The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. Colleen McCullough

change in May,” said Mary, nibbling a macaroon. “This is very good. I must ask Mrs McLeod for her cook’s recipe.”

      “That’s a relief!” cried Mr Wilde, forgetting that it was not polite for new acquaintances to contract words.

      “A relief. In what way?”

      “It says that there will be an end to your travels. That one day you will command the services of your own cook.”

      “I do that now.”

      “But do not entertain. Therefore, no macaroons.”

      “I am reproved.”

      “Miss Bennet, I would never dream of reproving you!” His light brown eyes grew brighter, gazed into hers ardently, and his whirling mind quite forgot that they were in Mrs McLeod’s drawing room with ten other people. “On the contrary, I ask for nothing more of life than to spend it at your side.” He took the plunge. “Marry me!”

      Horrified, she wriggled down the sofa away from him in a movement so convulsive that all eyes fixed on them; all ears had been flapping far longer.

      “Pray do not say it!”

      “I have already said it,” he pointed out. “Your answer?”

      “No, a thousand times no!”

      “Then let us speak of other things.” He took the empty plate from her nerveless fingers and smiled at her charmingly. “I don’t accept my congé, you understand. My offer remains open.”

      “Do not hope, Mr Wilde. I am obdurate.” Oh, how vexatious! Why had she not foreseen this inappropriate declaration? How had she encouraged him?

      “Will you be at Miss Appleby’s wedding?” he asked.

      And that, concluded the satisfied onlookers, is that — for the time being, at any rate. Sooner or later she would accept his offer.

      “Though if she plays too hard to catch,” said Miss Botolph, “she may find her fisherman has waded far upstream.”

      “Do you know what I think, Delphinia?” asked Mrs Markham. “I think she does not give tuppence for matrimony.”

      “From which I deduce that her situation is easy and her way of life settled,” Miss Botolph answered. “It was certainly so for me after my mama died. There are worse fates than a comfortable competence and a maiden existence.” She snorted. “Husbands can prove more of a sorrow than a blessing.”

      An observation that the married ladies chose to ignore.

      Argus put down his pen and viewed his latest effort with a slightly cynical eye. Its subject was actually rather silly, he thought, but comfortably off English folk, particularly those who lived in cities, were incredibly sentimental. Not the most vivid, emotive prose could move them to pity the lot of a chimney sweep, but if one substituted an animal for the human being — ah, that was quite a different matter! Many a tear would be shed when this letter appeared in the Westminster Chronicle! Pit ponies, no less. Permanently blind from a life spent underground, their poor shaggy hides furrowed with whip marks …

      It amused him to do this sort of thing occasionally, for Argus was not what he seemed to his readers, who in their fantasies pictured him starving in a garret, worn to bones by the sheer force of his revolutionary ideals. Ladies of Miss Mary Bennet’s kind might dream of him as a fellow crusader against England’s ills, but in truth his epistolary zeal was fired by his desire to make life uncomfortable for certain gentlemen of the Lords and Commons. Every Argusine letter caused questions to be raised in both Houses, provoked interminable speeches, obliged Lord This and Mr That to dodge a few rotten eggs on that perilous trip between the portals of Parliament and the cabins of their carriages. In actual fact he knew as well as did the most conservative of Tories that nothing would improve conditions for the poor. No, it was not that which drove him; what did, Argus had decided, was a spirit of mischief.

      Closing his library door behind him, he sallied into the spacious hall of his house in Grosvenor Square and held out a hand for his gloves, hat and cane while his butler draped a fur-collared cape about his broad shoulders.

      “Tell Stubbs not to wait up,” he said, and ventured out into the freezing March night wearing his true guise; Argus existed only in his study. His walk was very short; one side of the square saw him reach his destination.

      “My dear Angus,” said Fitzwilliam Darcy, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Do come into the drawing room. I have a new whisky for you — it takes a Scot to deliver a verdict on a Scotch whisky.”

      “Och, I’ll give my verdict happily, Fitz, but your man knows his Highland malts better than I do.” Divested of cloak, cane, hat and gloves, Mr Angus Sinclair, secretly known as Argus, accompanied his host across the vast, echoing foyer of Darcy House. “Going to try again, eh?” he asked.

      “Would I succeed if I did try?”

      “No. That is the best part about being a Scot. I don’t need your influence, either at Court or in the City, let alone the Houses of Parliament. My wee weekly journal is but a hobby — the bawbees come from Glasgow coal and iron, as you well know. I derive much pleasure from being a thorn in the Tory paw, stout English lion that he is. You should travel north of the Border, Fitz.”

      “I can tolerate your weekly journal, Angus. It’s Argus who is the damnable nuisance,” said Fitz, leading his guest into the small drawing room, blazing with crimson and gilt.

      No doubt he would have continued in that vein, except that his ravishing wife was coming forward with a brilliant smile; she and Mr Sinclair liked each other. “Angus!”

      “Each time I see you, Elizabeth, your beauty amazes me,” he said, kissing her hand.

      “Fitz is making a bore of himself again about Argus?”

      “Inevitably,” he said, heart sinking a little at her use of “bore”. Too tactless.

      “Who is he?”

      “In this incarnation, I know not. His letters come in the post. But in his original, mythical incarnation, he was a huge monster with many eyes. Which, I am sure, is why the anonymous fellow chose his pen name. The eyes of Argus see everywhere.”

      “You must know who he is,” said Fitz.

      “No, I do not.”

      “Oh, Fitz, do leave Angus alone!” Elizabeth said jokingly.

      “Am I making a bore of myself?” Fitz asked, a slight tinge of acid in his voice.

      “Yes, my love, you are.”

      “Point taken. Try the whisky, Angus,” said Fitz with a tight smile, holding out a glass.

      Oh, dear, Angus thought, swallowing a potion he detested. Elizabeth is going to embark upon yet another of her poke-gentle-fun-at-Fitz essays, and he, hating it, will poker up stiffer than any iron implement ever forged to tame a fire. Why can she not see that her touch isn’t light enough? Especially given its object, thinner-skinned by far than he pretends.

      “Do not say you like it, Angus!” she said with a laugh.

      “But I do. Very smooth,” Angus lied valiantly.

      A reply that mollified Fitz, but did not raise him in his hostess’s esteem; she had been hoping for support.

      It was a private dinner; no other guests were expected, so the three of them sat at one end of the small dining table in the small dining room, there to consume a five-course meal to which none of them did justice.

      “I publish Argus’s epistles, Fitz,” Angus said as the joints were removed and the syllabubs came in, “because I am so tired of this waste.” His rather crabbed hand swept the air above the table. “It is de riguer to serve me a gargantuan dinner, though I do not need it, and have eaten but a wee bit of it. Nor has either of you made greater inroads. All of us would have been