Chapter 29 #2
A small, wistful smile tugged at Elizabeth’s mouth as she recalled the pleasure of racing across the barren fields bordering their fathers’ estates.
“At the time, there was nothing I enjoyed more than to ride out with him. Jane was too slow, Mary too frightened, and Kitty too young. Charlotte was stubborn and disinclined to learn. So, whenever I wished to ride like a savage across the countryside, that left Mr Ellis for me.”
They turned onto Upper Brook Street and Darcy acknowledged a fashionably attired gentleman who tipped his hat to them. “Your father did not disapprove of your spending so much time alone with him?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “He was amused by our adventures but did not appear overly concerned about our friendship. He certainly never withdrew his consent, even after my mother voiced her disapprobation. My mother’s objection was not on the grounds of impropriety, you see, but because she detests horses. She feared I would become wild.”
“Did your parents have any idea that you had learnt to ride sitting astride?”
“They knew only that I enjoyed spending time with my friend. It was Colonel Ellis who eventually discovered my secret.” Elizabeth repressed a shudder.
“I had never seen him so angry as I did then, on the day he caught me sitting astride one of his fastest horses. I was castigated for my audacity and ran the two miles from Purvis Lodge back to Longbourn in tears. My friend was beaten for his defiance. He had disregarded his father’s wishes, which the colonel viewed as a blatant and deliberate act of insubordination.
By some miracle, we were not forbidden to see one another or even to spend time alone afterwards, but it took a long while for Mr Ellis’s injuries to heal. ”
“I would imagine Mr Ellis’s most painful injuries were not merely physical ones, nor did they truly fade.”
“No. His relationship with his father was never the same afterwards. Both tended to avoid one another, and they rarely spoke for the sake of conversation. The colonel assumed my friend had been properly deterred from encouraging my unladylike behaviour after such a harsh reprimand, but if anything, Mr Ellis was more determined than ever to see me excel where I otherwise should not have and doubled his efforts for the simple reason that it made me happy.”
“Mr Ellis,” Darcy said with quiet conviction, “must have valued your friendship—must have cared for you deeply—to risk his father’s disapprobation a second time.”
Houri snorted and Elizabeth took a moment to caress her neck as they turned onto Park Street.
“He did. He does. Our temperaments have always been very similar, and we understand one another. We both had parents whose conduct caused us some measure of pain and drove us to seek solace in our friendship. So much the better if we were astride a horse.”
“It is obvious that you care for Mr Ellis, quite sincerely. It does you credit.” For a moment, Darcy appeared to hesitate, then cleared his throat and said, “Elizabeth, in Hertfordshire your mother…”
“My mother happened to have some very unfortunate ideas, none of which Mr Ellis and I have ever shared. He is a dear friend, a protector, and a surrogate elder brother, nothing more. He looks upon me as he would a sister, just as he looks upon Charlotte and Jane and Mary and Kitty and Lydia. At one time he did imagine himself much in love with Jane, but that was to be expected. What mortal man has not fancied himself in love with Jane at one time or another? But, other than that, his relationship with us has always been quite brotherly. Nothing has changed.”
“Nothing?” Darcy enquired blandly. “I daresay quite a lot has changed since you were children. Do you still ride out with him?”
“Mr Ellis went away to school, attended university, and then travelled to America. He has only recently returned to England, but yes. I have ridden with him since he has come back to Hertfordshire.”
“Dare I ask if you rode with him in the same manner as you wished to ride with me this morning?”
Elizabeth’s lips quirked. “You mean did I throw caution to the wind and ride like a wild tempest across my father’s fields without an ounce of regard for anyone else’s sensibilities or the state of my appearance?
” The house Bingley had let loomed just ahead.
Elizabeth found she was not ready to share Darcy with her family just yet and tugged Houri to a stop.
She regarded him in silence—his beloved face, the concerned crease of his brow, the steady, slightly vulnerable expression of his eyes.
He gazed back at her, patiently awaiting her answer.
“Yes,” she admitted, “though our meeting with one another was entirely by chance, not by design. Spending time with Mr Ellis is something I have always enjoyed but not in the same way I enjoy spending time with you. You are the only gentleman I have ever allowed to kiss me. You are the only gentleman I will ever wish to kiss. That will not change because I happened to ride from Netherfield to Longbourn with my childhood friend.”
He bowed his head. “I did not think that it would.”
“But you are worried about it.”
“No. I trust you implicitly but confess to some degree of uncertainty regarding your friend. I barely know Mr Ellis, yet he has known you intimately for most of your life. Surely, he must realise your worth.”
“I am engaged to you, not to Mr Ellis.”
“And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why.”
“Why I have chosen you?” she cried feebly, growing more confused by the moment.
Darcy rubbed his forehead and sighed. “No, Elizabeth. I cannot understand why you have not chosen each other. You said yourself that your temperaments are similar. You care for each other. Clearly, you would suit.”
She stared at him in shock. “Certain aspects of your temperament are much like Jane’s—dutiful, reserved, and steady. Does that mean you should wish to marry her simply because you share those commonalities?”
Darcy turned aside his head. “Mr Ellis is handsome,” he muttered.
Elizabeth noted the petulance of his tone and almost smiled. “So is Jane,” she countered. “For that matter, so are you.”
“I cannot deny your eldest sister is quite pretty, but I do not love her. I love you.”
She looked pointedly at him and raised one brow in an arch manner. “‘Quite pretty?’ Everyone in Hertfordshire will tell you that Jane is far more beautiful than I, far more deserving, and the epitome of goodness! How can you not wish to marry her? How can you possibly love me instead?”
