Chapter Two #3
She was not looking at him anymore, but looking off into the distance, her expression almost pained.
He found he did not wish to speculate on any of this.
Yes, you did. You wished to be near her.
You found any excuse to be here with her.
You cad. He turned to the letters. He pulled out the first one, and began to read it aloud.
“‘Dear Eddie, I shall be indebted to you forever, and I know this.’” He looked up at her.
“Eddie? That’s Larilane, then.” His name was Edouard.
“Yes, I think so,” agreed Elizabeth.
He went back to the letter. “‘I think you have it in your head that you are my savior, and it is partly my own fault, for perhaps I have seen you that way. I also have known for some time that as the duke’s child grows larger within me, it has pushed you further away.’” He raised his eyebrows.
“So, she admits that her child belongs to a duke!”
“Yes, and she mentions Neithern elsewhere, in one of the other letters.” Elizabeth reached over him, her skin close, and he could smell her, and he remembered the way she smelled from being trapped close with her in that shack whilst Wickham’s body moldered outside in the rain…
She tapped at the letter, which said, I regret ever informing you that I had eloped with the Duke of Neithern.
“Eloped,” he said, shaking his head. “If they were married, that would mean that you were the legitimate daughter of a duke.”
She bit down on her bottom lip.
“Obviously, you’ve thought of this,” said Mr. Darcy.
“It really wouldn’t mean anything in the end, I don’t suppose,” she said.
“You don’t know that,” said Mr. Darcy, thinking it over. “It could be that the family doesn’t know that you exist and that they might welcome you with open arms when they find you do. Your life could change materially, if so.”
She shook her head. “They know.” She reached down to sort through the letters until she found one which said, I suppose you will think that I ought to be grateful for what you have done but if you think I shall send my sweet child away to live anywhere near the reach of that dreadful man, you have lost all your wits.
Then she paged back to the first letter he had been reading from and pointed out this tidbit, But this child has never been the duke’s, and if you persist in trying to give my own sweet babe back to that monster who spawned him
It cut off there, the sentence unfinished.
Then she pointed to yet another, which read, I can tell you that from the moment I felt my babe quicken in me, I have loved the child. You may say that this is a better path for my babe, but I cannot think I can trust anyone in that family, no matter what they may say.
Mr. Darcy furrowed his brow. “So, Larilane told the duke about his child?”
“That’s what it sounds like, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Mr. Darcy. “I spoke to him, you know, and he was the one who told me that your mother had been impregnated by a man who beat and bruised her. When he spoke of that, he was angry and horrified. He would not have returned a child to that.”
“Well, a duke has little interaction with his child, does he?” Elizabeth spread her hands. “It’s not as if a duke carries out the day-to-day punishment or the care or much of anything with a child. How often would a duke even see his own child?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on the duke,” said Darcy, looking her over. “It’s the principle of the thing, of course.”
“I’m only saying, maybe he could have convinced himself it would have been all right,” said Elizabeth. “And maybe, selfishly, he wanted my mother to himself, and he knew that if he got my mother’s babe out of the middle of everything—”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Darcy. “I feel as if there’s something more going on here.”
“It is all very strange,” Elizabeth agreed.
“Obviously, whatever it was that Larilane tried to do, it didn’t work,” said Mr. Darcy. “Because, here you are, and you were not raised within the reach of the duke. However, if the duke knew you existed, he wouldn’t have let you live out the life you lived.”
“I was a girl,” said Elizabeth, shrugging. “If I’d been his heir or something, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered—”
“No,” said Darcy, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so.
” He rubbed his forehead. “Well, maybe they never married? Maybe it was only an elopement? Maybe he might be convinced to forget about a bastard daughter? But a legitimate child of either sex, I can’t think any man would rest until he knew where the child was. ”
“That was why she hid me and passed me off as belonging to my father,” said Elizabeth.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Darcy, nodding. “Maybe she said you had died.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I had not thought of that, but it does make sense, actually. And this was why she hid me away and did not have contact with me, to protect me from the duke.”
“He’s dead now,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Yes, and I feel some odd pang about that, about never having met him, even after reading this letter wherein he is described as a monster.” She laughed softly. “I can hardly make sense of that.”
“That seems entirely logical to me,” said Mr. Darcy. “Everyone needs to know where they came from.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter, or it shouldn’t. I have a way I was brought up, a family, and I don’t know why it is that everything about that feels so different now.”
“It is different,” he said, regarding her. He got up from the desk and looked her over. “Lord, the things you’ve been through as of late. It is a wonder you’re still standing.”
She scoffed. “It’s not that much.”
“You were ravished—”
“Not really,” she said. “I suppose the colonel shared that with you?”
“Well, regardless, I’m not sure that being deceived by that villain made it much better,” said Mr. Darcy. “It may have made it worse in some ways.”
“Well, I thought I was with child, and that would have been impossible,” she said.
