Chapter Fourteen
I spoke to Elizabeth about bringing my sister back to stay with us on the carriage ride home.
I went into the entire conversation, what she had said about attentiveness, all of it.
“So, anyway,” I concluded, “I think she must feel as if she has been shuffled this way and that and hidden in corners and left to her own devices, and she must quite be very lonely, and I wish to bring her to live with us. I wished to inform you of my decision.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” I repeated. “That is all you have to say?” I had poured my heart out a bit there, and she was usually more likely to respond in kind.
“Well, you are simply informing me of what is already decided,” she said. “I don’t suppose my opinion is needed.”
“You don’t wish my sister to come and stay with us?”
“I did not say that,” she said. “Obviously, I would not object to such a thing. But even if I had, would it matter?”
“Obviously it would matter.”
“But you would make the decision yourself, in the end.”
“It’s my house. She’s my sister. It’s my decision to make.”
She was quiet.
I thought about how that must sound from her point of view. “If there is something that you do feel strongly about, of course, you must feel that you can come to me, and I shall consider your point of view, and—”
“Make whatever decision pleases you?”
“No,” I said. “That is not what I shall do. I shall make the best decision I can for everyone involved.”
“This is because of what I said about you in front of your family, is it not?”
“No,” I said, because I had quite forgotten all about that part of the evening.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t kind to poke fun at you, but I was ever so nervous, and it was difficult to stop when everyone was laughing, I suppose.”
“I am fine,” I said, a bit affronted. “I can handle a bit of teasing, of course.”
She looked at me in the darkness of the carriage, nodded once, and then looked away.
It was quiet.
“When will your sister arrive?” she said.
“I do not know,” I said. “I shall have to arrange it all, but I shall be sure to tell you of it once I know when.”
“All right,” she said.
And then it was quiet again.
When we got back home, I went to my room to have my valet undress me and then went to her room, which was customary. We had been spending every night together.
But she met me at the door and said she was very tired, not tonight, if I pleased, and what could I say but to agree and leave and go back to sleep alone in my own bed?
I lay there and wondered if it was something I had done, and if so, what?
She had reason to be angry with me, a much worse reason when it came to the dinner and my lying and trying to hide her from my family, and she had not barred me from her bed during all of that.
So, what could I have done this evening that would have made her do such a thing?
I turned this way and that in bed, trying to piece it together, and then the answer came to me.
Richard.
She had talked to him all night, had she not?
Richard called upon us two days hence, bearing a letter from my sister, who was entirely resisting the idea of coming to stay with me.
I had written her several letters, assuring her that I was not, in fact, angry with her, and that I had seen that she was vulnerable to the wiles of Mr. Wickham precisely because no one had been paying her any mind and that I wished to address this problem post haste.
But she did not want to come here and stay with me.
The letter that Richard gave me explained that she had been frightened to tell me that she did not wish to reside under the same roof as my wife.
She seems pleasant enough, I suppose, but she is very loud, and I do not think we should find much to converse about, you see, and I feel that the entire experience would be very uncomfortable for both myself and her.
Please, I am begging you, do not continue to push for me to come and live there.
I read through the letter thrice, each time feeling more and more angry. Was this the truth? Had my sister been telling me a polite lie in that sitting room?
I did not think so. She had been telling the truth about no one being attentive to her. I was certain of that.
So, it could be the influence of my aunt, making her send me this against Elizabeth. If so, I should fight all the harder to get Georgiana here, under my roof, where she would be free of the burden of having to please Lady Matlock.
However, in truth, the letter did not much sound like Lady Matlock, it sounded much more similar to the way that the Bingley sisters talked about Elizabeth.
I knew that Georgiana was not being influenced by them, so I had to take into account that it was possible that my wife simply rubbed other women the wrong way.
Not all other women, I supposed, but possibly certain sorts of women.
I did not think this signified anything good.
The sound of laughter startled me from the letter and I looked up to see that Elizabeth and Richard were sitting very close, laughing about something that I had entirely missed.
They both turned to see that I was looking at them and their laughter died out.
They each picked up their tea cups and took a sip.
