Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Darcy sat at the writing desk in his chamber and stared at the blank sheet before him. The ink had dried on his pen twice already. He had trimmed it, dipped it, and set it to paper with the full intention of producing a letter to Mr. Bennet that was clear, honourable, and persuasive.
What he had produced, thus far, was a blot.
He set the pen down, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, and attempted to marshal his thoughts into some semblance of order. It was eight o’clock in the morning. They ought to have been leaving Ramsgate at this very moment. But they would not.
The events of the previous day had replayed with merciless clarity every time he closed his eyes—the boy’s breathless falsehood, the door that should have been attended, Miss Bennet’s face when she understood what had been done to her.
The stout woman in the passage who had tilted her head, sniffed, and whispered lavender as though presenting evidence in court.
And finally, his own voice, graceless and blunt: I will marry you. He had not even asked her.
Darcy had only slept in fits and starts.
Franks had brought coffee at six and said nothing about the candle that had burned down to its socket, or Darcy’s bleary eyes. He set the cup down and then paused.
“I take it congratulations are in order, sir.” It was not a question.
“They are,” Darcy said.
“I shall have the good coat pressed. For calling.” Franks withdrew and said nothing further, which was precisely why Darcy valued him so highly.
The letter to Mr. Bennet was more difficult to compose because he could not explain. Not when the letter would travel by stage and receiving house and through the hands of servants who might talk. He could not tell Mr. Bennet about Georgiana. The full story would have to wait until the man arrived.
Which left Darcy to write a letter that must convey the gravity of the situation without revealing its cause.
A letter that must persuade a father to travel to Ramsgate and entrust his daughter to a stranger on the strength of nothing more than that stranger’s word.
It was well that Miss Bennet was sending a letter of her own.
He pulled a fresh sheet towards him.
11 September 1811
Sir—
I have had the honour of making the acquaintance of your daughter, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, during her stay in Ramsgate.
I have proposed marriage to Miss Elizabeth and she has accepted.
I am aware that this intelligence, arriving as it does without warning, must cause you some alarm.
I can only assure you that your daughter is well and shall be writing you herself with an invitation to join her.
I would be grateful if you would come to Ramsgate at your earliest convenience. There is much to discuss.
I am, sir, your obedient servant—
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy
He read it back. It was stiff, inadequate, and might frighten a father half to death.
It was also the best he could do. He could not explain the trap without explaining Georgiana, and he could not explain Georgiana without exposing the very secret he must protect—that his sister had been ready to elope.
Mr. Bennet would arrive suspicious, possibly angry, and certainly armed with questions. That was unavoidable. Better a father’s suspicion now than his daughter’s secrets scattered across the post roads of England.
Fitz’s letter was easier because he and his cousin understood one another.
Fitz—
A family matter requires your presence in Ramsgate. All is secure but the situation you feared has taken a different form than either of us anticipated.
—D
He addressed it to the regiment and added a second direction to the club in St. James’s where Fitz collected his post when in town. It would find him, for Fitz was always attentive to correspondence from Darcy.
Once that was accomplished, Darcy reached for a third sheet.
His good friend Charles Bingley was expecting him at Netherfield just after Michaelmas for the shooting.
The note was brief, saying only that he could not come and that he would explain when next they met.
Bingley, being Bingley, would accept it without question and write back an earnest paragraph of hope that all was well.
He sealed all three letters and sat back. Three letters. One guarded, one coded, not one of them containing the whole truth.
He detested disguise. But if it protected his sister and Miss Bennet, he would undertake it.
From the next room, he heard Georgiana stir.
A murmur, the creak of a bedframe, then silence.
She had cried herself to sleep despite Miss Bennet’s assurances and his own.
She had listened, nodded, pressed her face into his shoulder, and wept until she could not breathe, certain that Miss Bennet must hate her now.
He had held her and thought I did this.
Not the trap itself—that was Mrs. Younge’s work, and no doubt, Wickham’s.
But he was responsible for the conditions that had made it possible.
He had been so consumed with protecting Georgiana from one threat that he had walked blindly into another, and the woman who had warned him, who had seen what he had not, who had kept his sister safe when he was not present to do it himself, was now paying for his failure with her future.
She would be securing a match far and away above her expectations.
That was what the rest of his family would say.
They would no doubt encourage him to settle some money on her and move on.
But he could not. First because he knew the extent of the damage done—Georgiana had told him that Miss Bennet had four sisters still at home.
Second, because it was clear to Darcy that she was marrying him only out of a duty to that family.
Strange that the very thing that made the match tolerable for him was her evident wish not to make it at all.
He thought of her attempt to squeeze herself through a window barely as large as a bandbox and could not help but smile a little.
A very little, because their situation was serious.
He was simply aware that very few women of his acquaintance, faced with complete ruin, would have responded by climbing onto a copper bathing tub to affect their escape.
This was a woman he could love.
The realisation hit him without warning. He suspected that he would find Miss Bennet either very interesting to marry or very exhausting. Probably both.
However, Miss Bennet had not asked to be drawn into the Darcys’ difficulties.
Now, because she had been kind to a lonely girl, because she had possessed the courage to write to him of her concern when a lesser person would have considered Georgiana’s safety none of her business, she had been swept up into this feud of his, and her entire life would change.
He rose from the desk and moved to the window.
The morning was offensively fine. Sunlight poured across the rooftops and glittered on the distant water, and somewhere below, a woman was singing as she hung washing out of a window.
Ramsgate was going about its business with serene indifference to his turmoil.
Georgiana stirred again. He heard her maid’s soft knock, and the low murmur of voices. He would not disturb her. Let her sleep, let her eat, let her have one morning to recover her spirits. He could carry this alone for a few hours more.
He had been carrying things alone for a long time.
Since his father’s death and longer, if he were honest. His father had been ill for a few years before the end, and Darcy had assumed responsibilities well before the title and the estate were formally his.
He was twenty-two when he officially inherited. He had not felt young even then.
A knock sounded at the door. It would not be Franks. Franks did not knock; he simply appeared.
“Mrs. Morgan to see you, sir,” another maid called softly.
He rose, washed, made himself somewhat presentable. Mrs. Morgan was standing in the entrance hall with a stony, determined expression upon her countenance.
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Morgan. Will you not come in?”
“Thank you, but I will not. I have come to tell you three things, and then I shall go.”
He inclined his head.
“First, Elizabeth is not well this morning. She did not sleep, and her cough has returned. The apothecary will see her at noon. She will not tell you this herself, because she would rather die than admit weakness.”
The directness was startling. He opened his mouth, but Mrs. Morgan held up a hand.
“Second, she has agreed to marry you because she believes it is the right thing to do for her family. She is furious and frightened, and she has spent the night composing letters to her sisters in her head because she cannot bring herself to write them yet. If you go to her today expecting gratitude, you will be rebuffed.”
He had not expected gratitude. But neither had he considered that she might be frightened, and the idea concerned him.
“Third.” Mrs. Morgan fixed him with a gaze that reminded him of Fitzwilliam inspecting recruits.
“She is the most capable young woman I have ever known, and she will not tolerate being ordered about. She has spent her life taking care of others. Her sisters, her mother, even some of her father’s affairs when he could not be troubled.
If you treat her as a problem to be solved or a situation to be handled, she will comply, because she has no choice. But she will never forgive you for it.”
“I see,” he said, because he did not know what else to say.