Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Darcy returned from a bracing ride and, after taking care of his spirited horse himself, went to the garden to see if Miss Bennet and his sister were there.
The garden was empty, but when he walked around the house, he heard his maid talking with Cook and a farmer who had taken an interest in Hannah.
They were standing near the kitchen door, maligning his family’s good name.
“The master has no wife with him,” Hannah said, “but only a woman who passes for his sister.”
“She is his sister! They have the same nose,” his cook cried. “He acts more like a father than a lover. If he was her lover, then he has no idea how to please a woman worthy of being pleased. Now save your breath to cool your porridge!”
“Don’t be a spoilsport! What do you suspect of Miss Darcy?”
“You will hear no tales from me, not when the master pays me what he does.”
“You have been in the house longer than I. I have been only two months. Secret lovers? Natural children? She is too quiet, I say!”
Darcy rounded the corner and stood behind Hannah.
The farmer cleared his throat, touched his hat, and was gone before she turned around and blanched.
Cook chuckled to herself and returned to the kitchen while he severed Hannah’s employment without reference, paid her through the end of the quarter while she cried, and then had his man take her to the mail coach back to her mother’s.
Hopefully her wages and her ticket home thirty miles away will be enough to ensure no whispers about Georgiana move abroad.
He had hoped high wages and hiring servants from another county would prevent gossip about the Darcys or about his sister’s condition.
His cook and his man were content, but this was the second maid that could not keep silent.
Although, now that Georgiana had lost her child, the fear of gossiping servants was not as great.
A housekeeper and possibly a nurse could now be had without as much risk.
Still, the more servants in the house, the greater the threat of exposure.
Georgiana’s favourite Pleyel piece was coming from the little parlour that passed for his best drawing room, but when Darcy entered, he found only Miss Bennet.
Although she had called on his sister every day since their walk to Meryton a week ago, he had spoken to her little since the encounter with her rude family.
“You do not mind that I enjoy your instrument? Mary rarely allows me to play, and your sister wished to rest after we came inside.”
“You are in nobody’s way.” He wished her good health and would have left had she not called to him.
“Your sister said she was poorly last night.”
“Yes, I worry Mr Jones’s physic is no longer strong enough. I might need Mr Lynn to prescribe her something else. While Georgiana seems to have energy during the day and is in good spirits, she coughs more at night.”
“It is a shame that I cannot be with her in the evenings to ease her or distract her.”
He bowed his head, and hoped Miss Bennet would resume her song.
He missed hearing music at home, such a home as it was.
Instead, she rose and, in a hurried manner, enquired after his health.
He answered civilly, while Miss Bennet sat across from him for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room.
She rose and sat so often he decided to stay sitting until she stopped.
Darcy was surprised but said not a word.
Miss Bennet is not typically nervous or awkward.
“Mr Darcy, I struggle to ask the question . . . but you must allow me to ask you to do me the honour of marrying me.”
He was too stunned to entreat an explanation. Did a woman just propose to me? He stood and the words to demand that she get out of his house were half spoken when she interrupted him.
“I will explain to you instantly all that makes me urge you in this manner.”
“No sensible man in all of England would listen to you!”
“For your sister’s sake, will you hear me?”
He had never before been so discomposed in his life.
She must have taken his bewildered silence as leave, and she came toward him in an agitated manner.
He feared Miss Bennet might attempt to embrace him.
Darcy stepped away, holding up his hand to halt her, but she was only handing him a sheet of paper, which he instinctively took.
“This is from Mr Jones, in regard to my heart. You have the unfortunate distinction of having witnessed my paroxysms of heart pain, and Mr Jones is certain they will continue and that no rest or remedy is available.” Her lip quivered and she blinked twice before taking a deep breath.
“Mr Darcy, I will be dead by the end of the summer.”
In spite of her wilfulness and bizarre question, he was not insensible to her pain and distress. “Is it certain?”
