Mr. Darcy Vampyre (4 page)

The captain shook his head.

‘Sailors are a superstitious lot, and as soon as the least little thing goes wrong, they must find a reason for it. They say it is bad luck to shoot an albatross, and so, when something strange occurs, of course it must be because someone on board has shot one of the birds. That is, of course, a far more reasonable explanation than that the pirates were afraid of our guns!'

Elizabeth smiled, but the air of unease lingered. As the captain escorted them below, having invited them to take luncheon in his cabin, there were still mutterings amongst the crew. Some of the mutterings were in English and some were in a mixture of other European tongues. One phrase seemed to rise out of the others and one of the sailors asked another, ‘What does he say?'

‘Old one,' said the sailor sullenly.

The captain looked startled, but then said, ‘Old one!' with a laugh. ‘Why, there is nothing old about our cannons, or our ship either! Both are new. Well, new in naval terms, Mrs Darcy, and certainly new enough to scare away any other malcontents who should happen to cross our bows.'

They went below. A simple meal had been laid out on the captain's table and soon the three of them were eating. Darcy was content to listen to the captain instead of saying very much himself and Elizabeth was content to watch him. Her eyes were drawn to his fingers, and she watched them as he carefully peeled an orange. He took advantage of the captain leaving the table for a few seconds and put the orange on her plate. She broke it in two, separating the soft segments, then gave half back to him.

‘We'll soon be there now,' said the captain as their meal at last drew to an end. ‘It's been a pleasure having you on board, Mrs Darcy. Your husband I've transported on many occasions. But I hope I will have the pleasure of carrying you again. You did not find your first trip too unpleasant, I hope? I assure you that our little bit of trouble was unusual and is not likely to happen again.'

‘I am not so easily frightened,' said Elizabeth, earning an admiring look from her husband. ‘I think I would be more alarmed by a rough crossing!'

‘Aye, that can be unpleasant, but you have the look of a sailor about you, Mrs Darcy. I'll wager you'd find your sea legs whatever the weather.'

Elizabeth glanced at the porthole, which allowed daylight into the cabin, and through it she found that she could see the dim and distant outline of land.

‘Is that France?' she asked, going over to the porthole to look.

‘Aye, it is,' said the captain, rising to his feet as soon as Elizabeth rose. ‘Will you be staying long?'

‘For a few weeks, perhaps,' said Darcy, rising also.

‘There are many fine sights to be seen. I hope you enjoy them,' said the captain with a bow.

He had a few things he wished to discuss with Darcy, and Elizabeth took the opportunity to return to her cabin where she tidied her hair, which had been blown about by the wind, before going on deck again. Darcy was already there. He put his arm protectively round her as the shoreline drew gradually closer, until the buildings and then the people on shore could be discerned.

‘Is it far to Paris?' asked Elizabeth.

‘It will take us several days to get there,' said Darcy. ‘We will travel in easy stages, seeing the sights on the way. There is a great deal I have to show you.'

The ship eased its way into the harbour and the Darcys disembarked.

As she set foot for the first time on French soil, Elizabeth looked about her with interest and wondered what the next few weeks would bring.

My dearest Jane,

It is almost a week since I wrote to you last, and indeed I have been very negligent for I have forgotten to post my last letter to you. Never mind, I will post them both together and you will have the pleasure of two letters at once; or, more likely, you will receive one after the other. The post from the Continent is not very reliable, I hear.

We are now established in Paris, and it is the most beautiful city. I was apprehensive about coming here at first, but my fears were unfounded. The city is unexpectedly civilised and the French, so far, seem friendly. We have had some trouble with the food, which is laced with garlic, and several of the servants have been ill; indeed one of our footmen has left us, saying that he will be poisoned here if he stays any longer. Fortunately, he has not been difficult to replace. My maid refuses to eat anything except the bread and cheese she buys at the market. I must confess, I have joined her in this simple repast on more than one occasion. Darcy too eats very little here. But that is a small matter. The shops are elegant and numerous, and there are splendours to be seen everywhere. My dear Darcy has a wide circle of friends and relatives, and I pity poor Mama for telling him that we were able to dine with four and twenty families in Hertfordshire, for I must already have met a hundred of his friends. Last night we went to a soirée and tonight we are to go to a salon given by one of Darcy's cousins. Does that not sound grand? Perhaps I will start a fashion for salons when I return home. You and I can hold them, Jane, and be the most fashionable women in England!

How are you finding London? Are you and your dear Mr Bingley happy? I am happy with my Darcy, and yet, Jane, he has still not visited me in my bedchamber and I do not know why. I wish you were here, then I would have someone to talk to. The people here are all very welcoming, but they are strangers, and I cannot say the things to them that I could say to you.

Write to me as soon as you can at the address below.

Your affectionate sister,

Elizabeth

She addressed the letter and gave it to one of the footmen to post, together with the letter she had written in Dover, then went upstairs to dress. As she did so, she was conscious of the gulf between her old and new lives. Her experiences of Paris had, for the first time, shown her how truly different Darcy's life was from her own. Before their marriage, she had seen him at Pemberley with his sister, at Rosings with his aunt, and at Netherfield with Bingley, but she had never seen him in society. Now, however, it was very different.

