Chapter 22 #2
This was what he wanted. The laughter, the absurdity, the lightness between them that made the weight of everything else feel, if not smaller, then at least bearable.
She was happy this morning. He could see it in the colour in her cheeks, the animation in her features, and the way she tucked her arm through his without thinking, as though the gesture was natural.
He wanted to preserve this. He wanted to put it in a glass case and never let anything touch it. Which was, he recognised, foolish, for this, whatever it was between them, was happening on borrowed time.
They dismissed the carriage, for it was only a mile and Elizabeth preferred walking when the weather was fine. They were making their way through Green Park when Georgiana appeared, walking with her maid and a footman.
“Good morning!” she called. “Tracy said you were to visit the bookshop. Did you find anything?”
“Your brother has purchased a treatise on keeping bees,” Elizabeth said, with a gravity that did not quite conceal her glee.
Georgiana looked at him. “Bees?”
“It was recommended to me,” Darcy said.
The conversation turned to bees, and then to gardens, and then to a plan Georgiana had been forming to redesign the cutting garden at Pemberley, and Darcy walked beside them and said nothing and watched the private hour fold itself up and disappear.
He did not resent his sister. She was fifteen, and she had found in Elizabeth the sister nature had not provided her.
She did not mean to stand between him and his wife.
She simply could not help filling every space Elizabeth left open.
And Elizabeth left every space open. He began to think that Elizabeth had never in her life turned away someone who needed her.
It was the thing he admired most about her.
It was also the thing that was, at this particular moment, silently breaking his heart, because the hour he had needed, the hour in which he might have found the courage to say There is something I must tell you, had dissolved into talk of bee books and cutting gardens, and he had let it go without a word.
Elizabeth glanced at him once as they neared the house. A quick look, sidelong, assessing. He saw in it the same small pang he was feeling, the recognition that this kept happening to them, that something fragile had been forming between them in the bookshop but had not survived the walk home.
Fitz arrived at seven.
Tracy’s booming welcome of “Colonel Fitzwilliam, sir! A pleasure as always!” could likely be heard in the mews. He met his cousin in the hall.
“You look dreadful,” Fitz said.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. You look as though you have not slept in days.”
“Your perceptiveness is, as always, deeply unwelcome.”
After dinner, Darcy waited until Elizabeth and Georgiana had withdrawn before catching his cousin’s eye. They removed to the study without a word. Tracy closed the door behind them.
His cousin dropped into the chair opposite the desk. “You are different with her.”
Darcy glanced up.
“At dinner just now. You are almost bearable.” He said it lightly, but his eyes were steady. “I have not seen you laugh in . . . I do not know how long. Years, perhaps. She makes you laugh.”
“She recommended a pamphlet on lichen.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“At Hatchards. She pulled increasingly absurd books from the shelves to see whether I would object. I did not.” He paused. “I bought a book about bees.”
Fitz stared. “You do not have bees at Pemberley.”
“She recommended it. I could not determine at first whether she was in earnest.”
“But you have no interest in bees.”
“None whatsoever. But the first three chapters were better than I expected.”
“Darcy.” Fitz’s voice was gentler than he expected. “Have you told her?”
This was beyond anything. “You insisted I not tell her!”
Fitz blinked, and then any number of emotions seemed to cross his countenance, ending somewhere between pity and exasperation. He rubbed his forehead with a fist and exhaled slowly. “The intelligence can wait ten seconds. I am asking whether you have told your wife that you are in love with her.”
Darcy opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “That is not . . . The situation is rather more complicated than that.”
“It is not complicated at all. You bought a book about bees. You read a book about bees.”
“Only the first chapters. That does not constitute a declaration.”
“It does to anyone who knows you.” Fitz dropped his hand. “But very well. Since you are determined to do everything in the wrong order, let us discuss the other matter.”
The shift was seamless, from the lightness of bees to the weight of their situation.
His cousin opened the leather case he had carried in and spread its contents across the desk.
Mrs. Younge’s movements were traced and documented, the lodging house in Somers Town had been located, and Fitz’s men had made two visits to a coffee-house in Cheapside.
“She has been taking additional funds as long as she had been in your employ, Darcy.
From Georgiana's accounts, mostly." Fitz scowled.
