Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (15 page)

But no.  I am not going to write down any more of what he said about Mary.  Suffice it to say that his remarks were largely devoted to speculation about Mary’s undergarments and whether they came equipped with locks and keys.

And then he broke off in mid-sentence, frowning up at me in perplexity.  “Hallo,” he said.  “I know you, don’t I?  We have met before.”

Apparently even Mary’s last name—and my saying that I was her sister—had not made him recall the Kitty Bennet he met last year in Derbyshire.  Why should it?  After all, perhaps I had only been the object of some similar wager.

I had not thought that the recollection of my acquaintance with Lord Henry Carmichael could possibly grow any more mortifying, but my cheeks burned at that thought.  It was cold comfort to reflect that if his attentions to me
had
been part of a bet, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy had probably caused him to lose the wager by sending me away.

I leaned forward and spoke between clenched teeth.  “Yes, we have met.  This past summer, in Belgium.”  Which was true enough.  That was the meeting at which I realised the humiliating truth that he had no recollection of either my face or my name.  “And if you do not leave my sister alone—in fact, if you do not call off this revolting wager entirely—I will go to your Aunt Maude and tell her that we were in fact secretly
married
in Belgium.  And that you cruelly abandoned me during the battle to flee back to England.”

Lord Henry’s eyes snapped open at that.  His aunt Maude is the elderly relation whom he was visiting when we met in Derbyshire.  The extremely wealthy elderly relation, in whose good graces he must stay if he wants to inherit her fortune.  Which he does want to—very much indeed—since if rumour is correct, he has almost entirely run through the whole of his own.

“But we never … that is, we were not …”

“No, we did not and were not,” I snapped.  “But your aunt does not know that.  And as respectable a lady as she is, I do not think she would be at all pleased with you if I went to her with the claim of being your cruelly abandoned bride.”

Lord Henry goggled at me—his eyes glassy and rather like those of a fish.  But my threat did appear to have sobered him somewhat.  He drew himself up and attempted an air of bravado.  “But you would have no proof for such a claim.  No papers—”

“Our marriage papers were sadly lost during the chaos following the battle.  And the church in which we were married was burned to the ground by those French devils, Napoleon’s soldiers.”  I opened my eyes very wide in an exaggerated look of innocence.  “The countryside was in
such
an uproar—what with the French army fleeing, and the allied forces moving in pursuit.”  Which was also entirely true.  “And of course I suffered the most terrible privations and difficulties in returning home to England.”

 “You would not dare—” Lord Henry began.

I interrupted him again.  “Oh, but I would.  In fact, if you continue to argue, I may also decide to add a child to my story.”  I heaved a sigh and looked suitably sorrowful, touching one hand to my heart.  “A baby boy, who tragically died at birth—due of course to all those privations and difficulties I suffered thanks to your abandonment.”

I was leaning far enough forward that even in the darkness I could see the look of real fear dawn in his eyes.  I have never met his Aunt Maude.  But I had heard a great deal about her last year—largely from Lord Henry himself.  She is crabbed and irascible and extremely religious.  According to Lord Henry, she insists on her entire household, servants included, assembling every morning and kneeling in her drawing room, where she leads everyone in morning prayers.  Let her hear any hint of my story, and any hopes Lord Henry had of inheriting her fortune might very well indeed vanish like wood smoke.

Then I saw something shift in his gaze—as he evidently determined to change his tactics and try charm instead of bluster.  “Come now, Miss … Bennet, I suppose it must be?”  He gave me a frank, charming smile.  “You do not really wish to cause me such difficulties.  You know”—the quality of his voice changed, becoming low and intimate-sounding—“you know, you are a very pretty girl.  Far prettier than your sister, in fact.”

I had failed to consider that in leaning so far in towards him, I had also placed myself squarely within his reach.  As he spoke, his hand came out to grasp my wrist—and before I could jerk away, he had tugged me down onto the bench beside him.  He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around me, his brandy-scented breath hot on my neck and face.

“Get away from me!”  I shoved at him.  But even intoxicated, he was far stronger than I was, and he only laughed.

“A girl of spirit.  I like that.  I am sure we can come to some sort of understanding between us.”  His lips brushed the skin just below my ear.

