Page 68 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

George made a strangled sound into his glass, and even Darcy had to smile.

Milton continued, unmoved. “Father has assembled every inducement short of livestock to persuade some poor woman to take you off the family’s hands.”

Richard sat back. “There had better be no livestock. I draw the line at being offered alongside a pair of dairy cows.”

“The ground there is better suited to sheep,” Darcy said. “You could breed Dale O’Goyts there.” He sat up straighter. “I have been wanting to crossbreed my Dishley ram to see whether we can improve the wool.”

Richard lowered his glass. “I beg you not to discuss my marriage prospects in terms of lambs, rams, and wool.”

Even Darcy had to laugh. The sound came before he could prevent it, and once it had come, he found he did not wish to call it back. He sorely needed the relief after a day such as this.

“The south paddock will be for Countess,” Richard said, settling back.

“You see the difficulty,” Milton said wryly. “He has provided for his horse first. The wife is to fend for herself.”

“To the poor woman,” George said and raised his glass.

“Long may she remain theoretical,” Richard added.

George was off, then, speaking of the state of the Bath road, a member of Brooks’s who had lost his curricle at hazard, and then the war. “Now that Wellington has taken Ciudad Rodrigo⁠—”

“But how long can he hold it?” said Milton, and the talk rolled on.

“Matrimony,” Richard announced some time later from the depths of his chair, having consumed several glasses of wine after the discovery that he was now a gentleman with prospects, “is a tax upon optimism.”

“You will pay it,” Milton said. “One day. I daresay we all shall.”

It was a good evening. Darcy knew it was. Yet he kept finding himself apart from it, looking at the firelight, the lamp, the workbasket, the book lying open on its face—all the quiet signs of a house where two married people were pleased to live together.

At one o’clock, the door opened without a knock.

“Gentlemen.” Em stood in the doorway with a shawl over her long silk dressing gown. “It is time to go home. I mean to have my husband to myself for what little remains of the night.”

They all rose. George put his arm around Em and kissed her soundly, wholly unrepentant. In response, Em removed the glass from his hand and finished the wine herself.

There were hats, coats, gloves—the usual muddle of leave-taking. But on the step, while the others went down to his carriage, Em caught Darcy’s arm.

“You look as though you have been at one of your mother’s parties, Fitzwilliam,” she said quietly.

He might have said that he had been nowhere near a party since Monday. He might have said it was Bingley. She would hear about it soon enough.

But neither answer would satisfy her. She would push, and after the wine he had consumed this evening, he might tell her who it was he was thinking about.

“Good night, Em,” he said.

She released his arm, but her eyes remained on him.

In the carriage, Milton sat upright in his corner while Richard slouched opposite, hat tipped down.

“A new roof, you said?” he asked as they turned a corner.

“This past autumn,” said Milton.

“Hm,” said Richard, and nothing more.

Darcy looked out at the street. The rain had turned to frost, and each streetlamp appeared to have a halo around it. He was sorry for Bingley—sincerely sorry. But there had been no engagement. There had been only the beginnings of a courtship. And Bingley was three-and-twenty, at a time of life when a man’s friends and engagements were greatly increasing. He would suffer for a few months but be laughing again by summer, because that was his nature and because Miss Bennet had been kind.

Miss Elizabeth was another matter.