Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Thus, he surprised her this night by going to her, a mere three weeks after the eventful evening at Towton Hall.
He sat behind her on the piano bench, his fingers grazing her bosom while he kissed her neck, but she merely looked at him over her shoulder, a bit scolding.
“Have you already forgotten the doctor’s orders? ”
“The doctor is an old fool,” Darcy murmured into her ear then kissed the side of her face.
“He is not!” She laughed.
“He is. Surely, no one who has a wife as beautiful as mine could refrain from sharing her bed for six weeks. The very notion is preposterous.”
“You are healing well. I would not wish to imperil that.”
“The only thing that imperils me is the fact that I am so desperate for you, I cannot bear it.” He kissed her again, doing his best to tantalise and arouse her through her dress. “Your bodice comes up far too high. I must speak to your dressmaker.”
She laughed again. “I am setting a good example for our sister.”
“Hang Georgiana,” he said into the curls at the base of her neck. “She will wear them too low anyway.”
His ministrations were having the desired effect. Elizabeth leant into him, her breath coming more quickly. “I believe I might have an idea,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“The effort will be mostly yours.” He gave her a naughty smile when she turned to look at him. “And naturally, I shall insist that you not be too jarring in your movements.”
With that, he stood and pulled her to her feet. “Come along now, Mrs Darcy. I can see that you are ready to ravish me.”
“You are sore.” Elizabeth looked at him in dismay. “I can see it on your face. I believe I must have been too jarring.”
“A slight ache,” he told her. “Nothing of note, and in any case, the ache I had previously was far more pressing. You have cared for it nicely, my dear, and believe me when I say that you jarred everything in just the right way.”
She giggled. “You are a naughty man.” She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, my Lizzy, so very much.”
She settled in the bed next to him, lying on her back and staring at the canopy. She did not speak, but through the gathering darkness, he could see she was deep in thought.
“What is it?”
She turned her face towards him. “What do you mean?
“I can see there is something on your mind.”
She demurred, turning away with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
Darcy watched her for another moment. “Do you know what I have sometimes wondered?”
She looked back at him again and shook her head.
“During the autumn when we first met in Hertfordshire, at times, I would see a look of sadness or fear about you, generally in the oddest moments: for example, at the Netherfield ball. I now understand it, but then I did not. I have often wondered what might have happened if I had enquired about your low spirits.”
She laughed lightly. “What would you have said to me? ‘Miss Bennet, you have an odd, sad look about you that is in direct contrast to the lively music and rampant flirtation ongoing herein. Pray, tell me what ails you.’”
“I might have. Or perhaps I might simply have tried to be a friend to you, and you would have confessed to me unprompted.”
She understood his meaning and smiled faintly.
“So now you will understand when I tell you that I am your friend, and there should not be secrets between us.” He turned his head on the pillow, his gaze upon her. “Whatever it is that you are feeling, I would wish to serve as your confidante if you would so honour me.”
There was a prolonged pause as she considered his request. Finally, she spoke. “You have no doubt wondered about my behaviour the night of…the night when everything occurred.”
He reached for her hand. “What I have wondered about most is why you would undertake such a foolish thing as to bait him as you did.”
She leant up on her elbow, a motion he felt rather than saw as the room had grown fully dark. “I did not truly wish to seduce him.”
“Of course not.”
“I wanted to hear him say what he did—I needed to hear it.”
“You played a dangerous game. Even if he had confessed to all, there is little you might have done with the information save for the fact that Fitzwilliam and Hanley were outside the door and heard it.”
“I was exceedingly angry, and angry people do not act from reason.”
“Why were you so angry?”
She edged closer, laying her head on Darcy’s pillow. “I had read the last of Henry’s journals that day.”
“Oh?” Unexpectedly, Darcy felt a tear fall from her eyes onto his cheek. “Elizabeth, why—”
“It was a scheme, and I was a part of it! Nothing more than a pawn in the game.”
He said nothing, knowing very well to what she referred, but hoping against hope she had not learnt the truth.
Her voice from the darkness was angry, shaking, and sad, and there was a soft thud as she tossed herself back on her pillow.
“It was always a lie. His plan was detailed in his journal: to find a naive young country girl who would bear him a son to thwart his brother. That was all it was. It was not me; it was never me. He did not love me. He loved his heritage and his money and wanted to keep them from his brother. I just happened to be there, a means to an end.”
He felt the sadness for her; a long held, cherished notion of a perfect love had been taken away. It would be a loss that would mark her, he knew, and he hoped he might somehow say the right thing to take that sadness from her.
She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Did you know?”
He reached out blindly, and feeling her hair, he gently moved a curl from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Hanley told me what he knew of Henry’s plan.”
There was a moment of silence until she spoke again, bitterly.
“I was an excellent pawn after all. I went right along with the plan, gave him all that he needed: a wife, a son, and all my love. Then, when he was gone, I did everything I was ordered to do: I sent my son away, I lived my disguise, and I did as I was told. I held nothing back. I was all they wished me to be.”
