Chapter Nine
ELIZABETH STAYED CLOSE to Jane all day. She looked around, hoping that the duke would come, and that she could speak to him, since she had thought they would be having breakfast that morning, but he did not arrive.
She noticed Mr. Darcy from time to time, but she forced herself not to pay him too much mind, as she allowed her own mind to churn.
Larilane had negotiated everything with the dowager duchess, but what had he negotiated?
Elizabeth supposed that whatever the negotiation was, it had been for one child, and when it had turned out to be twins, he’d stolen away one of the children and left the other.
She couldn’t understand why her mother had allowed her child to be taken, however.
She also couldn’t understand why her mother had given Elizabeth up if she’d lost one babe.
But these questions, like the questions about why her mother had given her up at all or why she had not lived at Weythorn were all not likely to be answered, Elizabeth was coming to realize.
She did not know what to think about the dowager duchess herself, who seemed mostly awful, and yet, there was that one wistful moment about wishing for a girl child, about wanting to attend Elizabeth’s wedding.
As small as it was, Elizabeth’s soul grasped at it, and she realized she longed for some sort of maternal love, that it was a thing she had never really experienced in her life.
Looking back on the way Fanny Bennet had treated Elizabeth, it all seemed obvious now.
Mrs. Bennet had gloried in Jane’s beauty, in Lydia’s silliness, and she had even been affectionate in her dealings with Mary and Kitty.
But when it came to Elizabeth, she had been standoffish and harsh.
Elizabeth had been left thinking that she never measured up to her mother’s standards, but now she knew it was only that she was not her mother’s daughter.
The way the duchess’s eyes had softened, it had torn something inside Elizabeth, broken open a wound that had already been made and it had given some small promise of healing, and Elizabeth could not quite bear it, for she could see that it was not a promise at all, and that the duchess would never truly acknowledge her.
But why not?
That didn’t make sense.
She and Neithern were twins, and so they were both legitimate.
What did it matter if Elizabeth was acknowledged as well? Would it expose the fact that her father had been violent or crazed or locked away? But he was dead now. Did that really matter?
No.
This did not make sense.
There was more to know.
This settled into Elizabeth with a feeling of unease, because she was not sure how it was she could find out what else there was.
As the day wore on, she began to realize there was only one person who she knew could assist her in this matter, and it was Mr. Darcy.
As much as she knew she should stay away from him, as much as she felt that her association with him was becoming more ruinous by degrees, she could not but go to him.
He would do anything for her.
Of this, somehow, perversely, she was sure.
MR. DARCY SPENT the afternoon reassuring Georgiana that the absence of Neithern was not because of her.
“He said he would return today, but he has not returned,” said Georgiana, more than once. “Why would he not send word if he could not be here?”
“Well,” Mr. Darcy said, “it was not a formal appointment, was it?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” she said. “He even made a joke about how he had not even been invited. Even so, I thought he was looking forward to seeing me. I wonder now if I imagined it all. Did he truly have any regard for me?”
“I’m certain he did,” said Mr. Darcy, who was beginning to realize his sister had fallen in love with Neithern. How did he feel about that? He was not entirely sure.
If Neithern loved her back, then he was a good choice for a husband. He was a duke, after all. Darcy couldn’t ask for much better.
“You can’t be certain of that, though,” said Georgiana.
“Well, I am certain that men like the duke have a number of pressing responsibilities, any of which would take precedence over sipping lemonade in the gardens with diverting young women, and that you oughtn’t think anything disastrous has happened. Perhaps he’ll be back tomorrow.”
“What if he heard something?” said Georgiana. “What if he found about Mr. Wickham?”
“He did not. Mr. Wickham is dead,” said Mr. Darcy, firmly.
“Yes, but what if he did?” she nearly wailed.
And this went on, in various permutations, all afternoon. Eventually, she worked herself up so badly that she declared that she would not come to dinner and that she must spend the evening in her bedchamber.
Mr. Darcy retired early himself that night.
