The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. Colleen McCullough

to Mr Wilde and Miss Botolph. Who were on Miss Bennet’s doorstep before the uncomfortably High vicar of St Mark’s sounded the Angelus.

      Mary heard their news impassively, though under her composure she was conscious of the sadness she always felt when Charlie’s visits were over. She dealt with Mr Wilde’s overt jubilation in the most dampening way, and assured the pair of them that she had been expecting Mr Sinclair’s departure for some time. When Miss Botolph hinted heavily about disappointed hopes she was ignored; the rest of Hertford’s upper stratum might have been anticipating a joyous Announcement, but Mary had not. To her, Angus was simply a good friend whom she would miss.

      “Perhaps he will return,” said Mrs McLeod toward the end of April.

      “If he intends to, Sophia, he had better be quick,” said Miss Botolph. “Mary is off on her travels very soon, though I do wish she was less secretive about them. And what is Mr Darcy about, to let her ride in the common stage?”

      “Pride,” said Mrs Markham. “A ha’penny to nothing, he has no idea she is journeying to Pemberley, though I note that her things have been packed and sent to Pemberley ahead of her.”

      “Is she at all cast down about Mr Sinclair?” asked Lady Appleby; living five miles out at Shelby Manor, she was always the last to know anything.

      “Not a scrap cast down. In fact, I would say she is happy,” said Mrs McLeod.

      “The field is clear for Robert Wilde,” said Miss Botolph.

      Mrs Markham sighed. “She will not have him either.”

       FOUR

      “I am going home to Pemberley,” said Charlie ten days into May, “and I would very much like it if you came with me, Owen.”

      Dark brows raised, Mr Griffiths looked at his charge in astonishment. “You’ve finished the term, I know, but Pemberley? Your father will be there, and you dislike that.”

      “Yes, damn it! However, I cannot stay here.”

      “Why not?”

      “Mary.”

      “Oh, I see. She has commenced her odyssey.”

      “Bound to have.”

      “But how can being at Pemberley help?”

      “Closer to her targets. Besides, Pater will be aware of her every movement, if I know him. She may need a friend at court.”

      “Your mama did say that he was displeased at your aunt’s plans, but do you think him likely to confide in you?”

      “No.” Charlie hunched his shoulders, his mobile face saying more than mere words could. “No one will deem it odd if I go home early, since I couldn’t get there at Christmas. Pater will ignore my presence, and Mama will be ecstatic. If you’re with me, we can do a bit of prowling in the direction of Manchester. ’Tis but a day’s ride from Pemberley. We can pretend to walk the moors, or see the sights of Cumberland. There are reasons aplenty for absenting ourselves from Pemberley for days at a time.”

      The lad was fretting, anyone could see that, though how he thought he could pull the wool over his father’s eyes escaped Owen’s understanding. On the single occasion when he had met Mr Darcy, Owen had found himself torn between a strong detestation and a conviction that this was a man only fools would go up against. Of course the relationship between father and son was different from all others, but he could not help feeling that Charlie would do better to stay away. To be underfoot if Mr Darcy chose to apply discipline to his sister-in-law would make matters much worse; a year of listening to Charlie — a regular chatterbox when his head was not in a book — had apprised Owen of a lot that Charlie had not intended to communicate. And ever since Miss Mary Bennet’s letter, the correspondence between him and his mother had been profuse, each writing back to the other the moment a new letter arrived. Mr Darcy was extremely vexed; Mr Darcy had decided not to accompany Uncle Charles to the West Indies; Mr Darcy had delivered a crushing speech in the House against addle-pated do-gooders; Mr Darcy had suffered an attack of the migraine that felled him for a week; Mr Darcy suddenly switched from sherry to whisky before dinner; Mr Darcy had cruelly slapped dear little Cathy for playing a prank; and so on, and so forth.

      These reports of affairs at Pemberley (and in London) had only served to throw Charlie into fits of apprehension that culminated in a migraine of his own on the very day when his viva voce was scheduled; clearly he had inherited his father’s malady, if not his iron character.

      “I cannot think it wise,” Owen said, knowing that to say more would put Charlie’s back up.

      “As to that, I agree. Most unwise. Which doesn’t make it a scrap less necessary for me to go. Please come with me, Owen!”

      Visions of the wild, untamed Welsh countryside rose before his eyes, but there could be no refusing this behest; Owen put away his ideas of spending the summer tramping through Snowdonia out of his mind, and nodded. “Very well. But if things should become intolerable, I will not remain to be caught in the middle. Tutoring you is a godsend to me, Charlie, and I dare not run the risk of offending any member of your family.”

      Charlie beamed. “A done deal, Owen! Only you must let me pay the entire shot whenever we venture abroad. Promise?”

      “Gladly. If my father and mother are right, every spare pound must go home. We have to find a good dowry for Gwyneth.”

      “No, really? An eligible match?”

      “Extremely.”

      “It seems idiotic to me that a girl must be dowered when her betrothed is extremely eligible,” said Charlie slyly.

      “I echo that, but so it is nonetheless. With three girls to marry well, Father must shift to make it seem he can afford to dower them. Morfydd leaves the schoolroom next year.”

      In earlier days Elizabeth’s natural good sense would have precluded her confiding in someone as unsuitable as her son, whose feelings were as strong as they were tender. As it was, she put such reservations away — she must talk to someone! Jane was poorly, also very low; Charles had gone off to Jamaica for a year and left her alone. His estates in that idyllic isle were extensive, and relied upon slave labour too heavily to permit manumission after a slave had served a number of years, he was saying now. When Jane had learned he kept several hundred slaves, she had been horrified, and made him promise that he would free them as soon as possible. Let them work for him as free men — in that, there was honour. But he had been obliged to inform her gently that those who slaved for him would refuse to continue working for him once freed. Explaining why had proved a task beyond him; Jane had no idea of the practical conditions that existed on sugar plantations in the West Indies, and would not have believed him had he told her. Floggings, fetters and short rations were expedients so far from her ken that she would have gone into a decline at the very thought that her beloved Charles engaged in them. What Jane did not know, her heart would not grieve about; that was Charles Bingley’s credo.

      Married to a franker man, Elizabeth did not harbour the same illusions; she was also aware that kidnapping Negroes from the steamy west coast of central Africa had become much harder than of yore, thus causing shorter supplies of fresh slaves as well as higher prices. In her opinion plantation owners ought to accept the inevitable and free their slaves anyway. But this, Fitz had said, was impossible because black men could work in tropical climates, whereas white men could not. An argument that to Elizabeth smacked of sophistry, though for the sake of peace she did not say so.

      However, resistance and even rebellion among plantation slaves were growing, despite efforts to suppress them. For this reason Charles Bingley could not postpone his present voyage across the Atlantic. When Elizabeth had learned that Fitz proposed to go with him she had been surprised, but a little reflection had shown her why: Fitz was well travelled, but not west of Greenwich. His excursions abroad had been diplomatic, even including visits