“Yes, and when you look back on that, it probably just makes his sins against you worse because you see how he manipulated you and lied to you.”
She hung her head. “True.”
“And then, right on the heels of all of that, discovering that all of the foundations of your life, everything you had thought to be true was false? I can’t imagine how it is you’re not unraveling.”
She let out a little, strangled laugh. “Oh, perhaps I am.”
He thought about it, about the way she’d been behaving lately. They’d all thought that moving into that house as an unmarried woman alone was a bit eccentric, possibly courting whispers about her reputation. Then, she’d apparently agreed to go to bed with Richard without marrying him, which…
He had not thought about that from her point of view, had he? Why would she have done such a thing, however?
It must be because she was in a place where nothing and no one mattered anymore, where she had lost all sense of anything. There was no up or down, no north star. She must feel incredibly unbalanced.
He reached out for her before thinking better of it. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, heavens,” he murmured. “I’m ever so sorry. You don’t deserve to have so many tribulations heaped upon you.”
Her lower lip started to tremble. “I am quite well, Mr. Darcy, I assure you. I’m managing admirably, and there have been certain compensations, like the money and the house and… and the marriage.” But her voice cracked.
“What’s that?” he said. “What about the marriage?”
She looked away, her eyes shining, and she only shook her head back and forth, very quickly.
“It is as I said. He spirited you off and abandoned you and he did not tell anyone or make arrangements for you or treat you like a wife. He treated you like a strumpet, in fact, and when I see him again, I am going to wring his neck,” said Mr. Darcy, his voice growing more heated with each word, his hand still heavy on her shoulder.
She let out something like a sob and she ducked her head down.
He squeezed her shoulder.
She reached up to wipe at her eye. “I’m not crying,” she said in a voice full of tears.
“It’s all right if you are,” he said.
“No, it’s not proper, not done, to be so emotional—”
“Nothing about anything with you and I has been proper in some time,” he cut her off.
She looked up at him.
He wiped at the wetness on her face with his thumb.
She sagged against the place where he had her shoulder, and more tears slipped out over her cheeks.
He caught all of them with his fingers, gently brushing them away.
They held each other’s gaze, and he became aware of her in a way that he knew he shouldn’t be aware of her, aware of her warmth and her breath and the shape of her bosom as she heaved, and the way her nose got red when she was crying and he thought of crushing her against him, holding her tightly in his arms.
It had only been recently that he had been contemplating how little occasion it was he had to touch another person, and he thought the touch of Elizabeth might be the finest touch he could imagine.
“Why?” she whispered, shaking her head at him.
“Why?” he said.
“Why are you this way with me? I think you should hate me, sir. I really and truly think—”
“You keep coming back to this,” he said. “Do you not?”
“You don’t even think I’m pretty,” she said.
A laugh burst out of him. “What? Obviously, I think you’re pretty.”
“No, but you—” She flushed, color high on her cheeks. “Obviously,” she said. “But you have never said so.”
“Certainly, I have.”
“You have not,” she said firmly. “But I suppose I must have realized that you must… that somehow…” She shook her head again, but this time as if she were trying to clear it.
She met his gaze once more. “The woman who told me about Larilane thought he was a fey prince. She said I was half-faerie and that men must be going out of their heads with devotion to me.”
Mr. Darcy’s hand fell away from her shoulder. He took a step back.
She let out a laugh herself now, but it was surprised, wondering. “Well, that’s clearly fanciful and foolish.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Fanciful.” But what was it about this woman, in the end?
“Y-you must not threaten to wring my husband’s neck, I don’t think.”
“No, likely not,” said Mr. Darcy. “It might be better if I refrained from criticizing his behavior towards you, as lacking as I may find it, as much as I may think that I would do a better job with you if I had the chance. You have never wanted me.”
Her lips parted. She looked as if she might protest. Then she shut her mouth.
He turned away from her, scratching the back of his head, looking at the door. He pitched his voice up, as if they were now discussing the weather or something. “Likely this isn’t a good idea between us either, being alone in your bedchamber. I should take my leave of you.”
“Likely,” she said.
He started across the room, clearing his throat. He addressed the door as he grew closer to it, not her. “I do think that we must speak to Larilane and ask him what happened.”
“Both of us?” she said. “I could come along?”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “W-well, that might prove… I don’t know if we should go off on our own together, madam.”
“It would be much easier if everyone knew I was married, of course,” she muttered. “Why is it that I haven’t told anyone of my marriage?” She was asking this of herself, not him.
He turned back to the door.
“Mr. Darcy?”
“Yes?”
“You’d be better off to cease to think of me and to stay clear of me and all my past issues and my current relationship with my husband, all of it.”
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t think you would be here.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t think you would be here either.”
He reached the door. He put his hand on the knob. He thought of saying something else, but he ended up saying nothing at all. He opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and shut it firmly behind him.
She is Richard’s wife now, he reminded himself.