Duty and Desire fdg-2

by Pamela Aidan

  “I am certain worse things could happen,” Darcy snapped back at him, but Monmouth only laughed.

  “Then what are you about, sporting that knot of yours, if you don’t intend to fascinate the ladies!” he retorted and left him for the other side of the room. Trenholme followed lazily.

  Dancing! Darcy sighed, dismissing for the moment Monmouth’s comment on Fletcher’s knot. Well, perhaps it was a fortunate turn after all. Intelligent conversation was sadly lacking, the company being in no way distinguished by their interests or expertise. Such a glaring lack was not faulted on the dance floor, but a failure to engage in flirtation most certainly was. The ladies, he knew, would expect gallantry and a hint of naughtiness in his address as they met and parted throughout the sets. Just the thought of putting himself forward so with the collection of ladies present made him tired. Another sigh escaped him as he warily surveyed the room. Truth be told, the only partner who appealed to him was the very one he suspected of masterminding a vast and cruel fraud. A thought struck him. Would not her wall more likely be breached by his attentions than by his suspicious distance? If he appeared to fall into Sayre’s hopes for him, might not something slip out, something that would help him unravel this iniquitous tangle of pain, avarice, and fear?

  He looked again to the ladies, now beginning to pair off with the gentlemen. It was not hard to discover Lady Sylvanie on the edge of the lively circle, standing aloof from its excited currents. Her companion had appeared during his inattention and was now engaged in setting her mistress to advantage. The hunched old woman reached up awkwardly and unpinned a single, lush curl of her mistress’s ebony tresses. It fell down seductively over one white shoulder, twining past her bosom and brushing her waist. It was wantonly beautiful, and if it had not been for the coolness of the gray eyes she turned upon the room, Darcy knew that Poole, Monmouth, and even Manning would have been immediately paying her court. They could not have helped themselves, he judged, had she turned upon them the look she now directed at him. She held him intimately with those eyes, and he nodded his acceptance of her invitation. Only briefly was the contact broken when her maid distracted her with a tug at her sleeve, passing her something from her pocket, which Sylvanie smoothly tucked into the recesses of her neckline.

  Steady on, he warned himself as Doyle made her final adjustments to her mistress’s toilette. His right hand went inside his coat to the pocket, his fingers making immediate contact with what he had deposited there in advance of just such a need. He took a deep breath, and in his mind’s eye he saw her. Oddly, it was not the Elizabeth of the Netherfield ball whose stillness enveloped him. Rather, it was the one whose shoulder had grazed his arm as they shared his prayer book and whose curls he’d set into joyful dance by the breath of his singing that Sunday morning that now seemed so long ago. Goodness and good sense. He moved forward, no longer mesmerized or, he vowed, deceived by ebony glory, soft white shoulders, or fairy gray eyes.

  “May I have the honor?” He bowed and was rewarded with a rare, true smile as Lady Sylvanie extended her hand. He grasped it lightly and turned her out into the middle of the room, joining the others who had already formed lines, and awaited the opening measures of a country dance. The reel was lively, affording Darcy no more opportunity for communication with his partner than could be had by a knowing glance and a lingering brush of fingertips, but he concluded that the lady appeared more confident of him at its end than she had been at its beginning. It was enough, in all events, to dispose her to accept the offer of his hand in the next, which was of the more stately, intricate sort and, therefore, more suited to his purposes. Seating her decorously, he went in search of refreshment for them both and encountered a beaming, expansive Sayre near the table.

  “Darcy, my good friend, what a picture you and Sylvanie present!” Sayre nudged him with his elbow. “And I have never seen her in such looks, so it must be your doing.” Darcy murmured something polite, but Sayre would not have it. “No, sir! You complement each other perfectly in every way; that is easy enough to see.”

  “Smooth as cream with you.” Trenholme came up from behind them and nodded in Lady Sylvanie’s direction.

  Darcy feigned a study of the selection of refreshments. “Cream, Trenholme? Not precisely your description of the other evening.”

  Trenholme’s countenance froze for a moment and then relaxed into a self-deprecating grin. “Foxed, Darcy! You saw me. Drunk as a lord. Don’t know what fool thing I’m saying when in my cups. Ask Sayre.” He looked meaningfully at his brother.

