Chapter Fourteen #2
He was piqued that she should have taken it without permission, but he nodded. He did not, however, give her the letter for his cousin. He could not say why.
Mrs. Hobart was soon gone down the passage, reticule bouncing at her side, the letters safely within.
Darcy watched her for a moment, then turned and entered the parlour.
Miss Bennet had drawn her chair a little nearer the fire. With nothing left to occupy her hands, she had clasped them together in her lap, the fingers tightly interlaced. She looked up at his entrance at once, as if she had been listening for his step.
“I am told the horses will be ready shortly,” she said.
“Anders is satisfied they can take us on without risk.”
“I am glad to hear it.” Her gaze flicked towards the door, then back to him. “Mr. Darcy, I would like to . . .” She hesitated.
Darcy, who had been frowning, glanced down at her.
“You look as if you have something to say,” she said.
There was no escaping it now.
“I do,” he said. “It concerns what passed at the Lion, and what may follow from it if we are not careful.”
Her hands tightened together. “Then I should spare you the trouble, sir. You have already made your opinion of the matter abundantly clear. I see no profit in hearing it a second time.”
“I beg you to believe that I do not return to the subject from any love of it,” he said. “But the landlord here has it already from the post-boy that there were shots fired in the hollow. He will not resist ornamenting the tale. I would at least prevent him from adding a princess to it.”
“You need not fear that from me,” she said quickly. “I have no inclination to proclaim myself anything but Miss Bennet of Longbourn.”
“In which resolution I entirely support you,” he replied. “I have already directed my men that to every ear you are Miss Bennet, and nothing else. I will ask the same discretion of Mrs. Hobart as often as she requires it. I hope you will not protest.”
She glared at him and said, exasperated, “I shall do my best, sir.”
“Miss Bennet,” Darcy replied, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Her lips twitched and then steadied. “You see? We are already agreed. You do not believe a word of it, and I am resolved not to trouble you with it. What more is necessary?”
He might have left it there. It would have been infinitely more comfortable to do so. But the two dried peas shifted lightly in his pocket along with the Blue John stone as he leaned forward.
“One thing more,” he said. “You must allow me to say that although I still do not believe in your connection to Thurnia, I am no longer persuaded that you invented it.”
She stared at him. Colour rose slowly in her cheeks. “Indeed,” she said at last. “So you think me only a dupe, and not an impostor. That is a delicate distinction, Mr. Darcy. I hardly know whether to be grateful.”
It was a fair hit; he bore it as best he could. “You may call it what you please. I mean only that your conduct since we quitted the Lion has left me in little doubt of your sincerity. What you did in the hollow—what you have done since—is not the behaviour of a woman engaged in a conscious fraud.”
Her eyes wavered, then steadied. “But you still believe it to be folly.”
“It appears like a belief founded upon testimony that may not deserve the confidence you place in it,” he explained. “I cannot reconcile what you say with what I know of Thurnia. When such things are at variance, it is usually the testimony that is at fault.”
“Are you always so keen to rely so completely upon your own understanding when it is challenged?” she asked.
“It is not my understanding alone,” he replied. “I do not presume to set up my judgement against the entire world. But when a fact is asserted that contradicts every authority I possess, I must doubt the fact before I doubt all the rest.”
“And what august authorities are these,” she said, “that outweigh the whole of my experience? My father was a son of the current king, though not the eldest. I am thus a member of that royal family.”
This again. “My acquaintance with Thurnia does not rest on idle rumour,” he said, more stiffly than he intended. “I am acquainted with Prince Adrian from university.” He waited to see how she would respond.
Her brows rose. “You know my cousin?”
Darcy closed his eyes. “I know Prince Adrian, who has assured me there are no Thurnian princesses.”
A furrow appeared just above her nose. “Are you certain your friend is truly a Thurnian prince, then?”
“I am certain.”
“Based upon what evidence?”
He stared at her. “Upon his own account, to begin with,” he said, more stiffly than he intended. “Upon the universal acknowledgment of everyone who has met him in town. Upon the king’s letters to him—”
“You have seen those letters?” she cut in.
“I have not asked to inspect his correspondence. But I know—”
“You know of them,” she supplied. “As much as you know of Thurnia. Or of me.”
“That is hardly the same thing,” he protested.
“Is it not?” Her brows arched. “Let us compare. You have never seen Prince Adrian in Thurnia? Or met his family?”
Darcy sighed. “No.”
“You have never seen him in a crown, or upon a throne, or doing anything that could not be equally done by any other well-dressed gentleman in London.”
“That is not the point—”
“And yet,” she continued inexorably, “you accept that he is a Thurnian prince.”
“Because he is,” Darcy said, exasperated. “Because every circumstance of his life agrees with it. Because his family acknowledges him; because his sovereign employed him; because from the time he first came to England he has been treated as such by every person of rank and consequence.”
“Which you have learned entirely from him,” she replied. “And from the time I could first understand anything, my uncle told me that I was a Thurnian princess. Letters came from Thurnia under seal, addressed to my uncle.”
“Have you read these letters?” he asked, echoing her inquiry.
She shook her head. “No. But every circumstance of my life has agreed with what I have been told, yet you will not accept that I am who I say I am.”
He disliked exceedingly the way that sounded.
“Your uncle may have been misinformed,” he said. “Or imposed upon.”
“And Prince Adrian may be an impostor,” she answered serenely. “Perhaps he is only Mr. Adrian Something, who found that ‘Your Highness’ sits more pleasantly upon the ear than ‘sir.’”
“That is absurd,” Darcy said sharply. “He is received everywhere as what he is. Ambassadors do not grow upon hedges; any attempt at imposture would have been exposed long ago.”
