Page 38 of The Cheapside Runners
The colonel shrugged, more aware than Bingley about thereason for his cousin’s reformation but unwilling to discuss it in present company.
“Bingley proposed I dance with the next younger sister, a prettyish lady of about twenty. I had no objection to the scheme, but she disappeared before I could ask, so I chose another.”
“Right civilised of you,” Bingley quipped, then he laughed a bit and took up the story.
“Miss Elizabeth spent weeks mostly shunning Darcy for reasons known only to her. She was smooth, clever, subtle, and well-mannered about it, but by the time her sister got caught in the rain coming to dinner at Netherfield a month later, they had not even been introduced, nor had she spoken a single word to him. She even declined a dance without speaking to him.”
“That isunprecedented!Like waving red meat in front of a hungry wolf.”
“Do not be crude,” Darcy snapped, which surprised the colonel, who examined his cousin intently. He had never gotten tetchy about a woman before, so his reaction was interesting.
“Go on.”
“Miss Bingley, in a fit of even worse than usual manners, implied Miss Elizabeth avoided playing cards with us because she could not afford the stakes, whilst Hurst implied that she lacked the skill or temperament.”
“Hardly any great stroke of cognition when she was a country miss, and Hurst is little more than a professional gambler.”
“True, I suppose. She claimed satisfaction with her book, but they could just not let it go. She eventually seemed to lose her temper and snapped that if we were going to whinge all night, she may as well play. She called for Brag with five guineas as table stakes.”
The colonel whistled in admiration, since he had as good of an idea of how much a country miss was likely to have for allowance as anyone. Nobody but a suicidal madwomanor heiress wagered with months’ worth of allowance, ergo the woman must have more of the ready than would be expected.
Bingley laughed heartily. “She then proceeded to educate Caroline on what anaccomplished womanwas, whilst converting her five guineas to over twenty in less than an hour. I ended the night with a single guinea out of five.”
“One more than I had,” Darcy grumbled.
The colonel whistled in admiration again. “I would pay good money to see that.”
Darcy continued, “You can just imagine how that got my attention. She did all that whilestillavoiding saying anything directly to me. I did make some progress though. If I asked a question, she would deign to reply to the whole table if she felt like it.”
“More like if she found it useful for her card play,” Bingley quipped. “We were like lambs to the slaughter.”
“So how did she go from refusing to speak to you to the supper dance?” the colonel asked enthusiastically.
Darcy frowned till his teeth hurt.
“Your brother happened!”
“MY BROTHER!” the colonel bellowed, as was his custom when the viscount was mentioned. “What has that scapegrace done now?”
He had not spoken a word to his brother in over five years and had not had a good opinion of the blackguard for at least a decade.
His tirade was interrupted by a knock on the door, and the timely arrival of Soams with a tea cart.
~~~~~
Darcy always marvelled at his butler’s sixth sense. The man had a knack for knowing when a group of men should have some sustenance, requested or not. He sometimes speculatedthe man’s hearing was simply good enough to hear glass clinking and detect when the ratio of spirits to food was likely to lead to disagreeable tasks for butler and valet, or he had some other sensibility. That said, he could just as well have determined that three men in a room for an hour were almost certainly up to no good, and they should probably be interrupted.
Either way, the intervention was timely. The men tucked into a simple cold meal of bread, meat, cheese, lemonade, and strong coffee. They deferred all serious discussion as they ate, so had to fall back on the age-old male conversational gambits of boasting and exaggerating.
Eventually, the meal came to a close, so they reluctantly continued.
“All right,” the colonel finally said. “What has Andrew done this time?”
With that, Darcy spent the next ten minutes describing the confrontations, first with Miss Elizabeth and thence with the viscount, along with the entirely pointless effort he had made with the earl to rein his cousin in.
The colonel asked, “How could you not know Andrew was a rogue?”
“I suppose I never really thought about it. I have spoken maybe a hundred words to him in the last decade. I mostly ignore him, and he rarely if ever comes into my presence. I nearly came to blows with him my last year at Cambridge over his attempt to weasel me out of enough money to pay some gambling debts, and I have steadfastly ignored him ever since.”
