by Pamela Aidan
“Old times’ sake, Tris?” Darcy could no longer mask his disgust. “How could you?” he demanded of him and pulled away. Monmouth’s protests were met by his back as he stalked down the stairs and requested his things from the footman. A flurry of activity warned Darcy that the plans for his entrapment had not yet been given over by all the participants. As he placed his beaver atop his head and took his walking stick from the footman, Lady Monmouth appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Darcy!” Her voice, low and entreating, called to him. Propriety and good breeding, he very well knew, demanded he acknowledge her, but right now his feeling about social niceties were that they could be damned! Taking his stick into a ferocious grip, he turned pointedly to the door, causing the doorman to spring for the handle and wrench it open.
“Another time, then,” Sylvanie promised with a scornful laugh, “when you are less easily frightened by the world that is coming.” Those in the hall and on the steps around her tittered appreciatively.
Darcy stood motionless, beyond measure angered and stung by her mockery and the public humiliation she had dealt him. Summoning every ounce of hauteur he possessed, he turned on his heel and raised cold eyes to her beautiful, taunting countenance.
“Never, madam,” he answered her, biting off each word in solemn vow, “never on your life!” Not deigning to wait for a reply, Darcy swung back to the door and, with broad stride, walked out into the cool night air.
“The Fox and Drake, Portman Road,” he instructed the driver of the first conveyance that pulled to a stop at the curb.
“Righto, guv’nah.” The cabbie laid a finger to his brim, saluting him.
It was only after he’d been sitting back in the hansom’s dark interior for a few blocks that the anger-wrought tension began to loosen its grip on Darcy and allow him to think. Think! He wrested the privilege of mocking himself from Sylvanie’s duplicitous hands. How have you fallen into the role of the world’s greatest fool? That you have been deceived for years by one of your oldest friends and twice entered willingly into the orbit of a woman bent on using you for God knows what nefarious purposes? That the woman you love…He looked out the window. The streets of London were alive yet with the city’s more exalted citizenry and would continue so until the small hours of the morning. Ladies leaned on their gentlemen’s arms, laughing and excited, eager for the glitter and whirl of gatherings within the lofty halls of the many ballrooms and drawing rooms promised by row upon row of stately homes.
Darcy closed his eyes against the sights, the yearning slicing through him, painful as a cut to the heart. Yes, the world’s greatest fool! And what the world’s greatest fool needed now was a drink! The hansom pulled to a stop. Darcy climbed down and threw the fare up to the driver, who caught it handily. “G’night, gov’nah!” He nodded as he pocketed the coin.
“That remains to be seen,” Darcy responded. The driver laughed and commanded his horse to walk on, leaving Darcy to inspect the front of the public house. Its sign hung brightly illuminated in lamplight, showing a strong young fox exuding a wide grin while a fat drake dangled from its jaws. “Almost,” Darcy addressed the fox, which he had no doubt was a vixen. “But tonight the drake got away.” He bent and opened the pub’s door. Immediately, he was welcomed by its owner.
“What will it be, sir? I have a room available,” the man offered cheerily.
“No, no room, just a table in a corner,” he answered him. “Are you well stocked?”
“Why, yes, sir!”
“Good! Bring me your best brandy.” The man’s smile grew broader as he put a glass on a tray in front of him and began to open a bottle. “No, you misunderstand me.” Darcy stopped him. “Not just a glass. Leave the bottle as well.”
It was curious, Darcy reflected as he cradled the remains of his second glass of brandy, how every time his thoughts managed to fight their way up into the realm of his control, when he could begin to hope to direct them into rational avenues, they fell down again into a ghastly, maudlin tangle. He sat back and stared for a moment at the glinting amber liquid captured in the glass in his hand, then downed what remained of it. Where was Dy, anyway? If he would only come, the blasted sneaksby, the scoundrel! Acting like a positive coxcomb all these years! Laying the glass aside, he pulled out his pocket watch. Its hands danced wantonly but were not so wayward that he could not in the end verify that, indeed, an hour and more had passed without Brougham showing his face. He shoved the ill-behaved mechanism back into his waistcoat pocket. Well, when Dy did arrive, Darcy would tell him exactly what he thought of him! Yes, the delivery of a good dressing-down would serve admirably in putting a stop to this infernal brooding!
