Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MARY EXPECTED THAT Elizabeth would be angry, but the first edition of her scandal sheet came out and Mary knew that Elizabeth read it, but her sister said nothing to her about it.

At first, Mary wondered if Elizabeth thought that someone else was responsible for the gossip rag, but she didn’t think her sister could possibly believe that, for who else knew all that they knew?

Then Mary realized that Elizabeth was saying nothing to her at all . Well, that wasn’t entirely true. In mixed company, Elizabeth was monosyllabic and polite to Mary, saying enough to her that no one would realize she was pointedly not speaking to her sister. But if they were alone, Elizabeth did not address Mary at all, not even to answer questions that Mary put to her sister.

This was frustrating for Mary, because she had no idea what it was exactly that Elizabeth objected to, nor did she have any way of defending her actions.

Elizabeth wouldn’t listen to Mary either. At one point, the two were alone in a sitting room and Mary launched into a defense of her actions. Elizabeth stood up and walked out, slamming the door in Mary’s face even as Mary attempted to go after her sister and continue speaking.

It didn’t take much of this before Mary stopped trying. Mary was nothing if not pragmatic.

She had timed the first issue of her scandal sheet to be the weekend before Jane’s wedding, which had seemed the time ripest for the information to come out, for people were talking about the Bennet family. It also, Mary had to acknowledge, had been a sort of cruel thing to do to Jane.

She felt guilty about that. She and Jane were not close, though Mary could not claim to be close to any of her sisters or any member of her family. She often felt as if she were the odd one out. Everyone else in the family seemed to belong there, but she seemed to have been stamped down from some foreign land. Even so, she did not bear Jane any ill will. She felt chagrined at it.

However, it had worked. They had to go into a second printing, such was the demand for it. David had worked out a deal with the printer and she was being well paid for this venture. He was being well paid, too.

On the weekend of Jane’s wedding, they printed their second issue. This one wasn’t about the Bennet family at all, but was instead about Mr. Danning’s gambling debts, which might have been a boring story indeed except for the fact that it turned out that Mr. Danning had a crippled sister at home who had been denied a wheeled chair because her brother had sold it to pay off debtors and this made him look particularly bad.

Had Mary decided to get back at Mr. Danning for Elizabeth’s sake in the hopes of winning back her sister? Well, she had taken what was right in front of her and used it as best she could, that was the truth. If it helped, she would not begrudge whatever she could use to get back into Elizabeth’s good graces.

They had printed more copies this time, anticipating a great demand, but they undershot it again, and they had to print even more.

Mary couldn’t help but float through all of Jane’s wedding, feeling a sense of triumph that buoyed her up like a bright cloud. She could do this, she thought, she could forge her own path.

Truthfully, when they’d gone to see Mrs. Widebottom, Mary had felt nothing so much as envy for the woman. It seemed to Mary that Mrs. Widebottom was free in a way that Mary longed to be free.

The truth was, status and wealth were as much a prison as they were anything else. Certainly, Mary’s family had advantages now, but they also had scrutiny in a way they’d never had before.

Didn’t it make better sense to simply break all the rules, break them cleanly, break them intensely, and then continue on? Nothing could hurt Mrs. Widebottom anymore, after all. She’d been through the worst that society could give her. And she seemed just fine, in her very nice house, with her very nice dress, and her bevy of servants.

She told this to David, and he laughed and said she could become an earl’s mistress easily enough if she liked.

Mary scoffed. “I should need an earl to fall madly in love with me and forsake all others, and I think that is a rarity indeed.”

David looked at her, silent, tilting back his chin.

“What?” she said.

“I was going to say that I think it might be easy to fall in that kind of love with you,” he said. “But then I thought better of it.”

She shrugged at him. “Well, you’re biased.”

He laughed. “Why? Because I know you? You could simply let an earl get to know you, don’t you think?”

“No, you appreciate me differently,” she said.

“Oh.” He was still laughing. “And why is that, do you think?”

“I don’t know, because you’re you, I suppose.”

He thought that over, still gazing at her. “I think perhaps I do want something different from women than other men want.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I think other men want women to prop them up in some way, do you know what I mean? They seem to be attracted to silly and stupid girls who won’t challenge them. But I…” But he trailed off and never finished.

