“Cheer up, Lizzy,” chirped Kitty. “Just wait until Mother tells you all about the new colonel. He is a duke’s son!”
London
July 1900
“Darcy,myearsmustbe deceiving me. Tell me you have not fallen to the arts of that chit from the wilds of America. Why did you not send her packing at once?”
Darcy’s knee bounced as he sought words to appease his relation. “The ladies had nowhere else to turn, Aunt. They may indeed have no claims upon our family, but no gentleman could turn them out, friendless and distraught as they are.”
“Distraught!” The Dowager Countess of Matlock waved her lace handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “If anyone has reason to be so, it must be I—just widowed, and now this news about my dearest boy! Certainly not this nameless hussy of no family and no class. What connection can she possibly have to my son? It is all a sham and a lie, Darcy, and I cannot fathom how you have succumbed to her ill-gotten tale of woe.”
“I have the truth of it in Richard’s own hand, Aunt—or, at least, enough of it that I believe the rest she has summarised for me. Richard wrote of her while he was there, and then again after he reached South Africa.”
“He told you he was married? I do not believe it.”
“Not in so many words…” Darcy hesitated. “He spoke of the lady and that there was something more he wished to tell me, but I suspect his sense of delicacy and the demands of his circumstances prevented him from writing all. It was an exceedingly short note, barely more than an assurance of his safe arrival in Cape Town. One does not entrust the announcement of his marriage to such an abbreviated missive. He said he would write again soon, but he never did.”
“That girl has presumed upon us during a time of tragedy. I will not have her polluting my house, and I insist you send her away from yours before my niece is infected with her atrocious manners.”
“I have not found her manners to be particularly wanting. Uncultured, to be sure, but not deliberately so. She flaunts all that alarming frankness of her breed and is understandably unsettled just now, but she is not impolite or demanding, and neither is her sister. Their male escort—a cousin from what I understand—is less prepossessing.”
“Darcy, do you not hear yourself? She is not alone and friendless! Turn her out, I say, and let her trouble another family with her lies!”
“What is this?” Reginald Fitzwilliam, recently made ninth Earl of Matlock, breezed into the room, still fussing with his buttons. “Mother, you will have all the servants listening at the doors. Lower your voice, I insist.”
“I shall do no such thing!” retorted his lady mother. “Have you not heard what Darcy has done? That creature who tried to call last week, claiming a relation to us, has asserted that Richard married her while he was in America. And Darcy has taken her in, offered her party hospitality, of all things!”
Matlock shifted wide eyes to Darcy. “You don’t say. Richard married? I do not believe it.”
“She appears to have a legitimate marriage certificate. I was no more inclined to credit her story than you, but from piecing together the facts I know with what she has told me, I believe she is truthful. If that be the case, and she is married to Richard, it is our duty to see her cared for until…”
A choking sound from his aunt stopped him, and Darcy paused and lowered his eyes in sympathy. He had not been without his own private displays of grief, but a mother was permitted some more public liberties. His poor aunt had not been at all herself since her husband’s sudden death less than a fortnight earlier, and now this.
“There, there, Mother,” Reginald soothed. “They will have this all sorted out in no time, you shall see. No one simply disappears from the battlefield. Richard’s rank is some protection—like enough, he was captured for ransom.”
Darcy leaned slightly forward. “Have you heard anything?”
“Not yet, but I have made inquiries. I was just over at Whitehall again this morning. If someone captured him for money, they will get it. It turns my stomach to bargain with such tactics, but for Richard’s sake, I would barter with the devil.”
“You have my full support, whatever the demand. I hope they will be satisfied with English gold.”
“Thank you, Darcy. I knew we could count on your help. Now, Mother, let me ring for your maid. Darcy and I have some matters to discuss, and we should not like to burden you with such talk.”
The dowager countess sniffed and tossed back her shoulders. “You needn’t coddle me as if I were some fainting lily. Was it not I who raised two fine sons and kept the estate solvent while my husband found his amusements elsewhere? But I know very well when a woman’s sentiments are not wanted in the room. You need not ring, for I am perfectly capable of finding my own way. I shall bid you a good day, Darcy, and heed my words! That strumpet will bring nothing but trouble.”
Darcy stood as his aunt rose. “Good afternoon, Aunt.”
Reginald sighed in relief as she departed, then beckoned to a side table. “Dear Mother! That telegram nearly killed her, you know. We all thought it could never happen! Do not be too much put out with her, for it is only the shock of it all that has brought on this pettiness.” He poured them each a snifter of brandy, then sagged into a chair with his glass.
“You needn’t apologise for her. We are all out of sorts over the affair.” Darcy finished his drink and set the empty glass aside, turning it thoughtfully on the surface of a side table. “Have you thought of writing directly to some of his fellow officers in the Derbyshires? His superiors may be restricted to the official line, but others might be more helpful. Perhaps a more subversive approach would yield some answers.”
Reginald’s brow furrowed. “No, I had not. I wonder how I could know whom to write. I have already shaken down every secretary and general I could find, and I am now rather a conspicuously unwelcome figure about the War Office.”
“And I have already spoken with General Houghton, but he has little to do with deployed regiments. He did make an odd comment, though, that ‘sometimes these reports are in error, and corrected quickly.’”
“Then I would have it corrected at once!”
“Indeed,” Darcy replied. “I saw Bellamy at the club the day before the telegram came, and he said his cousin is stationed at Pretoria. I will ask him to send a letter for me.”
