Twixt Two Equal Armies

by Gail McEwen

  With a sigh she waited for his lordship to take a breath and jumped in the middle of their talk, resigning herself to the appearance of rudeness in order to defend her cousin.

  “Lord Baugham,” she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind, “I hope you have no plans to correct that bit of lower ground that tends to go boggy in the spring. It does give a lovely place to watch the birds as they come through.”

  It worked. Lord Baugham paused in his extended questions on how the social life in Meryton compared with that of Clanough and looked at her. Holly suddenly felt self-conscious under such a direct and very clear blue-eyed stare, and flushed.

  “I . . . I trust you know that which I mean.”

  “Oh, of course,” his lordship said regaining some of his ease. “I did not realise that you . . . well, that is to say, it is rather far off the path through to the north fields. I was not aware of it being such a favourite spot. Of anyone’s.”

  “Well,” Holly stammered, now wondering whether she should have just left Elizabeth, who had really seemed to be doing quite well, to fend for herself. “I do . . . that is, when I am home, I tend to wander a bit far afield. I sometimes forget to mind the property lines.”

  “Hmm,” his lordship said and could not prevent a shadow of disdain from passing across his face. He had always thought of Clyne as a personal sanctuary, and it did not please him overly to know that she knew about the places he had come to consider his private and intimate sources of pleasure and comfort in the short time he had been in possession of it. He had only come across that patch of land last year, and had been pleased to think of it as his own secret discovery.

  The look in his eyes was easy enough for Holly to read. Yes, it was his property, but she felt a twinge of resentment in being made to feel like an intruder in the places she had loved to wander since she was a child.

  “I will be certain to pay closer attention in the future. Forgive my trespassing, please,” she said, sitting back in her chair and turning her attention to her teacup.

  “It is perfectly in order to have my grounds enjoyed by those walking through them,” his lordship said airily. “Think nothing of it, Miss Tournier.” But it was quite clear he did.

  THEY LEFT SOON AFTERWARDS AND rode homewards in silence. Darcy seemed calm and almost happy. Certainly the corners of his mouth were relaxed and he sat easily on his horse looking at the surroundings with interest.

  Baugham’s predicament was greater. On the one hand, he was surprised and pleased at his encounter with Mrs Tournier. Far from the dull widow he had expected, he found her to be intelligent, informed, witty and frank in a manner that gave him great delight and she was also a surprisingly handsome woman. He had liked her very much and had not been sorry to spend an afternoon in her company.

  On the other hand, was the dilemma of Miss Bennet. There was no doubt she was an intelligent woman herself and his suspicion that she might find his friend intimidating and for that reason be averse to his advances he soon discarded. Not that his friend had done anything to counteract his inclination of repulsing unwanted addresses. He had sat on his chair, silent and relaxed and quite content to observe the proceedings around him. Baugham had the sneaking suspicion that the visit had been arranged as much to give him an opportunity to assess Miss Bennet as for his friend’s own benefit.

  If that was the case, Miss Bennet had given a fine performance. And, as it was a performance, it was better not commented upon. Perhaps there would be other opportunities to speak with her and to observe. Baugham reflected that he should not be sorry to do that either, and the puzzlement he felt at that realisation soon made him abandon any further deliberation on the subject of Miss Bennet’s personality and sincerity.

  “Oh, I need to thank you, Darcy!” Baugham said instead and moved his horse closer to his friend’s. “I enjoyed myself very much back there!”

  Darcy gave him an arch look. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “What a remarkable woman! And all the way in this little place! Astounding.”

  “I assume you mean Mrs Tournier.”

  “I do indeed. I am most impressed. And, I don’t mind telling you I liked her very much. Do you know, she turns out to be the widow of Jean-Baptist Tournier, the revolutionary and Girondist! I read his pamphlet ‘On the Necessity for the Abolishment of Noble Privileges’ when I was fifteen and it was rousing stuff, let me tell you. He was a lawyer but frightfully clever with words. Even my French teacher, old Monsieur Vallée thought so. Tournier had to flee Paris in ‘92 with his wife and daughter and they eventually settled here. Sadly, he died quite soon afterwards. He was a very clever if, of course, frightfully radical man. Isn’t that quite amazing!”

