Chapter 14 #2
Her gaze sharpened. “I did not say that.” She sighed, her tone softer. “I want to do what is best for my family. I do.” She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. “But must I sacrifice my own happiness to ensure their comfort?”
“Perhaps your betrothed will be understanding. You might even find him agreeable.”
“Had he made the smallest gesture of interest, I would believe it possible.” She crossed her arms over herself, the letter still in her hand. “At first, I applauded his flight. I wished I could have done the same.”
Darcy’s guilt redoubled. How self-indulgent his declaration of independence seemed from the perspective of a trapped young lady.
She blinked several times, tucked the letter back into her pocket, and rubbed her hands together. “I really thought he might write to me, to explain his absence or to somehow free me from our marriage contract.” She shook her head and shrugged. “Alas, he did not.
“And that is quite enough about that unpleasant affair.” She shifted her gaze to the room. “Let us turn to a more productive task before anyone else calls and I must join Mama in the drawing room again.”
Responding obediently, Darcy climbed on top of the library step to remove the final row of books and papers.
She trusted him. He had been careful not to mention Pemberley or the marriage arrangement, and she had confided in him anyway.
Now more than ever, he knew himself to be undeserving of her trust. He hated to disappoint her, and yet he did not know how to avoid it.
As Robinson, he was her friend. As Darcy, he was her duty.
As the man who withheld his identity while he allowed her to reveal her innermost self, he was a hypocrite.
“Here is another letter!” She held the paper up. “This makes ten in total. I do not see anything blatantly fraudulent.” She handed him the letter, equally hopeful and anxious.
It looked precisely as the other nine letters they had found.
He added it to the pile of evidence they had scoured through the library to find, heart heavy.
If he was doomed to disappoint her, at least he could clear her father’s name of reproach and free him from a life indebted to the crown.
Miss Elizabeth was resourceful. She would see Longbourn thrive long after she raked him over the coals for deceiving her and refusing his hand just as she said she would do at the young age of eight.
“It proves that they continued to do business with your father after the contract ended. Are there any other places in the house where your father might have stowed important documents?”
She frowned. “He keeps everything he considers of import in here.”
Before she could absorb the disaster of what they had not found, he suggested their next step.
“Before the bailiff arrives with a distress warrant, I think it advisable to take an inventory of Longbourn’s effects.
If we provide the bailiff and the customs officer with an extensive list of salable goods, they might be lenient and give us more time.
In the least, it will spare your mother and sisters from having strangers poke through their personal belongings. ”
“That is an excellent idea. A good deal of the furniture belongs to the property and is protected by the entail, but that will not save my mother’s pearls or my sisters’ trinkets.
” Tilting her chin, she narrowed her eyes.
“Would it be advisable to hide our jewelry until we have exhausted our search and presented our case?”
“Do you have someone you trust?”
“Charlotte. We are going to Lucas Lodge to dine on the morrow.”
Darcy pinched the bridge of his nose. He had forgotten about the dinner party to celebrate the arrival of the Bingleys, Hursts, and Wickham to Hertfordshire.
It was not a gathering Darcy looked forward to.
Already, he was raw with guilt, and Wickham would relish the opportunity to rub salt in his open wounds.
“Yes, I shall ask Charlotte to hide them for me and pray that our case is strong enough to prove Papa’s innocence. I can use the excuse of cleaning the settings and checking the clasps. Something believable to give us time.”
She paused, and the silence between them lasted long enough to raise Darcy’s suspicions. He felt Elizabeth’s eyes on him. He closed the collection of documents he would forward to Richard by messenger that same day and turned to her.
She was watching him, a thoughtful expression brightening her eyes. “Do you have any friends in England, Mr. Robinson? Or family, perhaps?”
How could he answer that? He had few friends—Richard and Reynolds, to name two—but he could not speak of his family without giving her more information than he was prepared to give.
He must have delayed too long in his reply, or perhaps she read the panic on his face with more sympathy than he merited, for she placed a hand on his forearm.
“I must seem like a selfish creature, always speaking of my family and my friends, blessed as I am with so many of them when you… it seems… that you have… no one?”
God help him. Darcy said nothing, in one omission allowing her to believe him abandoned, an orphan, when he had been the one to leave. He would answer for this deception later, he knew. There was one point he could not allow to pass, and he said, “I would never call you selfish.”
Pressing down on his arm, she looked up at him with open eyes brimming with sincerity, “If I may be so bold, sir, it would please me greatly for you to consider me a friend.”
Her offer hit him like a kick to the stomach. Darcy had thought he had reached the depth of his guilt, but now it was that much lower.