“But you, what?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said. “If this keeps up, this money, I shall stop working at your stable, I think. I shan’t need the job.”

“Where will you live? Could you buy something?”

“I think so,” he said. “Something small, in the shabbiest part of town, but it would be my own.”

“I could visit you there,” she said, thinking that over. “It would be much easier than worrying about being discovered out here.”

“You would not come to that part of town on your own, Mary,” he said, shaking his head disapprovingly.

“You can’t tell me what I would and wouldn’t do,” she muttered.

“Right,” he said. “Here we are, after all. I seem to be excited by a challenge.” He shook his head, laughing bitterly under his breath.

“Oh, I’m a challenge?” she said. “I suppose it’s better than being silly and stupid.”

“You could never be that,” he said in a very grim voice. “But you are too intrepid, and you’re going to get hurt, and I’m going to blame myself when it happens.”

“What if I help you buy something better,” she said. “In a less shabby part of town?”

“I’m not taking charity from you,” he said.

“It would be a loan,” she said. “You would pay me back.”

“Oh,” he said with a smile.

“I can charge you interest if you’d prefer that.”

He smirked. “All right, then. Perhaps we can discuss this.”

She smiled back. “It would be an investment in our further business ventures, David. We can’t simply stay with this, with gossip sheets. I’m not equipped to be in the right circles, to find the right stories.”

“Oh, who else would be?”

“Maybe one of my younger sisters, I suppose. I imagine Lydia could do it. But I won’t put her in danger,” said Mary. “And she couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended upon it. No, the safest business venture, as everyone knows, is property. We must invest in something we can rent out. So, we start with this, whatever we buy for you, and then, when we’re ready, we buy something else and get tenants for that property.”

“Look at you,” said David. “Such a head for business.”

“Oh, it’s hardly complicated!” Mary sighed. “I don’t know if men really think women are that stupid or if they are just so stupid that they truly think they’re intelligent.”

He smirked again. “The latter, I assure you.” He eyed her. “This venture of yours, it sounds like it will take quite some time. Years.”

“Oh, I think so,” she said. “It will be slow progress, and we shall need to continue to grow and expand, but we shall do well if we get started on it now, at the small level, and—”

“Mary, you’re going to get married.”

“Oh, I’m nearly nineteen,” she said. “I shall be an old maid ere long, and then I shan’t attract anything—”

“You’re very young and very pretty and very rich, and men will want you.” He shook his head at her. “If you are in business with someone like me and then marry some wealthy man, he will then own all your property. I’d be an idiot to agree to something like that.”

She drummed her fingers against her thigh, nervous. She had thought about this, of course, but she wasn’t sure of him. Sometimes he said things or looked at her, and she thought maybe he wanted her the way she wanted him, but then… then he did and said other things, and she doubted that he did. “Maybe I don’t wish to get married.”

“Well, maybe you don’t now,” he said. “But you might change your mind. I’m not going to hitch my horse to your cart, all right? We can discuss a loan, but we’re not going into some indefinite arrangement together.”

She bit down on her bottom lip. “You’ll wish to get married, too, I suppose.”

He swallowed.

“And your future wife wouldn’t like it either.”

“I don’t know,” he said, and now something about his voice sounded a little scoured. “I don’t know how well someone like me would take to marriage. I don’t know if I’ve quite got the constitution for it, considering the kind of woman I fall for.”

“What do you mean?” she said softly.

He lifted a shoulder. His voice was insubstantial. “Don’t know if I could be a head of a household, really.”

“You could marry me, then.” The words just came out of her mouth.

“You and I both know that’s impossible,” he said.

“Maybe now,” she said. “But if I help you rise, maybe…” She shrugged.

He let out a long, slow breath, and then, suddenly, he was moving. She blinked and he’d closed the distance between them, and his face was two inches from hers, so close that she could feel his breath on her cheeks.

She let out a little noise in the back of her throat, whether acquiescence or protest, she couldn’t say.

He touched her face. His fingers were thick and calloused and a little dirty, and she liked that for no reason she could even fathom. He stroked his calloused fingers against the soft skin of her jaw, feathersoft touches that went all through her.

Her eyes fluttered closed. She made more noises in her throat. This time, she was sure they were noises of surrender.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “This is mad.” And then he kissed her.

