Chapter 4 #2
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy,” she said. She appeared miserable and fatigued.
He gave her a curt nod and stepped out of the room.
Darcy had no idea how he was going to get them all out of this—but he would, and Fitz would help. Elizabeth Bennet deserved to live a long, happy life, and he was going to be certain that she did.
Fitz stood in the middle of the study, his arms folded over his chest.
“What is it, Fitz?” Darcy asked impatiently. “You had better just say it. We need to devise a plan.”
“What in the blazes do you think you are doing, telling Miss Bennet that you will save her family?” Fitz snapped. “We cannot make promises we do not know we can keep. The girl’s life is already in ruins. Do not make it worse.”
“It sounds as though you actually care what happens to her, though you attempt to hide it,” Darcy retorted. “Where was that concern when you were in her company?”
Fitz shook his head. “You may not like it, but it is unfair to allow her to develop a friendship with you, to depend upon you, when you shall have to send her away. If I am unpleasant, she will not regret having to go.”
Darcy sat heavily in the chair behind his desk.
That was what the end must be, he knew. They could not save Elizabeth’s reputation if she remained at Darcy House, but they could not ensure her safety were she to depart.
As much as he did not wish it to be true, Miss Elizabeth had been absent from her family for an entire day and would soon be missing overnight.
It was unlikely her family could hide that fact. His heart ached for her.
“Before we decide what to do with Miss Bennet,” his cousin continued, “we need to discover who is behind her abduction. We must not give anyone an opportunity to connect you to her.”
“Fitz,” Darcy asked softly, “do you believe they were going to kill her?”
“I do not know,” Fitz responded plainly, “but they did not care about her seeing their faces, and they forced laudanum upon her without any apparent concern for the dose. Whatever they had planned, it was not pleasant.”
Darcy’s frustration mounted. “What was their aim? Who benefits if Miss Elizabeth were to disappear or was killed and I am blamed for it? It cannot be over Pemberley. Georgiana would inherit and as angry with me as she is, I doubt she desires to see me hanged.”
Fitz rolled his eyes. “It might be a gambit to wed her for the estate, but she is very well protected.”
Now, Darcy thought guiltily.
Fitz rubbed the back of his neck. “Bingley is the obvious choice. He cannot be pleased you refused to wed his sister.” He paused, thinking.
“You say he is courting Miss Bennet’s elder sister.
Were the Bennets mired in a scandal it would certainly limit any competition for her hand or make the father willing to acquiesce to his offer. Is there a fortune involved?”
“Mrs. Bennet informed the entire neighborhood that Miss Bennet’s eldest son would inherit the estate.” Darcy’s disdain rang loudly in his words. He could not help it—the woman was foolish and vulgar. “Still, would not a scandal frighten Bingley away more than draw him in?”
Fitz shrugged. “Bingley would gain the estate his father wanted without having to deplete his own fortune. His alliance with the family might mitigate the damage, or he could be willing to marry her and wait for the scandal to pass.”
Darcy rubbed his eyes with one hand. “If Mrs. Bennet is correct. Apparently, there was an entailment, but the heir presumptive has died. If Mr. Bennet was the tenant in tail, he could pursue a common recovery. As he has not, he is likely not working with an entail but a strict settlement. In any case, an estate generally does not revert to the current family in residence, though there might be a remainder man named in the original document.”
Fitz stared at him blankly.
“A contingency,” Darcy explained. “Another man to inherit, even if he is not from the Bennet line. Eventually, it all depends on how it was written and what the will says.”
“Does Bingley know that?” Fitz asked, moving to pour himself a glass of port.
Darcy lifted his shoulders. “He should. I tried to teach him. But I find that he was often not listening.”
“I cannot imagine why,” Fitz said sardonically, and took a sip of his drink. “He expected you would be his brother and do his schoolwork for him. Besides, you are fastidious in your work whereas Bingley tends to flit from one thing to another.”
Darcy accepted a glass of his own port from his cousin. “I believe you just told me I am prone to delivering jobations.”
