Chapter Nine
Elizabeth had enjoyed her time with her father and Mary, but her mind was never very far removed from Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. She cursed her lack of self-control. When she heard the carriage return sooner than expected, she rolled over as carefully as she could so as not to wake Mary. Quietly, she listened as the others passed the door to Mary’s room. Jane’s steps were quick, and her door closed behind her. Elizabeth thought that Kitty paused in indecision before Mary’s door before also hurrying into her quarters.
Mrs. Bennet must have been talking to herself. “Never have I witnessed such rudeness!”
Whether her mother’s complaint indicated Mr. Darcy or the Lucases, Elizabeth did not know, but clearly all had not gone well with the evening out. “ Just as I suspected !” she thought.
She heard both Kitty and the colonel go further down the hall and enter their respective rooms. Elizabeth waited to hear Mr. Darcy’s return to his room, which was her quarters across the hall, but, evidently, he had not entered the house with the others.
Standing as quickly and as quietly as she could, she claimed her robe, but not her house shoes. Carefully, she eased the door open and closed it behind her before tiptoeing to Jane’s quarters. There she let herself into the room. Elizabeth paused to gain her bearings, but a muffled sob relayed where to find her sister. “I am well, Mama,” Jane assured on a sob.
“It is not Mama,” Elizabeth said softly. “I believe our mother sneaked into Papa’s quarters to relate the tale of this evening.”
“I can speak to it in one word,” her sister said with a hiccup of emotions. “Misery.” Jane gave up her protest and broke into tears in earnest.
Elizabeth rushed forward to pull her sister into her embrace. “Shush, my dear one.” She held Jane while her sister sobbed uncontrollably. After several minutes, Elizabeth asked, “Might you tell me what occurred?”
“It was a disaster,” Jane whined. “First, Lady Lucas suggested that she would write to Charlotte of my engagement to Lady Catherine’s nephew. You know as much as I do that the grand lady disapproved of you as Charlotte Collins’s friend after your refusal to marry Mr. Collins. Obviously, how much would the woman despise my marrying her nephew?”
Elizabeth did not wish to say the words, but she repeated them, nevertheless. “Mr. Darcy is not one to permit others to sway his opinions.”
“I would have thought so also, but then Maria spoke of Lydia’s marriage to Mr. Wickham. Did you realize Mr. Darcy knew Mr. Wickham?”
“When Mr. Wickham was pretending to woo me, the lieutenant spoke of how Mr. Darcy was jealous of how much the elder Mr. Darcy preferred Wickham over his own son,” Elizabeth admitted. She had wanted to believe Wickham’s tales, for had not Mr. Darcy found her repulsive. Yet, even through her own prejudice, she noted the “holes” in Mr. Wickham’s story, especially when Captain Denny warned her to question everything Lieutenant Wickham said.
“I knew nothing of it,” Jane declared.
“Assuredly you did not. When Lydia eloped, I was sorry I had not explained the reasons for my change of heart to Papa. Perhaps he could have warned Lydia away from the man.”
Jane said sadly, “Lydia was determined to be the first of us to marry.”
“Mr. Darcy will see all that in the morning. He tends to become angrier if he thinks someone meant to betray him,” Elizabeth explained. “Obviously someone in his past operated in a dishonest manner, coloring all his interactions now.”
“How is it that you so easily recognize his faults?” Jane asked.
Elizabeth wished to say she had taken the man’s measure years before, but, instead, she said, “Mr. Darcy is the classic Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. He initially believes the most ridiculous ideas, for he wishes to protect himself against society’s rebukes. You must call the gentleman out when he acts as such. He lost his mother when he was quite young, and I do not believe his father was the same after Lady Anne’s passing. Mr. Darcy has had no models to reflect upon his softer side.”
“How do you know this, and I do not?” Jane asked.
“I listened to Aunt Gardiner and to what the colonel said,” Elizabeth admitted, though she did not tell her sister she had made it her business to learn something of the man who had once snubbed her. “Are you better now?”
“I suppose I am as good as any woman who has agreed to marry a man she does not affect.”
