31
A NOBLE HELPING HAND
Afew days after Bingley’s visit, the weather turned delightfully sunny and warm. Darcy called on his sister again, intent on making amends for his ungrateful and surly exit at the end of his previous visit by offering to walk with her on Rotten Row. Elizabeth had been gone from town for the better part of a week, and Darcy hoped that interest in them might have waned enough that a foray in public would not incite another riot. Nevertheless, he suggested to Georgiana that they walk out before the fashionable hour to avoid any unpleasant scenes from the crowds.
The park was still far from empty, and Darcy grew tired of people’s stares within minutes. He was glad when Lord and Lady Rothersea hailed them from farther along the path, for to stop and converse with them would avert an unwanted address from any of the other people who looked tempted to approach him.
“Mr Darcy, Miss Darcy, what a pleasant surprise,” said Lady Rothersea.
“You have been keeping your head down,” her husband added. “We thought you must have retreated to Pemberley until all this lunacy died down.”
“I had hoped people would come to their senses,” Darcy replied. “And there are signs it is working. I have only received thirty-two invitations so far this week instead of the fifty-one I was sent last week.”
“I take it you have not seen the newspapers yet today?” Rothersea said.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“Notall,” Lady Rothersea corrected. “But the Duchess of Gracemont has had an invitation printed in some of the major publications—and a few of the gossip pamphlets—calling for you and Miss Elizabeth Bennet to open her grand ball together in April. She has challenged you to come forward and claim the triumph you have thus far shirked of being London’s most esteemed couple.”
Georgiana made an awed sound, drawing a wink from Rothersea. “Indeed! Not sure how your brother will get out of that one without ruffling a few feathers.”
The Duchess of Gracemont’s first ball of the year had become synonymous with the official start of the Season. To be asked to open the first set was a prodigious honour—and surely the pinnacle of society’s deranged captivation with a non-existent engagement. Darcy had been waiting for people’s fascination with him and Elizabeth to diminish before speaking to her, hoping she might be persuaded his friends were not all vacuous gossipers with more money than sense. The duchess’s invitation put an end to that plan.
He tried not to sound too irritated as he said, firmly, “Her Grace will be disappointed. I can assure you, no such spectacle will ever take place.”
Lady Rothersea looked excessively disappointed. “Oh. So it is true.”
He corrected his first impression—she was not disappointed; she was angry. “What is true?”
“That you and Miss Bennet are not engaged and never will be.”
Darcy reviled the irony of her so easily accepting that which she had been determined to disbelieve from the outset, now, when he most wished the opposite to be true.
“You would be the first person I have heard say they believe it,” he said mildly.
“Much though I did notwantto believe it, I heard it from the horse’s mouth.”
There was no disguising his dismay at hearing this. Elizabeth had told Lady Rothersea that she would never marry him. It was such an abrupt end to his hopes that it rendered him speechless.
Her ladyship’s countenance softened slightly. She turned to her husband. “Rothersea, what was that wonderful piece our cousin was practising the other day? Pray tell Miss Darcy about it.”
Rothersea took his cue, offering Georgiana his arm and conversing about pianoforte music as they set off along the path. Lady Rothersea did not wait for Darcy to offer his arm before taking it and sauntering after them.
“Pray, tell me why an engagement to Miss Elizabeth is out of the question,” she said without preamble.
Darcy looked ahead at the back of Georgiana’s bonnet and thought longingly of the time when his private affairs had not been considered the rightful property of every interested party.
“Did the horse not enlighten you?” he said bitterly.
“She said only that there was no prospect it would ever happen. But I find that baffling. In the short time I have known Miss Bennet, I have come to admire her very much, and I cannot see any good reason why a sensible man of sufficient means would not want to make her his own. She is perfectly delightful.”
“I do not disagree.”
“Then pray, what is the impediment?”
Darcy wished he had some of Elizabeth’s disdain for rank, for he wanted nothing more than to tell Lady Rothersea it was none of her business. But the habits of eight-and-twenty years were difficult to overturn, and the best he could manage was sullen silence.
