LIZZY: Wanted to make sure you were okay. Please call me if you are not.
Sarah smirked to herself a little as Benn turned around, smiling as he walked towards her. So, Lizzy Darcy wanted to get herself back into Benn’s good books, did she? Too late, she thought, as she deleted the message.
“Did my phone go?” He asked, spooning a mouthful of ice-cream into his mouth.
“Yeah,” she said, “crank caller.”
@CaliGOirl436 Saw @OfficialBenn on #SantaMonicaPier this afternoon. Looks HAWT. #Spotted #OohMrDarcy @QueenieCaro Is @OfficialBenn dating @LadySDlny Very cosy today on Sunset and Vine
1837
The house in Norfolk was small. Not in the usual homely way as was the house at Longbourn or even the parsonage in Yorkshire occupied by her Aunt Mary, Uncle Hughes and their little regiment of boys; but small in that it felt confined, each room seeming to get tinier and tinier as she was led to her rooms in the guest suite. Mabel had been shipped to the house with her companion, Mrs Sedgwick, at the beginning of May. Felham Manor was a small estate near the seaside town of Cromer, and it had only been with strict instructions and careful planning that Fitzwilliam Darcy’s only daughter had been allowed to travel to the county. Even now the thought of young girls in seaside resorts, with the temptations of fragranced gentlemen and handsome sailors made her father visibly blanche.
The journey had been arduous as they had bounced and bobbed along on the roads that led to the coast, but it was who was waiting at the other end that kept her focused on the weeks ahead. Her brother, James, had been given two months of leave from his commission about the ship HMS Envoy, and would be sailing in to the quay at Great Yarmouth within the next few days. Mabel had not seen her brother since he joined the navy six years ago; she had been fourteen, merely a girl, and now here she was nearly twenty-one and ready to be presented at court the following season. Likewise, James Horatio Darcy had been twenty – young and eager for adventure – now he would be a hardened sailor of twenty-five.
She wondered if he would have skin the colour of walnuts by now, crinkled and creased by the hot sunshine; would he smell like cinnamon and opium, his uniform scented with the heady fragrances of the ottoman markets, his voice husky with the rum of the Bahamas and the salt of the sea air. Imagining Captain Darcy aboard the ship darting about the Caribbean had given their mother palpitations, but it had given Mabel dreams that she knew were nigh on impossible.
A bell was sounding somewhere in the house, and outside in the hallway she could hear the Wyndham daughters – three silly fluttery girls with a predilection for fancy dresses and hair that looked like confectionary – running down the corridors. Mabel sighed, rolling her eyes at Eleanor in the mirror, who was dressing her hair in the absence of any ladies’ maid being available. Her room was called the Rose Room. It didn’t smell like roses, it smelled damp and unaired; the only allusion to its name a small row of plasterwork roses in the cornicing. It was a tiny, dark room, but she must appear grateful.
The family were polite and accommodating, obviously honoured to have her staying with them. She could tell by the way they had paraded their small retinue of servants out on the front steps to greet her as she arrived in the barouche after seven days of travel. Their eldest son, Peter, had made an advantageous match with the youngest daughter of the Earl of Bentick, Maria Framingham, and they were due to marry within the month.
Mabel’s mother and father were due to attend, travelling up from the house in Grosvenor Square and back to Pemberley for the summer. They would then collect her from the house of Lord Suffield in Cromer, where James would travel to once he had reached Yarmouth.
“I do not understand why I cannot meet James directly from the ship, Papa,” she had whimpered pitifully one evening after dinner before the ladies retired to the drawing room. “It makes the whole visit overly complicated and I do not wish any imposition on the Wyndhams.”
“Nonsense,” Darcy dismissed her whining with a wave of his hand, it had been a laborious journey from Derbyshire, and he was not of the disposition this evening to launch into a debate with his daughter, however much she may prompt him.
“Papa!”
He pretended he hadn’t heard her and rose from the table, Mabel glanced at her mother, who raised an eyebrow and returned back to her conversation with Emily Warner, who glanced over with prying eyes and a meddlesome countenance. She followed him into the hallway, and he turned, a deep sigh escaping from his mouth.
“What is it, Mabel?”
She folded her arms defensively. There had been enough battles with her father recently for her to know well enough that she must always protect herself against attack.
“I know you will disagree, but I feel that as I have been presented…” he started to interrupt her, but she ploughed on, “it would be acceptable for me to meet James in Yarmouth.”
“Absolutely not! I do not understand why we are having this discussion once more when I have already made my feelings entirely clear regarding this matter, and when preparations have already been made.”
“Papa, you made these plans without consulting me,” her voice raised an octave and she could see that his mood was darkening with every word.
“I do not have to consult you, Mabel,” the words stabbing the air, “the arrangements will continue as planned, and you will remember your position and your place.”
The words were final, a sentence passed in judgment. Darcy disappeared into the smoking room, the door closing firmly behind him. She cried out in frustration and stamped her feet against the marble tiled floor of the house in Grosvenor Square, before smoothing her gown and joining the ladies in the drawing room with a smile on her face.
