Chapter Twenty-two
“What can Richard be thinking?” I said. I was pacing. “What can he think he can do with her?”
“I don’t even understand why he’s here,” said Bennet.
“Well, that’s sort of my doing,” I said. “But it’s also sort of your wife’s, if I may say.”
“Oh?” said Elizabeth. “I did wonder if it was the right thing to leave her here.”
“She wished it!” said Bennet.
“Yes, but you did not even seem to put up a little bit of a fight at all,” said Elizabeth. “It must pain a woman to be so invisible to her husband.”
Bennet sighed heavily.
“I do think she’s been a bit… out of sorts,” said Bingley.
“She asked me to bed her,” I said.
“What?” Elizabeth shot to her feet, appalled. “That snake of a woman. If I see her again, I shall wrap my hands round her neck—”
“I said no,” I said.
“She knows you are my husband. How dare she?” said Elizabeth.
Bingley and Bennet shrugged at each other.
She looked between the two of them. “What is meant by that?”
“Nothing,” said Bennet. “It’s only that your husband is…”
“Is what?” she said.
“Tall,” supplied Bingley. “He is such a great tall fellow, after all.”
“Yes,” said Bennet.
I groaned. “Oh, I have asked you, Bingley, to cease—”
“And I have,” said Bingley. “I am only saying, Mrs. Darcy, you must see that Mr. Darcy is a bit, erm, swoonworthy.”
“I do see that,” she said. “But he is mine.”
“Obviously, I am yours,” I said. “Anyway, I wrote to the colonel.”
“Why?” said Bennet.
“Well, you remember how Bingley wanted to marry Elizabeth and then grant me visits of a certain nature?”
“Oh, must we discuss this again?” said Bennet, making a face.
“Apologies,” I said. “It is only that I thought perhaps it was a solution for Caroline, that is all.”
Bennet rubbed his forehead. “So, what happened? He came and fell in love with her?”
“I think so,” I said.
“But she is my wife,” said Bennet. “He cannot simply run off with her like that. And she should not have gone with him. She is ruined now. What could be worth such a thing?”
“Oh, I should think you’d understand,” I said. “What with the way the two of you risk hanging every time you touch each other.”
Bennet hung his head. “All right. I suppose.”
It was quiet.
“What would you have me do?” said Bennet. “My thought was to go after her and steal her back from him—”
“You don’t want to get into an altercation with my cousin,” I said. “You remember how I spoke of his bloodthirstiness since his time in the war.”
“He cannot simply have my wife. It’s not as if he can marry her himself,” said Bennet.
“Well, to be fair,” said Elizabeth, “you are not really functioning as a husband to her.”
“She knew it would be that way going in!” said Bennet.
“You must make some sort of bargain with him,” said Bingley.
“As I was willing to do with Darcy. I don’t like to think about my sister in this way, but I think we have to say that we should not deny her the ability to have a full life, with all of its experiences.
And if she is in love with him, it would be cruel to prevent them being together. ”
“You know where he is, do you not?” said Bennet to me.
“I may have some ideas about where he could have gone,” I said. “But I think I should go alone to talk to him. Perhaps I can get to the bottom of it. Would you be willing to allow them to have some time together?”
Bennet sighed. “I suppose I would be a villain if said that I would not. But I honestly don’t see how such a thing can work.”
“I can keep her as a mistress,” the colonel was saying to me.
We were standing in the outer chamber outside of the room he’d rented at an inn not far away.
I had an inkling this would be where he would come.
“I do not entirely know how yet, but I shall have to find the money for such a thing. I haven’t a choice. ”
“You do have a choice,” I said. “You had the choice not to take her away.”
“No,” he said. “I do not. You see, though I told you I was not a fool, I am quite a fool, and I have not been careful at all, and she may indeed be with child.”
“You have not been tupping her long enough to know that for certain,” I said. “It’s been less than two weeks.”
“Well, she said when she saw him, when he came back, and she looked at him, looked at the prospect of being with him forever and always, she could not bear it. She would rather be shamed and be with me than live the way she has been living.”
“He says he’ll make an arrangement with you,” I said. “Allow you access to her.”
“Well, who says that’s what I want?” said Richard.
“What about what she wants? Can’t we talk to her? She may not want to be entirely shamed and to bring ignominy down on everyone she is intimately connected with.”
“Fine,” he said. He thrust open the door into the room he’d rented.
She let out a cry, startled. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you. You’ve come after me, not my husband.”
“Erm,” I said, “I convinced him not to. I didn’t want my cousin to kill him.”
Richard touched his chest. “Why would I kill that poor molly of a man, hmm?”
“Well, he’s annoyed with you,” I said. “He said he was going to come and steal Caroline back.”
“He did?” said Caroline. “Really? Because I didn’t think he would care. He won’t want me once he knows I’m likely gone with Richard’s child, though.”
“Well, if he did, if he would allow you to spend time with Richard sometimes, would you wish to be a mistress or a wife?”
“Oh,” she said, biting down on her bottom lip. “Well.”
“Truly?” said Richard.
“Richard,” I said, “you are always and forever being called off with the army for months on end, you know.”
“I suppose that is true,” he said, thinking about it. “Maybe there is some sort of arrangement we can come to, if he’s willing.”
After that, there was a lot of talk.
Elizabeth and I went back to bed and we left them to it.
By the morning, however, they were all still talking, all four of them, for Bingley was quite involved in the discussion, too.
Elizabeth spent most of the morning still angry that Caroline would attempt to get me to bed her and I spent the morning reassuring her that I had never even thought of such a thing.
Eventually, however, it was decided that Mr. Bennet would take Caroline back without any concern of whatever had passed with her and the colonel, even if she did prove to be with the colonel’s child.
The hope was that, if so, Caroline would give birth to a girl and that she could be inseminated with Bennet’s child later, because he did wish for her to have his heir.
But there was at least some chance that Richard’s child was going to end up the heir of Longbourn, apparently, and if so, there would be nothing to be done about that.
Richard had sworn up and down that he would never marry and simply be devoted to Caroline. They were going to spend time together whenever Bennet, Bingley, and my wife were traveling, and I still needed to convince Bennet to forgive me enough to bring me along.
However, Elizabeth told me privately that she might not be traveling as much as she had thought with them both.
“But you seemed to have a wondrous time,” I said.
“No, James and I are always going to be as close as we are, of course,” she said. “But I missed you. And for the foreseeable future, I shall be increasing and then I shall have a small one underfoot, and I suppose I don’t feel as strongly about it, in the end.”
“I thought this was what you wanted. You almost did not marry me because of it.”
“It’s funny how things seem very important sometimes, and then once one experiences them, one realizes they don’t truly matter?”
“Is that the case?” I said.
“You are important to me, Will, and besides I get ever so bored if I don’t have you attempting to rule over me and being stymied by my inability to be ruled over and the two of us, erm, working that out.”
“Yes, I find that rivetingly stimulating as well,” I said.
“We’ll all travel eventually,” she said. “When the babe is big enough to be left on his own, perhaps.”
“If your brother will allow me to come, that is.”
“Oh, I shall force him,” she said. “My brother is sometimes stupid about things.”
I chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“Well, you are stupid about things, too.”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. And I am stupid, too,” she said. “And it doesn’t make me love any of you a jot less and it doesn’t mean that we won’t all work everything out swimmingly. I know it’s all going to be all right.”
“I think it will at that,” I said, and I kissed her temple.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said. “What if the servants see?”
“Let them watch,” I said.