Chapter 19
ELIZABETH
Lydia was married two days later, after my father gave his consent and the license was issued.
The ceremony was brief, discreet, and devoid of all the boisterous joy she had imagined. Yet she smiled like a woman who had just won a victory over the world. Wickham played the loving husband skillfully enough to deceive the clergyman, but not those who now knew his true worth.
I stood beside Lydia as she spoke her vows.
I thought of my own.
I had married Fitzwilliam without loving him.
Wickham was marrying my sister without loving anything but the money his consent had secured.
The comparison turned my stomach, but I rejected it forcefully.
My marriage had begun in error, yet it had grown each day through the freedom my husband restored to me.
Nothing between us resembled the cold bargain struck the day before.
After the ceremony, Lydia took my hands.
“Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll be leaving for the North soon. Wickham says his new regiment is quite distinguished. You’ll come visit us, won’t you?”
I held her close.
“Write to me often.”
“Of course. And tell Mama I’m the first of us to bring a uniform into the family.”
“You’re not the one wearing the uniform.”
“My husband wears it. It’s almost the same thing.”
She walked away before I could find a response.
Fitzwilliam stood apart, near my uncle. He looked unwell. His features were drawn, dark circles under his eyes. Since our argument the day before, we had exchanged only the barest words.
I loved him.
He dreaded believing me before I even spoke.
His caution wounded me because it stemmed from what I had shown him since Hunsford: hesitant feelings, consent given too hastily, and since Lydia’s rescue, immense gratitude. I needed to tell him the truth in a moment that could not be mistaken for payment.
My uncle Gardiner unwittingly provided the rest of the reasons to love him.
That evening, he asked to speak with me privately. My aunt accompanied him.
“Your husband wishes me to keep silent,” he began. “I will not obey him entirely.”
“What happened?”
They explained the debts, the commission, the income established for Lydia, the money Wickham had demanded. My uncle did not mention Georgiana, but I understood that an additional threat must have been used. Fitzwilliam had paid a considerable sum and refused any reimbursement.
“He claims he had a responsibility because of Wickham,” my uncle said. “That’s true to some extent. But no man searches for five days without sleep over an abstract responsibility.”
My aunt smiled gently.
“He did it for you.”
I closed my eyes.
“I know.”
“Then tell him,” she advised.
“He doesn’t want to hear it.”
“Men often say that when they’re afraid of hearing exactly what they hope for.”
I returned to the small parlor with the firm intention of speaking.
I learned later that Lady Catherine had been staying with relations in London. Mr Collins, informed by my mother with a speed that surprised no one, had relayed to her the account of the scandal, Fitzwilliam’s intervention, and the hasty marriage.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was waiting for me there.
She stood near the fireplace with the ease of a proprietor. Her cane rested against her chair. Two servants had no doubt tried to explain that we were not receiving visitors; they had failed, as had many before them.
“Mrs Darcy,” she said.
Her gaze traveled over my simple black dress, then my face, with methodical disapproval.
“Lady Catherine.”
“Where is my nephew?”
“With his man of business.”
“Settling the consequences of your sister’s transgressions, no doubt.”
I took a seat without inviting her to do so.
“Lydia is married. There will be no public scandal.”
“So you believe a hasty ceremony erases the nature of a family?”
“No. No more than a title erases rudeness.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You still have that insolence Darcy mistook for wit.”
“And you still have that bluntness you mistake for a privilege.”
She gripped the handle of her cane.
“My nephew has sacrificed his rank, his sister’s peace, and now a fortune for an unworthy alliance.
Your mother parades her triumph. Your youngest sister behaves like an adventuress.
Your father abandons his responsibilities.
And you settle yourself at Pemberley convinced that a pair of bright eyes is enough to make you worthy of being its mistress. ”
Each accusation held a grain of truth. Once, I would have answered with irony. This time, I thought of Fitzwilliam asleep in my lap, of his hands tying the belt of my dressing gown to protect me from his own impatience, of his face when he had promised to find Lydia.
“I have never claimed my family was beyond reproach.”
“Yet you allowed Darcy to bind it to his own.”
“He asked me to marry him.”
“And you recognized the opportunity.”
Her words struck at the very fear I had seen in Fitzwilliam’s refusal to hear me the day before.
I stood.
“I misjudged him when I accepted his proposal. I believed his love could be enough at the start of a marriage where mine was absent.”
Lady Catherine remained motionless.
I had spoken the truth to the last person I would have wished to confide in. Yet a strange freedom filled me.
“So you admit you accepted a man you did not love because his advantages outweighed your scruples,” she declared with satisfaction.
“I admit I accepted a man I barely knew too quickly. I never considered him merely as an income.”
“The distinction does you little credit. Darcy has been exploited by a family who knew perfectly well what they stood to gain.”
“He never asked me to deny who I was or to despise my own family. He is not blind to my faults.”
My voice trembled, not with fear, but with the force of what I was finally about to say.
“He knows my faults, my pride, my prejudices, and my family. He knows I misjudged him and that my affection did not follow his with the same swiftness. Yet he has never humiliated me or forced me to offer what he hoped for. He gave me freedom in a marriage where he could have demanded obedience. He protected my sister, not to purchase my gratitude, but because he cannot bear to see me suffer. And if you have come to tell me that my birth makes me unworthy of his love, you have come to the wrong house.”
Lady Catherine gave a cold smile.
“At last, a reasonable word.”
“But you will not make me believe I should give him up for that reason.”
“Give him up? You are married. The damage is done.”
“Then there is nothing for you to gain here.”
She drew herself up.
“I can make you understand that a woman of your birth will never be his equal.”
“His fortune and his rank exceed mine. They do not determine our worth.”
She looked surprised.
“Fitzwilliam is more constant than I am and more courageous when he loves. I remind him, for my part, that certainty is not always reason. We each have much to learn from the other. That is the equality that matters in our marriage.”
A movement near the door caught my attention.
Fitzwilliam stood in the doorway. He had heard enough to understand what I was defending, but not yet the words I had never managed to give him.
His face remained impassive. His eyes, however, asked me to choose.
Lady Catherine followed my gaze.
“Darcy. You arrive in time to witness the consequences of your folly.”
I did not take my eyes from my husband.
“I am his wife,” I said.
Then I finally crossed the distance I had maintained between us.
“And I love him.”
The words filled the drawing room. They felt like neither a debt nor an expression of gratitude. I had spoken them knowing he heard them.
Fitzwilliam did not move. Yet the hope that crossed his gaze made me forget even his aunt’s presence.
Lady Catherine seized her cane.
“You permit her to speak of you with such familiarity?”
He entered and bowed to her with glacial correctness.
“My wife received you with more patience than I would have shown. Your carriage will be waiting in five minutes.”
“You are turning me out of this house?”
“I am asking you to leave ours.”
Our house.
Lady Catherine protested, threatened, invoked her deceased sister and the future of Pemberley. Fitzwilliam made no reply. He rang, sent for his secretary, and waited until his aunt understood that the discussion was over.
When she had left, silence fell.
I remained near the fireplace.
Fitzwilliam stood on the other side of the drawing room.
“You heard,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Which part?”
“Enough.”
The word hung between us.
In his eyes, there was neither triumph nor certainty.
There was hope.
And a fear almost equal to my own.