It is strange.  Last year, I would have thrilled at his touch.  Tonight, the hot, wet brush of his lips made me feel as though I had been coated from head to toe in pond slime.  Bile rose in my throat, and I struck out at him.  To be honest, it was luck more than skill that made my clenched hand connect with his nose.  But the blow was at least hard enough to snap his head back.

Not hard enough, however, to make him loosen his hold on me.  His eyes narrowed, his handsome face darkening and turning positively ugly with anger.  “Why you little—”

This is the part that makes my hands shake to write.  Which I suppose would be obvious to anyone reading this; my writing seems to have grown even more illegible.

I think—at least I
hope
—that I would have been able to defend myself in some fashion and get away.  But the true fact is that I do not know what the end result of the encounter might have been—if, in the middle of speaking, Lord Henry had not abruptly flown backwards through the air, spun, and then landed with a thump, flat on his back in the middle of the decorative border around the marble statue.

At least that was how it appeared to my dazed eyes; it was a moment before my mind could process the truth of what in fact had happened.  Which was that a man had appeared out of the shade of the trees that ringed the grove, seized Lord Henry by the back of his collar, yanked him away from me, spun him around, and gave him a punch in the jaw that sent him flying backwards a good three or four feet.

Lord Henry struggled to rise.  But the second man planted a foot on his chest, pinning him to the ground, and said—in dangerously pleasant tones, “I believe the young lady asked you to keep away from her.”

I recognised his voice and felt the blood in my veins turn cold—even before he turned to me and said, “Miss Bennet, are you all right?”

It was Lancelot Dalton.  Naturally.  Evidently I was being allowed to extract the maximum degree of mortification from this episode.

I swallowed.  I discovered that I was shaking from head to foot, and I had to clench my teeth again—this time to keep them from chattering.  But I managed to nod and say, “Yes.  Fine.”

“Good.”  Mr. Dalton turned his attention back to Lord Henry, removing his foot from the latter’s chest.  “Get up and go.  Before I change my mind about allowing you to walk out of here under your own power.”

Lord Henry looked calculating for a brief moment—as though he were gauging his odds of winning against Mr. Dalton in a fight.  But he evidently decided that those odds were by no means in his favour, for he scrambled ungracefully up from the grass, swayed, and then lurched off into the trees.

Mr. Dalton started to offer me his hand, changed his mind, and instead dropped down to sit beside me on the stone bench.  Thankfully for me; I was still shivering and was not at all sure that I could manage to walk without tripping over my own feet.

We were both silent a moment, and then: “How did you come to be here?” I asked.  It still seemed beyond belief that he should have appeared on the scene at the precise moment I had need of aid.

Mr. Dalton was staring at the space in the surrounding trees where Lord Henry had vanished, and I could see that the line of his jaw had tightened.  He exhaled, though, and said, “Your aunt could not find you or your sister and became alarmed.  She sent me out to look for you.  I saw you entering the Lover’s Walk and was … concerned.  I followed after you.”

So it had not been only chance that had caused him to appear from nowhere as he had.  And I suppose I might have expected that he would be a supporter of this charity, on account of the military connection.

Still, I felt my cheeks heat up with another burning flush.  “I do not—” I began hotly.

I snapped my mouth closed.  Managing to bite back the words that sprang first to my lips—that I did not require to be watched and minded like a six-year-old child in need of a nursemaid.

It is perfectly remarkable how Lancelot Dalton seems to call out all my least admirable instincts.  The truth was that I
was
angry.  But not with him.  I was far angrier with myself, for …  Well, for a whole host of reasons, really.  But chief among them was the fact that I had been careless enough to place myself in a position to require rescuing.  As though I
were
a six-year-old child.  Or one of those brainless heroines in a gothic romance who skips blithely off into the abandoned wing of the haunted mansion without an apparent second thought.

I forced myself to draw a long, slow breath, and then I said, “Thank you, Mr. Dalton.  Truly.  If you had not intervened when you did, matters might have grown very unpleasant indeed.”

Mr. Dalton turned to look at me.  I thought there was a momentary crinkle of amusement about his eyes.  As though he knew what I had been about to say and why.  When he spoke, though, his voice was grave enough.  “Lord Henry Carmichael is not a man whom I would willingly allow to be alone with any woman I cared about.”

