Chapter 11 #2
A sense of distress settled in his chest, tightening around his heart. He did not want to live apart from her, but he would not force her to do anything.
“I am not the sort of man to restrict and control my wife. Elizabeth should be home within an hour if you would like to wait,” he said, rising to leave. “I am wanted elsewhere, but the library is yours.” He was not in a state of mind for this man’s company any longer.
Mr Bennet bowed his head. “With a book I am regardless of time.”
Elizabeth thought using the carriage to go such a short distance as Bond Street was wasteful, but Darcy had offered it as a courtesy due to Mrs Darcy.
She preferred to walk, but for the meanwhile, she would concede.
She was here to give the impression she was a valued wife after all, and driving in her husband’s carriage was expected.
As the carriage left Berkeley Square to enter Charles Street to return her home, Elizabeth noticed a young woman in a cloak watching the carriage.
She had a second thought and spun round to look behind her. It was Georgiana. When they stopped, the footman handed her down, and Elizabeth let go of his hand and hurried up the street. Upon seeing her, Georgiana shrunk back and turned the corner.
“Georgiana, wait!”
She stopped when Elizabeth had rounded the corner and was out of view of the carriage.
She was alone; there was no sign of Wickham near the square.
They had money to leave Scotland, but where were they lodging?
What kind of situation did they have? Elizabeth’s hope soared that Georgiana had come to her senses and would leave him.
“Georgiana, do you want to come—”
“You should call me Mrs Wickham,” she said with a proud smile. “And I must congratulate you in person. I had no notion you were fond of my brother. I wish you happy.”
Did she truly not understand why she and Darcy had to marry?
She swallowed her frustration and asked, “You are still glad, then, that you married Wickham?” Georgiana’s face fell at her critical tone, and Elizabeth softened her expression.
She would get nowhere with her by being judgmental.
“Come inside with me and tell me how you are.”
“Is my brother there?” Elizabeth said she assumed he was. “Then no. He will not see me if I stay with Wickham.”
“Then I cannot see you, either, out of respect for him and because I agree with his opinion on your husband.”
“Fitzwilliam will not help me—but you can, Lizzy.” Georgiana clutched her hand. “Wickham and I have scarcely any money.”
Elizabeth gently pulled her hand from her friend’s. “I will not convince your brother to release your fortune. Wickham may sue him and move through the courts.”
“But you can still help me,” she insisted. “You would not forsake your friend.”
She hesitated. If she met Georgiana again, perhaps she could convince her to leave Wickham. How happy would that make Darcy? Her husband was a good man who wanted to keep his sister healthy and safe, and how much happier would their new life together be if she could restore Georgiana to him?
“Very well. I have a small amount, but it is yours.”
Elizabeth heard the footman call her name from around the corner, and Georgiana walked away. “Meet me at Berkeley Square tomorrow at seven, before church services,” she said over her shoulder. “Please, any money from your own expenses would help us. Do not tell my brother you saw me.”
As she went home with the footman, Elizabeth wondered if she should tell Darcy that Georgiana had asked for money.
She did not wish to keep a secret from him.
But how was she to encourage Georgiana to reconcile with her brother if Darcy joined her and brother and sister argued, or he forbade them to meet?
It was best to go alone and persuade Georgiana.
She only needed a little more time to convince her, and a little more time with Georgiana living alongside such a man and in such a situation.
And then Darcy would be relieved of one burden he carried.
There were few ways that the unwanted wife could make her reluctant husband truly happy, but bringing Georgiana home was one of them.
When she entered the house, she was told she had a guest awaiting her in the library and received another shock to see her father seated with a book.
“Papa!” she cried, dropping her boxes of purchases and entering the room. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she put her arms around him.
“Even for a man inclined to do as little as possible, I had to come to town when I received a letter that my newly married daughter was here.”
She had written two letters to her father in the past fortnight, but he had only replied with distant politeness to the one announcing her marriage. Although his being a dilatory correspondent was to be expected, his silence was disappointing. “Are you angry with me?” she asked in a small voice.
“I did not come to scold you, Lizzy. Married women can no longer be scolded by their fathers. But I had to see for myself if my suspicions were true.”
“That I fell in love at the seaside and ran off in spite of good sense?” she said, smiling.
Her father did not match her spirit. “That you tried to save that man’s sister, and when it failed, you had to marry him.”
Elizabeth slowly sat. This was too many surprises for one morning. “Did he tell you?”
“You underestimate my powers of perception,” he said, sitting across from her. “Not to worry. No one else knows about Lydia and your little scheme to preserve Mr Darcy’s sister. You can parade around town pretending to be a happy couple.”
Her father’s tone was more serious than she had ever seen. “It is not as though we are unhappy, Papa. And it is a good match for me, given his position and his character.”
“But did you not expect happiness in a married condition?”
“Of course I did.”
“Then you should have prepared for it more carefully, and taken much greater thought about it before you engaged in it. Your impulsivity will have severe consequences.”
Elizabeth was tempted to say that if Lydia was better governed and tended to, this train of events might not have happened.
But if she had been able to help Darcy that morning in Ramsgate, had they known Georgiana left with Wickham, would she still have leapt at the chance to help him and protect Georgiana?
In her heart, she knew the answer. She was impulsive and always wanted to help, and she would have jumped in a carriage with Darcy even if he had not asked her. If he had been as bewildered and discouraged as he had been in London, nothing would have stopped her from helping him.
“Once we left London together on the mail coach, there was nothing else to be done. It would not have been safe to send me back alone, and we both expected Georgiana could be reasoned with. You cannot assume we will not be happy. He is a good man, Papa.”
