Free The Second Mrs Darcy by Elizabeth Aston Page B

was there— Octavia, are you paying attention?”
    â€œI?” said Octavia, who had been looking out of the window and watching a pair of quarrelsome sparrows perched on the parapet of the house opposite.
    â€œYou, ma’am. I said, I have taken the time out from my own affairs entirely on your account, the least you can do is to listen to what I have to say.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Arthur, but what have these routs and balls and Batterbys and Tollants to do with me?”
    â€œNothing at all, but Lady Warren does. She is George Warren’s stepmother, as it happens. And a connection of your late husband’s, now I come to think of it.”
    Another connection? What an entwined world it was, with the upper ten thousand woven into a spider’s web of marriages and consanguinity. Here was she, with a large family of half brothers and sisters, cousins, now even more connections through Christopher’s family—and yet, in truth, she was still an orphan, with no close ties of feeling to any of them.
    Arthur’s eyes narrowed; he loved tracing family links. “Caroline Warren was a Bingley before she married, and her brother married the eldest Bennet daughter, a family of no importance, it was not a good match, she brought him hardly a penny, but what is more to the point, her next sister, Elizabeth, had the very good luck to snare Fitzwilliam Darcy and so she became the mistress of Pemberley; my word, she did well for herself there! Now of course, Captain Darcy was a cousin of that family, not a close cousin, but the connection is there.”
    Octavia spread a generous portion of strawberry jam on a piece of toast. The connection seemed more remote than most, and while Lady Warren might be the most amiable creature, she had not heard a good word spoken about her stepson.
    â€œAnd George Warren is, of course, unfortunately, Christopher Darcy’s heir. So I took it upon myself to mention to Lady Warren that you were returned to England. She expressed surprise, had no idea of it, but at once said that she would call upon you at the first opportunity and knew that George would also do himself the honour of waiting upon you.”
    * * *
    Lady Warren had lied to Arthur. Lady Warren knew perfectly well that Octavia was in England; she made it her business to know most of what was going on in London society, and in such a case, when the news was of direct interest to her or to her stepson, George, upon whom she doted, she made sure she had all the details. She had known to the day, almost to the hour when Octavia arrived in Lothian Street, and sent a note round to George’s lodgings, summoning him to her house.
    â€œYou will call upon her, of course,” she said, sitting at her elegant writing desk, while George lounged in the most comfortable chair near to the fire.
    â€œThe devil I will.”
    Caroline Warren knew him too well to pay any attention to this. “The widow of your cousin, from whom you have inherited a very pretty estate; of course you must call. It would look odd if you didn’t, in the circumstances.”
    â€œWhat business had Christopher Darcy to be marrying again, at his age? And to pick a woman with no fortune, and from what I remember of her, nothing much else to recommend her. Regular maypole, ain’t she? I never thought him to have a goatish disposition, he should have stayed a widower, or found himself a rich woman to marry if he had to put his neck into the hangman’s noose a second time. Although his first marriage don’t seem to have done him much good, for all she was considered a good catch; Lord knows what happened to the first Mrs. Darcy’s fortune.”
    â€œI thought he ploughed every penny he had into his house and land, prize money, her portion, everything.”
    â€œWell, I shall find out by and by, now I’m installed there and have all the accounts and papers to hand. A few extra thousand would have been