“I have long suspected something was wrong, and you know that a physician often knows no more than a village apothecary. My father died of the same ailment, and Mr Jones has examined me. You have seen how intense, how painful, how sudden these paroxysms are. There is no denying they have been intensifying and will continue to do so until they carry me off just as they did my father.”
Having seen what she suffered, to learn that it would ultimately kill her did not surprise him.
“I am exceedingly sorry,” he said softly, and Darcy meant it truly.
Miss Bennet struggled for the appearance of composure before quietly thanking him.
He handed her the letter from the apothecary and asked, “Why would you wish to marry a stranger in the time left to you?” Had her heart ailment addled her mind?
“When my father died—” She hung her head and blinked. “He did not lay by an annual sum for the provision of his children. I am a poor dependent left to the charity of uncles and brothers-in-law, with only a thousand pounds on the death of my mother, and she will outlive me.”
As she pronounced these words, Darcy felt himself change colour.
To be desired for his wealth had always been an insulting plague on his happiness.
He had been shamelessly pursued for his fortune by all manner of women since he reached his majority, but he had not thought anyone would set their cap on him while living a secret, retired life. “You wish to be preserved from want!”
“No, not from want, from tedium. Preserved from anonymity and obscurity! I do not wish to be absorbed into a life ruled by my sisters’ domesticity and my nephews’ care.”
“You believe that marriage is the only end and aim to a woman’s life? It may be the only way women have to raise themselves in the world, but I had never thought you mercenary. You are desperate to raise your status before you die, and you see me as the means by which to do it!”
“I hardly think a gentleman who leases a four-bedroom cottage and who does not keep a carriage is so high above me, Mr Darcy.” He exhaled loudly, but Miss Bennet spared him from speaking out of turn.
“How many believe a woman’s purpose is to increase and multiply?
If a man has no need of a wife or heir, a poor unmarried woman is a pitiable object.
I do not want to be pitied or begrudged by everyone for the remainder of my short life. ”
He caught her words with more surprise than resentment. He did pity her situation but could not tell her so now. “Surely your family would not continue to begrudge you small comforts, given your fatal condition?”
“I have not told them, and I do not intend to, and you insult me by presuming I am thinking of new gowns or trinkets. Girls are taught to seem and appear, not to think and do. I want a little dignity and independence before I die.”
“What could you think and do as Mrs Darcy that you could not do as Miss Bennet?”
She was silent for a long moment. “I will love and care for your sister as long as I am able. That might, in fact, be the greatest blessing bestowed upon me. You are more her father than brother, and I can do for Georgiana what you cannot: be a friend, confidante, nurse. She and I both need not be lonely.”
Darcy’s astonishment was beyond expression.
She admired his sister so much that she wished to devote herself to her comfort before she herself died?
It was still a damned foolish reason to marry him.
“When a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion he wants, one to comfort and counsel him, to soothe his sorrows and educate his children, not a nurse for his wasting sister. We argue more often than we agree, and I suspect you might be the last woman to make me happy.”
“But I can make Georgiana happy, and Mr Jones said she ought to be kept cheerful. I can be your helpmeet and friend, and when I am dead, you can pretend to mourn me for as long as you need to avoid your family’s demands to marry a cousin you do not like.”
Darcy crossed the room to lean against the mantelpiece; he needed more distance between them.
“Why do you propose to marry me? Why not approach a bachelor in the neighbourhood, some longstanding friend? As his wife, you could be free from Longbourn to come here and see my sister as often as you pleased.”
“Oh yes, such a man often comes my way! The eldest sons of men of fortune fall at my feet. They are always the particular friend of my nearest relations and belonging to my own county.” Her expression darkened.
“And that man would be certain to not oppress me and would allow me to be with your sister, who has an uncertain reputation, whenever I please, rather than always tend to his home and needs.”
His face must have expressed the incredulity he felt, and she continued, although Darcy was not at all certain that he wanted her to. “You are a good sort of man. Georgiana confessed the Ramsgate affair, all of it.”