  Sayre laughed uneasily. “You know Bev, Darcy! It’s not called Blue Ruin for nothing!” He went back to his former subject. “But Sylvanie is a beautiful woman, is she not? Accomplished, intelligent…carries herself like a queen.”

  “She is beautiful,” Darcy granted him, knowing what would come next. Sayre’s smile grew wider.

  “Private, as well,” he continued. “Doesn’t plague a man with demands for gewgaws or entertainments, I promise you. Quite content on her own at home. And in her own home,” he suggested slyly, “she’d keep everything in good order and her husband satisfied…in every way.”

  Darcy’s grip convulsed upon the sharp edges of the cut-crystal stems of the glasses he held, barely containing an impulse to throw their contents into Sayre’s leering face. It never varied in content, this jostling for position and connections through the ironbound conventions of matrimony, only in its vulgarity. Had Elizabeth’s mother in Hertfordshire exhibited any more brass, after all, than had Sayre? He bent his will to the assumption of a casual interest in the game. “Her dowry? What could her husband expect from the marriage?”

  “Five thousand clear, after the sale of some property.” Sayre had the grace to look apologetic. “I am a bit at sea at the moment, you must understand, and cannot promise more until my ship makes port. Incompetent business manager. Fired him! You know how it is, Darcy.”

  He nodded. Yes, he knew exactly how it was! “Interesting.” He gave Sayre to interpret that however he wished. “But the lady awaits.” They all looked to Lady Sylvanie, who was in the midst of an exchange with her companion. “You will excuse me, Sayre…Trenholme?”

  “Certainly, certainly, old man.” Sayre waved him away jovially, as if permitting him a rare treat in allowing his attentions to his sister. Trenholme’s feelings about their exchange were less discernible.

  As Darcy approached them, Lady Sylvanie’s companion retreated to a dark corner of the room. Darcy offered her a polite nod and received a curtsy from her in response before extending a glass to her mistress. “My Lady,” he addressed her softly.

  Lady Sylvanie’s smile was slow; he could have traced its progress from her lips and through her cheeks until it came to rest in her brightened eyes. “You honor my companion, sir,” she commented approvingly as she took the offered refreshment. “In all the time since I have returned home and of all the guests Sayre has entertained, only you have treated her in a civil, gracious manner.”

  “Why should I not?” he inquired as he took the seat beside her.

  Lady Sylvanie’s smile hesitated. “Indeed! But that is not the custom of Sayre or anyone else I have encountered. To them, servants are so many hands and feet, and nothing more.” She peered at him intently. “With you, I gather, it is not so.”

  “How so, my lady?” Darcy wondered, caution racing coldly through his limbs. Of course! What a fool, to forget that she would have set about gathering information about him, just as he had done concerning her! The hair and bloodstained cloth in his dressing room were not the sum of what could be found out about him in a surreptitious visit. What had she discovered?

  “Your valet, sir,” she returned. “In a word, a singular man.”

  “‘Singular’ is an apt description for Fletcher, I grant you.” He tilted his face down to her as he brushed the edges of The Roquet. “He is somewhat of an artist in his profession, but sadly, I am a very unwilling canvas. I do not know why he stays with me.” Wh
at did she want with Fletcher? Had she or her companion discovered his other abilities, or had his interruption in the gallery merely raised their ire?

  “You do not?” Lady Sylvanie’s smile returned. “The mystery is easily solved. Either you pay him a very handsome wage or he stays for love of you. I suspect that if you treat Doyle, who is nothing to you, with such care, you treat your own servants with even better courtesy.” She sipped lightly at her punch. “You have their loyalty and their love. A rare thing in this world, Mr. Darcy.”

  “I suppose it is,” he answered, uncomfortable with the perspicacity of her words.

  “You suppose! Ah, your reply reveals much, my dear sir.” Her intensity of manner increased. “You are so accustomed to it that you give it no thought. You do not question why your valet has taken up residence in your dressing room, for example.”

  “Fletcher has his reasons.” Darcy’s mind raced for a likely excuse. “He is very particular, an artist — as I said — and found the distance between his accommodations and mine to be injurious to his standard of attendance upon me.”

