13. Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Longbourn
“A h, Elizabeth, you have returned from your walk. Please come in.” Mr Bennet greeted his daughter at the door of the house, standing back with a suggestive tilt to his head and his eyes flicking toward his study.
Elizabeth cast a dubious glance toward Lydia, disentangling their linked arms. She caught a nervous breath, but acknowledged the request with a cheerful nod and smile. “Certainly, Papa.” She removed her cloak and bonnet in the hall, then followed him dutifully to his desk, noting with what deliberateness he closed the door behind her.
Mr Bennet sighed wearily, tugging at his cravat and tossing aside a stray book as he found his chair. “Sit, Elizabeth.”
Her brow edged upward. “Are we to have a serious conversation, Papa? Perhaps I ought to call for tea, for I think I could do with the fortification.”
He returned a wry smirk. “I have just imbibed something a mite stronger, but you may feel free if you wish.”
“Oh! If it is that serious, I think I should not. My imagination as I wait would be sure to cause me far more distress than simply hearing what you wish to say.”
He had draped himself in a leisurely posture over his chair, but his whitened knuckles laced tightly over his abdomen as he smiled at her. “Lizzy, you…” he stumbled, then appeared to amend his approach. “Your father is a foolish old man. I am heartily ashamed of myself.”
“Ashamed? Papa, you have no cause to be. Is it because of Lydia you say this?”
“I wish I could say it was. In truth, I first sensed the gravity of my own oversights when Jane’s first brush with a suitor came to nothing.”
“Papa, she was but fifteen! Surely you would not have wished her to marry and leave us at such a young age.”
“Not at all, and doubly so because she wielded such a sensible influence over her younger sisters. But it is not that, Elizabeth, and do not play coy with me. You are too intelligent to feign ignorance of my failings as a father.”
She nibbled her lip and looked uncomfortably away.
“Aye, you may speak freely, Lizzy! Had I set aside over the years some small independence for you and your mother and sisters, you would certainly have attracted a suitor by now. It was shameful that Jane with her great beauty should have been nearly twenty-three before she was wed, and it was all the fault of my own inability to manage my funds more wisely.”
“Dear Papa, Jane could not be happier than she is now. If she had attracted another before, only think how miserable she would have been. She and Mr Bingley were smitten at their first conversation, and what a tragedy if she should have already been married to another!”
He snorted lightly. “You think to comfort me by this, but you have, in fact, poured salt upon the wound. Lizzy,” he chewed his inner cheek thoughtfully before continuing. “I know it was wrong of me to feel thus, but you have always been my favourite child. With your sharp wit and your easy way of laughing off your troubles, I loved you the best, I do confess. You are the most like myself, I suppose, and so it was my joy and delight to impart to you those hours and little bits of wisdom I might otherwise have reserved for a son. Aye, blush, my girl, but you know it for the truth.”
“I was only thinking,” she murmured to the floor, “that perhaps I received too much of your attention.” She raised those dark eyes to her father, glistening with feeling. “Lydia is rude and coarse, but that is only for want of training. She is quick, Papa, and eager for someone to invest in her. I am ashamed of myself for not seeing her more clearly.”
He studied her, his expression soft, and swallowed hard. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “You may be right, my dear. Perhaps we shall see what her future holds after… well, after…. Ahem, well, today I speak of you. I would not see you injured by my own follies if I can help it, my Lizzy.”
Her lips tugged slightly upward. “Do you presume that I have some disappointed suitor who pines for my lack of fortune? Oh, if only I had thirty thousand pounds to my name! Perhaps then Mr Perfect would at last ask me for a set at the Assembly!”
He chuckled. “You have never wanted for dance partners, for men are not blind, but neither are they largely without sense. Many ask for your hand for half an hour, but few can afford to ask for a lifetime.”
This little speech of Mr Bennet’s cast a sudden pall over his daughter’s expression. Her mouth set gloomily and her features seemed waxen as the blood left them. The father narrowed his eyes in concern. “Lizzy, has your lack of fortune already caused you some disappointment?”
She jerked her gaze back to her father’s face. “No! Certainly not, Papa.”
He nodded faintly. “Yet you nurture some manner of regret. Was it due to Lydia’s escapade?”
