The solicitor’s expression remained carefully neutral, but in his eyes flashed a condescending sympathy, almost pity, for Darcy’s obstinate simplicity. He risked a swift glance toward Fitzwilliam, then bent his greying head to scribble down some note. For his part, Fitzwilliam’s face was one of composed innocence, and he was studying the ceiling, the bookshelves, the casement—in short, everything but Darcy.
“Have you some different advice to offer?” Darcy asked, caring little who would answer.
Fitzwilliam held his hand toward the solicitor, who cleared his throat before speaking. “Mr Darcy, certainly you are aware of therepercussions….”
“The wording must be printed with care. I suggest only that we print a contradictory rumour, declaring the previous a mistake. I need not directly accuse my aunt of falsehood.”
“Come, Darcy, she will bring the matter to a point herself. You know our aunt—she will raise such pandemonium that you will be forced to either make your accusation public or withdraw your protest and capitulate. There is no saving face in this matter.”
“With all due respect, Mr Darcy, may I recommend preparing for just such an outcome?” the solicitor added his opinion. “It may not go as poorly as the colonel predicts….”
“And yet, it may,” sighed Darcy. “Very well. Have this sent to the papers to run in the morrow’s press, and I shall make what arrangements I am able. And post a letter to Mr Hodges and Mrs Reynolds at Pemberley, asking them to come to the London house at once to oversee the hiring of new staff.”
The solicitor bowed. “Of course, Mr Darcy.”
They departed the office together, Fitzwilliam whistling some crude battlefield tune and Darcy wishing his cousin on another continent. “Well, Darcy, are you for the house now to stare down the canon? I shall happily serve as your second if she chooses swords or pistols, but if it is to be a tongue lashing, I pray to beg off.”
Darcy sank into the cushion of his carriage with a sigh. “It must be done.”
“Aye, but only a fool arrives on the field without a weapon. Have you anything in your scabbard but your own sour temper?”
“You make me sound rather like an ogre. Do I not have every right to be offended by her actions? Shall I not insist on justice?”
Fitzwilliam stretched his Hessians across the carriage and lounged more comfortably in his seat. “In the First, we have a way of sorting the new recruits who will be shot first. It is always the rash, headstrong ones, indignant and fully assured of their right to justice. The clear-headed ones with a plan and some preparation tend to survive.”
“I am not searching out the ‘plan’ of which you speak. I have already told you why that is impossible.”
“Well, I suppose it is your neck in the noose, after all.”
Darcy scowled in frustration and fell silent, staring out the window but still sensing Fitzwilliam’s laughing attentions on him. They rode on for several moments, with Darcy’s fingers drumming the cushion and Fitzwilliam’s toes tapping away to some cheerful tune of his own making.
At last, Darcy conceded. “Perhaps I shall search out this Mr Gardiner once more and learn what I can of his character.”
It seemed an eternity before the children’s nurse had all three of them properly bundled to set out for their airing. Had Elizabeth not already taken her constitutional, she might have begun to fret at the delay. The nurse appeared to consider it a slight against her abilities when Elizabeth offered to help, so she withdrew and bided her time with her sister. At last, she was informed that everyone was ready—the youngest in his pram and pushed by his nurse, the middle taking one of Elizabeth’s hands, and the eldest gaily twirling Cousin Elizabeth’s parasol.
“Where shall we go today?” she asked of them, ducking swiftly to avoid a terrible accident between the parasol and her bonnet. She hated the contraption and never used it at home, but in London, her aunt insisted, and she remembered it approximately half the time. It was but a small price to pay for the freedom of walking out, save when one of the children took charge of it.
Elizabeth gently reclaimed the item and asked her question again. “Do you prefer the fountain or the pond?”
Jenny, the younger, voiced her enthusiasm for the pond, but her elder sister Maddy had a special coin she wished to toss into the fountain. Thus, it was decided.
The children’s morning outing, it must be confessed, tended to be a far grander adventure when Cousin Elizabeth visited. This day being no exception, it was nearly two hours before the small party reversed their steps. The cranky toddler harassed his exhausted nurse in the fore, while Elizabeth with the two girls brought up the tail of their little procession. She was sauntering along merrily, humming a silly song to them, when one of them called her attention to something.
“‘Lisbeth, that man is staring at you.”
“I beg your pardon?” She turned about to identify the source of her cousin’s accusation. It washe, on the opposite side of the street, and looking as if he wished to cross over to her. “Oh! Not him again.Look away Maddy, he is not worth your trouble.”
“‘Lisbeth, he’s walking this way. I think he wants to talk to you.” Elizabeth ignored her cousin’s advice and walked on, head held high as if she had not heard.
He was not willing to permit such an easy escape. “Madam, a word, please, I beg you.”
Elizabeth sighed, drew a bracing breath, then turned to face him with her cousins’ small hands clasped within her own. Indeed, it was that same footman again, but this time he was attired rather lavishly, in a suit of clothes which might have accounted for half her father’s annual income. She arched an eyebrow. “I see that your circumstances have improved somewhat over the course of the morning.”
“Would that that were true,” he frowned. “I came to ask one more service of you, madam.”
There was a stirring to his left, and Elizabeth noted for the first time another man standing nearby. He also seemed to be dressed as a gentleman, though slightly more modestly. He may not have been so handsome as the footman, but he seemed to be surveying her with an open cheer which more than made up for any lack of symmetry to his features. Elizabeth gave a small curtsy in his direction, but as she was not properly introduced to the gentleman,it would be unladylike to speak to him. Somehow, it was less improper to speak to the ‘harmless’ footman whose bare feet she had seen, than to the pleasant-looking gentleman in his company.
She surveyed her ‘footman’ once more, wondering whom he had swindled and plundered to obtain such a vestment. “You do not appear to be in search of work any longer, and I presume you have been reunited with your…” she swept a significant glance toward the other man, “…employer. I am left to wonder what service I could possibly render you.”