I felt another burning wave of mortification spread over me.  Mr. Dalton had said when we first met that he knew me by reputation.  Did he know that Lord Henry Carmichael was in fact the man with whom I had come close to disgracing myself?  Likely he did.  In which case he probably believed that I had deliberately come here to meet Lord Henry for a lovers’ assignation.

I said, “You must not think—that is, I did not follow Lord Henry because I—”  I took another breath and began again.  I am not even sure
why
I cared so much what Mr. Dalton thought of me.  Only that it seemed intolerable that he should think me such a fool as to be still infatuated with Lord Henry after all this time.

“Lord Henry Carmichael has been paying attentions to my sister Mary,” I said.  “He is … as you say, he is not at all the sort of man one would choose for one’s sister.  I followed him in here only because I wished the chance of warning him away from her.”

“Yes, I know.  I—”  Mr. Dalton cleared his throat.  “I apologise for eavesdropping.  But when I arrived you were in the midst of, ah, explaining your position to Lord Henry.  And since you appeared to have matters very well in hand, I did not wish to interrupt.”

And I had thought myself mortified before.  Mr. Dalton had in fact heard me threatening to tell Lord Henry’s aunt the barefaced lie that I had married him in secret and had his child.

But then I caught sight of his hand.  He wore no gloves, and the knuckles were both puffy and split open, bleeding—I suppose from when he had punched Lord Henry in the jaw.  “You’ve hurt yourself!” I said.  “Here.”  I dug in my reticule for a handkerchief.  “You had better let me tie that up for you.”

Mr. Dalton flinched when I tried to take his hand, and I looked up, startled.  “I’m sorry—did I hurt you?”

“No, it’s not that.  I just … pray, do not trouble yourself, Miss Bennet.  I promise you, I have had injuries far worse than this one.”

“And I have dealt with far worse.  Stop that,” I added, as he made to pull his hand away.  “You are going to drip blood on your coat.”

He held still as I dabbed the blood away with the edge of my handkerchief, and I added, “I did not know clergyman were allowed to engage in fisticuffs.”

“Yes, well.  I believe there are special dispensations when dealing with drunken little swine.”  There was an edge of grim amusement in Mr. Dalton’s tone.  “Or at least there ought to be.  Perhaps on second thought my bishop would not entirely approve.”

“Well, your secret is safe with me.”  I started to wrap the handkerchief about Mr. Dalton’s hand.  “You are at perfect liberty to say that you got these scraped up knuckles by running into a tree.  But in return—”  I stopped, glancing up at him.  “In return, could I trouble you to say nothing of what you overheard tonight?  Not even to my uncle and aunt, if they should ask?  It’s not for my own sake,” I added quickly.  “It’s for Mary.  I do not want to take the risk of her hearing anything of what happened here tonight.”

Mr. Dalton’s brows lifted.  “You do not mean to tell your sister of Lord Henry’s … wager?”

He really
had
heard the whole of the conversation.  “No—never.”  I had known that from the moment Lord Henry mentioned the bet to me.  “Mary—”  I exhaled, trying to think how best to explain.  “She seems frightfully conceited, always, and proud of her own accomplishments, but I think that really, deep-down, she is not sure of herself at all.  There are five of us sisters—and she has always been the plain one, the one who was never asked to dance at assemblies, the sister on whom gentlemen never came to call.  And now … now a gentleman she admires has finally taken an interest in her.  For the first time in her life, really.  If she were to find out that his interest was only on account of a wager he had made with friends—”

As I spoke, I could feel renewed anger at Lord Henry bubbling up inside me.  I could
not
tell Mary the truth.  However exasperating Mary can be, she does not deserve that sort of humiliation.  No one does.

Before Mr. Dalton could answer, we were interrupted by a thin, harried-looking woman who came along the path.  She peered at us short-sightedly from under a snowy-white mob cap.  “I am looking for my niece.  I do not suppose you have seen her?  She is wearing the costume of—”

The woman broke off abruptly, squinting at Mr. Dalton more closely.  “Well!”  She huffed a deeply affronted breath, her long nose fairly quivering with indignation.  “I certainly never thought to find a Church of England clergyman here, disporting himself in the Lover’s Walk.  You, sir, ought to be ashamed of yourself!”