Chapter 16
The news reached Darcy over breakfast at Lucas Lodge, delivered by his sister in the measured tones she adopted when she feared her words would wound.
“Mrs Annesley has agreed to escort me to Longbourn for the lessons, now that she has joined us again.” Georgiana turned her teacup in its saucer, her gaze fixed upon the delicate pattern of roses along the rim.
“Miss Elizabeth sent word this morning. She believes the arrangement will prove more convenient for all concerned.”
Darcy's knife went still against his plate. “More convenient.”
“Yes. We will set off at half past ten. We are to begin today.”
The longcase clock in the corner marked the silence that followed, each tick precise and remorseless. Darcy found himself studying the congealing fat on his plate of ham and eggs, his appetite quite vanished.
“I see.” He set down his knife and pushed the plate aside.
Georgiana looked up at him then, and the gentle knowing in her expression told him his composure had not deceived her in the least. She had always possessed the ability to see through him, his sister, even as a child when she would watch him with those solemn eyes and perceive what others missed entirely.
“Fitzwilliam.” She reached across the damask tablecloth and laid her fingers upon his hand.
“I know you hold Miss Elizabeth in high regard. I have watched you these weeks past. The alteration in your countenance whenever she enters a room. The attention you pay to her every word, as though she were speaking truths of the utmost importance. I ceased being a child some years ago, whatever you may prefer to believe.”
He could find no reply. The admission she sought lodged somewhere in his throat and refused to emerge, and so he merely looked down at her small hand upon his whilst the fire whispered in the grate and the clock measured out seconds he would never reclaim.
“After what Aunt Catherine said the other day…” Georgiana drew a breath. “After the accusations she levelled and the scene she created in the Longbourn drawing room, well, I daresay propriety demands you keep your distance now. I know your purpose here was to ...”
“You are right.” The words came out rough, stripped bare of the ease he had meant to affect. “I have been thinking only of myself.”
She pressed his fingers gently. “I am sorry, Fitzwilliam. Truly I am. I can see how much this pains you.”
He withdrew his hand and rose from the table, his limbs stiff and reluctant, moving as though through water.
“If you will excuse me. I have letters requiring attention. I believe I shall write to Matthews regarding our return to Pemberley. The lessons must come to an end soon anyhow, and I do not wish to spend Christmas here. I would rather we spend it at home.”
“But the lessons I had planned will take another week or two to complete.”
He sighed. “We will leave as soon as you finish, then.”
He quitted the breakfast room without looking back and climbed the stairs to his bedchamber with the leaden tread of a man ascending the scaffold.
The room that greeted him was cold despite the fire smouldering in the grate, and he stood for a moment with his back against the closed door, breathing slowly until the constriction in his chest began to ease.
Driven by impulse, he crossed to the desk and drew out a sheet of paper.
He sat motionless for a long moment, staring at the blank page.
Then something gave way within him, some final fortification crumbling, and he began to compose what would be the longest, most heartfelt letter he had ever written in his life.
Dear Miss Elizabeth,
I write to you in full knowledge that I possess no right to do so.
Every principle of propriety ought to compel me toward silence, and every dictate of honour demands I remove myself from your life without explanation or farewell.
You are promised to another man. You have given your word, and I know perhaps better than most the value you place upon honour and duty and the keeping of promises once made.
Yet I find the need to unburden certain truths that weigh upon me more heavily with each passing hour.
Forgive me if this letter occasions you distress.
That is not my design and has never been my purpose, though I acknowledge I have caused you distress enough in the past through pride and wilful blindness.
You will recall the proposal I offered you at Hunsford Parsonage last April.
I have turned that conversation over in my mind a thousand times since, each recollection bringing fresh waves of mortification as I contemplate my conduct on that occasion.
I made you an offer of marriage couched in terms calculated to insult any woman of sense and feeling, then had the unpardonable presumption to feel wounded when you declined me in the strongest possible language.
