Chapter Thirteen
The tea happened.
Obviously, I did not go, because I was not invited. Instead, I stayed home and paced the entire house, more nervous about it than Elizabeth had appeared to be, though she hadn’t much spoken to me that day.
We were growing more estranged as the time went on.
I hoped, after the tea, everything would go back to normal.
And, indeed, she came home, said that it went fine, and then we settled back into our lives, such as they were.
In two days’ time, a missive came from my aunt, actually addressed to my wife, but I intercepted it.
It was inviting us to a dinner at the Matlock house, and I hid the invitation, did not tell Elizabeth about it, and wrote back that we were ever so sorry, but we had a previous engagement that evening and could not attend.
A letter came back from my aunt saying that she had been so very careful to ask around and to make sure that she was not having her dinner party on a night that was free and open. She wondered if she could be so bold as to ask where we were engaged.
I did not answer the letter.
I thought about it, thinking of various ideas for a response and discarding them. I thought that I might make up someone that didn’t exist, but I thought that would be too obvious. She clearly knew I was lying, and I thought back on my speech about polite lies.
I obviously did not understand how they worked.
I had observed people making them and observed how they were received.
If I had made this one properly, it would have been received differently, but I had been too obvious about my intention not to socialize with my aunt.
I was going to have to go, that was all there was to it.
We were going to have to go. But I also could not admit that I had been lying.
My aunt and I both knew I was lying, but I had to pretend I hadn’t been.
I would have to write back and say it was of no consequence who we had been engaged with, because the invitation had fallen through, and we were free now, and we would be quite pleased to dine with her on that evening.
In order to do all of this, however, I was going to have to tell Elizabeth of what I had done, and she was going to be hurt, and I did not wish to do any of this.
Days passed.
I might have done nothing, nothing at all, let the day of the dinner itself pass away and have simply avoided all of it, rudely, which would have had such consequences as I could not even anticipate, for I had never done such an audacious thing before, but I was spared from this, well, sort of spared, because Elizabeth found the second letter from my aunt.
She was sorting through my writing desk to write a letter home to her sister.
She and her sister Jane exchanged letters at a rate that was truly fantastic.
She had two a week from her sister, sometimes three.
I had forgotten the letter was there when I told her to simply go and find some paper in my desk.
She came back with several sheets of blank paper for her own letter and with the letter from my aunt. “We are not engaged anywhere, Fitzwilliam,” she said.
“Oh, Lord in heaven,” I breathed. “You found that.”
She turned it over in her hands. “And you will still say you are not ashamed of me, I suppose.”
“I am not,” I said quietly, fervently. “Elizabeth, I love you. I am in love with you.”
“I think you believe all of that,” she said. “I think somehow you do not understand that you are, in fact, ashamed of me.”
“No,” I said, sitting up straight, adamant. “I am not. We did have a dinner engagement—”
“Fitzwilliam!”
“I accepted and had forgotten to tell you of it. It was with a friend from my Cambridge days, but he has taken ill, and so I did not tell you of that because it was off. No dinner after all. And I simply thought that we would be uncomfortable with my aunt, so I wished to leave it as it was, that we would not go.”
She eyed me, nervously dragging her teeth over her bottom lip. “Truly? You would not lie to me?”
I met her gaze. “Truly.”
She searched my expression. Then she looked away.
Had I convinced her? I felt a stab of guilt, having lied to her like that.
It was all unraveling, was it not? My happiness with her?
I should have known it could not last. When did anything that good and pure and wondrous ever last?
Life was not that way. It was not pure bliss.
It was tangled and complicated and shot full of difficulty.
“Well, I think we must go,” she said. “I shall write back to your aunt. It’s proper for me to handle these correspondences, you see. Wives handle dinner invitations. Certainly, you know that.” She wasn’t looking at me.
Damnation. I swallowed. “Elizabeth, I am sorry. I am ever so sorry.”
“About what?” She looked up at me, a smile on her face, plastered there, quite wide.
Another stab of guilt. I hated myself.
“You are so very concerned with propriety,” she said. “You must know I am the one to answer these sorts of correspondences. I am surprised it was not addressed to me, in fact.”
I sucked in a noisy breath.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I shall simply explain to her what occurred and I shall tell her we are now free and would be pleased to accept her invitation if we are still welcome.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s quite what should be done.”
“Good, then,” she said. “I must say, I shall be pleased to have somewhere to wear all these dresses you had made for me. You must wish someone to see them since you spent so much on them.”
“I see them,” I said.
“That’s what you’d like, then, I suppose, Fitzwilliam? To keep me here, all alone, just for you? Perhaps I am like your doll? You dress me up, then you undress me?”
I flinched.
“The hell of it, of course, is that I don’t entirely mind.” She lifted her chin, daring me to comment on the fact she’d just said the word “hell.”
I did not. I just held her gaze. “Perhaps you wish to be undressed now.”
“I have letters to write,” she said in a lilting voice. “But later, I shall quite be at your disposal.”
Elizabeth dazzled at the dinner, but maybe that was due to my cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, who seemed to be her faithful assistant, as if he were simply speaking to set her up to speak.
They met in the sitting room before dinner.
He was his typical amiable, talkative self.
No one much listened to me when Richard was around, but that was because he never let me get a word in edgewise, and I had come to appreciate it, actually.
If I went anywhere with Richard, he would do the talking, and that took it off my shoulders.
“And this is the new Mrs. Darcy, of whom I have been speaking of positively constantly, with everyone in the household, for the past three weeks,” he said. “I daresay, she lives up to the talk.”
