Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
UNHAPPY NEWS
The Collinses and their guests were expected that evening to drink tea. Richard was well looking forward to the event, there to see if Miss Bennet had at all changed her attitude towards Darcy, but he was to be frustrated.
Miss Bennet did not appear.
She was suffering, so Mrs Collins explained, from a bad headache. Moreover, Darcy too was absent. He had appeared in the drawing room as the Collinses arrived, a peculiar expression upon his face, but excused himself almost immediately upon the party taking their assigned seats and did not return.
“Where is Darcy? Where is my nephew? This is most unbecoming. He does not treat me with the deference due my role as his aunt and my status as the head of the family. I demand that Darcy appear!” Aunt Catherine’s tones could be heard through the house.
Yet still Darcy did not come. Could he have absconded to the village to partake of the society at the inn and some of the good cold ale there?
Considering the alternative—tea with Mr Collins—the idea had a particular appeal.
Still, it would be most impolite to leave now, especially in the light of Darcy’s defection, and instead of fleeing the house to seek out a table at the pub, Richard chose a seat next to Mrs Collins.
“I am sorry to hear about Miss Bennet’s headache,” he offered. “She began to feel ill as I walked back to the parsonage earlier. I hope she will recover quickly.”
Mrs Collins blinked as she looked at him. “She does suffer from headaches from time to time, but I have never seen her so affected. I trust that a quiet evening and a good sleep will set her to rights.”
“Fitzwilliam? What are you talking of with Mrs Collins? I must know.”
He sighed and turned his comments to his aunt, and had no more private conversation with Mrs Collins.
It was much later, after the guests had departed back to the parsonage, and after daylight had long since melted into night, that Richard heard noise from the room beside his own.
Thank the heavens! Darcy had finally returned.
The light of the half moon was sufficient to guide a man familiar with the neighbourhood back from the village to the house, and Darcy was a tall, well-built man, but Richard still felt no small relief that his favourite cousin was back safely from wherever he had been.
But… where had he been? The Fitzwilliam blood that made Lady Catherine who she was ran in Richard’s veins as well, and he had to know. He slid his feet into his slippers and stepped into the hallway.
“Darcy?” He rapped at his cousin’s door.
Noise from within suggested his cousin had, indeed, returned and was taking off his boots, but there was no answer.
“Darcy? Will? Open the door. Or I shall open it myself, by force if necessary.”
There came more thuds and shuffling, then finally the creak of the floor, as Darcy walked towards the door and unlocked it.
The shock of what he saw hit Richard like a fist.
“My God, man! What has happened? Did you have a letter? Is Georgie well?”
Darcy stood in the doorway looking absolutely bereft, as if he had lost all that was dear to him in the world. His proud shoulders slumped forward, his expression was ravaged. If Richard did not know his stoic cousin better, he would swear those were tear stains on the man’s face.
“What is wrong? You need a drink. Let me call for a brandy.”
“No. Nothing is amiss. I am perfectly well.” Darcy’s broken voice belied his words.
“That is utter rot. Something most dire has happened, and I am kin to our aunt. I must know what it is, and I insist on being satisfied. Now tell me, what has happened?” He pushed past his cousin and settled into a chair by the fireplace.
Darcy, his normally stoic face now a mask of misery, closed the door and joined him in the neighbouring chair.
“She has refused me.” Richard had to strain to hear the words.
“Refused…?” He scarcely understood the word, such was his surprise.
Had Darcy announced he had joined the opera ballet, Richard could not have been more taken aback.
He had not… no, surely not. And yet… “Who? Not Anne! No—! Not Miss Bennet? Do not tell me you offered for Miss Bennet.” This was a greater shock, still.
He could see on his cousin’s face that this was exactly what had happened. “Could you not tell that she disliked you?”
Darcy shook his head and wiped the back of his hand across his cheek.
“I thought… I believed, I really believed, that she was well-disposed towards me.”
“But Darcy, you have scarcely said two words to her all the time we have been visiting. And this has not furthered your case.”
Darcy winced. “I have been walking with her in the grove most days. I have made a great effort to be pleasing. I asked about her family and her wishes for the future… She even responded to me.”