She shook her head vigourously. “No!” but her breath caught as she uttered the word. At her father’s arched brow, she was compelled to make some explanation. “I was told—only once, mind you—that our family’s respectability was…. That is to say, that when Kitty and Lydia—and when Mama—”
He held up a hand. “You need say no more, Elizabeth. Again, I have evidence of how I have failed you. I give no credit to a man who could think poorly of you on your mother and sisters’ accounts, but—”
“Oh, he did not think poorly of me!” Elizabeth defended quickly.
“Did he not?” Mr Bennet drummed steady fingers on his desk, waiting, but Elizabeth was suddenly reluctant to say more. “I see. Or perhaps I do not, but it does not signify, I suppose. Lizzy, what I called you in for today was not past regrets, but a hope for your future.”
She shook her head. “What can you mean?”
His fingers tapped uncomfortably again on the desk. “It seems, Elizabeth, that you have a knack for winning men’s respect. I commend you, my girl, for I know few ladies—true ladies—of whom that could be said.”
“I do not understand, Papa.”
He rose abruptly and walked toward the window. Gazing out, he raised an arm to brace his weight against the glass as he spoke. “I have been concerned for you, Elizabeth. You have ever been of a hardy constitution and an easy temper—not as easy as Jane, but your good humour was more than sufficient to offset any complaint I might have. Yet that has not been your way of late. You are troubled by headaches, see as few people as you can, and nearly every second or third night since Christmas you have awakened us all with some horrid nightmare. Have you any notion of what has troubled you, Lizzy? Ought we to be sending for Mr Jones?”
“No! Oh, Papa, I do not know the source of my melancholy, but I am sure there is nothing Mr Jones could do.”
He turned to look steadily at her until she blushed, glancing down at her hands. “You have no ideas?”
She swallowed and shifted her toes inside her slippers. “None.”
He sighed and turned back to the window. “Your altered demeanour has been noted by more than myself. Oh, your mother dismisses it as concern for Lydia or some nervous sympathy for Jane, but others are as troubled as I. Mr Bingley…” here he paused and looked again to his daughter. “I do not know what I might have done to deserve such a generous man as a son-in-law, but I am inclined to impose upon his good nature where you are concerned.”
“You believe that I ought to live at Netherfield with them?” she asked softly.
“At Netherfield! No, I think that might be the worst of all for you. I never saw you so miserable as you were on Christmas Eve. No, Lizzy, I think you have grown beyond the humble walls of Longbourn, but I would not recommend that course. I think rather that a home and establishment of your own might suit your notions of happiness.”
What life remained in her cheeks now pooled somewhere in her stomach. Elizabeth shook her head, her lips forming a silent “No!” Her fingers gripped the sides of her chair as though her father would wrest it from her that instant and insist that she make her own way in the world. In the next breath, she had stumbled from it to nearly fall upon her father’s neck. “Oh, Papa, please do not say that! I am not ready to leave Longbourn, there is no place I should rather go!”
“Lizzy,” he grimaced, pulling her clinging arms from his shoulders and gently pressing her back. “Mr Bingley has made us an obscenely generous offer, one I feel honour-bound to refuse. However, when I look on you, I cannot bring myself to do it. He wishes to settle upon you five thousand pounds, in hopes that it may help you to make a better match than has so far been possible.”
Elizabeth thumped back into her chair, dazed. “F-five th-thousand pounds?” she cried. “He cannot possibly! No, I cannot permit it!”
“I have already accepted in your stead.”
Elizabeth stared, the heat rising into her cheeks. “How could you, Papa? It is not right! Why, only think that after Mary and Kitty also claim their shares, he—”
“The offer was made for you and you alone, Elizabeth. I do not doubt Mr Bingley’s continued generosity toward his new sisters, but he made no mention of the others. He is a kind man, it seems, and whether motivated by Jane’s concern or his own esteem for you, he wished to do you this service.”
She shot to her feet. “I refuse it! I will not have him impoverishing Jane’s children because of my own past obstinacy toward suitors!”
One grey eyebrow twitched. “’Suitors’ did you say? Indeed, you have kept some secrets from me, Elizabeth.”
