He then crossed the street to Mrs. Hemmings’s where he found the seamstress busily at work. In his most charming manner, he said that he did not have a head for the reckoning in detail and so presented her with several large bills that reflected the true value of Helen’s new wardrobe on the London market.
Providence did not allow him to escape Igglesthorpe without one last exchange with Mr. Vest. Mr. Darcy saw the magistrate emerge from the George after his routine morning call, where he had just been favoured with Mrs. Coats’s own interpretation of Mrs. Darcy’s indisposition. Unable to avoid a meeting, Mr. Darcy showed nothing but pleasure at the prospect of taking his leave of Igglesthorpe’s most outstanding citizen.
Mr. Vest came forward, extending his hand. He shook Mr. Darcy’s vigorously, with all best wishes for a safe journey and Mrs. Darcy’s health. “And are congratulations in order, sir?”
“I suppose, in some sense, they are,” Mr. Darcy replied.
The thought of Mr. Darcy as a family man gave the magistrate a further feeling of kinship with this man of the world. “Best thing to be a parent, you’ll see! I’m a father myself!”
“Ah!”
“Daughters!” Mr. Vest said, a little mournfully.
Mr. Darcy looked politely interested.
“Three of ’em!” Mr. Vest disclosed. “Each one prettier than the last, so you must not think I complain. Not that I wouldn’t have wished for a son. What man wouldn’t? But, I can tell you this, Mr. Darcy,” he said confidentially, “if I had had a son, I would not have named him Hieronymus. Indeed not!”
“I perfectly see the drawback.”
“No, if I had had a son, I would have named him Caspar. There you have it. What could be more reasonable?”
“A wise choice,” Mr. Darcy agreed.
“I offer you the suggestion of Caspar for your son, but, of course, you must be the judge of what will suit your family best. Don’t wait until the last minute! You may end up with something you don’t like a year later!”
Mr. Darcy said, “If it is a boy, we shall name him after me. Richard.”
Mr. Vest tried this out. “Richard. Capital! The very thing! What could be better? After his father!” He nodded, apparently satisfied then frowned. “But you must consider, sir. If it were a girl?”
Mr. Darcy said promptly, “Then we shall name her after my wife, Helen.”
“Helen. Excellent! Oh, very good, sir! Lovely name and even lovelier woman. Upon my soul, I like your wife well! Does you proud, but I am sure you know that better than I. Now, my wife’s name is Drusilla. Not bad, and has a certain charm. Our daughter’s names are—”
“Drusilla is one of my favourite names,” Mr. Darcy interjected into what was promising to be a very long conversation. “I congratulate her and take this opportunity to thank you for all you have done for us during our stay.”
With these words, Mr. Darcy extended his hand again, which Mr. Vest pumped at length. Then he tipped his hat and took very prompt leave of the magistrate.
As a result of this exchange, Mr. Darcy arrived in the stable yard wearing an expression that Keithley recognized as unholy amusement. What there was in this village to amuse Mr. Darcy was beyond Keithley, but he was long accustomed to his master’s sometimes erratic and often impenetrable sense of humour.
“We shall be off now, Keithley,” Mr. Darcy said, striding into the yard.
“Right, sir, on the double!” his henchman responded. “I disremember when ever I’ve been so mortal anxious to be away from a place! Will you be riding in the carriage?”
“I think not. I should like to put the bit of blood I bought yesterday through his paces.”
“And Miss?”
Mr. Darcy halted momentarily. “Miss Denville will not be accompanying us any farther,” he said coolly.
Keithley was plainly shocked. “Master Richard! Never tell me you gave her notice, lad!”
Mr. Darcy smiled a little cynically. “There is no need to reduce me to short-coats and leading-strings, my dear Keithley. I had no intention of serving Miss Denville notice. Much to my chagrin, she left of her own accord last night. She found that she could tarry no longer in our company, I believe.”
Keithley digested this news with difficulty. “But all of her belongings! They’re already packed in the chaise!”
