Twixt Two Equal Armies

by Gail McEwen

  TWIXT TWO EQUAL ARMIES

  © 2009

  Gail McEwen and Tina Moncton

  Copyright held by the authors.

  ISBN: 978-1-936009-08-4

  Editing and layout by Mary Sharples

  Graphic design by Ellen Pickels

  All rights reserved. No animals were hurt during the writing of this book, but spouses and children were often enough ignored.

  As, ’twixt two equal armies, Fate

  Suspends uncertain victory,

  Our souls — which to advance their state,

  Were gone out — hung ’twixt her and me.

  — John Donne

  Prologue

  Before it all began, for many, many years,

  there were two girls, two cousins, two friends . . .

  Whenever she looked back on that summer, it seemed she had laughed most of the time. Laughed, giggled, tittered or chuckled. And the best thing about it was that she had not done so alone.

  It certainly had not started out that way. That spring her mother had taken a commission requiring her to stay in Edinburgh and then to accompany one of the economist fellows of the University on a tour of the mills around the north of England. Mrs Tournier made it perfectly clear she did not regard this dedicated and vagrant life as fit for her daughter, and that her work would be much sooner accomplished and much better executed if Holly did not join them. Since her father had passed away only a little more than a year earlier, her mother decided she should travel to Hertfordshire and befriend her Bennet-cousins and family.

  Holly cried every night before they left Scotland. She cried for most of the journey too, except when shooting her mother daggered looks in response to her attempts at conversation, and she cried and sulked and avoided speaking to anyone when they arrived at Longbourn.

  Then one day when she sat with her cousins, Jane and Mary, and her Aunt Bennet, quietly sewing and moping in her indescribable longing to be back at Rosefarm Cottage with just her mother, she caught a glimpse through the window of Elizabeth walking across the lawn to the house. She was accompanying Holly’s Uncle Bennet — though one should perhaps say she was jumping and skipping around him, laughing and talking and catching his hand. Something hard and cold gripped Holly’s heart as she watched father and daughter from behind the window and she thought she would burst out crying at the sight of them. She bit her lip even harder and though her eyes swam with tears and she could not make out any stitches, she bent her head to her needlework and felt her heart slowly break all over again.

  A few moments later, however, her world changed. Having left her father in his study, Elizabeth came into the parlour and straight away crossed the room to where her cousin sat so quietly. She perched beside her for a while, neither of them saying a word, listening to Mrs Bennet’s chatter, Holly still struggling to pick up her work again and Elizabeth casting glances at her futile efforts. Then, quite unexpectedly, Elizabeth took her hand.

  “Do you want to see my tree house?” she quietly asked. “It’s just mine and it’s a secret, but you can go there if you want to be alone sometime. Come, I’ll show you right now.”

  Holly never remembered if she had agreed or not — probably not — but Elizabeth pulled her out of the house anyway, with no bonnet or shawl, and led her beyond the village lane, behind the green and through Farmer Wilson’s pastures until they came to the woods behind it. There, Elizabeth explained, she and her father had found the perfect tree and he had quietly commissioned the construction of a tree house. Its existence and location was their secret, but since he never came there except to find her to go walking with him, she wondered, would Holly . . . could Holly share this secret with her?

  “I come here to be alone; if you want, you can too. I have some books and a pillow and even a candle. Just tell me and I’ll leave you alone — I have plenty of other secret places around here. I’ll show them to you as well if you like, but none of them is as good as this one.”

  Whatever Holly answered and whatever her intentions regarding her cousin’s offer had been, the rest of the summer turned out quite differently from what she had expected. Perhaps because her life had been so devoid of laughter and happiness lately, it did still strike her as if she had laughed her way through those months at Longbourn. In her cousin Elizabeth, she found someone with whom, despite the fact that her position in life and disposition were so different from her own, she could share a whole world in common in that tree house, and elsewhere too. Elizabeth, who delighted in the absurd, found Holly’s every attempt to question her mind and opinions to be a personal challenge. She never feared to use that sharp tongue of hers or to gently tease where others would respect or accept, to make her laugh when she needed the silliness and to leave her alone when she needed the solitude. As the summer progressed, Holly found she needed that solitude less and less. She and Elizabeth would sit in the tree house talking, reading to each other and revealing secrets they would never utter to another breathing soul. Holly found that she could hold Elizabeth spellbound with the stories her father had loved to tell her and she eagerly shared all her parents had taught her to love and esteem: knowledge, the use of one’s own judgement, being proud of one’s abilities and intellect, as well as the responsibility to use them.

  “But, Elizabeth, you’re so clever. Don’t you think you ought to use your abilities to help others?”

  “Of course, Holly, but only if I can do it through the command of my very own pirate ship!”

  Holly giggled. “And what good would you do with your pirate ship?”

  “Sail the seven seas, of course, and rob and hunt treasures and make Billy Watson walk the plank for breaking my butterfly net. But I would refuse to wear the eye-patch!”

  “Or the wooden leg!”

  “Maybe we could have lots of parrots instead!”

