Julie Tetel Andresen

by The Temporary Bride

  Lord Honeycutt did not immediately respond, but he always respected a man’s reserve, and he had reason to think that his long lost friend had a large obstacle in his way. “I wish you the best of luck, Ricky,” he said. “And I think that she is very pretty.”

  Mr. Darcy regarded his friend blandly. “I beg your pardon, Bev?”

  “Really, dear old boy, you can’t think… you really can’t think to ride my back on this one, so I’ll say it again: she’s a comely chit, and I wish you the best of luck with her! Not that I don’t see the difficulty. Can’t offer for her in your position! Wouldn’t do! But you’ll come about again!”

  “I can imagine that you know what you are talking about, Bev, but grant me leave to inform you that I do not!”

  Lord Honeycutt ignored the snub with equanimity. “Have it your own way. You always were a deep ’un! But let me know. Be glad to help you in any way I can, Ricky. You know I would!”

  Mr. Darcy turned to his friend. “Then do you think…that is, would it be too much to hope, Bev, that you might, shall I say, arrange to forget that you ever saw me here and in the company of Miss Denville?”

  “Happy to oblige you, old boy! Easiest thing in the world! You know me—tight as a clam,” Lord Honeycutt said, who, like most sad rattles, thought himself the soul of discretion. “Think of old Foxhall’s run-in with that opera dancer years ago! Came to his house—and with his wife upstairs! Ticklish situation! Only other ones there were you and myself. Only ones in all of London who ever knew anything about it. You remember?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Darcy replied pleasantly, remembering in particular that half the Town eventually learned of the incident. “And that is what has me worried.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HELEN, TOO, was worried, and she attempted to restore the balance of her mind by resolving not to think about Lord Honeycutt’s visit. Unfortunately, she had nothing else to do, and very few minutes passed before she gave up the effort to convince herself that nothing disturbing had occurred. She had an uneasy feeling that Mr. Darcy, now having been seen in her company, was responsible to her in a way she would prefer him not to be. She and Mr. Darcy could not continue their charade much longer, and she desperately wanted him to discover whatever was hidden in Vincenzo’s portmanteau.

  Her worry was interwoven with contemplation of the implications of the words passed between Lord Honeycutt and Mr. Darcy. It was eminently obvious that wherever his lordship had thought Mr. Darcy had been, it was not out of the country. The unusual meeting between the two old friends also confirmed Helen’s suspicion that Mr. Darcy must be sailing under false colours. Otherwise, Lord Honeycutt would have known where Mr. Darcy had been all these years. Helen was firm in the belief that it was none of her business what Mr. Darcy’s real name might be, where he was supposed to have been when he had been gaming on the Continent, or exactly why he was now playing hide-and-seek with an Italian commediante. Clearly she had confronted a mystery, but whatever lay at the bottom of it, Helen was entirely convinced of Mr. Darcy’s innocence.

  Her disquieting reflections were interrupted some ten minutes later by Mr. Darcy himself. He appeared at the parlour door and said in the most unconcerned way imaginable, “Bev and I are off to Queen’s Porsley to hire a wainwright. If the worst is only a broken axle, I shall not be gone above an hour or two. In any event, I shall wait until the job is done, for I should not like to leave him until I know that he is on his way again. It would be very unsporting of me to leave him stranded on the road if the repairs prove extensive.”

  “Oh, you must not do that!” Helen said brightly, summoning a smile. “It would be a pity to have Lord Honeycutt lose his race, especially when you are in a position to help him.”

  “A pity indeed,” he agreed, conveying to Helen that she was not alone in thinking that Lord Honeycutt should be sent on his way, and soon.

  “Then I shall explain the situation to Mrs. Coats and tell her not to expect you for dinner. Perhaps it would be well for her to put something aside for you, for when you do come in?”

  “By all means,” he replied, “if it is not too much trouble for her. I hope, however, that I shall be back in time to dine with you. But, in any case, you have nothing to worry about.”

  She did not miss the point of this reassurance. “No, I am sure that I do not!” she responded bravely.

  He paused and asked with a softened smile, “You do not think you will be needing me for anything?”

