Chapter 3 #2
“Marriage to an heiress like Eliza Harrow, despite her empty head and insipid opinions, would help you achieve all of this! Your father, God rest his soul, would never have stood for you throwing your life away over some fanciful inclination that is not only unattainable, but irrational and unsound. Richard!” Lord Carlisle barked to his son.
“I have had enough of Darcy and his damned idealistic nonsense for one day. We are leaving, else I lose my temper entirely.”
“With your permission, sir,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied evenly, “I would prefer to remain. There is a matter of some import I would discuss with Darcy.”
Darcy rolled his eyes. His cousin may have been a decorated colonel in His Majesty’s army, but he was his father’s second son and therefore at the earl’s mercy until he made his fortune elsewhere.
He would not act without Lord Carlisle’s affirmation and risk falling out of favour with his father, at least not over something like this.
The earl uttered an oath, stalked towards the door, and yanked it open. “Do what you must, but by God make your preachy, pig-headed cousin see some measure of sense before he ruins himself!” Having said his piece, he stomped from the room and bellowed for a servant to fetch his carriage.
Fitzwilliam walked to the door and closed it while Darcy curled his hands into fists and resumed his previous post at the window.
“Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“I thank you, no,” Darcy replied tersely.
He was far too agitated to think, never mind drink tea.
How the blazes could Lord Carlisle excuse Fitzwilliam, a second son with a paltry inheritance, from paying his attentions to Miss Cromwell and her fifty thousand pounds, yet persevere in pushing Darcy, who had long been his own lord and master, towards insipid, bird-witted girls like Eliza Harrow?
The answer was as obvious as it was infuriating.
Of course, his lordship considered it a hardship for any son of his to be shackled to a woman whose physical attributes he himself considered less than appealing.
Perhaps he should hoist Lady Eliza upon Fitzwilliam then, Darcy thought bitterly, especially since Fitzwilliam would gladly choose a similar woman of fortune over a lady whose circumstances resembled those of Elizabeth!
A pang of longing pierced him as he thought of Elizabeth, and he shut his eyes.
“By God, I hate London,” he murmured, raking his fingers through his hair.
A loud crack of thunder sounded overhead, and Darcy watched his uncle clamber into his carriage and slam the door shut before his harried-looking footman could come around to oblige him.
With a lurch, the carriage pulled away from the kerb, but the earl’s departure did little to improve Darcy’s dark mood.
Across the room, Fitzwilliam sighed. “Darcy, I have known you my entire life. You are dearer to me than my own brother. But while we have always understood each other on a deeper level, there are moments when you baffle me exceedingly. Why on earth do you not simply ask for her hand and be done with it?”
“If you intend to talk me into marrying Lady Eliza, I will caution you to be careful.”
The colonel chuckled lowly. “I assure you I am well acquainted with your sentiments on that score. I need no lecture from you.”
“I trust, then,” Darcy said as he turned from the window, “you will be generous enough to extend the same courtesy to me. I am in no mood for another round of bullying, nor do I feel as though I owe you any further explanation as to my refusal to pay consequence to women who have been slighted by other respectable men.”
“Good Lord, you must take me for a simpleton. Between our disagreement of sorts last night at Lord Palmer’s and the speech you delivered to my father this morning there is little doubt in my mind you must be in love with Miss Eliza Bennet.
In truth, I always suspected a partiality on your part, but confess I had no idea it had developed into something so serious.
It does, however, explain your beastly mood over the past year, but hardly excuses the unwarranted abuse I have been forced to endure. ”
If Darcy expected his cousin to say anything, it certainly had not been that.
He strode across the room to the sideboard, where he braced his hands upon the gleaming mahogany surface and bowed his head.
Embarrassment and indecision pressed upon him like a weight.
Rarely had Darcy kept secrets from Fitzwilliam, but his dealings with Elizabeth had been different.
His feelings for her―his anger and humiliation regarding her refusal and the circumstances surrounding it―were far too painful to share with anyone, even someone he trusted as implicitly as he did his cousin.
He took a much-needed moment to compose himself.
“It is not,” he admitted, “quite so simple.”
“It is not?”