“Did your father change his mind,” Elizabeth whispered softly to her daughter upon her arrival in the room; out of earshot of Emily Warner and Emma Gerard, whom she knew would be angling for any ounce of gossip from Derbyshire House.
“Of course not,” Mabel frowned, “but I have to keep trying.”
“Perhaps you don’t have to challenge him on everything,” she soothed. “Papa has only ever wanted what is best for you.”
“Papa seems intent on showing me the world, simply to make me aware of everything that I cannot have.”
“Oh Mabel, you do have a tendency for the dramatic,” she gestured for them to sit on the pink silk ottoman. “I think you get that from Grandmama.”
“Quite possibly, although Aunt Lydia definitely inherited her nerves.”
Elizabeth tried to stop a little laugh. Her youngest sister went into mourning for twice the length of time required by polite society after the death of their mother a few years earlier.
“I cannot promise that I will change his mind regarding your visit to Norfolk, but I think perhaps he may be able to be convinced about the plans for next year. I could suggest that you stay with Aunt Fitzwilliam and Uncle Richard until we arrive, I know you are eager to enjoy the society, but I know that Papa always prefers to arrive fashionably late for the start of the season…”
“Thank you, Mama.”
Mabel smiled. She had read her mother’s story, knew that even though she was Elizabeth Darcy now, that the obstinate Miss Bennet, with her fine eyes and muddy hems, was still hidden underneath the respectable shimmer of silk and sapphires.
“Your father has always liked an argument, so I may as well oblige him this evening.”
Elizabeth rose from the ottoman and summoned Staughton to fetch Darcy from the smoking room; she disappeared into the hallway and the low rumble of voices could be heard until, noticing Emily Warner’s intrigued expression, Mabel went over to the pianoforte and delighted the guests until her mother returned with a triumphant smile on her face and her father stood defeated in the hallway, before returning exasperatedly to his guests. Fitzwilliam Darcy always found it hard to deny his wife anything and it was a fact that she often used to her advantage.
It was cold tonight, even for Norfolk in May, when the rush of sal
ty air drifted over the fields. Percy Wyndham sat reading in the library after dinner; he did not care for the masculine bravado on display in the Cabinet – the lavish room furnished with pictures and artefacts that his father William had brought back from the Grand Tour, his travelling partners being Fitzwilliam Darcy and a man of lower rank called Wickham, who had died at Waterloo – and so came here to find his next literary conquest. The door creaked open, a flurry of noise and giggles, the ruffle of silk and taffeta, and he saw the Darcy girl standing there, dressed in a gown of blue and silver, breathing a sigh of relief.
She didn’t see him, hiding as he was in the corner of the room in the wing-backed chair, and she flounced over the window to gaze out, before huffing and puffing in to the book room. He viewed her with great humour; she was a wonderfully fine girl, he thought, with dark hair piled upon her head and a spark hidden behind her eyes. She was clever too; he had heard her debating on the slave trade of the Americas with his father earlier, and then she had played a rather astonishing rondo on the piano, much to the chagrin of his three sisters.
He watched as she dragged the book from its place on the bookshelf and positioned it on the large table, and herself on the comfortable green chair that matched the modern décor of the room.
“I must say, Miss Darcy, your piano playing was exemplary. If you were intending to embarrass each of my sisters in turn, then you did a sterling job.”
It was Percy, the second eldest Wyndham, his deep voice burnished with a flattering tone that was obviously well practiced, living as he did with three sisters of little to no talent to recommend them.
“My apologies to your sisters for the discomfiture that I have unintentionally subjected them to.”
“Unintentionally? Miss Mabel, I am not a simpleton. I can see exactly what you were attempting to do…” He walked into the book room, languishing at the door. “Next time you should maybe sing in French too, that would really vex Penelope.”
“Would it? For I am more than happy to oblige.”
“Almost certainly,” he eyed her with curiosity.
The atlas was huge, splayed out now in front of her. She had recognised the gold Pemberley bull on the spine, and inside the hard-woven cover, snagged and faded with age, was the nameplate of her father, his clumsy teenage cursive firmly scrawled denoting ownership.
“Our fathers and a gentleman called Wickham travelled into Egypt and Greece for their Grand Tour, so you should blame Emperor Napoleon for their over-zealous scribblings.”
He pointed to the annotations that Darcy had made in his youth; the party had eventually ventured down further into the east than any other Englishmen had before; recovering Greek marbles, Egyptian treasures, and purchasing length of luscious fabrics from the Arabs.
“Wickham? He was my Uncle. My father always spoke kindly of him, but I am fully aware that he was a bit of a scoundrel.”
She had listened intently when she was younger, perched on Darcy’s knee as he had recounted the tales of his adventures, gripped in wonder and admiration at the exploits of the man she called Papa.
This was the nicest place in the house, away from all the giggling and shrieking about hats and dresses, and how beautiful the new young Queen was, how excited they were to travel to town for the coronation. She blamed her upbringing; a house full of boys was never going to encourage conversation about muslin, and her mother was much happier walking around the parkland than travelling to town to engage their modiste in the preparation of gowns.
“What secret adventures are you planning?”