  Helen was conscious of a strong desire to tell him to let Lord Honeycutt fend for himself. She quelled it and said only, “Of course not, sir! Do not give it another thought!”

  “Then just keep your eye out for any suspicious visitors,” he adjured her in parting.

  Helen’s mood of unease was prevented from sinking into something more serious by the timely entrance of Mrs. Coats with tea and biscuits. Helen thanked her hostess and told her that this was the very thing she needed to recoup her forces. Since Mrs. Coats seemed inclined to linger, Helen commented on the fineness of the weather. Mrs. Coats responded cheerfully, but the conversation did not thrive. When Mrs. Coats began to busy herself with all manner of things that did not appear to require attention, Helen decided to address the situation.

  “The most interesting thing just happened, Mrs. Coats. Mr. Darcy has met a friend of his here at the George! Perhaps you noticed the gentleman who came not above a half hour ago?”

  “The fine gentleman?” Mrs. Coats queried, admirably suppressing her curiosity. “The gentleman what come in with Mr. Bigslow?”

  Helen said that she did not know Mr. Bigslow. “But I can say that the gentleman I mean is very fine. I should think that you could not have a better example of Town elegance.”

  “Mr. Darcy is most assuredly an elegant gentleman,” Mrs. Coats said.

  “Thank you! But he is, perhaps, not in the same style as Lord Honeycutt.”

  Mrs. Coats bridled with pleasure. “A lord, Mrs. Darcy?” she breathed. “Well, there is no need to tell me that you must be acquainted with all manner of lords and ladies. But there it is! You’re a friend to Lord Honeycutt!”

  Helen started to clarify a point. “I have never … that is, I do not claim intimacy with him. I know him only through my husband.”

  Mrs. Coats abandoned all pretence of housewifery, took a chair opposite Helen, and leaned confidentially towards her. “I shouldn’t be asking you, but Mrs. Hemmings tells me you’re right as rain, though I don’t need her to know that. Tell me, what is his lordship’s title, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s for my Joseph’s sake. He takes an interest in such things.”

  “He is the Fifth Earl of Trent,” Helen improvised, and mentally crossed her fingers that the Fifth Earl of Trent—if indeed that was his rank—would never again stray into the George at Igglesthorpe Upon Inkleford.

  “The Earl of Trent! The Fifth!” Mrs. Coats echoed, awed. Here was an opening too good to be missed. “Are there any persons of rank in Mr. Darcy’s family?” she asked bluntly.

  Helen ignored the promptings of her better judgement to bring the discussion tactfully to a close. But she did not want to disappoint, and instead decided on a modest-approach to the question. “The Darcys’ immediate family includes several barons, and they have a second cousin who is a viscount,” she said, adding with a flourish, “and an earl by marriage.”

  Mrs. Coats was properly impressed and wanted to know where this illustrious family had its seat.

  “Yorkshire,” said the imaginative Mrs. Darcy, choosing the most distant point that came readily to mind.

  This was all it took to whet Mrs. Coats’s appetite. Helen’s conscience had apparently absented itself for, after a few more questions of this sort, she found herself recounting a very satisfying story of two childhood playmates—herself and Mr. Darcy—growing up in Yorkshire, who eventually lost contact with one another, and who later met again in Town, which happy encounter had led to the altar six months ago. Mrs. Coats was plainly storin
g up all these interesting points of information to share later with her husband.

  Helen was grateful when the subject of courtship and marriage brought Mrs. Coats to mention her own daughter, one Miss Samantha Coats, eighteen years old and in the employ of an inn in Thrapston. Since Samantha was a pretty girl, said her fond mama, she did not lack for suitors, and the enumeration of these lasted precisely forty-five minutes by the clock. Helen found that the discussion completely diverted her from her worries.

  During this comfortable chat, and unbeknownst to anyone at the George, a slight man of indeterminate age, dressed inconspicuously in a brown coat and with a brown cap pulled down over his fair hair, went round to the back of the inn and climbed the barren oak tree whose stoutest limb passed directly in front of the sitting-room window of the double suite occupied by the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. No one was in the rear yard at the moment, and the agile figure clambered up the sturdy trunk undetected. He edged his way carefully along the branch that led to the sitting-room window and did not show any alarm to discover that the window was locked. He had anticipated it, in fact, and withdrew from his coat a tool designed for the opening of just such recalcitrant windows.

