CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Elizabeth watched him, her suspicions solidifying. He was hiding something. His evasiveness now was even more telling than his theatrical guilt had been before. A dozen more questions burnt on her tongue.
Yet, as she looked at his face, another, more immediate truth asserted itself.
The colonel, whatever his past failings or present secrets, was her first and only friend at Pemberley.
His cheer had been a welcome antidote to Darcy’s gloom, his kindness a balm to her loneliness.
To press him now, to corner him with accusations she could not yet prove, would be to sacrifice a friendship she was not yet ready to lose.
She chose, for the time being, to forbear from any more questions.
“Very well,” she said, managing a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “You are right to counsel delicacy. We shall speak of it no more.”
The warmth instantly returned to his expression. “Thank you, Elizabeth.” He fell into step beside her as they continued along the path. Then, he said, his voice carefully casual, “If I may, Darcy was always the most loyal and considerate of friends.”
Her generous mood, having made its brief appearance, was now entirely spent. Praise for Mr Darcy was an additional toll it could not bear. “Then I admire how private of a virtue his consideration is,” she said, “for he gives very little public evidence of it.”
The colonel sighed. “You are determined against him, I see. I wish you could see past his faults to his virtues. He has a good heart. And he is, above all, a man of unimpeachable honour. Sometimes that integrity can lead him to make difficult choices. Choices that may seem harsh, even cruel, to those who do not understand the full weight of his responsibilities.”
The colonel’s words, his sudden, almost fervent defence of his cousin, felt pointed. As if he were leading up to something. As if he had a specific, pre-determined message to deliver.
“It seems you are quite invested in my good opinion of your cousin today, Richard.”
“He is the best man I know,” he replied, his gaze meeting hers directly, earnestly.
“And he is one of the truest friends a man could ask for. I have seen him bear burdens and make sacrifices that would crush a lesser man. The Arcane Office places heavy responsibility upon him. And he needs support.”
“Goodness,” she said, smiling, “you make his case far more eloquently than he does himself. Could it be he has asked you to intercede on his behalf?”
A faint, almost guilty, colour crept up the colonel’s neck. “Darcy rarely asks anyone for anything.” He paused, then, with a heavy sigh, added, “But yes. We spoke. Last night, after you had retired. He is concerned about your unhappiness.”
Elizabeth felt a short laugh catch in her throat. “Do not trouble yourself further, Richard. I am well aware of my deficiencies. I assure you, Mr Darcy makes them abundantly clear to me with regularity, without the need for an intermediary.”
The colonel looked genuinely distressed. “No, Elizabeth, you misunderstand completely. Our conversation was not like that. He is truly concerned for you, for the Concordance, for England. He would sacrifice anything for what he believes to be right. I have seen it. Time and time again.”
He paused, then, as if a new, more persuasive argument had suddenly occurred to him, he continued, his voice earnest, “Just recently, for instance, a very dear friend of his — a good man, but perhaps a little impulsive — was on the verge of making a most unsuitable marriage. A marriage not based on true affection, but rather one encouraged by an ambitious and manipulative family. Darcy saw the danger. He spoke to his friend, laying out the the realities of the situation and the potential pitfalls. And he persuaded him to reconsider. He saved his friend, Elizabeth, from a lifetime of misery. That is the sort of man he is. Discerning. Unselfish. Principled.”
Elizabeth listened, nausea churning in the pit of her stomach. The colonel’s words, intended, no doubt, as a testament to Darcy’s noble, selfless character, struck her instead like a dagger.
Mr Bingley. Charles Bingley was Darcy’s dearest friend. And Mr Bingley had withdrawn. Suddenly. Inexplicably. Leaving her gentle, loving sister heartbroken and bewildered.
The pieces of the puzzle suddenly, chillingly, clicked into place.
Darcy had not only been aware of Mr Bingley’s courtship of her sister, but had actively and deliberately intervened to destroy it. This was an unforgivable interference.
So this was the measure of Darcy’s ‘unselfishness.’ This was the nature of his ‘principles’. To destroy the lives and happiness of others, all because of what he deemed suitable.