  Darcy, never a man to endorse revolutionary sentiments, however prettily written, grunted and shook his head.

  “And easy on the eyes still, too, wouldn’t you say?” Baugham winked, knowing he had successfully managed to irritate Darcy on all the points he felt strongly about in one go.

  “And I remember the daughter now, too,” he went on more thoughtfully. “I have seen her about on occasion, I suppose. She’s a teacher. I wonder how that rhymes with her father’s views and her mother’s frankness!”

  His lordship chuckled and Darcy gave him an almost imperceptible headshake. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I owe you that fishing trip.”

  “Ah!” his lordship said and his thoughts drifted even further away from Rosefarm Cottage. “Angling! Yes, the great leveller of men, a sport for gentlemen of all social standing, a pursuit where the master meets his servant on common ground!”

  “A sport of quiet and reflection?” Darcy smiled.

  “And therefore more of a challenge than one would think,” Baugham laughed and to his great happiness, Darcy grinned broadly.

  They made plans, then and there, to go up to Brachen Falls and trick the trout as soon as possible. Darcy appeared to look forward to the trip and asked his friend a number of detailed questions pertaining to geography and terrain. Baugham answered him happily, feeling his mind and heart already racing off ahead to the best and most beautiful spots.

  “Darcy,” he said after a while with a sheepish smile, “you know, I really did enjoy myself very much today.”

  His friend looked at him carefully. “You did?”

  “Yes,” Baugham answered. “I did. But I don’t know that I quite understand it all. Yet.”

  “Don’t fret,” Darcy said calmly. “One day you surely will.”

  HOLLY WAS LYING ON HER bed, unable to close her eyes. It was a small room, right under the roof. A maid’s room, if there had been a maid. When it rained the patter of the drops was so close it was guaranteed to lull her to sleep in an instant. It was not raining now, however, and she could not sleep.

  This had always been her room, it was completely familiar to her, and yet she loved going over the things and checking that they were still where they had always been. Her chest of drawers, her small cabinet, her table and chair by the window that held few books and a looking glass perched on the side. It was mostly empty now, but when she was younger the table had always been covered with papers and paints and easels and gathered treasures of every kind. Her bed was narrow, but the blankets and pillows were familiar and smelled old and sweet.

  There were no sewing samplers on the walls, but they were far from empty. On every available spot there was a drawing or a study or a sketch and on the slanted ceiling, just above her head, where it was impossible to hang anything, she had instead drawn butterflies and other insects making their way across the whitewashed space.

  Holly sighed and watched the wasp that was just above her. Just on the opposite side of the hall was an identical room where Elizabeth was lying in a bed just like hers. She did not have insects to look at above her bed, but Holly was certain she was not sleeping either.

  When the gentlemen left them that afternoon, she had wanted to speak to her to come to some sort of common result and judgement of the visit,
but Elizabeth had been evasive. She instead asked her to write a letter to Jane with her — she was due, she explained, and Jane would never forgive her if Holly did not speak to her directly. Holly was eager to oblige and somehow they ended up being very silly in their serious pursuit, once again finishing each other’s sentences and Holly drawing silly little portraits of the two of them in the margins.

  She threw her covers aside, jumped off the bed and wrapped herself in her dressing gown, pulling on some thick socks. She picked up her still lighted candle and traipsed hurriedly across the hall and gently knocked at her cousin’s door. She was right; Elizabeth was nowhere near sleep either.

  “I was hoping you’d come,” she smiled. “Get in here, you must be freezing.”

  Holly skipped over to Elizabeth’s bed and dug her legs and feet in under the warm blankets.

  “I need to apologise,” she said.

