The Second Mrs Darcy. Elizabeth Aston

we dine alone, and the sooner we know just what Octavia’s circumstances are, the better.”

      “I was left enough to buy some clothes and to pay my passage and a little put by,” Octavia told her sister. “When everything is settled, I shall have an income of about a hundred and fifty pounds a year.”

      “Well, that is something, in any case,” said Mr. Cartland, who would have found it hard to manage on less than his own income of fifteen thousand a year.

      “It is barely enough to live on. I am really annoyed with Captain Darcy for having so little foresight, for making so little provision for her.” And then, to Octavia, “Why did you come back? I should think it was easier to live in India on very little money, surely everything is cheaper there.”

      Her husband made a tsking noise and shook his head at his wife’s ill breeding.

      “I had no particular reason to stay in Calcutta.”

      “No reason? You had every reason; in London you were unable to find a husband, whereas in India you made a perfectly respectable match—except for this tiresome entail, of course.”

      “Mr. Thurloe felt that my best course would be to return to England and approach Mr. Warren, to see if he can be persuaded to give me an annuity, or an allowance. I know he has a reputation of being a close man—”

      “He is simply a man who knows how to take care of his money,” said Theodosia. “Which is more than can be said for your late husband, I might point out. Yes, Warren must be approached, must be made to see that he has to do his duty by you. And meanwhile, we must put our heads together and decide what is to be done with you.”

      Octavia caught Mr. Cartland’s shocked eye, and had to make an effort not to burst out laughing. She knew whose heads were to be brought into service on this matter, and it would not include her own; her views were of no interest to Theodosia, nor would they be to Augusta and Arthur.

      “Naturally, you are our guest here,” Henry Cartland said quickly. “You are welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

      “Be quiet, Henry,” said Theodosia. “Octavia is my sister, this has nothing to do with you.” She looked at Octavia with narrowed eyes. “I will say that you are improved in looks since you went away, despite being burned by the sun. It is an extraordinary thing; for the most part women return from India with any trace of beauty gone.”

      Octavia was startled at this compliment, coming as it did from such an unexpected quarter; she was used to nothing but criticism from her sisters.

      “It is all to the good. One marriage can lead to another, even though you are now past your prime, at four or five and twenty you have lost your bloom—but even so, it may be possible. It will be best for you to stay in London, I think, and we shall see if we can find you another husband.”

      “But I don’t want to marry again!” exclaimed Octavia, furious at the heartlessness of her sister’s words. “It is less than a year since Christopher died, I am in mourning, I have no wish to be looking for another husband.”

      “You can’t pretend any great grief for a man you hardly knew. You did very well to catch him, very well indeed, and it is a great pity that things turned out as they did; whatever did the man have to go plunging into the jungle for?”

      “He was very interested in natural philosophy, and he had heard news of a rare plant that he had long wanted to see—”

      “Natural philosophy, my—” Theodosia caught her husband’s eye, and the words died on her lips. “Well, as to that, the past is the past, and we must look to the future, and since you have no fortune, just as you didn’t have when you left, the only course open to you is marriage.”

      “Or I could seek employment as a governess,” said Octavia, still angry, and yielding to an impulse to annoy her sister.

      As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. Her sister’s eyes flashed, and Mr. Cartland, after giving her a quick, despairing glance, fixed his gaze on the ceiling.

      The abuse washed over all, all her sister’s pent-up rage: the disgrace. Octavia was born a Melbury, even if she had never been worthy of the name; what would people say if her sister went out to be a household drudge; how could she, on her first day home, come up with such a crack-brained scheme and upset her own sister so greatly?

      Mr. Cartland called for his wife’s smelling salts; Icken, her maid, stalked into the room and waved a vinaigrette under Theodosia’s nose. Octavia could hear her hissing under her breath, “Shameful, upsetting the mistress like that, her own sister, she should know better.”

      “Theodosia suffers from her nerves,” Mr. Cartland said, a smile flickering to his face and then vanishing again.

      It was as though the intervening years had never happened, as though Octavia were a nineteen-year-old girl once again, expected to be obedient and to listen to her elders and betters.

      She had had enough of this. She was a grown woman, a married woman, if now a widow; what right had her sister to treat her in this way and lay down the law about what she should and shouldn’t do?

      She rose from the table. “Theodosia is unwell, I think my presence upsets her, I shall go to my room,” she said, flashing a smile at her brother-in-law before she fled upstairs.

      It was inevitable that Theodosia, when she had recovered from her equanimity to some degree, should send for her other sister and brother. “Let us see if they can talk sense into the wretched woman, let us see if they can’t make Octavia see reason,” she said to her husband with grim satisfaction.

      Mr. Cartland, who knew that the combined forces of his wife and her sister and his brother-in-law were more than he could stomach, beat a hasty retreat to his club, murmuring that he had business to attend to in town, might not be back for some hours.

      Octavia wasn’t at all surprised, as she sat sipping a cup of chocolate the next morning, to be told by a bright-eyed Alice that she was wanted downstairs as soon as ever might be, that Mr. Melbury and Lady Adderley had called and were waiting to see her.

      Octavia had heard the door knocker, knew perfectly well that it was far too early for any but members of the family to be at the front door, and had correctly guessed what was in store for her.

      She didn’t hurry her toilette, and indeed took unusual care over it. She put on a dark grey bombazine morning dress, trimmed with black silk rosettes on a flounced hem, which the clever fingers of Madame Duhamel’s derseys had made for her from a not-too-out-of-date pattern in the book of plates which had arrived in Calcutta on the last ship. It was modish enough, if not bang-up-to-the-minute—her sisters’ sharp eyes would at once spot last year’s trimming and the set of the sleeve that no modish London lady would dream of being seen in, but Octavia knew it suited her. The awareness of looking her best heightened her courage, so that, with the tinge of colour in her cheeks from the apprehension that she was trying so keenly to quell, she made a striking picture as she entered the room.

      Her brother Arthur rose from his seat. “Well, upon my word,” he exclaimed. “I never saw you in better looks, Octavia. I should have thought—”

      A formal kiss from Augusta. “That’s as may be, Arthur,” she said in her brisk way, “and we must be pleased to see Octavia looking tolerably well, but nothing alters the fact that she is several inches taller than any woman has any right to be, and what is more, several inches taller than any Melbury female has ever been. Of course, she gets her height from her mother.”

      From the contempt in her voice, you would have thought Octavia’s mother had been a giantess; it was a familiar insult, and one that Octavia knew how to ignore. She was, in some obscure way, proud of her height; it was an inheritance from her despised grandfather and as such, she treasured it. If it set her apart from her brothers and sisters, so much the better.

      “Now,” said Theodosia. “We have been discussing your situation while we were waiting for you to come down—what an age it took you to dress—and this