These Three Remain (35 page)

Could he hold to such a resolve? Any idea of her love as his reward must be put aside. Even were they to meet, it must be as indifferent acquaintances. But no matter! He would honor this woman who had scorned his station and state to her own hurt and brought him to see himself. He would do it, he swore, by striving hour by hour, unseen and unremarked, toward a conduct of his life that would have gained Elizabeth Bennet’s approval.

Darcy made for his desk and, seating himself, reached for his pen and knife. He would need a well-pared instrument for this project. Trafalgar hoisted himself up from his recumbent position next to the settee and padded over to where his master labored. With a sigh followed closely by a grunt, his haunches hit the carpet, and he turned inquiring eyes upon the figure in the chair. Darcy looked over from his task with a ghost of a smile. “Bored are we?” Trafalgar’s regard did not waver. “There is no hope of going out in this rain,” he told the dog flatly and, having finished a fine, strong point to his pen, set down the knife. “And even were it a perfect day, I could not oblige you. I have pressing business of a reformational nature, which you” — he bent a censorious eye upon his hound — “would do well to imitate, Monster.” Trafalgar sniffed in answer and sank down once more upon his stomach, propping his muzzle upon his paws. “So say you, but it is long overdue.” Darcy turned back to his desk and drew forth a sheet of paper before dipping the pen into the inkwell. His brow furrowed, and for a moment he hesitated. Then, adjusting his grip, he put the point to the sheet and wrote, “A Gentlemanly Manner.” He underscored it twice. “Long overdue,” he addressed the hound lying beside him, “for both of us.”

Several days later, following Darcy’s weekly session at Genuardi’s, his cousin Richard caught him up for the first time since their return from Kent. They had not parted on the best of terms, Richard having tried to tease Darcy out of his “sulks,” as he had named them, and he near taking his cousin’s head off his shoulders in return. So Richard had taken himself off, lending himself wholeheartedly to his military duties at the Horse Guards and his social duties to the female portion of Society, leaving Darcy to his own devices until such time as Darcy had regained his humor or Richard was in want of pocket money, whichever came first.

“What ho, Cousin!” Richard’s wide grin appeared as Darcy lowered the towel from his face. Genuardi had pushed him hard; it had felt good. It was good to see his cousin again too.

“Richard! Come for some practice? Regain your edge? I’ll stand you!” He motioned to the fencing floor.

“Oho, no thank you, Fitz!” He shook his head in mock horror. “I heard about your ‘practice’ with Brougham and have no desire to be publicly humiliated or worse. Came to see if you might be thirsty after all your exercise. Drop by Boodle’s perhaps.”

“Excellent!” Darcy said, glad for the opportunity to mend this most important of fences. “Give me a few moments.” When he had dressed, they sauntered up St. James’s Street and on to the club, Richard letting fall family news and select bits of drollery from military life as they went. Finally, when they were nursing glasses across a table from each other, Richard paused, lifted his, and then lapsed into an uneasy silence.

“Is there something in which I might be of assistance?” Darcy asked quietly when enough time had passed.

“Well, I could always use another win or five at billiards, you know.” Richard’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. “But that is not why I sought you out.”

“Regardless of your reason, I am glad you did.” Darcy leaned toward him. “I was insufferable, a veritable bore on our journey back from Kent. I do not know how you swallowed your spleen or resisted the temptation to plant me a facer, for I surely deserved it.”

“It might have something to do with the results of that quite physical exchange we had in Rosings Park, which left me with some nasty bruises!” Richard chided him, then changed his tone to a nasal whine. “Besides, I was wearing my best traveling waistcoat and did not want it ruined with blood — yours or my own!”

“And you a colonel in His Majesty’s —”

“Never mind that!” His cousin cut him off and, laughing, lifted his glass again, and again brought it down with an air of hesitant sobriety.

“You had better tell me what it is before it chokes you.” Darcy eyed his cousin over the rim of his glass.

“It has taken me the greater part of a day and a night to decide whether to tell you at all, old man, so give a fellow some time!” His cousin lifted his glass in salute to him and downed what remained. Setting it down with slow precision, he glanced up at him. “I have seen her. Miss Bennet. Here in London.”

Everything went still as Richard’s words slowly took on sense and meaning. Elizabeth in London — now? “Where?” he asked hoarsely.

