Julie Tetel Andresen

by The Temporary Bride

  “Ah, yes, your clothes. They are of much more importance.”

  “Well, they are,” she insisted, unmoved by his irony. “Unfortunately, I packed only a few light, summer dresses in my trunk along with books and blankets and other household items, and Vincenzo’s dresses do not fit me.”

  “I suggest you take the chaise into Queen’s Porsley, then, and procure the necessary.” After an infinitesimal pause, he added, “I shall certainly give you the money to outfit yourself for the week or so.”

  Helen felt vaguely insulted. She had only wished to discuss her problem, and she had not been fishing for his assistance. She certainly did not want to be making herself free with his chaise, much less his money.

  She suppressed a sudden feeling of awkwardness and said that she had enough money to purchase some dresses herself. She thanked him for the offer of his carriage, but added that she could find better prices here in the village. “On the morrow I am sure to find a seamstress in the village who can do something for me,” she said lightly.

  “As you wish,” Mr. Darcy replied, losing interest in the topic. He offered Helen some of Mrs. Coats’s buttered beans.

  She was happy to put an end to the subject of her clothes, and they returned to their companionable conversion. “I shall be letting out seams for weeks if I continue to eat like this,” she said after a while. “I vow, I cannot eat another bite!”

  At these fateful words, the serving maid came in, labouring under a heavy tray. Helen took one look at the large salver and exclaimed, “Oh, Mr.—Richard! You are wicked”

  With a delicious mixture of surprise and delight, Helen regarded the tray, which groaned under the weight of jellies, creams, Savoy cakes, berry tarts, pastries, a cognac syllabub, a crème caramel, a thick marzipan roll and candied almonds.

  “Dessert, my dear?” he said with an innocent smile.

  “You have made me the most shocking liar, Richard, when I have just said that I cannot eat another bite!” she reproved him. But she could not maintain her dignity and went off in a peal of laughter.

  After sampling several cakes, a pastry, and a slice of marzipan, she confided that she was a little out of practice eating sweets. There had been a time, she said, when she could have given a much better account of herself. Mr. Darcy, who had selected the syllabub and some almonds, was encouraging. It was his opinion that she would soon find herself back in form. To this she retorted sharply, if somewhat thickly, for her mouth was full, that she would soon find herself sadly out of form.

  Mr. Darcy declined port, and after some random conversation over the peeling of the nuts, Mrs. Coats came in to escort Mrs. Darcy to her chambers. Since the landlady naturally expected that Mrs. Darcy would be seeing her husband again later in their chambers, Helen thought it best not to thank Mr. Darcy for the lovely meal. Instead, she threw an impish smile over her shoulder as she left the parlour, which Mr. Darcy accepted with a graceful bow.

  In a state of pleasant and satisfied drowsiness, Helen was conducted up the narrow stairway to her bedchamber. There a servant was passing a warming pan between the sheets of the comfortable bed. A fire had been kindled on the hearth. Her brush and comb were carefully laid out upon the dresser. Mrs. Coats helped her into Vincenzo’s crimson dressing gown, without remarking on the tightness of the fit, and desired Mrs. Darcy to ring the bell if she should require anything. With a respectful good night, she withdrew.

  Leaving the future of this strange adventure to take care of itself, Helen prepared to give herself up to the luxury she had not known for three years. She climbed into bed and within five minutes was deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HELEN AWOKE LATE, relaxed and refreshed, and since she was out of the habit of sipping her chocolate in bed, she rose without delay. No miraculous change in her wardrobe had occurred overnight, leaving her with no choice but to put on the dress from the day before. She twisted her hair into a loose knot and descended to the private parlour where she found Mr. Darcy with an edition of the Morning Post and a cup of hot coffee. They exchanged civilities. Helen took her place and prepared to enjoy her repast in silence, for she recognized in Mr. Darcy the sort of gentleman who was taciturn in the mornings.

  The well-fed serving maid from the night before entered the room in Helen’s wake with a fresh pot of coffee and a basket filled with breads and biscuits. Helen selected a slice of bread and poised her knife above the pots of butter and jam. Thinking of all the sweets she had eaten the night before, she put the knife down again. Mr. Darcy looked up momentarily from his paper and regarded her blandly. Helen accepted the mute challenge and proceeded to spread butter on her bread with a lavish hand.