“I must beg your indulgence, Richard,” she said, her voice struggling to maintain its composure, “It is cold, and I should like to return to the house.”
And without waiting for his reply, without another word, she turned and fled, the snowflakes stinging her face like a thousand tiny needles.
The oppressive gloom of Pemberley, which Elizabeth had sought to escape from, seemed to redouble its hold upon her spirit as she re-entered the house. Every stone of Pemberley now seemed to echo with his arrogance and his monstrous presumption.
She had hoped to retreat to a place of sanctuary, to wrestle with this new knowledge in private, but Darcy, it seemed, had other intentions. He intercepted her in the main hall. There was a new, almost restless energy about him.
“I have just received a communication from the Lord Magister. As of last evening, the ley line at Buxton has begun failing precipitously. The Blight’s encroachment is accelerating rapidly there. We have been instructed to attend to it without delay.”
Elizabeth felt dread mingle with the simmering fury in her heart.
After their repeated, dispiriting failures to achieve even the most rudimentary magical harmony in the controlled environment of the library, the prospect of confronting a corrupted ley line filled her with an almost nauseating sense of foreboding.
Yet, the images conjured by his words – the suffering populace, the accelerating decay – pricked at her conscience, an unwelcome reminder of the immense responsibility that bound them.
“When do we depart?”
“The carriage is being prepared as we speak. The journey to Buxton is some two hours, I believe.” He paused, took a half-step closer to her, and it was all she could do to not step back.
She felt his gaze upon her, an assessment that seemed to catalogue the melting snow on her shoulders and the damp strands of hair clinging to her cheek.
“You appear fatigued. I understand this is a lot to ask from you, given the recent, considerable expenditure of magical energy.”
Fatigued? Elizabeth had to suppress a humourless scoff.
After the callousness she knew him capable of, this sudden display of trivial concern was a preposterous absurdity.
“Thank you for your solicitude, Mr Darcy,” she replied, her voice emerging cooler than she had intended, “But I assure you, I am entirely equal to the task.”
The journey began in a state of fraught and silent tension.
Elizabeth stared resolutely out of her window, her heart a hard knot of anger, disillusionment, and a sense of betrayal. She replayed Colonel Fitzwilliam’s words, Darcy’s calculated destruction of Jane’s happiness, his cold abandonment of his own sister. Each thought was a fresh twist of the knife.
Darcy, opposite her, did not even pretend to engage with the letters that lay, untouched, upon the seat beside him.
Elizabeth, through the haze of her own anger, noted that his gaze, when it was not fixed on some distant point beyond the carriage window, occasionally flickered towards her, not with its usual scrutiny, but with a troubled rumination made plain by the way his fingers worried at his signet ring.
A quiet clearing of his throat signalled his intention to speak. Darcy’s voice was low, aimed deliberately at the empty space between them.
“This impasse between us is untenable,” he began, “It hinders our ability to fulfil the duties that have been thrust upon us.” He paused, his jaw tightening.
When he spoke again, the words were precise, as though spoken through a great effort of will.
“I have…I confess I have engaged in some considerable introspection since our last unsuccessful attempt in the library. And I believe that the fault for our failure to achieve the necessary magical harmony may lie, at least in part, with me. That is to say, it lies with an internal conflict that I had not fully acknowledged.”
Elizabeth turned slowly from the window as her pulse began to thud with apprehension.
Darcy continued, “I find against all reason, against all will, that you have evoked feelings within me. Feelings I neither sought, nor desired, nor, frankly, can entirely comprehend or control.”
Feelings? He was admitting to feelings? After weeks of quarrels and thinly disguised disdain? Worse, he spoke of them as an affliction, a regrettable failing of his superior judgement. He was not offering his heart; he was lamenting its capture.
“Elizabeth,” and here, on her name, his voice roughened, “I believe it has become a constant distraction. Perhaps even from the beginning. As inescapable, it seems, as this Concordance itself.” He ran an agitated hand through his dark, impeccably arranged hair.
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. And this internal battle, this struggle with an attachment I cannot seem to conquer…it has fractured my focus.”
A hysterical laugh clawed its way up her throat, threatening to erupt.