice.”
“And I am sure that is, in large part, where their interest began, but she is making waves of her own now. I have not heard anybody talk about her who has not been in raptures over her beauty or compassion. I have heard as many people congratulate you for snaring her as the reverse.”
Darcy disliked the notion that anyone else should have recognised Elizabeth’s worth—or, heaven forfend, that they might act upon it. A twinge of jealousy made him petulant. “What do they know of her compassion? By her own admission, she has spent very little time in town.”
“Apparently, she performed some kindness to the Baroness of Alverstoke…helped reunite her ladyship’s daughter with a lost doll in the street or some such. And I did hear another tale in which she rescued an earl’s granddaughter from a tyrannous dressmaker using only her wit and a swatch of lace.” He shook his head and laughed. “I do not know. It has obviously all been exaggerated or made up.”
“It has probably not been. It all sounds very like her.”
Cunningham tilted his head and regarded Darcy shrewdly. “You do admire her, then?”
“I never said I did not.”
He had, however, tried exceedingly hard not to admit that he did. It was vastly inconvenient that he should feel an attachment to so unsuitable a woman, and he had been determined to overcome the infatuation. Yet, the more time he spent with her, the harder it became. Their last encounter had left a particularly enduring impression. He could still—and often did—call to mind the feel of her body against his when they collided in the street; he could still picture the enigmatic little smile she had worn whilst accusing him of being notorious, the flash of challenge in her eyes as she reminded him of his ungentlemanly behaviour at Netherfield, and the way her lips had parted by the merest fraction as she blew on her tea. Even the swaying manner inwhich she had wound her way between the tables to reach her mother and pull her into a chair had etched itself into his memory.
There was no pretending he did not admire Elizabeth every bit as much as he had when he fled Hertfordshire to escape her spell. It did not change a thing.
“Only that she would not make a suitable wife,” he concluded.
“Are you deaf?” Cunningham retorted. “Have you not just heard me tell you that she is as good as the diamond of the Season?”
“No. I have heard you tell me that she is the present object of a multitude of inaccurate reports and wishful matchmaking. Do you imagine that would be enough to persuade your father? Or Lady Catherine?”
Cunningham lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Probably not. Although, if you strike while the iron is hot, and Miss Bennet is this well regarded, they might forgive you.”
Darcy opened his mouth to protest—then he closed it again and frowned. Reason dictated that thetonsimply did not accept people of Elizabeth’s station, yet his cousin repeatedly insisting otherwise had opened a small crack in his carefully constructed defences, through which hope had shoved its head and begun calling to him like a lunatic.
He paid it no heed. Gossip was fleeting; society’s rules were unbending and immutable. Moreover, no amount of favouritism would outlive the exposure of Mrs Bennet’s adultery, were it ever to be uncovered—which it very well might be if Cunningham was right about people’s interest in unearthing details.
He shook his head firmly. “The material point is, whatever society thinks of her today, theywilltire of her. As soon as a new intrigue arises to fascinate them all, they will remember what Elizabeth’s condition in life once was, and who her relations are,and despise her for it. And if I had married her, I should then be left with a wife the whole world disdained. I should be scorned by everyone I know.”
Cunningham laughed heartily. “Better than being scorned by your wife, as so many of our lot are once the sheen of an excellent marriage has worn off. At least yours would be kind and handsome—and likely to remain so, if what I have heard about her mother is anything to go by. But I take your point. It is probably for the best that you do not pursue her. Lady Catherine would probably combust.”
