Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Darcy found his cousin alone in their shared sitting room later that afternoon. Fitzwilliam stood at the mantel with one elbow braced upon it and straightened at once when Darcy entered.
Darcy closed the door carefully behind him. “Tell me, Richard—what do you think of Miss Bennet?”
Fitzwilliam only stared at him for a moment, his brows drawing together as though he suspected a trap in the question.
“Our hostess is lovely, but I still do not think she likes me very much. I hope that I have improved her opinion of me somewhat, and I believe she looks on me with rather more friendliness than she did upon my arrival…” He trailed off as Darcy shook his head.
“Not our hostess, but her cousin, Miss Jane Bennet?” Darcy asked, moving farther into the room.
“I noticed that you spoke to her for some time when the Bennet ladies called the other day and that you immediately went to sit beside her today. If I am not mistaken, her younger sisters prevented you from speaking to her as much as you liked today, but you still shared at least some conversation.”
“I do enjoy speaking to her,” Fitzwilliam admitted, slower now, is gaze slipping away to the carpet as though it had suddenly become fascinating.
He paused for a moment, drawing in a breath. “She is… I suppose gentle is the best way to describe her. For a man who has so often been amongst rough soldiers, she is so very different from what I am accustomed to.”
Darcy considered this for a moment before grinning and folding his arms. “You are interested in her?”
Fitzwilliam sighed, then nodded; the gesture seemed dragged from him.
“But you know as well as I do, Darcy, that I need a wealthy wife.” He pushed away from the mantel and began to pace.
“I cannot marry wherever I wish. When Granfield told me about his granddaughter, I took for granted that she would be like so many other ladies I had met in the ton. I only needed to flirt a bit and act my charming self, and she would be mine for the asking. I was convinced there would be nothing to it to win her.”
At his cousin’s snort, he shot Darcy a look and huffed a reluctant breath of amusement.
“Oh, I am not so arrogant as to think that I would charm her to the altar. I expected that her grandfather would have told her enough about me to make her amenable to his plans. I cannot deny that I halfway expected her to be the type of lady who needed only a few pretty words and that we might be married before Christmastide.” He scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
“However, as we have already discussed, I miscalculated, badly. Still, she is somewhat more friendly towards me than before, but I have a feeling that it is a useless endeavour.”
“You did miscalculate,” Darcy agreed, not addressing the hint in his cousin’s final words.
Heat crept up the back of Darcy’s neck, and he prayed it did not show on his face.
Continuing bravely forwards, he asked: “But now, having met both Miss Jane Bennet and her cousin, which would you choose—if money and other matters were not a consideration?”
Fitzwilliam stopped pacing and stared out the window.
“It scarcely matters, Darce,” he said, slashing his hand through the air. The movement was violent enough that a lesser man might have stepped back from it. Darcy, however, well used to his cousin and his reactions, did not so much as blink.
“You know, Richard, that I have an estate that you could manage, even raise a few horses, should you wish it,” Darcy began, but paused when his cousin rounded on him, colour rising high in his cheeks, his eyes flashing.
“It is not charity,” Darcy continued quickly, irritation threading his voice in answer as they discussed a topic they had argued over a dozen times.
“If you like, we can call you the steward of the estate. However, if you would prefer not to accept charity from me, I daresay your father would do what he could to support you.”
That made Fitzwilliam laugh, the sound carrying little humour. He turned away again, raking a hand through his hair.
“Father might offer assistance were I to marry someone like Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who is untitled but apparently has a substantial dowry and the possibility of a title for a son.” Fitzwilliam glanced back over his shoulder at Darcy.
“Should I tell him I wish to marry a penniless country lass, he would laugh at me and call me foolish before telling me to make her my mistress after I have married a chit who could support me.”
Darcy opened his mouth to speak again, but was cut off by the colonel.
“No more, Darcy,” he said. “I might like Miss Bennet, but it will never be allowed to become more than that. If not Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who appears to be half in love with another—” this was said with a pointed look that Darcy had no wish to deny.