  He accomplished his object with the minimum of noise and, once inside, made his way softly about the room, missing entirely by chance the only floorboard that creaked distinctively. Not seeing what he had come for, he then made his way into the chamber Helen was occupying. There he spied the portmanteau.

  He eased himself over to the corner where it stood and knelt beside it. He flexed his gloved hands, perhaps out of nervousness, and undid the catches. With a thin, calculating smile, he withdrew a very ordinary article of ladies’ clothing and ran it once, cautiously, through his fingers. This gesture seemed to reassure him immensely, and he carefully folded the item and stuffed it into his coat. He closed the portmanteau and left it in the precise position where he had found it. He rose to his feet and went on tiptoe back to the sitting-room window.

  The sound of voices in the downstairs entry caused the man to halt momentarily. It soon became apparent that the voices belonged to people leaving the inn rather than mounting the stairs, and so nothing was to prevent the man from climbing back out onto the branch, shutting the window as tightly as he was able, and climbing nimbly back down the useful tree, again undetected. Once on the ground, he determined to leave the village in the same manner he had entered it. He was already on his way by foot to the next hamlet to the west of Igglesthorpe when Mrs. Coats finished enumerating to Helen the many virtues of the son of the Red Lion’s proprietor in Thrapston as husband to Samantha and future-son-in-law to Mrs. Coats.

  “Well!” the George’s hostess said at last, rising from her chair. “You’ll be wanting your dinner soon, and you won’t be getting it with me passing the time of day with you—as agreeable as it has been! But talk don’t cook the meat, as the saying goes, and I must be getting back to dress the mutton joint. It shouldn’t be above another hour now. In addition, we have baked fish, white collops, savoury turnips, blanched carrots, and preserved fruits and chestnuts, if you think Mr. Darcy might be tempted by such a meal. I can also bring out a fresh butter cake if you like, Mrs. Darcy, you being so fond of sweets!” Mrs. Coats said with a broad wink.

  Helen approved of the menu and declined the cake with an unconscious smile. Left with an hour to beguile before dinner and without much hope of Mr. Darcy’s return to share it with her, she thought she would take a walk. She went to her chamber to fetch her stylish new pelisse.

  She was vaguely aware of a draught in her room but attributed that to the fact that the fire had not yet been laid. The portmanteau, she noted, was in its accustomed place in the corner. Once outside, she took a brisk walk, always keeping the entrance to the George in view. She stopped to exchange civilities with several residents whom she had met the day before.

  She took dinner in a solitary state, feeling profoundly troubled, both by Mr. Darcy’s plight and by her own part in this strange affair. She had little appetite for Mrs. Coats’s tempting dishes and was picking at the excellent fish when, all of a sudden, an idea came to her that was so arresting, she did not think she would be able to sit through the rest of the meal. In fact, she did not. When the serving girl next came into the room, Helen excused herself abruptly and announced that she would await Mr. Darcy’s return, before continuing her dinner.

  Helen went in haste to her room, taking a taper with her, and lit the lamp on her dresser. The moment it took to accomplish this made her aware that the draught she had felt earlier had become quite cold. She could only think that a window had been left ajar, which she discovered to be the case in the sitting-room. Perhaps the maid had been careless, she thought. In closing it firmly, she noticed the branch so close outside, and panic rushed over her. She hurried back to her chamber and flung a hand to her heart in relief when she saw the portmanteau still occupying the corner. Crying shame on herself for her silliness, she knelt to examine, not the portmanteau itself, but the seams and hems of the clothing within.

  It had come to her during her idle moment at dinner that thin pages of a diary or another document could be concealed in clothing if they were stitched and tacked cleverly enough. After all, hadn’t a bill for Mrs. Hemmings’s client been inadvertently stitched into the bodice of the golden dress with no one being the wiser? Helen examined each item of clothing in the portmanteau, her fingers carefully seeking concealed paper, but the search proved fruitless. She stood and looked down into the enigmatic portmanteau, pulling a wry face at her flight of fancy.