  “Quiet, timid, little parrots!”

  “Who would never get a word in edgewise!”

  They laughed and Holly poked her cousin in the leg. “But what would you do with all the spoil? Think about how much good we could do.”

  “Mm.” Elizabeth picked out a stolen cherry from the basket between them. She spit the stone out of the tree house and they heard the rustle as it fell through the leaves. “Well, I would keep the pearl and diamond tiara . . . ”

  “And I would keep the soft and luxurious Cashmere shawl . . . ”

  “But other than that, I suppose we’d have to help the poor starving children of Peru.”

  “We would be very rich, Elizabeth. The poor starving children of Bengal too.”

  “And the poor starving children of Nubia!”

  Their laughter rang out again.

  “That would be heaven,” Holly said when they quieted down.

  “Very appealing, I agree,” her cousin said and leapt to her feet, “but until then, why don’t we feed the poor starving lambs down by Mr Wilson’s? I’m sure they are quite as adorable as any Bengal or Nubian children. And they eat grass!”

  “Fair enough,” Holly conceded. She nudged Elizabeth, who sat closer to the makeshift tree ladder. “Go!”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I will!” she said and scrambled down.

  So it turned out, when Holly left Longbourn to rejoin her mother and to return to the life she had so fervently wished for earlier, once again her heart was wounded. She had left part of it in that tree house and in the care of her cousin Elizabeth — her friend in laughter and companion in secret confessions.

  Chapter 1

  In which a young Hertfordshire woman and a young Earl find refuge in Scotland fullfilling their friends’ expectations most admirably

  Miss Elizabeth Bennet set out for the north at the time of year
when migratory birds and people with sensitive health elected to head south. Elizabeth had never suffered from ill health and neither was she the sort to choose her abode according to personal comfort. As a consequence, she felt nothing but hope and relief as she sat in the post and chaise for the third day in a row on muddy roads and in the company of morose co-travellers. For such a long time now she had kept her own council on so many things. Her beloved sister Jane would normally have been privy to her thoughts and speculations, but Elizabeth was fully aware that Jane, with her sweet ways and compassion, could not be burdened with her most uncharitable and desperate feelings. At any rate, Jane was now occupied in her own immediate happiness, just as she deserved to be. Whatever preyed on Elizabeth’s mind, making her lie awake at night weighing tragedies and embarrassments in their most wicked form, was not for Jane now. She would not have it so.

  She gave a fleeting thought to the fact that this must have been the same road on which her youngest sister and her husband had travelled to Newcastle scarcely a month before. That thought brought with it a renewed sense of shame and regret. She had never told anyone exactly how her sister’s marriage to Mr Wickham had made her feel. No one knew everything she knew. No one had been there and seen the look of anxiety in Mr Darcy’s eyes when faced with the knowledge that his sister’s secret was out and in her hands; or witnessed the fragile, shy demeanour of the one who had to be rescued from lies and falsehood too early in her young life. Even worse than that, only she knew how she had made Mr Wickham’s cause her own for all to see on such flimsy and unworthy grounds. Only she knew how her injured dignity at a country ball had overcome her precious judgement and sense and led her astray.

  She looked down at the gloved hands on her knees. They danced an unconscious little dance and she realised they were practicing — the first movement of Mozart’s piano sonata in A — as she had found herself doing so often since she first played that piece back in August on that magnificent pianoforte in that magnificent music room of that magnificent family . . . No, not magnificent. Kind. Diffident. Generous. Suddenly another recollection intruded: You will never play really well, unless you practice more. Against her will she smiled a little, remembering Lady Catherine’s thoughtless remark. Then her smile faltered as she remembered the thoughtless remarks that came later in the Hunsford parlour amidst declarations of love and admiration. Well, at her aunt’s home in Scotland she could oblige both Lady Catherine and herself, for she would certainly be in nobody’s way there.

  Sighing, she stopped her hands as her mind turned to that unexpected visit by Lady Catherine de Bourgh just a few days earlier. She had played that encounter over and over in her mind a hundred times already and she still did not understand it. What had possessed her? Why had she fought like a tigress to keep from giving one inch to a woman she had no interest in? Why had she defied all laws of common courtesy due an older and more distinguished woman from a young, unmarried, provincial slip of a girl?

  Pride. That was part of it, of course. She possessed pride in abundance, but not even that could completely explain why she should feel the need to stand so stubbornly against Lady Catherine’s demands. She sighed. It was because of him. With such conflicting memories now, how could she be certain of anything? And without certainty, how could she make promises? He was kind — he was mortified, he sought her out — she repelled him. He had done so much for her family — all was true and yet nothing could fully explain how she had answered his aunt’s accusations. What was it about him? Was her determination a credit to herself, or more of what she had so readily accused him of — vanity and pride?

  Soon, however, the thoughts that had been forced to flow back and forth in her mind in screaming silence for so long would finally be able to be articulated freely. She could tell her aunt and she could tell Holly. Everything and anything. And they in turn would be more understanding than Jane could be; they shared her pride as well as her doubts and disappointments with human nature. Asking just the right questions, following her own faltering thoughts, they would be more sympathetic than her father would be; they were women with lives lived behind them. Oh, how she had practiced at that exchange with them! It was all she could do to keep from saying it aloud here and now.

