In Darcy's Arms by Gwendolyn Dash

Author:Gwendolyn Dash [Dash, Gwendolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pride & Printing Press
Published: 2018-08-18T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The social circle to which the Gardiners belonged might not be as fashionable or genteel as Miss Bingley’s, but Elizabeth soon learned that it was one which provided far more interesting conversations than she’d ever had in Hertfordshire. Between the gentleman’s business concerns and the lady’s young children, the Gardiners themselves went out rarely, but they soon managed to make sure that Jane and Elizabeth were introduced to those who might provide them with more invitations than their aunt and uncle could supply.

Chief among these was a lucky encounter with the daughter of their uncle’s friend, who had recently returned to London from the country and set up a house of her own in town. Though her father had been likewise a tradesman, the lady’s dowry of seventy thousand pounds had been enough to attract the attention of an impoverished baronet in Devonshire. Lady Atwood was a plump, fun-loving sort of woman who had, in due course, given her husband a heir and a spare, then left him in the country so as to preserve them from the necessity of providing further fortunes for their descendants.

She kept a tidy, well-appointed house in a more fashionable district in town and had taken a great liking to Jane and Elizabeth when they had met several weeks earlier. Indeed, she had taken both Bennet ladies under her well-feathered wing, and much of their current social whirl was due to her influence. Because of her own tradesman class origins, she was not one to credit too highly a stratified social order, and Elizabeth privately thought Miss Bingley might learn much from her.

“I know well the deprivations one must suffer in a country village,” she had confided to them, during one of their soon-established regular carriage rides through Hyde Park. “I was stuck at my husband’s seat in Devonshire for nearly seven years. You must take every opportunity of enjoying yourselves here, ladies, and perhaps we might even find you husbands in the bargain. Tell me, Miss Elizabeth, do you like a Navy man?”

Naval officers and tradesmen, politicians and scholars, clerks and men of letters moved in and out of dinner parties and concerts at which their lucky new friend Lady Atwood insisted they be regular guests. They attended salons and lectures, met poets and playwrights, and dined alongside families who might count England as their homeland, but had been to America and Africa, India and the South Seas.

After hearing tales of farms in China, Elizabeth realized how much she took for granted in a simple cup of tea. After a discussion on the horrors of the slave trade with an abolitionist, Jane decided to give up sugar in hers.

Elizabeth did not know if the trip was helping her sister heal her broken heart, but one thing was certain—neither of them would return to Longbourn the same.

This evening they were to attend a performance of chamber music at Lady Atwood’s little salon, and they had hardly been in the room five minutes before she supplied them not only with glasses of wine, but also with two gentlemen to talk to.

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