Page 110 of The Scarred Duchess
Darcy shook his head. “I daresay my heir must first learn to walk more than three paces before racing off into the nearest flower bed.”
“Not marching to Wellesley’s prescribed pace, are we?” The child hid his face behind his father’s leg.
Bennet rose and sniffed the air. “Maybe he would like to be a cavalryman. Do you like horses, Lieutenant Darcy?”
Bennet Darcy released his father’s trousers, eyes wide. “Horsies?” He hopped in place and clapped his hands. “Horsies!” he squealed.
Darcy laughed. “Now you have done it.” He prompted his son towards his father-in-law. “You shall reap what you have sown.”
Elizabeth laughed as Mary broke free of her younger sisters to place her own babe in Mrs Bennet’s arms. “She is quite excited to meet her grandmama.” Franny waltzed away with little Annie, the former humming to the happy gurgling of the latter.
Bennet chuckled. “There you have it, girls. Your motherhas abandoned us for the grandchildren you have yet to provide.”
Kitty laughed; her whimsical melody placed a smile on Bennet’s face. She followed her mother’s example and took the youngest Darcy in her arms.
“Papa.” Lydia pulled Bennet aside and said quietly, “Kitty laughs off your teasing, but you should know, she is sensitive to the subject.”
Bennet lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Lizzy invited Mr and Miss Carlisle to join the house party.”
“Mr Carlisle? Is that the way the wind blows?”
Lydia wrapped her hands around his arm. “I daresay it does, Papa.”
“I shall consider myself warned.” Bennet exhaled as he realised another of his daughters would soon leave Longbourn. “I shall occupy myself playing cavalryman with my namesake here.” He accepted his grandson’s hand and together, marched around the carriage with tiny steps as his wife returned to the group.
“There you have it, girls. Your father has now abandoned us for the grandchildren you have yet to provide.”
“Mama!” exclaimed Lydia. Kitty laughed, joining in the merriment. They linked arms with Elizabeth, Mary, and Georgiana and disappeared into Pemberley with the children, a nursemaid, and Mrs Bennet.
George Darcy chuckled and patted his son on the back. “Chaos has arrived.”
Darcy began to make his reply when the loud clapping of hands drew the four men’s attention. “Must we stand in the road like a bunch of parsnips, Colonel Bennet?”
Lady Catherine de Bourgh had taken charge of the house party.
That evening’s separation of the sexes saw the ladies leave the men to their cigars and drinks. At nearly sixty years, Bennet and George Darcy continued sparring—both in fencing and debate—as if they were still at university. They were a few ticks slower, but their wrangling abilities remained sharp. Darcy was pondering whether his own sons would display the fencing skills of their bloodlines when the name Gardiner caught his attention.
“...Gardiner is in Canada?” asked Bennet.
“Pardon me,” Darcy said. “You were saying?”
“Sir Edward,” his father replied, “wrote that he and Lady Madeleine, with Thomas and Felicity, shall remain abroad once the ambassadors sign the treaties.”
“It does not surprise me that Gardiner would choose to remain in America. Apparently, merit trumps birth over there.” Bennet nodded to George Darcy. “We know his distaste for unearned pomp and ceremony.”
George Darcy raised his glass. “To Sir Edward Gardiner, the future master of American commerce.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted the men.
“He received his investiture to represent their majesties at the commerce treaty socials. It was done quickly, thanks to Matlock. His man uncovered the source of some rumours that may have caused the dissolution of Parliament. It would have been inconvenient should that body have dissolved during the scheduled treaty talks,” George Darcy said.
“Gardiner’s absence could allow opportunity for mischief if he is not keeping watch over the aristocracy,” observed Darcy.
“Roark has accepted the reins from Gardiner,” said Bennet. “The culling continues.”
“I cannot believe a peer would lower himself to do business with a man as forbidding as he,” Darcy replied.
