Chapter 19
WHERE ELIZABETH IS DETERMINED, AND MR DARCY IS RELUCTANT.
“That was wonderful, my dear,” said Mr Gardiner, following his wife’s lead as she rose from the dining table. He turned to Darcy with a good-natured grin. “We are an intimate family party this evening, sir. Shall we forgo a separation?”
Darcy, who had also risen, inclined his head. He had developed a genuine affection for Mr and Mrs Gardiner, and it pleased him to be counted among the members of their family. “I am most amenable.”
He offered his hand to Elizabeth, who was beside him on his right.
As she placed her hand in his, wrapped the other around the sleeve of his coat, and settled her fingers in the crook of his arm, Darcy’s smile softened.
The weight of her hand, however slight, felt significant, as significant as the lightness in his heart.
“I was wondering if Mr Darcy and I might speak privately, Uncle?”
There was a quality to Elizabeth’s tone—a certain strength to her voice—that foretold a purpose Darcy suspected would bring no enjoyment. His smile faltered, then faded altogether when Mr Gardiner not only agreed without question but offered the use of his study.
“Lizzy,” said her aunt, “the children have been sent to the nursery for the night and the servants will not bother you in that part of the house. Leave the door open if you please. Your uncle and I will be in the parlour should you need us.”
The Gardiners left them, and Darcy escorted Elizabeth from the dining room in a haze of weighted silence reminiscent of their earlier days at Longbourn.
Too soon, they entered Mr Gardiner’s study.
Elizabeth removed her hand from his arm and Darcy crossed the room to stand before a large set of windows draped in rich, crimson velvet that overlooked the street.
The neighbourhood outside the Gardiners’ home in Cheapside, though different from that of his Brook Street residence in Mayfair, was not unfamiliar to him.
He had spent many evenings gazing out of these very windows last summer when he had been arranging Lydia’s marriage to Wickham.
Darcy linked his fingers behind his back and sighed as he watched the silhouette of a lone cat wrap itself around the foot of a lamppost. There was something about being in the Gardiners’ home that soothed him.
Even through the stressful ordeal of negotiating with Wickham and all that entailed, Darcy had been able to come to this house at the end of each day and find peace.
Now, as he stood within the walls of Mr Gardiner’s study once more, he decided perhaps it was not the house that brought him comfort, but the people who resided in it.
The Gardiners, though Darcy considered them perfectly entitled to do so, were not the sort of people who made demands of him.
From the moment he appeared on their doorstep, through his painful recitation of his dealings with Wickham, to his insistence they allow him to have his way in their family’s most wretched affair, Mr and Mrs Gardiner were welcoming, agreeable, and even affectionate towards him.
“Mr Darcy.”
Darcy shifted his focus from the snow-covered street to the window’s reflection and sighed once more, this time in resignation.
Elizabeth stood with her hands behind her back, pressed against the door to the room.
Despite her aunt’s instructions to leave it open, Darcy noticed she had chosen to close it instead.
“Are you avoiding me, sir?”
He rubbed his brow as he perceived a distinct note of archness in her tone, then turned to face her. “Indeed, Miss Bennet, I do not dare.”
“I am relieved to hear it. It would be a most unpropitious start if my future husband were suddenly intent upon avoidance.”
Unsure of the correct response in such a situation, Darcy made no reply.
Elizabeth bit her lip. “Will you not tell me how Lydia has come to petition you, of all people, to persuade her husband to bring her to town?”
Of course, Elizabeth would not mince her words. It was a trait Darcy had always valued in her but on this subject, he found himself wishing she were not so direct. Explaining the matter, to her or to anyone, was not only distasteful to him, but out of the question. He said simply, “I cannot.”
She raised one impertinent brow. “You cannot or you will not?”
When he failed to offer clarification, Elizabeth straightened and crossed the room to stand before him. “Come, Mr Darcy, we are to be husband and wife. Let there be no secrets between us. Certainly, none that concern my sister and Mr Wickham.”
“I cannot speak of this, not with you. Not ever.”
“Why?” she asked, her frustration apparent in her voice.