He huffed. “I am surprised you are calm about this.”
“What am I to do?” she cried. “Choose to hate him, to fight him, to resent him? That is choosing misery for the rest of my life.” Why would she choose bitter hostility toward a man she esteemed?
“Choosing to be cheerful and sanguine will be harder.”
She suspected that was her father’s trial, and one he could not bear. “In some cases, that might be true. But I like him, and I am not without hope.”
“But do you want to live apart from him, Lizzy?” he asked. “At least as much as you are able, whilst keeping up proper appearances. He said he would put the choice to you.”
Her stomach clenched, and she gripped the chair arm. “Did you ask him if he would send me away?”
“You look pale. Does that distress you? Your husband seemed repulsed by the idea of parting with you too, but I could not say if it was because he has affection for you or if he is a proud man who does not want the world to know what a mistake he has made.”
It could be both. And if it was, how much of a role did affection play and how much of it was his familial pride? Still, her heart rate slowed at the hope that Darcy was not eager to be rid of her.
“I can have no home of my own, no children if I leave him. I always expected to marry, have a family, and there is no reason Darcy and I cannot be friends.”
Her father scoffed. “There can be no genuine friendship in a partnership entered into merely for propagation and the rearing of a child.”
That was not a possibility yet, but she would not allude to that to her father. “I disagree. We will be friends, caring friends, because we choose it.”
“You want to stay with him?” Her father gave her a sceptical look. “Has he truly been your devoted lover since the day he arrived in Ramsgate?”
“No, he called me ‘tolerable’ and said I would marry no one of consequence with a family like mine.”
Her father bellowed a laugh that Elizabeth did not feel equal in joining. “I think this young man could be my favourite son-in-law!”
“Papa, I want a home, a husband, and a family—and my only chance of that is with Darcy. I have to commit to this new life. But I appreciate that you came all this way to meet Darcy and ensure my happiness.”
“It was convenient for me. I must retrieve your mother and sisters from Ramsgate. They do not expect me for another week, but I had to go soon enough, and since you were in London, I decided to do all my little nuisance tasks at once. I will not tell your mother I will be early,” he added with a wink.
She was an afterthought. A chore to be done that was put off for as long as possible. He might care, but her father’s behaviour was a language as much as were his words.
“Your husband is a rather severe, proud man,” her father went on.
In some ways he was, but he was also so much more than that.
His merits as a brother and a landlord would likely make him a caring husband and father.
Darcy was generous, and a companion who exhilarated her spirits, with an honesty that she found she admired more and more. “I like him,” she whispered.
“And does he like you? Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger of an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery if you cannot remain faithful to one another.”
She drew back. It was one thing to fear that a man her father did not know might be an unfaithful husband, but did her father truly think that she would not be a loyal wife?
No matter how their marriage came about, she would not forsake the promises she made.
Had her father implied to Darcy that she might be disloyal?
“I will treat Mr Darcy well,” she said. “And he will be good to me.”
She felt as though all the ways her father had not been good to his family hung unspoken in the air.
But one look at him told her he had no similar feelings.
He saw no fault in his behaviour and never would.
In a brighter voice, she asked, “Will you stay to dinner? And you must stay here rather than in a hotel.”
“I do not think your husband is ready to sit across the table from me and be forced into polite conversation. Once you tell him you are not fleeing his protection, he might be more amenable to my company. Come to Hertfordshire when your little performance in town is over. Your mother will want to show you off to the neighbours.”
She rang for the carriage to be brought round for her father. After parting from him, she added hurriedly, “My marriage is not an impulsive mistake.”
“Ah, there you are wrong, my little Lizzy. It was the height of impulsivity. We have yet to see if it will be a mistake.”
She went upstairs to the drawing room and found Darcy holding a book. He sat very upright with the book clasped in his lap. His shoulders shifted as he heard her enter, but he did not look up. She was certain he was no longer reading, if he ever had been.
“Did you invite your father to stay?”
“I did, but he is otherwise engaged. He looks forward to seeing us in Hertfordshire in December.”
He turned a page with a swift flick of his finger, his lips pressed in a line.
How worried was he that she wanted to leave?
Perhaps he was fearful she wished to leave, but would stay only because she felt that she had to for the sake of appearances.
After what her father implied, how could she assure Darcy she was committed to him?
“My father is not angry, you know,” she said softly. “I do not think he actually wants me home.”
“He came all this way to bring you home if he could.”
“Not really,” she said, sighing over it. Her father would always be an indolent man. “His chief wish, as always, is to have little trouble in any business as far as his family goes.”
Darcy nodded, keeping his eyes on his book. “But he still asked you to leave. He still fears for our respectability and assumed you could not be faithful.”
Did Darcy fear she could be unfaithful? What would a proper wife, a chosen wife, do to reassure her husband? Neither of them knew how to be a spouse, and they did not even have a foundation of love to begin with.
She walked to his side and sat on the arm of his chair, forcing him to look up at her. “I am not leaving,” she breathed. “And not because it would be much talked of.”
Darcy closed his book and set it aside. “If you want to go, I won’t—”
“I don’t.”
He looked at her with a glow of regard. All the haughty composure he wore when she came in was gone.
Darcy wanted her to stay, and not because they were forced into this situation or because of appearances.
Her heart raced away as she realised how deeply she wanted to stay with Darcy, too.
Maybe they could have a relationship with more than just esteem and confidence after all.
“If you want to stay,” he whispered, “then how do we do this?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for his hand and carefully threaded her fingers through his. Instantly, his fingers tightened around hers. “But we will find out together.”