Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“I can tolerate your weekly journal, Angus. It’s Argus who is the damnable nuisance,” said Fitz, leading his guest into the small drawing room, blazing with crimson and gilt.

No doubt he would have continued in that vein, except that his ravishing wife was coming forward with a brilliant smile; she and Mr. Sinclair liked each other. “Angus!”

“Each time I see you, Elizabeth, your beauty amazes me,” he said, kissing her hand.

“Fitz is making a bore of himself again about Argus?”

“Inevitably,” he said, heart sinking a little at her use of “bore.” Too tactless.

“Who is he?”

“In this incarnation, I know not. His letters come in the post. But in his original, mythical incarnation, he was a huge monster with many eyes. Which, I am sure, is why the anonymous fellow chose his pen name. The eyes of Argus see everywhere.”

“You must know who he is,” said Fitz.

“No, I do not.”

“Oh, Fitz, do leave Angus alone!” Elizabeth said jokingly.

“Am I making a bore of myself?” Fitz asked, a slight tinge of acid in his voice.

“Yes, my love, you are.”

“Point taken. Try the whisky, Angus,” said Fitz with a tight smile, holding out a glass.

Oh, dear, Angus thought, swallowing a potion he detested. Elizabeth is going to embark upon yet another of her poke-gentle-fun-at-Fitz essays, and he, hating it, will poker up stiffer than any iron implement ever forged to tame a fire. Why can she not see that her touch isn’t light enough? Especially given its object, thinner-skinned by far than he pretends.

“Do not say you like it, Angus!” she said with a laugh.

“But I do. Very smooth,” Angus lied valiantly.

A reply that mollified Fitz, but did not raise him in his hostess’s esteem; she had been hoping for support.

It was a private dinner; no other guests were expected, so the three of them sat at one end of the small dining table in the small dining room, there to consume a five-course meal to which none of them did justice.

“I publish Argus’s epistles, Fitz,” Angus said as the joints were removed and the syllabubs came in, “because I am so tired of this waste.” His rather crabbed hand swept the air above the table. “It is de rigeur to serve me a gargantuan dinner, though I do not need it, and have eaten but a wee bit of it. Nor has either of you made greater inroads. All of us would have been content with a loaf of bread, some butter, some jam, some cheese and a winter apple. Your staff and all their relatives wax fat on your leavings-so, probably, do the ravens in the square gardens.”

Even knowing Fitz’s detestation of excessive loudness, Elizabeth could not help her burst of laughter. “Do you know, Angus, you and my sister Mary would get along together famously? That was exactly the kind of remark sets people’s backs up, but you care as little for our feelings as she would.”

“Whose wife is she?”

“Nobody’s. Mary is unmarried.”

“A spinster enamoured of Argus!” Fitz snapped.

Startled, Elizabeth’s eyes flew to his face. “How do you know that?” she asked. “I certainly do not.”

She had taken care to say it lightly, almost jokingly, but he would not look at her, and his face had gone very impassive. “I know it from Mary, of course.”

“Does she live in London?” Angus asked, shrewd blue eyes taking note of the sudden tension between them.

“No, in Hertford,” said Elizabeth, rising. “I will leave you to your port and cheroots, but do not, I beg you, linger over them. There will be coffee in the drawing room.”

“You’re lucky in your wife, Fitz,” Angus said, accepting a port. “The most beautiful, vital creature.”

Fitz smiled. “Yes, she is. However, there are other ladies equally entrancing. Why not espouse one yourself? What are you, forty? And unmarried. London’s most eligible bachelor, they say.”

“I beg to differ about the ladies. Elizabeth is unique.” Angus puffed at his slender cigar. “Is the spinster sister in her mould? If she is, I might try my luck there. But I doubt it, else she’d not be a spinster.”

“She was called upon to look after their mother.” Fitz grimaced. “Mary Bennet is a silly woman, forever quoting someone else’s noble Christian thoughts. Though at her last prayers years ago, she has found a new god to worship-Argus.” Darcy leaned both elbows on the table and linked his hands together; a habit of his to make other men think him relaxed, unworried. “Which leads me back to that vexed subject. It will not do, Angus, to keep on publishing this fellow’s pathetic crotchets.”

“If they were in truth pathetic, Fitz, you would not be half so perturbed. It’s not London eating at you, is it? London has always been a stew, and always will be a stew. No, you fear some revolution in the north-just how far do your interests go?”

“I don’t dabble in things beneath the notice of a Darcy!”

Angus roared with laughter, unoffended. “Lord, what a snob you are!”

“I would rather say I am a gentleman.”

“Aye, an occupation all of its own.” Angus leaned back in his chair, the hundred candles of an overhead chandelier setting his silver-gilt hair afire. The creases in his lean cheeks deepened when he smiled; they made him look impish. Which was how he felt, more intrigued with Fitzwilliam Darcy tonight than ever he had been. There were undercurrents he had not suspected-was that perhaps because Elizabeth was on a rare visit to the south? Most of his acquaintance with her had taken place at Pemberley during the house parties Fitz enjoyed having; she was, for all her beauty, not fond of the fleshpots of London society. A Court reception had brought her, and he counted himself fortunate that Fitz’s curious fixation upon Argus had produced things like an intimate dinner for three.

“It is no good,” he said, tossing back the last of his port. “Argus will have his forum for debate as long as I own the Westminster Chronicle -and you do not have sufficient money to buy me out. That would take the funds of a Croesus.”

“What a pleasant dinner,” Elizabeth said to her husband after their lone guest had departed. She commenced to climb the left-hand fork of the stairs above a splendid landing halfway up, Fitz by her side, helping her with her train.

“Yes it was. Though frustrating. I cannot seem to get it through Angus’s head that it is Argus and his like will bring us down. Ever since the American colonists started prating about their democratic ideals and the French started cutting off the heads of their betters, the lower classes have been rumbling. Even here in England.”

“A nation of shopkeepers, Bonaparte called us.”

“Bonaparte has failed. Sir Rupert Lavenham was telling me that his grand army is lost in the Russian snows. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers frozen to death. And he has left them to their fate-can you believe that, Elizabeth? The man is an upstart, to have so little honour.”

“No honour at all,” she said dutifully. “By the way, Fitz, when did Mary tell you she was enamoured of Argus?”

“When I saw her in the library the morning we left. We-er-had a little falling out.”

They had reached her door; she stopped, her hand on its lever. “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”

“They are not your affair.”

“Yes, they are, when they involve my sister! What kind of falling out? Is that why she is living in Hertford? Did you make her feel she is not welcome at Pemberley?”

His dislike of being criticised made him answer sharply. “As a matter of fact, she absolutely refused to come to Pemberley! Or even to have a companion! It is the height of impropriety to live unchaperoned! And in Hertford, under the eyes of the people who have known her for years! I have washed my hands of her, frittering away her jointure on some quest put into her head by the letters of that fool, Argus!”