Chapter 14
Darcy had slept poorly, and risen earlier than was his habit even on the mornings when sleep came easily, and had spent the better part of an hour before breakfast attempting, without much success, to settle his mind to the morning's correspondence.
He had been thinking, more than he cared to admit even to himself, of his conversation with Georgiana the day Miss Beaumont departed — of her plain, unhesitating certainty that he already knew his own heart, and that the only person at Pemberley still uncertain of the matter was himself.
He had turned the observation over a great many times since, in the manner of a man examining a stone he suspects may be a great deal more valuable than its plain exterior suggests, and had arrived, by the morning in question, at no firmer conclusion than that his sister had very likely been entirely correct, and that the correctness itself did very little to tell him what he ought now to do about it.
Fitzwilliam found him there, in the small room off the library where Darcy generally took his coffee alone before the rest of the household stirred, and entered without knocking, which told Darcy, before his cousin had spoken a single word, that whatever followed was intended to be said plainly and without the customary cushioning of ordinary civility.
"I am going to say something to you this morning, Darcy, and I am not going to be gentle about it, because I have tried gentleness for a fortnight now and it has produced nothing whatsoever beyond a great deal of wasted breath on my part."
"You have my full attention, though I confess I am not certain I have earned this particular tone from you this morning, of all mornings."
"You have earned it entirely, and I shall explain precisely how.
" Fitzwilliam dropped into the chair opposite without invitation, and regarded him with an expression that combined real affection with an exasperation Darcy had rarely seen him display so openly.
"I am watching a woman fall in love with you.
I do not say this lightly, nor do I say it to flatter you, since I do not think flattery has ever once succeeded in moving you to action and see no reason to attempt it now.
I am watching it happen, slowly and rather beautifully, in a hundred small particulars that I do not think she is even fully aware of herself, and I am watching you respond to the entire spectacle by becoming, if anything, more careful, more correct, more exquisitely restrained with every day that passes, as though restraint were the precise quality the situation called for, when in fact I have rarely witnessed a more profoundly ineffective strategy in the whole of my acquaintance with you. "
Darcy set down his coffee cup with rather more precision than the action required. "I proposed to her once, Fitzwilliam. I believe we have had this conversation."
"We have had half of this conversation, by the lake, some days ago, and I had hoped the half we had then might have produced some alteration in your conduct by now.
It has not. You are, if anything, more careful than you were before I spoke to you, which I can only assume means you have spent the intervening days convincing yourself that caution is itself a form of courtship, which I promise you it is not, however much you might wish it were, since caution requires nothing of you beyond the avoidance of further humiliation, and courtship, properly conducted, requires the willingness to risk it. "
"I am not in the habit of repeating mistakes."
"You have told me that as well, and I confess I am growing rather tired of hearing it, because it is not, strictly speaking, an answer to anything I have said.
The mistake was not the proposal, Darcy.
I have told you this already and I shall tell you again, as many times as proves necessary: the mistake was the manner of it, and the man who made it, and if you genuinely cannot see the difference between that man and the one who has spent the better part of a fortnight demonstrating, in a hundred small unguarded moments, precisely how much he has changed, then you understand your own conduct considerably less well than I have always given you credit for, and I have generally given you a great deal of credit on that particular score. "
Darcy did not answer this immediately. He rose instead, and crossed to the window, where the morning light was just beginning to find its way properly into the grounds, and stood looking out at them for a long moment, turning his cousin's words over with the same careful attention he generally reserved for matters of genuine consequence.
"I do not know how to begin again, Fitzwilliam, without repeating the very performance that failed me the first time.
I have thought of it, more than I care to admit.
I do not know how a man asks a woman to forgive him for the manner of a previous offer without the asking itself becoming another kind of performance — another speech, carefully constructed, calculated to produce the effect I require rather than to simply say what is true. "
"Then say what is true, and stop calculating the effect entirely.
I do not think Miss Bennet is a woman who responds well to calculation, Darcy, whatever effect it might produce in someone less particular.
I think she would value an honest stumble over a polished speech every single time, and I think, if you would only trust that instinct rather than your considerable talent for rehearsal, you would find the task a great deal simpler than you currently imagine it to be. "
Darcy was still turning this over, still standing at the window with his back half-turned to his cousin, when a servant knocked and entered with a letter on a small salver — an express, by the look of the seal, arrived earlier than the ordinary post would have permitted, and Darcy crossed to take it with a small private unease he could not immediately account for, until he saw his own man of business's hand upon the direction, and understood, before he had broken the seal, precisely what news it was likely to contain.
