Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

I nwardly, Darcy cursed. It had been so difficult to rein in his feelings at the evocative sight of Elizabeth in his home, at long last. Yet, he had seen the hurt and anger in her visage, and knew he should proceed carefully, giving her every proper attention due her as his bride. At his explanation of Georgiana’s attempted elopement, her eyes had just begun to soften with acceptance that the situation truly had been beyond his control. She had been ill-treated, and now, at the worst possible moment, entered the cousin who was to blame.

It took that cousin another moment before he realised they were not alone, but Darcy stood immediately as the colonel’s lips formed a sneer.

“Not another word, Fitzwilliam,” Darcy said. “You and I will speak privately.”

“Why are you so concerned about privacy now?” the colonel snapped, giving a contemptuous look at Elizabeth and her family. “I can tell you have been blathering the family business to anyone who will listen.”

“Once again, I see your temper has got the best of you. If you have any claim at all upon honour, you will leave us at once.”

“Do not talk to me of honour! I received this uncivil note from you threatening to destroy our entire family, all over this-this girl from Cheapside! Would you listen to yourself? Why in thunder would you chain yourself to a woman whose family you did not deem good enough for Bingley?”

“What?” Elizabeth cried.

The colonel faced Elizabeth. “Darcy confessed to me that he would do everything in his power to separate Bingley from your sister. No, I should not have left you standing at the church—but you ought to have never been in it! My motives for my actions in separating the two of you were and are the same as his for saving Bingley, and why should I apologise for them? Why am I suddenly the villain of the piece? Even he must admit that your births are better than his friend’s…and yet he cannot see that he is sacrificing himself and his future. You are a gentleman’s daughter, yes. But who is your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition.” He gave the Gardiners a derisive glance that made Darcy wish to punch him.

But Mr Gardiner had already stood, making haste to shepherd the ladies from the room. Elizabeth would not look at Darcy.

“Please wait, sir,” he begged. “If you would allow me to?—”

“You have a situation to resolve,” Mr Gardiner interrupted with a coldness that brooked no resistance. “I will not have my niece anywhere near such low discourtesy as she has already been subjected to. Whatever you wish to say of the circles I inhabit, none of my associates would have treated her like this .”

The undelivered letters he had written to Elizabeth, Darcy noticed, had been left behind in plain sight upon the table. He snatched them up. “Please, Elizabeth, take my letters,” he implored. “Read them. If only you could understand how much you mean to me!”

Briefly she hesitated; was she tempted to take them from his outstretched hand? But when she turned back to face him, he saw naught but grief and rejection in her expressive eyes. “I understand much more than you ever wanted me to, I think,” she said, her words a mere whisper, as she allowed Mr Gardiner to guide her from the room.

The hardest thing he had ever done was to watch her go. However, in this Gardiner was correct—to further expose her to the colonel’s disregard would be unconscionable.

Darcy stared with narrowed eyes at his cousin; Fitzwilliam’s anger at Mr Gardiner’s words had been obvious as he watched the party leave, and the air grew thick with silence between the two men who remained.

Sorrow, disbelief, and fury churned in Darcy’s gut, a toxic brew threatening to fell him.

“I cannot fathom your thinking, Fitzwilliam. I knew you were unhappy with my choice—but I thought that you respected me enough to lend your support and friendship.”

“I am! I do! It is for your sake that I did it, though you hate me for it! You have been fooled, or played for one. Her family is low, vulgar?—”

“Enough! Do I have eyes in my head? Do you think me incapable of seeing what—who—is in front of me? Am I blind, as well as foolish, that I cannot judge them for myself?”

His cousin opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I did wrong by leaving her at the church,” he said after a pause. “It was not well done of me, I admit that, and if I had the money to offer recompense, I would.”

“Money? You think this is about money?” Darcy laughed with acid resentment. “Who is blind now? They had the evidence for a breach of promise suit lying on that table—pages and pages of promises. They would not take those letters, not when I begged.”

