Chapter Seventeen #2
“Please, William, I beg of you, do not marry Anne. You will lose Lizzy, I will lose Lizzy, and I cannot bear it!”
“I will not ruin you,” Darcy said, frantic at the sight of Georgiana so distraught. She had not come so unraveled even after Wickham.
“That is what Lizzy said last night.” Georgiana’s eyes blazed with anger as she landed this blow.
Darcy took an unsteady step backward and groaned. “She knows?”
“She loves you, just as I know that you love her. If my tears do not move you, shall I tell you of hers? Of how she wept to know she would have her heart broken again!”
That final word undid Darcy. He staggered backward into the sofa and sank down on it, his posture crumpling. “I ought never to have let myself harbor such feelings for her, nor give her such encouragement to return my love.”
“Of course you ought to have! That is not what vexes me. Good God, William, I had not thought you capable of such faults of understanding! Nothing has ever made me so happy as watching you and Lizzy fall in love; only having her as my sister could eclipse such joy as I have had this past fortnight. I should embrace ruin and eschew ever marrying if I might have such a sister at Pemberley—and such a brother as the man you are when you are with her.”
Georgiana was heaving through her tears, her eyes wide with the shock of how she had railed at him.
She and Darcy stared at one another for an agonizing eternity, until finally Darcy spoke.
“I cannot do it, Georgiana. God knows I want to; I want her for my wife so desperately that I could hurl our aunt into the sea. But I cannot jeopardize your reputation, for such a scandal would not only affect yourself. She has three unwed sisters, and her stepsisters, who would be tainted by association after her marriage to me. Even her infant half-brother may suffer from the scandal. Look what the guilt of it has done to you already. Do you wish a lifetime of such agony?”
Georgiana’s ferocity surged once more. “Throw our aunt into the sea, then! There is a great deal of it!” She gestured at the window. “How cruel that our mother and Lizzy’s should be taken so young, when Lady Catherine will live to be a hundred and still be tormenting us all with her dying breath!”
Suddenly, Richard began to roar with laughter.
“That is it! Ha, mothers indeed! The lengths that Lady Catherine has gone to—first she blackmailed you, Darcy, threatened her own angelic niece, and then she tried to bribe Sir Sidney, and now she has bribed Miss Denham and orchestrated a compromise and an elopement without a second thought for what her own daughter might wish.”
“She is the devil,” Georgiana hissed.
“Probably,” Richard agreed with a smirk.
“But all this is merely what we know about—and I would wager that there is much more that we do not. But I know who would; my mother has despised Lady Catherine longer than we have been alive; she has devoted her life to this loathing, and to being the keeper of the family secrets. She has told me a few that would give you the vapors for weeks, but I know she is holding a few cards very close to her chest, and now is the time for us to play them.”
Georgiana gasped and then broke into a smile. “Blackmail her back? And in doing so, silence her. Force her to release William. Oh, Richard, yes! It is perfect!”
“I shall write to my dear mother at once. A dowager countess would lend Sanditon much distinction, do you not agree?”
“Oh, we are saved!” Georgiana spun with glee and sat down beside Darcy. “I am sorry for my outburst, but not for the sentiments I expressed. You and Lizzy belong together—you must go to her and tell her that there is hope! Aunt Margaret will surely think of something.”
Hope. Darcy dared not hope; brooding fool that he was, his instinct was to cling to his despair. Surely the solution to his troubles could not be so simple. Darcy only stared at Richard and Georgiana, too stunned to speak.
Richard surveyed him as if he were a madman. “I sincerely hope you are not going to protest against such devious methods, Darcy.”
“I am only in shock, to think there is any chance of it turning out well. I dare not hope until we have heard from your mother,” Darcy said, his discernment warring with a desperate desire to believe he might not be bound to Anne in the end.
“We will fix this,” Richard insisted. “And if you had told me of the blackmail sooner, we might have squashed the matter directly.”
“Oh, but then we would never have come here and William would not have met Lizzy,” Georgiana said. “Go at once and make yourself presentable, William! Are you not eager to go to her?”
He was, despite the tremendous shock of all that had transpired.
Stunned and reeling from the drastic shift from despair to relief, and still a little apprehensive about Richard’s new scheme, Darcy rose from the sofa and smiled tentatively at the looks of encouragement Georgiana and Richard offered him.
Suddenly energized, he hastened from the room to dress himself for a call on Elizabeth Bennet.
