A Learned Romance Read online

  “I am perfectly well,” she told Mrs Holt in clipped tones. “I am sorry you feel I have not the grasp on my constitution that you have on yours. At any rate, I cannot discuss it any longer, because I am due elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere? I thought Mrs Wickham was sending the carriage—”

  “If it comes, you can send it back. I will find my own way home. I have an errand to do before I return to the Wickhams’.” The heat of anger sustained Mary in gathering her things with an aplomb that dissuaded Mrs Holt from objecting. Mary perched her bonnet on her head and tied the ribbons, feeling strengthened by the silkiness going under her chin. “Thank you for a lovely day, Mrs Holt.”

  “Of—of course.” Mrs Holt settled back with a limpness that showed her confusion. Before the woman could recover her wits enough to ask any questions, Mary strode out of the drawing room and out the front door, giving a nod to the footman who opened the door for her.

  It was only when she was out in the street, awkwardly clinging to a pillar and waving half-heartedly for a hack, that the anger ebbed and the anxiety underneath it swelled to drown her.

  The ride to the Royal Academy at Somerset House went by all too quickly, and Mary felt almost dumped onto the sidewalk by the hackney coach. Her trembling fingers pressed coins into the driver’s hand. A few months ago, she would have had no idea how much such a trip should have cost, nor how much to tip, and very likely would have been swindled dreadfully. I suppose life in London does make one less naive. The thought did nothing to reassure her; in fact, it soured her mood further, and she glanced up at the palatial entrance to the gallery with distrust. Wait—what if this is not the right gallery? She had assumed Lydia and Mr Cole had been speaking of the most popular one in London, but there were others. Panic leapt up her throat, and her breath wheezed. No, I am second-guessing myself. At any rate, whether it is correct or not, I am here. I might as well look inside.

  The entryway teemed with people, and the air that had been brisk and fresh outdoors sweltered into a thick, musty odour of dust, oil, and sweat. Mary dodged between art lovers eager to squint at landscapes and squeezed against walls to avoid chattering ladies gesturing with excitement. There were only a few rooms that displayed portraits, but Mary did not know which one Mr Cole would lurk at. She chose one at random and hurried in.

  “Why, Miss Bennet!” Miss Poppit caught sight of Mary, and before Mary could work out a plan the woman joined her. “I did not know you were fond of art. I suppose you came with your sister?”

  “Lydia is not here.” Mary wished she had more presence of mind; the words slipped out without thought. “I mean, she may be here…”

  “You do not know?” Miss Poppit’s eyes narrowed, and her sudden interest reminded Mary of a cat who had scented a mouse.

  No wonder Lydia does not like her. Mary felt she had fallen into a trap, running into such a person at such a moment. She had to find Mr Cole quickly, before Lydia arrived. “I…cannot say.” Feeling helpless, Mary lifted her hands and threw caution to the winds. “Miss Poppit, may I ask you a very great favour?”

  “Of course you may ask.” Her subtle wording warned she might not grant it.

  “I am looking for Mr Cole. I must speak with him. Please do not mention to anyone—” Mary struggled to plan. Quick thinking was not one of her talents. “Please just do not say anything to anyone, about me, or Lydia, or Mr Cole. Nothing at all.”

  Miss Poppit licked her lips, and Mary could almost see the deliberation going on in the woman’s mind: a delightful piece of gossip, or a show of solidarity for an acquaintance? Perhaps Mary’s meekness worked in her favour, for Miss Poppit eventually gave a slow nod. “Very well. I will say nothing.”

  “Thank you.” Mary lurched in the direction of the room adjacent, but Miss Poppit grabbed her arm.

  “Do not go in that room. Mr Cole is not there, and Lady Crestwood is.”

  “Thank you again.” Relieved at the narrow escape, Mary gave her a weak smile and hurried in another direction. Lady Crestwood would never have kept it secret. She thought she could probably count on Miss Poppit to delay her mentor in that room for a short time, and the gift of aid was very welcome. Miss Poppit is not so bad as Lydia says.

