Chapter 15 #8
“Did Bingley hurt you, love?” He regretted that his question made her smile falter. He could not have cared less that it made Jane gasp. Elizabeth whispered that he had not. His relief was profound, but short-lived, for in the next instant she winced and sucked in her breath. “Are you in pain?”
The man cleared his throat. “Mr Darcy, I presume? It is perfectly normal. Parturition is a many-staged process. You might prefer to step outside for a short time until Mrs Darcy is ready.”
“And who are you, sir?” he demanded, standing to his full height.
“He is the only available apothecary in all of Derbyshire,” Mrs Sinclair piped up. “And it took a good long while to find him. For heaven’s sake, do not scare him off now.”
Elizabeth huffed a tired little laugh and reached for Darcy’s hand. “Do not go too far.”
“No fear of that, woman. I shall never go far from you again. Every time I do, you die.”
Bingley had never given much thought to how he would meet his maker. Now the moment was upon him, the only uncertainty remaining was at whose hands it would be, for there presently seemed every chance Colonel Fitzwilliam might beat Darcy to it.
He sat as still as he could, mostly so as not to further aggravate his glowering sentry but also to minimise his discomfort.
His throat and head were bruised from being flung against the wall, and he thought his arm might be broken from being hauled to his feet and manhandled into this antechamber.
His ribs were almost definitely cracked from the blows Fitzwilliam had already dealt him, and his heart was broken for Elizabeth.
The door banged open. His innards liquefied. Darcy completely filled the aperture. The turn of his countenance was awful.
“Darcy,” Fitzwilliam said, coming to his feet and putting a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I am truly sorry—”
“No need,” Darcy interrupted, never taking his eyes off Bingley. “Elizabeth is well. A little tired after delivering my son but in fine health.”
Elizabeth was not dead! Bingley breathed a vast sigh of relief then wished profoundly that he had not. Both men puffed up even further with affront and surged forward to loom over him.
“I am this close to running you through,” Fitzwilliam growled, holding his finger and thumb half an inch apart to demonstrate Bingley’s precarious mortality. “You have no right to be relieved. She is not yours!”
“I should be relieved under any circumstances at such happy news,” Bingley mumbled.
Darcy’s lip curled contemptuously. “Would you leave us, Fitzwilliam?”
It was decided then; the Titan would be his executioner. The door closed behind the colonel. Bingley flinched when Darcy moved, but he came no closer, only turned his back and stalked to the window. There he remained, ominously still.
Unsure of what exactly he was presumed guilty, Bingley thought it safest to say nothing at first. Yet, the longer Darcy remained silent, the more anxious he grew until he could stand it no more. “Darcy, I—”
“How long?”
“Pardon?”
“How long have you been planning to take her from me?”
“That is not how it was.”
“No? Then pray, explain this!” He whirled around and slammed his hand on a nearby table.
Bingley’s ribs protested when he leant sideways to read the crumpled letter Darcy had slapped down, but that was nothing to the horror that settled in his stomach as it dawned on him what the letter contained.
Imprecise memories floated back—of a bawdy tavern song, an argument with Louisa, and an instruction to Peabody to post the letter professing his love for Elizabeth to the man she would go on to wed.
“Do you still deny you have admired her since before I even returned to Hertfordshire?”
“Well, it—”
Darcy’s hands landed on the arms of Bingley’s chair, bringing their faces nose-to-nose. “I ask you again. How long have you been planning to take her from me?”
“No time at all, for I did not plan it!” he answered, scraping his chair backwards and scrambling out of it.
“Of all the depraved, incestuous schemes,” Darcy snarled, circling on the spot to follow his progress. “To make off with your wife’s expectant sister! How did you ever think such a plan would succeed?”
“I swear to you. I never planned it!” He edged away along the wall. “It was but a stupid suggestion made on the impulse of the moment!”
“Was it? Then how is it that my cousin’s wife received a letter from Jane begging her to thwart your plan to take Elizabeth away?”
Bingley banged his head against a wall sconce. “Ow!” He ducked under it. “I have no idea!”
“Enough with your damned lies!” The manner in which Darcy clenched and unclenched his fists was frankly terrifying.
“I am not lying! I truly cannot explain it. No, wait—it is possible that Jane wrote to her about Amel—” He stopped but not soon enough.