“She left them behind, and I could hardly drive off without them. I feared that it would look rather odd.”
Keithley cared little for appearances and kept to the gist of the matter. “Where did she go?”
“I do not know, and she did not think to, er, inform me of her destination in her note. As it is, I know nothing about her except that her father is dead.”
“I have the notion she’s from Yorkshire,” Keithley volunteered.
Mr. Darcy glanced over at his man, interested. “Yorkshire. Not impossible, but what gives you reason to think that?”
“The serving maid had it that Miss Denville grew up there.”
The interest faded from the gamester’s face. “And is Yorkshire, by any chance, the supposed locale of the childhood she and I spent together as sweethearts?”
“I did hear something about it, but I never said yea or nay to nothing what was told to me! But why Yorkshire, if she has nothing to do wi’ it?”
“It has the virtue of being very far away,” his master replied dryly.
“I don’t ken, sir. Do you mean she ran off, just like that? Why?”
“You will have to ask her that,” Mr. Darcy said as he mounted his huge raw-boned brute, “when next you see her. I fear, however, that she will not be as easy to find as Vincenzo. If only I had returned to the George after I got what I wanted, instead of paying a visit to that barrister in Thrapston! But there is no undoing it now.” He turned his mind to immediate matters. “Follow me with the chaise. We shall, of course, be travelling the road to Billingshurst. I shall meet you later this afternoon at the Chequers Inn.”
Without waiting for a reply, Mr. Darcy veered his horse, who was a little fresh and curvetting playfully about the yard, towards the road, where he flung his servant a final salute before heading in a westerly direction.
The man who called himself Mr. Darcy rode along easily for miles into a country that he knew well. His pace was not leisurely, but neither did he have the eager haste of someone who had longed to see this corner of the earth for over six years. In riding coat, buckskins and shining boots, he looked entirely in his element as he travelled down a familiar road, between straggly hedges and fields hinting of new life that rolled upwards until they merged with the woods rambling over undulating hills in the distance.
It was a calm day, with only a gentle march wind blowing. He met no one for long stretches, and when he did chance upon a labourer or a farmer, he bade him good afternoon and continued on his way. So he rode for several hours, thinking.
His mind followed no predictable course, although his direction was unerring. He dwelt for a while on the always precarious and often opulent life he had led in the past years and could find no bitterness or resentment in his heart at having had to fashion a new life for himself on the Continent. Nevertheless, no matter how much the role of gamester had suited his temperament, the score must be settled. He had imagined, when he first started back to England, that the settlement might be determined by the turn of the cards, in true gambling man’s fashion. Now, he reflected, almost with disappointment, that the documents safely in the respectable legal offices at Thrapston had robbed him of some of that stimulating element of uncertainty. Perhaps he could contrive a lively confrontation after all, before putting his gambling career behind him and taking his rightful place in the world.
He reached the Chequers Inn not in the least fatigued. He ventured out on a preliminary excursion, and when he returned, evening was drawing in and Keithley had arrived with the chaise. By the time he had partaken of a hearty country meal, darkness covered the sky, and he and Keithley rode out with only the moon to light their way. The
y met no one, and nothing but the sound of their steeds’ hooves broke the stillness of the night.
Presently they came to the entrance to a broad tree-lined allée, a massive iron grille barring them from the magnificent estate beyond. They drew rein simultaneously.
Mr. Darcy leaned across the pommel of his saddle and said conversationally, “I never really expected to see the grounds of Clare again.”
Keithley preserved a reverential silence.
“And now that we are here,” his master continued, “it does not seem so very long ago that we left, does it?”
Roused from his awe, Keithley could not decide the matter. “It do, and it don’t. Do you mean to go up?”
“I am not at all anxious, you understand, and hardly in the mood for a social call tonight. However, since they did not know at the Chequers whether Talby is in residence at the moment, it seems appropriate that we discover this for ourselves before proceeding.”
