Chapter Seventeen
The dispatch arrived at Netherfield while the household was still at breakfast.
A rider in army livery; a sealed packet bearing his name in a hand he recognised. Fitzwilliam accepted it from the footman with an expression that gave nothing away, excused himself from the table, and went upstairs.
He had known it was coming, of course. He had given General Hazlett his direction before leaving Brighton precisely because he had known it was coming. But knowing a thing and holding it in your hands were, he had found, two rather different experiences.
He sat by the window of his room for something under an hour, reading the orders twice and then setting them aside and looking out at the Hertfordshire countryside in its bright summer colours, which was pleasant enough and which he did not see at all.
He went through the arithmetic he had already gone through a dozen times; the dates, the distance to Plymouth, the margin available to him.
The margin was thin. A few days’ grace had been granted because of his upcoming wedding, which was something.
Not very much, but something. He would get no more even if he asked; Hazlett was clear about that.
He thought about Lydia.
Then he put the orders in the inside pocket of his coat, straightened his cuffs, and went downstairs.
Darcy was in the entrance hall, hat already in hand, displaying all the outward attitude of a man with no particular intention and the inward restlessness of one with a very particular intention indeed. He looked up when Fitzwilliam appeared on the stair.
“Too early to call at Longbourn?” Fitzwilliam enquired, having observed the way his cousin spent the previous evening watching Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Darcy had ceased to be covert about his attention, which spoke volumes about his imminent intentions.
“It is half past nine,” Darcy said, with some dignity.
“Then yes. Far too early.” Fitzwilliam reached the bottom of the stair and considered his cousin. “Come and play billiards.”
They had the billiards room to themselves for the better part of an hour. Fitzwilliam played badly, which was unlike him, and Darcy played quietly and waited, which was entirely like him. The balls clicked against each other in the morning silence.
“I have orders,” Fitzwilliam said, lining up a shot.
Darcy looked at him steadily.
“I knew they were coming,” Fitzwilliam continued, making his shot without seeing it.
“I was advised before leaving Brighton, but granted as much leave as possible due to the circumstances. But the orders that arrived this morning dictate that I must be in Plymouth at the end of the month. There is a ship.”
Darcy set down his cue. He walked to the window and stood there for a moment looking out at Netherfield’s grounds.
“America?” he said. It was not an unreasonable assumption, given the port.
“The Canadian theatre, specifically. Hazlett’s regiment.”
Darcy was silent for long enough that Fitzwilliam lined up another shot, missed it completely, and straightened.
“Does Lydia know?” Darcy asked.
“Not yet. I will tell her later. Right now I am telling you.”
Darcy turned from the window. He was doing the thing he always did when he had something to say that he was not yet saying; his jaw set, his expression settling into the careful neutrality that the world generally mistook for arrogance and Fitzwilliam recognised as thought.
“You could have told me earlier,” Darcy said at last, very evenly.
“Yes.”
“You chose not to.”
“I chose to wait until I had complete and specific information.” Fitzwilliam met his cousin’s gaze. “What was to be gained by telling you earlier? You would have worried, and been unable to do anything useful about it, and we had rather more pressing matters to manage.”
Darcy made a sound that was not precisely agreement. He came away from the window and retrieved his cue, though he did not play, only held it. Fitzwilliam had learned Darcy’s silences fairly well, and this one had the texture of a man working himself up to saying something he found difficult.
“Fitzwilliam,” Darcy said.
“If you are about to tell me to take care of myself,” Fitzwilliam said, “I would be grateful if you could find a way to do so without making it sound like a military briefing.”
A very faint, very dry smile crossed Darcy’s face. “I was not going to say anything of the sort.”
“Good.”
“I was going to say…” Darcy paused again. “She is going to take it well, you know. Whatever face she puts on it.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him.
“She has more resolution than she is given credit for,” Darcy said. “Than she gives herself credit for.” He set the cue down again. “I only mean that you need not brace yourself for hysterics.”
“I know.” Fitzwilliam had not been bracing himself for hysterics.
He had been bracing himself for the opposite; for Lydia holding herself together with every ounce of that iron she kept hidden under the brown curls and the bright chatter, and for the cost of it, which he would see and not be able to address. “I know.”