Her mouth failed to close as she blinked numbly back. “I—”
Her father dismissed her excuse with a wave. “Oh, let us not trouble ourselves over the past, Lizzy. I ought to have made you accept Collins, but he was a disagreeable toad; I think we are of one mind on that. Whatever others have arrogantly presumed upon your inclinations, I have faith that you dispatched them only after proper reflection. You may have a romantic bent, as do most young ladies, but you are the most sensible of all my children. I trust that you would render due consideration to an agreeable and respectable offer.”
Elizabeth cast a doleful look from the corner of her eye. “From whom?”
“John Lucas. He came to speak to me yesterday.”
The mantle clock bore witness to Elizabeth’s silent reception of this news. Mr Bennet’s fingers drummed occasionally, but he kept respectfully quiet as his daughter absorbed these tidings. After three full minutes had passed with no response whatsoever from Elizabeth, Mr Bennet cleared his throat. “Well, say something, Lizzy!”
She blinked, her throat feeling too parched to speak. After one or two failed attempts, she whispered, “Do you mean to insist that I accept him, Papa?”
“I mean to see to your well-being, Elizabeth. I think perhaps that might be best found with a husband of your own, and John Lucas is a decent fellow, after all. He has long fancied you, and a dowry such as Mr Bingley has offered makes it possible for him to form some more serious designs.”
“So, you demand my acceptance?”
“Demand? I think we need not speak in such stark terms. If what you want is for me to lend you a bit of decisiveness, then yes, I shall insist. Know, however, that I intend it for your benefit, not your misery.”
A choking laugh rose in her throat. “There could be nothing that might make me more miserable, Papa! I beg you, do not undertake to accept John Lucas on my behalf. I may never find the sort of love I once desired, but it is too soon for me! I have no heart to give him—oh, Papa, it would be too unfair!”
Mr Bennet’s lips—thinned and grey as his hair—pressed tightly closed. Elizabeth held his steady gaze as bravely as she dared, her lashes quivering and her eyes longing to dart away from his searching.
“Then,” he mused, narrowing his eyes, “I shall put him off. Know this, though; I am not content to leave you as your sister’s caretaker. Lydia has her own troubles to chase and I will not see your life ruined on her account. I think perhaps you should return to London with your aunt and uncle next week.”
She swallowed. “Do you insist on this, Papa?”
He nodded slowly. “Unless you can convince your aunt otherwise—yes, I do.”
Porto, Portugal
“I insist, my dear,” Miguel carried his wife’s fingers to his lips, “do tell me what troubles you this evening. You have looked white as these linens all afternoon!”
Amália jerked her chin in an empty gesture of casual flippancy. “Pray, do not concern yourself, my husband. I have only caught the sun.”
He laughed as he turned her hand over and began to kiss her palm. “A lady who catches the sun has a distinct colour to her cheeks, my jewel. You have none at all. Come, you must not tell me your head troubles you again, for I fear I shall die of disappointment.”
“It is not my head, but my spirits that trouble me, Miguel.”
“Oh!” he turned her wrist up and began to knead it with his fingers. “And how may I soothe your spirits, my angel?”
She squirmed her hand from his with an uncomfortable little huff, and wandered nonchalantly toward the window. “I suppose,” she offered slowly—carefully, “I am still not accustomed to such a large house as this.”
“Is that all?” he laughed. He followed her and slid his hands over her hips, caressing her form through the thin gossamer of her gown. “I feared perhaps you were unhappy with other circumstances.”
Amália spread her fingers lightly on the casement, the window frame defining the farthest extent of her retreat. She could have placed herself at no greater distance without creating an obvious scene, but perhaps her stiffness might put him off… but no, a dry, warm touch nuzzled the back of her neck. A heated flush stirred from her scalp down over her back, causing her to edge one shoulder up in an uncomfortable writhing arc.
Miguel only took that to mean that she wished for him to nuzzle the other side of her neck. His hands had now crept round to the front of her hips, and his fingers trailed familiarly down the lines of her undergarments through her gown. Amália swallowed, clenching the wooden frame in a desperate quest for self-control. Her breath was coming in hot little gasps now, which surely he would mistake for desire, just as he must delight in the way the flesh over her arms and neck prickled in dread, and her body flexed as her stomach recoiled from his sensual touch. How alluring her unconscious distaste must be to one so willfully deceived as her husband!
