Chapter 16 #2
The truth of it shamed Darcy deeply and made him more determined to prove Elizabeth’s true worth.
She did much to aid my recovery.
A wholly inadequate explanation on paper that felt even more deficient when Fitzwilliam read it aloud with perfect indifference.
“We comprehend she was very good to you,” Ladbroke replied. “But, you know, it would not do to appear over grateful.”
“Meaning?”
“You are aware, I presume, that the relatives with whom she is staying live near Cheapside. Gracechurch Street is the direction she gave when we sent for her uncle to fetch her. Seriously, Darcy. Gracechurch Street.” He scoffed contemptuously.
“You must take care to give them no reason to think they can expect anything from you. Give these people an inch, and they will take a yard.”
Darcy winced. This, then, was how he had sounded to Elizabeth. With this same unfounded and despicable contempt had he paraded his prepossessions before her.
What, other than their residing in the City, makes you suppose they expect anything from me?
“That alone would be enough to rouse my suspicions. But if it is proof you desire, the uncle has already come sniffing around once.”
“What?” Darcy scrabbled to replenish the ink on the pen.
He has called here? For what purpose?
Ladbroke deferred, with a look, to Fitzwilliam, who answered, “He claimed to have come on behalf of his niece to enquire after your well-being.”
Hope exploded in Darcy’s chest, dislodging a nebulous memory that bubbled to the surface of his laudanum-addled mind and popped into coherence: “Darcy, please do not die.” People who cared whether one lived or died were surely beyond enmity.
His other memory—of Elizabeth’s dismay at hearing Wickham traduced—abruptly blurred and transformed into something that might just as easily be construed as concern for him.
Perchance he had not lost her after all.
It did not occur to you that her interest might have been genuine?
“It would not matter if she were in complete earnest,” Ladbroke objected. “They are of absolutely no consideration in the world, Darcy.”
She is a gentleman's daughter.
“Aye. A gentleman of paltry income whose estate is entailed upon Lady Catherine’s parson, we are reliably informed.”
“By whom?”
“Lady Catherine, of course. You know how she likes to be an authority on every subject. Her new incumbent is cousin to Miss Bennet, apparently. Once she discovered she knew the identity of your saviour, she was most forthcoming on the matter. That is all by the by, though. The material point is that unless you wish to saddle yourself with the most inferior connexions in Christendom, you must not encourage them.”
I care nothing for her connexions. I owe her—
But Fitzwilliam was leaning over him, reading his words as he put them on the page, and before he could write my life, Ladbroke interrupted.
“Yes, yes. We have attempted to reimburse the family, but they have resisted. My guess is that they hope, by refusing immediate recompense, to secure a more lasting reward.”
“What do you mean, you have attempted to reimburse them?”
Ladbroke screwed up his face. “Eh?”
Darcy shoved the pen in the ink and almost broke the nib scratching out,
What do you mean!
“Calm yourself,” Fitzwilliam said. “You have only just awoken. You must not overexert yourself.”
“What do you think I mean? We are not brutes,” Ladbroke said, ignoring his brother.
“You bled all over her clothes, apparently, so my mother offered her a sum of money to replace them.” He waved a hand insouciantly in the air.
“Plus a token amount in recognition of her assistance. Enough to dissuade them from embroiling you in any scandal—or so we hoped.”
After a moment of disbelief, Darcy threw the pen down in despair and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Elizabeth cared enough to have sent her uncle to ask after him, and his family had attempted to buy the man off and then sent him on his way.
The cruel irony of him ever having disdained her relations made a mockery of everything.
“Perhaps you had better go,” he heard Fitzwilliam say quietly. Darcy could almost hear Ladbroke roll his eyes in response, though his cousin’s parting words were more generous.
“I shall see you in a while, Darcy. It is very good to have you back with us.”
Fitzwilliam saw Ladbroke to the door and on his return, dragged a chair with him, in which he sat, crossed his arms, and leant back until the front legs lifted off the floor.