A quarter hour later, when he was ready to depart, Richard and Georgiana declared their intention to accompany him.
Richard had already written and dispatched a hasty missive to his mother, and he saw the good sense in being on hand to ensure Darcy had an opportunity to speak privately with Elizabeth.
“Surely she must have a friend or sister with her,” Georgiana pointed out. “She will be in want of a confidante after last night.”
Georgiana was proven correct when they were shown into the sunlit parlor of the Gardiner apartments above the ballroom.
Lady Parker and Miss Dashwood were taking tea with Elizabeth and speaking with great animation about the previous evening’s events.
Elizabeth offered a weak smile as she welcomed them.
“I suppose you have heard about Sir Sidney and Miss Denham,” Elizabeth said as Darcy sat beside her.
His gut twisted at the sorrow in her eyes. “Yes, we have heard.”
Miss Dashwood screwed up her face with distaste. “Was there ever much attraction between them? I saw them speaking at the picnic, but you would know better, Charlotte.”
“Lady Denham is not likely to favor the match,” Lady Parker said cautiously. “I am surprised that Miss Denham would risk her aunt’s favor, with the prospect of future prosperity at stake.”
“Yes, Miss Denham has always struck me as having a pragmatic view on social connections, but then, I cannot imagine there was any secret romance involved. I hope he did not prevail upon her,” Elizabeth mused.
“I believe it was her pragmatism that motivated her, rather than any untoward coercion. I saw Lady Catherine this morning and she told me without a modicum of shame that she paid Miss Denham to remove Sir Sidney from her daughter. I am, of course, heartbroken,” Richard said with a wink.
Lady Parker gasped. “Lady Denham must be preparing her pistols! Good Lord! Perhaps we had best not speak of it to anybody else. Oh dear, she will be so angry with poor Sir Thomas.”
Darcy saw Elizabeth’s brow furrow with concern for her friend’s husband, whom he understood to be heavily connected to the local dowager in their business dealings.
Without thinking of what he might feasibly do to help, he blurted out, “I should be happy to speak with her; my aunt acted as she did to press for the match between myself and Anne. I am to blame.”
Miss Dashwood scoffed in indignant disagreement, and Elizabeth shook her head sadly. “I suppose you are nearer to what you have desired all along. I shall soon be wishing you joy.”
“I….” Darcy sighed. He wanted to fall at her feet and give her every possible reassurance that he would find a way out of this disaster, that what he desired had so materially altered since knowing Elizabeth that he could only be wished joy once he had made her his wife.
Richard and Georgiana had accompanied him to divert Elizabeth’s friends so that he might speak privately with Elizabeth, and at present they were doing a terrible job of it. Instead, they were conversing with great animation about the upcoming events in Sanditon.
Darcy was floundering. Elizabeth would not meet his eye, and there was an alarming look of defeat in her posture that he was desperate to ease.
He cast a look around the room and spied the books that he had given Elizabeth; the flowers that had accompanied his gift were wilting in a vase beside them.
“Elizabeth,” he said, infusing her name with all the adoration he could lavish on those four syllables. “Have you found a place of much distinction for your collection of autographed Bevan novels?”
“I have indeed,” she said. “Do you wish to admire the little shrine I have made for my treasures?”
“If you would be so kind as to show me.” Darcy smiled as she led him across the room, relieved that he had managed to detach her from the others. Richard gave Darcy a nod and a smile, as if he had anything to do with it.
Elizabeth made a sweeping gesture of her hand over the space dedicated to the novels on a shelf across the room, situated just under a wide window overlooking the cliffs.
“My uncle says I need only a few candles here to light daily, to complete my worship of my favorite novelist,” she said with laughter dancing in her eyes.
Darcy examined a small sketch on paper that was propped up next to one of the books, depicting Mrs. Bevan at the reading held at Trafalgar House. “Georgie made this; I saw her drawing something at Mrs. Bevan’s reading but I never asked her about it.”
“She knew that when the euphoria of my elixir waned, I would lament missing the event,” Elizabeth explained. “She is a dear girl. I… I hope you will not object to our friendship after you and Miss de Bourgh are married.”
“Georgiana thinks of you as a sister,” Darcy said warmly. “As to my marriage, after what my aunt has done….”
Elizabeth averted her gaze. “It must be inevitable; I daresay it shall be soon.”
“No.”