The Second Mrs Darcy. Elizabeth Aston

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      “Or London, how much I envy you returning to London!” said Harriet. “And you will be pleased to see your brothers and sisters again,” she added, without conviction, having a very good notion of just how pleased they would be to have Octavia turning up on their doorstep again.

      “It is such a pity that Darcy’s heir should turn out to be George Warren,” Robert Thurloe said, not for the first time, as he ate a mango and then dipped his fingers into the water bowl. “No one, except his mother and the Prince Regent, with whom he is on very good terms, one understands, has a good word to say for the fellow. My advice, Octavia, if you decide to return to England, is to write to Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, in Derbyshire. He is not a close connection of your late husband’s, but he is a man of considerable wealth and influence. He has a fine estate, and has done very well out of mineral rights, I understand. He may be able to advise you as to the best course with regard to approaching George Warren.”

      Octavia had no intention of contacting any of her Darcy connections, however rich and influential. She suspected that their reaction to the arrival of an impecunious widow, even one bearing their name, would be much the same as that of her own family. They would compare her unfavourably with that paragon of breeding and beauty, the rich, aristocratic first Mrs. Darcy, whose memory had haunted her marriage. And from all she had heard of George Warren, the chances of his providing for her in any way seemed remote; he was not that kind of a man.

      The lawyer in Calcutta who had laid out for her just how Captain Darcy’s affairs were arranged had expressed his own doubts about Mr. Warren in no uncertain terms. Mr. Dyer was a small man with round, red cheeks, which he blew out in a disparaging way when the subject of George Warren came up. “Mr. Warren has a reputation for doing nothing which is not of immediate benefit to himself. You must make the attempt, of course, I would not advise otherwise, but you should not hang any great hopes on a favourable outcome.”

      Well, she, Octavia, wasn’t going to go cap in hand to any George Warren. She would ask Christopher’s lawyers in London to write to him, and if, as she expected, the answer was a flat refusal, then she would take it no further.

      “Have you made up your mind when you will return to London?” Harriet enquired, as she and Octavia left the table and went to sit on the verandah.

      Octavia listened to the sounds of an Indian night, the yelps and yowls of the pi dogs, the unearthly howls of the hyenas, a baby in a neighbouring house crying, then being hushed, the hoot of an owl, that harbinger of doom, according to the Indian servants, although Octavia liked those big birds of the night, with their huge, unblinking eyes and feathered wings. She didn’t care so much for the bats, visible against the last trails of yellow left from the abrupt tropical sunset, squeaking and flitting to and fro. And the frogs had started up in their steady nighttime chorus.

      How she would miss it all; how would she cope with life in Cheltenham or Bath, or whatever genteel town her tiny income would take her to?

      “The Sir John Rokesby sails on the twenty-fifth, and I dare say you could get a cabin. Oh, how I envy you, how I wish we were going back to England.”

      Harriet’s plump face looked quite distressed, and Octavia leant over to pat her hand. “Well, you will be returning in two years, will you not?”

      “Two years! Two more years of this, I do not know how I will bear it.”

      “You could return sooner.”

      “And leave Robert on his own? That would be unkind, unchristian, unwifely. And besides,” she added wisely, “it is never a good idea to leave one’s husband on his own in such a place, there are temptations, and I have seen it all too often, the handkerchief waved at a departing wife, and within hours the desolate husband has found comfort in a pair of willing arms. For the women here are uncommonly beautiful, and Robert is no different from any other man in that. No, I must serve my time out, but you—I cannot imagine why you hesitate. Time has passed, you know, I dare say you will find yourself on better terms with your family than you imagine; it is different, being a married woman—that is to say, a widow, but it is not the same as when you were a girl.”

      Better terms? Well, she could hope so, but she had a strong suspicion that none of her family would be pleased to see her. Had she been a rich widow, the case might be different, but she knew they would be annoyed by her circumstances.

       Chapter Two

      “A caller, at this hour?” said Harriet.

      She and Octavia had just returned from their morning ride, and were still in their riding habits.

      “Tell him to return later,” Harriet said to the bearer.

      The bearer looked grave. “It is a lawyer sahib, for Mrs. Darcy. Upon an urgent matter.”

      “Oh, well, in that case.”

      “Mr. Dyer?” said Octavia. “What can he want that is urgent? Ask him to come in, Chunilal.”

      But it was not Mr. Dyer who came into the room. This was a stranger, a perspiring, red-haired, red-faced young man, freckled and hot.

      “Beg pardon, ma’am, for calling so unconscionably early in the day,” he said. “However, this news has just reached us, it came overland, you know, and London never sends overland unless it’s urgent. I thought you might be out later on, so I took the liberty of calling early. If it is inconvenient, I shall return later, at any hour you care to name; however, I believe you will wish to hear what I have to say.”

      Octavia was intrigued. Overland from London? “I assume it is to do with the estate of my late husband, Captain Darcy.”

      “Late husband …? Captain Darcy? Oh, no, not at all, nothing to do with Captain Darcy.”

      “Are you not a colleague of Mr. Dyer, who handled my husband’s affairs here in Calcutta?”

      “No, not at all, nothing to do with Mr. Dyer, I know him, of course, it is a small world, but this is an entirely separate matter.”

      “Well, then,” said Octavia, gesturing to the harassed-looking young man to take a seat. “What has it to do with, Mr….?”

      “Oh, Lord, I never introduced myself, and I do not think your servant caught my name. I am Mr. Gurney, Josiah Gurney.”

      Mr. Gurney had a sheaf of papers with him, and he began to sort through them in a hasty way. “Yes,” he said. “Now, your mother was Susannah Worthington before her marriage, is that correct?”

      “My mother?” Octavia was nonplussed. Her mother, the woman she had never known, who had died when she was born? What had she to do with anything, let alone urgent missives from London?

      “Daughter of the late Mr. Digby Worthington, of Yorkshire? Who was your grandfather?”

      “Yes, he was my grandfather.”

      “And you have papers to prove it, I suppose.”

      “I have some papers—but what is all this, Mr. Gurney? You are nothing short of mystifying, and I do not see what my mother’s family nor my grandfather can have to do with anything here in Calcutta.”

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