“At the theater last night. She was with a small party, an older gentleman and his wife and a lovely creature whom I take to be her sister. And, of course, Miss Lucas.”

“Did you speak to her?” Darcy could not help but ask. He grasped the smooth solidity of his glass as if it could steady him.

“No, I did not think it wise even if I had been able to reach her, for there was a fearful crowd on the floor. I do not believe she saw me. She looked…”

“Yes?” Darcy prompted.

“She looked well, as she always does, even amid the opulence. I believe she watched the audience as much as she did the players.”

Darcy almost smiled. Of course she would. Had she not professed herself a student of character?

“I hope I have done the right thing in telling you, Fitz.” Richard’s concern was genuine. “I could not convince myself that you would not wish to know, yet damned if I wanted to be the one to tell you. Better forewarned, I thought, than chance that you might come upon her unprepared or never know that she is here and…and…”

“You did the right thing, Cousin, and I thank you for it.” Darcy nodded slowly, then took a long pull at his drink. Gracechurch Street. Time…he needed time to think.

“Will you…” Richard stopped and looked away.

“Will I…?”

“Will you…ah, be escorting Georgiana to services Sunday?” His cousin’s recovery was admirable, Darcy had to admit that.

“Yes, I will. A new clergyman Brougham desires me to forward for installation will be conducting the service, and —”

“ ‘Brougham desires!’ ” Richard’s incredulous guffaw attracted stares and uplifted brows from every corner of the club’s dining room. “You must be joking! Oh, that is rich, Cousin.”

Darcy flushed with annoyance at his slip. Naturally, such a statement would be viewed by the world as ludicrous and in perfect opposition to the persona Dy tried to portray.

“I should almost wish to see such a clergyman as would attract Brougham’s attention.” Richard continued to laugh.

“Then why not come?” The challenge had sprung from his lips without thought and more for the sake of turning the conversation away from Dy than anything else. “Her Ladyship would be pleased, I have no doubt, to hear from your lips an opinion of this new man, and His Lordship —”

“His Lordship would not believe a word of it, but Pater will defer to Mater on this one. Hmm.” Richard sat back and pondered the advantages and disadvantages of his cousin’s proposal. That he considered it at all meant that his pockets were already to let, or near to it, for the quarter.

“A game of billiards might be had later.”

“Five,” Richard shot back.

“So, that is how the land lies?” Darcy’s brow rose. “Three.”

“Done!” His cousin grinned. “Shall we order another round?”

“We?”

“Oh, only in the broadest sense, Fitz. I have not yet won your money!”

Several days later found them elbow to elbow in the Darcy-Matlock pew on a warm May Sunday. In the intervening time, Darcy had not tried to see Elizabeth, nor had he any business, real or imagined, in the vicinity of Gracechurch Street that might make a chance meeting possible. There would have been no point in it. The last thing Darcy wished to behold was the tight look of politeness, or the hurried excuses to be gone that such a meeting would generate. He would deserve no better in return for that uncharitable letter that he would give almost anything now to have written differently. No, it was better to retain his memories of her in a gentler hue. She would not be in London long. Opening his prayer book, he nudged a corner into Richard’s arm and pointed to the scripture for the day as Dy’s clergyman began the reading.

The shadows were lengthening, the corners of his study already in darkness, when Witcher knocked and delivered a calling card. “Who is it?” Darcy asked, reaching for the card.

“The Honorable Mr. Beverly Trenholme, sir. I cannot say that I recall the gentleman.” The old butler’s brow wrinkled in distress. “But he says he is an old friend.”
Trenholme!
Darcy thought.
What in the world…?

“Yes, Witcher, but from university days. I do not believe he has ever called on me here in Town. I spent some time after Christmas with him and his brother, Lord Sayre, in Oxfordshire.”

“Oh, begging your pardon, sir. Of course, Oxfordshire!” Witcher shook his head. “Shall I bring him in, sir?”

“Please, Witcher. There’s a good man.” Darcy rose, straightened his waistcoat, and pulled at his cuffs, the habitual motions helping to clear the tumble of questions Trenholme’s sudden appearance had provoked. Dy’s warning stood out starkly from among them all, and Darcy wondered whether agreeing to see the man might be more than Brougham would think wise.

