The Second Mrs Darcy. Elizabeth Aston

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СКАЧАТЬ philosophy, my—” Theodosia caught her husband’s eye, and the words died on her lips. “Well, as to that, the past is the past, and we must look to the future, and since you have no fortune, just as you didn’t have when you left, the only course open to you is marriage.”

      “Or I could seek employment as a governess,” said Octavia, still angry, and yielding to an impulse to annoy her sister.

      As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. Her sister’s eyes flashed, and Mr. Cartland, after giving her a quick, despairing glance, fixed his gaze on the ceiling.

      The abuse washed over all, all her sister’s pent-up rage: the disgrace. Octavia was born a Melbury, even if she had never been worthy of the name; what would people say if her sister went out to be a household drudge; how could she, on her first day home, come up with such a crack-brained scheme and upset her own sister so greatly?

      Mr. Cartland called for his wife’s smelling salts; Icken, her maid, stalked into the room and waved a vinaigrette under Theodosia’s nose. Octavia could hear her hissing under her breath, “Shameful, upsetting the mistress like that, her own sister, she should know better.”

      “Theodosia suffers from her nerves,” Mr. Cartland said, a smile flickering to his face and then vanishing again.

      It was as though the intervening years had never happened, as though Octavia were a nineteen-year-old girl once again, expected to be obedient and to listen to her elders and betters.

      She had had enough of this. She was a grown woman, a married woman, if now a widow; what right had her sister to treat her in this way and lay down the law about what she should and shouldn’t do?

      She rose from the table. “Theodosia is unwell, I think my presence upsets her, I shall go to my room,” she said, flashing a smile at her brother-in-law before she fled upstairs.

      It was inevitable that Theodosia, when she had recovered from her equanimity to some degree, should send for her other sister and brother. “Let us see if they can talk sense into the wretched woman, let us see if they can’t make Octavia see reason,” she said to her husband with grim satisfaction.

      Mr. Cartland, who knew that the combined forces of his wife and her sister and his brother-in-law were more than he could stomach, beat a hasty retreat to his club, murmuring that he had business to attend to in town, might not be back for some hours.

      Octavia wasn’t at all surprised, as she sat sipping a cup of chocolate the next morning, to be told by a bright-eyed Alice that she was wanted downstairs as soon as ever might be, that Mr. Melbury and Lady Adderley had called and were waiting to see her.

      Octavia had heard the door knocker, knew perfectly well that it was far too early for any but members of the family to be at the front door, and had correctly guessed what was in store for her.

      She didn’t hurry her toilette, and indeed took unusual care over it. She put on a dark grey bombazine morning dress, trimmed with black silk rosettes on a flounced hem, which the clever fingers of Madame Duhamel’s derseys had made for her from a not-too-out-of-date pattern in the book of plates which had arrived in Calcutta on the last ship. It was modish enough, if not bang-up-to-the-minute—her sisters’ sharp eyes would at once spot last year’s trimming and the set of the sleeve that no modish London lady would dream of being seen in, but Octavia knew it suited her. The awareness of looking her best heightened her courage, so that, with the tinge of colour in her cheeks from the apprehension that she was trying so keenly to quell, she made a striking picture as she entered the room.

      Her brother Arthur rose from his seat. “Well, upon my word,” he exclaimed. “I never saw you in better looks, Octavia. I should have thought—”

      A formal kiss from Augusta. “That’s as may be, Arthur,” she said in her brisk way, “and we must be pleased to see Octavia looking tolerably well, but nothing alters the fact that she is several inches taller than any woman has any right to be, and what is more, several inches taller than any Melbury female has ever been. Of course, she gets her height from her mother.”

      From the contempt in her voice, you would have thought Octavia’s mother had been a giantess; it was a familiar insult, and one that Octavia knew how to ignore. She was, in some obscure way, proud of her height; it was an inheritance from her despised grandfather and as such, she treasured it. If it set her apart from her brothers and sisters, so much the better.

      “Now,” said Theodosia. “We have been discussing your situation while we were waiting for you to come down—what an age it took you to dress—and this is what is to be done.”

      Octavia listened with half her mind. Did her sisters and brother imagine she would have nothing to say in the matter? Did they expect her to accept being treated simply as an object to be dealt with as they might a horse or a long-standing servant who had become a problem?

      Their decision was clear cut. Arthur was to approach Warren and represent to him in the most forceful and persuasive terms how very bad it would look for his late cousin’s widow to be seen to be destitute. By this means, it was to be hoped, they might squeeze some money out of him, which would go towards Octavia being able to support herself, if not in comfort, at least not in penury.

      “Until such time as we can find you another husband,” Augusta finished in a definite voice.

      “You weren’t able to when I was last in London, why should it be any different now?” said Octavia.

      “Well, upon my word, Octavia,” said Arthur, looking down his long nose at her. “If you are going to take that tone with us, I shall consider you ungrateful. Your sister is only—”

      “Meanwhile,” went on Theodosia, as though Octavia hadn’t spoken, an old trick and one that always reduced Octavia to seething if helpless fury, “you will go down to Hertfordshire, where you may stay with our cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Ackworth. I wrote to them first thing this morning, so it is all arranged. We don’t want you drooping about town in your weeds, there is nothing more depressing or off-putting to the male sex than a widow in her weeds. Your year of mourning will shortly be over, fortunately before the end of the season. You are no longer a green girl; we shall see if there is not some older man, a widower who wishes for more sensible company than a debutante would provide. You do not want for sense, when you are not being wilful and obstinate, and some country squire, who is not too nice in his …”

      Octavia considered. Her first reaction was to refuse all their suggestions, to insist that she was going to make her own way in the world and that they need not bother themselves with her at all. On the other hand, almost anything would be preferable to spending these next few weeks in London, in Lothian Street, incarcerated within doors except when her sister condescended to take her out in the carriage, or demanded her company while she took her morning constitutional in the park.

      “Very well,” she said. “I shall go to the Ackworths, if they will have me.”

      “No question of that,” said Theodosia.

      “Not for a few days, however. I have a few things to attend to, lawyers to see—”

      “Oh, as to that, you are not to be dealing with lawyers, I shall arrange all that,” said Arthur.

      “No,” said Octavia. “I will not authorise you to act on my behalf, indeed, I shall write to the lawyers and say quite clearly that they are to deal with no one but myself. And don’t puff up like that, Arthur. I am of age, well past my majority, as you all remind me, a married woman, and more than capable СКАЧАТЬ