As if to pledge himself to his design, Darcy snagged the brandy bottle and poured himself another, but he missed the snifter’s rim by a hairsbreadth, the liquid fire flowing instead down its side and puddling around its base. With an oath, he moved the glass. That he had fallen into distemper was the conclusion he came to as he sat in a corner of the Fox and Drake and finished his second glass of brandy. Try as hard as he might to argue otherwise, he was forced to concede that he had not yet spent any significant time without Elizabeth Bennet occupying the uppermost place in his thoughts. Nothing had served to dismiss her completely: not his anger at her accusations, his indignation at her opinion of him, or the monumental shock at her rejection of his suit. He imagined her wiping her hands of him, crowing her triumph in bringing him to his knees. Did she and that friend of hers, that Mrs. Collins, laugh together over his humiliation? Darcy’s jaw hardened as he again picked up the bottle, this time finding the glass without mishap. Nothing helped relieve or even mitigate his disconsolation. Solitude betrayed him, sleep fled him, sport offered only a temporary reprieve, and Society — well, look at what his venture into Society had almost done to him! And now, here he was alone, in a strange public house, on his third glass, and with not even the comfort of a friend to keep him from getting ape-drunk. How had he come to such a pass? He retrieved the brandy glass and raised it in toast to himself. “To the World’s Greatest Fool!”
“Oh, I would hazard you have rather heavy competition for that title, old man!” Dy sat down heavily in the chair across from him, his face drawn and tired.
“Where did you come from?” Darcy demanded without looking up and then downed a significant portion.
“The back door,” Dy replied casually. “I know the owner. He told me you have been drinking this.” He placed a new bottle of brandy on the table. “But I did not realize that he meant by the bottle. Let me call for some ale or, better yet, some coffee —”
“This will do very well.” Darcy cut him off and took up the bottle, placing it next to his original before pouring his friend a glass.
Dy eyed him speculatively. “I believe the last time we did something like this was the first time we met.”
“I believe you are right.” Darcy held up his glass.
“To old friends.” Dy tipped his glass against Darcy’s and joined him, then sank back into the chair with a sigh.
“Well, ‘old friend.’ ” Darcy nursed his glass, watching the brandy swirl. “Are you finished playing footman for the night, or must you toddle off soon to play next as my lady’s maid?”
“I suppose I deserve that, but I had hoped better from you, Fitz,” Dy returned steadily. “I had also thought to find you sober enough to hear my explanation,” he added as his friend took another drink.
Darcy raised a brow at him. “I’m sober enough to hear your miserable excuses for deceiving me…deceiving me into thinking you had abandoned your reason in favor of…of what? I never could fathom it, but I still counted you as friend.” To emphasize the point, he replenished their glasses and, picking up his, lifted it to Brougham. “To old friends.”
“We already drank to that,” Dy drawled, a wry smile relaxing the tension in his face. He tipped his glass to Darcy’s all the same and closed his eyes as the liquor warmed his senses. “Oh, what a night!” He
shook his head and then leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and studied his friend. “And now I have you to contend with. Were you in charge of your faculties, I might know what to do; but three sheets —”
“Two,” Darcy interrupted. “Haven’t reached three…yet.”
“Every bit of three sheets to the wind,” Brougham insisted with a snort. “I do not think I have seen you bosky since that first meeting at university! It was over women then, and we both forswore them at the time, if I recall.” At the remembrance, he suddenly sat up straighter, a look of alarm upon his face. “This is not about Lady Monmouth, I hope!” He gestured to the half empty bottle.
“Sylvanie?” Darcy peered intently at Brougham’s face, the better to bring it into focus. “You must be mad!”
“You are not the first to think so!” His Lordship lapsed into thought. “You seemed rather taken with her tonight, and it naturally occurred —”
“Nothing ‘natural’ about Sylvanie, I assure you.” Darcy laughed bitterly. Then, in a more pensive tone, he continued. “Nor any female, come to that! Not to be trusted, not a one of them — from first to last!”