  The tranquility of their light breakfast was soon broken by a piercing feminine shriek emanating from the region of the kitchens.

  “Good God!” Mr. Darcy said, putting down his paper. “Is murder being committed in this sleepy hamlet?”

  Recognizing this as a purely rhetorical question, Helen vouchsafed no response.

  A minute later Keithley presented himself in the parlour, looking quite pleased.

  “Good morning, Keithley. Have you executed my commissions?” his master enquired.

  “Yes, sir, and no trouble it was,” his trusty man responded, placing a small box by Mr. Darcy’s hand on the table.

  “Thank you. And have you taken care of the other matter?”

  Keithley affirmed that he had.

  “Now, Keithley, would you happen to know anything about the plight of the poor female who found it necessary to emit a highly irritating sound a few moments ago?”

  “Well, sir,” he replied, scratching his nose, “in fact, I do. It’s this way—Vincenzo is headed in our direction, and he may be dressed as a woman. He’s a crafty sort, as we both know, and could turn up anywhere. Take the kitchens, for instance! So, it occurred to me, just in the line of duty, mind you, that I had better discover if the serving wench in the kitchen really is a wench.”

  “And the verdict, Keithley?”

  “She is!” the henchman confirmed with a wide grin of satisfaction.

  Mr. Darcy admirably preserved his countenance. “You are very thorough, but I fear that your efforts are entirely unnecessary. In fact, they are unacceptable. I hope I shall not have to send you on some long and perhaps tiresome errand soon, if you see what I mean.”

  Keithley did. “It won’t happen again,” he assured Mr. Darcy, adding, “I don’t think there’s another maid back there who aroused my, ah, suspicions.”

  “That is to be hoped,” Mr. Darcy remarked. “Do you not have something to attend to now in the stables?”

  Never one to miss so broad a hint, Keithley took himself off.

  Mr. Darcy then opened the small box that Keithley had given him and presented it to Helen.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, beholding a small diamond ring sparkling against the black velvet of a jeweler’s box.

  “The topaz will just not do, my dear,” he explained, taking Helen’s unresisting hand in his and slipping off Vincenzo’s ring to replace it with the slim wedding ring. “That is a very nice fit, I think. I confess that the problem of a wedding ring did not occur to me until I saw your hand last night. You did very well to provide yourself with one, but I thought we could do better.”

  “Oh!” Helen repeated. “Would it not cause comment in a small village such as this to send your man out to buy a wedding ring for your wife?”

  “You are right,” he said. “I sent Keithley back into Trapston to procure one.”

  “Oh!” she said a third time. “Th-thank you, Richard!”

  “You are most welcome, Nell. Do your plans for the day include a visit to the local seamstress?”

  “Yes, I had thought to do that first thing.”

  Satisfied, he turned back to his paper, thus putting a stop to all further conversation.

  When Helen had finished breakfast and was preparing to leave, she was prevented from doing so by the entranc
e into the parlour of a large man with a florid complexion and expansive paunch. He entered without ceremony, with the manner of one accustomed to greeting every guest who stopped at the George. Miss Denville and Mr. Darcy were soon to learn that such was his practice, for he was the local representative of the law and a self-appointed welcoming committee of one.

  “Your servant, sir!” the large, bluff man said. “You are Mr. Darcy, so Joseph tells me, and I am Hieronymus Vest, the magistrate here. Nothing pleases me more than to make all travellers welcome to our village. It’s small, that’s a fact—just a speck on the map—but as friendly as the day is long.”

  “Mine, sir, is the honour,” Mr. Darcy said colourlessly. “My wife, Mrs. Darcy. Mr. Vest.”

  “Well, well!” Mr. Vest said jovially. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Darcy. I hope that everything is all right and tight with you, and that Mrs. Coats is properly seeing to your comfort.”

  Helen was able to say in all sincerity that every service at the George was most excellent.

  “That’s a pleasure to hear from a lady such as you, ma’am. We are proud of the George here in Igglesthorpe!”