Elizabeth knew great sorrow at Jane’s admittance. It was as she had suspected. Rather than commenting on her sister’s words, she suggested, “You must not permit him to frighten you or upset you. Just think of him as a spoiled child, as if he is one of the Gardiner children at his or her worst.”
“You are the best sister ever,” Jane said. “I shall sleep better now.”
Elizabeth gave Jane another hug and slipped from her sister’s quarters only to turn and see Mr. Darcy alone in the hallway.
Darcy had stayed in the stables long enough to permit the household to claim their beds before he entered the house and quietly locked the front door. He had silently made his way up the stairs to his quarters, only to be brought up short by the image of Miss Elizabeth Bennet in a nightgown and robe and barefoot and her hair handing down to her waist and . . . Dear God, she was more lovely than he had imagined, and his imagination had been quite active of late regarding the woman.
Doing the only thing he could under the circumstances, he opened the door to his chambers and gestured her in. She paused, at first, refusing to move, and so he had shrugged his supposed indifference and started in, but, predictably, she darted past him. It was Darcy who paused this time, for he knew, next to having once trusted George Wickham, this was the most dangerous choice he had ever made. Even so, he followed her inside and closed the door behind him.
He turned slowly and attempted not to permit her to know how much he wanted her in his arms. Even when she accused, “You brought my sister to tears,” he still wished to reach for Elizabeth Bennet.
“And I have been manipulated into accepting a person as a brother who I loathe with every beat of my heart. Miss Bennet’s tears are minor in comparison. Her tears may be mended with a simple apology. Being asked to accept as a relation a person who has betrayed me at every turn since I was four years of age is a true tragedy. I have spent nearly two decades covering up Mr. Wickham’s faults so as not to break my father’s heart. Now, I am to accept him as my brother-in-marriage.”
“Were all Mr. Wickham’s tales a lie?” she asked softly.
“In my experience, if Mr. Wickham is talking, he is lying,” Darcy retorted in hushed tones and leaned closer.
She looked up to him with those eyes in which he had always wished to lose himself. “My family should have told you,” she began. “I should have . . .”
“At the moment,” he interrupted her acknowledgement, which was more than he had expected, “George Wickham is not on my mind,” he groaned. He used his fingertips to lift her chin and was rewarded with a hitch in her breathing. “I do not know if you are always this enticing or if you are only as such with me, but you must hear this. Your plan to spend your life as a spinster would rob the world of one of its . . .”
He meant to kiss her, whether it was ethical or not, but a soft tap at the door had him taking a giant step back.
A second tap sent him looking about for a place to hide her. She placed her finger to her mouth in a “shush” signal and crossed to an interior door. Without a word, she disappeared before he knew what was what. Turning to the outside door, Darcy opened it to discover his cousin. “I have a message from the general,” Fitzwilliam said without preamble. “I must report the day after tomorrow.”
Darcy nodded his agreement. “Miss Bennet and I must call upon Mr. Williamson tomorrow. You and I may depart afterwards.”
Darcy said for Miss Elizabeth’s benefit, for he knew the lady was listening at the adjoining door. “Mr. Wickham has ruined the youngest Bennet sister. Even so, I would be worse than he is if I jilted Miss Bennet now. She would be destroyed and so would be the remaining sisters, for she would be considered a ‘tease.’ I have no choice but to perform my duty to the woman.”
“And what of your duty to Wickham?” his cousin asked.
“I will not provide Mr. Wickham even one pence, even if the future Mrs. Darcy begs me on hands and knees to do so. As Mrs. Darcy, the lady will have a large discretionary ‘purse’ to use as she sees fit. However, if Miss Bennet chooses to use those funds to support the Wickhams, then she must do without for her personal spending. If I must be made to ‘tolerate’ having Wickham as a relation, I will insist he be a ‘distant’ one. I will not parade the man around as a ‘brother.’ Poor Georgiana must know I will keep her safe even if that means I must ostracize my own wife.”
