Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Elizabeth awoke the morning after the Latymers’ ball feeling peevish, melancholy, and rather unfit for company.
Most unfortunate, particularly as she believed she would have a great deal of it once the hour for callers came.
Her aunt would call and beg her company on a visit to Jane.
She believed her mother was staying with the Bingleys, and she felt the throb of an incipient headache just imagining it.
The best part of the morning began when she heard her maid preparing her bath. Dear girl, she had anticipated her mistress’s most ardent desire: a calming, soothing bath to relax her spirit and ease her body.
In twenty minutes, Elizabeth found herself in a heavenly, hot bath.
She dismissed her maid and rested her head with a cloth over her eyes against the edge of the tub, attempting to clear her mind of her worries and distresses.
It did not work; instead, it settled her melancholy deep within her.
After fifteen minutes of time thus wasted, she sighed, sat up, and began to bathe.
She ran the fine-milled, lavender-scented soap over her body, enjoying the soothing scent and silky feel.
As she washed her legs, she saw the scar on the lower part of her right one, earned at the age of twelve when, to her mother’s mortification, she was climbing a tree.
She still remembered going home with her petticoat and skirt torn and blood running down her leg.
It was not such a bad wound, but it did bleed quite a bit, and it left her with a scar.
A scar! What has become of Henry’s scar?
Elizabeth remembered seeing it on his chest one night soon after they had arrived in Italy on their wedding trip.
In general, Henry did not remove his clothing when they were intimate, but he had purposely shown her the scar, admitting to some embarrassment about it.
This, he had said, is what happens to men who act like boys while using men’s toys.
Elizabeth had laid her hand over it. It had exceeded the length of her hand, though by just a bit. It was slightly raised, angry, and red, though it was nearly a year old by that time.
Was it possible that now, almost four years later, such a scar could be gone?
She looked down at her leg. It had been a much less impressive sort of wound and was received at a younger age when healing was quicker and scarring less permanent. Yet, a line remained, faint but still there after nearly ten years.
Her heart pounded as she thought of the implications of her husband’s scar having vanished from his chest, for she had not seen any hint of it the night he came to her room.
Of course, the light had been dim, and Henry’s robe had mostly covered him. Mostly. However, the scar ran across his chest; surely, she would have seen something.
She was overwhelmingly anxious that night though, and in truth, she had looked away the instant he exposed himself. Perhaps she had simply missed it.
If it is gone, what does it mean? She wrenched her mind from considering that and concentrated on whether she had seen any suggestion of it. She could not determine that she had, but she also could not be certain it was truly gone.
I must look again. Examining his chest for marks when he came to her had not been foremost on her mind. It likely was there, but she had been distracted and did not notice. Perhaps her recollection of that night was faulty.
Just then, Elizabeth heard sounds indicating that her husband was rising.
Impetuously, she leapt from her bath, snatched a towel and her dressing gown, and pulled the latter on hastily.
Without stopping to think of the implications, she was determined to see his chest. Perhaps she might surprise him while he dressed and see him bare-chested.
Fortune was on her side.
Henry stood looking out a window, clad only in his small clothes with no shirt.
“Oh!” she exclaimed upon seeing him.
“My darling.” His voice was low and a bit sultry as he turned and walked towards her.
The bright morning light streamed through the windows, and Elizabeth clearly saw that his chest was smooth and unmarked with not so much as a hint that any wound had ever been there.
Her heart pounding, she fixed on the more immediate problem: her husband—or was he?—was presently approaching her, having seen some sort of invitation by her appearance in his bedchamber and by the fact that she was ogling his shirtless body.
She took a step backwards.
“Henry, I…I beg your pardon, I have interrupted your morning…toilette…and I only just wished…that is, do you…what are you…”
“You may interrupt me any time you wish,” he murmured. His delight was rather prominent, and she could not stop herself from noticing it. Her eyes somehow slid towards his pelvis no matter how she tried to stop them.
He chuckled, noticing her look. “As you see, I have been thinking of you. It seems a gift that you should appear like this.”
She laughed nervously and took another step back. “No, I would…you are meeting Mr Hanley today, are you not?”
“Does it seem that I am thinking of Hanley right now?” He took her hand and tried to draw her closer. When she did not budge, he began tugging her towards his bed. She stumbled, and he reached out as if to pick her up.
A knock was heard from his dressing room.
A flash of vexation came over his face, and Henry called out, “I said I would ring when I was ready for you.”
The valet responded, “Beg your pardon, sir, but Mr Hanley has arrived and asked me to bid you make haste. There is someone you must see.”
Elizabeth stood breathless with relief flooding her senses. Henry pressed his lips together, clearly trying to abstain from a curse. He sighed and pulled her hand to his lips. “Perhaps later we shall begin where we have so unwillingly ended?” His voice was hopeful.
“Perhaps,” she agreed, hoping she sounded discouraging.
Hanley had spoken with Darcy well into the night, seeking some means by which they could prove Lord Courtenay was Francis Warren. Definitive proof would be difficult to find. Twin brothers who had lived most of their lives in one another’s pocket could slip into the identity of the other with ease.
Hanley still felt the frustration as he rode with the man he believed was Francis Warren, travelling towards Towton Hall after spending time together at Brooks’s.
