I could not resist the challenge, so I did something I never did with anyone but my sister. I raised my voice and recalled what I could. “The taaaaaallllking! Every event requires discussions about where it is, and so on and so forth and all of those are repeated a dozen times or more, in half a dozen drawing rooms.”
She laughed gaily and I joined in.
“And your support project?”
“Your book-buyer is excellent. We finally completed our inventory, so I visited the man during a visit to my uncle. He very kindly explained that my father’s estate would not be his first entail, or even his dozenth. He showed me a warehouse full ofpacking crates and claimed he could clean a library in a matter of hours like a swarm of locusts. He even volunteered to refill the shelves with absolute rubbish for a modest fee.”
I laughed long and hard, enjoying the fact that she was willing to repeat something that would be considered a touch vulgar by most ladies of her age and station. Naturally, the matrons of London said far worse day in and day out when they were alone, but I saw little point in mentioning that.
She sighed ruefully, “I was astonished by the sums available. There is over £1,000 in books, and my father did nothing to recover the funds. I almost challenged him on it, but—”
“But… what?” I asked as if skating on razor thin ice.
She sighed resignedly. “I have tried several times to discuss such things, and he did just what you alluded that first year. Remember that… I was fourteen and dumb as a post at the time.”
She did not seem upset by her self-condemnation, so I chose to treat it as a teasing jest. “Perhaps not a post. You could have at least competed with a goose.”
She laughed gaily, and I was not unhappy with the result.
She shook her finger at me like a particularly exasperated governess. “Do you remember what you said?”
“I remember quite a few things, so it would be speculation to guess what exactly you mean.”
“You asserted that some men would pat me on my head like a wayward puppy and tell me to go back to my embroidery… or something like that.”
“Ah, I remember… though I do not recall any mention of puppies.”
“I can imagine you mentioning such cute creatures now, but back then, well, I was certain you spent most of the meeting wondering what kind of stupidity you had engaged yourself in and when the torture would end.”
“Actually, I can remember being impressed with a—”
I started choosing my words carefully, so she beat me to it. “—a precocious child… a brat… a little hellion. You need not own to it.”
“I shall neither admit nor deny any or all such assertions, though you are welcome to add spitfire to your list of things I may or may not have thought.”
She laughed gaily, which reminded me very much of one of my good friends. There was an infectious joy in her character that had completely escaped the Darcy line some generations back—if it ever existed in the first place. I most certainly had little of it, and given that most of what I remembered of my father was after my mother’s death, I could not remember much there either. Of course, my grandfather killed a man in a duel, so I doubted he was a bundle of joy either.
“How is your sister doing, Mr Jones? Did you send her to school in the end?” she asked brightly.
“I did, and I believe it is working well enough so far. She is a rather shy and timid child… nothing at all like you.”
She laughed gaily and shook her finger again.
“She does not seem to be making very many friends, but there are a few, and given that she shares my reticence, I suppose I cannot expect more.”
“You? Reticent?” she snapped in shock, then laughed. “You are most certainly not reticent.”
“Ah, but this room is a special case. If you ever met me at a ball, you would hardly know me.”
“I am all astonishment,” she said suspiciously. “What is the problem if I might ask? Husband hunters or worse?”
I sighed and was thinking about what I could or could not say, so she impatiently continued in a gravelly approximation of a man’s voice.
“See here, Mr Jones, my Mathilda is quite in her looks, is she not. Mr Jones, My Agnes plays the pianoforte like an angel, though I suppose I must ruefully admit she sings like a scalded cat. Jones! Take a look at this rifle. Practically bags birds by the dozen without even aiming. You need at least a dozen! Why, Mr Jones, you must get in on this investment… one-hundred percent returns or more, and there are only fifty shares left! Mr Jones, you have not been at Almac’s in a month, nor have you danced with a single debutant in a fortnight—What is wrong with you?—”
She carried on in that vein for a good five minutes, until we were both in tears. The worst part was that she was obviously trying to produce the most absurd ideas she could manage, but at least half of them had happened to me at one time or another.
I finally settled down and could see we were running out of time.
