Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MR. DARCY RESISTED when it was suggested that he leave the house. Mrs. Collins said that she thought she knew where Elizabeth had gone, and she said she would speak to Mr. Bennet and they would go after them. It would all be rectified, and that Mr. Darcy should not concern himself with it.

But he could not help but concern himself with it, so he pressed her for information, giving assurances here and there, and eventually, the entire tale came spilling out.

He was impressed, truly, that Elizabeth should come up with such a plan to combat the rumors that plagued her family. He thought that it had a good chance of working, though he was not pleased that she had gone off, all alone, to talk to some man’s mistress. None of that was going to help her reputation if it was discovered, for heaven’s sake.

Mr. Bennet was already ready to set off for Surrey.

Mr. Darcy did not think to impose upon the family, but he went immediately home and set off himself on horseback. He could go more quickly this way. It was simply easier to get out of London when one did not have to wait for other carriages going to and fro. One horse could make its way through any tangle of carriage traffic.

He suspected that he might be able to find Elizabeth and Mary before the family could get there. He debated on whether he should give her some sort of lecture when he came upon the carriage. He would obviously stop them and tell them that their father was on their way, that everyone had been quite worried.

But then he came to a fallen tree, which was blocking the entire road. Someone was sitting on it.

He pulled to a stop, and that was when he realized it was Elizabeth! Mary was standing next to her, by the tree. Now, he noticed a carriage stuck on the side of the road, sans horses.

Well, then. Thank heavens he’d come.

He dismounted and made his way towards them.

Elizabeth recognized him immediately. “Mr. Darcy,” she said. “What a strange and happy coincidence. We are in need of some assistance. I am so happy it is you who is the first to happen by. How could that be?”

He felt abashed. “Er, it is no coincidence, I’m afraid. I was even now off in search of you.”

She looked stricken. “You?”

“Well, I called upon you, and then Mrs. Collins went to look in on you and then your absence was discovered, and then we determined you must have gone to Surrey. But thank heaven this tree in the path has prevented your going to visit a woman of ill-repute.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, hesitating a moment, and then saying, “Oh, yes, indeed. Thank heaven. We were entirely prevented from getting to Surrey at all.”

“I know you may be disappointed,” said Mr. Darcy, “but I can’t say that meddling into these matters would have really provided any way to stop rumors. I can tell you that rumors are part and parcel to having any sort of wealth or position. You might have quelled this one, but something else would have come up.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes, you must be right, I think. Best to let this go.”

“I admire it, I must say,” he said with a chuckle. “Why, which one of us hasn’t wished we could stop the tongues of others wagging about us. Your ingenuity and determination are admirable, I must say.”

“You truly think that?” Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “I thought you’d be censuring us much more than this.”

“Our driver ran off after the horses,” said Mary. “He has not come back. We have been sitting and waiting, debating on whether we should set off after him, or if the food in the carriage was too dirty on the carriage floor to be eaten, for we are ever so hungry.”

Darcy considered. He only had one horse. “Well, your father will be along shortly with your sister and Mrs. Collins, so I think you will soon be rescued. They will take you back to London, where you can get something to eat. If you wish to wait for your driver to come back, of course—”

“No,” said Mary. “I suppose I rather hope he won’t come back, then. I should not wish to get him into trouble. All he did was my bidding. It is my fault.”

“ You’re the schemer,” said Mr. Darcy, looking Mary over. He had never paid her much mind before. She’d seemed nearly invisible, all of her other sisters so much more vibrant as she stayed to the periphery. If I marry Elizabeth, I shall come to know her sisters better.

Ah, but what sort of thought was that?

She would never marry him, not if he were the last man in the world.

“You called upon me,” said Elizabeth softly.

“It was unwelcome,” he said, with a nod. “I suppose I knew that. I shouldn’t have come at all, let alone gallop off on my own after you. It’s foolish, truly.”

“I didn’t say it was unwelcome,” she said.

He turned to look at her. “Well, you have made your stance when it comes to your thought about me rather plain, and I know it, but, yet, some part of me still—”

“Mr. Darcy, I have repented several times, rather strenuously, from things I said before,” she said, hopping up off the fallen tree. She was glaring at him.

He drew back.

She groaned. “Oh, heavens, I am hungry, that is all. I don’t mean to be sharp. I can’t believe it. Here I am, grousing at you for not accepting my apology. It’s preposterous.”

