“Like the look of that saber, do you?” Sayre strolled over to them with unconcealed pride. At Darcy’s nod, he motioned toward it. “Take it up! Tell me what you think.” Almost disbelieving him, Darcy reached up and gingerly freed the saber from its display. The weapon’s hilt seemed to slip into his hand, his fingers closing around it in a perfect fit, the swirling silver bands of the wrist guard accentuating its deadly beauty. He hefted it reverently, flexing the muscles and tendons of his hand and forearm, and slowly thrust it out before him, watching the candlelight play along its length as he tested its exquisite balance.
“Go on, Darcy,” urged Trenholme as the others gathered around. “Show what can be done with the little beauty! My brother never was a swordsman. I’d like to see it as it was meant to be seen — in action!”
Smiling with anticipation, Darcy executed a few simple moves. The blade floated, then slashed through the air, the traditional moves calling forth the weapon’s own distinctive song. Perfect, he thought, or as near to perfection as a thing from the hand of man could be.
“Too tame by half!” Manning sneered.
“Show us more than nursery exercises, Darcy!” called Poole.
Checking his movement, Darcy gently placed the saber on a table and began unbuttoning his coat. With a knowing smile upon his face, Monmouth came behind him and helped pull it from his shoulders. Shaking one arm free, Darcy stripped his other and threw the coat over a chair as he turned back to the blade. It fit into his hand as smoothly as before, and no, he had not dreamed the perfection of its balance. Stepping away from the group and stretching the muscles of his back and upper arms, he swung the saber in increasing arcs.
“He should have an opponent,” Chelmsford observed, but no one made a motion to offer his services. Instead, silence fell as the gentlemen eagerly awaited Darcy’s first move. Darcy drew in several calming breaths as he reviewed the steps of the exercise he had recently developed for himself. It had been well over a week…
He began slowly with classic moves that warmed his muscles and steadily increased the beat of his heart. Then the pace and complexity of the figures increased as well, until the blade was a blur as he advanced and retreated against an invisible foe. The saber responded to his slightest wish, becoming an extension of his body. He pressed himself further.
Shouts of “Well done!” and “Good show!” slowly invaded his concentration. It was time to end. Advancing to his host, he slowed and, with a flourish, threw the saber up into the air. Catching it, he laid it across his crooked arm, offering it hilt first to a wide-eyed Sayre. His Lordship took the weapon with a bow as the rest clapped Darcy upon his back, exclamations of their appreciation echoing from the stone arches of the ancient armory.
“Damn me, Darcy!” Sayre eyed him speculatively. “Thought seven years would have slowed your sword arm. Of course, with such a blade…” He let the thought dangle as Darcy shrugged back into his coat and began on the buttons.
“Out with it, Sayre. ‘With such a blade…’?” Monmouth prodded.
“Just a thought.” His Lordship would not be rushed. “Perhaps, Darcy, you would like an opportunity to acquire the saber?”
His suspicion aroused at such a question, Darcy replied casually, “Are you offering it for sale, Sayre?”
“Oh, no! Not for sale, Darcy!” His host regarded him slyly. “If you would have the saber, you must win it from me!”
The gentlemen entered Lady Sayre’s salon to the sound of a musical duet. The last to enter, Darcy paused in the doorway, for the scene presented for them had been artfully contrived. Lady Felicia sat at the pianoforte with Miss Avery at her side to turn her pages, while Miss Farnsworth stood behind them, drawing a bow across a violin. The music was sweetly plaintive, a popular lament and, with the performers so charmingly grouped, ideally suited to delight the senses.
It was a pleasing sight, Darcy admitted as he found a seat. Veteran as he was of many a drawing room campaign, he was not inured to beauty and grace; and the females present possessed those qualities in full measure. All of them were good-looking women. Lady Chelmsford, the oldest, was still handsome; and her sister, Lady Beatrice, could almost be taken for Miss Farnsworth’s older sister rather than her mother. Lady Sayre had been declared a “stunner” her first Season by members of the fast set who still had entry into Almack’s and had been credited with bringing red hair into fashion. Although six years had passed since her triumph and marriage, her sloe eyes, womanly figure, and pouting, full lips were still more than capable of sending warm shivers down a man’s spine.