Fitz met his gaze and lifted his eyebrows. Darcy thought he would deliver another jibe, but instead, Fitz asked, “Perhaps Bingley’s sisters? I cannot imagine they are in favor of his suit.”
Darcy pondered the notion. “Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were not pleased, but I cannot see them engaging in this kind of behavior. They enjoyed the connection. They are not violent. In fact, they are more averse to scandal than Bingley himself.”
“Miss Bingley nearly knocked you over in a bid to force an offer,” Fitz reminded him.
“That is true, but you know, I would not have expected it of her.” Darcy sipped his drink.
“She would have liked to wed me for Pemberley—but I never had the sense that I was her only target.” Miss Bingley was anxious to marry a man of the first circles, but until the ball he would not have thought her desperate.
Perhaps his intimacy with her brother had led her to act as she had—she certainly had a level of access to him she did not have with many other men of his station.
She had seen Elizabeth as a rival, no doubt thanks to his impertinent remark about her fine eyes.
Then, to have Elizabeth witness her failed attempt at compromising him . . .
“I cannot eliminate her,” he said begrudgingly. “Nor can I eliminate Bingley himself, of course.” He recalled Sir William Lucas’s thinly veiled hints at the ball. “Though I am not certain Miss Elizabeth’s sister returns his regard, he has raised expectations.”
“And you are no longer there to save him from an imprudent attachment,” Fitz replied with a snort. “He is justly served.”
Darcy wondered whether it was rather Miss Bennet who required saving but did not think of it for long. She had a father, and Mr. Bennet had been warned. Elizabeth’s predicament required his complete attention.
Fitz opened a drawer in the desk to withdraw a piece of paper. He took up a pen and handed it to Darcy. “Write them down. Miss Caroline Bingley. Mr. Charles Bingley. What think you of Hurst?”
Darcy raised his eyebrows. “I think it would be too much effort for Hurst to be involved in anything that required him to leave his port. I cannot say as much for his wife.”
Fitz shrugged. “Add them. We cannot rule them out.”
Darcy did so. He was by virtue of his experience a suspicious man, but Fitz was ruthless.
It was a dismal business, making a list of his former friends and acquaintances who might have reason to harm him through Elizabeth.
They went through his more recent business dealings, adding another name to the list and discarding several more.
“Who else have you disappointed lately?” Fitz asked.
He snorted. “Must we list them all? It will take a great deal of time.”
“Limit them to people who would have heard about Bingley’s little ball.”
Darcy rubbed his eyes. “That leaves out Crossley and Waring. They do not know Bingley, and the last I heard they were in Liverpool, trying to find investors for a shipping concern.”
“Ah. You were not interested, I take it?”
He shook his head. “If they wish to squander their principal on leaky boats and shoddy merchandise, that is their business. They should not have counted on my participation before they had spoken with me.”
His cousin nodded. “You would think that after you have turned away so many petitions they would know not to assume.”
Darcy shrugged. “I have not relayed these stories to anyone but you. Perhaps the others have not, either.”
Fitz pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are too discreet, cousin. Not all men deserve it.” He gestured at the paper. “Write the names down, and we shall discuss each one.”
Darcy did so. He stuck a line through Crossley and Waring.
“Edgerton. He does not have the stomach for this sort of intrigue. Indeed, our business has concluded rather successfully for him.” Another name eliminated.
Fawkner, Howard, Masterman, Seymour, Webb.
All were discussed and dismissed. “Wickham.”
Fitz stood abruptly and began to pace. “Now there is one who never has a feather to fly with. It is highly suspicious he came to Hertfordshire when you had been there but a month, particularly after Ramsgate. He also knows you well. If anyone was going to discover your tendre for Miss Bennet . . .”
“Really, Fitz,” Darcy protested. “I do not have a tendre for Miss Elizabeth. I admire and respect her, that is true, but you must stop allowing your imagination to conjure up an attachment of that sort.”
His cousin’s expression was skeptical. “Do not lie to me. Worse yet, do not lie to yourself.”