  Then she realized that something was missing. A particular item of clothing she had cause to remember. She riffled through the clothes once more, but it was not there. The bright pink Zephyr shawl was gone, the one she had first thrown about her shoulders to prove to Mr. Darcy that the clothes in the portmanteau were not her own. She knew she had not handled the shawl again, and it was unlikely that Mr. Darcy had removed it.

  Her mind was racing. The clues began to add up, suddenly her confusion vanished, and all became clear. The pink shawl had been of a stiff yet supple material of double thickness, between which the papers that were so valuable to Mr. Darcy had been sewn. Nothing could have been easier than for Vincenzo to have climbed the branch, to have come through the window, and to have stolen it.

  She felt sick as she realized that Vincenzo must have been in her suite while she was below stairs gossiping with Mrs. Coats. It was all her fault.

  She pressed her hands to her temples to steady her thinking and to decide what to do. The answer came readily enough: nothing! Her only object now was to remain calm until Mr. Darcy’s return. She thought, practically enough, that she could achieve tranquillity better in a warm room than a cold one, so she rang for the maid to lay the fire in her room. Just as the blaze was being kindled, Helen heard the sounds below of someone arriving, then footsteps down the hallway past her door, and finally muffled sounds coming from beyond the sitting-room.

  She forced herself to sit calmly until the maid had left. Then she jumped up and hurried to Mr. Darcy’s chamber door.

  “Mr. Darcy!” she called softly, knocking lightly. “Mr. Darcy! Richard!”

  The door opened to reveal Mr. Darcy, an expression of surprise on his face. He had already shed his coat and loosened his cravat. “You must excuse me, my dear,” he said, indicating his informal state. “Would you care to join me for dinner? I can meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”

  “Oh, never mind that!” she said impatiently, waving her hand at his dress. “And there is no point to eating now! I have come to tell you that it is gone!”

  “The portmanteau?” he asked, brows raised.

  “No, the Zephyr shawl!”

  “The what?”

  “The Zephyr shawl,” she repeated, and rushed headlong into speech. “It was bright pink and clashed with my hair, and it’s gone! I am convinced that Vincenzo has taken it. That was his hiding place, I am sure of it! It’s all my fault! I di
d not think of it until too late. When I came upstairs, I saw the window open and went through the clothes, and then I knew! It’s all my fault!”

  “Gently, my dear, gently!” Mr. Darcy took her hands in his. “Pray, what is all this about? Whatever it is, believe me, it is not your fault!”

  Helen drew a long breath and kept her eyes fixed on his. The room seemed to steady about her. She felt immeasurably reassured by his unshakable calm coupled with the firm clasp of his hands. Before she began again, however, another thought occurred to her. “Is Lord Honeycutt on his way?” she asked abruptly.

  Mr. Darcy nodded.

  “It was the unluckiest chance that brought him here!”

  “Nothing shall come of it,” he reassured her.

  “I am not worried about that,” she said. “It is rather that something already has come of it, for while you were away, I believe Vincenzo has come and gone. You see, after you left, I stayed in the parlour, with my eye on the hallway and the stairs the whole time, not thinking that he would break in through a window! Mrs. Coats and I were there for about an hour, I would say, drinking tea—that is, we were gossiping,” she amended guiltily and found herself making a clean breast of all her iniquities. “I told her that Lord Honeycutt was the Fifth Earl of Trent!”

  Mr. Darcy had no difficulty keeping up with this erratic conversation. “He is not, and I do not believe I have had the pleasure of the Fifth Earl of Trent’s acquaintance. In fact, there is no such person.”

  Helen rushed on, “And when it came to you, I may as well tell you that you have recently become related to two barons and a viscount.”

  “What?” he demanded, indignant. “You could do no better for me than a few barons and a viscount?”

  “And an earl by marriage,” she added, hoping to please.

  “Paltry stuff!” he replied, apparently unmollified.

  “I thought it would be better if—but this is not of the least moment! And it is not funny!” she said angrily. “I tell you, it is gone! Come!”