After the Storm #2
She regretted allowing herself to think of his letter, for certain other parts of it soon obtruded on her memory also.
In particular, its revelations of Mr Wickham’s true character, which were almost too appalling to allow, given how blithely she had permitted him to court her vanity and colour her opinions.
“Please do not make me go,” she heard Maria say. “His plays are all high Dutch to me.”
“Of course we shall not make you go, my dear,” said Mrs Gardiner.
“I should be happy to stay here and keep you company,” Jane offered. “I have never much cared for Shakespeare either, particularly the tragedies. They are too gloomy for my liking.”
“And you, Lizzy?” Mr Gardiner enquired. “Can we tempt you with a little Romeo and Juliet?”
“I should be delighted,” she replied, drawn to the prospect of an evening passed in contemplation of anybody’s gloom but her own. How, after all, was she ever to reconcile such an intense dislike of Mr Darcy with such remorse for misjudging him?
“Excellent! It is settled then. Have you any other plans, ladies?”
The failure was assuredly not hers, for Mr Darcy was the most contrary creature she had ever met. On the one hand, he was unrepentantly meddlesome, whilst on the other, unfailingly loyal.
“I promised Mrs Featherstone we would all visit,” Mrs Gardiner said.
He boasted of consequence and duty yet, by his own admission, was motivated by sensibility.
“I should like to go shopping,” said Maria. “Lady Catherine said, if I mentioned her name at the drapers on Bond Street, I would be attended to!”
“Then we absolutely must go,” Jane replied. “I have no plans other than to steal as much of Lizzy’s time as I can.”
Dear Jane! How perverse that Mr Darcy should have treated her so cruelly whilst all gallantry in defence of his sister!
“I cannot imagine you will find any complaint,” Mr Gardiner replied amiably. “Though before you begin, might I persuade you, Lizzy, to play the pianoforte for us?”
Most contrary of all, she thought, was that he had disdained her situation, connections and looks—then declared his passionate admiration and love!
“Go to bed, Lizzy,” her aunt said softly, closer by than she had been a moment ago.
Elizabeth looked up, struggling to disengage herself from her reflections. Her aunt’s frown and, across the room, Jane’s concerned expression came into focus. Elizabeth wrinkled her nose in defeat. “Pardon me. I am a hopeless bore this evening.”
Everybody politely assured her otherwise, though no one objected when she excused herself to bed.
Tuesday 21 April 1812, London
“Let me understand you, Bingley. This cousin of yours has inherited land in Nova Scotia?”
Bingley squinted at his friend Tindale and nodded. The whole room wobbled. He stopped nodding.
“And he has asked you to build him something on it?”
One brief nod—still too much movement.
“Why can he not build something himself?”
“He has no money.”
“Ah, and you have no land. I begin to comprehend why you are tempted.”
Bingley tried, in his best approximation of sobriety, to explain that he was not at all tempted. “In any case,” he concluded, “it is too blasted far away.”
“’Tis about to be in the middle of a blasted war,” said his brother, Hurst, wafting his drink about in a drunken gesture of distance.
“I’ll wager they’ll not see a bit of fighting that far north,” said another of the dinner guests from the far end of the table.
“That is a gamble I should not like to make,” Tindale countered. “But then, we all know how you prefer your odds, Wrenshaw.”
“The material question,” their host, Verney, asserted, “is what potential has the land? I could endure a good deal of unrest if my house were built on a lode of gold.”
“He does not need to leave the country to invest in the land,” somebody argued. Bingley had given up attempting to fathom who said what.
“Quite right! He could stay here and invest in mine!”
“You cannot have much land left, Wrenshaw. Did you not recently sell half your estate to Mr Darcy?”
“Not quite half. Only three hundred acres.”
“Three hundred acres and still you are in deep? What the devil did you wager this time, man?”
Wrenshaw mumbled something about a horse and a duchess, whereupon Bingley gave up all attempts to follow the conversation. His legs felt heavy, and he amused himself by wriggling his toes in his shoes to see whether he still could.
“Here is a wager you can afford, Wrenshaw,” Verney shouted. “Two pounds to the man who can guess which woman has put that stupid grin on Bingley’s face.”
Bingley laughed for show, though his cheer evaporated at the mention of women.
“’Tis not Miss Rivers is it, old boy?” Tindale said with a wink.
“No,” Bingley replied, reflecting briefly upon what he had always considered to be two of Miss Rivers’ best virtues. “I have long been reconciled to never becoming better acquainted with those. Just as I am resigned to the loss of Miss Bennet.” He sighed morosely.