Elizabeth listened to what Mr. Darcy said. She knew much of it was for her benefit. Mr. Darcy wished her to explain “things” to Jane, and Elizabeth supposed, also to her father and mother. To save their mother, Jane had made a contract with the Devil himself. Though Elizabeth knew that characterization was too strong, she wondered why Mr. Darcy was set to protect whoever the young woman known as “Georgiana” was from Mr. Wickham? Was the girl someone who held the gentleman’s heart? The idea brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes. Mr. Darcy loved someone, who was not Jane, nor would it ever be her.
The door between the two bedchambers opened, and he stood in the muted light of one candle. “I suppose you heard all I said?” he asked. A crisp sharpness had returned to his tone. He was warning her—warning her family what he would and would not tolerate.
“I did,” she said simply. “You wish me to relay your words to Jane and my parents: You will not have anything to do with Mr. Wickham and my youngest sister.”
“I would not say your youngest sister,” he corrected, “but Mr. Wickham has been a blight on my family since he was a youth on the estate. My father was blind to Mr. Wickham’s real nature, for George Darcy greatly admired Mr. Wickham’s father, who served honorably as Pemberley’s steward. My father stood as godfather to the younger Mr. Wickham. He paid for George Wickham’s education at university and meant for him to take orders and be presented with a valuable family living as soon as it became vacant. You know of the living, for it was the curacy Mr. Ericks held for several years before becoming the vicar at Bakewell.”
“The one at Kympton?” she asked.
“Yes, I presented it to Mr. Ericks, not only because of Samuel Ericks’s character, but because of his sense of duty to the community. He is cut from the same cloth as was his late father and brother.”
“Yet, it was promised by your father to Mr. Wickham, which is what the lieutenant claimed when he spoke of it,” Elizabeth argued.
“I imagine Mr. Wickham omitted the part of how he was to receive a legacy of one thousand pounds after my father’s death. His own father did not long survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Wickham wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders, he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed him to be sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to his proposal. I knew Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman; the business was therefore soon settled—he resigned all claims to assistance in the church, were it possible he could ever be in a situation to receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection between us seemed dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him to Pemberley or to admit his society in town. In Town, I believe he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretense, and being now free from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard little of him; but, on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most unprofitable study and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in question—of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty or for resisting every repetition to it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of his circumstances—and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others as in his reproaches to myself. After this period every appearance of acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice.”
He sighed heavily, “I know you heard me mention Georgiana.”
“I did,” she said simply.
He smiled upon her. “We do not actually know each other, Miss Elizabeth, but there are moments such as these that I feel we know each other better than we do any others in this world.”
She agreed, but Elizabeth kept her opinions close to her chest. “I shall not betray to others anything you share with me,” she promised. “What occurred that was so very painful for you?”
He studied her face for several elongated seconds before he continued. “I wish I could forget Mr. Wickham’s most odious betrayal. Only Fitzwilliam knows the full extent of the devastation. Yet, as you are soon to be my sister . . .”
“Whatever you are about to say,” she cautioned, “should it not be directed to Jane? She will be your wife.”
“Yet, it is quite apparent, this family bends or stands strong at your encouragement—guided by your hand and quick wit,” he stated in firm tones. “I hold no doubt Miss Bennet would keep what I am sharing a secret, but I wonder how she might react.” He paused and a slight shake of his head said he had reorganized his thoughts
“Permit me to explain Mr. Wickham’s betrayal and you will then understand my reticence. I possess a sister . . .”
“Georgiana?” she asked as a dawn of awareness arrived.
He nodded his response. “I must mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said thus, I feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of Colonel Fitzwilliam and myself. About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented any public exposure; but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Wickham's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which is thirty thousand pounds, but I cannot help supposing that the hope of revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have been complete indeed.”
Elizabeth buried her initial comment on any young lady being presented a dowry of thirty thousand pounds. Instead, she made quite a different observation. “Which means Mr. Wickham likely pulled himself together and went looking for another means to support himself. I understand from Captain Denny, who knew Wickham previously, that Mr. Wickham appeared purposely to have sought him out. Mr. Wickham had won enough in a game of cards to purchase a lieutenancy and, of course, he had a gentleman’s education. It appears he was waiting for the opportunity to latch onto a family that would hang on his every word. Unfortunately, Lydia was young and foolish enough to do so.”