Mabel closed the book furtively as if she were plotting something forbidden. Percy had been, she found, a quiet port in a storm of noise and they were free to converse easily, given that he was already engaged to a dreary girl from Rutland called Flora, who had a titled father and a dowry of twenty thousand pounds.
“I’m trying to see what route my brother might take on his way back from the Indies,” she proclaimed with a confidence he admired. “I’m attempting to calculate when he should return to port.”
He walked over to where she was sitting, placing himself comfortably on the chair opposite, turning the atlas around and studying it carefully. Mabel eyed him curiously, he was quite handsome close up, and he smelled like pomade and cologne; he stood about a head taller than her but was a large spread of a man with a smile that filled his whole face.
He smiled often, grinning at her from across the room when she ended up caught in conversation with his mother, or a small wry smile, like the one this evening, when she gave his sisters a thorough drubbing after she had overheard them calling her unfashionable, he had looked at her as if he was terribly amused. She liked the feeling of camaraderie that it gave her, an ally in an enemy camp. He glanced up, she noticed that he had a faint scar above his left eye, she wondered where it was from.
“Surely you have already heard word from your brother regarding his approximate arrival at Yarmouth.”
“I have,” she muttered. “I am simply impatient to see him.”
He observed her carefully; there was a little crease that appeared on her forehead as she concentrated, focusing intently on the map of the continents, the trade routes between the Caribbean and their very own sceptred isle. Percy knew that James Darcy was set to arrive four days hence, mentally he had calculated how long she had left as the family houseguest.
“Do you require me to accompany you to Cromer? I have business there this Thursday week.”
She couldn’t concentrate when he was so very close, her focus became blurry around the edges.
“I am not aware of any preparations that have been made,” she said politely. “You will need to ask your father to speak to my companion.”
“Well, that’s decided then.” Marking out the quickest plot with the sharp brass compass, he wrote down the numbers quickly on the border of the page, “I will take you and your companion to Cromer. From my jottings here, I am fairly sure that your brother will arrive home on time.” She checked his sums, and once in agreement with them she nodded her approval.
Percy got up from his seat, and gently placed his hand on her shoulder, giving it the vaguest hint of a squeeze. He had never touched her before and she felt a jolt run down her spine; it was something that she had not experienced before, and it made her instantly aware of the goosebumps on her arm.
“Once more unto the breach, dear Mabel,” he smiled forlornly as he grabbed a book from the shelf and wandered back towards the cackling and laughter emanating from downstairs.
She watched as he stepped out of the book room, waited for the gentle click of the door signalling his departure and finally breathed. Percy Wyndham made Mabel Darcy feel nervous, and she didn’t know why.
The coach clattered along the coast to Cromer; a short distance of two and a half miles. Mrs Sedgwick, sitting next to Percy Wyndham, observed the young pair closely. Mabel had dressed her hair up high upon her head, a cupcake tier of curls adorned with bows and clips – the young girl acting as lady’s maid at Felham finally attending to her – and she was wearing the new dress and jacket that had been sent up from London the day before by her mother. It was the deepest emerald green, trimmed with accents of gold and there were little peacocks embroidered into it in a vibrant, blue thread. Eleanor thought that Mabel looked entirely beautiful, and she could tell that the Wyndham boy thought the same and was obviously half in love with her. She glanced over, her charge seemed nervous as she gazed out of the window, fiddling with her kid gloves, constantly opening and closing her purse.
And then there it was; the vast expanse of the water spread out before them – glittering and blue under the May sunshine, Mabel inadvertently rose to her feet, her hands on the edges of the barouche, her face looking outward towards the sea. She had never seen anything so marvellous and declared so with shrieks and giggles, as she turned to him and said that it was so perfectly wonderful.
Percy watched her with delight, Mabel was proving to be something els
e entirely. He wondered what it would be like to wrap his arms around her as they travelled together in the coach, to hold her hand in his and allay any uncertainties she may have; but he knew that any ideas he had in that respect would come to naught, his engagement to Flora had been publicly announced in The Times and she had already ordered her wedding trousseau. It was all too late.
Elizabeth was excited to see her second eldest son; she was wondering how he must have changed. Darcy was currently reading the paper as best he could in the carriage, he looked stern, the moustache he had grown did not sit comfortably on his face and resulted in him looking constantly angry, and he refused to wear his spectacles, which vexed her greatly. They were both excited to see James again and Elizabeth personally could not wait to have all her children back on dry land and at Pemberley, even if only for a short while. She could smell the saltiness of the air, could hear the gentle caw of the gulls as they flew overhead. Darcy looked up from his paper and smiled at her, before reaching over and taking her hand as the carriage pulled along, the rhythm of hooves clattering against the cobbles as they reached the coast.
The billiard balls clunked against each other and Darcy, firmly ensconced in the house at Cromer, realised that he was losing to his wife. His second eldest son laughed from the corner of the room as he watched his parents battling each other on smooth green baize.
“Lizzy,” he walked around to where she was standing as she studied her next move. “What do you suggest we do about the Wyndham boy.”
James rose to his feet, taking a long drag of the cigar, a deep gulp of the port. “It’s obvious to anyone concerned that he has a great affection for her, and she for him.”
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 40