  The next room held one group of gentlemen and ladies goggling at a portrait of a heavy, thick-browed judge who stared back at the viewer with a sternness that seemed to both titillate and disturb the patrons. “By Jove! Is that really old Harcourt?” one of the gentlemen said. “He looks cruel enough, but why is one lip such an odd colour?”

  “Perhaps he has been eating blueberries,” a lady said.

  “I assure you, the colour is perfectly correct,” another man said. “I painted it with a minute attention to detail.”

  “My dear husband, no one doubts that, but one cannot deny that his left hand only has four fingers.” A fleshy woman, so heavily doused with powder that Mary could smell it across the room, patted the artist’s arm. “Mr Cole, what do you think?”

  The group parted enough to reveal Mr Cole, whose eyes met Mary’s across the room. Mary’s heart did a wayward flop, but she forced herself to approach.

  “Any praise human lips could offer would be unworthy of it,” Mr Cole said, giving an ironic bow to the artist.

  The artist’s face lit up. “Why, thank you! My love, do you hear what Mr Cole says? He said only angels could praise my work properly.” His group began ambling toward the door, and the crinkles of amusement around Mr Cole’s eyes revealed another meaning to his words. Mary stifled a giggle as she joined him.

  Even at such a moment, he can make me laugh. The thought unsettled her, but she tried to push it from her mind. “Mr Cole, it does not seem worth your effort to devise hidden insults for poor painters.”

  “Oh, he is not poor by any means.” His gaze swept the room, and Mary realised he must be thinking Lydia brought her.

  “She is not here. Not yet, any way.”

  His gaze returned to Mary, and his brows drew up in perplexity. “No? But you are here.”

  “I took a hack.”

  He blinked, but soon smoothed his features. “By yourself?”

  “I had to speak to you.” All the way—all day long, really—she had dreaded this moment, the moment where she would have to face Mr Cole and yet again plead with him to have better sense. And yet, now that it was here and she was standing in front of his strong, broad shoulders and quirky grin, she felt almost happy. Do not be cajoled by his charm, Mary. Keep to your business, she chided herself. “This meeting is beyond foolish. Anyone who sees you together will assume it was planned.”

  “It was planned. But how did you come to know it?”

  “I overheard you speaking of it.” Mary brushed back the strands of hair from her temples. “Sir, you must comprehend the problem? If you are seen together here, it will feed the gossip tarnishing her name.”

  “Surely not.”

  “Indeed,” Mary insisted, much against her nature. “There has already been talk—”

  “I care nothing about that.”

  “But a woman’s reputation is always more fragile than a man’s. Lydia is married, but her youth at times promotes incautious behaviour.”

  His stance relaxed as he studied her, though she still knew not if her words had penetrated his understanding. “If anyone realises you came all this way in a hackney coach just to try to stop us, it will create much worse gossip.”

  “No one will know that unless you tell them,” Mary replied. “And you will not do that I am sure.”

  “No, I shall not. However, am I just supposed to abandon my afternoon’s plans on your whim?” He tilted his head and paused, and Mary braced herself for an argument. But to her shock, none came. “Very well. I shall go on home. Hercules will be overjoyed.”

  “You—you will?”

  “You are a very interfering sister, Miss Bennet. I only hope it is the kind of interfering that does more good than harm.”

  Interfering? No one—no one�
��had ever called her interfering before. Preachy, perhaps, but not actively interfering. She was the mouse of Longbourn. What had Lydia—no, what had Mr Cole—made of her?

  She knew Lydia might turn up at any moment. She knew Miss Poppit might not be able to keep Lady Crestwood away for long. She knew time was of the essence, and yet she could not help but detain the man a moment. His acquiescence had unsettled her. “Why are you so willing to help now, all of a sudden?”

  He shrugged. “I told you that I wanted a distraction. However entertaining it would have been to chuckle with your sister in a corner, I think her sister rampaging across London to try and stop idle gossip is at least as amusing.”

  “Rampaging?”

