Page 21 of The Gilded Masquerade

Your opinion on what Mr. Darcy desires is incorrect. He is not amenable to a union to a sickly wife. He is merely too noble, too honorable, to break the promise made by his relations. But yes, you’re correct about my being unready to meet my future husband. It is a shame his course has already been charted before mine has begun. As for my impertinence, I cannot deny the accusation, but I vow to change. She must if any good were to come from this experiment.

The carriage jostled and she hit her head on the cold window. “Oh! Pardon me. I must have dozed off,” she said, fixing her tiara.

“Ah, our briar rose has awoken,” Uncle said with a smile.

“You did exceptionally well this evening, my dear,” her aunt praised. “I am very pleased. Have you enjoyed yourself?”

She yawned. “Immensely. It was like a fairytale. Would you agree the spectacle outshone Mrs. Vanderbilt?”

“Quite possibly and that is a feat. Did you make many acquaintances?”

“Oh yes! I did converse with the Chanlers. Good heavens, what a test to remain incognito, but I suspect Miss Chanler did not hold me, the stranger in gold, in great favor.”

“Of course not. She deems you as competition as her last season approaches before considered a spinster.”

“I would prefer a friend than an adversary when I return home.”

“In two years, with that terrible limp of hers, she will be nothing more than a societal casualty both in town and in Newport unless she makes a match.”

“Society can be so cruel.”

“You will fare well to remember that. And what did you learn this evening?”

She knew this question would come over breakfast. “I must practice the gallopade and that the members of the ton rarely use contractions,” she laughed. In truth, she had learned so much more than she had sought to—and it had awoken something wholly foreign in her—a hunger she didn’t know she possessed or desired to satisfy.

“Nor should you—or Mr. Gardiner. What else have you learned?”

“A young woman should not laugh too much, shouldn’t speak too loud, and God help her if she is brash in the least bit.” She grinned.

“I saw you engaged with Napoleon Bonapart,” her uncle said with a chuckle, deliberately redirecting the conversation.

“It was a very short exchange about Oxford University with a very short gentleman who had a short attention span beyond his grandiloquence about his uncle’s neighboring barony. Although, he did inform me about a German patent for a mode of transportation using an internal combustion engine. I believe he referred to it as a three-wheeled motorwagen.”

Aunt closed her eyes and shook her head with a tut-tut-tut.

“I assure you, Aunt, the conversation was rather harmless. I mostly held my tongue only conceding that thermodynamic energy and the electromagnetic Ruhmkorff coil could pave the way for a plethora of new inventions before nineteen hundred, including alternating current and its vast usages!” Internally, she laughed feeling utterly wicked for fibbing about a conversation which had not taken place. Small talk with the boring elitist had proven a futile endeavor until the colonel graciously rescued her for the midnight collation.

She did, however, read about the patent when at school, and was intrigued about the possibilities. Perhaps she’ll write her father and ask his opinion on the invention and seek his counsel regarding some of the feelings Mr. Darcy aroused. With Father, she could always be herself and share everything with him—well, almost anything. Some secrets were meant to be hers alone.

Chapter VIII

A Trusted Valet

By the time Darcy found solace in his bedchamber, Grayson, a man of fifty years, had already stored the evening’s tailcoat. With the fire attended to a modest flame, his personal valet of two years, stood near the hearth, eyes lowered, hands behind his back, waiting for further instruction beyond his completed nightly duties.

Darcy loosened his scarf with a tug. His gaze fixed on the brandy already decanted, poured, and waiting for him upon the small table beside the bed. The digestif was a welcome end to the merriment and simultaneous emotional occurrences of the evening. He had never felt so much unrest. Everything took up space in his mind: the arrangement, Anne’s failing health, and the introduction of an unexpected light into his life—mysterious as she was. “Thank you, Grayson. I am in dire need of the brandy this evening.”

Turning his back to the valet, he shrugged out of his waistcoat, feeling the need to talk to someone—anyone—who might have an alternative, maybe even optimistic, opinion on the matter. His discussion with Richard in the library still gnawed at his soul.

His valet removed the tossed garment from the bed then walked into the dressing room.

“If there is nothing further, shall I retire, sir?” Grayson asked, upon returning to the chamber.

Pausing, he looked at his trusted servant. “I wish you to stay.”

“Stay, sir?”

“Yes.”