  Soon the Borders, then the Southern Uplands, then Clanough village and then Rosefarm Cottage. And then her aunt and cousin and the society of women who would challenge her, but at the same time let her rest in who she really was as a person.

  MR DARCY SAT AT HIS writing desk in the library looking out at the London street beneath his second floor window. The noise outside barely penetrated his consciousness as he sat straight in his chair with his eyes fixed beyond the immediate view. He was perfectly still and to the chambermaid, who in her error thought the room empty and came to remove the ashes from the grate, he seemed asleep. She quietly tip-toed out again and her Master never blinked an eye. He simply had not noticed her. His body might be motionless, but his head was swirling with thoughts and plans.

  On the desk in front of him lay a letter from his aunt. He gave it a glance and set his lips in an even firmer line. The letter had reached him at Netherfield but he had not dealt with it there. He had simply done what he had set out to do and then left Bingley to it.

  His jaw relaxed slightly and a crooked smile crept over his features. Yes, he was certain Bingley would have some very happy news to share upon his return to Hertfordshire. His friend had been quite touching in his reaction to his confession and opinion. At first incredulous at Darcy’s motives and actions on his behalf, he was quick to understand, forgive and dismiss.

  Darcy moved his gaze closer to rest on his right hand, still lying on the letter. Bingley was a good man and perhaps he was right. If there is a chance at happiness, one should perhaps just grab it and not question. Impulses do not always have to be rationalised. Feelings are not always by default inferior to reason. In fact, reason often encourages the very feelings it seems to be at odds with. So here he sat, contemplating whether he should allow his feelings and impulses to guide him to where his reason was telling him there were possibilities for success.

  His aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, had come to see him, not only to emphasise the indignity of the rumours she had reported in the letter before him, but aghast at the response from the young lady who, along with himself, was the subject of those rumours. But she brought stronger ammunition as well, or so she had thought. When she stopped over at Longbourn to give Miss Elizabeth Bennet a piece of her mind, a piece which was promptly returned to her ladyship by the said Miss Bennet, she discovered that on that very morning, Miss Bennet was preparing to leave for an extended visit to relations who, once they were known to Lady Catherine, shocked her greatly. As she later spelled out to her nephew just exactly which relations Miss Bennet was visiting, Mr Darcy was certain he did not look quite as repulsed as she expected. Her response lit a hope and a suspicion in him quite contrary to the one Lady Catherine had intended or his own reason for so long told him he had no right to entertain.

  Miss Bennet was leaving to visit her relations, scandalous relations according to Lady Catherine, but what interested him more was that these relations lived in Selkirk, Scotland. Providence had thrown him a circumstance and he impulsively decided, right then and there, to take advantage of it. He now smiled to himself. After having regretted his decision to interfere on Bingley’s behalf because of reason, he was now planning how to do the exact thing again to another friend because of instinct. For perhaps the first time in his life, he would take a chance that was not calculated, but that would push his interests towards what his heart told him was right and might just work out to his undefined advantage.

  As for that friend, despite his earlier mistakes with Bingley Darcy believed his interference could not help but be beneficial. When Lord Baugham was bored, he was apt to play such games as Darcy had no stomach for himself, therefore he always strove to distance himself from the intrigues and amusements his lordship tended to sur
round himself with in while in Town. That he happened to witness the rapidly escalating situation between his friend and the two present ladies of his particular attention a week ago at Wellstone Manor had surely been providential. A quick word in a willing ear and his lordship would surely see the wisdom of withdrawing rather than playing the game to its natural, stormy conclusion. This time he was right to interfere. For both their sakes.

  The opportunity for such an intervention came sooner than he anticipated, but it was not entirely unexpected. That very evening he found his friend in perfect time for dinner, in his hall, ridding himself of his outer clothing and throwing them at his butler.

  “I happened to pass by and thought I’d see if I should find you at home!” Lord Baugham grinned up at him. It was an infectious smile and quite successful in hiding the impertinence of his action. But then, it was the result of a lifelong study and had served his friend very well in the past, and not only when scrounging dinners he could very well afford to give.

  Darcy assumed a leisurely pose at the top of the stairs and looked down at him, but not without a smile himself.

  “Dressed for dinner?”

  “Well, I thought I’d make certain you wouldn’t refuse me entry because of etiquette. Are we dining alone?”

  Darcy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t surprise me, you know. Not as much as you think. I was told there would be veal tonight and so I have been expecting you.”

  There was a genuine laugh from his friend. “All is right in the world then, eh? One wouldn’t want to disappoint by suddenly turning unpredictable. Or is that predictable?”

  Lord Baugham made his way up toward his friend after a quick wink to the butler and the assisting footman. With his long legs and quick pace it was soon done.

  “And when am I to find out who, of my staff is the guilty informant on my menus?”

  Baugham shrugged and walked before his host into the drawing room.