Without Vanity or Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Variation Duology

Chapter 4

As the gentlemen walked the streets to return to his house, Darcy could not speak for the tumult in his mind. Saye was forbearing for a time—almost until they reached the park gate—but eventually wanted some answers.

“Did you see how fast I walked off with the others?

“Yes.”

“Wanted to give you a bit of time with her.”

“You are very good, Saye.”

“Took her aunt and Miss Bennet right off into the crowd for you. Left you alone with her. Hope you made of it what you could?”

Darcy nodded.

“That Miss Bennet is something to look at, hmm? Silent as a nun though. Then again, I think she has recently had some romantic disappointment.”

To this, Darcy could only reply with a disgusted look.

“Ah, right! That was you!” Saye chuckled and gave him a poke on the arm. “Well, not you precisely, but you had a hand in it. Still, I think Bingley ought have ballocks enough to direct his own romances. Why should he be so reliant on your opinion?”

Darcy sighed and tried to walk faster.

“I am sure once Bingley knows how you have bungled your own romance, that will end that! Then again, your problem was that you presumed too much affection, when in his case, you presumed there was none. From what I can see?—”

“Saye, enough, I beg you.”

That induced a silence that lasted nearly ten paces.

“So, did she give you something of a set-down?”

“A set-down the likes of which Hyde Park has never before seen.” Darcy allowed himself a small smile.

“Ah!” Saye nodded, his eyes bright with anticipation. Clearly, he expected more information to be forthcoming.

They had then arrived at Darcy’s door. They entered, handing off coats, hats, and gloves to Darcy’s housekeeper who asked if they would like something to eat. Saye immediately replied that he would, very passionately, appreciate some tea and fruit, and if some meat and cheese happened upon the plate, so much the better.

Darcy began moving down the hall towards the drawing room, Saye keeping pace beside him. “What did she say?”

“Mrs Hobbs? She said she would bring the food to the drawing room.”

“Not Hobbs. Miss Elizabeth Bennet! Did she take you to task? Or had she more to say of your dreadful offer?”

Darcy shrugged. “Oh, she said a little of this and a little of that.”

Behind him, Saye cursed. They had arrived in the drawing room by then where, as he had hoped, Georgiana sat with a book. He greeted her with a kiss on her cheek and sat down near her, informing her of the repast that was on its way to them. All the time, Saye stood indignantly in the centre of the room, nearly twitching with fury.

“Devil take it, Darcy!” he bellowed at last.

“Mind your tongue,” Darcy admonished. “We are in the presence of a lady.”

“Think nothing of it,” Georgiana assured him, looking baffled but interested by the goings-on.

“This is all quite ungenerous of you! It was I who formed the design of this whole plot. I have been hearing your moaning and wailing for weeks about this girl, and then, just when I have arranged everything for you, you go silent! Have you no feeling for the needs of others?”

“Feeling for the needs of others?” Darcy asked. “You need to know my most private affairs?”

“Yes, I do,” Saye retorted. He came forwards quickly and grabbed Georgiana’s book. “Imagine if I should hurl this directly into the fire? You would never know how it ended!”

“In truth, I have read it before,” Georgiana replied sweetly. “But I should think it a dreadful waste nevertheless.”

“I feel,” Saye enunciated carefully, tapping the book with each word, “as though I were reading a book and someone came and tossed it into the fire before I knew the ending. Is that just? Where is your sense of what is honourable and good?”

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet and I are hardly arrived at our last chapter,” he said. “At least I hope we have not.”

There was another brief silence in which Saye tossed himself into a chair, huffing and puffing angrily, giving Darcy many sidelong scowls and muttering about ingratitude and the respect due an elder cousin.

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet? Have you met her again?” Georgiana enquired.

Georgiana did not know the specifics of his time in Kent, or at least he had not spoken of it to her. It would not be beyond Fitzwilliam or Saye to apprise her of all the news he did not wish his young sister to hear. But she was not blind and had likely observed his melancholy, inasmuch as even now, she might have perceived the sudden removal of it.

“I have, and she has invited us to call on her in Gracechurch Street two days hence. The bellows on the chair over there will come along to show off his dog while you and I visit with Miss Elizabeth. Does that suit you?”

Georgiana turned pink and pressed her lips together before allowing a beaming smile to break across her countenance. She then replied with effusions of pleasure, leaving him quite certain of how very much the plan did suit her. Moments later, refusing any part of the repast that Mrs Hobbs brought in for the gentlemen, she nearly skipped from the room, intent on examining her gowns so that she might determine what to wear to Gracechurch Street.

“Just tell me part of what she said,” Saye wheedled as soon as she was gone.