It wasn’t like the kiss before. It wasn’t quick and he didn’t taste like food. He tasted like risk, she thought, like excitement.

His lips were warm and his mouth was wet and eager, and he kissed her like she was the thing he wanted most in the entire world, like she was everything .

She clung to his broad shoulders and kissed him back, and her body felt shot full of so many sparks of goodness, that she wanted nothing more than to live in this moment, forever and ever.

But he pulled her into his arms, pressing her into his chest, and he stopped kissing her. Instead, he rested his chin on the top of her head and muttered about madness until he seemed to talk himself into letting go of her.

“If they found us like this, you know what they’d do to me,” he said to her.

She nodded. It would be bad. How bad, she couldn’t say, but it could cost him his life in the worst case. She didn’t think her father would string a servant up for touching his daughter. Her father was not that severe. However, it did happen. David would be punished if it was discovered, badly punished. “They won’t find us,” she said.

“It’s likely why it’s so tempting,” he said, rubbing his own forehead. “The risk makes it sweeter, somehow.”

She supposed she knew what he meant. But she wasn’t risking the same thing, was she? The risk for him, it was more dire than it was for her.

“We can’t do this,” he said to her, and then he reached for her again.

She flung herself into his arms, offering him her lips again. She wanted the feel of that wild abandon again. “Never again, then,” she gasped against his mouth. “Just this once.”

“Right,” he breathed. “Never again.”

ELIZABETH DIDN’T SPEAK about the gossip sheet with anyone except one brief conversation with Mr. Darcy.

She noted that no one had spoken to her about it, not even at Jane’s wedding. She noted that she saw people looking at her and speaking to each other at the wedding, but she couldn’t know if they were gossiping about her or her mother, only that she felt as if they were.

“It’s always the way,” said Darcy. “You become on guard all the time. ‘Why are they looking at me? What are they saying?’ You express these thoughts aloud and everyone else laughs you off. ‘Oh, Fitzie, old boy, it isn’t as if everyone’s concerned with you .’” He shrugged. “So, you bear it alone. I well understand, you realize this?”

“What have they ever said about you, about your family? There has been no stain on your mother’s honor!” She could not help but protest this, even though she knew he was trying to make her feel better. She wanted to be consoled, she supposed, but she didn’t want to be patronized.

“My mother, no, but the sort of gossip that has gone on about my cousins and aunts and uncles?” He raised his eyebrows. “And they’ve made things up about me. Why, there was a rumor at one point that I’d drugged some girl with laudanum to try to make her miscarry my child, which I had not done. I’d never even met the girl.”

Her lips parted. “Forgive me. I should not have pressed you. Of course you do understand.”

“I do,” he said. “And there is nothing to forgive.”

So, that was all. They did not speak of it again. Then, they climbed into a carriage to begin the journey to the north. Her father was with them, and she did not wish to speak about any of it in front of him, of course, so she stayed quiet.

It was a two-day affair. They stopped overnight at an inn, but quite late. They did not dine together, but instead took food in their rooms and retired immediately.

The next day, she tried to write a letter to Jane, but she didn’t know what to say. She felt as if all of this business with Mary and the gossip rag had robbed her of the ability to properly experience her sister’s wedding. She had been preoccupied with all manner of worries and negative feelings. She had missed it, all of it, Jane’s special day, and she would never get that back.

They did not get into Staffordshire until after nightfall. Her father and Mr. Darcy got into a good-natured argument about whether or not they would take the carriage directly to Mr. Darcy’s family’s house to drop him off or if they would go directly to the Bennet house, Collswood Hall, whereupon Mr. Darcy would take a horse and go on horseback on his own. The latter was Mr. Darcy’s suggestion, of course. They went back and forth, each insisting upon the other’s comfort, until Elizabeth decided to interject.

She pointed out that if they arrived at the Fitzwilliam household, the family there would likely insist that she and her father disembark and come inside for light refreshment. “It would only be hospitable, I think. But it is late, Papa, and we have no interest in idle chit chat.”

“Oh, true,” said her father, considering this.

And, she added silently, I am not prepared to see the colonel yet.