“Richard, truly, no one is talking that much of Mrs. Darcy,” said his mother witheringly.
“Oh, don’t listen to her, Mrs. Darcy,” said Richard to my wife as if they were sharing a secret, though he was proclaiming it loudly for the entire room, “she is ever so taken with you. You are all she talks about. You, I would venture to say, are the most exciting thing to have happened to her in a decade.”
“Richard!” said Lady Matlock in horror.
“Well, I am all astonishment,” said Elizabeth, grinning an impish grin. “For I must say, I think of her ladyship often as well. I spent quite a bit of time wondering if she would approve of my dress this evening.”
“I approve,” said Richard, smiling at her.
I glared at him.
He pretended not to notice.
“I hear,” said Richard, “that you are some sort of countryside siren, but instead of causing men to shipwreck themselves on rocks, you cause them to break their ankles.”
“That was me, breaking my ankle,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “It’s your cousin’s fault, truly. You would not believe how absolutely dreadful he was at courting me. It’s amazing, really, that I assented to marry him.”
Richard laughed, but then, horrifyingly, so did everyone.
My uncle, the earl, spoke up. “Yes, we have worried that Darcy would never find anyone who could stand his taciturn and grim nature. You are not at all what we might have expected.”
Taciturn? Grim? This was what my family thought of me? I stiffened.
“He is a trial at times,” said my wife, looking askance at me. “He does not give a good first impression, I am afraid.”
“Darcy? Well, I can hardly believe that,” said my cousin, in a voice that meant entirely the opposite.
“We met in a ballroom,” said my wife.
I gaped at her. Was she going to tell everyone I said she was not handsome enough to tempt me?
“He would not dance,” she said with a shrug. “And gentlemen were scarce.”
I sputtered out, “You know that I am not at ease amongst people I do not know.”
“Yes,” she said, with a laugh, “and, as we all know, no one can be introduced in a ballroom.”
And everyone laughed again.
The evening went like that, mostly, but—thankfully—not all at my own expense. However, Elizabeth and Richard dominated the conversation. He prodded her, she said things, everyone laughed.
Afterward, we all retired to the sitting room, and my aunt played the piano, and Georgiana came and sat next to me.
She had been entirely silent all evening, but that was often her way.
She could be like a shadow, sitting out on the periphery, not moving unless others did, simply going along with the rest of the gathering but doing nothing to call attention to herself.
“Am I to stay here, Fitzwilliam?” she said. “Or shall I go back to the house on Chapel Street?”
She had lived with Mrs. Younge there before the incident with Wickham. Since then, I had determined it was best if she were living with someone, so that she could be looked after.
“I suppose you will not wish me underfoot with your new wife,” she said.
“I believe you are likely quite settled here,” I said.
“No, I am truly tired of our aunt,” she said. “Must I remain here?”
I let out a breath. “Well, I could send you to Rosings, I suppose.”
She turned on me in horror. “In December? To the country? You would not send me from London in December.”
I sighed.
“Fitzwilliam, you must realize it is absolutely unfashionable to be in the country in December.”
“Perhaps in March, it is absolutely unfashionable, Georgiana,” I said, “but there is a gray area of the winter. Not everyone returns, even if Parliament is in session. It is no hardship to be in the country in December.”
She scoffed.
“What do you think of her?” I said.
“Of who?”
“My wife,” I said.
“She’s loud,” said Georgiana.
I smirked. “I suppose.”
“She is loud and she is very confident and she is not unpleasant, I suppose, but our aunt hates her.”
“Hates?” I said, cringing. “Truly?”
“She is only angry that you have broken the betrothal, of course, and that you have ruined everything, all the plans, because you were supposed to marry Anne—”
“Yes, good point, you can be assured I shall not send you to Rosings after all. Aunt Catherine is probably fit to be tied, and quite out of her head.”
“Oh, yes,” said Georgiana.
“You can come stay with us, if you like,” I said.
Georgiana turned to look at me, as if thinking it over. “I shall stay here, if those are the choices.”
I furrowed my brow. “Why is that? Is it because of Elizabeth?”
“No,” said Georgiana. “It’s because of you, because you are still fit to be tied as well, quite out of your head, and you are never going to forgive me, even though I did not do anything.
I wrote to you of the elopement. He wished us to do it without telling you, and I went against his wishes, because I thought you would not like it.
I did everything right, and yet you still blame me. ”
“I do not blame you,” I said. “I blame him and only him. He is the one who has wrought all of this.”
“Yes, but that is part of it as well, I suppose. You were not very nice to him.”
I started, horrified. “He was only seeking your fortune, Georgiana,” I said in a low voice. “How can you think otherwise?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He told me…”
“What did he tell you?”
“Well, you’ll think I’m a fanciful girl, clinging to silliness, but he was ever so attentive, you know, Will? I was not accustomed to anyone being so attentive to me.” She was wistful as she looked off into the distance.
Across the room, my cousin Richard spoke up. “I say, can we not hear our own Miss Darcy play the piano?”
My sister smiled, getting up. “Oh, of course I shall play.” She left me alone as she went across the room.
I felt deeply ashamed of myself. Here I had been, gallivanting around, trying to solve the problem of Georgiana’s husband from the perspective of her reputation, and she had gotten into this predicament because of my behavior.
I had neglected her. She had been susceptible to that awful man because I had been neglecting her.
And obviously I had been neglecting her further.
Not accustomed to anyone being so attentive?
Damnation.