Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Judging by the line of carriages, the soiree at the home of Sir James and Lady Thomas-Reese would be an undisputed crush.
The notion of it was already fatiguing even though she had not yet set foot in the door.
But Henry felt it was important to regain their standing and acceptance as a married couple, so retreat was not an option.
“I am all anticipation of dancing with you.” Henry leant towards her in the carriage, taking her hand and kissing it through her glove.
“And I with you.” She smiled at him as he would expect.
Henry spoke cautiously, having learnt that his precipitous announcement of Mr Darcy’s possible attendance at the Millers’ dinner had displeased her. “Sir James mentioned that they received an acceptance from Mr Darcy for tonight.”
Elizabeth felt a burst of happy excitement at the thought of seeing him and nearly broke into a broad grin. She disciplined herself to remain serene. “How nice.”
“I hoped that having him call at our home would ease the relations between our families.” Henry smiled at her sympathetically. “I know this is difficult, but only a few more weeks and we shall go to Lancashire. I am eager to be home with you.”
“I am eager to be there as well.” She smiled faintly, feeling, as she often did these days, rather removed from it all. Then the time for discussion was ended as the footmen moved to assist them from their carriage.
The public rooms were nearly overflowing, making it difficult to move or breathe, much less dance. A set had nevertheless formed in the ballroom, and in the drawing rooms, there were card tables. In Sir James’s study, a group of older men debated politics and other news.
Elizabeth danced with her husband, drank punch, and greeted her acquaintances, but through it all, she had one eye on the door.
She made herself laugh and talk just as she was expected to do, and she made inconsequential chatter as was required for such parties.
But her thoughts were for him, wondering when he would arrive.
Every sense was honed to awaiting the appearance of Darcy, but he did not appear.
When she finally saw him, her heart plunged. She had returned to the ballroom and found Jane and Mr Bingley. They had escorted Miss Bingley, who was dancing with Darcy. Elizabeth felt a stab of the acutest sort of jealousy as she watched them move through the patterns.
They made an attractive pair, both of them elegant and handsome.
Miss Bingley laughed at something Darcy said as he drew near, and Elizabeth swallowed hard, forcing away the moisture that had risen to her eyes.
She felt an intense urge to stride onto the dance floor and scream invectives at Miss Bingley, tearing her away from Darcy at once.
She wanted to look away, but she could not. He will marry. Not Miss Bingley, perhaps, but another beautiful, elegant woman, and she will know him as I have, only for a much longer and truer time. How shall I bear that?
Suddenly, he looked up and saw her. Their eyes locked, and Elizabeth was pained to see the sadness there, knowing it was reflected in her own expression.
“Lizzy?” Jane was at her side, and Elizabeth turned to her, determined to appear sanguine.
Jane looked to where Elizabeth had been staring and frowned. “She forwarded herself to him in a manner most unbecoming. You need not worry about that; he had to dance with her.”
“She is a beautiful lady,” Elizabeth replied with a tight smile. “They look wonderful together.”
“But they are not together. They are only dancing.”
Elizabeth sighed deeply. “What does it matter? Her or another lady—it cannot be me, and that is the painful part.”
The dance ended, and Darcy escorted Miss Bingley to their group though it appeared to Elizabeth that Miss Bingley was protesting their route. From nowhere, Henry also arrived, placing his arm around his wife’s waist.
Darcy bowed as soon as he reached them. “Lord Courtenay, Lady Courtenay.” Elizabeth curtseyed, her eyes glued to his face.
“Lady Courtenay, would you do me the honour of dancing the next with me?” Elizabeth’s eyes flew to her husband, wondering how he would bear it, but Henry appeared untroubled and calm.
“Oh yes, my love, do go, and while you are at it, I believe I shall see what the lads in the card room have going. Will that suit you?”
“Of course,” Elizabeth agreed, pleased to have some time without the burden of his presence, a reminder of her guilt over not loving him well enough—or at all.
He excused himself just as Miss Bingley’s next partner came to claim her.
Bingley and Jane decided to dance as well, and thus, Elizabeth found herself alone with Darcy.