Darcy tipped his head back against his chair and squeezed his eyes shut. “Her situation is such that I cannot have a tendre for her. If I did, I should have to act upon it.” He opened his eyes, determined to maintain his composure.
His cousin scratched his ear and released a weary sigh. “Have it your way.” He tapped the paper. “But whether you love her or only admire her, Wickham would not much care. Leave him on the list.”
“Wickham has spoken with Miss Elizabeth, told her his lies. He was not at the ball, so as far as he knows, she still believes him. He would have no reason to harm her and there is no money in it for him.”
“Unless he was hired by someone else,” Fitz concluded.
Darcy conceded the point and added Wickham to the list. “That leaves us with five names,” he said, setting the paper down. “Presuming there are not others out there who hold a grievance against me they have not yet voiced.”
Fitz tipped his head to the side and pulled a face. “Have you offended anyone else lately?” he asked.
“Other than Miss Elizabeth? No, I cannot say I have.”
“How did you manage to offend Miss Bennet?” Fitz poured himself a glass of port. “Besides running afoul of the sort of men who would attack and abduct her, of course. Oddly, once she had her wits about her, she did not seem to blame you for that.”
“Not yet,” Darcy grumbled. “She would at least have grounds in this case.”
“Therein lies a story,” Fitz said. “Let me hear it.”
It took Darcy nearly an hour to tell the whole of his visit with Bingley, ending with the confrontations at the ball—first with Elizabeth and then with the Bingleys. Fitz found most of the story highly amusing, and he expressed his appreciation for Elizabeth rather more warmly than Darcy liked.
“When I rode away, she was standing in the window watching me,” Darcy said at the end of his recital, his chest tight and his head aching.
“I wanted nothing more than to go back for her like some fool out of one of Georgie’s novels.
” He propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands.
“How have I made such a muddle of my life?”
Fitz was quiet for a moment. “You consider this attraction a muddle?”
“Of course,” Darcy responded with a groan. “I am expected to make a very different sort of match. You know that.”
“To increase the family’s standing. Yes, I have heard it my entire life.”
“Then you see the problem.” Darcy ran a hand over his eyes.
“No,” Fitz replied sharply. “I cannot say that I do. My mother might once have had high expectations, but she has waited many years for Henry to marry. She is growing quite concerned that none of us mean to wed at all.”
Darcy sighed. “Henry does not wish to spend his allowance on anyone’s clothing but his own. He will marry when he can no longer put it off. He may ask his widow.” They would all marry eventually. “I have a duty. An obligation to my parents.”
“Your parents are dead. And despite my father’s insistence that he is the head of the family, he is not the head of yours.”
Fitz was being purposefully obtuse. “You need not remind me of my place,” Darcy replied, resigned. “I am well aware of what my honor requires.”
His cousin frowned, then drank deeply from his glass. “Your choice of wife is not a matter of honor, you idiot.” He studied Darcy for a moment. “You still believe that those around you are governed by the same set of rules you insist upon for yourself.”
“And this is wrong?” Darcy asked, incredulous.
“No,” Fitz replied. He set his glass down. “Just na?ve. Most men carefully consider the appearance of honor, but do not attend to a demonstration of it. Their lives are all about pleasing themselves. No wonder you are continually disappointed in your friends.”
“I am not a child, Fitz,” Darcy grumbled. “I understand better than you know how dark men’s hearts can be.”
“But you always hope for better.” His cousin chuckled. “And, like a child, you are rather fractious when tired.”
Darcy was put off by Fitz’s patronizing tone, but he could not deny he was exhausted. He stood and moved to the chaise by the fire. “Wake me if Miss Elizabeth needs anything.” She was just on the other side of the wall. Close, yet impossibly out of reach.
“I will.” There was a pause. “You are an honorable man, Darcy,” Fitz said quietly.
Darcy removed his shoes and reclined on the chaise. The last thing he heard before he drifted into a deep sleep was Fitz adding, “Which is why you need me.”