The door opened. “Mr. Trenholme, sir.”

“Darcy! It is good of you to see me!” Trenholme advanced into the room, one hand extended. In the other was a handle attached to a long, thin leather case.

“Trenholme.” Darcy nodded his greeting and took his hand. It felt cold, and he could almost swear that it trembled as they shook. “Please, be seated.” Trenholme pulled forward a chair and then, after laying the case gently on the desk, he sat down with a sigh.

“Can you believe that it has been almost four months since last we saw each other?” He sighed again. “Such an awful business. Sayre and I are more than grateful that you have kept mum about my step-mother’s suicide and Sayre’s financial straits. It only postponed the inevitable, but one is glad for whatever time the wolves may be kept from the door.”

“It is over, then?” Darcy asked evenly.

Trenholme shook his head. “I will not pretend it is not, not with you. Everything movable has been stripped and delivered here for auction at Garraway’s. The estate itself goes on the block at the end of the week.” A look of murderous hatred shaded Trenholme’s face. “It should have been mine! Sayre never cared about anything more than the coin he could wring from it for one more go at the tables. And then that Irish b ——!” His voice rose. “Turned our own people against us. You watch her, Darcy! Watch her for the lying little traitor she is! She’ll stab you in the back without a thought.”

“What do you mean?” Darcy stared hard into Trenholme’s eyes while in his mind he tried to piece together names, faces, and conversations from his fractured memories of Sylvanie’s soiree. “Traitor? What do you know?”

“What I know is that, between her and Sayre, I no longer have enough money to get drunk on, which is the only state in which I do not wish to send them to —” He stopped. “That is not why I have come. I came to deliver this.” He leaned forward and nudged the case toward his host. “You won it fairly, and it should not be sold to pay one farthing toward Sayre’s debts.”

Darcy opened the case; his breath caught in his throat. The Spanish sword lay there, cradled in velvet. It caught the lamplight immediately he picked it up, blazing in a living fire.

“I may be a coward and a drunk, but I know what is right in a debt of honor. Sayre will damned well pay this one!” Trenholme declared with vehemence.

Darcy hefted it, adjusting his grip on the pommel. It was every bit as perfectly suited to his hand as he remembered.

“Trenholme, I hardly know what to say!” Darcy placed the exquisite weapon back in its velvet swathing.

“There is nothing to say. It has been yours since that night, and you had every right to it all these months. You certainly had enough witnesses to go to the Law if you had wished. Sayre should be grateful that you did not, grateful enough to have sent this to you himself.”

“He does not know you brought it to me?” Darcy asked sharply.

“He does now!” Trenholme laughed mirthlessly and rose. “Left him a note!” He nodded his leave. “I’ll not take up any more of your time, Darcy, but remember what I said about Sylvanie. Monmouth’s taken a viper to his bosom, no doubt about that. If there is any deviltry afoot, Sylvanie will be in the thick of it, make no mistake.”

“But what will you do?” Darcy’s question stopped the Honorable Beverly Trenholme as he reached for the doorknob. There must be something! Darcy cast about for anything he could offer the man that would answer yet not offend or humiliate him.

“I am for America, I think.” Trenholme turned back. A grim smile played upon his face, but even the slight animation that lent never reached his eyes. “I hear English gentlemen are still welcome in Boston, even if tea is not.”

“Tea?” Darcy looked askance at him. “I do not believe the current grievances of the Americans have anything to do with tea, Trenholme.”

He shrugged. “I thought they sent a shipload of tea overboard into Boston’s harbor.”

“Over thirty-five years ago! Tea has been safely shipped to Boston for thirty years and more!” Darcy’s jaw worked fiercely to suppress the laugh that threatened insult to his guest. “You need have no fear of going without tea in Boston.”

“Oh. Well…” Trenholme seemed to have run out of life as well as words.
Passage!
The word pealed in Darcy’s ears.

“Wait a moment!” He left Trenholme and went to his desk, drawing out a diary from the top drawer. Flipping through the pages, he came to the section detailing his shipping interests. “If I could arrange your passage to Boston, would you take it?”

“Free passage?” Trenholme’s eyes sparked faintly.

“Free passage,” Darcy affirmed. “I have controlling interest in a ship bound for Boston, but it leaves tomorrow morning. That is little time…”