Her father and Mr. Darcy came to an easy agreement, then. They would go to Collswood Hall, and Mr. Darcy would be quickly excused to get a horse and go on his way. His trunk and his valet would follow him as soon as they were able. Darcy would not be required to engage in chit chat with the Bennet family either. All would be done to make sure everything was smooth and they could all retire to bed and rest, for they were exhausted from the journey.

Elizabeth thought she might, with any luck, be able to be alone in bed quite quickly.

However, in this, she was entirely stymied. Also, if she had wished not to see Colonel Fitzwilliam, she was not pleased when he was amongst the party greeting their carriage.

So, Mr. Bennet was loudly declaring that Mr. Darcy was heading directly to the stables and was quite tired and would be on his way, but Mr. Darcy was staring at Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was staring at Elizabeth. And so, Mr. Darcy alighted from the carriage and stood there, not going for the stables at all.

The colonel sauntered over to them. He ignored Mr. Darcy and kept his gaze on Elizabeth. “You wrote to your mother you’re engaged,” he said to her, first words out of his mouth, not even a greeting or any kind of pleasantry.

“Richard,” said Mr. Darcy.

“Is it true?” said the colonel, raising his eyebrows at her.

She swallowed.

“Richard,” said Mr. Darcy again. “Please, we’ve been on the road for days. If you wouldn’t mind not accosting my bride-to-be the moment she gets her feet on solid ground?”

“Oh, and he speaks for you now?” said the colonel. “Did he accept himself as well?”

Mr. Darcy let out a frustrated noise.

“I’m very sorry for a number of things, Colonel Fitzwilliam,” she managed. “I did not expect you to be here.”

“Oh, yes,” said the colonel. “I am nearly always here. That was the way it was meant to be. Of course, you were meant to be here as well.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.” She grimaced. “I’m ever so sorry.”

The colonel sighed.

“Would you stop badgering her?” said Mr. Darcy.

Everyone in the household was watching this exchange, Elizabeth realized. She cringed.

Lydia was all smiles, vastly entertained. Truly, her mother and Kitty seemed similarly interested.

“Have I not been saying all along that she did it on purpose, Colonel Fitzwilliam?” Lydia burst out.

The colonel ignored Lydia and instead addressed Mr. Darcy. “I suppose you plan to stay with my mother, so it is lucky that I am here because we can share a carriage back to Brambles End.” That was the name of the Matlock estate.

“Lucky indeed,” said Mr. Darcy.

The two men glared at each other.

Oh, marvelous. Elizabeth was too tired to worry over that.

“Lizzy, come here,” said her mother. “I am expecting a detailed explanation of Jane’s wedding, and I am relying on you to provide it. You can provide it, can you not? It was merely days ago that it occurred, so I cannot think that your memory would not be fresh.”

“Oh, indeed!” cried Kitty. “We are desperate for every single detail.”

“What color was the dress?” said Lydia. “Also, what color is your wedding dress? La, I have been saying often that I deeply wish to be married in a lovely shade of blue. Wouldn’t that be simply darling?”

Elizabeth sighed.

“I shall go even now to bed,” said her father.

Just like her father to throw her to the wolves.

“BUT SHE DOESN’T like you!” exploded Richard as soon as they were alone, the carriage on the road back to Brambles End.

Mr. Darcy had spent two days in a carriage with a very silent Elizabeth, who had stared out the window and looked ill and worried the entire time and with Mr. Bennet, who had spoken easily about all manner of subjects, most of which Mr. Darcy had no real interest or knowledge of, leaving him looking like an idiot to his intended’s father at every turn.

“Oh,” he had said, too many times to count, “well, actually, I’m not truly familiar, I’m afraid.”

Why was Elizabeth so worried?

Was it about the gossip rag that had come out?

It was a blow, and he couldn’t deny that. He wasn’t even sure if the news had reached this part of the country. He would have thought it had, for news like that spread like wildfire. But here was Richard, at the house with them as if all were well, and the Bennet women seemed utterly unaware of what was being said.

His own aunt, Richard’s mother, had once been the pointed subject of gossip when her husband, Richard’s father, had fought a duel over her with some man or other with whom his aunt had almost certainly been having an affair.