He read it standing by the window, in silence, while Fitzwilliam watched him with the particular stillness of a man who recognizes, from long acquaintance, the exact moment when a conversation must be set entirely aside for something of greater weight.
The letter confirmed what he had feared since the night Fitzwilliam first brought him the name.
Wickham's debts in Brighton were considerable, and growing; his conduct with respect to a certain young lady recently arrived in that town had become, in the careful language his man of business employed for such matters, a subject of some local comment, which Darcy understood to mean precisely the danger he had hoped, against very little real hope, might somehow have been averted by his letter to Mrs. Forster.
It had not been averted. The letter made plain that matters in Brighton had progressed considerably beyond the point at which a careful warning, however well composed, could be expected to do any good at all.
He read the relevant passage twice, as though a second reading might somehow soften what the first had already made entirely plain, and found that it did not.
"Darcy." Fitzwilliam had risen, and crossed to stand beside him, and read something of the answer in his face before a single word had been spoken. "What is it?"
"It is precisely what I feared, and considerably worse than I had permitted myself to imagine while there remained any room for hope otherwise.
" He folded the letter with hands that he was distantly aware were not entirely steady, and looked at his cousin with an expression he made no attempt to soften, because there seemed, in this particular moment, very little point in continuing to manage his own face when the matter at hand required so much more of him than composure.
"I must excuse myself, Fitzwilliam. I have a journey to make, and very little time in which to make the necessary arrangements before I go. "
"To Brighton?"
"To wherever the present trail leads, which I expect will begin in Brighton and may not end there.
I will ask you to remain at Pemberley in my absence, and to say nothing of the particulars to anyone — not to Bingley, not to Georgiana, and most especially not to Miss Bennet, until I have had the opportunity to speak with her myself, this morning, before I go. "
"You mean to tell her yourself, then. Before you go, or after?"
Darcy considered this for a long moment, the letter still folded in his hand, and found, examining the question with the same honesty he had been trying, all morning, to bring more fully into his own conduct, that he already knew the answer, and that the knowing of it required very little further deliberation.
"Before I go. I will not have her hear of her sister's danger from anyone but myself, nor learn, secondhand, that I am the man best positioned to address it, and why.
She has earned the whole truth from me, Fitzwilliam — not a careful, edited version constructed to spare either of us discomfort, but the entire history, exactly as it happened, including every part of it that does me no particular credit.
I find I am no longer willing to offer her anything less. "
"That," said Fitzwilliam, with a quiet, genuine warmth that had entirely replaced his earlier exasperation, "is the most sensible thing I have heard you say in a fortnight, and I shall not spoil it by adding anything further, except to say plainly that I think you have finally understood the whole of what I have been trying to tell you, and I am glad of it, whatever the present circumstances that have occasioned the understanding. "
"I take very little pleasure in the timing, Fitzwilliam, however much I may value the lesson."
"No. I should not imagine you would. But a lesson learned under difficult circumstances is no less learned for the difficulty of the occasion, and I think you will find, whatever happens in the coming days, that you are considerably better equipped to face it than the man who stood in that parsonage at Easter ever could have been.
" Fitzwilliam clapped him once, briefly, on the shoulder, a small gesture that carried, Darcy thought, considerably more weight than its brevity might have suggested.
Darcy went to find her within the half hour, the letter still in his pocket and his own composure rather more thoroughly stripped away than he had permitted any audience but Fitzwilliam to witness in a very long while, and thought, walking the short distance to the morning room where he understood her to be sitting, that whatever else this conversation cost him, he intended, at last, to conduct it as the man he had spent the past year trying to become, rather than the one who had once mistaken pride for honesty, and a catalogue of grievances for an offer of love.
He paused outside the door for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, gathering himself the way a man gathers himself before stepping into cold water, knowing the discomfort to be brief and the alternative — standing forever at the edge, unwilling to commit to either the plunge or the retreat — considerably worse than whatever the water itself might prove to be.
He had spent a great deal of his life at that particular edge, he thought, turning over decisions long after the moment for deciding had passed, weighing consequences with a thoroughness that too often shaded into simple avoidance.
He thought, briefly, of his father, and of what his father might have advised him in such a moment, and decided that the advice would very likely have been simple: to go in, and say what was true.
He did not intend to stand at the edge any longer this morning. He opened the door.