The Hertfordshire Cliff
Darcy stared out at the distant landscape for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts.
“I have struggled with how to explain my behaviour without making excuses. In the last few months, I even read some of my father’s journals I had never given much attention to and rethought most of my life. I fear, though, that nothing will excuse my abhorrent behaviour.”
“I am here to understand, not judge,” Elizabeth said, then mumbled nearly inaudibly, “I have judged enough already.”
“I will not have you take any blame upon yourself. If you have judged and found me wanting, it is my own doing.”
“That would be true if I had acted properly in every instance, but… may we just say neither of us acted without fault, and it is time to find out what shape our future may or may not take.”
“Very well,” he said with a sigh. “My father, a wealthy and influential man, married the daughter of an earl, which was quite a catch for a mere gentleman—”
“Go on.”
“—and she never let him forget it.”
While the sentiment was hardly shocking based on the descriptions of Lady Catherine’s character, Elizabeth felt something akin to despair at the tone of voice in the statement, which carried far more weight than the words.
“That must have been difficult.”
“I suppose it was, but it is what I have known, and for much of my life, I accepted what I was taught, both in words and deeds. My social position forced me into a society where everyone else thought much the same.”
He looked to see her reaction. She seemed pensive, but at least not angry.
“Early on, I suspect my father was like me, proud of his heritage and satisfied with being a gentleman. Over time, I fear my mother’s attitude, combined with the same thing from her supposedly superior connections, either exhausted him, or he began to agree.”
He sighed pensively. “I cannot say which. Since I was born early in that transformation and he died a few years after my mother, I went through several stages without realising it. He probably loved her in some way, and she may have loved him as well, but it was… different… from what I desire.”
“What do you aspire to?”
“Real love. Respect, kindness, attraction, passion.”
“So do I,” she whispered, almost afraid she might ruin it by saying it aloud.
Darcy smiled to show he heard but continued.
“I suppose the next contributor is that I was always, from an early age, a quiet and serious boy. Children are born very different. I believe they can be changed beyond recognition by circumstances, but their essence is innate. I would wager your father could see the beginnings of the personality differences between you and Jane within weeks or months.”
“Probably,” Elizabeth admitted. “And then he encouraged the parts of me he liked while Mama did the same with Jane.”
“Exactly! I knew from almost my earliest words that I was to be the Master of Pemberley. I was the heir. I was to be respected, but I was also responsible. In that, my father did his duty and more. I am responsible for the prosperity of hundreds or even thousands, and I always took that seriously, particularly since we never had a second son and the cousin that would inherit Pemberley if I died is not exactly prime stock.”
Elizabeth grinned, thinking said cousin might not enjoy being compared to cattle.
“My father was a gregarious man, much like Richard. He was quite satisfied to see my serious side, but that left him in a house with two serious and not especially sociable relatives, and—”
“—and Mr Wickham,” Elizabeth guessed.
“Exactly! He was born everything I was not. He was malevolent, greedy, grasping, and manipulative from an early age—but also very charming, as you well know. His mother had something in common with mine and Miss Bingley—a profound belief that the world owed them. I will obviously not say my mother was evil like Wickham, but the attitude was similar. My father often found my company to be a duty and Wickham’s a pleasure. ”
Elizabeth ground her teeth in frustration. “It sounds like Mr Wickham served as your father’s mistress.”
Darcy shuddered but then chuckled. “There is an apt comparison. Perhaps my father and yours have something in common. Both might not have been willing to give their wives the attention required to make their marriages better.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Among many, a good marriage is not a necessity, or even a priority. I sometimes believe my parents quarrel so much because they perversely enjoy it.”
Darcy chuckled and laughed a little longer, before becoming serious. “I do not aspire to that.”
“That is in your favour,” she said, wondering if it was the first truly kind thing she had ever said to him.
“Thank you,” he said gently, as if he recognised a certain thawing that may be propitious, before continuing.
“My reticence and awkwardness are, I believe, things I was born with. I have tried practising, but no amount of effort can make me a tenth part as charming as Richard or Wickham… or you.”
She smiled but said nothing.