You were right to refuse me. Your words that afternoon at Hunsford, painful as they were to hear, began a process of reformation that has occupied me daily since.
I have endeavoured to become the sort of man who might deserve the good opinion of those he respects, rather than one who simply demands deference and admiration as his due.
Whether I have succeeded in this endeavour I cannot say with any confidence.
But I have tried, Miss Elizabeth. I have tried with all my heart and all my will to become worthy of you, even believing I had forfeited through my own abominable conduct any prospect of ever securing your regard.
I tell you this not to purchase your sympathy or to argue that I deserve another hearing.
I tell you because I wish you to understand, before I address the other matters I must raise, that I am altered from the man who wounded you at Hunsford.
Thus, I approach you not as the proud Mr Darcy of Pemberley demanding what he considers his due, but as a man who has learnt through bitter experience that the things most worth possessing cannot be demanded or purchased or seized by force of will, but can only be freely offered and gratefully received.
Which brings me to the second matter I must address, one of far greater urgency than my own sentiments, though I confess the two are not unconnected in my thoughts.
Miss Elizabeth, I have cause to believe that the man you know as Malcolm MacKinnon is not who he claims to be.
I advance this accusation with full awareness of how it must appear and how readily it might be dismissed.
Indeed, I recently had a meeting with the despicable Mr Wickham and a certain Scotsman who goes by the name of Kinsman.
I believe they both visited Longbourn recently.
Mr Wickham, being who he is, somehow managed to take advantage of the situation.
He demanded payment in exchange for the story and I daresay, he shall come back for more.
I have every intention of paying them both a handsome sum to ensure you never have to lay eyes upon Wickham again.
For now, what they said is all speculation since I am still trying to uncover evidence.
The man who styles himself Malcolm MacKinnon, Laird of Strathaird, is supposedly Hamish McLeod, son of a factor who served on the MacKinnon estates during the Highland Clearances of 1805.
I do not yet possess documentary proof sufficient to sustain this accusation in a court of law or before a magistrate.
I have laboured these past weeks to obtain such proof through correspondence with solicitors in Edinburgh and through enquiries conducted via connexions in Scottish legal circles.
My intention was to lay irrefutable evidence before you, sparing you the torment of uncertainty and ensuring that when I presented my case you would have no grounds whatsoever upon which to doubt its veracity.
But I find I can delay no longer. I beseech you to credit me, Miss Elizabeth.
Trust that I would never level such an accusation without cause, that I would never hazard occasioning you such distress unless convinced in both heart and conscience that the peril of remaining silent far exceeded any danger in speaking.
I mean to continue my enquiries regardless of what passes between us.
Even should you dismiss this letter as the ravings of a jealous fool and wed Mr MacKinnon on the morrow and never speak another word to me so long as you live, I shall not rest until I have uncovered the full truth and ensured you and your family are protected from whatever scheme he has set in motion.
You deserve to know the true nature of the man you contemplate marrying.
You deserve to make your choice with full command of the facts.
If I prove mistaken in my suspicions, if Mr MacKinnon is indeed the honourable gentleman he presents himself to be, then I shall accept the consequences of my error and beg your pardon for the distress I have caused.
But I do not believe myself mistaken. Every instinct I possess tells me something is gravely amiss, that the man who has insinuated himself so smoothly into your family's affairs is not what he pretends, that his purposes in pursuing this marriage bear no resemblance to those he has professed.
And now I must address the final matter. The one I have been circling since I first took up my pen.
I have loved you longer than I understood, Elizabeth. Even since before I possessed any name for the feeling that overtook me whenever you entered a room or laughed or turned those fine eyes upon me with that singular expression I have never encountered in another woman.
I know I possess no right to burden you with sentiments you neither sought nor may welcome.
But I wish you to know I am willing to wait for you.
However long it may take, however many months or years must pass before circumstances permit, I am willing to wait.
My heart is yours, and it shall remain yours, and no passage of time shall alter that fundamental truth.