  Her reaction was all Mr. Vest could have hoped for. “Aye, that’s the name of our little village, Mrs. Darcy,” he said with a rumbling chuckle, working up to his climax, “Igglesthorpe Upon Inkleford, that’s the full name! We call it Igglesthorpe for short, and it stands to reason with a little dab of a village like this! And the Inkleford, why, it’s not much wider than a flea’s leg and not much for fish, but it’s our own, and we’re proud to call it so. We have a saying here in Igglesthorpe: if you were to put the letters side by side, the name would stretch longer than our high street!” He wiped his eyes, which streamed with merriment, enjoying the joke every bit as much at this telling as at every other.

  “That is very amusing, Mr. Vest,” Helen said who, noting Mr. Darcy’s patent lack of interest in this local dignitary, was left to carry the burden of the conversation.

  “Our little joke on our long name,” he said, pursuing the matter. “It’s what you might call an inverse proportion: the name is as long as the village is small!”

  “Why, yes!” Helen concurred.

  “Now, it works in reverse as well—the larger the city, the shorter the name. Why, take London. Just two syllables there. Lon-don. There’s Ox-ford, Cam-bridge, Bris-tol—”

  “Firenze,” Mr. Darcy suggested.

  “Or York!” Helen said quickly, glossing over her husband’s counter-suggestion. “There’s a name that’s short and to the point. In one syllable, the entire city is called to mind!”

  Mr. Vest ignored the fertile topic of one-syllable names and instead nodded to Mr. Darcy. “Now, foreign names, that’s another matter entirely! Perfect example, Fir-en-ze. What we call Florence. Flor-ence. There you have it: two syllables. The whole thing comes off much better in English! Always did think the Italians a queer set of fish, what with their strange names.”

  “Do you enjoy travelling, Mr. Vest?” Helen asked brightly, hoping to divert his attention.

  Pleased to have impressed such a tonish couple with a point of information he had garnered from a guidebook linking the names Florence and Firenze, Mr. Vest was not to be diverted. Instead, he bent a warm gaze on Helen. “I rather fancy I do. Now, take France! I spent three weeks there once. I found the language very odd. It seems at first, when you look at the map of France, that their names go on forever, but when you hear them pronounced, you realize that the French don’t use half those letters. So Bordeaux is really Bor-do.” Mr. Vest shook his head in wonderment. “Devilish queer lot, those French, almost as bad as the Italians.”

  “Very odd, indeed!” Helen said.

  “That’s the truth, Mrs. Darcy,” Mr. Vest replied. “I bet you a pound silver the French add all those extra letters just out of contrariness!”

  “Gambling man?” Mr. Darcy asked with his pleasant smile.

  “Well, no! Couldn’t say that, Mr. Darcy!”

  “Come! You’re a man who’s travelled the world,” Mr. Darcy said. “A man could hardly have made such journeys and not run into a little wagering along the way.”

  Mr. Vest was gratified to learn that Mr. Darcy perceived him to be a man of the world. “I play a fair hand of piquet,” he confided amiably, “but I’m not one to brag.”

  “Ah, piquet!” Mr. Darcy replied meditatively.

  Helen tried to catch Mr. Darcy’s eye to warn him off this path, but her efforts were in vain.

  “I am partial to cards, if you must know,” Mr. Vest continued. “Always have been!”

  “I am fond of cards myself, although piquet is not my strongest suit. Still … Mr. Vest, would you…?” Mr. Darcy broke off with a hesitancy that Helen did not imagine sprang from natural sources.

  “Yes, Mr. Darcy?” Mr. Vest prodded.

  “That is—well, the fact of the matter is,” Mr. Darcy said, sliding a glance artfully composed of anxiousness and expectancy at his bride, “that I would enjoy a few quick hands of piquet this evening.”

  The effect of this look was not lost on Mr. Vest and was even reinforced, to her dismay, by Helen. “Oh, no, no, Richard!” she said quickly. “You have forgotten that this evening is quite impossible for cards!”

  “Is it, dearest?” Mr. Darcy countered, leaving Helen somewhat at a loss.

  “Yes,” she said with a frown. Since she did not know where Mr. Darcy’s whim might lead them but could not see any good coming of it, she groped for words. “You promised to spend, that is, to—to spend the evening with me!”

  “But, my dear!” Mr. Darcy exclaimed, shocked. “I do not dream of excluding you from our company. You may certainly join us in the parlour with—what is it you do? Tatting? Yes! You may certainly sit with us while you tat.”

