Page 37 of The Cheapside Runners
Darcy weighed in. “I applaud both Miss Elizabeth’s thinking, and you taking up the yoke—but why use your sister as the excuse? If you want to abandon Miss Bennet, abandon her. The ball alone gave sufficient reasons without leaning on your sister’s rather suspect opinion. If you want to proceed with her, write to Mrs Nichols and reopen the house. If you want to think about it, write to her father that you are delayed but expect to return. At the very least, you owe it to your staff to make certain any servants were properly paid off and the house properly closed if you are not to return.”
“Oh ho! This I have to hear,” the colonel chuckled. “Now I know not what I am more anxious about—Bingley’s explanation, or what in the world has you sticking your nose in. Mayhap Bingley was not the only one interested in Hertfordshire?”
“I admit that I have aninterestin Hertfordshire, though not of the matrimonial variety, which I will expound on presently… but let us not confuse poor Bingley with too many topics at once.”
Bingley laughed, returning a bit to something approaching his customary humour.
“I was becoming quite enamoured with Miss Bennet, but blood and thunder, did you notice her family at the ball?”
Darcy ground his teeth. “That I did! I hadfinallygotten more or less into Miss Elizabeth’s good books, or at least out of her bad books. I danced the supper set and dined with her, but—”
“OH HO!” the colonel bellowed before he could even finish. “You danced thesupper set? Voluntarily?”
“Yes, well—”
“This I must hear!”
“I would be done by now if you had not interrupted.”
“Carry on, good sir. Pray, carry on. I am all ears.”
“We are not finished with Bingley yet.”
“I believe I can keep track,” Bingley said. “Besides that, theyaresisters, so the two stories are related. Might as well give the colonel the whole picture.”
The colonel laughed while Darcy sighed. “You just want me to shoulder the load.”
“And who better?” Bingley said, mostly back to his normal mood, which may or may not have been helped by his second or third glass of port.
Darcy looked pensive while the colonel said, “So… the Misses Bennet?”
“It all started at the assembly, at least I thought so for the first month.”
Bingley sat up curiously, “Do tell! If you know more, it is news to me.”
Darcy wondered how much to actually tell his friend. The man was trustworthy, but every person who knew about Georgiana was one more person who could slip at an inopportune time, and his sister becoming aware would be a calamity beyond measure, so discretion should be the order ofthe day.
“It was a country assembly, probably much like any other when there is new blood for the matchmakers. Naturally, Bingley went to thehandsomest woman in the room. The eldest Miss Bennet is not exactly to my taste, but she is handsome by any measure.”
“And you stalked around the edges like a prowler.”
“Not quite. You remember Mr Gardiner?”
The colonel’s interest was piqued as he poured one more glass. “He of the insipid-fortune-hunting Cheapside nieces?”
“Exactly,” Darcy said while Bingley’s ears perked up like a hunting dog. He had never heard a peep about any of that.
Darcy told a sanitised version of the Cheapside story, omitting the inconvenient fact that he was there because the man rescued his sister, from an ill-thought-out elopement. Instead, he focused on his own faux pas. Fortunately, Bingley was too fascinated with the story to question such minor details as why he might agree to meet such nieces in the first place.
“Believe it or not, I returned hat in hand a week later to apologise, but Mr Gardiner said his niece had returned to the country. I spoke to him for an hour or more and he gave some excellent advice. I decided to listen, for once in my life, and try to be a better man. Naturally, that meant I should dance with the ladies. After all, they outnumbered the men by a noticeable margin, and itisthe duty of a gentleman.”
The colonel jumped up out of his seat and put his hand on Darcy’s forehead before sitting back down. “No fever… must be madness.’
Darcy chuckled but allowed him his amusement.
“I was unaware you even knew how to hold your hat in your hand, Darcy.”
“One must start somewhere.”
