Chapter 17
Taught to Hope
There was nothing more to be said on the matter that was not either awkward or painful and thus, when a knock on the door interrupted the exchange, neither man was disappointed.
Fitzwilliam looked at it expectantly. Darcy looked at Fitzwilliam and waited for him to notice, raising an eyebrow when he eventually turned a puzzled expression his way.
“Oh, yes! Forgive me, I quite forgot!” On Darcy’s behalf, Fitzwilliam barked, “Come!”
The door inched open and around it peered such a heartwarming sight as cheered Darcy considerably. “Georgiana!”
His sister opened the door fully and came in, though his muteness evidently disturbed her, for she cast an anxious glance at Fitzwilliam rather than reply to him.
“It is well, Georgiana,” her cousin assured her. “Your brother has not yet recovered his voice, but he is much improved.”
Darcy held out his arm and gestured for her to come to him, which she did, whilst simultaneously beginning to weep.
He put one arm about her and cradled her head against his shoulder.
With his free hand, he scooped up his notes from his nightstand and held them out for Fitzwilliam to dispose of.
There was no need for Georgiana to learn that her misadventures had been disclosed to anyone.
“We were so worried!” his sister sobbed. “Morby told us you were not an hour behind him when he set out.”
“This is true, he did,” Fitzwilliam said with a cynical tone.
“And had you stayed on the Great North Road, you would have had no trouble, for they had men working to keep it clear for the stagecoaches all week. You gave us a rum chase searching for you in every ditch between here and Cooper’s Corner.
We never thought to look for you along Ermine Street.
Indeed, there was no plausible reason for you to go that way. ”
Darcy grimaced apologetically at his cousin, then gently moved his sister away from his shoulder and mouthed an apology to her. She squinted at his lips, and he did his best to conceal his exasperation that even such a simple phrase should be incomprehensible. “Sorry,” he tried again.
“Oh, you do not need to apologise. I am only relieved you are home and well. You cannot imagine our relief when we received your letter. Though it was tempered by Miss Bennet’s account of your condition.”
He frowned at her in query and, when she did not take his cue, at his cousin.
“Miss Bennet added her own note to yours,” Fitzwilliam explained. “She felt you had not done justice to the severity of your injury and urged us to do all we could to reach you with haste.”
Darcy smiled, recalling wistfully Elizabeth’s teasing while they composed his letter together and loving her all the more for not concerning him with her clandestine plea for urgency. “And still you mistrusted her?” he mouthed.
Fitzwilliam peered closely at him, muttering, “Still…mistrust…still I mistrusted her? Of course! More so, after that, for you would be no good to a self-seeker dead, would you!”
Georgiana gasped loudly. “Miss Bennet would take advantage of you? That cannot be!”
Darcy snarled in vexation at his cousin and twisted to the nightstand to dash off a few lines on a new sheet of paper.
Miss Bennet absolutely did not attempt to exploit me.
To ease Georgiana’s mind, and in no way to exculpate anybody else, he added,
It is only that none of our family was acquainted with her. Prudence demanded that they were wary.
He passed the note to his sister.
“They ought to have asked me,” she said upon reading it. “I could have told them of the favourable reports you gave her in your letters to me from Netherfield last autumn. It is the same Miss Bennet, is it not? It was quite near her home in Hertfordshire that the accident happened.”
Darcy pretended not to notice the way Fitzwilliam was looking at him, and mouthed, “Yes, somewhere near there.”
“And she was so kind to me. I could never believe she would take advantage of anybody.”
The incongruity of such a remark did not go unnoticed by either gentleman, and while Fitzwilliam frowned over it, Darcy wrote,
When has Miss Bennet had the opportunity to be kind to you?
“The night you were brought home. You looked so very ill, I thought you must be about to die, but everybody was running about, shouting, and I had no idea what was happening. I do not blame anybody for attending to you—I should have been dismayed had they not, only I was very frightened. And Miss Bennet comforted me.”
“She is very caring,” he mouthed. “I am glad you liked her.”
Georgiana shook her head, obviously unable to understand him, and continued as though he had not spoken. “She assured me that you were not going to die.”
“That was brash,” Fitzwilliam remarked. “Even I would not have given you that assurance on Monday evening. None of us were convinced it was the case.”
“Oh, but she was only making a joke.”
