Chapter Eight
Darcy sat at his desk pondering another truly odd letter from Bingley.
Something was decidedly amiss. Darcy could only conclude that this Netherfield Park place had an immense flaw, one Bingley felt ashamed to have missed and one on which he hoped Darcy could advise him.
And yet, Bingley was obviously embarrassed to ask for said advice.
Yes, Bingley regretted not consulting Darcy before taking up residence in the place, and was ashamed of the mess in which he’d become embroiled.
He required Darcy’s assistance, but did not know how to ask.
That was the only rational explanation for letters that seemed almost guilty in nature, and that somehow conveyed so little information despite their length.
If Georgiana didn’t need him, Darcy would simply set out for Hertfordshire uninvited, to spare Bingley the trouble of mustering his courage.
And to spare Darcy reading any more absurd, poorly scrawled letters that contained nothing.
On the study’s carved Connemara mantelpiece, the clock chimed, reminding him that the dinner hour drew near.
With a final grimace for Bingley’s meaningless chatter, Darcy set the letter aside, and rose.
He sought his chamber and changed for dinner, then made his way to the small parlor, where he, Georgiana, and Mrs. Annesley met before evening meals.
He was early enough that it did not trouble him to find the ladies absent.
He took a seat facing the door and picked up the paper Pemberley’s competent staff had left for him.
It was not until the hour for dinner drew nigh that he heard footsteps. One pair. With a sigh, Darcy lowered his paper and stood as Mrs. Annesley entered the parlor alone. “Again?” he asked.
She nodded, her features pinched, giving her the look of a bereaved stoat. “She will not dress and she will not come down to dinner.” Mrs. Annesley clutched her hands together. “I have never seen a young lady so bereft at the defection of a suitor.”
If only Wickham were but a suitor, Darcy thought sourly. “This cannot go on. It has been over a year.”
“I know, but I have no notion how to assist her.” Mrs. Annesley shook her head, her brow creased with worry. “I have listened. I have talked. Been understanding, and brusque. Short of shaking her until her teeth rattle, I am out of ideas. She is despondent and seems to wish to remain so.”
“No, we will not shake her,” Darcy said. “You are correct, however, in the notion that something more drastic is required. Something different from what we have been doing.”
But what?
Folding his paper, he tossed it back on the table before marching from the room. In a scuttle of slippered feet, Mrs. Annesley followed. Darcy could all but feel tension radiating from her like heat from a candle’s flame as he led the way to Georgiana’s room.
He knocked.
No answer came. Not even the sound of someone shifting about.
“Georgiana?” he called. “We must speak.”
Still, no reply.
Worry scuttled up his spine. Darcy reached for the doorknob. “I am entering.”
He cracked open the door to find the room well-lit. Georgiana sat at her dressing table, staring into the mirror, tears sliding down her cheeks. Half of her hair was curled, and an iron rested near the fire, but no maid remained.
Leaving the door open so Mrs. Annesley could follow him in, Darcy crossed to stand behind his sister, meeting her red-rimmed eyes in her reflection. “Georgiana. Will you come down to dinner?”
“I am hideous,” she whispered. “Too hideous for any man to love me.”
This had become a favorite refrain ever since Wickham’s parting remarks so many months ago. Darcy wished he’d had the presence of mind to shove a fist in Wickham’s face before he could utter that poison. A split lip would have made him think twice about speaking.
“You are lovely,” Darcy countered aloud, tamping down his anger at Wickham.
“You have to say that. You are my brother.”
“He is also very honest, as you well know,” Mrs. Annesley said, coming to stand at Darcy’s shoulder. “You are a lovely young woman.”
“I am repulsive,” Georgiana sobbed, and dropped her face to the tabletop, her forehead slapping down hard enough to make Darcy wince.
“Georgiana,” Darcy struggled to keep misery and frustration from his voice, for they’d played out this scene on too many evenings over the past year. “Please call your maid back in and ready for dinner.”
A keening wail left her, somewhat muted by the tabletop.
Darcy looked at Mrs. Annesley.
She shrugged, her visage as squeezed with sorrow as Darcy’s heart.
“Something different,” Darcy muttered, racking his brain.
He could pick Georgiana up. Carry her down to dinner. Hopefully she would not fight him, for she was tall, and had been fit. He didn’t fancy carrying her down the staircase if she struggled. They’d both end up with broken necks.
At least then he would not need to endure any more of his sister’s misery, Wickham’s torment, or Bingley’s strange letters.
Bingley. Netherfield Park. That was the answer.
“We are leaving with the dawn,” Darcy stated.
Mrs. Annesley turned a surprised look on him but, more importantly, Georgiana’s head came up. Her forehead pink from such rough contact with her dressing table, the remainder of her face, even her bloodless lips, stood out as sheet white. Except for her eyes. Her blue irises swam in red.
“Mrs. Annesley will assist your maid in packing for you,” Darcy continued.
“Leaving?” Georgiana croaked out.
“Yes. At dawn.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I do not want to go.”
“I did not ask for your opinion or approval,” he said flatly. “Be ready at dawn.” Darcy strode from the room.
