Doubtless now that he was in London and likely to see other women who would be even more eligible, his fascination would light upon them instead. The key question that must be determined tonight was this: Could he transfer this desire to marry specifically upon Anne?
They were all there in the drawing room. Lord Matlock, his face ruddy and healthy, despite nearly being sixty years old. Lady Amelia, who smiled at Darcy and waved at him. Darcy had always liked her. Anne sat near the fire with her companion, her face rather pinched and tired, though she also smiled at Darcy. Lady Catherine sat on the center of a Chesterfield, taking up all three cushions with the force of her presence as she discoursed to the others.
It was unusual to see her and Anne this far from Rosings, as Anne’s supposed poor health usually kept her from coming to town. However in his time with knowing her, Darcy did not believe he had ever seen anything which would give him cause to believe that she could not bear children, or would be unusually likely to die in the childbed.
Upon entering the room Darcy inclined his head to his relatives, and then settled in a seat which the butler drew out for him. At least someone amongst the staff, or maybe it was his uncle or aunt, had remembered what he said when they visited him in Bath about the kinds of chairs he had found with experiment to be easiest to sit in and rise from.
“Hmph,” Lady Catherine sniffed as she looked at him. “Where is the chair I sent for your use?”
“Still blocking the doorway,” Darcy replied dryly. “I found no use for it.”
“Bah. You rather mean to say you are too stubborn to take the advice of a woman who knows better than you — you ought not insist on always going everywhere on those crutches. It would be far more dignified, and better if you were pushed around in a fine chair, decorated with a bit of gold. That is what all of my crippled friends do.”
Darcy controlled his expression and did not roll his eyes in amusement and annoyance. She was family after all. “Madam, I have discovered over my life that there is a fair amount of value in appearing tall. The crutches allow me to maintain that benefit.”
She sniffed haughtily. “Nonsense. Any well fed peasant boy can grow tall — or use crutches. A true man of worth and consequence will not expose his infirmities in such a visible way to the public eye. What a peasant boy cannot do is afford a manservant to push him everywhere — if the appearance of height is of such a concern to you, you ought to hire that tall, well fed peasant boy to push you. You might even find one who is taller than yourself. That is what will display your income and consequence to the best advantage.”
Darcy pressed his lips together to keep from smiling, and then he said, “I shallthinkupon what you have suggested.”
“And ignore it,” Lady Catherine replied peevishly. “I know that expression of yours. It is the same in all my nephews, that determination to ignore the wisdom of their elders.”
“I am delighted to see you as well, Aunt,” Darcy replied with a friendly grin that he had always known to soften Lady Catherine. “Even though I am possessed, as I apparently often am, with such a determination to ignore your wisdom.”
His smile worked on her once more, and Lady Catherine rose and delivered a kiss upon his cheek. “You look just as my sister did — the dimples and glint in your eye — when you smile in such a manner.”
After the matter of Darcy’s use of crutches was settled, the group canvassed a variety of other topics: Plans for Christmas, and where each member of the family would be. A determination upon when they would all meet for the season. A mutual agreement upon the virtues of Wellington, and their general distaste for Boney. Comments upon the excesses of the Prince Regent. And of course, as usual, there was a half hour of dispute about whether Georgiana ought to be brought out for the season next year or the year following.
Shortly before the dinner bell rang, the Matloc’s’ younger son Colonel Fitzwilliam exploded into the drawing room, all grins and bright conversation. “Darcy, I heard you came up from rusticating in the countryside — from Bath to an abandoned rural town. I’d rather have been shot in battle, but you were always odd.”
Darcy grinned and shook his hand. Richard had always been his favorite cousin, and even though their personalities were in substantial ways distinct, they never failed to enjoy time spent in each other’s company.
“Stand up now! Stand up. Let me see how you’ve come to manage those crutches — you look remarkably fine. I note how your shoulders have expanded at least two inches since I saw you in the spring.”
Darcy grabbed the crutches that he’d leaned against the armrest of the chair and pushed himself up, clicking the braces in his knees locked as he did so.
“You stand quite straight — still taller than me. The deuced fact is I’ll never win upon that matter, not without directly shooting your feet off.”
“Were you to hit,” Darcy raised his eyebrows in a manner that suggested skepticism on that score, “you would still be shorter than most gentlemen you meet, so I suggest you would derive little advantage from it.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “Mind making a display of how you walk?”
Darcy obliged by using his swinging gait to go around the room once, and then the slower gait that involved going one leg and crutch forward at a time to go around once more.
His cousin clapped Darcy on the shoulder once he’d sat down again. “Very agile — I can only think of one fellow who seems even more a master of the crutches. Man from my regiment whose lower spine was shot right through at Albuera.”
“Oh, how horrid,” Lady Amelia said. “Richard, do not say such things.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Well he certainly was shot in such a way — brawniest fellow of my acquaintance. Can manage well as anyone, even though his legs are a whole dead weight, unlike yours which I believe you said can do a little.”
In reply Darcy tapped his foot a few times. “They are only exceedingly weak, not insensible.”
“You look well, Darcy, look very well.”
“As it happens,” Darcy said laughingly, with a look at Lady Catherine, “I have been strongly advised that for the sake of my dignity I ought to leave off the use of the crutches, and limit myself to the use of a Bath chair. Were I to hire a very tall footman to push me around, it would make a fine display of my consequence.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed heartily, and he replied as Lady Catherine huffed, “Are you wholly certain that even you could afford the wages a mantallerthan yourself can command?”
“Wholly certain.”
