Chapter 35
As quick as a whip, Miss Bennet reached behind Darcy and pulled Elizabeth away from him. “Oh! Jane, that hurts.” Elizabeth spun around, rubbing her free hand over her arm.
Darcy did not know what he would have done had Miss Bennet not let go of her sister right then, but he was grateful she did. He might not have behaved as gentlemanly as he would hope.
Mr. Bennet arrived at the top of the staircase.
Such was the urgency in Miss Bennet’s call, he gripped the banister and bent over to catch his breath, having obviously rushed up the stairs.
Mrs. Bennet, in her haste, struggled to slow her momentum before colliding into her husband.
Had she not been pressed so closely by Miss Kitty and Miss Lydia following behind, shoving each other for a better view, she would have bounced off him and toppled down the steps.
Behind them, patiently waiting, her forehead creased with concern, stood Miss Mary.
It was a comical scene, but Darcy did not smile. He did not move.
Standing erect, Mr. Bennet took in the tableau with one, long look: Darcy's agitation, his eldest daughter's accusatory demeanor, Elizabeth’s upset.
Something shifted in the old man's face—not yet anger, but it would come.
He turned to his wife and younger daughters.
“Downstairs,” he said quietly. Darcy rather wished he had shouted.
“But Mr. Bennet, I must know what has—”
“Downstairs, Mrs. Bennet.” He pointed at the stairwell, adding gravity to his command.
Her youngest daughters exchanged wide-eyed glances, their curiosity discouraged from pressing the matter at the rare firmness of their father’s tone. Mrs. Bennet did not argue. Their slippered feet whispered back down the staircase, leaving Darcy to face an increasingly irate Mr. Bennet.
Miss Bennet wasted no time leveling her accusation. “Papa, I came upstairs to fetch my shawl and found them here, outside Mr. Robinson’s bedchamber door. He had his arms around her. She…”Her gaze moved briefly, coldly to Elizabeth. “She did not appear to object.”
“The blame is mine—” Darcy began, interrupted by Elizabeth’s clear voice.
“I did not object because I had nothing to object to. Whatever you believe you saw, Jane, you are mistaken in assigning blame where none exists.” Miss Bennet huffed, a condemning retort no doubt on the tip of her sharp tongue.
“That will do,” Mr. Bennet said. He looked at Jane.
“Go downstairs. Keep your mother and sisters occupied. Tell them—tell them whatever you think best. But keep them below.” Miss Bennet, having been denied the final word, was determined to make her displeasure known.
Chin firm, she cast Darcy a stern glare before turning her disapproval to her sister.
Elizabeth reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. Then she was gone.
The hallway contracted around Darcy. He saw Elizabeth square her shoulders and hold her father’s gaze, and he knew that, once again, she would accept the consequences, this time for his own moment of weakness.
The tenderness Darcy felt for her ached, his heart lacking the space to contain the fullness of his regard, his respect, his love.
She would pay for this loyalty. Not because she was wrong but because she would be defending the wrong man under the wrong name.
When the truth finally came out, this would be one more item in the ledger of his deception.
He could not allow something so beautiful to turn into regret.
“Miss Elizabeth, pray allow me to accept responsibility for my own behavior.”
“But I came to you. I practically asked you to—”
“Your father deserves the truth.” He met Mr. Bennet's gaze directly. “Miss Elizabeth came to ask me a question. I answered it. The manner in which I answered it was… impulsive.”
“Impulsive?” asked Mr. Bennet, his tone low and slow.
Darcy replied quickly, clearly. “I kissed her.”
The absence of sound amplified the pounding of Darcy’s heartbeat in his ears. Mr. Bennet studied him for a long moment. “I see.” Only two words, and yet they communicated a well of disillusionment and reprobation.
“The conduct was mine. Whatever consequences follow, they belong to me and me alone.” Elizabeth shook her head, lips open, her eyes searching Darcy’s, but his remained fixed on Mr. Bennet. He dared not look away, dared not redirect the gentleman’s anger away from him and toward his daughter.
Mr. Bennet was quiet for a moment. Then he said, in the tone of a man delivering a verdict, “Your conduct has been shameful.”
Darcy accepted this without flinching. “I understand why you believe so.”
“I do not require your understanding. I require your absence. Immediately.” The measured quality of Mr. Bennet’s anger was more effective than an outburst. “You will pack your things. You will be gone within the hour. And you will not, by any means or contrivance, speak to my daughter, write to my daughter, or so much as occupy the same air as my daughter between now and the moment we depart for Pemberley. Do I make myself clear?”
Darcy swallowed his objections. “You do.”
“Furthermore.” He paused. “Should I find cause to believe that you have ignored this instruction, I will see to it that every respectable household within fifty miles of London knows precisely the manner of man they would be employing were they to engage you as a secretary. I have connections, Mr. Robinson. More than you might suppose.”
“I do not doubt it, sir.”
Mr. Bennet considered him for a moment longer, and Darcy perceived something more complicated and far more dangerous than anger.
He saw fear. And why should he not be afraid?
The man had built his family's entire security on one daughter's prospects, and he had just witnessed the frailty of his plan.
