Page 2 of A November to Remember

She wheeled around, her skirts snapping, and swept directly across the floor towards her sister.

Darcy watched, paralysed, as the gossip was delivered. Mrs Philips arrived at her sister’s side with the momentum of a runaway coal wagon. She began to speak with violent gestures, her hands chopping through the air to illustrate the height and breadth of Darcy’s arrogance.

Mrs Bennet gasped, her hand flying to her throat. She turned her head to Darcy, her face rapidly colouring to the shade of a ripe pomegranate, and shot him a look of such icy condemnation that it would have put the most formidable tragic actresses of the Theatre Royal to shame.

Darcy stared at the young lady whose fine eyes regarded him with a fury equal to that of her aunt and mother. He then glanced at the outraged matrons, and then at Bingley. His mind, so orderly, so capable of managing thousands of acres and complex financial ledgers, had reduced itself to a single repeating thought: I have to rectify this. I must, at all costs, rectify this.

But his legs, having declared their independence from his torso, refused to move.

Bingley sighed, a sound of theatrical pity. He reached out and slapped Darcy on the back with a force that nearly dislodged his friend’s teeth.

“You always tell me to think before I speak, Darcy,” Bingley said with a rare, triumphant mockery. “Perhaps it is time you took your own advice.”

And with that parting blow, Bingley turned on his heel, bounding back to the dance floor to find the elder Miss Bennet and enjoy her smiles, exactly as Darcy had advised him.

Meanwhile, in Town...

Eating, for most people, was a tedious exercise necessary for survival. For the viscount’s little brother, it was a habit, or, more accurately, an impulse. But Lord Keathley himself cared rather less about the food than the manner in which it was offered. Being fed from the fingers of a delectable lady was, in Robert’s opinion, bliss.

Robert Fitzwilliam, Viscount Keathley, the heir to the earldom of Matlock, was currently engaged in the heroic, self-sacrificing task of being thoroughly and delightfully ruined.

The venue for this moral collapse was the private boudoir of Lady Pembroke. It was a room emanating the scents of jasmine and expensive French powder, along with the promise of imminent scandal. Pink silk draped the walls with the luxury of a gilded cocoon, and the fireplace crackled with a warmth that was positively sinful given the fog choking the London streets outside.

Robert lay sprawled over a Grecian couch, his long legs draped over the scroll-end with an ease that suggested he had been grown in that posture by a particularly indulgent florist. His neckcloth, a masterpiece of crisp, triple-starched muslin that Boodles had spent forty-five minutes arranging into a “Gordian Knot”, had been dismantled, hanging limp and unravelled over his waistcoat.

“You are too silent, Robert,” Lady Pembroke murmured, her voice a low, honeyed purr. Seated on the edge of the couch, she dangled a plump Muscat grape above his parted lips.

Robert caught the grape between his teeth, chewed with appreciation, and sighed. “I am practising the grand art of silent adoration, my dear Lady Pembroke. It is a highly taxing spiritual exercise. A man of my intense passions must occasionally rest his vocal cords, lest the brilliance of my conversational wit cause your delicate curtains to spontaneously combust.”

She laughed, gently tapping his nose with a second grape. “You are an absurd, decorative creature.”

“Decorative? I am offended to my very marrow,” Robert protested, adjusting his shoulder on the soft cushion. “I will have you know that my presence here is a monument to family duty. My mother, the countess, is in a state of frenzy regarding my future, drafting exhaustive lists of eligible heiresses categorised by their dowries and the straightness of their teeth. I am hiding here for the sake of British liberty. I am a fugitive from my family’s matrimonial ledgers, Lady Pembroke. You should be feeding me grapes out of patriotic gratitude.”

“Is that why you flee to my chambers at the slightest click of the Matlock lorgnette?” she asked, her fingers tracing the embroidered edge of his waistcoat.

“Naturally. In this room, the world cannot reach me. Here, there are no ledgers, no estates, no fathers demanding I find a purpose, and absolutely no conversations regarding the price of rye in Cornwall. Here, there is only you, the grapes, and a spectacular lack of responsibility.”

She smiled and slipped the second grape between his lips before moving her fingers upward to toy with the untied ends of his cravat. “If we are truly so safe behind closed doors... why do you still hold me at such a distance, Robert? In the privacy of my chambers, you still address me so formally. It is always ‘Lady Pembroke’ or ‘my dear Lady Pembroke.’ Why do you never call me Eleanor?”

The Muscat grape residing in Robert’s throat stopped behaving as a succulent piece of fruit and became a solid billiard ball.

He choked, coughed, wheezed, then coughed again. His toes curled inside his stockings. The warm, jasmine-scented air of the boudoir was replaced, in his mind’s eye, by the rigid atmosphere of the Matlock House drawing-room.

Eleanor.

Eleanor, Countess of Matlock, was a woman who could halt a runaway carriage with a single, well-placed squint; a woman who presided over tea tables with the authority of a grand inquisitor, dispensing social ruin alongside the scones, and who had once, during a dinner party, reduced an old duke to tears over his incorrect usage of an oyster fork. Eleanor Fitzwilliam, the Countess of Matlock, did not enter a room; she claimed ownership of it. She did not converse; she issued decrees.

To speak that name in a voice of romantic entreaty—to apply it to a beautiful woman draped across him in a state of scandalous intimacy—was not merely an egregious social blunder; it was a disaster. It was the equivalent of attempting a passionate embrace with a lover, only to turn and find oneself hugging one’s brother.

Robert’s ardour did not only deflate; it fled the premises, leaving behind a vacuum of filial terror.

“Robert?” Lady Pembroke asked, her brow furrowing as she stared down at his face, which had gone the chalky shade of a turnip that had spent too long in the cellar. “Are you well? What is it? You look as though you have just seen a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Robert croaked, his voice cracking in a manner that would have deeply satisfied a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. “No. No, indeed. Not a ghost. A... a monument. A monument of... unparalleled familial authority.”

“Robert, have you caught the putrid fever?” she asked, reaching out to touch his forehead.

“I have caught... a sudden appreciation for the boundaries of Christian nomenclature,” Robert stammered, trying to wiggle out from beneath her hand. “Lady Pembroke. Let us stick to ‘Lady Pembroke.’ It is a magnificent title. It has a... a brisk, non-threatening, non-maternal quality to it. You, however, are the maternal type, and I congratulate you, for the three sons you have provided your husband are all robust. I prefer your title, because it does not signify the imminent arrival of a countess demanding to know why I am not inspecting the drainage of my estate.”