“Just so,” she said. “He is believed, because from the beginning everyone agreed to treat him as if he were a prince. You do not require to see his cradle, or his christening robe, because the consequences of his birth are publicly visible. You see the result and infer the cause.”
“Precisely.”
“And with me,” she went on, “you have the opposite. You have the cause—my father’s birth and rank, my uncle’s word, the king’s letters—and you refuse to allow the consequence, merely because it has not been paraded before your club.”
“My club has nothing to do with it,” he said, stung.
“No? What, then, makes the difference? You know Mr. Adrian is a Thurnian prince because he told you so, and because his family, whom you have never met, has always treated him as one. You know that I am not a Thurnian princess because I have also told you so and my family always treated me as one.”
“Your family treated you as Miss Bennet of Longbourn,” he objected.
“There was no need for them to do otherwise,” she said.
“My mother died when I was born and my father soon after; their marriage was not popular and my uncle was pleased to have me stay with his family.
Now I am at last to join my father's family, and the first gentleman beyond my own acquaintance to hear the story looks at me as if I have run mad.”
He had the uncomfortable sense of being briskly arranged in the wrong while his principles were all loudly protesting that he was right.
“It is not madness I apprehend,” he said. “Only error.”
“Because Prince Adrian told you there were no princesses,” she concluded. “Tell me, Mr. Darcy, how much did you know of him before he made that pronouncement? Were you personally acquainted with his entire family? Had you visited Thurnia? Counted its royal offspring?”
He frowned. “I knew enough.”
She spread her hands. “The only difference between us is that he is a man and I am a woman.”
“I do not found my judgement upon such things,” he said, though a small silent voice told him that he did. “You are wilfully misunderstanding me. I do not deny that the cases bear some resemblance. I only say that in yours there is more room for—”
“For my having been fooled,” she supplied. “Yes, we have returned to that. Foolish Miss Bennet, who has believed her uncle and a dead father and letters; wise Mr. Darcy, who has believed a man he liked at university.”
“I am not in the habit of believing men because I like them,” he said, irritated to find she had come so near the truth. “I believe them because I know their character.”
“And you know Prince Adrian’s character well, do you?” she asked. “You have seen him tempted? Disappointed? Poor? Sick? In love?”
“I have seen enough,” he said shortly.
“And you have not seen enough of me,” she concluded. “So I must be wrong.”
He opened his mouth; nothing sufficiently sensible emerged to justify disturbing the air.
She watched him for a moment in silence, then sighed and laughed a little.
“Mr. Darcy, if you are determined not to believe me, I cannot help it. But you must own the thing is at least droll. We are like two people standing on opposite sides of a looking glass, each insisting that only their own reflection is real.”
“Droll is not the word I would choose,” he said, though a reluctant humour was beginning to steal over his annoyance. “Perverse. Exasperating. Dangerous.”
“Very dangerous,” she agreed gravely. “You may go about London telling people there are no Thurnian princesses at all, and I may go about being one, and think what confusion will ensue.”
“I have no intention of going about London proclaiming anything of the sort,” he said. “I am not obliged to declare my opinion from every housetop.”
“That is fortunate,” she replied. “You might be thought to have run mad. You would be contradicting your own friend, after all.”
“I should do no such thing,” he said quickly; then, with an effort, added, “On the contrary, I mean to appeal to him.”
“To Prince Adrian?” Her eyes widened. “You mean to call my cousin to give judgement upon me, as if I were a disputed package and he the postmaster?”
“He is not your cousin,” Darcy said, and then realised, with immediate regret, that this was not the happiest direction to take.
Her chin lifted. “No? Then I shall be curious to hear what he says when he meets me.”
“If he says that you are his cousin,” Darcy replied, “I will beg your pardon upon the spot.”
“And if he says I am not?” she asked.
“Then you will own that I have had some reason for my doubts,” he said. “But I am not a fool, madam.”
“I have never thought you a fool, Mr. Darcy,” she said, with an expression that did not at all agree with the words. “Only determined to be in the right.”
“That is a common failing,” he said. “I do not observe you entirely free from it yourself.”
She stared at him for a moment, before shaking her head and offering him a reluctant smile. “True. I dare say when we are all in London together, and Prince Adrian sits between us like a judge upon a bench, we shall each be perfectly persuaded beforehand that he must give sentence in our favour.”
The door rattled; the sound of Mrs. Hobart’s complaints about the boy she had sent off with the letters floating in ahead of her. Miss Bennet glanced towards the sound, then back at him.
“In any case,” she said lightly, “it promises to be vastly diverting. I shall look forward to this encounter with great impatience. It is not every day that a girl has the chance to be proven either a princess or a simpleton in a London drawing room.”
He winced. “I have no wish to see you mortified.”
“Then do not watch,” she said. “You may stand at the window with your back to us and applaud when it is over.”
Before he could answer, Mrs. Hobart swept in, pink with indignation and cold, issuing a new flurry of grievances. Miss Bennet rose to meet her, composure quite regained; she might never have been engaged, a minute earlier, in demolishing his arguments.
Darcy remained where he was for a moment, collecting himself. Stubborn, provoking, infuriating girl. If she had been in the right, he reflected, she could not have argued her case with more confidence.
Very well. There was nothing more to be done at present.
He had carried the point as far as civility would allow.
In London, the thing would be resolved easily enough.
He need only ensure that Adrian should dine where Miss Bennet stayed in London, and then Adrian might explain to this obstinate, dazzling creature exactly how she had been misled.
Darcy left her, intending to pass off Fitzwilliam’s letter directly to the landlord for the post. The peas in his pocket which he was careful not to disturb as he removed the missive were an absurd reminder that the world had already surprised him once that day and might yet do so again.
But it would not be because she was a princess. That he knew for certain.