  “I see.” Lady Sylvanie tilted her face up to his, her lower lip caught delicately. “Do you suppose his loyalty and love will make way for your wife, should that happy lady come into being, or will he always be that close by you?”

  “My wife, my lady, will have no cause to complain of Fletcher’s attention to his duty,” he replied stiffly, “nor will my valet’s wife suffer neglect for cause of his duty to me.”

  “I am glad to hear it for your future wife’s sake. The jealousy of servants against their master’s new wife is a formidable obstacle to a woman’s happiness. In the end, one or the other must lose.”

  Sayre’s call to the floor prevented Darcy from responding, and he did not regret the intrusion. The lady’s words were not lost on him, and he fervently hoped that his disavowal of Fletcher’s propensity for interference in his personal life had convinced her.

  Darcy rose and offered Lady Sylvanie his hand, escorting her to their place in the set. Her countenance and carriage were austere as she faced him across the correct distance, but the emotions her bearing hid had unwittingly communicated themselves to him through the fingers she had laid upon his arm. She seemed inordinately excited and pleased with his partnership, more like a debutante than a practiced woman of four and twenty, and he wondered how she contained the energy that he felt pulsing through her fingertips.

  Lady Chelmsford struck the first chord, and the couples bowed to each other. Darcy stretched out his hand for the petite promenade and once again was impressed by the strength of the lady’s hold upon it and the tremors of nervous energy that betrayed her outward poise at each instance of contact between them.

  “I daresay you find country dances more to your taste,” he opened as they met and then circled each other back to back.

  “True,” she answered. “The stiffness of the patterns is so confining. Do you not agree?”

  “Confining?” he returned as he rose from a bow and took her hand. They both turned to the head of the room. “I had never regarded them so. Rather, I would call them orderly and precise, even mathematical.”

  The lady smiled, a beguiling light suffusing her face. “Mathematical dancing! How droll you are, sir!” It was now her turn to pass behind and around him. Darcy could feel the air between them stir with her amusement as she performed the passé and faced him once more. “Dancing is not for the mind, Mr. Darcy; it is for the body and the expression of emotion. Do you never wish to kick over the traces, live outside of order and precision? Or is mathematics sufficient for you?”

  “Do you accuse me of having no feelings, my lady?” He returned her question in a bantering tone.

  “Oh, no, sir!” she hastened to correct him. “I am convinced that you are possessed of feelings — all those of the orderly and precise variety!”

  “A very dull dog, then,” he concluded for her.

  The lady laughed. “No, I did not say it!” She looked at him speculatively and then murmured when next they faced each other, “I think that you would very much enjoy what lies beyond the conventions, Mr. Darcy. The exhilaration, the power of riding the crest of passion, is life worth the living.”

  The fierceness of her words, in combination with his suspicions of her, set the fine hairs at the back of his neck on end as cold caution seized him again. With effort he continued to draw her out. “Power, my lady?”

  A low chuckle escaped her. “Yes, power.” Her demeanor changed suddenly, as if she had come to a decision. She looked up at him intently. “Is there something you wish, Mr. Darcy, that as yet you have not been able to obtain?”

  His alarm increased. “My lady, I do not have the pleasure of taking your meaning.”

  “Something you desire but is denied you. Something that — The sword!” Lady Sylvanie exclaimed triumphantly. “The Spanish sword in Sayre’s gun room!” The smile that caressed her lips was one of poetic satisfaction. “He baits you with it, does he not? Yes, that is perfect.” The steps of the pattern separated them briefly, giving Darcy a little time to formulate a response. Should he encourage her or take steps now to end her mischief? The first did not appear to present any danger. Her choice of a test was innocuous enough. How could she possibly determine the turn of a card? His second option was more problematical. What did he have to present to Sayre but her wild assertions in the gallery and now these?

  The pattern brought them together for a final promenade, and as Darcy took her proffered hand in his, her slender fingers gripped his tightly. “You shall have the sword,” she pronounced with icy firmness. “I so will it.”

  Darcy bowed to her in the final step, but the curl of the brow he affected upon his rising expressed his skeptical reception of her pronouncement. “My Lady, if you think to prevail upon Sayre to relinquish the prize of his collection merely upon your desire of it, I beg you will abandon such a course,” he drawled. “Whatever your ‘will’ in the matter, he will not, I assure you!”