Behind him, a whispered babble rose, his sister and Mrs. Annesley.
Anger welled in Darcy, made sharp, volatile, and unfocused by month after month of worry.
Was taking Georgiana to Hertfordshire the right thing to do?
Simply by being in the company of others, they risked some inkling of his sister’s shameful behavior getting out.
Someone could guess what Georgiana had done.
Someone like Miss Bingley. She was shrewd.
She was also ambitious. She would not risk Darcy’s ire. Both she and her sister, Mrs. Hurst, were so eager to throw off the shadow cast by their family’s ties to trade that they would do anything Darcy asked. As would Bingley, though out of amiability, and Hurst, but simply out of indifference.
Darcy shook his head as long strides carried him down the hallway. It almost did not matter at this point. What Georgiana had now was no life at all, and not worth protecting. True, were her shame revealed, she would be equally alone, but he could hardly believe things would be worse for her.
And he must try something to break her from her misery. Something to end this torment. New surroundings were the best option he’d come to.
And they must go to Bingley, in Hertfordshire.
How fortunate that Bingley had taken a residence outside a village so obscure, no one of consequence would ever visit.
Darcy had not even known the place—Meryton, he thought it was called—existed.
Even if their hosts learned of Georgiana’s folly, no one else in the area mattered enough to consider.
Meryton may as well be the moon insofar as the ton was concerned.
As he neared the door to his chamber, footfalls pattered down the hallway after him. “Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Annesley called.
Turning, he waited for her to reach him.
“Mr. Darcy,” she repeated as she drew to a halt. “May I inquire as to your intended destination, so I may ensure Miss Darcy is properly packed?”
“Hertfordshire,” he said shortly. His appetite, such as it had been, was gone. He wished only to summon Patrick and see his own wardrobe packed.
Mrs. Annesley’s face pinched. “Hertfordshire? May I ask why a dawn departure? Should we not send ahead? Apprise the relevant party in Hertfordshire of an upcoming visit?”
Darcy shook his head. “There is no need. Bingley will be pleased to have us.” He would be pleased to have Darcy, at least, and would be convivial to Georgiana, no matter how weepy she became.
“Then a visit to Mr. Bingley is your intention?”
Darcy frowned. Why did so much worry fill Mrs. Annesley’s voice? “Yes.”
“Oh, but you should write to him first, surely. We should—”
“You overstep, Mrs. Annesley,” Darcy snapped.
Her mouth popped closed, mid-sentence.
After months of worry, his patience was worn thin, like leather pulled too tight over the top of a drum, but he should not address her in such a tone.
He drew in a breath. “I apologize. What I should have said is, Bingley will be pleased to see us, with warning or without, and a messenger would scarcely reach him faster than I intend us to. Furthermore, I believe this is the best way to go about extricating Georgiana from her misery. I do not want to give her time to formulate too strong of a protest. I want to remove her as quickly as possible. I would have us away within the hour if not for nightfall.”
Mrs. Annesley nodded. “Very well. I will have us packed by morning.”
“You will not accompany us,” he said, a bit surprised she assumed she would when he had not expressly said so.
Gentling his voice he continued, “I do not fault your care in any way. I simply wish to change as much as possible as quickly as possible, in an attempt to jolt her from her doldrums. However, it would please me if you would make your way to London. I will put a carriage at your disposal. That way, should Georgiana require you, you will be nearby.”
Mrs. Annesley twined her fingers, the skin pulled white. “Yes, Mr. Darcy,” she murmured, and he imagined that now her worry stemmed from fear of losing her position rather than the consequences of showing up on Bingley’s doorstep unannounced.
Darcy did not trouble to inform her that her position was as secure as ever, meaning fully dependent on how well he felt she performed her duties. With a nod, he turned and went into his room.
His evening continued down a similarly aggravating path for, when summoned, Patrick protested not first writing to Bingley as well.
Far more strenuously, in fact, than Mrs. Annesley had dared.
Darcy was not swayed, for he knew Bingley full well, and certainly better than either member of his staff did, but being badgered to change his plans left him in an even more sour mood.
Finally, after all was in order and he had a tray in his room, he climbed into bed to seek sleep, where the frustrations of his evening could be relegated to yesterday.
He had strange dreams, however, the clearest that Patrick and Mrs. Annesley stood on the other side of the doorway to his sitting room, arguing.
One of them kept saying that Colonel Fitzwilliam must be told, and the other protesting that only ‘the general’ could decide that, so he must be told first. They then devolved into bickering over routes to London and to Hertfordshire, and how fast a man ahorse could go, and who to trust. In Darcy’s sleeping mind, their words mingled with his travel plans.
Then Richard was there in his dream, conjured by his staff’s argument, telling Darcy that he’d failed Georgiana. Muddled as the whole vision was, Darcy didn’t know which of the two of them his cousin meant by ‘he.’ Regardless, Darcy apologized over and over.
He woke with a throbbing head, reflected that it would be good for him to get away from Pemberley as well, and rolled over. In moments, he was asleep again, his mind now ranging over what could be so wrong with Netherfield Park that Bingley did not want to admit the problem.