Bingley! He groaned aloud and, sitting up, leaned forward to stare into the fire. It is all to good purpose, he told himself for the thousandth time, and it is of no matter how the whole affair makes you feel. As he took another draw from the mug, his eyes strayed about the room and fell upon the book he had been reading in the carriage. Remembering what lay inside its pages, he quickly turned away. Surely Fletcher was ready for him by now! He set the mug down upon the tray and strode out the library door.
The next morning found Darcy awaking from the first night of true repose he had experienced in some time. Almost before the bell pull had stopped swaying, Fletcher appeared and, with quiet expertise, prepared him for a day devoted to his business affairs. Breakfast and the perusal of the morning’s newspaper, Darcy noted, had been blessedly devoid of Miss Bingley’s chattering interruptions, and when both were finished, he looked up to be informed that his secretary awaited his pleasure in the library.
“Mr. Darcy, sir.” Hinchcliffe rose from his chair set directly across the wide desk from Darcy’s own.
“Hinchcliffe” — Darcy acknowledged his slight bow — “it appears we have quite a day ahead of us. Did you receive the instructions concerning the disposition of the charitable funds for this year?” He sat down opposite his secretary, who then resumed his own seat.
“Yes, sir.” He drew Darcy’s letter out of the leather case in his lap and lay it on the desk for his master’s approval. Each recipient of Darcy’s yearly largesse was noted and checked off in Hinchcliffe’s neat script. “Expressions of gratitude for your interest arrive daily, sir.” He withdrew more letters from the case and laid them beside Darcy’s. Darcy swept up the letters and glanced through them before pushing them back across the desk.
“Very good, Hinchcliffe.” An almost imperceptible nod of the head was the sum of his secretary’s response to his words. Its curt nature and Darcy’s unconcern over such procacious behavior in a servant would have surprised many of his acquaintances. Of course, they could not know that Hinchcliffe had been his father’s secretary, engaged into his service since Darcy had been a lad of twelve.
Their first meeting had not been an auspicious one. Elated to be home on a short holiday from Eton, Darcy had run into Erewile House straight out of the carriage, through the entry hall, and right into a tall, black-clad form just coming into the hall. When the last bit of paper had finally drifted to the floor, he’d found himself lying across the legs of a stern-eyed man of about thirty years. The fall had knocked the man’s wig askew at a comical angle in such a marked contrast to the granite set of his jaw that Darcy had been unable to prevent a sign of the humor of their situation from escaping him. That had lasted only until the strange servant untangled his limbs and rose to his full height. To Darcy’s twelve-year-old amazement, the man had seemed a giant and one with a darkling eye focused wholly upon himself.
“Master Darcy, I believe,” the giant had rumbled.
“Yes, sir,” he had responded in a much subdued voice, sure that he had been unlucky enough to have tumbled over an unknown schoolmaster engaged to keep him at his studies during the holiday.
“I am your father’s new secretary, Mr. Hinchcliffe,” the giant had continued, his diction precise and his voice stentorian. “You, sir, are awaited in the library. You will pardon me if I do not announce you, as I have an unexpected task to complete. I suggest you bestir yourself before your father comes in search of you.” Fixing him with a final, stern look, Hinchcliffe had turned and begun retrieving the papers that littered the hall while Darcy walked quickly up the steps and slipped inside the library door to safety.
For years Hinchcliffe had been a rigid fixture among the servants whom Darcy had learnt to appreciate only when he had come home from university to find his beloved father’s health in an alarming state. During those two harrowing years before his death, Hinchcliffe had tutored Darcy on all his father’s business interests and concerns, and he could conceive of no other more suited to be his own secretary than the man who knew the Darcy interests so intimately and had kept them so faithfully and so well. He did not look for warmth from Hinchcliffe, nor did he expect deference. It was enough for Darcy to be certain that he had merited the respect and loyalty of a man who had known of all his concerns since boyhood and, further, tendered him the services of a true master at his craft.
“Mr. Darcy, sir, there is one thing more I must bring to your notice.” Hinchcliffe withdrew yet another letter from his case and, carefully opening it, laid it on the desk. “I received this from Miss Darcy a few days ago. Shall I do as she has requested, sir?”
Darcy took up the letter and read it softly aloud:
21 November 1811
Pemberley House
Lambton
Derbyshire
Mr. Hinchcliffe,
If you please, make out a check from my Charity Funds in the amount of twenty pounds to be given over to the Society for Returning Young Women to Their Friends in the Country, the address follows, and see that a check for one hundred pounds per annum is made over to them hereafter.
Sincerely,
Miss Georgiana Darcy
Eyebrows arched high in surprise, Darcy looked over the top of the letter at his secretary. “The Society for Returning Young Women! Hinchcliffe, are you acquainted with this society?”
“I was not, sir, previous to Miss Darcy’s letter. I have made inquiries, and it is a legitimate society with connections to Clapham, sir. Very respectable board of directors, subscribers are from the best families and even a few peers. Nothing objectionable, sir.”
“Hmm,” Darcy replied, staring at the letter thoughtfully. “That may be so, but I object to my sister knowing of such women…such evils,” he amended. And further, that she did not consult first with me! Why did she not? He frowned.
“Shall I comply with Miss Darcy’s directions, Mr. Darcy?” Hinchcliffe’s voice rumbled quietly.
“Yes,” he answered slowly, drawing out his assent to the request. “Make over the twenty-pound bequest, but do not send the hundred until you have heard from me on it. I would speak to Miss Darcy first.”
“Very good, sir. Your first appointment is with the manager of the warehouse that handles the imported goods from your shipping interests. Shall I show him in?”
Darcy nodded, and the day began in earnest with a series of meetings and negotiations. Bargains were struck and funds withdrawn or invested in quick succession, with only a short pause in the late afternoon for a cold collation and glass of ale. This had been pressed upon him most insistently by his watchful housekeeper, Mrs. Witcher. When the door had closed behind the last man in his appointment book, the clock was very near to striking six.
“A most productive day.” He sighed, closing the account books and sitting back in his desk chair. Hinchcliffe leaned across the desk, pulling the accounts into a neat pile and then taking them in a stack to the safebox hidden behind a set of weighty tomes on a bookshelf.