“That is quite a sweeping condemnation!” Brougham sat back and folded his arms across his chest.
“But true, nonetheless.” Darcy leaned forward and set down his glass. “In their girlhood they learn how to twist men about their fingers, beginning with their fathers, then…” He stabbed at the table with a finger. “Then, they start working their wiles on every honest-hearted man that crosses their path, turning him into a beef-witted Jack Pudding before he knows what he’s about!”
“Indeed?” Brougham’s eyebrows rose.
“Indeed!” Darcy returned and took another drink. He hardly tasted it now, but the fiery liquor seemed to flow into the gaping fissures of his wounds. “Ungrateful, teasing creatures!” he continued as his friend made himself comfortable, “designed by Nature to drive a man mad. They look up at you with eyes that leave you breathless and then steal your soul!” His voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Beautiful eyes that promise a paradise you alone may explore.” He placed his glass down carefully on the table.
“And then?” His Lordship asked quietly after several minutes had passed in silence.
“Then, when a man’s guard is down and his hand is out, they turn on him.”
“Touché?” Brougham quizzed him.
“Touché and the whole damned engagement!” Darcy slumped back into his chair and rubbed at his temples. “Deceitful, May-gaming wenches, the lot of them!”
“Undoubtedly you are right,” His Lordship agreed indifferently. “Perhaps Benedick’s course is the wisest after all, and every man should do himself ‘the right to trust none.’ ”
“Hear, hear.” Darcy, raised his glass, the brandy sloshing dangerously.
Brougham lifted his as well. “To the forswearing of all the race of Deceitful Women…especially those of Kent!”
Darcy lowered his arm in flushed confusion. “Kent? Who said anything of Kent?”
His Lordship looked at him quizzically. “Why, you did; did you not?”
“Did I?” Darcy’s brows lowered in perplexity with his faltering grasp on the conversation. “No, no, the trap was merely set there…in the park.”
“In the park?” Brougham questioned, then his face cleared with recollection. “Oh, yes, Rosings Park! Your aunt’s estate. Well then, it must be the Deceitful Women of London Who Visit in Kent that we are forswearing. And Heaven knows, I heartily agree with you there! To the Deceitful — No?” He stopped his toast as Darcy began to shake his head.
“Hertfordshire!”
“Oh, Hertfordshire!” he expressed with surprise. “Cannot say that I know much about the women of Hertfordshire, not enough to forswear them, I’m sure! You must enlighten me first, my friend.”
A look of supreme distaste crossed Darcy’s face. “They breed them like rabbits in Hertfordshire, at least five to a family! They have tabby cat mothers who do nothing but lie in wait for a likely gentleman to pounce upon and leg-shackle to their daughters, all of whom scamper as they please like hoydens about the countryside running after red coats!”
“In Hertfordshire?” Brougham returned with amazement. “I had no idea it was such an interesting place!”
“Interesting!” Darcy set his glass down with such force that the contents sloshed out, soaking the ruffle of his cuff and sleeve. “Blast!” He pushed away from the table, but not before some had dripped onto a leg of his trousers. His outburst caught the attention of the pub’s young serving wench, who hurried over with a piece of toweling, but upon closer examination of her patrons, she also drew out the clean handkerchief that had served her as bodice lace.
“Here, dearie,” she cozened Darcy as she dabbed the frilly square of cheaply scented holland about his sleeve. “None the worse!”
Withdrawing from her ministrations, he commandeered the piece of cloth with a tersely polite “Thank you, miss,” and bent unsteadily to employ it upon his trouser leg.
“Yer welcome, I’m sure!” she simpered back to him, but as he did not immediately look up from his endeavor, she flounced away to more appreciative customers.
When he carefully sat back up, it was to behold Brougham’s amused countenance. “Certainly you were in no danger in this disreputable shire; your way with women must surely have insulated you against any such encroaching or shocking females as you have described!” He paused as Darcy returned him a scowl. “Or perhaps not all were so shockingly behaved or enamored of red coats and gold shoulder braid?”
