Chapter 10
’TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE
Darcy paced the dark terrace, well beyond the lights of the drawing room.
He did not want to be spotted by its inhabitants, not now that Mrs Ashwood had gone up with her sister.
He required time alone to cool his heated frame and heated desires, to shove them back into that cupboard inside himself where unacceptable yearnings lived.
The problem was, he did not wish to thrust them away, as he usually so easily could.
He wanted to remember, to recall her wide, beguiling smile, her sparkling eyes, the pleasure she had taken in the simple dance.
Neither had been gloved, and even those few brief touches had set a fire in his bones.
It was terrible. It was astounding. It was glorious.
I am in danger, he thought. In true danger, for the first time in my life.
He strode more resolutely across the breadth of the terrace.
Do not be an idiot, his brain lectured. Had she still been a maiden daughter of Longbourn, it would have been foolish enough; only Mrs Collins’s children would have any inheritance of which to speak.
According to the voluble Sir William Lucas, the two younger daughters still at home each had twenty-five hundred, and that not until their mother died.
While that amount might get them some sort of husband, he had every expectation of a great deal more than that.
His father would have been appalled at anything less than thirty thousand.
But it was not simply money to which he was entitled.
His father’s mother had been a peeress in her own right—Pemberley was, in fact, one of Grandmother Darcy’s father’s estates, and the blood of earls ran through his veins from both of his family lines.
His father’s marriage to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Matlock had not raised a brow.
His father and mother had been virtuous, honourable people; however, Darcy knew theirs had been no love match, but an arrangement made by their parents.
There had never been passion, adoring looks, or anything even close to ardour between them.
Nevertheless, his father had been a good husband to his wife, and his mother had been a good wife to her husband.
The point was, generations before him had surrendered personal interest in order to build the legacy of which he was now the beneficiary.
He could do no less for his own children, even while hoping for more feeling between him and his future spouse than his parents had experienced.
Besides, Elizabeth had made it plain that she was not interested in remarriage. And when had he begun thinking of her as ‘Elizabeth’ instead of ‘Mrs Ashwood’?
It would not do. She would depart within a couple of days, and he would forget her. He was almost certain of it.
Jane slept well that night; Elizabeth woke two or three times, rose from her bed, and went to her sister. Every time, she was sleeping peacefully. Her forehead and cheeks were cool.
However, the next morning, after eating a hearty breakfast, Jane lost it all, casting up her accounts most violently.
Elizabeth called for Molly, for broth, for clean linens, fretting all the while. “I knew you should not have gone downstairs last night.”
Jane was sanguine, however. “I did overdo yesterday,” she said. “But I am only sleepy now. I shall rest and feel better by noon, I am sure. Oh, but Lizzy?”
“Yes?”
She looked away. “If Mr Collins calls…I would prefer to…to not see him. Not yet.”
Elizabeth’s heart sank at the notion of trying to calm Jane’s husband, once again. “Oh, dear.”
“You do not understand, Lizzy! It is easy for you, who has her freedom now, who answers to no one! It seems little enough to ask.”
Jane’s assumption that Elizabeth’s life was a carefree, easy one because she no longer had a husband prompted a resentment that tried to flare into anger, but she quelled it.
Jane was only asking for a small respite from a husband who was, so often, so foolish.
Still, that husband had sent over flowers from Longbourn’s small orangery, and written her two letters since yesterday’s visit that, as far as Elizabeth could tell, Jane had not yet read.
“It is not my place to decide anything regarding you and your husband, I know,” Elizabeth said quietly, her reluctance clear. “But I do not relish the thought of being caught in the middle between you, either.”
“Please, just one more day?” Jane begged.
Elizabeth could do naught but agree.
By the time Mr Collins called and she went downstairs to greet him, she was so far past her own panic regarding Jane’s condition, she felt well able to deal with his.
He was alone in the drawing room—she did not know where Miss Bingley or Mrs Hurst might be, and really did not much care.
But she felt a quick, sharp stab of disappointment that neither was Mr Darcy present.
It is only…he is such a help with overexcitable brothers-in-law, she justified the emotion.
But Mr Collins was not in his previous volatile state. Instead, he was slumped upon a frail, spindly-legged chair that did not look quite up to its burden. He stood, glancing up when she entered but quickly resumed his previous examination of his boots.
“Good morning, Mr Collins,” she said, taking the nearest seat. “You will, I am certain, be happy to hear that—”
“I know, I know,” he said, slumping back down into his chair. “Jones came by last evening and said he detected much improvement. I thought…I thought perhaps she might answer one of my notes. She refuses to see me still, does she not?”
“She is improved, yes. However, she is not yet recovered. She lost her breakfast this morning; her belly is still tender, and she is weak. You must give her time.”
“Why will she not see me?” He met Elizabeth’s eyes with his own red-rimmed, pale blue ones.
Elizabeth decided that perhaps Mr Darcy’s suggested reasoning might help him understand, even if it was not the whole of it. She hoped Jane felt some sort of fondness for her husband, but if she did not, Elizabeth was certainly not going to point it out.
“You are afraid for her, are you not? You require reassurance that she is improved, and now that she is, at least to some degree, you require reassurance that she cares for your feelings. However, Jane has been very ill, and is definitely not recovered yet. She cannot yet summon the strength to deal with your feelings and her own. And you must admit, your feelings are somewhat… overpowering.”