  “Not again, Holly!” her cousin smiled and prodded her with her elbow. “It seems all we do these days is apologise and I think we should stop before we are afraid to do anything to provoke reaction from the other anymore.”

  Holly smiled back. “Well, perhaps. But just this once though. Then I will stop.”

  “Only if you let me do it once more too after you’ve finished.”

  Holly could not help but laugh. “Very well. Me first though. I apologise for tea. I was very rude to you and I let my emotions get the better of me when I should have kept my peace and stood by you calmly. I don’t know what got into me! At the very least, I could have made better use of my rudeness to shield you from Mr Darcy rather than to irritate his friend.”

  Elizabeth reached over and took Holly’s cold hand in hers, dragging it under the sheets.

  “Yes, that was highly curious, I must admit. But please don’t worry about Mr Darcy on my behalf. I think I did very well not speaking to him at all.”

  “He never said anything!” Holly said. Oh, how she had waited to be able to say that! “He just looked at you and never said a thing! To anyone!”

  Elizabeth looked at her cousin. “Holly,” she said quietly, “my turn. Let me say that when Mr Darcy does speak — which is, I grant you, a rare occurrence — he speaks very well.”

  Holly was puzzled and showed it.

  “I talked to him earlier today; we met while I was out this morning. I don’t doubt he had been looking out for me, hoping to catch me walking. He said as much and he has done so before: once, in Kent. The morning after . . . well, that was when he gave me that letter explaining his actions and I am glad to say he did nothing of the sort this time. But he asked if he might accompany me and I had no objections so we walked. We said perhaps ten words all together. Most of them concerned whether it was convenient for him and his friend to call. I said yes.”

  “You said yes . . . ” Holly repeated slowly, “and by ‘yes’, did you mean ‘yes, if you must’ or ‘yes, please do’?”

  Elizabeth was quiet. “Neither,” she finally answered. “I meant, ‘come if you will and I will see what you are about’.”

  She sat up and tenderly adjusted Holly’s dressing gown to cover her properly. “Holly,” she said, “I apologise for not telling you earlier.”

  “You are forgiven, of course. But Eliza, did you feel that you wanted, or needed, to keep it from me?”

  “Neither, again. That is why I owe you an apology. It is no secret — I could never keep it a secret from you. I have none but childish and cowardly reasons for not waiting to tell you. Had you asked me what I thought of that walk, what happened, and if I had been sure of myself right away, I could not have told you anything that could have satisfied even myself. So I kept quiet and hoped if the gentlemen should call, you could see a little more for yourself and then perhaps not need me to tell you things that only make me more uncertain and unsure of myself.”

  Holly sighed and thought back over the strange visit of the afternoon.

  “I wish I could say that I had seen something, but his behaviour today was just as mysterious as all your descriptions of him in Hertfordshire. Did you see anything; are you any closer to satisfaction as to his feelings? Why does he seek you out only to remain aloof?”

  “Why do you think I am still awake? I went to bed two hours ago, Holly!”

  Holly smiled and pulled her cousin’s head onto her shoulder and stroked her hair.

  “Don’t worry Elizabeth, we are intelligent and resourceful women and we won’t let this man disturb our time together. And that friend of his!”

  Elizabeth sighed. “Lord Baugham. What a curious man! And what a curious man for Mr Darcy to have as a friend! Could there be two more diverse men claiming friendship? Except . . . ” and here she laughed. “I wish you knew Mr Bingley! Now what does that say about Mr Darcy, I wonder, having friends like that?”

  “Something like ‘tell me who your friends are and I shall tell you who you are’?” smiled Holly. “If Mr Bingley is as agreeable as you say, I think it only one more puzzling contradiction about Mr Darcy. This friend was not so agreeable at all!”

  Elizabeth raised her head and looked at her cousin thoughtfully. “Do you really think so, Holly? Once again, I think we owe him a great debt for keeping our little party somewhere near ordinary, polite discourse.”