Another silence, easier than the first.
“She will need people around her,” Fitzwilliam said. “While I am away. Your offer, when you made it…”
“It was not an offer. It stands as a fact.” Darcy’s tone did not invite debate. “Lydia will have a home at Pemberley whenever she wishes it. Georgiana will like her, I think, once she knows her properly.” He looked at his cousin steadily. “And I give you my word, Richard. I will keep her safe.”
The use of his Christian name was so uncharacteristic that Fitzwilliam found he had nothing adequate to say in return. He picked up his cue, discovered he could not remember whose shot it was, and set it back down.
“Thank you,” he said, which was insufficient, but Darcy only nodded once, as a man does for whom the matter was settled and required no further discussion.
A silence. Then Darcy said, with the careful neutrality he deployed when he was about to say something he considered significant: “I intend to speak to Miss Elizabeth. Soon. Once this business of the wedding is settled.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him.
“My previous attempt at Hunsford was not a success,” Darcy said, not meeting his eyes.
“You proposed to Elizabeth Bennet at Hunsford,” Fitzwilliam said, arriving at this conclusion with considerable interest, “and she turned you down.”
“She did.”
This was absolutely fascinating information, and one day Fitzwilliam would try to get the entire story out of his cousin, but he suspected Darcy would need to be plied with a great deal of brandy in order to reveal anything.
“And you intend to try again,” was all Fitzwilliam said at the present time.
“I do.” Darcy’s jaw set in the way that meant the subject was not open for debate, only for information-sharing. “I wanted you to know. That I hope there will be a Mrs Darcy at Pemberley very soon, and one with whom Lydia will always be welcome as family, because she will be family.”
Fitzwilliam thought about Elizabeth Bennet, about the dry intelligence of her and the warmth underneath it, about the way she had handled Lady Catherine and the way she had handled Lydia and the way she sometimes looked at his cousin when she thought nobody was watching.
He thought about the way Darcy had been since he arrived in Brighton escorting Elizabeth; decisive, purposeful, the best version of himself.
“She’ll say yes,” he said.
Darcy looked at him.
“This time,” Fitzwilliam amended. “Whatever your previous difficulties, whatever you said at Hunsford; you are not the same man who said it. And she will see that.”
Darcy was quiet for a moment. “I hope so,” he said, which for Darcy was a significant admission.
“She will,” Fitzwilliam said. “And Pemberley will suit her extremely well.” He picked up his cue again. “I am glad of it, Darcy. Genuinely glad.”
They returned to the game. Fitzwilliam played rather better after that, comforted that Elizabeth would make Lydia’s happiness and welfare a priority not for his sake, but for her sister’s.
He rode to Longbourn with Darcy and Bingley, watching with amusement as the other two deftly peeled off the Bennet sisters who were the object of their affections and disappeared with them into the gardens.
He had to endure a little more fussing from Mrs Bennet, but perhaps she sensed his mood, because when he quietly requested a short private interview, Mrs Bennet gave him a penetrating look and nodded.
“I shall just attend to some matters in the stillroom. Mary, Kitty, attend me.”
And then the small morning room was empty except for himself and Lydia, sitting very straight in a chair by the window.
She gave him a small, composed smile as the door closed behind her mother and sisters.
She was wearing a white morning gown with a green sash and she had done something with her hair that made her look rather older than usual, and he thought, not for the first time, that she had in the last weeks made some considerable leap that he had not anticipated and did not fully understand as yet.
He sat down across from her, which was perhaps not the most correct arrangement given they were not yet married, but the sofa was too far away and would have felt absurd, and he did not want to remain standing and loom over her.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “I am sorry I did not tell you sooner. I should have.”
Her composure held, but she went very still.
He told her about the orders. He kept it plain and factual, as he did with all difficult intelligence, and he watched her face as he spoke.
She listened without interrupting, which was itself remarkable.
Her hands were folded in her lap. He could see, from the slight whitening of her knuckles, what the stillness was costing.
“When do you leave?” she said, when he had finished.
“The twenty-third, two days after the wedding. I must be in Plymouth by the end of the month.”