She coughed slightly—the only breath she could control—and attempted to laugh off his advances. “Come, Miguel,” she shifted her shoulder away from him ever so slightly, “did not your father remain for drinks this evening?”
“He knows where to find the wine,” Miguel breathed into the hollow at the base of her neck. “I have a finer vintage here, and I intend to drink myself dizzy. Will you not retire early with me, my sweet?”
“I only thought,” her voice trembled in her throat, “that perhaps he had yet some matters of import to discuss. He was here all day, was he not?”
Miguel bent round to soothe the front of her milky throat with his lips, his hands trailing over her breasts and shoulders to hold her against him. “He often comes, for the house does still belong to him, after all.”
Amália wriggled one breast a little away from his bold fingertips, drawing her shoulder back into his chest to do so. “He comes often, but I seldom see him.” She closed her eyes, swallowing her bounding pulse. She ought to submit to her husband’s caresses, she really ought, but the shock of her afternoon discovery and her growing aversion to Miguel’s touch only loosed her tongue, and she spoke in rapid, thoughtless little bursts.
“As a matter of fact, I sought both of you when I returned today, before Ruy arrived, but could not find either of you. Are there by any chance parts of the house which I have not yet explored?”
She felt more than heard a low rumble of laughter. “Secret rooms! My darling, you have been reading too many novels.”
“Oh,” she shivered, but forced herself to bear up. She first smiled, then affected a little pout, turning to face him and at last removing his blasted fingers from her breasts. “You must go and spoil all my fun, must you? There really is nothing of interest behind some sealed wall? No romantic fancies I might entertain about the old ruins at the western end of the house?”
He spread his hands and shook his head, smiling. “None at all. I am sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps we may have some old chambers built, simply to satisfy your whims.”
She wrinkled her brow. “By no means. Distasteful things, ruins. One never knows what might be lurking there without one’s knowledge. Do you suppose any rodents or larger creatures have burrowed into those walls?”
He draped his hands over her hips again, but was not content to leave them there. He drew close to slide them down the curve of her backside, lowering his mouth to her ear. “Undoubtedly,” he mumbled. A moment later his fingers were hungrily clutching at her rear, pawing up the hollow of her back, pulling her tightly against him and pressing his firmness to her stomach. He groaned inarticulately as he drew her earlobe between his teeth and rocked her body against his.
Amália shuddered. She could not help it. There was something about Miguel—had always been—and now she could put a name to it. He was lying to her. Lying about the house, probably about his father, and certainly about his own knowledge of both. The only thing about him which seemed genuine was his passion—no, his lust, for passion implied some deeper, genuine feeling and regard. Surely if he truly felt such for her, he would not lie!
Her hands raised to his shoulders to push violently away, but she forced herself to still them, resting them instead on his chest as a reciprocating wife might. Perhaps he was only protecting her. Perhaps there was truly nothing of interest, and he did not care to bore her with whatever dull affairs of politics his father undertook. Perhaps she had imagined everything, and she was only robbing herself of whatever happiness their union might bring her with these fruitless and vile accusations rumbling through her mind.
But that voice…. No, she had not imagined it! And they had not been the carefree tones of some wanderer lost in the ruins, or the laboured efforts of a mason working at the old stones. The cries had been anguished, bitter—tortured, even. And the inflections of the words carried to her—no voice native to her ears had it been! There had been a foreign, yet deliriously familiar quality to it; one that had thrilled to her core and breathed life into the memories of the girl she had been, just over a year ago.
The gravity of these thoughts weighed her hands, and without intention or thought, she had pushed Miguel away. He stepped back, his expression mystified. “My precious? You do not fear some creature finding its way to your own room, do you? Be not concerned, for we are quite safe here from those older chambers. Moreover, I am here,” he grinned charmingly.
“I was only wondering,” she gasped tremblingly as his lips bent to assault her décolletage, “if it was possible to walk through some day. Only as a point of curiosity, you understand. Are there still doors to the old stairwells, or have they all been sealed off?”
