Page 31 of A Most Favourable Match

“Very true, Jane,” Charlotte agreed. “In any case, Mr Darcy is of ten times Mr Wickham’s consequence. If I were you, Lizzy, I should leave any argument between them alone. It is none of your concern, after all.”

Elizabeth felt briefly mutinous. She had no intention of spreading the story more widely, but still shelonged to throw this new example of injustice in Mr Darcy’s face and make him suffer for it. Then she saw Jane’s pained expression.

“For my sake, do let it alone, Lizzy,” Jane pleaded. “Lord Grantchester has great affection for Mr Darcy, remember.”

Her self-righteous indignation dying down, Elizabeth sighed and nodded. “Very well. I was not going to tell anyone else but you two, in any case,” she said. “He did not say so, but I am sure that Mr Wickham only told me in confidence.”

Again, Charlotte’s eyes flickered with amused disbelief, glancing over to where George Wickham now sat at the card table with Mrs Philips, their heads very close together in conversation while Mr Carter dealt the cards.

“Mr Wickham tells a lot of things in confidence,” Charlotte observed with an amused smile.

“I suppose it is hard not to confide one’s grievances when one feels them so strongly,” Elizabeth retorted, still slightly put out by the reception of her revelations about Mr Darcy.

Charlotte’s smile developed a hint of contrition. “I’m sorry, Lizzy. I shall not tease you any more. Tell me, how goes your mother’s matchmaking? Mine was quite in despair at Mr Bingley’s departure.”

“Our mother lives in hope of Mr Bingley’s return,” Elizabeth replied more cheerfully, glad to set their disagreement aside. “She also lives in hope of marrying off one of our sisters to Mr Collins.”

“Really?” Charlotte questioned critically, studying their cousin, who was also now seated among the card players and holding his cards in a most foolish open-handed fashion. “A clergyman? Lydia and Kitty…Hmmm. I suppose perhaps Mary…”

“Mr Collins is Father’s heir,” Jane added. “Elizabeth and I suppose that Longbourn is the only reason Mother takes any interest in Mr Collins at all.”

“Lydia and Kitty have none,” Elizabeth confirmed. “As you say, Charlotte, perhaps Mary, although Mr Collins pays her no attention.”

“How very interesting,” Charlotte mused. To Elizabeth’s surprise, she left them not much later and strolled over to watch the whist players. Charlotte had never been much interested in cards, but perhaps she intended to improve her game.

Chapter 12

“You spent last winter in Venice, did you not, Lady Summerhill?” Darcy prompted the auburn-haired woman sitting across the Darcy House supper table from Lord Grantchester. “Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble were there in the spring.”

The soup course finished, footmen and maids rapidly cleared used bowls and cutlery from the table and replenished the wineglasses of the ten guests. Tonight, the Bingleys, the Hursts, Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble were joined by three ladies of Darcy’s wider acquaintance. All three were well-educated, well-travelled and sophisticated women in their thirties, two widows and one an unmarried lady of independent means. Georgiana was dining out, not by chance. Though Darcy certainly was not ashamed of his intentions for the evening, neither was a gathering of such sophisticates one at which his shy young sister could have felt at ease.

“Ah, I should have stayed on a few months longer if I had known I could have such good company,” answered the Dowager Marchioness of Summerhill, a discerning collector of renaissance sculpture, both on herown account and for the Summerhill estate collection on behalf of her fourteen-year-old son. “Lord Keeble has a good eye for art, and we might have joined forces.”

“Perhaps next year,” Lord Keeble suggested. “I should very much like to see your family’s palazzo and art collections, Lady Summerhill.”

“Let us pin it down now. Winter or spring?” Lord Grantchester put to Lady Summerhill. “I shall be marrying in the summer, so best not plan any travel during those months. The mosquitoes are dreadful in Venice then, anyway.”

“Autumn, and bring your new wife with you,” Lady Summerhill responded with a chuckle. “I shall entertain the new Countess of Grantchester, if you two will represent me at the auction houses. They do not always take servants seriously, I find, and God forbid a woman should bid herself. It is the only time I miss my husband, or think of acquiring another one.”

“Lady Summerhill,” Lord Grantchester reproved her laughingly. “What a thing to say! Especially with unmarried ladies present.”

“I take no offence,” Caroline Bingley assured them. “While every woman likely wishes a first husband, many do not wish a second.”

“I shall marry you, if you are ever serious about a second husband, Lady Summerhill,” offered Lord Keeble gallantly. “After all, I don’t see why Lord Grantchester should achieve married respectability and not me.”

“Propose to me in Venice, Lord Keeble, with a generous marriage contract drawn up, and perhaps we cancome to terms,” Lady Summerhill laughed. “Or at least the four of us can tour the Italian lakes together. I’m sure Lord Grantchester will not object to a foursome for his honeymoon.”

“The more, the merrier, Lady Summerhill,” Lord Grantchester agreed affably.

While Darcy personally found such levity around marriage mildly distasteful, he supposed himself to be in a minority of one at the present supper table, its guests purposefully chosen by him to create exactly this kind of atmosphere.

Or possibly he was in a minority of two, Darcy reconsidered, looking at Charles Bingley’s unsmiling face. Sipping his wine, Darcy nodded to a footman that they were now ready for the roast beef.

“Unfair, my dear Lady Summerhill!” complained a buxom, blonde-haired woman, sitting beside the monosyllabic and already wine-addled Mr Hurst, who offered no conversation whatsoever. “Too unfair to keep your new husband on the Continent where the rest of us cannot share him. The ladies of the ton cannot do without Lord Keeble in London, you know. The Season would fall apart.”

“I thoroughly agree, Lady Jefferson,” put in Mrs Hurst. “Do not let Lady Summerhill take Lord Keeble away from London for months on end. As a dancing partner, I have heard hostesses say that he is worth three other gentlemen. No ballroom would be the same.”

“Oh, very well. It seems I must let you alone, LordKeeble,” conceded Lady Summerhill with mock regret. “By popular demand, our engagement is scratched before it has even begun.”