The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. Colleen McCullough

Miss Delphinia Botolph, sixty if she was a day, had bridled and simpered when introduced to such a desirable bachelor as Mr Angus Sinclair. Whereas Miss Mary Bennet had turned her shoulder because he could not feed her frenzy for a figment of his own imagination, Argus.

      He began to plot. First of all, how to meet his Mary not only again, but many times? Secondly, how to impress her with his undeniable assets? Thirdly, how to make her fall in love with him? In love at last, he found to his horror that things like social imbecility did not matter. Once he had snared her, he would have to paint Mrs Angus Sinclair as an eccentric. That is the best quality of the English, he thought: they have an affinity for eccentrics. In Scotland, not so. I am doomed to live out the rest of my days among the Sassenachs.

      Ten years ago he had made the journey south from his native West Lothian to London. The Glasgow coal and iron had been in his family for two generations but, to a Scot as puritanical and logical as his father, wealth was no excuse for idleness. Newly graduated from Edinburgh University, Angus was bidden do something for a living. He had chosen journalism; he liked the idea of being paid to play, for he loved to write and he loved to pry into the affairs of other people. Within a year he was master of the innuendo and the allegation; so steeped was he in his profession that few, even among his closest friends, had any idea who and what he was. It had been exactly the right training for an Argus, for his work had taken him everywhere: a series of murders in a factory; fraud in government and municipal circles; robberies, riots and mayhem. In all walks of life, not least among the poor, the unemployed, and the unemployable. Sometimes he penetrated south of the Border into the haunts of the northern Sassenachs, and that had taught him that, no matter whereabouts in Britain he might be, ultimately everything stemmed from London.

      When his father died eleven years ago, his chance had come. Leaving his younger brother, Alastair, to run the family businesses, Angus emigrated, reinforced with the huge inheritance of an elder son, and in the knowledge that income from the businesses would keep his pockets lined with gold. He had bought a house in Grosvenor Square and set out to cultivate the Mighty. Though he made no secret of the source of his money, he discovered that it mattered little because that source was, so to speak, in a foreign country. But he could not quite give up the journalism. Learning that no newspaper existed devoted entirely to the activities of the Houses of Parliament, he had founded the Westminster Chronicle and filled the gap. Given Parliament’s lethargy and reluctance to meet any more frequently than necessary, a weekly journal sufficed. Make it a daily event, and soon much of its contents would be prolix and spurious. His spies had infiltrated every government department, from Home to Foreign, and the Army and the Navy were guaranteed to provide plenty of fodder for his paper’s voracious maw. Naturally he employed half a dozen journalists, but nothing they wrote escaped his personal attention. Which still left him with time on his hands. Hence, a year ago, the genesis of Argus.

      Oh, there had been a number of love affairs over the years, but none that had dented his heart. With the daughters of the Mighty it could be flirtation only, but his native shrewdness and considerable social skill had kept him out of the serious clutches of the many high-born young women who succumbed to his charms — and his money. The easiest way to rid himself of his more basic urges was to set up a mistress, though he took great care to avoid married Society ladies for that role; he preferred opera-dancers. None of these activities had imbued him with much respect for the female sex; women, Angus Sinclair was convinced, were predatory, shallow, poorly educated and, after a few months at most, hideously boring.

      Only Elizabeth Darcy had captivated him, but at a distance. For one, she was incapable of seeing any farther than Fitz, and for another, beneath her attractions lay the temperament of a warm, maternal kind of creature. Whatever a man’s scars, she would want to kiss them better, and Angus didn’t think such a woman could keep him interested through half a lifetime of marriage.

      Now to find that the woman of his heart was fixated upon his own creation was a blow both ironic and frustrating. No fool, Angus saw at once that, were he to confess his identity, she would scorn him as a dilettante. He did not practise what he preached, and had no intention of doing so, even for this new and painful emotion, love. Imbued with ardour, Mary took Argus at face value. Thus face value it would have to be.

      Still, better to cross some bridges as he came to them; the first order of business was to get to know his Mary, make her like and trust him. What a hypocrite you are, Angus/Argus!

      The next morning she was the recipient of a note from him asking her to walk with him. An activity, he was convinced, that could not offend her sensibilities. A gentleman escorting a lady through Hertford’s public streets was irreproachable.

      Mary read his letter and came to the same conclusion. Her plans for her mission of book-writing investigation were made as firmly as possible and the winter had long since begun to drag, despite the efforts of such determined individuals as Mr Robert Wilde, Lady Appleby, Mrs McLeod, Miss Botolph and Mrs Markham. How, she asked herself, could any person exist in such a pointless way? Concerts, parties, balls, receptions, weddings, christenings, walks, funerals, drives, picnics, visits to the shops, playing the pianoforte and reading; they were designed purely to fill in the huge vacancies in a female’s life. Mr Wilde had his law practice, the married ladies had their husbands, children and domestic crises, but she, like Miss Botolph, existed in that fashionable new word, a vacuum. One short winter had been enough to teach her that the purpose she yearned for was vital to her wellbeing.

      So, upon receipt of Angus’s note, she met him in the high street eager to discover more about him, if not about Argus. After all, he did publish Argus! He was very personable, eminently respectable, and not to be sneezed at as a companion for the walk she would have taken anyway. His hair, she decided as they exchanged bows, was like a cat’s pelt, sleek and glittery, and something in his features drew her. Nor was it disappointing to find that, in spite of her own height, he was much taller. If any fault were to be found in Mr Wilde, it was that he and she were on the same level. Miss Bennet liked the sensation of being towered over, a disturbing facet of basic femininity that Miss Bennet promptly buried.

      “In what direction would you like to go?” he asked as he held out his arm for her to lean upon.

      She spurned it with a sniff. “I am not decrepit, sir!” she said, striding out. “We will proceed up this way because it is but a short step into the countryside.”

      “You like the countryside?” he asked, keeping up.

      “Yes, I do. The beauties of Nature are not obliterated by humanity’s tasteless urban huddle.”

      “Ah, indeed.”

      Her idea of a short step, he learned, was more than a mile; beneath that awful dress two powerful legs must lurk. But at the end of the short step fields began to open up before them, and her pace slowed as she gazed about with delight.

      “I suppose that Mr Wilde has informed you of my plans?” she asked, hopping nimbly over a stile.

      “Plans?”

      “To investigate the ills of England. I commence at the beginning of May. How extraordinary that Mr Wilde did not mention it!”

      “It sounds an unusual aspiration. Tell me more.”

      And, liking the set of his far-sighted blue eyes, Mary told him what she intended to do. He listened without evidence of disapproval; rather, she thought, gratified, he took what she said seriously. And certainly, once she had finished, he made no attempt to dissuade her.

      “Where do you intend to start?” he asked.

      “In Manchester.”

      “Why not Birmingham or Liverpool?”

      “Birmingham will be no different from Manchester. Liverpool is a sea port, and I do not think it wise to associate with sailors.”

      “As to sailors, you are right,” he said gravely. “However, I still wonder at your choice of Manchester.”

      “So do I, sometimes,” she said honestly. “I think it must be because I am curious about my brother-in-law Charles Bingley, who is said to have ‘interests’ in Manchester,