He had his valet come and undress him and he spent the evening near an open window, wrapped in a banyan, reading a book and gazing out as darkness stole over the countryside. He hadn’t had the chance to relax like this in some time.
Of course, he was not certain what to make of Houseman’s strange exit, or what the man had said about Sulles. But since he could not puzzle any of it out, he determined not to think about it, and he was mostly successful.
That was, until there was a knock on his door.
“Yes?” he called.
Her voice was a whisper. “Mr. Darcy?”
He set down the book and hurried over to open the door to let Elizabeth inside. “Everyone cannot be abed yet. It is but quarter to nine. You are risking discovery coming here.”
She darted inside, looking guilty. “I know, I know. But everyone knows I’m married now, which makes it much less scandalous.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s just… married women aren’t quite protected in the same way, you know.”
He considered and determined she was right, that it was one thing to bed your cousin’s wife—very bad, of course—but it was another thing entirely to bed an innocent virgin and take her virtue when it wasn’t yours to take.
He sighed. “All right, I see what you mean, but we still oughtn’t be doing this.
I don’t like either of us in each other’s bedchambers, and I am not even dressed. ”
Her gaze flitted over him. “I can go?”
“No, no, you’re already here. What is it?”
She took a deep breath and then related being awakened in the night the previous night, the marriage license, the discussion with the duke, the invitation to breakfast, then only meeting the dowager duchess in the wood, all that had been said there, and finally, her realization that there were too many things that didn’t line up, that she must be missing something about the situation.
“And I have to know what it is,” she finished.
“I cannot do it alone, and I feel as if there is only one person who I can trust to assist me with this, and it’s you.
You have always put me first, Mr. Darcy.
I don’t understand it, and I don’t deserve it, and I shouldn’t take advantage of it, but… please help me.”
“Of course I shall help you.” He crossed to her.
“And you do deserve to be put first, of course. You do.” He smiled at her.
“But I think it will have to be your husband who does that. I do not put you first, Elizabeth, not truly. I have merely put you into my responsibilities. They are sorted differently at different times, though. You are not the chief of them.”
“Well, good,” she said, smiling. “That would be far too much pressure on me. I should disappoint you.”
“Never,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not that way. I shall adjust to be what you need. I shan’t expect anything of you at all. You must just continue to be Elizabeth, and I shall do what I can for you.”
Her eyes shone. “That is… you are… I am grateful. I don’t mean to rely on you, but—”
“No, rely on me,” he said. “Please. I wish to do what I can for you.”
“Why?”
“We are not doing this again,” he said, chuckling.
“But even if you are in love with me, sir, I can’t see why.
With Richard, yes, I love him, and yes, I have some resentment towards him, but he did…
there are things that happened that caused that love.
There is a mixture of good things and bad.
With me, what is there that has been good? Have I not caused you only misery?”
His lips parted. He was struck rather deeply by this question, though perhaps he oughtn’t be. He had chided himself for his stupid and irrational obsession with this woman, and he had told himself over and over that it didn’t make sense, but now he wondered.
Why did he love her?
“When I become set upon something, you see, Elizabeth, it is difficult to get me away from it. I commit to things. I am invested in things. It is simply the way I am.”
She was thoughtful. “Do you not do things because they make you feel good, sir?”
“Because they feel good?”
“No,” she said in understanding. “Indeed, you are distrustful of pleasure. You think pleasure leads to the easy path, and you are inclined to do difficult and painful things because you think they are righteous.”
“Is this why you do things?” he said. “Because they feel good?”
“I…” She shrugged. “Sometimes, I suppose, but I am capable of knowing that feeling good has its consequences, and that if I don’t wish to pay the consequences, I must forgo the good feeling.” Well, I used to be this way, didn’t I? Am I still this way?
He nodded slowly.
“Sometimes, the consequences seem worth it,” she said.
“But even if there are minimal consequences, sometimes a thing is just wrong,” he said.
She opened her mouth to answer.
And there was another knock at the door.