He shook his head and, with a great deal of exasperation and a hint of a smile, said, “Because you have captivated me from nearly the first moment of our acquaintance. Because you are intelligent and teasing and compassionate and ten times more handsome than any other lady I know. Because you are uniquely you, and so long as you exist in the world, I can never love another. It is well. I see your point.”
“I am relieved to hear it. I could never abide marrying a man who has so little sense as to fail to see reason, and it is entirely reasonable that I should want to marry you above anyone.”
He extended his hand to her, palm upward, and Elizabeth grasped it with her own. “I would have it no other way.” He lifted her hand to his lips and bestowed a kiss upon it. “Should Mr Ellis ever decide he absolutely must have you, I shall take great pleasure in telling him he cannot.”
With a wry turn of her lips, Elizabeth squeezed his hand.
“I doubt that shall ever happen. He likes you, firstly, and secondly, I believe Mr Ellis is in love with someone else. He has not said much about it, nor do I desire to force his confidence, but he intimated he had met someone while he was at Oxford, someone special and unique. I have no idea what happened between them, only that my friend insists their relationship, as society sees it, is impossible.”
For the briefest moment, Darcy’s eyes widened infinitesimally.
Then he cleared his throat and, with a quiet but decided note of compassion, said, “I knew men like Mr Ellis at Cambridge. Good men, of divergent interests.” He appeared on the verge of saying something further when a voice—a woman’s voice—called his name with some urgency.
Elizabeth felt his grip upon her hand tighten, watched the set of his shoulders grow rigid, and the lines of his mouth harden.
The softened version of the gentleman she had come to love so well all but disappeared before her eyes, and in his place sat the Mr Darcy of old.
He cast an apologetic look at Elizabeth, took a fortifying breath, and released her hand.
“Lady Harrow,” he said evenly, guiding Pharaoh a few paces away from Houri, but remaining close. “Good morning.”
“So, it really is you, Mr Darcy! For a moment I thought I had quite mistaken your figure. Whatever are you doing in the middle of Park Street at such an ungodly hour? The weather is horrid, and the sun has barely even risen!”
“You exaggerate, your ladyship. The weather is by no means unpleasant, and it is quite late by country standards. We have already been to Hyde Park.”
“Hyde Park? At this hour? I cannot believe you would waste your time. I would wager there is absolutely no one about this morning.” Her gaze shifted to Elizabeth and, regarding her coolly, she added, “At least no one of any consequence that I have seen. Besides, this is London, sir, not Exeter.”
“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, “I do not believe you know Lady Harrow. She is an old friend of Lady Carlisle’s. Your ladyship, it is my honour to present Miss Elizabeth Bennet, my betrothed.”
Elizabeth glanced at Darcy. Despite his professed dislike of Lady Harrow, she was surprised that he would slight his aunt’s dearest friend by ignoring her superiority of rank and introducing Lady Harrow to her.
One only had to look at the woman’s piqued countenance to see Darcy had indeed angered her; but Elizabeth suspected he could have followed protocol to perfection and Lady Harrow still would have taken offence simply because he was to marry Elizabeth and not her own daughter.
She decided there was little she could do at this juncture but pretend to an agreeableness she did not feel.
With a polite turn of her mouth, she said, “It is a pleasure, Lady Harrow.”
“I am sure,” the countess replied with an insincere smile.
“Allow me to congratulate you on your conquest, Miss Bennet. For over ten Seasons now, our Mr Darcy has been in high demand among the ladies of our exclusive little society. Imagine our surprise when we learnt he had been snatched up from beneath our very noses, and by you—a total stranger of no consequence! Why, half of London is scandalised, the other half desolate—my own dear daughter included. Lady Eliza admires Mr Darcy exceedingly, but then again, so do we all. I daresay we have come to think of him quite as our own.”
Lady Carlisle’s words about pecking order and petty, embittered society matrons resounded in Elizabeth’s head, and she understood that the strength of her performance now would set the stage for establishing her own rank and position in London society as Darcy’s wife.
She resolved not to give this grasping woman any reason to believe she would tolerate intimidation or abuse, either by her or others of her ilk.
She said confidently, “While your daughter’s disappointment, and your own for that matter, is certainly pitiable, your ladyship, I cannot account for it.
Mr Darcy is a man of the world. He belongs to nobody but himself.
As intimate as you must be, this cannot have come as a surprise—nor should my inability to repine my own excellent fortune of having earned Mr Darcy’s affection in the first place.
He is the best man I have ever known, and I shall enjoy being married to him immensely. ”
She heard Darcy choke, then cough, but did not dare turn her eyes upon him.
“Of that I have little doubt,” Lady Harrow said with barely concealed disdain. “Your dowry, I hear, is but a thousand pounds.”
“It is,” Darcy replied, “but I will receive consolation of far greater value with Miss Bennet as my wife. Surely, Lady Harrow, even you can comprehend the unmitigated satisfaction and unparalleled advantage of making a love match over a tepid arrangement orchestrated purely for convenience.”
Though his tone was mild, his eyes shone with a quiet, tightly reined fury Elizabeth had only ever seen once before: when he had met George Wickham in Meryton over a year ago. She could not account for it, even with the pointed barbs and slights her ladyship had aimed at her.
Lady Harrow made no reply, but her mouth twisted unpleasantly, as though she had tasted something sour.
“We will not keep you,” Darcy told her with the same smooth, unaffected air. “I will be sure to offer your compliments to my aunt when next I see her.” He turned towards Elizabeth and said, “Shall we go, Elizabeth? Your sister is no doubt desirous for your return.”
Without taking her eyes from Darcy’s, she smiled—the barest curve of her lips—and said, “Yes. Good day, your ladyship,” and urged Houri towards home.