“Very well. She said the neighbourhood would be glad to see Bingley return.” Recollecting that made some of Darcy’s hope dissipate.

“Very good, yes?”

Darcy shook his head. “Not good at all, in fact. I wonder if he might have met someone in Scarborough. I had one of his letters from him waiting when I returned from Kent. It was difficult to discern the particulars, but it seemed he was attending a great many parties.”

Saye seemed to understand the problem at once. “Much opportunity for new love in two months, particularly for the callow sort.”

“As agreeable as she was in the park,” Darcy observed glumly, “further disappointment for her sister will likely put an end to it. I should guarantee it, in fact.”

“How are you so certain?”

“She said so. That night at Hunsford she said, ‘Had not my own feelings decided against you…had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?’ This matter of her sister’s happiness must be completed before she would even consider another proposal from me.”

Saye appeared to think it less a problem than Darcy, if his yawn was any indication. “So summon Bingley. Let us get him in hand, and we will take him with us to Gracechurch Street.”

“And if his affections have wavered?”

Saye shrugged. “A problem for tomorrow.”

* * *

Mrs Gardiner and Jane both forbore to ask questions until they were all delivered into Mrs Gardiner’s parlour. Just enough time elapsed that Elizabeth had begun to hope she would not be called upon for explanations—when suddenly, she was.

“Well, Lizzy,” said Mrs Gardiner whilst pouring tea, “our time at the park was certainly unusual.”

Elizabeth accepted a cup from her aunt and raised it to her lips, wishing to have time to form her reply.

“Lord Saye was very agreeable and absolutely charming with the children,” she added. “I suppose it must have been due to my beauty that he spent so much time with us.”

Both of her nieces giggled at that, and Elizabeth felt colour come to her cheeks but still could say nothing of sense about the real subject.

“Perhaps it was,” she replied lightly, “after all, you are scarcely thirty and look five years less. My uncle is a fortunate man.”

“Lizzy,” Jane said, more easily exasperated than their aunt. “We were not five minutes with his lordship when we understood that his true object was to leave Mr Darcy alone with you. Now why should that be?”

“I am not sure myself.”

Frustration appeared on both of her companions’ countenances, in the form of pressed-together lips on Mrs Gardiner and a sigh from Jane. Thus, with halting candour, Elizabeth told them all, from meeting him in the parsonage, walking with him in the grounds of Rosings Park, his shocking proposal, and her vitriolic reply. “After all that, I am utterly amazed he does not despise me.”

“As am I. It speaks well of his character that he does not. It seems to me as though he would like to show you he is different than you thought,” Mrs Gardiner replied.

“I do not know about that. His cousin tasked him with being excessively prone towards having the last word in an argument, so he wished to offer me the opportunity to reply to his letter. Perhaps he wanted nothing more than to prove his cousin incorrect or even to prove me incorrect.”

“He does not need to bring his sister to Gracechurch Street to prove anything to his cousin, or to you,” Jane observed.

“True, but I am disinclined to make too much of it.”

“There is no conclusion here but to see he is still in love with you,” Jane insisted.

Elizabeth’s instinct was to demur but found she could not, mostly because she could not think of another reason for Mr Darcy’s actions and behaviour.

“The question for you, Lizzy, is how do you feel about it all?” Mrs Gardiner asked.

Elizabeth opened her mouth, then reconsidered and closed it again. Then she said, “If you had asked me that question a month ago I would have told you that Mr Darcy was a hateful man and the last man in the world I could ever marry.”

“I am not asking the question a month ago,” Mrs Gardiner said. “I am asking it now.”

“While we walked, Lord Saye confided that Mr Darcy has been engaged in a course of self-improvement. We knew not the reasons behind it, of course.”

“Oh!” Elizabeth blushed hotly. “Well…the conduct of neither of us, if strictly examined, will prove irreproachable. The fact is that I believe I have grossly misjudged him, and it is pleasing to hope I may have a chance to begin anew.”

“He truly has no improper pride,” Jane mused, her voice sounding contemplative. “No man who did could go to a woman who had scorned him so violently as you.”

Elizabeth took a drink of her tea and swallowed audibly. “No, I see that now. For whatever ill feelings that night engendered in him, they were quickly set aside by his…well, by, um, I guess you would say?—”

“Love,” Jane said again, more forcefully this time. “Ardent love. Unshakeable, ardent love.”

Feeling decidedly ill at ease, Elizabeth said only, “Maybe.”

“I believe she is correct,” Mrs Gardiner said. “And so we can only come back to you, Elizabeth. What is it that you want in all of this?”

Elizabeth set her teacup down in its saucer. Considering it for a moment, she said, “I truly cannot say.”