He laughed softly. “No, no, it’s warranted. I should accept the apology and stop being so needy. You do not need to sing my praises to prop up my self-worth.”

“I doubt your self-worth needs any propping,” she said dryly.

He laughed, more loudly this time.

She flushed and then she laughed, too, putting a hand over her mouth, laughing helplessly.

“You came all the way out here,” said Mary thoughtfully. “Alone. On horseback. After my sister.”

He eyed her. Yes, she was the schemer, so she saw directly through him. “After you both, of course.”

“Oh, both of us, yes,” said Mary, nodding.

“We are here together,” said Elizabeth to Mary.

“I daresay until now, Mr. Darcy would not have remembered my name,” said Mary with a small smile.

Mr. Darcy could see that she wouldn’t believe him if he lied, so he said, shaking his head, “My sincere apologies, Miss Mary. I promise I shall know it well hereafter.”

Mary was a bit taken aback by this. She shook her head. “Nonsense, there are far too many sisters in the family. It is common, really. I am often called the wrong name by new acquaintances.”

“Well, I’m sorry that has happened,” he said to her, and he truly was.

Mary furrowed her brow. She gestured. “I am going to see if I can find David—er, the driver—and tell him not to come back.”

Mr. Darcy thought to prevent her from doing this, for it would leave him alone, all alone, with Elizabeth, something that was hardly proper. He didn’t say that, though. “Not too far,” was all he said.

“I’ll keep the road in sight,” Mary said. “If I see Papa’s carriage, I shall wave them down and say I was only off to seek them, yes?”

He said nothing.

Elizabeth said nothing.

Mary hurried off, yelling for someone named David.

“I wonder if I should reveal the driver’s identity,” muttered Elizabeth. “My sister might never forgive me, but I think she is being badly influenced by him. They are scheming all manner of improprieties together.”

Mr. Darcy turned back to Elizabeth, eyebrows raised. “Truly? Because if you have suspicions that your sister is being taken advantage of—”

“Oh, Lord, no, I don’t wish your help with that,” Elizabeth muttered. “I don’t know what I’m even saying. What a day it’s been.”

He nodded. “I can only imagine.”

She regarded him. “You aren’t scolding us at all.”

“Is that what you think of me?” He folded his arms over his chest. “Perhaps you’re confusing me with Caroline Bingley. She’s the one who has her ideas of the way that things must be done and woe be to anyone who does it differently.”

“You, Mr. Darcy, with your ideas of the six accomplished women in all of England, are not a scold?”

He rubbed his forehead. “What I meant when I said that was that being accomplished is not about the accomplishments themselves, it’s about… something else, something you have, that most women don’t have, a certain inner glowing confidence that makes me tongue-tied and awed in your presence. I never meant to censure you. I know you took it that way, but I—”

“Awed?” She let out a disbelieving noise. “What?”

He dragged a hand over his face, embarrassed. How was it that he kept saying these things out loud in front of her? What an idiot he was. He groaned softly.

“What if I told you that we did make it to Surrey? How about that?”

He was confused. “What?”

“Would you scold me then?” she said sharply.

“Do you wish to be scolded, Miss Elizabeth?” he said.

“No, obviously not.”

“Then I shan’t do so.”

“Well, you might refrain from letting it out, but be holding it in and truly believe I deserved a scolding, which would be rather worse than if you simply let it out, I think.”

“Would it? Truly?”

“I think so, yes. Such repressed scoldings have a way of coming out eventually. When they do, they are much worse than if they’d been let out a bit at a time here and there.”

“Well, this, Miss Elizabeth, assumes that we are spending enough time together for me to build up a great deal of repression, doesn’t it? We must not only be together often, but you must be drawing my ire often. And I assure you, I rarely feel my ire rise in your direction.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “You with your standards and your strictures and your good opinion, once lost, lost permanently? I’m sure I don’t pass muster.”

“Oh, you are beyond such things, Miss Elizabeth,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“You can’t judge a woman like you according to ordinary standards,” he said. “You’re extraordinary.”

She blinked at him. “You really think that.”

“I’m not given to saying things I don’t mean.”

“No, I know,” she said. “Before, I had not been around men who were quite as skilled at silver-tongued flattery, but now I have, and I see the difference when someone says a thing for my benefit only. You are not that way, and you never have been.” She eyed him. “I do appreciate that about you, Mr. Darcy.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “You think about spending time with me?”

She sighed heavily.