  Never having tatted in her life, Helen shot a look of mild reproach at her supposed husband, who was to become still more outrageous.

  “And how can you complain, my love,” Mr. Darcy cajoled, “when you know that I have not lost a groat at the gambling table since we have been married?”

  “Newlyweds?” Mr. Vest asked with a paternal smile for the young couple.

  “Not exactly,” Mr. Darcy replied, “but it has been a long time since I cut the cards after dinner with a gentleman and a glass of port.”

  “But, Richard—” Helen protested weakly.

  Mr. Vest, a kind if misguided soul, thought he saw the lay of the land. He had a wife, too, and understood Mrs. Darcy’s concerns. As much as he believed in the institution of marriage for the reform of the male character, he also believed in moderation. He imagined Mr. Darcy to be of that breed of man who wagered a little higher than his luck could afford. Still and all, Mr. Darcy had the look of a man plump in the pocket—thanks, no doubt, to Mrs. Darcy’s wise restraints—and so Mr. Vest felt perfectly justified in allaying the worst of her fears.

  “There, there, Mrs. Darcy,” Mr. Vest soothed good- naturedly, “it will be only a few hands, and I promise you the stakes won’t be high! Would you feel better if I made you my solemn promise not to rob your husband blind? Word of a magistrate!”

  Helen’s smile went a little awry.

  “And you will be right here, my dear, to prevent me from indulging in any, ah, excesses,” Mr. Darcy said with his most dangerous smile.

  Helen was hardly reassured but had to be satisfied, for Mr. Darcy gave the conversation a dexterous turn. “Did you not want to see a seamstress, Nell, before it gets much later? Perhaps Mr. Vest will be so kind as to suggest someone.”

  “I shall indeed. I commend to you Mrs. Hemmings, a widow and a fine seamstress,” Mr. Vest informed Helen. “As good as any you’d be likely to find in Queen’s Porsley, or even Thrapston.”

  “Perhaps we might prevail upon Mr. Vest to escort you there, my dear.”

  “I should be honoured!” Mr. Vest replied, all alacrity, and offered Helen his arm. “Your servant, sir,” he said to Mr. Darcy with a little bow. “Until tonight!”


  Having no choice, Helen graciously accepted the magistrate’s arm and left the room, not deigning to so much as glance in Mr. Darcy’s direction.

  Mr. Vest, sallying forth with Mrs. Darcy on his arm, felt it incumbent upon himself to greet such passers-by that were of some standing in the community and bring them to his guest’s notice. Consequently, the excursion to Mrs. Hemming’s establishment, which was just across the street from the George and down two doors, took some fifteen minutes. At last Mr. Vest left Helen on Mrs. Hemmings’s doorstep with a bow and a flourish of his hat.

  No sooner had Helen rung the bell than the door swung back to reveal a diminutive woman, whom she accurately identified as Mrs. Hemmings. The seamstress’s lively, almost garish style of dressing jarred with Helen’s quiet taste, and gave her immediate doubts about the prospects of finding suitable clothing in Igglesthorpe Upon Inkleford. Mrs. Hemmings might have been a widow, but she was certainly well past the stage of wearing widow’s weeds. Her gown was of semi-glaze lawn muslin high to the throat, crowned with a neck ruff Helen knew as a fraise, and ending with a treble flounce. The coquelicot colour of its wide stripes against her frizzled blondish hair might possibly have been becoming on a woman thirty years her junior. However, Mrs. Hemmings’s willow-wand thinness corrected Helen’s impression that everyone in the quiet village was in need of a strict reducing diet.

  “You must be Mrs. Darcy!” the droll little woman chirped cheerfully. “News of visitors travels quickly in our little village. And I am Mrs. Hemmings. Pray come in, and we shall see what we can do for you.”

  Before Helen had the opportunity to demur, she was curtsied into a small front room, several thoughts chasing one another in her head: that Mrs. Coats had no doubt been busy spreading the identities of her guests at the George throughout the village; that Mrs. Hemmings had perhaps the most shocking taste of anyone she had ever seen; that the chaotic mess in the front room boded ill for the quality of Mrs. Hemmings’s workmanship; and that she should never have embarked upon this wild adventure with Mr. Darcy.