  Raising her chin to his challenge, Lady Sylvanie laid her hand upon his arm and regarded him with a brilliant eye. “I will ask nothing of Sayre,” she whispered, her ebony curl brushing his sleeve. “You shall see; he is easily bound.” She turned to him as they neared her chair and signaled that she did not wish to rest. Instead, her hand caressed his arm. “His fortune at play tonight will force him to put it on the table.” She looked up at him from beneath elegant, dark brows. “And when it is yours, we shall hold a private celebration and speak, perhaps, of future possibilities.”

  Both Darcy’s brows rose briefly at her suggestion, but he delivered a smooth “As you wish” in reply before bowing and making a strategic remove. Availing himself of another glass of punch, he slowly navigated his way past a very smug-looking Sayre and through the rest of the company, retreating to a quiet place in the shadow of a window. Raising the glass to his lips, he turned to the moonless dark and swallowed half of the concoction of sweet liqueurs as his mind reeled.

  Good Lord, not only was the lady very likely guilty of perpetrating a far-reaching fraud upon her stepfamily but she truly believed she had the power to bend events to her will! The bundle at the foot of the King’s Stone sprang unbidden to his mind, its ghastly purpose now clear. It had been a calling forth, a bid for the bestowal of power from a cast-down prince, and the supplicant was acting, sure of her answer. That such a thing were possible Darcy could not accept, but neither could he completely banish it from consideration. For, if Sylvanie believed herself so empowered, the influence of that belief alone was capable of wreaking untold havoc. What should be his course? A short, bitter laugh escaped from him as he considered the coils of intrigue his simple matrimonial search had woven.

  Sweet are the uses of adversity. Again, it appeared, he was confronted with the mysterious workings of Providence. Well, my dear Mrs. Annesley, explain this to me once more, if you please! Darcy almost wished he had her in front of him to make an answer, but he would, it see
med, have to muddle through on reason and common decency alone.

  Chapter 11

  Gentleman’s Wager

  Darcy emptied the contents of his glass and turned just as Poole approached to demand his making of a fourth couple with Lady Beatrice. Placing the glass on an available tray, he traversed the room to the lady’s side, offering his hand and as pretty and meaningless a speech as he was able. Lady Beatrice gracefully received his meager compliments with perfect understanding, and they took their places in the square. As he anticipated the start of another country dance, he looked for Sylvanie, but she was not among the dancers.

  “Called away, Mr. Darcy.” Lady Beatrice turned to him in the beginning curtsy with a knowing smile. “Lady Sylvanie and her serving woman left shortly after you parted, should you desire to know.” Darcy felt a flush rise to the level of Fletcher’s blasted knot.

  “Indeed,” he replied indifferently and proceeded to ignore her speculative glances. It was not until some time later, after the last dance of the evening’s gathering was announced, that Lady Sylvanie returned, although without her companion. Darcy espied her from the corner of his eye as he set his partner into a turn under his hand. When the last chord sounded, he hurriedly performed his bow to the lady, but Lady Sylvanie’s eyes had already passed over him and come to rest upon Sayre. Her chin high, she accosted him in conversation with Lord Chelmsford and drew him apart with a show of humble insistence. Too distant from their exchange to overhear her words, Darcy could not misinterpret their effect. Sayre’s face turned first wary, then displeased. He looked about the room in agitation as his half sister continued to speak. Then something she said arrested his attention. He blanched. His eyes flicked to Darcy and then back to her as he bent to whisper something. Lady Sylvanie nodded, and the color returned to Sayre’s face. He nodded back curtly, and the two parted.

  Darcy was certain the exchange had to do with the sword. The lady had demanded her brother put it down in play and, it appeared, had won the day. But to his surprise, the prized weapon had nothing to do with the announcement Sayre called the room to attend. “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he boomed above the sea of conversation. “And ladies!” The room quieted. “It has been brought to my attention that the dancing has so pleased the ladies that they are persuaded that the evening should not yet end. It is proposed that tonight, if they so choose, the hardy females among us be welcomed to observe the gentlemen in our night’s battle of chance.”