“Is there hope here?” he said. “Am I perhaps not behaving ridiculously when it comes to you?”

She flushed again, looking away, and she didn’t respond directly. A moment passed and then she looked up and her lips parted. She was just on the verge of speaking when—from behind—came the sound of Mary’s voice. “Here we are, then!”

He turned to see Mary hanging outside the open door of the Bennet carriage.

Yes, he and Elizabeth were being interrupted by carriages rather often.

He backed away to allow the carriage to come closer.

Elizabeth spoke to Mrs. Collins, to her sisters, to her father. Mr. Darcy observed and felt as if he should not have come, that he was intruding on everything.

He called out that he would take his horse home, that all seemed to have ended well and he could see his services weren’t needed any further.

At that point, Mr. Bennet climbed out of the carriage to shake his hand.

“Mr. Darcy, I appreciate your help,” he said. “My girls, they are rather independent. I raised them in such a way that they might feel free to pursue the learning they liked or the activities they liked. I didn’t limit them. But now, we are in a different social sphere. They are under a different kind of scrutiny.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Darcy, agreeing with the man. “They certainly are.”

“I’m afraid the damage may be done at this point. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. An independent woman doesn’t become subjugated. But I still appreciate your help here, looking out for the girls. I don’t know if I can anticipate all the ways things might go badly.”

“Subjugated,” Mr. Darcy repeated. He gazed at Elizabeth. Oh, perhaps that was it. The difference between her and so many other women he’d known. That fierceness. It was independence. It was freedom. It was being brightly alive. “I wouldn’t wish to subjugate her for the world.”

“Good man,” said Mr. Bennet with a smile. “Do come back and call, then, any time you like. She hasn’t gone on about how much she despises you in quite some time.”

Mr. Darcy winced.

Mr. Bennet snickered and climbed back into the carriage.

Damnation.

Was there hope?

MARY BENNET TWISTED her hands together. “It was all my fault, I’m afraid.”

David was sprawled on a rectangular bale of hay in the stables, shoveling food into his mouth. Mary had managed to get a plate set aside for him, though she’d told the kitchen staff it was for herself. (“Oh, yes, I’m ever so hungry late, and I like to have something substantial for when I wake. I don’t want to leave my room. Yes, pile everything high, if you don’t mind.”) He chewed, smiling up at her. “It’s all right. Nothing happened. I wasn’t discovered, and the horses were easily returned where they came from. I had all that worked out, as I told you. You found me and told me to avoid your family, so that was no worry. And I had begged off work here saying that my grandmother was ill. No consequences befell me, so there is no fault, I don’t think.”

Mary shook her head. “But that is all chance, David. If one thing had gone remotely differently, it could have gone very badly.”

“But it didn’t,” he said. “We planned it well.”

“Not well enough,” she said. “I can’t be responsible for things going wrong for you.”

“I don’t mind, though.”

“Yes, but I’m beginning to worry about your saying that,” said Mary. Elizabeth’s taunts had burrowed into her. She’d laughed them off, but she supposed that some part of her had reasoned this out before, and she had factored it all into her scheme. She knew that David was beguiled by her in some way.

She found it flattering, really. No man of any sort had ever found her beguiling. She knew it wasn’t saying much for a half-grown stable boy to find her so.

And that was odd to say, really, because he was the same age as she was, but she knew that if she were to get married, she should marry someone older than her. It was the way it was done.

Not that there had been any thought of marrying David!

Of course that was not even possible .

But perhaps the way she was with him, the way she flirted a bit, the way she allowed him to flirt with her, the hint of that element underneath it all, perhaps that was dangerous.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I’m quite free to decide when and where I wish to take risks, you know? If I wish to take risks for you—”

“But why do you wish it?” she said.

“Well, because—”

“No, pardon me, I don’t know if you should say it out loud,” she said. She paused. “You and I, there is no future between us, and we both know that. If I am preying on you in some way by dangling something in the future, some fulfillment, you must realize that will never come to be.”

He set down his fork on his plate, stunned. He gazed at her with wide eyes. “Oh, Miss Mary, no, of course…” He cleared his throat. “You are an heiress, and I am but a… I would never…”

Then it was quiet, very quiet.

She chewed on her bottom lip, considering what to say next. An awful desire was welling up in her, a desire to ask him to do shocking things. She thought she could use him in all manner of horrid ways. She could ask him to kiss her, just for experimentation purposes, of course, and he might do it, and then she would know what it was like, and when she did meet some older man with money (or a title, as she’d joked of with Lizzy) then she’d know what she was about.