  He ignored her indignation. “You know, if Mrs Wickham guesses someone actively prevented our meeting, she will only be the more eager to accomplish it.”

  “You understand her well. She is contrary like that.”

  “You do not understand her. As one of the most fashionable ladies in London, she is under constant scrutiny. Whatever she does is exaggerated, amplified by the awe of the crowds. She tells a joke, and the world finds it far funnier than they ought. She makes an error of judgment, and the world condemns her as the greatest villain imaginable. She senses the injustice when it works against her, but not at other times. That is why she rebels.”

  “You are saying that all the attention corrupts her?” Mary clutched her reticule tighter, unsure whether to defend her sister or pity her. “But you relish all the attention you get, as the gentleman associated with her. You are not so careful of yourself.”

  “Frankly, I think I have better sense than Mrs Wickham.”

  “Yet you pursue glory in the form of your lectures, even though the whole endeavour seems to disgust you. Perhaps you are not so incorruptible as you think.”

  His lips pursed with annoyance, but he made a polite bow. “Perhaps not. Good-bye, Miss Bennet. Try to get home without causing too much scandal.” The amused smile creeped back over his face as he watched her indignant reaction. “Fear not, I will come up with some excuse for Mrs Wickham.” He strode off.

  Perhaps he does not mean to keep his word. Though it was a risk, Mary followed him at a distance, hanging by the edges of the rooms, and paused at a window to watch him get into a hackney cab. The wheels scraped with the sudden motion of the carriage, and the cab hurtled down the street. Relief tingled down Mary’s neck, relaxing her shoulders. Whatever his faults, apparently Mr Cole was a man of his word. He had repeatedly refused to make idle promises to stay away from Lydia, and he left today, just as he had said. As Mary hurried into a coach, she caught sight of Miss Poppit and Lady Crestwood strolling out of the gallery with languid elegance. Miss Poppit turned the noblewoman to admire the pillars as Mary’s carriage rolled away.

  Perhaps people are not so bad as they seem. She felt confused by the sudden aid of Miss Poppit and Mr Cole, as if she had charged forward to break through a gate, only to find it open and abandoned. The day’s trials pressed down on her, sinking her body into the cushion of the carriage seat, and Mary sighed with exhaustion. I wonder if Mr Wickham has any books on geology in his library. If Mr Cole was indeed going to be more helpful, the least Mary could do was contribute to his lectures as best she could. But the weight of loss of sleep bore down on her, and she knew her mind would be too muddled to accomplish much today. Tomorrow, then. I shall have to make more of an effort to sleep tonight. I wonder if the cook would warm some milk for me. For once, the embarrassment of asking for something did not seem to bother her. She slumped against the wall of the carriage and watched Mr Cole’s smile flicker in her mind’s eye. He is not so bad as he seems.

  “Now, Lieutenant Stubbs, you must sit and tell us all your dreadful war stories. Do make them thrilling! Put in some helpless foreign women that you rescued, and a brave subordinate dedicated to your safety—”

  “As I am only a lieutenant, I cannot expect much in the way of devoted subordinates and protection,” Kitty’s husband said, his mouth twisting as if he had bitten down on a lemon. He had little patience for Lydia’s frolics, and when the couple had arrived at the Wickhams’ earlier that afternoon, he had responded with indifference to most of her teasing, compliments, and silly talk. He had seemed duly impressed with the magnificence of the house, however, and had appeared downright pleased with Mr Wickham, whose amiable but soldierly demeanour reassured him. While Kitty had embraced her sisters with enthusiasm, Lieutenant Stubbs had given Mary a perfunctory bow, a little awkward due to the wound in his arm, but otherwise had not much to do with her.

