Chapter Thirty-Three
Caroline approached Fitzwilliam’s study with the same amount of trepidation she would feel regarding the doorway to hell itself.
As if sensing her presence, Mr Darcy appeared just beyond the entrance; his glower had not faded any but seemed to have concentrated
in the very little time it had taken her to gather her wits and pat her hair down.
“Remind me,” said Caroline, turning sideways to present as small a target as possible as she inched closer, “just how many
guns do you keep in that room?”
“Four,” he said, with no hesitation.
“And how many are within arm’s reach?” she asked, stepping over the threshold.
“All of them,” Darcy snapped. “And do not think I shall stop there. I can obtain more guns if need be. Close the damned door.”
“You shall not require any,” Caroline retorted, as the door clicked shut behind her.
“Shan’t I?” He regarded her coolly. “I will be the judge of that.”
She waited while his eyes raked her face, the clock in the corner ticking an endless beat without a melody. “You do not need to put on such a performance, sir,” said she. “I am no common country swain, come to whisk your sister away to a life of poverty and ruin.”
“Poverty, no. Ruin? That is yet to be seen.” His fingers tapped the arm of his chair while Caroline seated herself opposite,
even though he had not invited her to do so. “The last time I saw you, I told you that if you did not mend the error of your
ways, then you would never find love as I have done.”
“Indeed, you did.”
“And now . . .” His fingers ceased drumming, then started again. “You think you have found love with my sister?”
Ah. So he already knows. “As difficult as that may be to believe, yes.”
“It is not difficult at all,” he said immediately, a loyal hound to his last breath. “My sister is an absolute delight.”
The implication hung in the air: and you are not. Caroline refused to rise to the bait. Instead, she crossed her legs at the ankle and folded her hands in her lap.
“I have no desire to prolong this pain on either side. So let me ask you plainly.” Darcy’s fingers tightened on the arms of
his chair. “You may already know that I once offered George Wickham a great deal of money to leave her alone and he took it.
I shall offer you the same now. As many thousand pounds as you require to leave and never look upon my sister again.”
She could not possibly have heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
“Name a number, and it shall be yours.”
She wondered whether she could refrain from slapping him.
The urge had been building for some minutes and was now almost impossible to repress.
It was bad enough that he had once thought Caroline shallow enough not to be capable of falling in love, but to also have him ask how much money it would take to buy her off, as if it was a foregone conclusion and all that was required to agree on was the precise amount, was too much for her to bear.
“Do not dare insult me so, sir.” She very nearly spat her next words. “I do not want your money. I do not need your money.”
“Perhaps not,” he said, stroking his chin. The motion producing a slight rasping noise. Evidently he had not yet been shaved
that day. “Everyone wants something different, do they not? For Wickham, it was money and freedom. For you—”
“Only your sister.” Caroline’s tone was ice. Slapping was too good for such a man. Stabbing might do.
A long, slow stabbing.
He studied her, those familiar dark eyes roving over her face, searching for any weakness. This was not the Fitzwilliam Darcy
she knew—neither the haughty, self-contained version, nor the softened husband. “Not status? Not a marriage match worthy of
royalty? For I could manage such a thing easily, you know. I could charm my aunt into taking you on one of her tours. Lady
Catherine de Bourgh’s reach is . . . extensive.”
She said nothing. The clock ticked on. Darcy got up from his chair and began to pace the room. “You would have status,” he
continued. “You would have power. Are those not the things you once prized more highly than anything else?”
“I did, once.” Caroline swallowed. He knew her well enough to probe her weakness, and to exploit her new vulnerability to
his advantage. The dreams she’d once held of her own importance, sparkling on the arm of someone wealthy and handsome, the
envy of every ballroom, faded when she thought of worn couches, tender kisses, dark eyes fierce with unspoken longing. “That
was before I knew anything else existed.”
“And where will you go, if my sister decides she no longer wants you?” His dark eyes watched her every move.
“For I know that you have no desire to return to Hadley Hall to live with that cold-hearted wretch you call a mother. The only option you have left is to accept this viscount who has made you an offer of what must surely be a loveless marriage. And trust me, when Georgiana comes to her senses, she won’t want you, nor whatever domestic felicity you claim two ladies can have together.
It would be but a half-life, Caroline. You must see that. ”
Liar, she thought, and hadn’t realised she’d said it out loud until she saw Darcy’s eyebrows rise. Despite her rebuttal, she swallowed
down a wave of panic. She was certain of Georgiana’s feelings, but she could not quite shake how it had felt when her lover
had refused to commit. Suppose Miss Darcy renounced her promise, if only to placate her brother, whose happiness and peace
she had so often prized above her own?
I must be Orfeo, she reminded herself. Walking away into the darkness, not looking back to see whether love followed. Devotion was a test
of faith indeed, but not a test for the object of one’s affections.
A test of myself.
“I am here whether she wants me or not,” Caroline declared. “I couldn’t stop loving her if I tried, and whether she decides
to be with me or not”—she broke off, gulping down a swell of panic—“is both of no consequence and the greatest consequence
of all. I love your sister, and I will never stop loving her. You cannot induce me to do otherwise with money or status or
power or anything else you can think to bribe me with.” She rose, drawing herself to her full height. “I am no George Wickham,
sir. I cannot be bought. I will not flee. And I will never be hunted.”