Keithley nodded. “A mortal shame about Sam. Always peeled to advantage and right handy with his dabblers,” he said wistfully.
Mr. Darcy did not consider the ability of a man to mill another down to be an attribute deserving of the highest praise one could bestow on one’s fellow. Still, he agreed that had Sam been alive and running the inn, he certainly would have been abreast of all the goings-on at the hall. “Yet,” he continued, “it is fortunate that Sam’s cousin had never seen us before, so we need not fear that our presence at the Chequers will become known. That would quite spoil our fun, I fear.”
A martial light appeared in Keithley’s eye. The pugilistic henchman offered to go up to the hall and, if he were there, to draw Talby’s cork.
“What, and deprive me of that pleasure?” his master replied with a dangerous smile. “It would be a pity to underplay the drama that my return certainly merits.”
Keithley demanded to know what he intended to do.
“First, I intend to discover the whereabouts of our quarry.”
“And then?”
“I plan to visit several churches.” In answer to Keithley’s look of acute disgust, he added, “To get my facts straight, you see.”
“So you’re not going to call Talby to book on the morrow?”
Mr. Darcy did not think that he would have time to do everything.
“What about her ladyship?” Keithley asked.
His master considered this. “I think it too soon to pay her a visit. She has had me dead and buried for six years, and a few more days won’t hurt. I want to dispose of Talby first.”
Keithley saw the wisdom of this. “What do you plan to do first after you’ve shown Talby the door?”
“Go to Calvert Green.”
For all of his years at his master’s side, Keithley was, for once, utterly surprised. “Where the deuce is Calvert Green?”
“I am not certain.”
“Faith! If that don’t beat all!” Keithley expostulated. “And what might be there?” Before his master could speak, the trusty servant nodded and answered his own question. “Miss Denville.”
“Perhaps. I am in possession of her trunk and much of her clothing,” his master pointed out, “and Calvert Green was her destination on the day she met us. I am hoping that she would find nothing exceptional about a visit from Mr. Darcy.”
Keithley scratched his nose. “I’ve been wanting to ask you, meaning no disrespect,” he said, “but when do you plan to cut line and cast off that name?”
The gamester smiled. “It is tiresome, is it not? I should like to shed the name in a matter of days. Yes,” he repeated, “I should like to recover my original name in the next three or four days.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HELEN HAD BEEN at the home of Lady Happendale only four days, and already it was clear to her that her duties as governess were insignificant, if not to say nonexistent.
The morning after her late-night arrival on her employer’s doorstep, Helen had been ushered, knees shaking a little, into an apartment occupied by the woman her imagination had made into a dragon. One glance at Lady Happendale informed Helen that such a description was very far off the mark.
Lady Happendale had reached her fortieth year but looked, when she was enjoying a good day, to be ten years younger. The lingering effects of the inflamed hip joint that had plagued her from her early adulthood had not taken their toll on her face, which was free of all but laugh-lines. In fact, when Helen first met Lady Happendale, she would not have known that her new mistress had any infirmity, had the information not been conveyed to her at the employment agency and for the circumstance that Lady Happendale did not rise from her chair.
What degree of pain this invariably cheerful lady suffered, neither Helen, nor anyone else, ever knew. Although Lady Happendale was confined to her cushioned chair, she enjoyed the stimulation of a full social life. She had a wide circle of friends who made it a habit to visit her cosy, well-appointed home frequently and informally. None among them came out of a sense of duty. Lady Happendale was quite the most popular hostess in the district, and even though she rarely entertained on a large scale, she had a distinct flair for receiving guests, possessed an informed mind, and exercised a lively, but never unkind, wit.
This morning Helen was summoned to Lady Happendale’s apartment, and when she entered the modest, sunny bower where her ladyship spent most of her days, she saw her employer already seated at her desk, writing. Seeing Lady Happendale so engaged, it was easy for Helen to forget that she was infirm in any way. It seemed entirely natural that the least pitiable of invalids should be seated hour after hour with her pen and paper and her books, for her ladyship’s enthusiasm for reading and writing was genuine and would have kept her for long stretches at her desk even had her health permitted her to be more physically active.