Heat rose again along the back of his neck “—then I suppose I ought to find another heiress to wed, or else go back to the continent and see what fortunes can be made there.”
That remark caused Darcy to shake his head, and he moved away, unable to keep still.
“I wish Father had left you more than the ten thousand pounds in his will. There are still two small estates intended for a second and third son that have yet to come, and if I were to win Miss Elizabeth Bennet, should her grandfather allow it, then I would have at minimum two additional estates.” He gave a short, humourless breath.
“Truly, your taking one, even just the management of one, would be a tremendous burden removed from me.”
For a moment Fitzwilliam said nothing. The edge had gone from his posture, and he regarded Darcy more steadily than before. Darcy could only hope his cousin understood the offer as it was meant and that he would, finally, consider it seriously.
Before long, Fitzwilliam barked a laugh, but his tone was soft when he spoke.
“I think that if you were to speak to Miss Elizabeth, you would find her amenable to at least courting you. And I suspect Lord Granfield will not prove as difficult as you expect. He only wishes for his granddaughter’s happiness.”
He paused, only for a moment. “He was irate, however, when Miss Elizabeth’s letter reached him describing the way you treated her at that first assembly.”
Fitzwilliam lifted his brows.
“It took him several moments to stop ranting about the insult—and how astounded he was that the son of George Darcy, and grandson to the former Earl of Matlock, could behave in such an infamous manner to anyone, much less his granddaughter.”
Darcy winced at the reminder.
“I do believe he was more upset about the insult than Miss Elizabeth,” Fitzwilliam finished, and though his tone was lighter, Darcy thought he detected something softer beneath it.
Darcy dropped his head, one hand coming to rest on the back of a chair as if he required its support.
“I was wrong for speaking the way that I did that night,” he said.
“I knew almost as soon as I spoke the words that I was wrong to do so, in more ways than one.” His fingers tightened against the wood.
“I regretted the words the moment they left my lips.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Fitzwilliam move, as if uncertain what to do with such an admission. Darcy knew his reputation was that of a stoic, almost unfeeling, man, but for the first time, he felt as though he needed to confide in someone.
“Worse still,” Darcy continued, forcing the words out now, “I did not manage to apologise, despite having opportunities to do so, until after I learnt who her grandfather was.” He gave a small, bitter shake of his head. “I knew I ought to, but I let my pride get in my way.”
He drew a breath, the effort doing little to steady him.
“If I had managed to apologise before his arrival, he might have been more willing to consider me as a suitor now.”
Silence settled between them. Darcy could not make himself look up; he was suddenly aware of his cousin’s attention in a way he had never been before.
He started despite himself when Fitzwilliam’s hand came down, warm and firm, upon his shoulder.
“We make a fine pair, do we not?” the colonel said.
“I have quite a few weeks of leave and shall be here until after the new year. At present, I barely know Miss Bennet, so allow me a few weeks to know her better and we might discuss this further then. She may be pretty but vacant, or her gentleness may prove only an illusion.”
Darcy huffed a quiet breath at that, not yet trusting himself to look at his cousin.
“But I will say,” Fitzwilliam went on, squeezing his shoulder once before letting him go, “she strikes me as a more comfortable sort of wife than your Miss Elizabeth. She is certainly very pretty, but I am not convinced I wish to spend my life in conflict within my own household—most particularly not with my wife.”
He paused, and when Darcy finally lifted his head, Fitzwilliam was grinning at him.
“Particularly when I suspect I should lose every one of those battles.”
Over the next several days, the residents of Millwood Cottage were inundated with visitors.
Some sought to merely repay the calls Elizabeth and Georgiana had previously made; others arrived out of curiosity, having never met Mr Grant nor Colonel Fitzwilliam and wishing, upon hearing they were in residence, to secure an introduction.
The gossip about Mr Grant actually being Lord Granfield appeared not to have spread as rapidly as they had feared, for none of their visitors mentioned the news or asked about it.
A few were ambitious mothers who hoped one or the other gentleman might prove amenable to an attachment with some daughter or another, there being so few marriageable men in the neighbourhood. In this, however, they were disappointed.
They were not the only ones.