She thought of Lady Catherine's visit to Longbourn a few short weeks before, when Lady Catherine had tried to dissuade her from marrying Darcy by saying that she would be censured, slighted, and despised by everyone connected with him, and that the alliance would be a disgrace; that Elizabeth herself, if she were wise, would not wish to quit the sphere in which she had been brought up. To which Elizabeth had replied angrily that, in marrying him, she should not consider herself as quitting her sphere, because Darcy was a gentleman and she herself was a gentleman's daughter.

And that had been true. But only in Paris had she realised how wide was the gulf between a gentleman's daughter from a country manor house and a gentleman of Darcy's standing. The people he knew in Paris were quite unlike the country gentry of England. They were beautiful and mesmerising in a way she had never encountered before. The women undulated, instead of walked, across the rooms with the sinuous beauty of snakes, and the men were scarcely any less seductive. They spoke to her in low voices, holding her hand lingeringly and gazing into her eyes with an intensity which at once attracted and repulsed her.

Nevertheless, she liked Paris, and by the time she arrived at the salon, she was ready to enjoy herself.

The house was insignificant from the outside. It was situated on a dirty street and had a narrow, plain frontage, but once inside everything changed. The hall was high ceilinged and carpeted in thick scarlet, and a grand staircase swept upstairs to the first floor. It was crowded with people, all wearing the strange new fashions of the Parisians. Gone were the elaborate styles of the pre-revolutionary years, with wide hooped skirts and towering wigs. Such signs of wealth had been discarded in fear, and simplicity was the order of the day. The men wore their hair long, falling over the high collars of their coats, and at their necks they wore cravats. Beneath their coats they wore tightly fitting knee breeches. The women wore gowns with high waists and slender skirts, made of a material so fine that it was almost sheer.

There was a noise of conversation as the Darcys began to climb the stair. One or two people raised quizzing glasses so they could stare at Elizabeth. She felt conscious that her dress was English and appeared staid by the side of the Parisian finery. The fabric was sturdier and the style less bare.

Darcy introduced her to some of the people and they welcomed her to Paris, but it was not the warm welcome of Hertfordshire; it was an altogether more appraising greeting.

Elizabeth and Darcy made their way to the top of the stairs where they waited to be announced.

The doors leading to the drawing room had been removed and the opening had been shaped into an oriental arch. It framed the hostess so perfectly that Elizabeth suspected it was deliberate. Mme Rousel, reclining on a
chaise longue
, was like a living portrait. Her dark hair was piled high on her head and secured by a long mother-of-pearl pin, from which curls spilled artistically round her sculptured features and fell across her bare shoulders. Her dress was cut low, with the small frills which passed for sleeves falling off her shoulders before merging with a delicate matching frill at her neck. The sheer fabric of her skirt was arranged around her in folds that were reminiscent of Greek statuary, and on her feet she wore golden sandals. A dark red shawl was draped across her knees, flowing over the gold upholstery of the
chaise longue
in an apparently casual arrangement. But every fold was so perfect that its placement could only be the result of artifice and not the negligence it was intended to convey. Elizabeth realised that that was why she felt uncomfortable: because the whole salon, from the people to the clothes to the furniture, was the result of artifice, a carefully arranged surface which shone like the sea on a summer's day but disguised whatever truly lay beneath.

The Darcys were announced. At the name, many of the people already in the drawing room turned round. Even here in Paris, the name of Darcy was well known. They stared openly, in a way the English would not have done, with a boldness that was unsettling.

They went forward and Mme Rousel, Darcy's cousin, welcomed them.

‘At last, Darcy, I was wondering when you would pay me a visit. It is many years since I have seen you.'

‘It has not been easy to visit France,' he said.

‘For one of our kind it is always easy,' she said reprovingly. ‘But you are here now, and that is all that counts.'

She held out her hand, with its long white fingers covered in rings, and he kissed it. She then withdrew it and placed it precisely in her lap, exactly as it had been before.

‘So you are Elizabeth,' she said. ‘You must be very special to have won Darcy's affections. I never thought he would marry. The news has taken many of us by surprise.' She looked at Elizabeth and then at Darcy and then back again. Her expression was thoughtful. Then she bowed slightly to Elizabeth with a small incline of her head before wishing them joy of her salon.

‘You will find many old friends here and some new ones, too,' she said to Darcy.

Darcy and Elizabeth moved on into the large drawing room so that Mme Rousel could greet her next guests.

Darcy was at once welcomed by four women who walked up to him with lithe movements and lingering glances. Their dresses were rainbow hued, in the colours of gems, and flimsy, like all the Parisian dresses. Their hair was dark and their skin was pallid.

‘You will have to be careful,' came a voice at Elizabeth's shoulder.