“Perhaps the man did not realise?—”

Darcy stalked the length of the chamber, his sense of frustration, grief, and betrayal building with every step. “Do not be stupid as well as blind. Her uncle Gardiner lives in surprising wealth, none of it handed to him. To be sure, he is clever and resourceful. I have hurt, however mistakenly, two favoured members of his family. He would never allow either of us to buy our way out of the dishonour you have heaped upon us both.”

“Darcy, come now, you must be reasonable,” Fitzwilliam pleaded. “You cannot believe that Matlock would welcome such a bride. Why, imagine his displeasure! It does not bear consideration. He would never forgive it.”

Darcy stopped pacing to stare at him, shaking his head in disbelief. It was all growing clear to him, finally, and long after it was too late. “I should have known,” he retorted. “When Alexander died, I could see that you?—”

“Alexander?” At this unexpected mention of his dead younger brother, Fitzwilliam paled. “What has he to do with this? Not a thing! You are turning wide of the point, sir!”

“I beg to differ. Did not Alexander beg your company before he departed that wretched day? Did you not refuse him because of your sore head, born of making merry with your friends the night previous? Had you accompanied him as he asked, would he have drowned?”

Fitzwilliam’s face went from white to dark red, his fists clenched as if restraining himself from speaking with them. His voice, when he answered, was choked. “What of it? I suppose you have some purpose in dredging up my old guilt?”

“I do.” Darcy rounded on him, using his greater height to advantage, his gaze boring into Fitzwilliam’s. “It has always been obvious that you blame yourself. How many times since his death have I witnessed you licking the earl’s boots in your eagerness to satisfy his every wish and agree with his every opinion, no matter how outrageous? You still attempt to earn an absolution no one can grant you. I see it now. Our friendship—or what I thought was a friendship—was doubtless but another of Matlock’s demands, that he might attempt to influence me through you. Will you deny it?”

Fitzwilliam’s eyes blazed, and Darcy wondered if the colonel would offer a challenge in response. Almost, Darcy wondered if he was goading him towards it. Certainly, men had fought over less .

“Of course I deny it! Now I am certain you have lost your mind,” Fitzwilliam said sharply, before cutting off his belligerence with visible effort. In a much quieter voice he said, “I have always been your friend.”

Darcy shook his head, incredulous. “A friend ? Would a friend lie to me? Would a friend utterly fail to behave as a gentleman, leaving the only woman I will ever love believing I am untrue? Would a friend slice my heart out through my back, and while I am bleeding before him, explain I ought to care what his father thinks? From the first moment, I may almost say, of sharing with you my decision to marry, your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others have demonstrated your meaning of the word ‘friendship’. I want no part of it. You will leave my home at once. Do not return.”

“Darcy, please, you cannot mean—surely you can see w-why—” Fitzwilliam stuttered, but Darcy did not wait to hear more, and strode to the doors.

“Michael,” he called to the footman waiting there. “Please show Colonel Fitzwilliam out.”

The colonel gawped at his ejection, but tried again. “Understandably, you are too angry at the moment to be reasonable. I am still Georgiana’s guardian, however,” he beseeched. “You cannot disregard my wishes when it comes to her—we still have much to discuss.”

“Take it up with my solicitors,” Darcy said coldly. “He who has the most money to argue with them, may have his opinions most heeded.”

The sturdy footman entered the room, wide-eyed, but willing. The colonel stared at the two of them, as if weighing whether he could take on them both. Good sense won the day, and instead, he stalked out.

Elizabeth did not speak all the way home. When they arrived in Gracechurch Street, Mr and Mrs Gardiner both begged her to join them in the parlour, where a meal might be brought in place of the one they had missed at Darcy House. She excused herself, however, as having no appetite, and quickly found her own room. She believed perhaps that tears might help, for once, to free the excess of pure emotion trapped within her chest. But lying here, staring up at the ceiling, she knew nothing would erase the dull ache.