  Holly snorted. “He was so . . . smug!” she said violently. The idea of being indebted for anything to a man like Lord Baugham disgusted her. “Very well,” she conceded, “but he was so annoying. And quite full of himself and his own sparkling wit. And so eager to impress Maman and flash that smile and play the gentleman, when all he really wanted was to expose you and find something to ridicule us about!”

  But Elizabeth was frowning and was obviously worlds away from Holly’s long-awaited outburst about her ‘practical’ neighbour.

  “Really?” she said absentmindedly. “Well, perhaps.”

  THE HOUSE WAS QUIET AGAIN and Lord Baugham felt a great sense of peace come over him. It was true he had been more confused by his introduction and conversation with Miss Bennet than he at first expected. The biggest fault with that lay with his inability to fit her into the picture he had formed of her. Of course, he rationalised, that was partly Darcy’s fault. How was one to successfully envision the woman Darcy confessed such violent feelings for? There was no precedent, only sketchy figures of youthful admiration, never discussed and quickly exchanged by Darcy for new pursuits or peace.

  Baugham did not believe in love. It was not that he did not believe in its existence, he rather did not believe in it as a goal worth striving for or as a means to achieving happiness. He had not needed love for the twenty-eight years of his life and when it had been given to him it had been complicated, tinged with tragedy and sorrow. Love was a thin veneer over selfishness, desperation and helplessness; it took more than it gave and what it did give was more aptly called by other, less noble, names.

  The truth was that if Darcy confessed to love for a woman, Baugham was caught in territory he knew nothing about and viewed with suspicion. That in itself was cause enough for him to be curious. Who was Elizabeth Bennet? And more to the point, what was she? Why did Darcy love her enough to propose marriage despite her obvious reluctance and then keep returning to her when she so clearly had denied him? And why had she denied him? It still made no sense at all. What kind of woman was she?

  He looked around the hall after leaving the bright, warm drawing room. There was still the whiskey bottle and perhaps Darcy could be persuaded to come back to the library. Baugham had a vague feeling he perhaps owed his friend something akin to an apology — or sympathy.

  According to Mrs McLaughlin, Miss Bennet was fleeing from a disappointment. But what sort of disappointment? Had she set her sights on someone even higher than Darcy and that was why . . . but no, that was so far-fetched an idea that Baugham dismissed it immediately. Whatever it was, his lordship thought, it must be gunk, indeed. Shaking his head, he abandoned the idea of further conversation about this confusing matter and took to his cham
ber instead. The fire was burning, but there was no sign of Riemann except in the form of his laid out nightclothes on the bed and the perfect arrangement of a glass of wine and the volume of Donne’s poems he had left open in the library yesterday. Baugham’s amusement was evident when he discovered that his valet had marked the exact spot of his interrupted reading and inscribed the piece of paper with the date. He was certain this was Riemann’s subtle comment on his habit of reading several works at once and leaving them open upside down all over the house. Then his lordship disturbed the perfect picture of order and took them both to bed with him.

  Since so, my mind

  Shall not desire what no man else can find;

  I’ll no more dote and run

  To pursue things which had endamaged me;

  And when I come where moving beauties be,

  As men do when the summer’s sun

  Grows great,

  Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat.

  A wise sentiment, and very aptly put. He could certainly live with that and be very comfortable. Very comfortable, indeed.

  Chapter 7

  Friends and Family Keep Abreast of the Developing Friendship of Miss Bennet and Mr Darcy

  Holly sat at her worktable amid a jumble of manuscript pages, half completed sketches, tubes and pots of paint and pastels as she tried to decide just exactly how she wanted to organise and portray Sir John’s air pump experiments. There was not much evidence of progress to show for her long day’s work excepting for a growing list of discarded or unworkable ideas, but however much her brow was wrinkled in thought, it was work she enjoyed and found much more fulfilling than her attempts to educate the spoiled daughters of Scotland’s elite.