“Miss Bennet? Who—”
“For all our sakes, do not ask, it will only encourage him!” Hurst lurched to his feet, splashing brandy down his waistcoat, and hauled Bingley from his chair by the elbow. “Come, you are too foxed by half to be brooding over women.”
Bingley was also, it transpired, too foxed to object, and he mumbled his thanks to Verney as Hurst bundled him towards the front door.
In the time it took him to correctly align all the fingers of his hands with those of his gloves, their carriage had been summoned, and the two gentlemen were homeward bound.
“I must say,” said Hurst a short while into the journey, “notwithstanding your professed heartbreak, you seem to be rallying remarkably well.”
“I shall not forget her, Hurst. Miss Bennet is an angel.”
“So you keep saying. Indeed, I cannot altogether account for your giving her up.”
“She did not love me.”
“A man with your fortune does not require a woman to love him.”
“Darcy did not agree. He said her sincere regard could be the only inducement to such an imprudent match.”
“That only goes to show just how deuced imprudent a match he considered it!”
“But Dar—”
“Cease hiding behind the Titan and admit it. You agreed with him.”
“I did?”
“God’s teeth man, he hardly dragged you away kicking and screaming. Besides, I do believe your spirits are more recovered than you allow. Remember, I witnessed your dance with Miss Aston Tuesday last.” He waggled his eyebrows salaciously.
Bingley leant forward. “I am in love, and I shall not be convinced otherwise by you, my sisters, Darcy, Miss Aston, or anybody else!” He poked a forefinger into Hurst’s chest with each point.
“Far be it from me to disabuse you of it. God knows you are forever in love with somebody. Only it does seem this particular fascination is beginning to lose its power.”
Bingley was forcibly returned to his seat when the carriage came to an abrupt halt outside his front door. There he remained, slumped dejectedly, shaking his head. “I swear I am as in love with Miss Bennet as ever I was.”
Hurst chuckled quietly. “That I do not doubt, my friend.”
Wednesday 22 April 1812, London
Darcy put his name to the last of the documents his attorney had brought and flicked the ink well shut. “Any other matters?” Already, he felt the tug of other thoughts and struggled prodigiously to ignore them whilst he concluded his business.
“Only that the sale of land from Mr Wrenshaw’s estate has completed.” Irving reached across the desk for his papers. “I wonder that he did not wait to sell to Crambourne directly.”
“I understand he was not at liberty to wait for funds.”
Irving looked unsurprised and vaguely disgusted. “He is popular in some circles, I understand, but I have heard several things that have given me reason to think ill of him.”
Only several? Darcy thought bitterly. That gave Wrenshaw the advantage, for Elizabeth had every reason in the world to think ill of him.
“I do not suppose Crambourne was in any haste, either,” Irving went on as he tucked the documents into his pocketbook. “Railways are a patient man’s investment. Though Wrenshaw is the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Um, I said Wrenshaw is the last man in the world whom I would expect to comprehend that…sir.”
Darcy clenched his teeth against an imprecation, immeasurably weary of hearing Elizabeth’s voice and recalling her enmity in every conversation. “Quite.”
“Still,” Irving said with a cautiousness Darcy despised, for it bespoke his own insufferable distraction, “Wrenshaw approached you with the offer, not the reverse. One must suppose he knew what he was about.”
That was just as well, Darcy supposed, for his own recent foray into proposals had met with decidedly less success.
His brief pause must have stretched into a long one, for Irving cleared his throat loudly before announcing his readiness to depart.
Cursing silently, Darcy thanked him for his diligence and personally escorted him out.
Would that have made Elizabeth think him any more gentlemanlike or merely prouder and more unlikeable for having been inattentive in the first place?
“I shall have coffee in my study now, Godfrey,” he instructed the butler, as though coffee were all that was needed to silence the unending echo of her reproofs.
He had barely seated himself back at his desk when there came a knock at the door. He barked an instruction to enter but regretted his tone when his sister stepped into the room. He stood immediately to greet her.
“Pray, excuse the interruption,” she begged. “Godfrey said you were busy, but I simply had to see for myself that you were better.”
Darcy flinched. As a rule, he abhorred disguise of any sort, but he had arrived home from Kent with no inclination to discuss his time there and had feigned illness to avoid her questions. “I am, thank you.”
“I am pleased to hear it. I have been very worried. And now we shall still be able to go to the theatre this evening.”