The Second Mrs Darcy

“As a married woman, your inheritance would have come under your husband’s control, and could have formed part of his estate. I understand there was an entail? Yes. Well, it would not have formed part of the entailed property, and should have come to you in the event of your husband’s death—but it might have been, as I say, a complication—not one we need consider in this case. I have from Calcutta copies of the documents relating to your husband’s sad and premature demise, please accept my deepest sympathies—and I am sure everything will be quite in order with regard to that.”

Christopher would have rejoiced in her good fortune, Octavia reflected, as she watched the cows who grazed in Green Park lying comfortably on the grass, chewing the cud, looking, she couldn’t help feeling, very much like one or two of Theodosia’s acquaintances, with their bland, bovine expressions.

Had Christopher survived, he would undoubtedly have put quite a lot of her inheritance into his house in Wiltshire, a place that seemed to eat up money. She went pale at the thought of the Worthington money passing into the grasping hands of Mr. Warren; well, there was no point in dwelling on might-have-beens; Christopher, God rest his soul, was gone, Mr. Warren had Dalcombe, and she had her own immense fortune from her mother’s despised family. She gave a little skip, startling a stout man hurrying past.

She had pledged Mr. Wilkinson to secrecy.

“It will get about in due course,” he said. “Such things always do, although not from me or anyone in my employ, we know our business too well for that, discretion is essential in our profession, Mrs. Darcy. Now, I am one of the executors of the will, and the other is a Mr. Portal—ah, I see you know the name. He is presently abroad, travelling in France, I believe, but that need not hold us up, although, as a lifelong friend of your great-uncle and -aunt, I know that he is very eager to make your acquaintance.”

“He wrote to me, from France, but I did not quite understand his position. So he is an executor?”

“Yes. Meanwhile, you will want someone to advise you; your brother, Mr. Arthur Melbury, would be the proper person, for I understand that Sir James Melbury is rarely in town. I can be in touch with Mr. Melbury at his earliest convenience to discuss—”

Octavia cut in swiftly. “I forbid you, I absolutely forbid you to have any contact with Mr. Melbury about this or anything to do with me.”

Mr. Wilkinson’s grave face took on a look of astonishment.

“I am twenty-five, and as a widow I believe I have full control of my financial affairs, is not that so?”

“In law, yes, but as a practical matter, I beg of you to consider what a responsibility such a fortune is. Mr. Melbury is known as an astute man, he will be better able to—”

“No. If I decide to run wild and sell out of the gilts and gamble the money away at the card table, I shall do so; it is entirely my own business.”

“But, Mrs. Darcy,” he began in appalled tones.

“I joke, Mr. Wilkinson. I am not a gambler, and I have been too poor for most of my life not to know the value of large sums in gilts. But I mean what I say. Whom did Mrs. Worthington rely on to advise her?”

He looked doubtful. “We were her lawyers, and she had a man of business in Yorkshire, but as to investments and so forth, and the plantations—well, I believe she saw to all that herself.”

“Then so shall I.”

“But, Mrs. Darcy, the cases are quite different. Mrs. Worthington was a woman who—”

“I shall make mistakes, I am sure, but my mind is quite made up.”

She could see that he was going to argue, and could watch his mental processes as he thought better of it. She knew just what was going through his mind, that in no time at all, she would be married again, and her fortune would pass into the hands of a man, someone who would take care of everything for her.

“Not so,” she said to the nearest cow, who gazed at her with huge, soft eyes. “I am a woman of independent means, definitely in possession of a good fortune, but I am not in the least in want of a husband!”

Chapter Seven (#u78706f8d-78f9-577c-954d-18fd65e6e97e)

Arthur called early the following morning, when his sisters and niece were still in the breakfast parlour. Penelope was toying with a piece of toast, looking out of the window, and, while her mother was attending to her morning coffee and arranging everyone’s day for them, letting herself give way to a heavy sigh. She rose politely as her uncle came into the room, dropping a neat curtsy, and presenting a dutiful cheek for his avuncular kiss.

“You are not in looks, Penelope,” he said. “You need to get some roses into your cheeks. I saw Louisa yesterday, and she is blooming, quite blooming; you will have to look to your laurels.”

“What have Louisa’s looks to do with me?” Penelope muttered as she sat down again.

Arthur greeted his sisters, Theodosia with enthusiasm, Octavia less so, and sat himself down, calling for a fresh pot of coffee. “I have just time for a cup, but I shan’t stay. I have called on Octavia’s account, as it happens. I met Lady Warren last night, at the Batterbys’ rout—I didn’t see you there, Theodosia. It was a sad crush, you did well to avoid it.”

“We called in early, probably before you arrived, for we were going on to the Tollants’ ball.”

“Oh? Well, as I say, Lady Warren was there— Octavia, are you paying attention?”

“I?” said Octavia, who had been looking out of the window and watching a pair of quarrelsome sparrows perched on the parapet of the house opposite.