“I recognised that fact sometime after my mother died and compensated by surrounding myself with people who could ease my way. Richard, Bingley, and another dozen or so close confidants. I never had any close female cousins or associates, so tried to practise speaking to my friends’ wives, with limited success. ”
“Perhaps you needed a tutor,” Elizabeth guessed.
“Perhaps I have found one,” he said shyly, and she laughed freely for a moment. He could certainly be bold when he wanted to.
“What else shaped you?” she asked, not willing to discuss any potential future apprenticeship.
“I entered the marriage mart,” he said with the tone he would use to say he was thrown into a French dungeon.
They both sighed, not really needing to exhaust the subject. They had both spent years on both sides of the divide.
“Everywhere I went, every room I entered, every ride I took in the park, the whispers started within minutes. Ten thousand a year, he has already inherited, no in-laws, half of Derbyshire.”
Elizabeth stared down in shame, realising that he was perfectly describing the start of the Meryton assembly. Charlotte had whispered half of those words to her, while Mrs Bennet proclaimed them like a town crier.
“I am seven and twenty. My parents’ relatives started yammering away at me when I was less than fifteen.
Mr Collins’ patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, claimed she and my mother planned a union with her sickly and frankly unpleasant daughter, before my mother’s funeral ended.
One of my uncles tried to execute a compromise with his enceinte daughter when I was but fifteen to her eighteen. ”
Elizabeth gasped.
“If you do the arithmetic, you will see I have had to be on my guard for over a decade. It is exhausting.”
Elizabeth sighed. “It is! Just ask Jane.”
Darcy nodded, not willing to add anything to the assertion that would be obvious to anyone, with the glaring exception of the Fitzwilliam Darcy of the previous autumn.
Both reflected on it for a few minutes, and Elizabeth finally prompted, “I suppose my mistake was assuming all men are rather simple creatures whose character can be sketched in an evening. In fact, you came to that assembly as a complicated specimen.”
“Yes, I suppose so. I was the Master of Pemberley, a man I am quite proud of. When you meet Mrs Reynolds, who has known me since I was four, you will hear her praise me to the skies.”
“I would take the word of an intelligent servant over a Member of Parliament any day,” Elizabeth said with a laugh, though Darcy thought there was far more truth to the assertion than she could know. He was perversely pleased she did not contradict his assumption that she would meet Mrs Reynolds.
He continued grimly. “I was the hunted animal, wounded by a decade of insincere flattery, excessive boasts, blatant promotion, and outright lies. Neither Miss Bingley nor Mrs Bennet is in any way unusual.”
Elizabeth, much to her surprise, found that the foot or more of space between them when they sat down had mysteriously reduced by half.
She boldly reached over to squeeze his forearm in silent commiseration.
She watched and saw the moment when his hand reached to clasp hers, and the brief flash a few seconds later when he decided not to push his luck.
She was uncertain which choice she would have preferred but had to admit he was being prudent.
They were stretching the rules of propriety within an inch of their lives, but there was no point in breaking them entirely.
“I suppose the fourth part was the failed guardian. Wickham’s elopement attempt had been only a few months earlier, Georgiana was not recovering, and to be honest, she was the only truly important thing in my life.
I freely admit that I would have happily given up Pemberley to restore her happiness. ”
“To be honest, I am surprised you left dealing with him to her hand,” Elizabeth said, trying with her tone to indicate she was not condemning.
“I thought about it. Richard could and would have made him disappear one dark night if I allowed it, but I believed, and still do, that doing so at the time might well have broken her. I wish I understood better, but I was doing the best I could at the time, even though I now recognise my many errors.”
“No one is perfect,” she said softly. “The previous week has made me acutely aware of all the follies of my family, and the many failures of Jane and me. Much like you, we should have known better. Our aunt taught us well, but we made little effort to enforce some sense of decorum and propriety on our younger sisters. There is every chance Georgiana saved Lydia or Kitty from ruin.”
“Was that not your parents’ responsibility?” he asked.
“Was it not your father’s responsibility to protect you and Georgiana from Mr Wickham?”
“A fair point,” he said with a laugh.