Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

“ W ickham forced Bingley to swallow spirits, enough to lose consciousness, and was about to brand a highly offensive insult onto a highly embarrassing portion of his anatomy using a hot iron. You may now proceed to swoon.”

Darcy could not believe what he had just blurted.

Miss Elizabeth’s mouth formed a little rosebud of astonishment—and not entirely, he thought, because of Wickham’s revolting villainy. She had not believed he would tell her.

Well, call us both surprised.

“Perhaps I will postpone the swoon, in favour of asking how you rescued him?”

Darcy knew he ought to keep the rest to himself, end the walk, and return to the house. Yet, once again, she was alert, eager, interested in what he had to say—not, he knew, because she enjoyed disgusting details, but because he felt her strong enough to hear them. He should feel appalled .

Why am I relieved, instead?

“It was easily done. The fools knew they were behaving badly—and, I think, were it not for Wickham’s insistence and their own drunkenness, most would not have participated. I simply had to remind them that if he died of infection afterwards, they might be accused of murder, and asked them how they would enjoy a vagabond’s life, on the Continent.”

She smiled faintly. “I suppose that in return for your heroism, you were never again required to polish your own boots.”

He gave her a disdainful look, and she laughed—a marvellous sound.

“Very well, I stand corrected. You never did have to polish your own boots.”

“The very idea,” he drawled, and she laughed again, and he felt strangely, improbably happy, strolling in the outdoors with her on his arm.

Odd how he had never before noticed the beauty of Netherfield’s garden paths. Even with autumn’s fading blooms, the deep greens, nicely laid walks, pretty statuary, and quaint follies were quite satisfying, really.

A small voice within his mind—a sarcastic voice—noted that it was unlikely his current happiness was due to the beauties of nature and architecture.

“How did your father feel, learning that the godson he treated so well, behaved so poorly?”

Abruptly, his feelings of pleasure ebbed, making way for guilt. “He did not know. By that time, we knew his heart was weak. I was afraid of what it might do to his health, to learn that his favourite was a noxious degenerate. I never did tell him, although Father lived five more years. I ought to have told him. I regret now that I did not.”

Miss Elizabeth turned a sympathetic gaze upon him. “I cannot imagine bearing such news to my papa about any of my sisters—whether or not she was a favourite. You cannot be blamed for trying to protect him. It sounds as though your friend was like a brother to you, once upon a time. For that old friendship’s sake, it would have been difficult.”

Darcy tried looking at the tangle from her point of view, but knew it was not an accurate one. By the time he graduated Eton, he felt nothing but disgust for his old ‘friend’. “Do not credit me with any remnant feelings of loyalty—those were gone long before he attempted to… deface Bingley.”

“Ostensibly, you gained Mr Bingley’s friendship in exchange,” she remarked. “A good bargain, I am thinking. Still, the difference in your ages—I am surprised you remained close. He would have been too young to join you at university.”

Darcy smiled sardonically. “My first letter from Bingley arrived during my second week at Cambridge. I cannot tell you precisely what it said—his scores and crosses were too obfuscating. However, I gathered that he was still having a rough time of it, so I wrote back to him—nothing much, really, just a word of encouragement. Thereafter he was a surprisingly faithful correspondent. Truthfully, his hand is abysmal and for all his education, it has never improved—half the time I have little idea what he means to say.”

Miss Elizabeth gave him a look which he thought might be called approving. “Do you know what I believe, Mr Darcy? I think that you worried about him, and you wanted to help him. I am certain your reputation at Eton remained an excellent one even in your absence, and that by sharing a correspondence, you ensured that others knew he retained your protection. I believe that your friendship, once gained, is given forever—as long as one does not grow into a ‘noxious degenerate’.”

His return answer was a wry one. “By the same token, my nature is a resentful one—my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.”

“It sounds as though Mr Wickham lost your good opinion for good reason,” she replied. “I am not sure forgiveness is possible in such a case. You protected your father from heartache—perhaps a fatal one. What harm was there in that?”

Darcy could not tell her of Georgiana—the wound was still too fresh, too raw, besides showing his sister in a poor light. But there was evidence less fraught. “Harm enough. Upon his death, my father left Wickham a significant inheritance, which included one of the livings in Pemberley’s gift, should it become available. It became my responsibility to compensate him for it—because of course, the last office the man should ever hold is a clerical one. Who knows what offences he might have committed in such a position of trust?”

She nodded her understanding. “I am certain, from all I have heard of Pemberley, that it was a significant price to pay.”

“Three thousand—plus another thousand for the sum Father left him outright. It is all gone, I understand. He has gambled and wasted what, for another man, might have given security for a lifetime.”

“So much,” she murmured. “To be forced to bestow so much upon one you hated, and all for nothing. It is inconceivable.”

“Three years after collecting his inheritance, I received a letter from him. He had learnt Mr Bradley—who held the living once designed for him—was dead. I could not possibly have any other person to provide for, he was certain. He was ready and willing to be ordained, he claimed, if only I would present him the living my beloved father intended he should have.”

“What? The nerve of him!”

“Oh, he has no end of that,” he said bitterly. “He tells anyone who will listen of my denial. I have heard—well, it does not matter. He is, doubtless, as violent in his abuse of me to others as he was in his reproaches to myself.”

“Failing to mention, of course, that he was well paid for giving it up. What an awful person! When you have done nothing to deserve such infamous treatment!”

Darcy smiled at her vehement defence of him, but his conscience demanded a confession. “As to that, he has other reasons provoking his hatred. He erroneously assumed he would have no trouble taking up where he left off at Eton, once we were at Cambridge. However, I did not repeat my mistakes of the past. I did not allow him to trade upon my reputation. I made it known that I despised him. I befriended a few of his blue-blooded Etonian comrades-in-arms, and then forced them to choose between us. There was no contest. By the time he left Cambridge, he had very few he could count as friends, none of whom held any influence.”

“Ooh, well done. Remind me never to make of you my enemy,” Miss Elizabeth murmured, a twinkle in her eye .

She was so pretty, so…bewitching. “I would never want you to be,” he said, the least of what he felt, the most that he could say.

“As long as I do not insist you dance with me,” she laughed.

Regret again speared him; had he not been such a clodpoll, he could have had an hour of her time and attention upon their first night of meeting, and several such encounters since.

They had reached the garden’s eastern boundary, where the path narrowed into what was merely a trail, leading into the woods bordering the property line.

“Come with me,” he said, grabbing her hand in a most proprietary manner, and setting off down the trail at an unfashionably rapid pace.

She laughed again, as if she was game for any adventure, and hurried along with him.