No matter how Mr Darcy had wished to hide it, she had seen the truth upon his face. Colonel Fitzwilliam might despise her— did despise her, in fact. But he had not lied about separating Mr Bingley from Jane. She perfectly remembered the letter Miss Bingley had written to Jane, with not one mention of a wedding—ruined or otherwise. She had not known. He had not wanted the Bingleys to know, because if they did, Mr Bingley would have pursued the connexion with Jane.

A connexion with Jane was, somehow, unacceptable.

If Jane—gracious, lovely Jane—was not ‘good enough’ for Mr Bingley, what did that say about Mr Darcy and Elizabeth?

I was convenient , she thought. There was a physical attraction, and all of his worries about Miss Darcy, and he impulsively proposed. Now he is home alone with his troubled sister, and I am still, in his mind, the easiest answer to setting up his nursery and coping with his sister.

Marriages had been based on far less, often enough.

Nevertheless, Colonel Fitzwilliam, hateful and despicable as he behaved, had produced an undeniable logic. The foundation for this ‘courtship’—desire and a sense of convenience—was unlikely to last much beyond the first year—or the first ton social event when the earl made his contempt known for Mr Darcy’s country bride. If Mr Darcy believed Jane and Bingley were a mismatch, what would it be like when he realised his own?

A lifetime of misery.

A tap on the door broke into her desolate thoughts, and her nine-year-old cousin, Eleanor, slipped into Elizabeth’s room.

“Cousin Lizzy?”

With a sigh, Elizabeth sat up to face the eldest Gardiner child, a pretty, slender, sensitive girl who reminded her often, at least in temperament, of Jane.

“Yes, dearest?”

“Mama wants to bring you a tray, but Papa wishes for you to be left undisturbed. Mama says you are sad and we must all leave you be. I promise, I shall not stay. It is just that I have a biscuit that I was saving from earlier. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly wretched, I find a biscuit can help.” She held out a small, napkin-wrapped parcel.

Elizabeth found a smile for the child and held out her arms. “Would a hug come with that biscuit?”

Eleanor hurried to her embrace. “You are my favourite cousin in the whole world,” she declared, squeezing with all her slight strength. “Well, and Cousin Jane too, because she is so patient showing me new stitches—but you read the very best stories, because you do all the voices properly. And you sing me lullabies so beautifully, I-I don’t ever wish you to be sad. Mama said your nice dinner out was ruined, and I am so very, very sorry.”

As Elizabeth felt those thin arms around her, she swallowed down her heartache. The Gardiners were the kindest, loveliest family in the world, and clearly this sensitive child had picked up on her parents’ distress, not just Elizabeth’s. No one knew what to do, how to help. Nor was there much help they could extend. But wallowing alone was not the answer. There was time enough for her own sorrow—years of it—without wrecking the happiness of everyone surrounding her.

“I do not wish to be sad either, sweet Eleanor. I am certain this biscuit will cheer me, but perhaps I should first discover if Cook has conjured up anything to replace our ruined dinner.”

Eleanor perked up immediately. “Oh yes! She has! A lovely soup! Would you like me to bring you a tray?”

“There is no need for that,” Elizabeth said, smiling at the sweet offer. “I shall go downstairs now, if you will accompany me. Perhaps, while I eat, you would tell me of the next chapter in your novel. Or have you finished Eleanor Goes to London ? I remember you said it was close to completion.”

As the two made their way downstairs, Eleanor chattered brightly about the illustrations for her book she intended to draw of the Bartholomew Fair—an event she had been allowed to attend with her papa for the first time in September. Obviously having heard her daughter, Mrs Gardiner quickly joined them at the bottom of the staircase, her gaze questioning .

“I have decided I am hungry after all,” Elizabeth answered her look.

Smiling sadly, the compassion of a thousand unspoken words in her eyes, Mrs Gardiner took Elizabeth’s other hand in hers, and together they went to find the promised meal.