Chapter 7
I stood in the shadow of the finial with my breath still held, conscious only of the roar of blood thumping through my body. I could not make my mind congeal upon a single concluding thought.
Feelings flashed through me, but I could name none of them. I felt unsteady. Some minutes passed, and the two figures at the lake then took to the path, dipped below the rise, and went out of view.
In a state of insensibility, I wandered away from the scene, but by the time I returned to the house, a blanket of numbness had fallen over me.
I watched as a disinterested party while Fitzwilliam Darcy said all that was expected of him, moved as he always moved, and if he were soulless as a puppet as he did so, no one remarked upon it.
That evening, I learnt a second express, this one edged in black, had come for my cousin.
Later that night when he gravely suggested the time had come for us to strike off to the tavern in Hunsford, I wholeheartedly agreed—not only out of consideration for his grief—but also for my own.
I knew better than to partake of solitude that night.
Masculine sorrow was sometimes a raucous business.
My cousin shook off his solemnity as we entered the White Heron, and in a mood of artificial congeniality, he looked around the room.
Perhaps having seen before that peculiar glint in a man’s eye, the host brightened upon greeting us, brought out his best bottles, and made a great show of cleaning the glasses before setting them down on the table between us.
“This is a dull little place,” Fitzwilliam said to him before handing him a fat purse. “Perhaps this should make for a lively evening.”
In a twinkling, the room was full of men of varying occupations, most of them humble, and all of them eager to become stupidly drunk to please the colonel.
In an hour, Fitzwilliam had abandoned the nuisance of a glass, and soon after he stood on the table waving a bottle, adjuring us to sing with him.
What then ensued was an uproarious chorus of ‘come merry hearts, and call for your quarts, and let no liquor be lacking…’
I could hardly sit back, unmoved by the determination of my inebriated fellows to participate, particularly when I could shout, ‘we have gold in store, and we purpose to roar, until we send care a packing!’
It was unfortunate—or perhaps a blessing—that at some period well past midnight, having lost my voice from singing, I also discovered I had overindulged.
Not quite certain as to how I arrived there, I found myself doubled over at the edge of the road as I retched in agony.
It was considered unmanly to fail to hold one’s liquor, but in fairness, I had not the practice afforded to an officer in the Foot Guards.
There was nothing like losing one’s stomach to remind a fellow he was an ordinary idiot like every other drunkard who was rendered disgusting. I returned to the scene inside the tavern humbled indeed and endured a few hails of abuse as I called for coffee.
It was a peculiar fact that mass inebriation erases most boundaries between the classes.
After a round of good-natured jeers, I must have admitted defeat with some sense of humour yet intact, for when I laid coins on the table for a fresh barrel of ale to be opened for my company, my defection was properly forgotten.
Eventually, the tone of celebration turned more morose. I sat in a haze but eventually became aware of this change when Fitzwilliam called out mournfully, “Pinky, Pinky! Why have they taken Pinky?”
Though my head still spun dreadfully, this was a sufficient signal that I must extricate him from the scene before he began to openly weep or fight some poor fool who laughed at him for doing so. I wrapped his arm around my shoulder and walked him in a wobbling line back to Rosings Park.
I hailed the shadowy figure standing watch at the main gate, and somewhere past a large stand of trees, my cousin stopped thinking of Major Pinkney and began to think of earthly consolations.
“Where are the ladies, Darcy? I must find some ladies somewhere…” He then erupted into song, this time a shamefully bawdy rendition of The Trooper and the Maid.
Upon approaching the house, which was ominously dark, we were struck with a burst of hilarity.
Though we tried to be very quiet, this in itself became uproariously funny.
I could stifle my own laughter, but Fitzwilliam could not, so I held my hand over his mouth as we staggered up the stairs.
After a harrowing passage down the hall, I deposited him ungently into Donaldson’s care, who raised one eyebrow, assured me he would manage, and promptly threw a glass of water in his colonel’s face.
Thus, we had deferred the worst of our private reckonings.
I had been rendered insensible and my cousin had passed into oblivion, neither of us capable of dwelling upon our troubles.
But the light of morning was harsh indeed, and there we sat—glum, resentful, and slightly unwell.
At last Fitzwilliam broke our stony silence as he stared in repulsion at his eggs.
“I should abbreviate my leave,” he said.
“And Georgiana’s presentation? Do you forfeit that?”
He looked at me with undisguised irritation, but I saw beneath that look that he was very nearly desperate, a state which he bluntly confirmed.
“I must have something to do , Darcy.”
Some moments passed in silent commiseration clouded by the dullness with which we were afflicted, until a faint notion began to creep forwards in my mind.
“I shall give you something to do,” I said at last.
“Oh?” He grunted in his scepticism.
“Wickham is in Hertfordshire.”
“What? You mention this just now? In passing?”
“Your ambition to kill him must be my excuse. He is in the militia under a Colonel Forster.”
He stood abruptly, grasped his head, and sat back down with a hard thump. “Lord, my head! Darcy, are you certain?”
“I am.”
“I could be back in London in good time for Georgiana.”
“Might you spare yourself the noose? I mention his whereabouts only because I want him ruined in that neighbourhood. They think well of him…Miss Elizabeth Bennet thinks well of him.”
This last I had muttered below his hearing, and he was, by that point, utterly preoccupied with his own thoughts.
“Consider it done,” he said. “I should resort to the soldier’s remedy for this head and be off at first light.”
I politely declined his offer to send Donaldson to me with a questionable brew of spirits, rhubarb, and myrtle, and I, too, retreated to my room.
I slept a little, stared out the window, read two letters, and drank cups and cups of tea.
The reality sat heavily upon me throughout my recovery from my appalling drunkenness—I had nearly offered for a woman who hates me!
By what failure of judgment had I come so close to such a humiliating encounter? Was I stupid? It boggled my mind. I saw no way forwards, nor could I see any way back to some blissful time when I did not love her.
“Sir? Are you well?”
“As well as can be expected. Why do you ask?”
After a brief pause, Carsten said, “I misheard you, sir.”
“Misheard me? I did not speak—did I?”
“I am certain you did not. Only I heard what I thought was…”
“Well? Out with it, man.”
“…a moan, sir.”
“It is possible you did,” I finally admitted, wishing only that he thought the cause was my thumping head, not the shocking truth I had just owned.
I love her . I confessed this to myself again, and then another thought took hold.
My God, could anything be worse?