Chapter 26
Elizabeth stood twisting her hands, hardly knowing what to do next, while the smell of plaster dust still hung heavy in the air.
It was a relief to know that someone would take action and, she hoped, retrieve Lydia from her foolishness without detection.
And yet, that the person should be Mr Darcy!
A trifling association between his sister and hers, and already Miss Darcy would suffer consequences.
It made it all the more difficult to discover that he had called on her.
Before this evening, that revelation would have made her rejoice.
Now, it was bittersweet, for what hope had she of his affections enduring in the face of Lydia’s misadventure?
“We can take you back to Mrs Millhouse’s home on our way,” said Mr Darcy gently, his deep voice soothing. “Come.”
She allowed herself to be moved away from Lord Saye’s indecency and the newest of her house-related problems, their footsteps echoing hollowly on the floorboards as they went.
“What will you do once you have them?” she asked. “How will we keep this a secret?”
“We will do our best to make them come quietly,” he said. “Georgiana will likely be terrified the moment she sees me. I hope your sister will as well, knowing their game is up.”
“I hope so as well. Perhaps…” She chewed her lip worriedly for a moment before asking, “Ought I to come with you?”
“These parties are no place for a lady,” said Mr Darcy immediately and then winced. “Not to say there is danger, only…well, sights a lady ought not to see. Pray do not worry. We will have the girls out of there as fast as we can and with no harm to any of us.”
She had not removed her bonnet or pelisse, so they waited only for Mr Darcy’s overcoat and hat before opening the door to the street.
The dim light of the seafront lamps through the sea mist revealed Mr Hartham on the street.
He had evidently just returned from somewhere, his boots wet with the evening’s drizzle.
“Elizabeth? Darling, what do you do here?” he asked jauntily, his air so easy as to be almost indifferent.
It jarred horribly with the multiple disasters presently besetting Elizabeth’s own life.
She swallowed hard, tasting the salt air on her lips.
It dawned on her with unpleasant clarity that she did not trust Mr Hartham.
She enjoyed his company; she enjoyed laughing with him.
But in a crisis? She had the feeling that to lean on him would be the same as leaning on her crumbled wall.
She glanced up at Mr Darcy who had a strange, stoic expression on his countenance, the lamplight playing across the sharp planes of his face. When he saw her look, he quickly glanced away.
“A problem with a wall,” she said. “Mr Tucker has been sent for.”
“At this hour?” Mr Hartham looked comically puzzled, droplets of mist clinging to his beaver. “Surely it might have waited until morning.”
She did not answer, for Mr Darcy’s cousins approached, their voices, strangely jovial, preceding them. Lord Saye, mercifully, was now fully attired, including a snow-white cravat with an amazing number of knots and billows that seemed about to envelop his chin.
“No, it could not wait until morning,” he snapped at Mr Hartham.
“Miss Bennet has understated the matter. The wall is no more. Why, I was standing there right as the Lord made me with all and sundry to gaze upon me! We needed to summon Mr Tucker immediately to make sure the entire house was not about to turn into rubble on top of us.”
“How dreadful!” Mr Hartham was at once all sympathy. “Elizabeth, how may I be of assistance? Shall I wait with you until Mr Tucker arrives? It seems Lord Saye and his party mean to go out.”
“Mr Tucker will do perfectly well by himself. We are escorting Miss Bennet home,” Mr Darcy said flatly at the same time as Colonel Fitzwilliam said cheerfully, “My pay packet will not gamble itself away. We mean to join up at Sullivan’s party.”
“Pray do not let us detain you,” said Mr Hartham. “Enjoy your evening. I can see Elizabeth home.”
A muscle in Mr Darcy’s jaw twitched, but he said nothing.
Watching him, all Elizabeth could think was, He called!
She had no idea what he would have said had she been at home, nor whether he had since been put off by the report of her engagement.
Surely so, for he had not returned a second time.
She wished there were fewer people present so she could finish what she had been trying to tell him inside—that no such understanding existed—but she reluctantly acknowledged that she probably ought to tell Mr Hartham that first, so instead, she told Mr Darcy, “It is for the best. I would not like to delay you in getting to the party.”
After a prolonged look, he nodded, once.
The elegant carriage had already been brought round, its fittings gleaming dully in the lamplight.
The coachman sat hunched against the damp.
Lord Saye, after a narrow-eyed look at Mr Hartham, went to it, followed by his brother and cousin.
Mr Darcy did not look back at her as he climbed inside and was borne away into the mist-shrouded night, the clatter of wheels fading into the distance.
Mr Hartham turned to Elizabeth, rain beginning to speckle his shoulders. “Shall we go in? Wait out of the rain while my carriage is readied?”
She nodded and followed him to Lady Preston’s front door, where, at his gesture, she preceded him inside while he spoke to a footman about his carriage.
When he turned back to her, looking as though he would speak, she anticipated him, unable to wait another moment.
“Before we go on, there is something I must say.”
“Oh?”
Drawing a deep breath of the close air between them, she said, “As much as I esteem you, sir, I cannot marry you. Forgive me if I misled you in any manner.”
He studied her for a moment, his head tilted. “That it is Mr Darcy who has changed your mind, I cannot doubt; but is it what he said to you, or what he is to you, that prevailed?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What did he tell you?” he asked in a voice that was not challenging, only curious.
“Mr Darcy? He did not tell me anything,” she said, then faltered as the memory of what else he had been saying, just before the wall came down, resurfaced in her mind.
He can never love you. It had made her want to scream after having spent three days convincing herself that neither could he, and his meaning had been lost amongst her indignation.
It gave her greater pause now. “What has he to do with any of this?”
“Everything and anything,” Mr Hartham remarked cryptically. “Come, it is a beautiful night. Let us speak up on the roof terrace. My aunt will only interrupt us if she hears us talking down here.”
