Amanda Grange - Mr. Darcy, Vampyre

‘Is it far to Paris?’ asked Elizabeth.

‘It will take us several days to get there,’ said Darcy. ‘We will travel in easy stages, seeing the sights on the way. There is a great deal I have to show you.’

The ship eased its way into the harbour and the Darcys disembarked.

As she set foot for the first time on French soil, Elizabeth looked about her with interest and wondered what the next few weeks would bring.

My dearest Jane,

It is almost a week since I wrote to you last, and indeed I have been very negligent for I have forgotten to post my last letter to you. Never mind, I will post them both together and you will have the pleasure of two letters at once; or, more likely, you will receive one after the other. The post from the Continent is not very reliable, I hear.

We are now established in Paris, and it is the most beautiful city. I was apprehensive about coming here at first, but my fears were unfounded. The city is unexpectedly civilised and the French, so far, seem friendly. We have had some trouble with the food, which is laced with garlic, and several of the servants have been ill; indeed one of our footmen has left us, saying that he will be poisoned here if he stays any longer. Fortunately, he has not been difficult to replace. My maid refuses to eat anything except the bread and cheese she buys at the market. I must confess, I have joined her in this simple repast on more than one occasion. Darcy too eats very little here. But that is a small matter. The shops are elegant and numerous, and there are splendours to be seen everywhere. My dear Darcy has a wide circle of friends and relatives, and I pity poor Mama for telling him that we were able to dine with four and twenty families in Hertfordshire, for I must already have met a hundred of his friends. Last night we went to a soirée and tonight we are to go to a salon given by one of Darcy’s cousins. Does that not sound grand? Perhaps I will start a fashion for salons when I return home. You and I can hold them, Jane, and be the most fashionable women in England!

How are you finding London? Are you and your dear Mr Bingley happy? I am happy with my Darcy, and yet, Jane, he has still not visited me in my bedchamber and I do not know why. I wish you were here, then I would have someone to talk to. The people here are all very welcoming, but they are strangers, and I cannot say the things to them that I could say to you.

Write to me as soon as you can at the address below.

Your affectionate sister,

Elizabeth

She addressed the letter and gave it to one of the footmen to post, together with the letter she had written in Dover, then went upstairs to dress. As she did so, she was conscious of the gulf between her old and new lives. Her experiences of Paris had, for the first time, shown her how truly different Darcy’s life was from her own. Before their marriage, she had seen him at Pemberley with his sister, at Rosings with his aunt, and at Netherfield with Bingley, but she had never seen him in society. Now, however, it was very different.

She thought of Lady Catherine’s visit to Longbourn a few short weeks before, when Lady Catherine had tried to dissuade her from marrying Darcy by saying that she would be censured, slighted, and despised by everyone connected with him, and that the alliance would be a disgrace; that Elizabeth herself, if she were wise, would not wish to quit the sphere in which she had been brought up. To which Elizabeth had replied angrily that, in marrying him, she should not consider herself as quitting her sphere, because Darcy was a gentleman and she herself was a gentleman’s daughter.

And that had been true. But only in Paris had she realised how wide was the gulf between a gentleman’s daughter from a country manor house and a gentleman of Darcy’s standing. The people he knew in Paris were quite unlike the country gentry of England. They were beautiful and mesmerising in a way she had never encountered before. The women undulated, instead of walked, across the rooms with the sinuous beauty of snakes, and the men were scarcely any less seductive. They spoke to her in low voices, holding her hand lingeringly and gazing into her eyes with an intensity which at once attracted and repulsed her.

Nevertheless, she liked Paris, and by the time she arrived at the salon, she was ready to enjoy herself.

The house was insignificant from the outside. It was situated on a dirty street and had a narrow, plain frontage, but once inside everything changed. The hall was high ceilinged and carpeted in thick scarlet, and a grand staircase swept upstairs to the first floor. It was crowded with people, all wearing the strange new fashions of the Parisians. Gone were the elaborate styles of the pre-revolutionary years, with wide hooped skirts and towering wigs. Such signs of wealth had been discarded in fear, and simplicity was the order of the day. The men wore their hair long, falling over the high collars of their coats, and at their necks they wore cravats. Beneath their coats they wore tightly fitting knee breeches. The women wore gowns with high waists and slender skirts, made of a material so fine that it was almost sheer.

There was a noise of conversation as the Darcys began to climb the stair. One or two people raised quizzing glasses so they could stare at Elizabeth. She felt conscious that her dress was English and appeared staid by the side of the Parisian finery. The fabric was sturdier and the style less bare.

Darcy introduced her to some of the people and they welcomed her to Paris, but it was not the warm welcome of Hertfordshire; it was an altogether more appraising greeting.

Elizabeth and Darcy made their way to the top of the stairs where they waited to be announced.

The doors leading to the drawing room had been removed and the opening had been shaped into an oriental arch. It framed the hostess so perfectly that Elizabeth suspected it was deliberate. Mme Rousel, reclining on a chaise longue , was like a living portrait. Her dark hair was piled high on her head and secured by a long mother-of-pearl pin, from which curls spilled artistically round her sculptured features and fell across her bare shoulders. Her dress was cut low, with the small frills which passed for sleeves falling off her shoulders before merging with a delicate matching frill at her neck. The sheer fabric of her skirt was arranged around her in folds that were reminiscent of Greek statuary, and on her feet she wore golden sandals. A dark red shawl was draped across her knees, flowing over the gold upholstery of the chaise longue in an apparently casual arrangement. But every fold was so perfect that its placement could only be the result of artifice and not the negligence it was intended to convey. Elizabeth realised that that was why she felt uncomfortable: because the whole salon, from the people to the clothes to the furniture, was the result of artifice, a carefully arranged surface which shone like the sea on a summer’s day but disguised whatever truly lay beneath.

The Darcys were announced. At the name, many of the people already in the drawing room turned round. Even here in Paris, the name of Darcy was well known. They stared openly, in a way the English would not have done, with a boldness that was unsettling.

They went forward and Mme Rousel, Darcy’s cousin, welcomed them.

‘At last, Darcy, I was wondering when you would pay me a visit. It is many years since I have seen you.’

‘It has not been easy to visit France,’ he said.

‘For one of our kind it is always easy,’ she said reprovingly. ‘But you are here now, and that is all that counts.’

She held out her hand, with its long white fingers covered in rings, and he kissed it. She then withdrew it and placed it precisely in her lap, exactly as it had been before.