“You, ma’am. I said, I have taken the time out from my own affairs entirely on your account, the least you can do is to listen to what I have to say.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur, but what have these routs and balls and Batterbys and Tollants to do with me?”

“Nothing at all, but Lady Warren does. She is George Warren’s stepmother, as it happens. And a connection of your late husband’s, now I come to think of it.”

Another connection? What an entwined world it was, with the upper ten thousand woven into a spider’s web of marriages and consanguinity. Here was she, with a large family of half brothers and sisters, cousins, now even more connections through Christopher’s family—and yet, in truth, she was still an orphan, with no close ties of feeling to any of them.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed; he loved tracing family links. “Caroline Warren was a Bingley before she married, and her brother married the eldest Bennet daughter, a family of no importance, it was not a good match, she brought him hardly a penny, but what is more to the point, her next sister, Elizabeth, had the very good luck to snare Fitzwilliam Darcy and so she became the mistress of Pemberley; my word, she did well for herself there! Now of course, Captain Darcy was a cousin of that family, not a close cousin, but the connection is there.”

Octavia spread a generous portion of strawberry jam on a piece of toast. The connection seemed more remote than most, and while Lady Warren might be the most amiable creature, she had not heard a good word spoken about her stepson.

“And George Warren is, of course, unfortunately, Christopher Darcy’s heir. So I took it upon myself to mention to Lady Warren that you were returned to England. She expressed surprise, had no idea of it, but at once said that she would call upon you at the first opportunity and knew that George would also do himself the honour of waiting upon you.”

* * *

Lady Warren had lied to Arthur. Lady Warren knew perfectly well that Octavia was in England; she made it her business to know most of what was going on in London society, and in such a case, when the news was of direct interest to her or to her stepson, George, upon whom she doted, she made sure she had all the details. She had known to the day, almost to the hour when Octavia arrived in Lothian Street, and sent a note round to George’s lodgings, summoning him to her house.

“You will call upon her, of course,” she said, sitting at her elegant writing desk, while George lounged in the most comfortable chair near to the fire.

“The devil I will.”

Caroline Warren knew him too well to pay any attention to this. “The widow of your cousin, from whom you have inherited a very pretty estate; of course you must call. It would look odd if you didn’t, in the circumstances.”

“What business had Christopher Darcy to be marrying again, at his age? And to pick a woman with no fortune, and from what I remember of her, nothing much else to recommend her. Regular maypole, ain’t she? I never thought him to have a goatish disposition, he should have stayed a widower, or found himself a rich woman to marry if he had to put his neck into the hangman’s noose a second time. Although his first marriage don’t seem to have done him much good, for all she was considered a good catch; Lord knows what happened to the first Mrs. Darcy’s fortune.”

“I thought he ploughed every penny he had into his house and land, prize money, her portion, everything.”

“Well, I shall find out by and by, now I’m installed there and have all the accounts and papers to hand. A few extra thousand would have been worth having, but you say the second Mrs. D is landed safely on these shores, so she lives to enjoy her share of the inheritance. I dare say I’ll have her or that prosy brother of hers coming round begging me to give her an annuity or some such thing. I shan’t, of course, that family of hers can’t let her starve, and she’s no responsibility of mine if she can’t live on what her husband left her.”

“Which was little enough. I suppose he expected her to bear him a son and heir, what a mercy he was carried off before that could happen. It is fortunate for you that India has such a very unhealthy climate, where insect bites and the like can finish you off; that doesn’t happen in Wiltshire that I ever heard.”

“No, down there you die of boredom instead.” He raised a languid hand. “No need to remonstrate with me. It’s a devilish neat property, and will bring me a tidy little income, which I can do with.”

“Have a word with Arthur Melbury before you pay your duty call on Mrs. Darcy, so that she has no expectations of any kind, knows that your visit is purely a matter of form.”

“Lord, how tedious duty is. She’s only a half sister to the rest of that Melbury lot, ain’t she?”

“Yes, Sir Clement married her mother in an aberrant moment; she was from a family in trade, not in any great way, neither. At least she had the grace to expire in childbirth, and the third Lady Melbury was unexceptionable, if dull.”

George Warren was surprised by Octavia when he paid a visit to the house in Lothian Street. There was a glint in her eye, as though she were laughing at him, which he didn’t care for, and an air of confidence about her; what right had a poor widow to look as though she hadn’t a care in the world? And for all her half-mourning grey dress—not badly cut, either; George was a connoisseur of women’s clothes—she looked far from full of grief. But she had the decency to look more sombre when he spoke of Christopher; in flattering terms, although the truth was that he and Captain Darcy hadn’t got on well together, chalk and cheese.

The matter of money, of his inheritance, of her slight income, was not raised. And the only reference she made to Dalcombe House, the house where she might have expected to spend many years of her married life, was when she said that if she were at any time in Wiltshire, she would like to see the house where Christopher had been born and grew up, and which he loved so much.