Her voice grew louder and angrier. “To know it was just a lie! All I went through—the hiding, the disguise, the fear, and the sorrow—I managed because I believed I was doing it to honour his memory. I wished to preserve his legacy for his son and for his family name. For a farce, nothing more than a farce!” She raised the coverlet to her eyes, and he felt her shoulders shaking. “None of it was worth anything.”
Darcy pulled her into his embrace, wincing at the slight pain it caused. “That is not wholly true. You preserved the legacy on behalf of your son after all.”
She continued, seeming not to have heard him. “To have found the happiness—the short-lived, cruelly aborted happiness that I had with you—only to be tricked again! I did as I was told I must, only to find I was once again the unwitting fool, and for what? Do you know why Francis wanted me?”
“The hidden fortune in Warrington Castle.”
She laughed angrily. “A fool’s quest, but Francis believed I knew where it was. He thought I had solved the cipher and planned to use me to retrieve the supposed grand fortune buried in the walls of Warrington Castle.
“Used.” She inhaled deeply. “Used to make a son, used to find a treasure, just used. I could take no more. I was used up, my heart taken away, and my soul filled with nothing but indignation. So I provoked him. I knew I played a dangerous game, but I could not stop myself. I suppose I thought—”
She broke off, chuckling a bit.
“Thought what?”
“I had my little gun, and I suppose some part of me believed I might be brave enough to shoot him if it came to that.”
“You had a gun?”
“A gift from Lord Matlock. It proved useful to Mr Hanley when he and Colonel Fitzwilliam chased Francis into the streets, although your cousin did remark on its girlish character.
“I have always been my mother’s least favourite daughter,” she continued.
“Always. Jane is the favourite for her beauty, and Lydia is next favoured for her liveliness.
Kitty and Mary vex her in turns, and then there is me.
I have never done a thing to suit her save for the day I came home and told her a wealthy earl wished to marry me.
“It seemed like my vindication. I should not have seen it so. But for all that I was then—an opinionated country girl inclined towards muddy walks and too much reading—it seemed that since Henry found me acceptable, then surely, I was acceptable. With Henry’s love I was assured that I must have been, in some way, admirable and worthy of esteem in my own right. ”
She sighed. “It is silly to allow this to affect me so, but it has. I would like to have known that Elizabeth Bennet was a lady of worth. It does not really matter now as my experiences have made me into something different.”
His ribs ached, but his heart ached even more. “Do you recall when first you loved me?”
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “It came on too gradually. I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.”
“I know the very moment when first I knew I loved you, but I shall not confess it unless you swear to believe me.”
“Very well, I swear to believe you. You are no master of disguise, and I do not think you would begin now simply to appease my wounded vanity.”
“True,” he admitted. “You will recall my offence at the assembly in Meryton.”
“How could I forget it?” She squeezed his hand to remove any reproach from her words. “It was quite infamous in its incivility.”
“Do you remember what you did?”
“I do not remember doing anything at all.”
It was easy to be lost in the well-worn, beloved recollection. He was almost there: hearing the music and smelling the scent of candle wax and flowers as she brushed by him. Even the feel of his heart pounding and his breath sticking in his chest were recalled with unusual clarity.
“You rose from your seat in a fluid motion. Whenever I think back on it, I am struck by your elegance and grace, but at the time, I could not think so clearly. I was rendered motionless watching you. You strolled towards me. When our eyes met, you raised your brow a little—just enough to assure me that you had heard my rudeness—and you went to your friends. It appeared that you all mocked me though I cannot know whether you truly did. In any case, I did not care, for it was in that very moment that I knew.”
“What did you know?”
He replied with great tenderness, “I knew we could not end any way but this one: the two of us, together, forever. I loved you then, knowing nothing about you, and as I grew to know you, I loved you more still.”
She leant up on her elbow. “That is a great deal to glean from just a look.”
“It was all I needed. Anything I learnt from there only confirmed that it was in you where my happiness must lie.
I did struggle against it, I acknowledge it again, but even before I met Lady Courtenay, I knew I needed you.
I needed Miss Elizabeth Bennet just as I needed the air I breathed, and I do not doubt for a moment that, had you not turned up in London, a countess in disguise, there would have been another plan for the pair of us to unite. It could be no other way.
“You see, I did not need your fortune, and I did not need your standing in society.
What I really, truly needed was Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
I needed an impertinent miss with decided tendencies towards laughter and teasing, who would take me as I was, a proud, lonely man, and make me into something far better.
“To know your love has made me wealthier than I ever could have imagined. Even when we were merely friends, when you assured me many times that you would never love me, it was still far better than anything I knew before. The loneliness that was always within me had begun to dissipate because we were united in something—be it friendship or courtship, it was the two of us, together. Of course, when you grew to love me, that was vastly better still, but I shall always treasure our friendship.”
Softly, Elizabeth said, “I am glad you never gave up, no matter how much I discouraged you.”
“I am too.” He kissed her tenderly and looked at her for several long moments then added, softly but firmly, “I shall never believe that Henry did not love you. No matter where it began, coming to know you, he must have loved you. I know what it is to have your love, and it cannot be resisted. He loved you, yet how grateful I am that it is I, and not he, who has you.”