“Slowly, I am afraid. I hope the noise is not disturbing you too much.”
“It is not disturbing me at all. I am too hard of hearing to be troubled by noises on the other side of walls.”
“That is a relief…” Elizabeth trailed off, for her eye had been caught by the sight of Lord Saye striding past the window. Colonel Fitzwilliam followed him with a lady on each arm. One was Miss Darcy; Elizabeth did not know the other.
“Is one of them Mr Darcy?” Lady Preston asked. She had extracted a lorgnette from somewhere and was using it to peer unabashedly at the party from next door.
“No,” Elizabeth replied, praying her scrutiny would be unnoticed. “They are his cousins, Lord Saye and Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
Mr Darcy soon came into view, however, and he also had a young lady on his arm. An extraordinarily handsome, very finely dressed lady. They were smiling and laughing gaily with each other, which struck Elizabeth, for Mr Darcy did not often laugh. The whole scene brought an odd, flustery feeling to her gut. Hastily she rose, wishing for escape from Lady Preston and her keen eye.
“But now they have gone out, I had better see what Mr Tucker wants. Thank you so much for the tea.”
Darcy was in a foul humour. It had begun the instant he emerged, dripping wet, from the sea and had not yet shown any sign of abating. As if he had not been humbled enough already! Elizabeth had called outevery conceivable fault in his character, pride being chief among them, but did it follow that even the pride he took in his personal appearance must be dismantled? Was it necessary that he be robbed of all dignity? The care with which he presented himself to the world as a respectable gentleman, master of a great estate, and descendant of a noble family—done away with completely as he was bared, literally as well as figuratively, in front of the woman he loved.
If only his forays to Benjamin and Gerald’s had not rendered what she saw beneath his clinging shirt as unappealing as what she had seen in his character. He had continued exercising: swimming, farther up the beach where fewer people ventured, and occasionally running up the hills on the outskirts of town. He could not yet see any improvement—but then, he had not thought his figure much altered to begin with. Only Saye’s incessant teasing had made him aware of the danger of growing stout.
“Be not offended by Darcy’s silence, ladies,” Fitzwilliam said. “He has had a bad few days.”
“I was not offended in the least,” replied Miss Hawkridge. “Indeed, I had not noticed that he was any graver than usual.”
Fitzwilliam and Saye’s maternal cousin, Miss Georgette Hawkridge, was spending the summer at the Brighton home of her friend Miss Jane Larkin, with whom she had come to call. It was unfortunate that this happened to be the first day of inclement weather all week, and they were all stuck in the dreadful excuse for a drawing room, waiting for the rain to cease.
“Have you done much since you got here?” Miss Hawkridge continued. “There was a ball at LadyRosse’s which I understand was a great success. Did you go?”
“No, we arrived too late for that one,” Fitzwilliam answered. “We have dined with some of the officers and been riding up on the Downs.”
“We had a picnic on the beach yesterday,” Georgiana added.
Perhaps noticing the manner in which this made Darcy glower even more darkly at the carpet, Fitzwilliam cleared his throat and moved the conversation quickly along. “Saye is organising a card party. Should be fun.”
“He said he is going to invite Mr Hartham,” Georgiana said. “Apparently he has a reputation for always winning.”
Darcy glowered harder still.
“Where is Saye?” asked Miss Hawkridge.
Fitzwilliam sighed. “Getting changed. His outfit did not suit the weather, apparently.”
“It has taken a rather chilly turn,” Miss Larkin said, affecting an exaggerated shiver.
“The house is a little cold today on account of our walls having been breached,” Fitzwilliam said with a grin. Evidently, he found the situation far more diverting than Darcy did.
Tucker had that morning sent men to remove the splintered window frame on which Georgiana’s maid had supposedly skewered herself. Regrettably, they had seen fit to discard the glass along with the frame. A replacement pane had been ordered, but for now, there was an enormous hole in the wall through which most of the day’s rain had fallen, and at one point, a seagull had flown in and defecated profusely all about the place, doing nothing to improve Darcy’s mood.
“It is not because of the ghost, then?” Miss Hawkridge asked with a satirical smile. “Saye said the house was haunted. Is it?”
Fitzwilliam shook his head. “I have not seen any indication of it, though it does creak and sigh a fair bit.”
“Apparently someone died here,” Miss Larkin said in a voice soft with awe.
“They did find bones,” Georgiana agreed.
Darcy suppressed a groan that his sister should continue so credulous. Had she learnt nothing from her misadventure with Wickham about the lies men told for their own amusement?
“How did they die?” Miss Larkin asked.
“Probably murdered,” Miss Hawkridge supplied with mock gravity. “Spirits only linger when they are unhappy.”