Darcy joined his cousin in looking askance at Georgiana. She blushed deeply, which scarcely surprised him, for his sister had none of the same courage to be impertinent as Elizabeth.
“What did she say?” he mouthed. Only when Fitzwilliam repeated the question aloud did his sister explain.
“Well, she said…pardon me…she said that you like to have your own way rather too well, but that in this case it would prove invaluable, for it was very unlikely that you wished to die, therefore she could not see that you would allow it to happen.”
Fitzwilliam snorted with laughter. “I like her better by the moment.”
So did Darcy.
“She was only joking, though,” Georgiana stammered. “I have made it seem as though she spoke unkindly of you, but that is not true. She spoke very highly of how brave you had been.”
Darcy restrained his response to a raised eyebrow, though his heart leapt like a boy’s at the unexpected praise.
“She said you never complained, despite being in a great deal of pain with no means of relieving it, and that you were concerned for her safety and comfort above your own throughout.”
These words were of greater comfort to Darcy than any pain relief, further swelling his burgeoning hope.
He knew enough of Elizabeth’s disposition to be certain that, had she still been convinced he was a selfish and conceited being, she would never have mollified Georgiana with false platitudes such as these.
Though he comprehended that it made him appear somewhat ridiculous, he could not resist appealing for more particulars.
Did she say anything else?
“Not that I recall. Her uncle arrived shortly after that to take her away. She did beg me to keep her informed as to your recovery, but it is not a promise I have been able to keep, for nobody knows where her uncle lives.”
Darcy turned to glare at Fitzwilliam.
He splayed his hands and gave a barely contrite shrug. “Prudence demanded we were wary.”
“I wish I could have sent word,” Georgiana said, “for notwithstanding all her attempts to assure me, it was obvious that she was very worried about you. And what with Lady Catherine being uncivil to her, I should imagine she was—”
Darcy interrupted her with a hand on her arm. “Lady Catherine was here?”
“Pardon?”
He grabbed the paper and impatiently echoed what he had said in a note.
“Everybody was here,” his sister replied.
“Lady Catherine travelled to London as soon as she heard you were missing,” Fitzwilliam informed him. “She has been staying with my mother and father, which has made them twice as anxious as the rest of us to see you expeditiously recovered.”
Darcy ignored him. There was but one person for whose inconvenience at the hands of Lady Catherine he cared.
In what way was she uncivil to Miss Bennet?
Georgiana leant over to read this and then sat up and began wringing her hands.
“It was a bit of a misunderstanding, I think. When Miss Bennet’s uncle arrived to collect her, he was quite cross that she had been left to sit in the entrance hall.
If he had seen your condition when you arrived moments before, and the commotion in the house, I am sure he would not have been so angry.
I certainly did not sit with her there with any design to be insulting; it was just where we ended up after you were taken upstairs.
“I imagine, though, that he has been as worried about his niece as we all were about you, and…well, I can comprehend why he was vexed at the apparent slight. I know you would have been, had it been me. Only Lady Catherine did not take kindly to his manner of speaking to the footman when he expressed his displeasure. I was sent upstairs, and I believe they left directly, but from what I heard, my aunt was not very gracious in her farewell.”
Darcy said nothing. He could scarcely bear to consider the disregard with which his family had treated the woman who saved his life and dared not suppose what effect their behaviour might have had on his already tenuous chances of securing Elizabeth’s affections.
“Darcy, I am heartily sorry that happened,” Fitzwilliam said with more earnestness than any of his previous excuses. “I knew nothing of it until this moment. I would never have been so uncivil—”
He stopped when Darcy thrust a hastily scrawled note at him.
No, you waited until his next call and then insulted him with the offer of hush money!
Could any more possibly have been done to ensure Elizabeth would never love him?
He had to apologise. If she never spoke to him again afterwards, he would have to accept the loss, but he could not rest until she knew how sorry he was.
He tossed the pen down and stood up only for the lightheadedness of his last day at the inn to return with a vengeance.
Fitzwilliam lunged forward to lend his support, demanding, “What are you doing?” as he propped him up by the elbow.
“I mean to call on Elizabeth.”
“Say that again?”
“There is no need to shout. I am mute, not deaf.”
“Stop babbling, man, I cannot understand you!”
Darcy elbowed him off and leant over the nightstand to write a note.