Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
His cousin took one look at his face when Darcy lurched into his rooms in the Albany and sent the servants away and poured him a glass of whisky.
Fitzwilliam then listened in silence while Darcy, not very coherently, explained the current sad state of affairs.
His wife had lied to him and nearly embroiled them in scandal.
“You have said nothing,” Darcy muttered after he finished the entire tale.
Fitzwilliam blew out a breath. “Well, you have drunk nothing.”
He set down the full glass. “I feel absolutely sick all over.” No wonder Elizabeth could scarcely eat this week. They were both sick to death over her deceit, but it was not a pain they could share. She felt guilt, and he felt betrayal, and he did not know how to move forward.
“I suppose the first thing to address is, do you believe her?” Fitzwilliam asked. “Or do you think she had an affair with Wickham and spun this story because the truth would come out?”
“I believe her,” he said instantly.
Fitzwilliam gave him a sceptical look. “You said her father thought she might not remain respectable, and Lady Catherine offered to pay her to engage in an affair.”
“She was not unfaithful. She is impulsive. Na?ve. But not an adulteress.” Darcy sank back into his chair.
“I did not see this coming. She went behind my back, giving money to that man through my sister’s hands after we agreed not to, and the lying worsened from there.
I know we married for the wrong reasons, but what sort of friend even acts that way? ”
“Intimacy and friendship were a lot to hope for, given your beginning.” Fitzwilliam finished his own glass. “Even fidelity might have been an unrealistic expectation.”
Darcy gave him a flat look. “If she intended to be unfaithful, why would she choose a gamester with the pox who ruined a fifteen-year-old girl and tricked her own sister?”
“I suppose she has better taste than that. Even though, apparently, she wrote some rather lusty words about you,” Fitzwilliam said, shaking his head as though disbelieving such a thing could happen.
He wondered what was in the journal. How candid and curious had she been?
It must be explicit if Wickham could so easily twist it.
He must be confident he could get money from him or ruin him.
A wife’s infidelity did not have to be proven, merely suspected.
Newspapers would print the lurid details of the alleged infidelity, just like they had printed about Georgiana’s elopement with a scoundrel and Darcy’s marriage and the new hair ornament he bought for his bride.
“If you believe her,” Fitzwilliam went on, “then it is not impossible to restore your marriage, although the world will censure her if Wickham exposes her.”
“I believe her,” he repeated.
“Then I wonder if her keeping it all secret is harder for you to overcome.”
“It is,” he murmured. It was still a betrayal.
It felt like there were types of infidelity beyond sexual misconduct.
Emotional infidelity. Financial infidelity.
Her withholding the truth and taking money from him hurt the most. “I am so angry. I had to leave lest I said something I could not take back.”
He was incensed that she thought she knew better than him and gave Georgiana money, but he was also livid that she lied to him day in and day out. But equally heartrending was that when Elizabeth found herself in a desperate situation, she had not turned to him.
He chanced a sip of the whisky, but then winced as it hit his churning stomach. “My wife did not trust me enough to help her.”
“Were you a husband she could tell the truth to?” his cousin asked gently.
“Of course!”
Fitzwilliam held his gaze with an expressive look, and it forced Darcy to think. Had he been a husband his wife could confide in? Could she talk to him about a threat to their reputation? Could she talk to him about Wickham? Or did she think anything short of perfection would cause her to lose him?
Since they had to marry, he had tried to prove that he did not resent her, that he wanted to be her friend and partner.
But he was the one who brought Elizabeth to town with the express purpose of parading her around to prove she was not a disgrace to his family.
She had been forced on display to shift attention away from his sister’s fall from favour, and her good behaviour and respectability were judged in the public sphere.
For him, being on display in town was a nuisance, but he knew how to act and what to say.
She was the one who had to adjust to an unaccustomed environment where her new husband’s standing depended on how well she was viewed.
Darcy could be himself; she had to be practically perfect.
He had never even told her she was excellent at it, that he was proud of her.
And she did not even know that he was in love with her, and that Wickham’s claims would not be enough for him to abandon her.