“Ha!” Darcy snorted, absently tucking the handkerchief into his coat pocket. “Dress the blackest villain in a red coat and he is instantly a saint whose whispered lies are more to be believed than another man’s entire life and character!”
“Ah, a Serpent in the Hertfordshire garden!” His listener nodded sagely as Darcy took up his glass again and, noting that most of the brandy had spilled out, reached for the bottle. Brougham’s hand forestalled him. “Here, Fitz, allow me,” he drawled and poured him short. “Enough for our vow,” he explained to Darcy’s displeased frown, “which I take us to be offering up against your Hertfordshire Eve. Yes…” His Lordship waxed eloquent as Darcy looked on him in growing confusion. “A highly appropriate metaphor when one thinks on it. Serpent in the garden, Eve in the park — which is really nothing more than a large Garden, you understand — whispers in her ear, Eve figuratively ‘bites’ and then serves you — our Adam — the core of bitter fruit. Yes, the symmetry is near perfect!”
Darcy’s glass hit the table again. “What the Devil are you talking about? I have never been in a garden with a woman named Eve!”
“Then of whom are we speaking?” Brougham asked innocently.
“Elizabeth, you idiotish wretch!” Darcy ground back at him. “Elizabeth!”
“Oh, is that the deceitful wench’s name! Elizabeth!” Brougham looked relieved. “Then I may now in all good conscience offer the vow.” He stood and lifted his glass as his companion fumbled for his own. “To the forswearing of Elizabeth, Ungrateful, Deceitful Wench…”
Darcy brought his arm back down, his mind a muddle. Forswear Elizabeth? She would never be his, he knew that well enough, but to vow against her? Curse even the memory of her? It was not even remotely possible!
“…an Unworthy Creature of the lowest order…”
Darcy stared hard at his friend. Lowest order! Elizabeth? What did he mean by that? “No, not-not low,” he mumbled as a vision of Elizabeth easily, graciously holding her own against his aunt’s imperious demands flashed through his mind.
“…Despoiler of the Hopes of honest men…”
“No, not low,” he argued a bit louder against the laughter that Brougham’s oration was provoking across the room. His speech had by now attracted the attention of the pub’s other patrons, who being already primed for any sort of mill, regarded a show provided by the gentry as especially entertaining.
�
��…and, let us not forget, Tease, who after having led them on an intoxicating chase down the garden, or rather, park path…”
“No!” Darcy bellowed as he attempted to stand. The room swayed and howled with mirth, refusing to come clearly into focus.
“A Disgrace to — Pardon me?” Brougham inquired loftily. “I believe I was in the midst of —”
“How dare you, sir!” Finally, Darcy had found his feet and rose, belligerently intent upon putting an end to Dy’s slanderous speech. “How dare you bandy about Elizabeth’s name in a public house and in such an infamous manner!”
“Darcy.” Dy began in a conciliatory tone, but his companion would have none of it.
“You are speaking of a lady, sir!” He was interrupted by jeers from across the room. “A lady,” he insisted passionately over their calls, “of incomparable worth!”
“Darcy.” Stepping between his friend and the pub’s raucous patrons, Brougham laid an earnest hand upon his arm. “I would be honored to drink to such a lady…providing you sit down, my friend.”
Eyeing him at first with some suspicion, Darcy slowly resumed his seat as Brougham did the same. For a time, they sat in silence as Darcy tried to read his friend’s face through his self-inflicted haze but, he concluded, Dy was such a changeling to begin with that his state of inebriation was hardly a factor in the effort. With as much acuity as he was able to bring to bear, he searched Dy’s face, and what he saw in his old rival and friend’s countenance was a sincerity of concern and a warmth of sympathy that were impossible to discount as mere playacting. No, the playacting had been the ridiculous toast, the posing as a servant, maybe even the whole frivolous persona he had presented to the world for the last seven years! But here, now, was his truest friend in the world come back from a very long journey, and the timing of his return was impeccable.
Brougham broke their silence with a sigh and then, with a wry smile, leaned his elbows once more upon the table and looked Darcy square in the eye. “I think you had better tell me about her, old man,” he prescribed, his voice compassionate but firm. “She must, indeed, be of incomparable worth if she has so won your heart.”