"As for the gossip, she is planting seeds. A word here, a detail there. Servants first, of course. A lady’s maid hears something from a former colleague, mentions it to her mistress over dressing, and from there it moves on.
“Notice where it has not moved.” Fitz set down the page.
“Not a word has come through the clubs or any other channel a man might use. The gossip exists entirely in drawing rooms and servants’ halls.
Every link in the chain is female.” He paused.
“That is not an accident. Wickham understands that scandal of this kind, filtered through women, reaches a wife before it reaches a husband.
He wishes Elizabeth to fear the scandal before you have heard of it, for if she wishes to spare you the grief of it, she is more likely to acquiesce.
“The Graves letter makes the timeline clear. Wickham expects a quick return on this. He is stalling at least one creditor and likely more. He would not be making a promise unless he believed Mrs. Younge’s work will soon bear fruit.”
“He has not yet made a demand.”
“No. And that is what concerns me.” Fitz leaned back. “The town is thin. Parliament does not sit until the new year. Half the houses in Mayfair are shut up. If Mrs. Younge’s purpose is to poison your wife’s reputation, she has chosen a poor season for it. Which means either she is incompetent—”
“She is not incompetent.”
“Or she is laying the groundwork now so that when London fills for the season, the story is already in place. A whisper repeated often enough becomes a thing that everyone has always known. By January she will not need to say another word. The gossip will sustain itself.”
His wife had not mentioned her callers, but he knew she had entertained a few. And then her animation over the Brunton . . .
“I believe Elizabeth is already hearing it,” he said. “Her protest about the way ruination was handled in a novel she is reading was an indirect reference to it. She was rather more pointed on the subject than I think she intended to reveal.”
“Or rather more pointed than you were easy hearing.”
Darcy knew that was right. “She sat in the library and said that she would not accept anyone telling women that she must take on the corruption of the man who had wronged her.” He paused. “She was extraordinary. And I sat there knowing the source of every whisper, and I said nothing.”
Fitz was quiet for a moment. “That cannot continue.”
“I know.”
“I am not speaking of strategy now, Darcy. That would have you maintain your silence still. No, I am speaking as family, for that will last a good deal longer than this crisis. The longer you keep this from her, the worse the reckoning will be. I must ask for your apology, I did not know things had progressed so far between you two.”
Darcy sighed. “It is not your fault, it is mine. I ought to have trusted my instincts, but with Elizabeth I often find myself entirely turned about.”
Fitz’s eyes lifted to his. “And it is about time, you colossal ninnyhammer.”
His cousin was two years older and he had not yet wed, but Darcy’s mind was on other things.
“I fear this will wreak havoc on anything we have shared. I ought to simply have told her, but between your warning, not wishing to burden her, and simply finding a good moment without Georgiana about, I have lacked the courage.”
“Then find it.” Fitz’s voice was firm but not unkind. “Tomorrow, first thing. Before Georgiana comes down, before the post arrives, before you have time to talk yourself out of it again over your coffee.”
“And Georgiana?”
“I will speak to her. Elizabeth must come first for you now. You trust as well as love her?”
She had saved Georgiana by daring to send him a letter, putting herself in danger by doing so, and he recalled how, when she had been compromised by his ineptitude, she had responded not with resentment, though she must have felt it, but instead with a determination to make the marriage a good one. “Implicitly.”
“Well then. She is no doubt hearing whispers. An intelligent woman like that must already know something is happening.”
Darcy closed his eyes. She had been waiting for him to enlighten her. He had been seeing it for some time and pretending not to.
“I will tell her.”
“Good.” The colonel rose. At the door he stopped, his hand on the frame. “She will be angry. Probably quite spectacularly angry. But she will be angry because she trusted you to be honest. It is not the worst foundation for a marriage.”
Darcy sighed. “That is not as comforting as you appear to believe.”
“Please tell me you do not rely on me for comfort. You have a wife for that, which is rather the point of this conversation.” He rapped his knuckles once on the door frame. “Goodnight, Darcy.”
“Goodnight, Fitz.”
They had spent a long time going over the intelligence, and Darcy was sorry to have missed his time in the library with Elizabeth. He passed through the quiet house to the second floor. He paused outside her door, but there was no noise from within. He held up his hand to knock.
Then he lowered it and went to his own room, where he lay awake composing, in the dark, the sentences he would say to her in the morning. None of them were adequate. But they would have to be enough.