“What is all this about then?” he enquired.
“You seem more concerned about this Miss Bennet than you do about the very real prospect of being imposed upon in some way. I comprehend that she assisted you, but that does not oblige you to be shackled to her forevermore.”
“Your concerns about Miss Bennet are wholly without founda—”
“I am afraid I shall have to stop you there,” Fitzwilliam interrupted. He stood, caught and righted his chair as it toppled from the only two legs in use, and returned to the nightstand to point at the inkwell. “You are going to have to write it down.”
Darcy gritted his teeth. He sincerely hoped his voice was not permanently gone, for the struggle of making himself understood was becoming intolerably vexatious.
None of you need concern yourselves about Miss Bennet. She is not mercenary, else she would not have turned down an offer from her cousin—heir to Longbourn. It would have secured her future and that of her whole family, yet she refused him because she did not respect him.
It observably gave Fitzwilliam pause, but not so much that he ceased his objections completely. “Or perhaps she turned him down because she had set her sights higher.”
Give it up, Fitzwilliam. She has no wish to marry me.
That earned him a piercing look. “You seem very certain of that.”
I am even more certain of it now that Lady Matlock has attempted to bribe her into silence.
“My mother had only your best interests in mind. It did not occur to any of us that you might actually have designs on the young lady.”
I have known Miss Bennet for many months, not just this one week.
“Yes, she told me you met in Hertfordshire last year. She did not elaborate on the nature of your acquaintance, though—which, it would appear, was closer than any of us supposed.”
Darcy avoided answering directly and wrote,
Her integrity is one of many reasons you need not worry for my reputation.
He took his time replenishing the ink and held his hand over the page for a long moment before adding,
My reputation is not the only one she is protecting. She knows about Wickham and Georgiana.
“What? How?”
It is a long story, but you must not be anxious. I trust her implicitly.
Fitzwilliam looked at him long and hard—a look that Darcy met unflinchingly until his cousin let out a harsh sigh and stalked away across the room. “We must hope your trust is well placed.”
It is better placed than your mother's suspicions. Her good intentions notwithstanding, this attempt to buy Miss Bennet's secrecy, when she was already concealing so much on my behalf, is an insult I can scarcely think on without abhorrence.
Darcy held the note out until Fitzwilliam came back and snatched it from him. He did not speak immediately after reading it, but leant against the window, looking out as he ruminated on it.
“I grant you,” he said at length, “if she was intent on blackmail, Georgiana’s misadventure must present a far greater likelihood of success than the rumour of a few days at an unknown inn with a man as far beyond her reach as you. She has given no indication that she means to reveal any of it.”
Darcy fixed his cousin with an unyielding look. “She will not.”
“Well, I am convinced you believe it at least.”
Darcy nodded once in acknowledgement—and mouthed an oath at the pain it induced, which seemed all the worse after not having felt it for so long.
“Better?” Fitzwilliam enquired, once he had regained his composure. Darcy almost laughed that he should ask another question requiring a nod in response. He had forgotten how well Elizabeth had learnt to evade such questions. He eschewed answering at all and wrote another note instead.
How was she? When you found us?
He held it up. Fitzwilliam walked closer to peer at it, then frowned deeply.
“She was distraught—which I attributed at first to her being frightened by your being comatose and bleeding on the floor. I have wondered since whether she formed an attachment to you in the course of your time together, but that seems unlikely if what you say is true.”
Darcy had thought the same at one time. After she had grown flustered watching his lips; whilst she had held his hand as he spoke about his mother.
It all seemed moot now, for since then, they had stood in the snow, arguing bitterly about his selfishness, and his family had insulted her in the worst way imaginable.
Nevertheless, he could not easily dismiss the tiny ray of hope he felt in knowing that, of all the horrors Elizabeth had endured last week, none had rendered her distraught—only his malaise, apparently.
“But you do admire her?” Fitzwilliam enquired.
“I do.” He fancied his cousin comprehended his sincerity as, for once, he did not ridicule him.