She looked up and, seeing his intent gaze upon her, felt that she might burst into tears under the weight of it.
He leant in closely. “Let us forget about the dance. I shall go out into the gardens using that door.” He gestured towards the end of the room.
“Go have some punch and follow me by another way. Do not take long. I do not wish to waste even a minute.” He was off, striding towards the door he had indicated.
Eyes were upon her; she well knew that. The Courtenay-Darcy triangle was of enormous interest to the ton.
There could be nothing more that those gathered would like better than to catch a whiff of improper behaviour.
Thus, she was superbly cautious, nonchalantly strolling through the crush of people to the refreshment tables with ambling, aimless movements.
After spending five minutes greeting a few people, sipping at punch, and making her way in fits and starts towards a door, she turned, and slipped out into the inky darkness of the garden.
The faint sliver of moonlight was barely discernible through the cloud cover and did nothing to light her path, and she hoped Darcy would come forwards soon, as she had no notion of how she might find him otherwise.
She expected him yet nearly screamed when she felt his hand grasp hers, pulling her towards a bench in a little secluded spot among the shrubbery. “Shh,” he chuckled, his voice low. “Come, Lady Courtenay.”
When they reached the bench, she sat as close to him as possible, revelling in the feel of his warmth. “Pray, do not call me that,” she whispered. “It must be ‘Lizzy’ to you.”
He tilted his head a moment, a bit quizzical. “I never called you ‘Lizzy,’ did I? Only Elizabeth.”
She reached over to run a light caress over his arm. “You did indeed call me ‘Lizzy,’ and they were moments I treasure—wonderful, private moments.”
“Oh?” He thought for a moment, and then understanding dawned upon him. “Oh yes, I see now.”
“I want you to know that I do appreciate how honourably you have behaved in this. I am mortified when I think how much I wish to forget decency and propriety.”
“It is an odd thing to go from being married to suddenly being unmarried. The usual strictures surely do not apply,” he reassured her. “I admire how well you have comported yourself in this.”
“You do it again,” she told him tenderly.
“What is that?”
“You take my bad behaviour and somehow turn it to my credit.”
He reached over to run his finger lightly along her wrist. “As I have said before, that is what it is to love somebody.”
“I am a greedy and selfish creature,” she admitted. “I long to hear you say that every time I see you and even on the days I do not, although it is to your detriment to continue to love me.”
“Detriment or not, I shall not stop. I believe I once told you that my good opinion, once lost, was lost forever—did I not?”
She nodded.
“Likewise, my love, once earned, is earned forever. You will see.”
“You cannot know how very much I long to kiss you. I wish to be on your lap with my hands in your hair, holding you as tightly as I can.”
“I would love that,” he murmured. “I dream of it.”
She paused a moment, considering, and then decided she could not care. What good was it to be so rigorously ladylike when her entire world had collapsed upon her? She lowered her voice, speaking in a seductive tone as she laid her hand on his leg. “What else do you dream of?”
He did not miss her meaning and gave her a low chuckle. “Minx. What you do to me!”
She edged a bit closer to him. “Is your mind still married to me as mine is to you? My thoughts contain a different world, one in which none of this ever happened. A world where Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy met Miss Elizabeth Bennet, free and unencumbered, and they lived happily ever after.”
“That might have done very well,”
“Of course, had I been the lady you thought I was in Hertfordshire, I never would have seen you again,” she teased. “You left me without a look back.”
“Do not think it for a moment,” he responded with earnestness.
“I might have been so stupid—indeed, I was so stupid—but even in January, I had already begun to think of a way it might be done. I knew then that I needed you. I was stupid on many accounts, but I was wise enough to realise you were everything I could ever need and wish for.”
She blushed. “Then I suppose it would have been for the best, for we might now be married to one another. I think of it often.”
“It is always in my mind as well.”
“Well then, tell me what we are doing in this marriage in your mind.”
He shifted a bit in his seat. “My imagination is poor, but I am fortunate to have had some taste of a beautiful reality to feed it.”
She was silent but allowed her fingers to trace his leg.