Richard rubbed his eyes. “Did she respond similarly to her replies to your terse comments whilst we visited the parsonage, with silence broken by the occasional pointed barb?”
Darcy turned a quizzical gaze at his cousin. “Why, of course. How else should she answer?”
“And you could not see that she was forcing herself to be polite?”
“No! Surely she enjoyed our badinage. Why, even back in the autumn, in Hertfordshire, she was a worthy opponent. She—”
This was awful!
“Oh no! Not she! Why did you not tell me? If I only had known…”
“Richard?”
How could he have missed this? The idea that it was Miss Bennet who had captured his cousin’s attention had crossed his mind so often, and each time he had considered the notion and discarded it.
He was relying entirely upon his cousin’s own account of the time, forgetting all the while how blind Darcy could be at times to the unspoken meanings of conversation.
Why, he recalled a comment that Darcy himself had made just the other night, after dinner at Easter.
I certainly have not the talent which some people possess of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.
I cannot catch their tone of conversation… Oh, how blind he had been!
“This is why you were asking me about marriage. You were planning to speak to Miss Bennet all along. Oh, why did you not ask me? Why did you not tell me it was she whom you admired in Hertfordshire? I might have saved you a great deal of grief.”
The pain in Darcy’s face gave way to vexation. “Richard, what have you done?”
“I really believed this was a different lady than the one you loved in the autumn, else I would never have said those things to her. I knew you had come to like her, and I thought you might eventually speak… But I had no idea! I thought I was furthering your ends by relating to her what a good friend you have been to Bingley. I told her…” Richard took a breath to gird himself for this confession.
“I told her of your success in separating Bingley from his lady, whom I now believe is her sister. I am correct. I see it in your glare.” He screwed his eyes closed and breathed out hard.
“Richard!” He heard Darcy’s chair shift on the floor and fully expected to feel his cousin’s fist land on his jaw. He would deserve it. It was with a great deal of relief that he heard, instead, his cousin’s footsteps move towards the window.
“Shall I speak to her?” He cracked his eyes open.
Darcy glowered. “You have caused enough damage. Leave me. I must speak to her somehow. Will she receive me again? No. Of course not. I would be surprised if I am allowed into the parsonage.”
“I can write her a note…”
“No. But I shall write to her. Bring me some paper and then leave me. If she will not have me, at least I can beg her forgiveness over some of my worst offenses, in her eyes. Did you know she even blamed me of mistreating Wickham? Wickham! I must set things to rights. Go—bring me paper.” He had spoken without breathing, and his eyes were growing red again.
Richard rushed from the room to do his cousin’s bidding and then retired to his own rooms. He tried to sleep, but far, far late into the night he heard noises from Darcy’s room, suggesting that the wretched soul was still up at his task. Tomorrow would be a difficult day for everybody, he surmised.
Darcy was not at the breakfast table the next morning, nor was he in his room, or in Lighton’s offices. When he did appear, he was in full regulation of his demeanour and resolved in visage.
“We leave on the morrow after breakfast,” he announced without explanation, before disappearing to his rooms, where he stayed for the remainder of the day.
Richard ordered his man to pack his trunks in preparation for the return to London and then took himself out of the house again.
He must visit the parsonage to take his leave of Mrs Collins and Miss Bennet.
Only Mrs Collins and her sister were present.
The parson was in the village on church business, and Miss Bennet had not been at home since early in the morning.
Darcy, it transpired, had already been and departed.
“Elizabeth often takes her walks immediately after breakfast, when I am setting about the household affairs for the day,” Mrs Collins explained, “but she is usually gone no more than an hour or perhaps two. But I have not seen her these three hours or more. I do not worry, for she does sometimes wander further than she thinks. Will you sit a while and take tea?”
This Richard did. He very much wished to talk to the young woman, to try to excuse his cousin if at all possible, and to apologise for his terrible gaffe the previous day.
He sat in the small morning room, exhausting his supply of small talk and asking questions, for which answers he did not care, until nearly an hour had passed.
He could not importune the lady of the house any longer, for surely she had her own matters to attend to, and he did need to return to Rosings to oversee his packing.