Read Mr and Mrs Darcy 02 Suspense & Sensibility for Free Online Page B

urgent called you from Pemberley?"
    Darcy laughed. "That is a matter of opinion. To my mother-in-law,
chaperoning my wife's sister through her first London season is a matter of
utmost urgency."
    "Ah, the obligatory premarital promenade! You have my deepest sympathy.
How many times have you endured Al-mack's thus far?"
    "None."
    "You truly lead a charmed life. You cannot avoid it all season, you
know."
    "I can if Miss Bennet meets an acceptable gentleman elsewhere."
    "Any prospects yet?"
    "Perhaps. A Mr. Harry Dashwood has come to call. Do you know him?"
    "Dashwood," Chatfield repeated as he and Darcy removed their
gloves. "I think he's a friend of my wife's youngest brother, Phillip. Bit
of a wild bunch, their set. Most of them barely finished university - more
interested in learning sixteen different ways to tie a cravat than in learning
anything from a book. Tumbled out of Oxford and into town to pursue a full-time
occupation of general carousing. Too much money and not enough responsibility.
You know the type."
    Unfortunately, Darcy did; it was all too common among his peers. Born
into privilege and untempered by duty or conscience, many of his fellow "gentlemen"
behaved like anything but. They lived lives of self-absorbed leisure,
frittering away their time and fortunes on meaningless pursuits. The worst of
them carried this extravagance to excess - slavish attention to clothes,
overindulgence in drink, high-stakes games of chance, fast horses, faster women
- and in many cases ultimately found themselves undone by it.
    "I am sorry to hear this of Mr. Dashwood. For Miss Bennet's sake, I
had wanted to like him."
    "Those are just my general impressions of Phillip's crowd, Darcy.
I've heard no genuine harm of Mr. Dashwood in particular," the earl said. "Say,
he isn't related to old Sir Francis Dashwood, is he? Now he was a
hell-raiser."
    "Let us hope not." Sir Francis Dashwood, though dead more than
thirty years, had been a libertine so notorious that schoolboys still talked of
him in the dormitories of Eton and Westminster when they wanted to impress
younger schoolmates with their worldly knowledge. Perhaps, Darcy mused, that is
why Mr. Dashwood's name had sounded familiar.
    "So, you are here long enough to find a husband for Mrs. Darcy's
sister, and then it's back to Pemberley. Is that the scheme?"
    "Essentially. I do hope to locate a good clergyman while in town. I
recently received word that the vicar of Kympton is taken quite ill, so the
living will likely become vacant by year's end."
    "How much is it worth?"
    "About four hundred a year."
    "You have not already sold it? A living that valuable? I should
think someone would have paid you handsomely to hold it for him."
    Darcy had never much cared for the practice of accepting payment from a
gentleman or his family in exchange for appointing him as a parish priest.
Fortune and connections had their place in the worlds of business, law,
politics, and the military, but not, he believed, in matters of the spirit. The
men who guided their parishioners from baptism through death, who married and
buried them, who counseled and consoled, should be selected for their office on
the basis of merit alone.
    "According to my father's will, it was to be held for an individual
who has since elected not to take orders," Darcy said. "When the
living became vacant about three years ago, I granted it to the best candidate
I could find, despite his advanced age. Now that his health is in decline, I
once again wish to select a clergyman based on aptitude alone. I would grant
the benefice free and clear to the right person."
    "Simply circulate that fact, and you'll have half the clerics in
Christendom knocking on your door."
    "I would settle for a single good one."
    As they left the fencing club and entered the street, the earl invited
Darcy to dinner. "Lady Chatfield wishes very much to see your wife again.
Can you come round on Wednesday?"
    "Only if you engage to be our guests the Wednesday