“Do you recall,” he asked, sounding a bit embarrassed, “when we went for a ride on horseback to one of my favourite spots at Pemberley: a rise that overlooks the river?”
She immediately knew the day of which he spoke. “I remember that day well. We kissed a long time.”
His voice became husky. “I became rather desperate for you.”
She knew where his thoughts had gone, and it made her blush hotly.
She had been in that time of the month when to do more than kiss was impossible, yet she had clearly seen his need for her.
She had once read a book where a woman had placed her mouth on a man and, not knowing precisely what she was doing, had sought to emulate the act. “I hoped to ease your suffering.”
“You did…I had never imagined experiencing such a thing by your ministration.”
“The pleasure was as much mine as yours.”
“You are a remarkable woman. I had always believed a lady might find such things distasteful. I could never have asked for it but surely thought I was favoured by fortune to have you do so of your own inclination.”
“There is nothing of you that I find distasteful, nothing at all. I only wish that I might do it again.”
“Ah, Lizzy.” He rested his forehead on hers, breathing as heavily as she was.
She closed her eyes a moment, enjoying the scent and the nearness of him, even as she attempted to calm herself.
She knew, at his slightest hint, that she would go off with him and do anything for him, and she supposed she must be grateful for his greater restraint.
He leant back with one last deep breath. “It seems you are right. In certain situations, I do call you ‘Lizzy.’”
She laughed, lightly and quietly. “Yes, you do.” They were silent for several long minutes.
“Will he miss you? I would imagine the time for a dance has long since elapsed.”
“My husband is devoted to card playing far more than ever before. Then again, there likely has been little else to amuse him these last three years. I console myself in that he seems to have no idea of the complexity of his father’s financial system; therefore, he can do little damage with his wagers. ”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Just that his father, the old earl, had a rather elaborate means by which he kept his books. It took me many months to fully learn it, and even so, I do not know that I yet comprehend all his methods.”
“But what of the years after Courtenay inherited? He must surely have looked at it then.”
“If he did understand, it has been forgotten due to his injuries. The manner of its construction made me wonder whether his father had some suspicion of the traitorous doings in which his younger son was engaged.”
“That seems a dangerous game. What if both he and Henry had died? Would the fortune have been lost?”
“No,” Elizabeth assured him. “It can be understood. It is just complicated and requires a mind for numbers. Once Henry approaches it with a bit of patience and diligence, he will learn it, but as yet, he has not.” She heaved a sigh. “Why do we speak of Henry? I wish to speak of you.”
“There is nothing to say about me. I am a man with a broken heart, doing what I can to heal and succeeding not at all.” He sighed. “I find solace in knowing that you have a good man, one who loves you and whom you love. I could not bear it otherwise.”
It was shocking, the sense of repulsion she felt when he mentioned her loving Henry. Before she could stop herself, she whispered, “I do not.”
“You do not what?”
“I do not love him.” Her words came almost in spite of her. She was horrified that she had said it yet also liberated as if a burden dropped from her mind upon admitting the truth that lurked in the shadows of her consciousness.
“You do, I know that you do. You are distressed.”
“No…no, I am not,” she insisted. “I do not love him. You, I love you.”
“You cannot. You cannot love me, no matter how I yearn for it.” He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it, lingeringly and tenderly. “But I do assure you, I love you. I ache with how much I love you.”
“Lady Courtenay?” A man’s voice came into the garden, and Elizabeth started, removing her hand from Darcy’s. She wondered whether whoever was there had seen them, even knowing it was impossible in the shadows of the dark garden.
Turning, she saw the form of a man looking off in the opposite direction. By the shape of him, she guessed it was Mr Hanley. How long has he been there? He surely saw us and now only pretends he does not.
It was shocking that she felt no wash of guilt, only annoyance that he dared to interrupt her interlude with Darcy.
“Remain here until I have gone.” She rose, gliding to where Hanley stood. She dared not look at Darcy as she listened to Mr Hanley explain that Henry had been called away on an urgent matter and asked Hanley to escort her home. Taking his arm, she allowed him to do just that.