“No,” said Darcy succinctly, then introduced another topic altogether, or so the colonel most likely thought. “You are aware that my friend Charles Bingley is engaged to be married.”
If Fitzwilliam was confused by this sudden change in their conversation, he hid it well. “I had not heard. I do not suppose she is anyone we know?”
Shaking his head, Darcy poured two fingers of scotch into two crystal glasses. “You have not had the pleasure of meeting the lady, but she is not unknown to you. As a matter of fact, she happens to be the very same lady I separated him from last winter. Miss Jane Bennet.”
“Miss Jane Bennet? Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s eldest sister?”
With a rueful turn of his mouth, Darcy offered him one of the glasses. “One and the same.”
The colonel accepted it, raised it to his lips, and swallowed half its contents. “That must have come as quite a blow to you, to have gone to such great lengths to separate Miss Bennet from your friend, only to fall in love with her sister. I trust this occurred before you knew your own heart?”
Darcy sank onto the nearest chair and passed a hand tiredly over his eyes.
“I hardly know anymore. At the time I told myself it was for Bingley’s own good.
He is relatively new to society and therefore could not afford to form an imprudent alliance.
Upon further reflection, however, I believe I had my own circumstances and standing in society in mind as well.
“To make a long story short, my conscience would no longer allow me to conceal the truth of my involvement in Bingley’s affairs, so I made my confession to him when I was last in Hertfordshire.
He was angry, and rightly so, but upon my assurance of the lady’s continued affection for him all was forgotten.
I received a letter from him last week. He asked me to stand up with him.
It escapes me, how Bingley can bestow such an honour upon me after all I have done to wrong him and his betrothed. Tell me, how can I possibly accept?”
The colonel traced the rim of his glass with his index finger. “Quite easily, I imagine. It would no doubt bring Bingley a great deal of pleasure or else he would not have asked it of you. He has always been of a remarkably forgiving nature.”
“And his future wife is much the same. In that they are well suited. They will be very happy together. I envy him his good fortune. He has secured the affection, the admiration, the esteem of a worthy woman—a woman he loves and values above all others.”
“And you have not?”
“I have not. As a matter of fact, I have been refused.”
The colonel, who had raised his glass to his lips a moment before and taken another fortifying sip, choked.
Darcy turned aside his head. He, like Fitzwilliam, was well-aware of the fact that no person in their circle of acquaintance would believe a woman in Elizabeth’s situation would dare reject a man such as himself, even if she did know the man in question had sought to separate her most beloved sister from his love-struck friend.
“I am surprised to hear that,” Fitzwilliam rasped, wiping beads of amber-coloured liquid from the lapels of his tailcoat. “I had thought Miss Bennet was rather friendly towards you in Kent.”
Darcy’s mouth twisted into a cynical smile as he studied the contents of his own glass, yet untouched.
“Then you knew even less of her feelings than did I. It was only with you and her friends, Mrs Collins and Miss Lucas, that she was ever completely friendly and at ease. As for myself, Miss Bennet left me in absolutely no doubt of her feelings.”
“She was unkind, then?”
“My behaviour did not merit her kindness,” said Darcy, his self-loathing evident in his tone.
“After I professed my ardent admiration of her, I went on to insult and demean her family and all her relations, her circumstances, and her prospects. Miss Bennet then accused me of disappointing all her sister’s hopes, attacked my character, and proclaimed me to be the last man in the world whom she could ever be prevailed upon to marry. The very last man.”
Darcy went on to recount the whole of his proposal, Elizabeth’s accusations, and her belief in Wickham’s claim that Darcy had denied him a living.
Finally, he revealed his impulsive need to defend himself and his actions to her in a letter.
“I thought she would have at least spoken to her father to warn him of the danger to her sisters and the rest of the neighbourhood, but she did not. In any case, Miss Bennet cannot forgive me for failing to expose Wickham for what he is. She could barely even look at me when we were last in company together. She despises me and I am powerless to change her mind.”
“She has admitted as much to you, then? That she holds you responsible for her sister’s predicament and her connexion to Wickham?”
Darcy shook his head. “That was hardly necessary. Her anger with me was quite evident in the way she avoided nearly every opportunity for discourse between us.”