“I was not as easy to appeal to as I could have been,” he realised, “considering how much importance I put on our reputation, on how well she was received.” But did that mean he deserved to be lied to?
Perhaps not, but it also did not mean he deserved her trust. He groaned and ran his hands over his face. Everything was in a muddle now.
“Do not be too hard on yourself,” Fitzwilliam said as he clapped him on the shoulder. “You had no courtship, after all. Marriages that are preceded by long courtship are the ones that generally abound with the most love and constancy.”
“A long courtship full of hopes and expectations might have at least habituated us to a fondness and a trust of one another.” Passion might have struck root and gathered strength before marriage too.
Now it had to be grafted on later like everything else—unless it was too late for fondness and trust and passion and all the rest.
Fitzwilliam picked up Darcy’s abandoned glass and drank it himself. “What will you do?”
He heaved a sigh. “She fears I will divorce her if Wickham presents what evidence he has: an obscene letter, an intimate gift, he was seen at her house, and they were witnessed together in public. And of course amid the hasty marriage of both me and my sister, the gossips are already alert for anything that hints of a scandal.”
“Is she afraid you will divorce her because she wants to protect your good name or because she has an affection for you?”
“I want—”
“I did not ask what you want; I know what you want.” Darcy glared at him, and Fitzwilliam scoffed. “You still love her, you want to take care of her, and if she has not been unfaithful, then you will stay married to her.”
“How could you know that, especially when I am here rather than with my wife?”
“Because you left. You left because you were not master of yourself and were afraid to say or do something irrevocable. You love her and don’t actually want to hurt her or lose her.”
He did not disagree. Darcy wondered how his cousin could see he loved his wife, but Elizabeth could not. Maybe because Fitzwilliam’s happiness did not hinge on those feelings, and because the words needed to be said and heard to make it real.
“I will not end my marriage, regardless of what Wickham does,” he murmured.
“But she lied. So does she love you and want to stay married because of you, or because of what your good name and your money can do for her?”
“The journal entry implies she loves me.”
“Desire is not love. And she kept a damaging secret from you.”
“She lied because she was afraid she would lose me, and that hurts the most. That when she was in trouble, rather than turn to me, she kept it all from me.” They had come to town purely for society’s approval, but had she really thought he would divorce her just to keep his reputation if she had done nothing wrong? She must have, and that pained him.
“There is nothing of so great importance as the good qualities of the person we join ourselves to for life,” Fitzwilliam said. “Is Mrs Darcy at her core someone who will lie when it suits her purposes, who will not tell you the truth when you ask?”
His heart told him no, but did the facts before him say otherwise?
Were his feelings lying to him, or were they right?
She always took care of everyone around her.
Whether it was making his shirts or racing after Lydia, she cared deeply for others.
Whom had she ever been able to rely on before he married her?
“I feel like she was so preoccupied with protecting me from any further harm Wickham could do, and was so fearful of my not believing her that she acted hastily. That as she fell deeper into despair and into Wickham’s scheme, she did not know how to get out, and it truly never occurred to her that she could depend on me for such a substantial thing. ”
“It looks very bad, Darcy.” Fitzwilliam’s face was sombre. “It is enough to sue him for a criminal conversation with your wife and get a divorce.”
His heart revolted. He did not know if Elizabeth loved him, but shaming her publicly, divorcing her, and losing her forever were impossible. He would not end his marriage, and he would not allow Wickham to ruin his reputation. He would take Wickham to ground and end this.
“I must find Wickham.”
“And do what? Call him out? Appeal to his honour? Give him the thirty thousand pounds?”
“None of those. Well, the first is tempting, but no.” Neither Wickham nor Elizabeth had thought this through. Wickham was too selfish and stupid, and Elizabeth too afraid to consider the situation properly.
“You will have to pay him something to stay quiet, I suspect. And he will always be after you for more.”
“No, he won’t,” Darcy said, heaving himself out of his chair and out of his stupor. “Once I find him, I am leaving with the diamonds and the journal. What Edward Street do you think he is in?”