Upon hearing Helen’s light knock on her open door, Lady Happendale looked up, laid down her pen and welcomed the newcomer with a warm smile that lit her twinkling grey eyes. “Thank you for coming so promptly!” she said. “I had a most pressing question to put to you, but now I have discovered that I have left my French dictionary on the table by the window and cannot think of anything else for the moment. Do you see it? Yes, would you be so kind as to bring it to me? And while you are at the window, could you also draw the curtains just an inch, please, against the morning light? The glare of the sun off my paper has made me more than usually stupid today!”
Helen closed the curtains the designated distance and crossed the room with the dictionary. As she seated herself on the sofa next to Lady Happendale’s desk, Helen said, “Is there a French word you need to translate or to spell? Perhaps I can tell you.”
Lady Happendale smiled. “You shall save me the trouble of looking up the word apartment if you can tell me whether it has one p in French or two.”
“It has two, ma’am, and an e before the m-e-n-t,” Helen replied.
“Dear me, does it?” Lady Happendale said. She scribbled out the word. “I feel certain that you are right, but it does look very odd on the page!”
“Do not give it a thought. I have recently been told that the French do not pronounce half the letters in their words,” Helen said with a straight face, “and that they spell them so abominably just out of contrariness.”
“Very likely!” Lady Happendale agreed. “Allow me to compliment you. Your French is very good.”
“Thank you,” Helen said. “Speaking of which, should I not perhaps be instructing your son in the intricacies of French spelling? I have hardly seen him these past few days.”
“Oh, that is what I have called you to talk about. I have engaged Charles Marksmith to be Claude’s tutor.”
Helen bunked. “You have?”
“It took me only a minute in your company to realize that Claude needs some masculine guidance, having lost both his father and his uncle when he was but a little boy.” Lady Happendale smiled at Helen. “I must tell you, my dear, that as a lively and, may I say, beautiful young woman, you are simply not
cut out to be a governess!”
The colour drained from Helen’s face. “I should like very much to disagree with you, my lady, and I would have hoped to have concealed my inadequacies better than that!” Helen laughed a little shakily.
“Silly child!” Lady Happendale chided gently. “Do you think that I mean to turn you off? No such thing! I have a much more suitable position in mind for you, if you are so disposed.”
“What might that be, ma’am?” Helen asked, having recovered her complexion.
“I need a companion,” Lady Happendale said with an air of mild triumph. “It came to me yesterday when you were being so helpful to me.”
“Was I indeed?” Helen lifted her brows. “Then how has it happened that I cannot name one thing that I have done for you? I have not felt so entirely useless in a long while as I have these past few days!”
The twinkle in Lady Happendale’s eyes was pronounced. “What an unhandsome thing to say! I am not so puffed up as to think that dancing attendance on me is the most vital or interesting task in the world, but, my dear, would you consider what you do for my well-being to be useless?”
Helen coloured faintly. “To be with you could only bring me happiness,” she managed.
“Then it’s settled!” Lady Happendale pronounced. “And you shall begin today.”
“What am I to do?” Helen asked, eager now.
“Well, for one thing, you will help me entertain,” Lady Happendale said.
Helen threw up her hands. “Here I was thinking that I would actually be able to help you! In the past few days, you have not had one minute of difficulty receiving all your many friends, and a more accomplished hostess I have yet to meet!”
Lady Happendale’s expression was pleasant, but closed. “You have not yet had an opportunity to meet everyone who is kind enough to call on me. Not that I am not fond of every one of them. I am! It is simply that some of my days are better than others, and I have been finding more and more that I need a new face in the household to add freshness to the conversation. Sometimes—though this is rare—I find a particular guest difficult to entertain. For instance, this afternoon I am receiving Kenneth Talby, and it is the most curious thing, but I find we have little to talk about.”
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