Except she shouldn’t.

Not only because it was frightfully improper, of course, but because of damaging David’s feelings. Not just his feelings, but her own.

“I like you, though,” she said eventually, her voice soft. “I like you more than I should.”

He swallowed. He looked down at his plate. “Well… well, stop it.” He picked up his fork and began to eat again. In between bites, he continued. “That’s mad, and we both know it’s mad, and you mustn’t entertain any thoughts like that. When I have thoughts like that, I shove them aside, you know, and you can do exactly the same thing.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I can. But it only goes so far.”

“No, there’s no danger of anything actually happening,” he scoffed. “I would never do anything. And I wouldn’t let you. So, no need to worry there.”

“But David, you can’t put yourself in danger for me, not this kind of danger, when you are getting nothing out of it.”

“Who says I’m getting nothing out of it?” He gave her a smile, and she thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever met when he smiled like that. “I get adventure and excitement. Also, when I say yes to you, you smile. I like that.” He winked at her, eating more food.

Oh, heavens. Now, they’d spoken of it, and they were freer with each other. She should never have pointed it out between them.

She brushed at her skirts and resolved to ignore his wink and his commentary on her smiles. She drew in a breath and addressed a spot over top of his head. “Well, I found out information that isn’t ideal today.”

“Oh, Lord, your father isn’t your father, is he?”

“Wasn’t quite that bad,” said Mary. “But Elizabeth points out that if we attempt to clear our mother’s name that it may come to light that our mother was not entirely virtuous.”

“Truly? What happened?”

Mary explained.

“Sounds to me like his fault,” said David.

“Agreed,” said Mary, with a nod. “He lied to her, and she didn’t know any better.”

“But leaving the money, it does make sense,” he said. “It’s the truth. It rings like truth. If you put this in a gossip sheet, it would spread, but you don’t wish to tell the truth, not as you first intended.” David was a bit of a student of gossip sheets. He would read them and make guesses as to which rumors would spread and which would not, and much of the time, he predicted correctly. He said that whether or not certain things were true or not, a thing would have the “ring” of truth, and that was one predictor of whether or not it would spread.

“What if I did, though?” she said. “I did wish to tell the truth, did I not? That was what I set out to do. This is the truth, and so if I reveal it… what happens?”

“Well, you ruin yourself?”

“I don’t know that I do,” said Mary. “It will become the accepted bit of rumor, I think, but it will stop the tongues from wagging. Everyone will know, and it will be over.”

“People will shun your mother and your family by extension, if they know this,” said David.

“They already are,” said Mary. “But if I do nothing, it extends on and on for some time. The more people talk, the more the rumor extends and grows. Elaborations will be made. This will silence it.”

“It might,” he said. “It might indeed. Even so, it’s not the sort of silence you want.”

“I don’t think it ruins us,” said Mary. “My sister Jane is practically engaged to Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy galloped halfway out to Surrey today to come after my sister Elizabeth. Once those two are married off, we are secure in two strong connections. Elizabeth has also been pursued by Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, and he involved his mother and sister-in-law, so we have some connection that way. So, whatever the case, we shall weather it.”

David shook his head. “What if you don’t?”

“What if I conceal it, and it comes out later, at just the wrong moment?” she said. “This way I can control it.” She shifted on her feet. “Besides, it would be quite the way to start a gossip sheet, wouldn’t it? I’d be instantly popular.”

“Probably,” David allowed.

“And what I want is to have my own income. What I want is freedom, David.”

He drew in a breath, looking her over. “Freedom to do what, Miss Mary?”

She bent down, impulsive. She pressed her mouth onto his mouth, and he tasted of the dinner she’d gotten together for him. She pulled back, shaking her head. What was she thinking?

He was so startled that he got to his feet, knocking over the plate. “Bloody hell,” he said, bending over to pick it up. “I’ll clean this. Leave this to me.”

She nodded. “I appreciate that.”

“Don’t do that again,” he said in a choked voice.

“Oh,” she said, a little bit hurt by that.

“We can’t, as you’ve just finished saying,” he said. “There is no way to make ourselves free enough for such things, no matter how many successful gossip sheets we create. Some things are impossible.”

She swallowed, looking down. Yes, but just weeks ago, all of this would have been impossible. If her fortune could change so drastically, could she not have everything she wanted?