Chapter Seventeen #4
Georgiana appeared to piece it all together apace with him. “The letters—the only reason you ever felt that Anne loved you, the only reason you loved her! It was Lizzy all along? And she kept the letters. She was in love with you all this time! But that is… a miracle!”
Behind her, Richard clapped his hands and guffawed. “Oh, that is rich! Anne could not be troubled to correspond with you, Darcy, and actually enlisted the aid of a stranger! I trust you were handsomely paid, Lady Parker.”
Georgiana looked aghast, and Lady Parker shifted uncomfortably.
Darcy felt a surge of resentment at his cousin’s words, and at the shadow they cast on this unfathomable revelation.
Darcy clenched his jaw before asking, “Elizabeth accepted payment to participate in this deception, as Anne made a fool of me? I must repeat the same question as she, Lady Parker—just how long have you known that Miss de Bourgh was involved in this scheme?”
Lady Parker recoiled at the sharp edge in his voice.
Georgiana scowled at him, and Richard raised his brows.
Darcy bowed his head with a measure of contrition.
“Forgive my unintentional severity, Lady Parker. I am shocked, utterly stunned. I merely wish to know all, so that I might reconcile a falsehood I have long cherished to… whatever is the truth.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile that he did not entirely deserve.
“It is astonishing. I had a suspicion last week when Lizzy stayed at Trafalgar House. I saw the valentine in her book, and I compared it to the writing on the note that accompanied your flowers. She was muddled from her medicine; she could not see the similarities. The ink is rather smudged, but you must have recognized it.”
Darcy nodded pensively. “And you told Anne to write to me? You wished to test your theory.”
“It was a stroke of luck that she asked the owner of the hotel to dispatch the letter; I had intended to collect it from the post office in Bunbury tomorrow or the next day, and see if the return address was the Tremont.” Lady Parker sighed and glanced down the corridor to where Elizabeth had fled to her room.
“She must think I have betrayed her somehow. I had hoped that it would be a fine thing if it was you, but perhaps it will only deepen the loss.”
A heavy silence fell over them. Lady Parker squared her shoulders as she looked back at Darcy, tears in her eyes.
“When her brother was born, Lizzy gave all the money to her uncle, who is a solicitor in Meryton. He put the sum in the four percents for her younger sisters, and was so impressed with Lizzy that he promised to add the same twenty pounds to the sum every year until they are all settled. I believe he even managed to persuade her father to do likewise.”
“You are both very good to your sisters,” Georgiana said, laying a hand on Darcy’s arm. Her expression was not as gentle as her words, but mirrored the warning in Lady Parker’s gaze.
Darcy had not yet cooled the fury that balked at humiliation in his chest, but he understood what his sister meant. “I would do better to direct my present sentiments elsewhere.”
“Darcy, you are all in upheaval,” Richard said. “This morning has brought too much upon you, too swiftly.”
“I think Charlotte and I should speak to Lizzy first,” Georgiana told him. “Perhaps I could recant what I told her last night, in light of our appeal to Aunt Margaret.”
Darcy had not intended to speak to Elizabeth.
Not yet. Darcy could not bear to see her in such a state, knowing himself to be, in part, the cause of it.
No doubt she was also tormenting herself with recrimination.
He wished to ease what she suffered, and yet he could not yet fully comprehend the enormity of what he had learned.
The woman he had recently lost his heart to was the very same woman whose soul-bearing letters he had also fallen in love with; a woman who had consoled herself in a time of grief by writing to the betrothed of another, and forming an attachment to a man she was complicit in deceiving.
“Was it really her?” Darcy asked Lady Parker. “Was it—was it the true Elizabeth—did she merely write what she imagined Anne might say, what I might wish to hear? Did she think it a lark to participate in that ruse?”
“It was never a lark to her, Mr. Darcy,” Lady Parker said calmly. “As to the rest, I think you should ask her, once you have both calmed yourselves. Your sister and I will go to her first.”
Darcy clasped his sister’s hand as she moved away.
In answer to the question she had asked him, he said, “The dowager countess is not a certainty, but….” He brought the valentine to his lips and then handed it to his sister.
She smiled at it and nodded before following Lady Parker to Elizabeth’s room in all haste.
Richard moved back into the parlor. “Shall we wait?”
“Go along with the others, down to the beach, and try to behave normally. I have somewhere else I must go before I speak to Elizabeth.” Darcy strode off, clutching the letter he had slid out of Lady Parker’s hand.