She turned to see a man with fine features and tousled hair. He had an air of boredom about him, and although Elizabeth did not usually like those who were easily bored, there was something strangely magnetic about him. His
ennui
gave his mouth a sulky turn which was undeniably attractive.

‘They will take him from you if they can,' the man continued, watching them all the while.

Elizabeth turned to look at them, and as she did so, she was reminded of Caroline Bingley and her constant efforts to catch Darcy's attention. He had been impervious to Caroline and he was impervious to the Parisian women as well, for all their efforts to enrapture him. As they talked and smiled and leant against him, flicking imaginary specks of dust from his coat and picking imaginary hairs from his sleeve, they looked at him surreptitiously. When they saw that he was oblivious to their attempts to captivate him, they redoubled their efforts, one of them whispering in his ear, another leaning close to his face, and the other two walking, arm in arm, in front of him, in order to display their figures.

‘It is not right, what they do there, he being so newly married,' said a woman, coming up and standing beside the two of them. ‘But forgive me, I was forgetting, we have not been introduced. I am Katrine du Bois, and that is my brother, Philippe.'

There was an air of warmth about the woman which was missing from many of the salon guests, and Elizabeth sensed in her a friend. And yet there was something melancholy about her, as though she had suffered a great disappointment from which she had never recovered.

‘It is not right, no,' said Philippe. ‘But it is nature. What can one do?'

He turned to look at Elizabeth with sympathy but Elizabeth was only amused.

‘Poor things!' she said.

Darcy wore the same expression he had worn when she had first seen him at the Meryton assembly; and despite the difference in the two events, the noisy vulgarity of the assembly and the refined elegance of the salon, he was still above his company. His dark hair was set off by his white linen and his well-moulded face, even in such company, was handsome. His dark eyes wandered restlessly over his companions until they came to rest on Elizabeth. And then his face relaxed into softer lines, full of warmth and love.

‘I wish a man would look at me the way that Darcy looks at you,' said Katrine.

‘I am very lucky,' said Elizabeth, and she knew that she was.

She had not married for wealth or position; she had married for love. She wished that she was not in company, that she and Darcy had stayed at the inn where they could have been alone, but she knew they would not be in Paris forever. The calls and engagements would come to an end and then they would have more time to spend, just the two of them, together.

‘You are,' said Katrine. ‘I have many things; I have jewels and clothes, carriages and horses, a fine house and finer furnishings, but I would give them all for one such look.'

Darcy's companions claimed his attention and he turned reluctantly away. As he did so, his hand moved to his chest as though he were lifting something beneath his shirt, pulling it away from his chest and then letting it drop again.

‘What is it he does there?' asked Katrine. ‘Does he wear something round his neck?'

‘Yes, I bought him a crucifix yesterday. The shops in Paris are very tempting,' said Elizabeth. ‘He refused to take it at first, but he had given me so much and I had given him so little that I insisted, and at last he allowed me to fasten it around his neck.'

Katrine's voice was reverent. ‘He must love you very much,' she said.

‘Yes, I believe he does,' said Elizabeth.

‘And now, we have talked of Mr Darcy for long enough,' said Philippe. ‘Any more and I will grow jealous. I will pay you out by talking of our hostess's many perfections. Do you not think she is beautiful?' he asked, casting his own longing look in her direction.

‘She seems charming,' said Elizabeth.

‘Yes, she is, very charming,' he said with warmth.

‘But does she always receive people whilst reclining on a sofa?' asked Elizabeth, unable to suppress her mirth.

‘Ah, you find it amusing,' he said, seeing the humour in her eyes. ‘And so it is, an amusing affectation. Our great hostesses all like to have them. Do your hostesses at home not like to make an effect?'

‘I cannot say; I rarely go into society,' said Elizabeth, ‘or at least not this sort of society, and no one in Meryton would dress in such a way or spend the evening lying on a sofa unless they were ill!'

‘Your husband does not take you to the London salons then?' asked Philippe. ‘I was certain he would do so.'

‘I hardly know where he takes me—or perhaps I should say, where he will take me. He has only been my husband for a week.'

‘Ah, yes of course. Being so newly married you will have better things to do with your time than to go to salons,' said Philippe, raising his eyebrows.

Elizabeth, much to her surprise, blushed, and Katrine, seeing it, said, ‘Take no notice of my brother.' She tapped his arm reprovingly with her fan. ‘He is very French; he does not understand the English idea of good taste. He thinks of nothing but the pleasures of the flesh, and he has no reticence in him.'

‘
Ma soeur!
You wrong me,' he said, pretending to be wounded. ‘What impression of me will you give to
la belle
Elizabeth?' Then turning to Elizabeth he said, ‘I think of many things, of my horses and carriages, my friends and family, of art and music… see, I will prove it to you. I will take you to meet our resident genius, and you shall see how I listen to him with rapture in my eyes!'

He offered her his arm with such an air of gallantry that she could not refuse, and he led her to the other side of the room, where a young man was starting to play the piano. He was surrounded by a devoted coterie of women who leaned over the instrument or stood adoringly by his side.