“Doors! I should think they rotted off their hinges long ago. There would be nothing to see in any case, for it has been vacant for decades now. You know after the quake many houses lost such older halls, and most never rebuilt them in quite the same way. There were sadly not enough funds in those days to do so, but if it pleases you, we shall endeavour to rebuild it ourselves one day. A sunlit hall, set facing the river to please my flower. It would be a fitting legacy to pass to our children, would it not?” He emphasised his comments with a renewal of his ardour, claiming each of her curves for his own and tracing his mouth from the tip of her bare shoulder—when had he slipped her gown from it? —up to the base of her ear.
Amália’s core clenched, sending a shudder through her being and permitting an audible gasp from her lips. She bent, curving herself away from him and capturing the hands roving over her most sensitive places. “Oh!” she cried hoarsely, then flattened her back against the casement.
“My darling?” Miguel did not lower his hands, but held them aloft and twined his fingers through hers. “What is it?”
She opened her mouth, gazing back into the face of the man she had married. So genteel, so proper. A veneer of sweet lies, palatable only on the first hesitant taste, then turning to bile when partaken of. “I—” she clasped her hand self-consciously over her stomach, pressing her weight more firmly back against the wall. How could she bear his attentions, now when she had finally begun to recognise the truth of her misgivings? She could not take him to her bed, forcing herself to lie sedately as he sought his pleasure, all while knowing some other wretch also endured misery at his hands!
Her fingers tightened over the bodice of her gown, and they lent her the inspiration she wanted. “Oh, do forgive me, Miguel. I… it was a sudden pain in my stomach.”
His eyes kindled. “Dare I hope, my flower—”
“No! I fear it is a pain of quite a different kind. It sometimes transpires so abruptly, I… oh, forgive me, Miguel, but I believe my courses have come upon me. I do beg your pardon, but I believe I shall be indisposed this evening.”
He drew back, his jaw tightening and a flint sparking in his eyes. “Not at all, my darling. You have no control over such matters, of course.”
“You are most forbearing, my husband,” she sighed in relief.
He backed away, his displeasure evident despite his easy reception of her dismissal. “A man with a treasure such as you, my sweet, need not be concerned for some small delay to his pleasures. What matter a few days? I shall bid you a pleasant evening then, my angel.”
Amália sagged against the wall as he left. This reprieve would be but brief, though her quick thinking had purchased her a few days, at least, to sort out her fears. Was her husband possibly unaware of the doings in the underground chambers? Was this captive a justified prisoner of war, and his presence a necessary secret? There might yet be some perfectly innocent explanation. As she was bound to Miguel for life, she desperately hoped so.
Longbourn
I t was with a weary heart she trudged to her bed that night. Alone—so mercifully alone! —Elizabeth retired to her room as the weight of a thousand solitary nights dragged at her shoulders.
For all of six seconds she had tossed about the notion of wedding John Lucas, at her father’s suggestion. He was a good enough sort—respectable, tolerably good-looking, standing heir to a modest property and possessed of a well-regarded family… but ignorant as a post.
His only claim to familiarity with Elizabeth had been his relationship to Charlotte, for the simple reason that she had always found him exceedingly dull. There was no quality worth admiring, no folly worth teasing. He was simply there; an object of polite discourse, a warm body that occasionally led her about a set at the Assembly. To marry such a man! Elizabeth’s entire soul shuddered at the blasphemy of surrendering her hand and future when she could not also give her mind, her heart, nor even her sincere respect.
Elizabeth pulled the blankets to her chin and stared upward. No, she would marry no man she could not love as she had loved Darcy, and as such a man did not exist—none could ever hope to compare—she would remain alone. A deep sigh filled her lungs, and her eyes drifted closed… and as always, he was waiting for her.
A tendril of her own hair drifted across her cheek, a whisper of breeze tickled her brow, and then that comforting warmth caressed her eyelids, brushing lightly over each. “ Elizabeth! ”
She lifted her chin, tipping her face into the soft touch. Her lips curved faintly as she mouthed back, “William.”
“Oh, my dearest Elizabeth! What grieves you, my love?” The words in the dream curled round her ears, piercing and echoing until she heard them spoken in truth—low and trembling.
She attempted to smile, raising hesitant fingers to brush his roughened cheeks. “William,” she whispered, “you are so thin, you look to have endured hell itself! Why do you ask what grieves me? Do you not know what I would give to hold you and to be your comfort?”
