13

Darcy had hoped the last day of the long journey north would bring him some peace of mind. His mother had spent her ire over Marcus’s scandalously patched up marriage on the first full day, and on the second she had given voice to every ounce of fear and dread she felt on behalf of her husband’s health.

The third day only brought new lamentations to compound the previous ones. They were not twenty miles from Pemberley when she looked up from her book; she had not turned a single page in a quarter hour at least.

“Jane Bennet was undoubtedly complicit in the whole affair. The gambit of switching her room with Marcus’s was blisteringly obvious. But that Jane should become confused enough to intrude upon them at such a moment is as preposterous as Caroline forgetting about the alteration she herself had requested. It is beyond coincidence! They had never seemed so amicable before Jane’s illness – if indeed she was ill at all.”

Darcy went rigid. His mother had only spoken of her antipathy toward Miss Bingley and her disappointment in Marcus’s actions. Yet it was inevitable, as apt as she was to dwell upon the incident, that she should eventually piece it together more fully. But he was not prepared for what came next.

“Do you suppose that Miss Elizabeth played some role? She came to Netherfield to tend to her sister, and yet she was scarcely with her. Fitzwilliam, I hope she did not attempt to impose herself upon you in a similar fashion!”

“Certainly not,” he cried, aghast. “She is a better woman than her sister, whose duplicity I shall not deny.”

“And yet they are so close,” Lady Anne mused. “Miss Elizabeth has set her elder sister upon a pedestal, and I have seen her endeavours to promote her sister to Mr. Bingley. And then, she is far cleverer than Miss Bennet and Miss Bingley combined.”

“She is also vastly more virtuous,” Darcy insisted. “She and I were alone often enough that she had ample opportunity to act as Caroline has done, and yet she did not.”

“Fitzwilliam,” his mother gasped.

“She would have no need to attempt any scheming, for I had every intention of offering for her, and I made my sentiments plain enough.”

His mother’s face twisted with alarm. “Have you offered for her?”

“I had not the chance,” he said bitterly.

“Perhaps it is for the best. I trust you were never discovered alone with her?”

Darcy shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the turn of this conversation. His mind inevitably drifted back to the library that last night she was at Netherfield, and to his horror he began to see it with this painful shade of implication. “We encountered one another in the library, just before – before the ordeal. She was in her nightdress and I was comforting her in a moment of distress. It was then that Miss Bennet left her room to procure a book before returning to the wrong room.”

Lady Anne’s eyes flared wide in icy rage. “Her sister walked in on you embracing Miss Elizabeth? Just as she did moments later with Caroline and Marcus?”

“She did not speak of it, obviously,” Darcy spat. “Because she was not in cahoots with her sister as she was with Caroline.”

“She has not spoken of it yet,” his mother retorted. “But if we are obliged to remain at Pemberley, if the worst should happen and mourning prevents you from returning to her, she has the means of making some claim upon your honour.”

“Which I would be delighted to satisfy,” he said energetically. His heart twisted with the pain of having to leave her so abruptly, without settling things between themselves. He meant to pay her his addresses at the ball – but had he spoken sooner, as every impulse had compelled him to, he might at least have the comfort of a fiancée in what may come when he reached his father.

“As it happens, the reason I was comforting her in the library is that we were both kept awake by our suspicions of what may be afoot. She confided in me that she mistrusted her sister, and I was fool enough to make light of it all.”

“No doubt made a fool by Miss Elizabeth! She is clever, Will, and has a cunning and avaricious mother. She might have only confided what Jane meant to do because it was too late to be prevented, since it all blew up moments later, as she lured you into an embrace.”

“I should never call her mother cunning and I refuse to believe it of Elizabeth,” he insisted. “Indeed, I am shocked and appalled that you could conceive such an awful notion. I thought you rather liked her.”

“I did – I do – but I have been deceived by the charms of others before. It is the way of the world, for people of our rank. Do not look at me like that. I know I just sound like Catherine, but I speak the truth.”

“You may speak your mind as you please, but I will not hear it,” Darcy said coldly. He pounded on the roof of the carriage, and when the equipage came to a stop, he got out and rode atop beside the driver.

His mind played over every happy memory of Elizabeth, particularly the thrilling encounters they had shared at Netherfield. He wished to absolve her of any guile, to convince himself his mother was speaking rashly out of grief and anxiety, but her poison had begun to taint these tender recollections, shading them with unwelcome doubt.

He thought of their tantalizing interlude in the library that night. She had dropped her book, and Miss Bennet claimed the sound of it had alerted her to their presence. And then the lady’s shock at what she had beheld seemed to bring on a spell of dizziness that justified her confusion in entering the wrong room. But to what end? What purpose did it serve, when Jane had not spoken up in the moment? Darcy had been on the verge of speaking his heart to Elizabeth just before they were interrupted, but she could not have known it.

The argument was not a sound one, and Darcy knew that he could not believe Elizabeth capable of such arts. In a painful twist or irony, he nearly wished she had engaged his honour. Perhaps her scheming mother might discover the letter he had written to them, and set Mr. Bennet upon him; be would be happily caught in a trice.

Not long after they reached Pemberley, the quarrel was entirely forgotten. They sat beside his father’s sickbed for a long and harrowing night before the beloved father and husband departed this world for the next. In the sleepless and desolate hours that followed, they cleaved together in their devastation, awaiting Marcus’s arrival. Everyone and everything from Hertfordshire was pushed from their minds as they sank together into the deepest despair that either had ever known.

.