His voice dropped; softer, more cunning. “Would you acquiesce to be helped, then?”
Tick. Tick. Caroline’s heartbeat pounded rabbit-fast, but she refused to look away from him. She would meet her fate head-on, whatever
it was, and he could not trick her when she had nothing to hide. “Not by you. I have already turned the viscount’s offer down.
I have already been disowned by my mother. If those facts do not convince you of my undying love for your sister, nothing
will.”
He sat back in his chair, brow knitted. Something had changed in his expression, though she knew not what it was or what it
heralded. “There are two doors in this room.” Fitzwilliam gestured behind him. “This one leads to my sister and certain ruin.”
He pointed over Caroline’s shoulder, at the door she’d entered. “This one leads to stability and security, though you will
never see Georgiana again. Choose now. Which will it be?”
“Without Georgiana, I am already ruined.” She stared him down unblinking. “No amount of money or power could ever make up
for her absence in my life, and you cannot take anything from me which I wouldn’t gladly give for her. I had already chosen
my fate before I ever entered this room.”
“Really, Miss Bingley?” he said, the hint of a sneer curling his upper lip. “You, who once cared so much about fortune and
rank? To say nothing of your precious reputation? Now you say you do not care at all? You understand how that is an exceedingly
difficult thing for me to believe.”
“I . . .” She hesitated, biting her lip.
It was a fair point, she had to admit. He had been there when she had presented her argument to Charles against his pursuing Jane Bennet, when she had talked of status, of wanting only the best for him and their family.
“I understand how that might look to you,” said she.
“And perhaps I shall never be able to convince you. But let me put the same question to you. For you joined me in advising Charles to drop his pursuit of Miss Jane Bennet, and I believe, given what he said to me later that week, that you and he had also had some private conversation away from us ladies, where you argued even more strenuously for his giving up the match entirely. You were not an innocent party in that matter.”
An angry flush painted Darcy’s cheeks. “I did so. I do not deny it.”
“So then,” she challenged. “What say you to that?”
“I say nothing. I was in the wrong.”
“And so was I,” she cried. “How can you hold us to different standards when you yourself made the same decision I did, based
upon what you thought was right for my brother? And when you realised your mistake later, when once you fell in love yourself
and understood all the happiness which you had kept from him, how did you feel?”
“I know very well how it made me feel,” said he, his eyes glittering. “How did it make you feel?”
“Nothing at first,” she admitted. “It was only once I developed feelings for your sister and understood the great happiness
and joy that love can bring, that I truly realised the depth of my betrayal of Charles. I chose my own status and comfort
over his happiness.”
“As did I.”
“So we understand each other,” she said, watching him carefully. “As we did then, so do we now, though for very different
reasons.”
“Then to keep you apart from her would be to simply commit the same error of judgement again as I did with Charles, would it not? By doing so, should I not prove that I had learned nothing? Is that your argument?”
“I would not hold it against you, if you did,” said she, despite feeling as if her stomach had fallen into her shoes and was
even now seeping between the floorboards. “The situation is . . . rather different.”
“Indeed.” He leaned forward. The chair creaked under his weight, and the sound reminded Caroline of a tree being felled. “Then
let me alter my question, since you will not agree to my terms. I am asking, as a brother and as a friend, for you to let
Georgiana go. This affair can only lead to her ruin, as well as yours. If news of such a relationship should ever get out,
neither of you would be allowed back in society again. Surely you would never put the woman you purport to love at risk?”
“I would let Georgiana go if I thought that it was the best thing for her.”
“Do not you want her to be happy? Secure? Safe?”
“Of course I do,” Caroline snapped. “But I believe myself best placed to provide that happiness.” She closed her eyes for
a moment. “No one could ever love her as much as I do. I can assure you of that.”
“And if that should ever not be the case?” he pressed, looking at her keenly. “Would you let her go then? Would you free her
if she wished to marry someone else?”
It was a question she had asked herself many times over the last few weeks.
“That is an impossible question. I know that the answer—the right answer, the one you want to hear—would be yes, that I would let her go. That I would rather she be happy with someone else than with me.” Caroline took a deep breath.
She couldn’t believe she was about to admit the one thing that would give him grounds to forbid the union entirely, but she simply couldn’t lie about a subject this grave.
“I have changed over the last few weeks, and I believe I have become a much better person, but a leopard cannot change his spots, sir. At heart, I am still that stubborn, selfish woman who demanded the truth from you when she was not ready to hear it. I give you honesty, as I have always done, even if it secures my doom. The truth is that while I love her so much that I would do anything for her, the one thing I could never do willingly is give her up. Therefore, no, I cannot imagine myself without her, and I cannot do what you ask.”
Darcy’s glower was so extreme, and his fingers twitched towards her and for a moment Caroline really did think he was about
to reach for the nearest gun, but a split second later, he’d grabbed her by the hand, pulled her in close, and was—
Shaking it.
What?