In that glimmer, Darcy saw Mr. Bennet, not as a villain, but as a flawed father floundering in his fear and uncertainty.
Darcy almost told him then. The name, the will, the truth of why he had come to Longbourn and what he had arranged and what the next two days would reveal. He opened his mouth. He closed it.
Not here. Not in a dim hallway with Mrs. Bennet one floor below and Elizabeth's loyalty still ringing in his ears and his own temper at its least reliable. The truth deserved better than a corridor confrontation. Elizabeth deserved better. “I will be gone within the hour.”
He was. He did not see Elizabeth on his way out. He had not expected to, but the hope had been there regardless.
Mind full, heart heavy, he rode into Meryton.
Making his way to the stables to return his rented horse, he touched his hat to the blacksmith, exchanged a nod with Mr. Jones, and greeted the villagers without slowing his pace too much lest he encourage further conversation he was in no mood to accommodate.
It occurred to Darcy how quickly he had made friends here—the people Elizabeth had known her entire life.
How would she feel to be uprooted from the place where she had grown up and where all her friends lived?
No doubt she would win over the whole of Derbyshire within a fortnight.
She would know every farmer's name and every tenant's history and every shortcut across the moors within a month.
Within a year, she would be as essential to Pemberley as she was to Longbourn, and the county would wonder how it had ever managed without her.
Full of thoughts and no clear direction, Darcy walked over to the inn, where he would plan his next step.
He ought to continue north to Pemberley, but he sensed trouble circling like a red kite over Elizabeth and feared it would swoop in the moment he departed.
Perhaps he would take a room for a day or two.
He would certainly call on Mr. Philips to apprise him of the situation at Longbourn, as he could not trust Mr. Bennet to do it.
After taking a room and leaving his few possessions inside, he accepted the innkeeper’s offer of a tankard of beer and sat in an unoccupied corner as the afternoon coach arrived and the inn filled with travelers.
He would have to travel north by coach, an inconvenience which would lengthen the journey considerably.
Darcy missed having his own coach, missed his valet, and missed the flavors he had grown so accustomed to tasting on the continent.
Most of all, he missed Elizabeth. The expression in her eyes, confused and hurt, flashed across his mind.
One word from him would have explained everything away, solved all her family’s troubles, eased her burden.
He had been tempted to do just that. To wrap his arms around her, declare to all and sundry that he was Fitzwilliam Darcy, that he wanted to marry her and love her and care for her until their last breaths.
To carry her away that very moment to Pemberley, where they would observe all the formalities of inheritance and matrimony…
… And where she would meet his venomous family and learn of his cowardice.
She would realize he had lied to her from the moment they had met.
She would doubt everything she understood about him, and she would be surrounded by people who would gleefully fill her ears with accounts of all his faults. Guilt consumed him.
Yet he would also have allies at Pemberley.
There was Richard, of course. And Reynolds, Mrs. Reynolds, and quite possibly Brenner by now.
Darcy rubbed his hand over his beard, tired of his disguise—sick of it—and afraid of the consequences he would face when he removed it.
But he would not pity himself, not when he would have allies with him at Pemberley.
Elizabeth would have no one in whom to confide during the three days of travel or to bolster her confidence when his aunts seized their opportunity to air all their complaints against the lady who ruined their ambitions. Elizabeth needed a friend. But who?
Someone her family trusted, someone Wickham could not easily dismiss or maneuver around.
Someone who would sit beside her in the carriage to Pemberley and quietly, sensibly, hold the line.
Not Jane Bennet. She had made her position perfectly clear.
Miss Mary would make a worthy ally. But she was the middle daughter, overlooked and underestimated, and her parents would no more consult her preferences about the journey than they would the house cat's.
Charlotte Lucas! The solution arrived fully formed, not so much a discovery requiring consideration but as a clear recognition.
Charlotte Lucas, who had called at Longbourn consistently and loyally even after the news of Mr. Bennet's debt had circulated through Meryton like a contagion.
Charlotte Lucas, who had sat beside Elizabeth at the assembly and watched the room with the careful, unsentimental intelligence of a woman who has long since stopped expecting the world to be other than it is.
Charlotte Lucas, who was renowned for her practicality and perception—the very qualities which might persuade Mr. Bennet to accept the plan Darcy was concocting.
In addition, Miss Lucas would be a restraint on Wickham, whose charm tended to falter under the scrutiny of a sensible person watching for it.
She would be a source of strength for Elizabeth, who had been carrying the weight of her family's expectations alone.
And she would make the journey itself something other than a prolonged exercise in familial pressure delivered at close quarters inside a carriage.
The difficulty was getting her there. Darcy could not call on Lucas Lodge directly.
Mr. Bennet could not suspect his involvement.
He needed an intermediary. He needed someone Longbourn’s master trusted, someone with a legitimate reason to involve himself in the arrangements for the Pemberley journey, someone who could plant the idea of Charlotte's inclusion in such a way that Mr. Bennet believed he had arrived at it himself.
Mr. Philips. Downing the last of his beer, Darcy crossed the square and pushed open the door to the office of Mr. Bennet’s brother-in-law.