“About what?” Darcy demanded in a tone that brooked no objection.
Bingley swallowed—or tried to. Curse his reckless tongue! “Amelia.”
“Damn it, I am in no humour for equivocation, Bingley! Who the bloody hell is Amelia?”
“She was a maid at Netherfield.” He prayed to God Darcy would not recall which maid. “I, er…we had a dalliance of sorts. It was reprehensible, I know. I would never usually…with the…only she was more than commonly willing—most determined, in fact.”
“Jane’s letter mentioned a woman with child.”
“Er, yes. There was that small complication. I only found out about that after arriving home from my wedding tour. She came to the house while we were away. But I dealt with it! Well, I thought I had. I was not aware anybody else knew. Indeed, it might never have been discovered had I not decided to send her away, but Lizzy gave me hope that Jane might yet love me, and I thought, to stand a chance of keeping it that way, it would be best to ensure that she never found out. So I wrote to Amelia and…offered to send her…to…”
He ran out of words. He rather wished he had run out of them sooner. The force of Darcy’s glare had begun to actually hurt. His tone, when he spoke, was glacial.
“You laid with the maid who looked like Elizabeth.”
It was a statement, not a question. He remembered.
Oh God! A bead of sweat trickled between Bingley’s shoulder blades.
“It was not such a remarkable likeness—” He was sliding down the wall, blinking away a blinding flash of white light before he comprehended that Darcy had hit him.
Then came the pain. Then, worse still, came the Titan’s rage.
“Did you imagine it was Elizabeth?” he roared. “Is that what was in your head whenever you were in her company?”
Bloody hell, his face hurt. He rolled onto his hands and knees. His head swam, and his ribs screamed. “No, I—”
“As you sat at my table and slept under my roof, whenever you danced a reel with her, were you pretending to yourself that you had laid with her?”
Darcy loomed over him, his raised voice fearsome, but nothing to the murderous look in his eye. Much like a cornered cat, Bingley struck out. “Yes, then! Is that what you wish to hear? There were times I imagined an intimacy that was not mine to envisage.” And he instantly regretted it.
Darcy slammed his palm into the wall above his head. “She is my wife, for God’s sake! Does that mean nothing to you?”
Flinching against a blow that did not come, Bingley got a foot underneath him and hauled himself to his feet with a grunt. “But I never acted on it!”
“You tried to abduct her, for Christ’s sake!”
“Abduct her?” he cried, clutching at his ribs and sidling away. “Blast it, Darcy, what do you take me for?”
“I heard no word from Pemberley for two weeks before reports of your reprehensible actions reached me. If I discover that you hurt one hair on her head in that time, I swear—”
“Good God, I did not, and I would not!” He pushed away from the wall, taking a wide berth around and away from the Titan. “You received no word because I took her letter, not because I tried to take her!”
Had he a needle and thread to hand, he would gladly have sewn his own mouth shut, for nothing that came out of it did him any good, and Darcy looked about ready to tear him in two.
“It was not my design to cause you any anxiety. I took it on a whim. It was left out for posting. I saw it as I left the house, and I knew Lizzy must have written of what I said to her, and then I—well, I thought that if you read it, you would kill me.”
“I might.”
That, at least, would stop his damned runaway tongue! “I am sorry, Darcy! I took the letter. It was wrong, and I should not have done it, but I did not attempt to abduct Lizzy! I thought she wanted to go!”
“You thought what?”
“I thought she was miserable!”
Darcy stared at him with much the same expression of incredulity as Elizabeth had when he suggested the same to her. “And you claim to love her? You do not even know her.”
“I fully comprehend that now. She made it perfectly clear that I was mistaken. But it is not so very difficult for somebody to misjudge a woman’s feelings, is it Darcy? Had you not done the same with Jane, none of this would have happened!”
He took several hasty steps backwards when Darcy lunged towards him, bellowing furiously.
“Was this retribution enough for you? Taking my wife and child from me? I suppose, given the indifference with which you have just parcelled your unborn child off to another life, I ought not to be surprised that you did not blink an eye at the prospect of stealing mine.”
The backs of Bingley’s legs hit a chair; he could retreat no farther.
Darcy stepped close, his eyes savage. “My son, Bingley, my heir!”