“You already are, my love. No darkness could prevent your face illuminating my way. But oh, my Elizabeth, if I did not have to leave you the moment I awake!”
She breathed in his scent—strong and masculine—and threaded her arms about his neck. “Then never wake! Let us remain always so. I can be content here.”
She felt his breath catch, sensed the weight of his arm tightening round her back as he pulled her close, but then he was pushing her away.
She lifted her face from his chest. “William?”
He was shaking his head, sliding his arms from her to capture her hands. “’Tis not fair, Elizabeth.”
She shuddered in reply. “Fate has been too cruel to us! Could I only have known that I would lose you—”
“No!” He touched a finger to her lips, his dark eyes hooded with grief. “No, that is not what I meant. It is not fair to you, Elizabeth.”
She sniffed and rested a hand upon his chest. “You must not speak so, William. It is not I who was taken. I remain here, as I have always been. It is you who have been wronged.”
“Yet it is you who remain shackled to a phantom in the night. You have another life, Elizabeth—people who love you, a future to live.”
A chill shivered through her scalp and she opened her mouth in denial, but he brushed his thumb over it to silence her. “Please, my dearest, I cannot allow your days to be taken as mine were.”
Her eyes began to burn and a sob caught in her throat. “My days are already a torment, William! Every waking moment leads me farther from you. Gladly would I sacrifice my reality for these moments in your arms.”
He pulled her close once more, his chest shaking in restrained anguish. “But there is more for you. You must permit life to have its way in you, else you will die. I could not bear it, my precious Elizabeth!”
“What would you have me do, William? I did not summon these dreams of you as an act of will, nor do I understand why you are so real to me, but I cannot deny the truth. You are mine and I love you, William!”
Something like a cry burst from him and his arms tightened still more. His cheek, wet with agonised joy, he rested atop her head as he trembled for breath. “My Elizabeth! You have made my existence worthwhile. Would that I could do the same for you! But it is too selfish of me to keep you for my own. I can bring you nothing more but grief, my love.”
“Do you expect me to simply forget you, to cease seeing you whenever I close my eyes? Even if I could, there must be some reason for you to always be in my heart!” she protested.
“My darling, I do not deserve to have you making yourself miserable on my account. You must allow some other to fill your thoughts, so that I may fade.”
She pressed her tear-streaked face to his shoulder, clinging to his shirt. “There could never be any other, William. How could I love again?”
“A moderate degree of affection may grow from friendship, may it not? Even a comfortable sort of accord, with a home and family of your own, would be preferable to the waking nightmare that has been yours because of me.”
“And I am to settle for comfortable accord, after I have known what it is to have my heart shattered, seared, and set aflame? You believe I could be content with only a ‘moderate degree of affection’?”
“Not content, no, but no longer tormented, Elizabeth. I beg you would live again, and know that with you, you carry those hopes I was never able to realise. Love for me, my darling.”
She buried her face more deeply into his chest, pushing against him until he reclined back and held her cradled in his embrace. She fought to breathe, and for a fleeting instant dreamt of suffocating herself in his arms. At least then, she would nevermore be parted from him. This horror he had asked of her—could he really expect her to do it? She sobbed, a piteous gasp, and bit her frozen lips. “How?” she whispered into his neck.
“Laugh, Elizabeth. Laugh as you did on the night I first set eyes upon you. You captured my heart in that moment, for no other has ever shone so brightly in her joy as you did. You have lost that—I have robbed you of it—and I cannot bear to see you so broken! I would rather see you at peace in another’s arms than devastated in my own.”
She swallowed, not lifting her head. “I do not think I have it in me.”
“You do, if anyone does. There is none so strong and clever as my Elizabeth. Please, my darling, will you try?”
Elizabeth slid her arms under his torso, still shaking her head in denial but unable to refuse his plea. “Just a little longer, William. Let me hold you for a short while.”
He sighed into her hair, and her neck tickled as his breath warmed her neck. She heard him draw breath to answer, but he never did. His body tensed, his chest arching in some hidden pain. She raised up to see his eyes flown wide in alarm as they rested on her for one last, searing instant. He was gasping, crying out in silent terror, and then he was gone.