“My wife holds my deepest affections. Is that so wrong?” he asked, with no little resentment.
“Of course not,” she said gently. “Can you call upon that affection to give her a bit more time, even though you do not understand her reasoning just yet?”
He hunched forward and sighed heavily. “Certainly I can. Will you tell her…will you tell her that I only want to gaze upon her for a few moments, to see her as she is convalescing? Will you ask that she let me know whether she requires anything at all, and if it is within my power, I shall obtain it for her?”
For once, nothing out of his mouth was foolish or ridiculous. He was in earnest, and it was troubling.
But she and Jane were no longer close, and although she had wanted Elizabeth with her as she suffered an illness in a strange household, not much had changed.
Jane had not protested her insistence upon remaining, despite Fanny’s not-so-subtle pressure to separate them; it had not meant that her sister was ready to traverse the distance between them and seek full reconciliation.
In a way, Elizabeth found Jane’s feelings towards herself as much a mystery as they were to Mr Collins. She could sympathise with his distress.
“I will tell her,” Elizabeth promised.
After his departure, she found she could not easily return to her place at Jane’s bedside.
Her patient was slumbering; the skies beyond the window were sunny, for once.
It was an opportunity for a walk around Netherfield’s gardens, to exorcise this spirit of restlessness that had settled upon her after the conversation with Mr Collins.
In order to reach the walking paths, she had to first pass through a folly resembling a gothic temple—a triangular shell of a building of two storeys, with a pentagonal-shaped tower at its corner rising another floor higher.
At its peak, the ironstone tower was an enclosed balcony framed by three arched apertures, a space barely big enough for one or two persons to look out upon the house, the gardens, or the maze, depending upon which direction one faced.
The view probably made the climb up the steep, curving staircase worthwhile.
When Elizabeth reached the top, however, she could not really pay attention to the shrubberies below her.
Instead, only her worries seemed visible.
What if the investment ship was truly lost, her money with it?
Her uncle had advised her against such an outlay.
“Only invest what you can afford to lose,” he had argued.
“To do otherwise is to act in desperation, and you are not desperate.” Then he had begun his usual lecture about her moving out of the cottage, coming to them in London.
“You have proved your ability to live independently, Lizzy. Will not you consider another way?” When he believed she would again refuse, he had made the generous offer sparking what could only be called, in retrospect, desperation.
Her uncle, good man that he was, was a fountainhead of charitable works, and she had become the first object of his charity.
Feeling that pity to her soul had increased her impatience, despite her gratitude for his measured, steady actions on her behalf.
Knowing it would take several years to be truly independent at this pace, knowing he would continue to expend his own money and time on her needs—at the expense of his own—had been a blight upon her happiness.
Living in the shadow of Stoke, being subject to Fanny’s manipulative viciousness, had further worn her down.
The hole that Jane’s absence of friendship had left in her heart was an open wound.
“I know you disagree with my decision to stay here, rather than move to Gracechurch Street,” she had begun, ready to confess that she had changed her mind.
“I will not have it, Lizzy,” he had interrupted, his voice holding equal measures of love and his own impatience. “My latest scheme, if it pays half what I expect, shall give me money to spare. If it does, I will be fixing the roof on this house, and you will not stop me.”
All those feelings of weariness and defeat had shattered in an overwhelming burst of frustration. Subsequently, she had risked nearly all her savings into one recklessly impulsive investment.
Now it seemed that the only ‘other way’ was to admit he had been right from the beginning, and that living in the cottage was stupidity wrapped in foolishness.
Why had she done it?
Yes, she hated being an object of pity. Yes, she was desperate to be out from under Fanny’s thumb.
And yet, she had remained in that awful cottage.
It was true that learning Jane did not want her to return to Longbourn had hurt dreadfully; it had also fired her pride, a desire to take care of herself and not depend upon family to do it for her.
Was she trying to punish Fanny, perhaps even Jane by living in a draughty, falling-down cottage? It had not seemed so at the time, but why had she rejected going to the Gardiners instead?
These thoughts twisted round in her mind, distracting and confusing, until she was abruptly called to herself by the sound of voices in the garden below her.
“If you can compass it, do cure the youngest girl of running after the officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses.”
It was Miss Bingley’s voice, at its most sarcastic.
Your lady? But to whom could she possibly be expressing such mocking opinions?
While eavesdropping was certainly not Elizabeth’s habit, the sudden surprise of overhearing such a conversation took her aback enough to attract her attention, and instinctively, she turned to look in the opposite direction, peering down out of the aperture.
“Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?”
It was Mr Darcy! Did he even have a lady? She had not thought so. But if he did, why would he not reprove such callous speech regarding someone dear to him? Talk of impertinence!
“Oh yes! Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Philips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great uncle, the judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth’s picture—”
“What?” Elizabeth cried aloud, astonished that she, unbelievably yet patently, was the subject of such open derision.
There was an abrupt and utter stillness from the pair below her. Her shock and outrage were such that she did not care about embarrassing anyone, least of all herself.
“Perhaps in your circles, it is not ugly and coarse to publicly jeer at a guest and her family. I was raised differently; thus I wish to provide fair warning—you two are not nearly as private as you had hoped.”
She dashed down the stairs, racing to nowhere or anywhere that they were not.