Now, it was quiet.
There was a great deal of quiet these days, and it wasn’t the kind of quiet I liked, it was the kind of quiet that speaks of emptiness and wishes to be filled with something, but no one knows how to fill it.
The quiet stretched out between the three of us.
“What does Georgiana say?” said Richard to me.
“No, not important,” I said, folding the letter up. “She will not be coming to stay here, after all, it seems.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “It’s because of me, is it not?” She let out a little laugh. “Richard here was just telling me what he has overheard being said about me in the sitting room at his mother’s home.”
“Richard,” I said. “You two are already calling each other by your first names, I see.”
Richard looked at me, furrowing his brow, and he sat back in his chair, bringing his tea cup with him, holding it in front of him like a shield. “I am sorry. I thought it only expedient. Because of confusion and all of that.”
“Yes,” broke in Elizabeth, “because I call you Fitzwilliam, and his last name is Fitzwilliam, so… for the sake of being certain who it is I mean, that is all.”
Oh, they were both very defensive, weren’t they?
I glared at them.
They both seemed very interested in their tea.
“Is it because of Elizabeth, though?” said Richard in a low voice.
“Is what?” I said.
“Georgiana refusing to stay here,” he said.
I only sighed.
“Apparently, I did myself no favors at that dinner,” said Elizabeth.
“They thought it quite bad that I criticized you for not dancing at the ball, and they thought it quite bad that I made so many jokes. What did they say, Richard?” She was laughing.
“That a lady ought not be quite so funny? Was it that?”
He smirked into his tea cup, nodding.
Then they were both laughing, but it was the kind of laughter wherein they were trying very hard not to laugh, and they couldn’t manage it, so the laughter was simply overtaking them, and they would get themselves under control and then snort it out at odd moments, and it was very disconcerting to watch.
I wanted to laugh.
When other people are laughing, one wants to join in. One sort of tries, even, but I could not find the thread of this, and they clearly thought it was very funny, and I… did not.
Elizabeth set down her tea cup, wheezing. “Oh, I am ever so sorry, it is only that it is such a strange thing to say! How can I control how funny other people find me, you know?”
“You know,” Richard said, still smirking, “I think it is only that they are set on disliking you, and they do not know why. They are simply casting about for reasons.”
“Oh, but that is awful!” said Elizabeth, though she was still laughing a bit, and it did not sound as if she did find it all that awful, actually. “What have I done to make them dislike me, truly?”
“I was thinking you must rub certain women the wrong way,” I said in a thoughtful voice.
“What a thing to say, Darcy!” said Richard.
“Is it?” I looked between them. “I was thinking of the way the Bingley sisters talked of you when you weren’t around.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, sitting up straighter, her mirth draining away. “So, they did that, then? And with you? I don’t know why I did not suspect that. I came upon you and Caroline talking about me and that is what caused all of this. But what did they say?”
“It was as Richard is saying,” I said, sipping at my own tea. “Foolish things, as if they were casting about for things to criticize.”
“But what did they criticize?” said Elizabeth, who was not laughing at all anymore.
“I don’t know. Your hair being blowsy and your skirts in mud and walking alone—you know of all these things.”
She was touching her hair.
“I liked it,” I said pointedly. “That moment, when you appeared in the breakfast parlor and your hair was escaping, all wild curls, that was the moment you were breathtaking, and they knew it, and they were jealous.”
She turned to me, and she bit down on her bottom lip in that way of hers again. Our gazes caught and something passed between us.
Richard cleared his throat. “All right, you two, I happen to be sitting right exactly here.”
Elizabeth flushed crimson, going back to her tea.
“Jealous,” I said. “I wonder if it’s that.”
Richard cleared his throat again.
I looked at him, furrowing my brow. “They must see how it is that men respond to her, perhaps.”
“Men don’t respond to me any such way,” said Elizabeth, who was still blushing. “You were drawn to me, I suppose, Mr. Darcy, and Miss Bingley had designs on you and she was jealous. Perhaps her sister was inclined to dislike me in solidarity, I cannot say—”
“What?” said Richard, laughing. “Is this something women do?”