“You are for Warrington next week?”
“Elizabeth and I shall go and try our fortune, so to speak.” He laughed.
“And then?”
Warren shrugged, his eyes on the road ahead of him. “Then we put our plans into motion—at long last, I might add.”
Hanley paused a moment then asked, “Do you never fear capture? You saw what happened to your brother.”
“My name is attached to nothing implicating me of any wrongdoing. Even this fortune, when it is found, is not Courtenay money but, rather, the money of hardworking townspeople. It is rather fitting, is it not?”
Hanley did not respond, and Warren continued, “Moreover, as a peer, they can hardly treat me as they did those nobodies, can they?”
“Your brother was a nobody?”
Warren looked irritated. “In time of war, sacrifice is made. My brother is a hero, a war hero.”
In a contemplative manner, Hanley said, “Ah, so it will be Francis’s name attached to all these actions, good and bad. Francis will be a hero then, and you are left to obscurity.”
Warren smiled, looking a bit dangerous. “Perhaps posterity will honour us both.”
The letter.
A letter written by Henry that Elizabeth had held, crumpled and forgotten in her hand when Darcy had arrived at her home to find her drunk those many months ago.
He took the letter from her and then mistakenly brought it with him when he left that night.
The next day as they walked in the park, he had attempted to return it.
She had explained its contents, knowing he would not have read it.
“…nothing more than a note to a friend…a draft, or he neglected to send it… the pair of them fencing with old swords they had found…deep gouge across Henry’s chest…quite the scar…nearly the whole way across his chest…I saw it once. It looked rather mean.”
Darcy’s heart pounded with excitement at the recollection. If the letter could be produced along with the testimony of the friend and Elizabeth, it would indeed prove conclusive. He remembered he had carried the letter back to her house, as she had no reticule with her.
Had he returned it to her? Had he left it somewhere at Towton Hall? He did not think so. By the time they had returned to the house, his mind had fixed on only one objective and that was to kiss her. He had not given the letter even one moment more of consideration.
But where might he have put it?
He began his search in his bedchamber, looking in the box within his armoire where he kept items of sentimental value.
He then went to his study, rifling through his files to see whether it had been placed with his personal correspondence, then to the mistresses’ study where he examined everything and anything to find the letter.
Hours later, he remained unsuccessful and summoned the assistance of his valet.
Fields had been with Darcy since university.
In his fifth decade, he was nearly as tall and quiet a man as his young master.
He prided himself on solving any problem, sartorial or otherwise, with as little fuss as possible.
He stood before his employer, his face betraying no expression, as Darcy explained the dilemma.
“Perhaps it was in my coat pocket when I returned home? I do not recall removing it, not after she had asked me to hold it.”
“This was last April, you say, sir?”
Darcy nodded.
“I believe, had I uncovered such a letter in your coat, that I would have asked you what you wanted done with it.”
Darcy sighed. “I would have told you to file it. Alas, I have already checked my files, and it is not among them. Could it still be in the coat? I cannot recall precisely which coat it was.”
“I always verify that your pockets are empty. I would not wish something to be ruined in the laundry. Shall I check your coats to be certain?”
“Please do,” Darcy acknowledged glumly, dismissing him. For long minutes, he racked his brain, trying to imagine any place where the letter might be and hoping it was not at Towton Hall.
A knock came at his door, and Fields entered when bidden. “I did not find it among your coats, but I had another thought, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Oftentimes, I have noticed you will mark your place in a book with whatever correspondence is at hand.”
“That is true, I sometimes do that.” A bad habit, and it had caused him to misplace more than one letter in the past. He tried to break himself of the custom but still fell into it on occasion.
“Perhaps if this particular letter lay on your desk, it might have been pressed into service as a marker.”
“I do not suppose that you would recall what I was reading a year ago?” He spoke lightly, not wishing to alarm Fields, who might think himself required to know such things.
“I do not, sir.”
Darcy never could comprehend the neglect of a family library, and thus his libraries in both Pemberley and London were extensive. He sighed, hoping he was not about to demand the impossible. “Then I believe we have a task ahead of us.”
All who could be spared from their duties were pressed into service, rifling through each of the books in Darcy’s library.
Almost three hours later, a young scullery maid named Betsy found a letter folded within the pages of an agricultural treatise that Darcy had once tried to read but found too dull to continue.
His hands shook as he took it from her, opening and reading it eagerly.
According to this letter dated September 29 1808 and written to his friend Mr Silas Barnes, in June of that same year, Henry had received a wound from his friend’s errant sword as they unwisely fenced after some time of port drinking and cigar smoking.
The blade had been old and dull, but unlike practice foils, it boasted a real point at the end.
The wound bled impressively for some time, and it became infected, but in the end, it did heal.
However, Henry was left with a scar across his chest that, by his own account, was almost seven inches long, purplish red, and slightly raised.
His servants jumped as Darcy let out an exultant whoop, having never heard such a sound come from their usually sombre master.
Betsy was awarded twenty pounds and a week’s respite from her duties, causing her to cry with happiness.
Fields was similarly gratified, having thought of the notion in the first place.
Darcy went off to see his uncle and cousin, his step quick and a smile on his face for what felt like the first time since he had heard the dreadful words uttered by Wickham.