Darcy turned his contemplation upon the younger ladies. Miss Avery, Lady Sayre’s much younger sister, was a copy of her but in a different key. She also possessed the Avery hair, but imitated her brother in looking upon the world through grass green eyes. The most obvious difference lay in her manner. Whereas her siblings regarded the world with confidence and complacency, Miss Avery did so with a timidity that revealed a severe doubt as to her welcome. This hesitancy was further exacerbated by her brother’s impatience with her and an unfortunate tendency to stutter. She was very young and impressionable, Darcy noted. Already, her gratitude for Lady Felicia’s intervention during supper had blossomed into worship as she gazed upon the lady playing so charmingly beside her.
Miss Farnsworth, by contrast, was a regal beauty cast in the classical mold. Tall like her mother, she held herself with an easy confidence that bore testimony to her reputation as an accomplished horsewoman and huntress. A veritable Diana, she seemed as if she had just stepped from the forests and fields shouldering Olympus. In that, she was a perfect complement to her cousin. Lady Felicia’s celebrated beauty was all of English cream mixed with Norse ancestry. Sunlight or candle, it did not matter, her hair was gloriously golden and her eyes the clearest blue. As he turned his attention to her performance at the pianoforte, Darcy recalled his enchantment upon their introduction almost one year ago and his subsequent recession of himself from her court several months later. She was beautiful, of that there was no question. Her taste, her air of recherche were exquisite. She was the perfect consort for a man of distinction in the world. But he had relinquished his place in the lists; she was now his cousin’s, and although he could still respond to her beauty, Darcy suddenly found that he was not sorry he had stepped aside. He wanted for a wife and a mistress for Pemberley, not a consort, and especially not one whom he could not trust out of his sight.
Lady Sylvanie was the only one of the young women who was not charmingly grouped for the gentlemen’s appreciation. Quickly surveying the room, Darcy found her half-hidden behind Trenholme’s turned back in a corner of the salon. A heated discussion was obviously in progress as Darcy immediately recognized the signs of a man whose back had been set up. Beverley Trenholme had never been one to handle his emotions stoically. He now wove back and forth, as he habitually did when in agitation, but Darcy could not fault him; for the movement gave him a view of the lady. His first impression of a fairy princess was recalled as he observed her cool disdain for her half brother’s words. Her black hair was plaited into a crown upon her head, although cloudy wisps had come loose and played delicately about an ethereal face. Her smoke gray eyes looked through Trenholme as if he were not even now leaning toward her, intent on making his point. Her gaze seemed focused elsewhere, beyond her brother or within herself, Darcy could not decide. No child’s flower fairy she, he concluded, but one of that more traditional, fearful caste whom men do well to treat with caution.
Knowing he should not attend to a family squabble, Darcy made to look away; but at that moment, Lady Sylvanie’s eyes met his. A slow smile touched her lips. Seeing the change in her expression, Trenholme turned immediately, his features smoothing from their snarl into an embarrassed smile when he beheld the raised brow of her object. Looking over his shoulder, he said something that only caused her to laugh at him before he abruptly left her where she stood. Shuttering her eyes once more, the lady drifted to a chair next to Lady Chelmsford and, without another glance in Darcy’s direction, appeared to give all her attention to the duet.
Finally, the last notes drifted across the salon and were answered with enthusiastic applause from the gentlemen and ladies alike. Darcy added his, but the irrepressible memory of another lady’s performance at the pianoforte tempered his response. As the pair acknowledged their audience’s appreciation, he could not help but contrast their grand curtsies with Elizabeth Bennet’s unaffected one, which had thanked her listeners with such sweet sincerity. Elizabeth’s performance had been no better in execution, he admitted, but her music’s expression had called forth from deep within him a response that Lady Felicia’s performance had been unable to touch. He closed his eyes while the remembered pleasure coursed through him.
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