“What is so terrible, so unspeakable that you cannot confide in me? The Gardiners are privy to whatever has taken place. I know that much from the scene that unfolded this morning at Longbourn, though neither my aunt nor uncle would utter a word. You have nothing to fear in that quarter. But Lydia is a poor secret keeper, sir. Shall I apply to her instead? Or perhaps I should bypass her altogether and enquire of Mr Wickham? Surely, he will have something to say on the subject.”
Darcy imagined Elizabeth confronting his former friend, and worse still, the embellishments and falsehoods Wickham would likely add to the tale to make Darcy’s life a misery. He grew livid. “Absolutely not. I forbid it. No good will ever come of your applying to him.”
“No good indeed,” she replied in annoyance.
Lifting her chin, she turned on her heel and strode to the fireplace, where a fire flickered brightly in the grate.
Her shoulders slumped, and Darcy watched her wrap her arms around herself, more likely to draw comfort than to ward off a chill.
He shut his eyes, understanding too late she was disappointed and injured as well as angry.
They stood in silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound in the room.
Is this how it is to be between us? he wondered with mounting unease.
At Netherfield Elizabeth had agreed to marry him and the moments that followed had been blissful.
Now they were in London, and she was mad at him.
Was their newly acquired joy to be so fleeting?
Was keeping his part in her sister’s marriage from Elizabeth worth sacrificing their own contentment?
When Darcy considered it in those terms he could not answer in the affirmative.
Nothing was worth such a sacrifice. But how could he ever confess what he had done?
He had assumed a role he had no business assuming in the first place.
He had acted when he had no right, no claim to Elizabeth.
Though Darcy had determined to restore Lydia Bennet’s respectability, his true purpose was to preserve Elizabeth’s respectability; to protect Elizabeth’s reputation; to restore Elizabeth’s happiness.
Everything he did he did for Elizabeth. Everything he did he did out of love for her.
In his preoccupation, he failed to notice Elizabeth had abandoned her station at the hearth and returned to him. Her head was bowed, and her hands were clasped tightly.
She spoke. “I was wrong to threaten to press Mr Wickham for answers you clearly do not want me to seek. I am well acquainted with his character and know he is unlikely to be truthful in any case, especially where your good name is concerned. Please forgive my disloyalty, Mr Darcy. My remarks were not only undeserved, but inappropriate. You are the last man in the world I wish to injure. If you feel such secrecy is necessary, that is your prerogative. I am only sorry you feel I cannot be trusted to maintain it.”
In her voice and in her expression, Darcy not only recognised contrition, but genuine distress. “You believe I do not trust you?” he asked, truly surprised by her statement. “Elizabeth, I trusted you to keep Georgiana’s secret after you refused me. I trust you implicitly in all things.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and troubled, and slowly shook her head.
“I cannot account for your reasoning. It makes no sense. If you still trust me to keep your sister’s secret, then why can you not apprise me of whatever secret encompasses my own sister?
If it is as you say, you would share your burden with me and you would do it willingly, knowing I would gladly bear the weight of it with you.
There must be something you do not trust me with in this case. ”
My heart, a voice in Darcy’s head whispered in reply.
He swallowed thickly and averted his eyes.
As much as revealing his role in her sister’s marriage disturbed him, it pained him far more that Elizabeth believed he did not trust her.
There was nothing else to do but speak. There was nothing else to do but confess all. With great difficulty, he began.
“When I saw you that day in Lambton—when I came upon you after you had read Mrs Bingley’s letter…
” But Darcy found there was too much sentimentality, too much raw emotion attached to seeing Elizabeth alone and weeping at the inn to continue in that vein.
She had been heartbreakingly beautiful, even in her distress, and he feared he would reveal more about his feelings for her in that moment than his purpose during the moments that had followed.
He extended his hand to her, his palm facing upward to show he had nothing he wished to hide. Elizabeth stepped forward, closing the distance between them metaphorically as well as physically, and accepted it. Darcy relaxed, if only slightly. He began again.
“You were supposed to dine at Pemberley that afternoon, but instead you departed for Hertfordshire with your aunt and uncle.
The fault was mine, and I resolved to go to London at once.
It would be difficult, but not impossible to find them.
I knew Wickham well, whereas your father and uncle did not.
His habits, his vices, his contacts, his haunts—I knew all.