The way of things in the Fitzwilliam household, near as Darcy knew, was that such things were kept out of the other person’s sight. Lady Matlock had brought her lover home and Lord Matlock had found them together and made quite a scene, after which there were pistols at dawn, and both men shot the other—Lord Matlock took a bullet in his upper arm. The other man—Darcy wanted to say it was Lord Digby? No, Dixby? Whatever the case, he was only grazed, a chunk of his earlobe missing, however.

At any rate, in the wake of this, Lady Matlock had pulled up stakes, retired to the Matlock estate in Scotland, hidden away for a year, as far as Darcy knew, absolutely refusing to see anyone at all.

So, the behavior of Mrs. Bennet, going on about weddings, it didn’t seem like the behavior of a woman weathering a scandal. Of course, Darcy might allow that different women handled these things differently.

His aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh had once told her husband Sir Lewis that he was no longer welcome in her home until she heard no more rumors of his behavior with a certain courtesan. She said this very loudly, in public, during a ball, in fact. Everyone had been drunk.

Sir Lewis was escorted out of Rosings by the butler, who was always on Lady Catherine’s side in any argument between her and her husband, and Sir Lewis was, in fact, not allowed back into Rosings for what Darcy seemed to remember was perhaps four or five months. He’d been a lad of fifteen at the time, so he did not remember exactly. Lady Catherine certainly hadn’t hidden away, that was the thing. She refused to accept her husband’s misdeeds as her own business. She simply cut him off and ridiculed him.

Scandal was commonplace, that was the thing. It was painful and personal when the light of it fell upon you or your loved ones, but it didn’t last forever.

On the other hand, Mrs. Bennet had not inherited her wealth and seemed to have come by it scandalously, rather like a scarlet woman, in the end, if the story in the gossip post were true. It seemed to make the most sense, though, Darcy thought. He could see why Benlolk had left Mrs. Bennet the money, though Benlolk should have thought the whole thing through better. There must have been a less conspicuous way to go about it.

Darcy was glad he’d be married here, in the country. He and Elizabeth would leave after their wedding, four weeks hence if all went well, and there was no reason it shouldn’t, and then they could winter at Pemberley and then come to town in the late spring, hopefully late enough that the whispers would have been supplanted with some other scandal.

It was not ideal, however, that he was marrying Elizabeth right in the wake of all of this being revealed. He imagined his aunt Lady Matlock was going to suggest he postpone the marriage, but he was afraid that would hurt Elizabeth, and he wouldn’t do that for the world.

On the other hand, he might not mind the delay, considering he was bungling everything with her. Couldn’t even kiss her properly, for the sake of all that was holy.

Now, in the carriage, Richard was still talking. “You aren’t going to deny it? Not going to protest that she does like you?”

“She likes me,” grumbled Mr. Darcy, though he couldn’t really be sure, he supposed. Maybe she’d changed her mind. The proposal had been horrid, really, not at all how he wished it would have gone. Then the kiss had been horrid. Then she’d gotten that look on her face all the time, the worried look.

Was she worried that she’d consigned herself to a future with him?

Damnation.

“You sound so very sure,” muttered the colonel.

“It’s been a long day,” said Mr. Darcy. “A long two days, in fact, and I am tired, and I wonder why it is you feel the need to yammer endlessly at me right now.”

“All I asked was if your future wife liked you.”

“No, you proclaimed that she did not,” said Mr. Darcy.

“Well, she admitted as much to me,” said Richard. “So, I must say, I can’t understand how this all came about. How did it come about, then? Explain how you got her to agree to marry you.”

He groaned. “Oh, it was all… we had this frustrating conversation and I was confused and she said, ‘Well, I’ve just agreed to marry you,’ and I said, ‘I don’t understand how that came about, but I’d be a fool not to seize upon it,’ and then—”

“What? You didn’t ask her?”

“I have asked her before.”

“Yes, and she said no. And the way she looks at me, Darcy, I guarantee she doesn’t look at you that way.”

Darcy didn’t say anything. She probably wished Richard was kissing her. He glowered out the window of the carriage, feeling a dull sense of rage descend over him. He was going to knock Richard down, he thought. He was going to find some reason to pick a fist fight with the man. He’d do it while Elizabeth was watching.

And then he’d kiss her.

Oh, God in heaven, what was wrong with him? He must be exhausted indeed.