He is more than I had supposed. A great deal more.
The sound of carriage wheels on gravel interrupted her contemplation. Elizabeth closed the journal with more hastethan dignity, turned the little brass key, and rose to peer through the window.
A barouche drew up before the entrance, gleaming with the Cathcart insignia. Sure enough, Lady Cathcart, unmistakable in her signature purple, descended with the assistance of a footman. Behind her came Miss Entwhistle, clutching a book and wearing the expression of a woman with “Definitive Opinions” to share.
Elizabeth tucked the writing desk into the cabinet beside her chair. The dreamy afternoon of cataloging Darcyisms was concluded, and the duties of Mrs. Darcy now asserted their claim.
Smoothing her skirts, she composed her features into something appropriate for receiving callers, and reflected that the timing was, in its way, rather convenient. She had written quite enough dangerous admissions for one afternoon.
Lady Cathcart swept in first, all gracious condescension and sharp-eyed assessment. She was a handsome woman in her middle years, possessed of the overwhelming confidence that came from being both wealthy and well-connected. Though she had called before, she examined Elizabeth’s drawing room anew each time, as if surveying either improvements and deficiencies for later report.
“Mrs. Darcy! How delightful to see you recovered. We were all so concerned when we heard of your illness—caught in that dreadful storm, I understand, and quite overcome by the time Mr. Darcy carried you into the house.” Lady Cathcart’s smile suggested she questioned the embellishments she had no doubt heard from below stairs. “Such devotion in a new husband. We are all quite charmed.”
“My husband is nothing if not practical, Lady Cathcart,” Elizabeth said, ringing for tea. “I was incapable of walking, and Mr. Darcy preferred not to leave me in the rain.”
“Modesty becomes you, my dear, but it does not convince me.” Lady Cathcart settled into her seat with an air of affronted dignity, not accustomed to contradictions from those below her sphere of influence. “A man does not carry his wife through a storm unless his heart is thoroughly engaged. I have been married thirty years, and I know the signs.”
Miss Entwhistle followed her patroness with considerably less ceremony, animated by fascination and entirely unable to comprehend why others did not share her burgeoning curiosity.
“I have brought youThe Midnight Tower,” she announced, depositing her books on the nearest table. “Lady Renwick’s first novel. You simply must read it if you are to understandThe Ruined Chapelproperly. The themes build upon one another, you see—the critique of mercenary marriage in the first prepares one for the more radical arguments about honesty and independence in the second.”
“You are too kind,” Elizabeth said. “I confess I have not yet had the opportunity to read Lady Renwick’s work in full.”
“Oh, but you must!” Miss Entwhistle vibrated on the edge of her chair as Hannah entered with the tea tray. “She is quite the most original voice in Gothic fiction. Her heroines are not merely decorative sufferers waiting to be rescued—they think, Mrs. Darcy. They argue philosophy with their lovers and refuse to accept protection they have not requested. InThe Midnight Tower, Lady Venetia actually tells Lord Withers that she would rather starve independently than feast as his dependent. Can you imagine?”
“I can imagine Lord Withers found that rather inconvenient.”
“He found it devastating! He spent three chapters in his hunting tower reconsidering his entire understanding of matrimony.” Miss Entwhistle accepted her tea with the distracted gratitude of someone whose mind was elsewhereentirely. “And in the newer work, there is a passage where she and her sister debate and compare conventional marriage to a gilded birdcage—all comfort and no flight. I do imagine Lady Renwick as such a maverick—racing across the moors, snubbing proposals from dukes, and taking on lovers of no rank or consequence and weaving her adventures into her novels, which I do not find scandalous in the least.”
“Miss Entwhistle.” Lady Cathcart’s voice carried the patient weariness of a woman who had heard this lecture before. “Lady Renwick is a pen name. Anom de plume. You speak of her as though she were a personal acquaintance whose views you have absorbed over afternoon calls.”
“But her views are so clearly articulated?—”
“In fiction. In novels written for entertainment, not instruction.” Lady Cathcart stirred her tea with pointed deliberation. “Lady Cecilia and Lady Venetia are characters, my dear. Inventions. The authoress—whoever she may be—is likely a perfectly conventional woman who writes radical heroines because they sell books.”
Miss Entwhistle’s cup rattled dangerously in its saucer. “Lady Cathcart, you cannot possibly believe that such passionate conviction is mere commercial calculation!”
“I believe that passion on the page and passion in the parlor are entirely different creatures.” Lady Cathcart smiled with the serenity of one who had won this argument many times. “For all we know, Lady Renwick is a vicar’s wife in Shropshire who writes her novels between arranging flowers for the altar.”
Or Prue Duntze, Elizabeth mused as she lowered her teacup, who had once more hinted at secret manuscripts and requested a tour of Pemberley’s library, as though Mr. Darcy preferred Gothic novels to the agricultural treatises he had so admired at Netherfield.
“She is discussed in the literary salons of London!” Miss Entwhistle had flushed to the roots of her hair, her tea now tilting at an alarming angle. “She is considered revolutionary—dangerous, even! TheMonthly Reviewcalled her philosophy ‘unsuitable for impressionable minds,’ which is practically an endorsement. A vicar’s wife in Shropshire could never?—”
“A vicar’s wife in Shropshire could write whatever she pleased, provided no one knew it was she.” Lady Cathcart turned to Elizabeth with an expression of amused forbearance. “You must forgive Miss Entwhistle, Mrs. Darcy. She has made Lady Renwick her particular study, and the enthusiasm sometimes exceeds the evidence.”
Elizabeth, who had been watching this exchange with private amusement, suspected that Lady Renwick—whatever she was—would have enjoyed observing her own defenders and detractors sparring over tea. The authoress seemed to delight in provoking exactly this sort of disagreement.
“Perhaps Lady Renwick is poking fun at us all,” she offered. “At the aristocracy and its pretensions, at the conventions we maintain and the hypocrisies we overlook. Her heroines may be less prescriptive than satire.”
“Satire!” Miss Entwhistle looked genuinely wounded. “Mrs. Darcy, Lady Renwick is entirely sincere. Her arguments for female independence, for honesty between lovers, for marriages founded on equality rather than convenience—these are not jests. They are principles.”
“Principles which you have adopted as your own,” Lady Cathcart observed dryly.
Miss Entwhistle lifted her chin with the dignity of a woman about to make a confession. “I have, as it happens. Lady Renwick’s work gave me the courage to refuse a proposal that would have made me materially comfortable but spiritually wretched.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose. “You refused a proposal?”
“Two years hence, a gentleman of considerable property—heir to an estate, which I shall not name—offered me his hand and his fortune.” Miss Entwhistle’s expression suggested she was reliving the moment with some satisfaction. “He was seven years my junior, Mrs. Darcy. Seven years, can you fathom that! A spoiled boy who had never been denied anything in his life, who expected a wife to manage his household and admire his consequence and never, ever contradict him.”