Elizabeth nodded, somewhat numbly, and allowed him to guide her up the stairs to the roof.
Being out on the terrace reminded her of being trapped on her own balcony with Mr Darcy, of the wonderful moment in the rain when she had been enveloped in the warmth of his coat, the warmth of him.
How she longed for that same comfort now!
They stood for some minutes in silence, inhaling the salty tang of the sea air and listening to the rhythmic crash of waves on the stones along the shore.
“I suppose I ought to go back to calling you Miss Bennet,” Mr Hartham mused. “It was fun while it lasted, I daresay.”
It was the least of Elizabeth’s concerns at that moment, so she only nodded, running her hand absently over the railing.
“Mr Darcy was rather severe with me earlier. Quite took me to task for having the audacity to propose to you.”
“Why did he think it so audacious?”
“Eliz— Miss Bennet. You are a clever girl, and even if you are not worldly, I hope you will understand what it is I must tell you. I…I am the sort of man who could be forever happy unmarried. A man for whom the marital state…is undesirable. A man who has no wish to take a wife. Alas, men like myself are not…not always tolerated in society.”
“I see.” And she had always seen, had she not? At the very least, she had suspected, before his proposal made her think she must be mistaken. It was why she had never felt in any danger of misleading him.
“At times, that intolerance can lead to…unpleasant, or even dangerous consequences, so it is something that must be kept hidden.”
“A correspondence not fit to be named,” she said softly, her gaze still in the direction of the crashing sea.
There had been a book in her father’s library—Roderick Random, she believed it was called.
She had read it clandestinely when she was but sixteen.
In it, a certain Captain Whiffle had ‘a correspondence with his surgeon not fit to be named’.
She remembered distinctly going to her father about that phrase, wondering at it.
She recalled, too, the unexpected sight of her father turning red and snatching the book from her hands, telling her to find something else to read.
Mr Hartham neither confirmed nor denied it.
“But why, then, did you make an offer of marriage to me?”
He inhaled deeply, the sea breeze ruffling his hair.
“Elderly aunts and grandmothers are particularly concerned about this sort of…life. They wish for nothing more but to imbue respectability on their not-so-respectable bachelor nephews and thus will often act to try and disguise the problem. Such as dangle a fortune or estate in front of him but place a condition of matrimony upon it.”
“Lady Preston,” Elizabeth concluded. “She wishes to see you wed?”
He nodded. “That much is not new. We are all of us being forever pushed towards matrimony, are we not?” He cast her a quick, guilty glance.
“What I did not know until very recently, was that my inheritance was dependent upon it. Truly, I am not sure that it was a stipulation before this summer. I believe my aunt’s mind was made up about half an hour after meeting you and deciding no one else would fit the bill.
So, yes, Mrs Hartham would provide me a home and fill my coffers, even if I had no romantic inklings towards her. ”
“And Mr Darcy knew that? I did not think he knew you so well.”
Mr Hartham looked as though he was about to say something but stopped himself.
“Mr Darcy seems to think he knows you quite well, and he is loath to see you unhappy. And in truth, in my selfishness, I had not allowed myself to think of how it might be for you. I suppose I thought us good enough friends to make it a tolerable arrangement—a pleasing one, even. That the money, the estate, and my companionship would be enough for you. Mr Darcy disabused me of that nonsense straight away.”
Elizabeth offered him a faint smile. “As you know, Mr Darcy is painfully aware that I would not marry for wealth or position.”
“Mr Darcy wants you to be cherished,” said Mr Hartham with a small smile. “His exact words were that you deserve to be worshipped. I daresay he would like to do the worshipping.”
Worshipped. The word sent Elizabeth’s heart soaring even as she doubted it. “Once, he might have wished that, but I am not certain—”
“I am quite certain,” he said firmly. “He told me in no uncertain terms that he doubted he would ever recover from your rejection and that had he the opportunity, he would adore you for all of your days.” He leant closer to her abruptly, raising a hand to brush her hair aside in a gesture that was at once intimate and yet strangely detached.
He grunted. “He was right about this scar, too. He said you always try to hide it with your hair. I never noticed it before.”
“And he did?”
“I do not think there is much he has not noticed about you, Miss Bennet. Which is hardly surprising, given the amount of time he spends staring at you.”
It was too much to endure, the happiness, the delight that suffused Elizabeth.
She shivered and did not think it was the cold night air, not when she was veritably resonating with hope.
Even the remembrance that Mr Darcy was presently out trying to save her wayward sister from ruination could not dampen the smile on her lips, or the thrumming of her heart.
“And by the expression on your face, I believe I might conjecture that having Mr Darcy at your feet is a notion not entirely displeasing to you? And that, perhaps, all may end well after all? I daresay the guilt for my precipitate offer is relieved.”
Mr Hartham dusted his hands together briskly.
Elizabeth could easily perceive that he was embarrassed, just as she could tell from his wince that he regretted his offhanded remark.
She was about to tell him ‘yes’ when he said in a gentler voice, “But just in case, I apologise. I have been dishonest and selfish. Mr Darcy is right, you do deserve better. My only excuse can be that you are the first woman I have ever even considered that I could spend a lifetime with, and I wished to secure you before anyone else could. Dare I hope that we might remain friends for the rest of our lives, if we cannot be husband and wife?”
“I hope we shall.” Elizabeth reached out and touched his arm. “But what will you do?”
“Oh, something will come up,” he said blithely. “You would be surprised at how many men among my acquaintance find themselves bound for matrimony, in one sense or another. For some ladies, the notion of a wealthy husband who will not trouble them overmuch is rather desirable.”
He took her hand and bent over to offer a kiss on her knuckles then said he could see his carriage waiting below and would see her back to Mrs Millhouse’s residence.