  Mary felt relieved rather than miffed. She had never felt close to Lieutenant Stubbs, and presently she felt especially unsuited for the social demands of the day. The warm milk she had obtained from the cook last night had soothed her, and though worried thoughts had popped into her mind, Mary had focused on relaxing enough to drift off into a deep slumber. The morning had been refreshing as well: she had curled up with a geology book and only stopped reading to pen a few notes. But as the day went on, Mary found herself getting more and more nervous at the advent of her sister, worrying that Kitty’s playfulness would encourage Lydia to be wilder still. When the Stubbses had arrived and they had all dined together, the sight of Lydia and Kitty at the table brought up a hundred memories of Longbourn dinners—the squabbles, the hurt feelings, and most of all, Mary’s retreat from it all by making herself as little noticed as possible, careful not to speak nor eat much, and quoting something religious when she felt it important to speak. With the flood of memory, Mary found she could hardly touch her plate, and now her stomach grumbled at the negligence. No one had said anything unpleasant, but the air felt stifling and full of suspended doom. It did not help matters that they were in Lydia’s accursed drawing room, the one with aging yellow curtains and stolid, ill-carved furniture. It had been a point of contention so long in the household that Mary felt it an unlucky omen that they had wound up there for their after-dinner tea.

  “Surely you can tell us some sort of story or other,” Lydia said, brushing her curls back with an impatience that showed she was near to losing her temper. Mary was not surprised to see it; Lydia had been on her best behaviour all day, full of pretty tricks and a warmth that would have engaged most people. No doubt she was tiring quickly. Nothing dampened Lydia’s spirits more than having her charm go unappreciated.

  The lieutenant certainly did not appreciate it. Though in his presence, Kitty showed a salutary shift to sense and calm, Lydia remained in their childish habits of gambols and frivolity. Kitty and Lydia still shared their tall, pleasingly-curvaceous figures and dark hair, but either marriage or her constant perusal of war news had altered Kitty’s character to some degree, making her more serious, though not as sullen and prickly as her husband. Both husband and wife were handsome, Kitty’s lips coral-bright and her hair swept up in simple elegance, Lieutenant Stubbs with heavy eyebrows, a strong chin, and a moody Byronic beauty. The soldier’s composed, yet haughty smile both created the sense of distance and attracted one to collapse it.

  At least, if one were not his sister-in-law. Mary could acknowledge the man’s beauty and military prowess, but neither appealed to her. She would much rather have Harry Lucas in the family, with all his ugliness and gentleness, than Lieutenant Stubbs. But I will probably never see Harry again. She turned her gaze to Lieutenant Stubbs again, resigned to try to love him.

  “Perhaps there is a story I can tell,” Lieutenant Stubbs said. His brows narrowed as if he were willing himself to charge up a hill at the enemy, and Mary realised Kitty’s husband was indeed making an effort to make himself agreeable to them all. “There was a day when my captain…”

  The story was not long, but it included enough blood and death to make Lydia’s eyes widen and to make Mary hunch up in her seat. Mr Wickham coughed in a way that suggested he thought the subject inappropriate for a drawing room, but he listened politely nonetheless. Lieutenant Stubbs must have felt the failure of
his story, for when he completed it, he folded his arms and lifted his chin, and made only curt replies to questions after that.

  Lydia, too, made an effort. Finding that her usual chatter had failed to produce the usual success, she sat in prim stateliness and made the kind of dull, proper conversation she must have supposed palatable to a man of Lieutenant Stubbs’s nature. She played the part of obedient, submissive wife, echoing Mr Wickham’s statements and attending to his comforts rather than summoning him to carry her tea or to hail a maid for a forgotten object as she commonly did. Mr Wickham yawned and drooped at his wife’s change, and Mary almost giggled to see how unsatisfying the ‘proper wife’ was for both of them. I suppose Mr Wickham really does like Lydia’s sauciness. Lieutenant Stubbs viewed the transformation with a pleased but suspicious expression.

  But it was not until the next day that the source of his suspicion was made known. With Kitty trailing behind him nervously, he entered the drawing room where Mary and Lydia sat, every inch the man of purpose, and requested a conference. Lydia snorted and pronounced him droll but agreed to hear him.

  “You seem to have grown comfortable in your marriage, Mrs Wickham. I am glad to see you are not so restless as Kitty feared you might be.” There was something repellent in the self-important manner of his congratulation, and Mary winced, remembering her own errors of that kind.