Chapter 27
Darcy had never known his mother to knock at doors in her own house. She arrived at doors, and they were opened for her. But on Friday morning, she knocked.
He had spent the past week being especially diligent. His steward had received answers about the north farms, the drainage, the timber contracts, even several matters he had not asked about. Letters went out in the morning, and they were beginning to come back in the evening.
And all the while, a clean exhibition catalogue was lying at his elbow. He had not opened it, but he could not put it away.
Richard had called to see him twice and been denied. He had visited with Georgiana instead and left a note for Darcy, offering to be fond of landscapes and terrifying flowers again whenever required. Darcy had fed the note to the fire.
There was a second knock.
“Come,” Darcy said, as he wrote the third page of a letter about sheepfolds.
His mother entered. She looked at him, then closed the door behind her, crossed the room, and sat in the chair in front of his desk.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said without preamble. “Emmeline came to me this morning.”
Darcy set down his pen.
“She was distressed, declined to sit, and would accept neither food nor drink. She came, she said, because Richard said you had turned him away twice, and she was sure you would not do so unless you had given up, which she would not allow you to do. I asked what she meant by ‘given up,’ and she told me a story.”
He sat back in his chair. “What are you talking about?”
“Emmeline began to think of you two, she tells me, the day she met Miss Elizabeth in the park. George thought nothing of it. Emmeline thought a great deal.”
Darcy said nothing.
“The night of our party, the one where I introduced Mr. Aldridge—” She paused.
His whole body went cold. She must have noticed, because she did not finish her sentence but instead began another.
“Well,” she said. “According to Emmeline, you fetched Miss Elizabeth punch. Although there were eighty people, you never once lost her in the crowd. The one time you could not see her, you left the room in search and returned some minutes later with her on your arm. And Miss Elizabeth, for her part, did not seem to like it when you spoke with Miss Finch.”
“It does not matter.”
“Emmeline also observed that you allow Miss Elizabeth to tease you.”
“I allow Richard to tease me.”
“Yes, but you enjoy her teasing.”
Darcy did not answer.
“She says you watch Miss Elizabeth even when she is speaking to someone else. Not continually,” his mother added, before he could object. “That would lack subtlety. You look away and then look back again, which she considers far more telling.”
Darcy rubbed the back of his head, something he would never have done in his mother’s presence had he not been so tired. “This is absurd.”
“Most observation appears absurd to the person being observed,” his mother said. She moved her eyes to his hands but did not point out his lapse in manners. “There is also Georgiana.”
“What of her?”
“You have encouraged the friendship between them. Emmeline says—and I quite concur—that you have never before taken the least interest in forwarding Georgiana’s acquaintance with any unmarried woman.”
“Miss Elizabeth is good for her.”
“I am aware.”
Darcy had believed himself careful. Richard knew, but he had not expected anyone else to notice. Emmeline had, but despite George’s teasing about his wife and her wager with Milton, he had never considered that Em, so busy with her own life, would care this much about his.
He had misjudged that too, it seemed.
He considered what his mother had said. Had Miss Elizabeth truly minded his speaking with Miss Finch? Could she have been jealous? He certainly had been when it came to Aldridge.
“That was not all,” his mother was saying. “Emmeline spoke at length, and she ended with three sentences I am going to repeat exactly. They do not reflect well upon me, and so I shall say them only once and will then deny having ever admitted them. Are you listening?”
“Of course,” he said.
His mother caught his gaze and held it. “She said, ‘Your son has been in love with Miss Elizabeth Bennet all winter. Miss Elizabeth is not unmoved. And you have been proceeding all season under a mistake of some magnitude.’”
The fire ticked, but otherwise there was no noise in the room.
His mother closed her eyes. “When I asked you if there was anyone—”
He would not allow her to continue. “There was not. Not then. I had insulted her grievously, and my own feelings were not relevant. But Miss Elizabeth is not moved by my feelings for her. Even if she was once, she is not now.”
His mother sighed and opened her eyes again but did not move. “Emmeline has never in her life been mistaken about who is looking at whom. She may not always be correct about why, but she was quite convincing in this case.”
“Em is mistaken this time. I have it from the lady herself.”
His mother paused. “You have what from the lady herself?”
“A refusal.” He had not meant to say it, and certainly not to his mother of all people, but it was a relief to let it go. “I called at Gracechurch Street a week ago on Thursday, where I asked Miss Elizabeth to be my wife.”
His mother was silent.
“She refused me. It was final and deserved. I would rather have told you nothing about it, but you have come in here armed with Em’s suspicions, and I suppose you must have your answer. That is my answer.”
She was silent for a moment. “Tell me everything,” she said.
Darcy did not wish to revisit the mess he had made of things. But he could not sit in this room working all hours and never putting away the catalogue, either. So he told her.
Not all of it, for some of it was not his to tell.
But he did explain how he felt, what Miss Elizabeth said she had overheard on the night Georgiana played the pianoforte, the rumour about Aldridge, the proposal made in haste because he had thought another man might speak first, how Miss Elizabeth had been angry with him.
His mother listened without interrupting. That alone told him the matter was grave. Twice he stopped, certain he had said too much or too little, and each time she waited for him to resume.
“Did you explain Miss Finch?” his mother asked when he had finished.
“I could not. I did not know what it was that Miss Elizabeth had heard. I knew only that she believed you were planning an engagement.”
“There was a plan.”
“Not with me, I hope.”
“After you told me you had no interest in Miss Finch, I began to think Richard might suit her very well. He has property and a fortune now, and she is both direct enough not to be over-awed by him and perceptive enough to see that his humour conceals a great deal of feeling. She even loves horses nearly as much as he does.”
“She complained about her horse for ten minutes.”
His mother stared at him. “Fitzwilliam, she told me that her mare was heavy in the shoulder, badly handled on the left rein, and inclined to rush a fence when checked too sharply. Those were not idle complaints. She knew precisely what was wrong with the animal, which means she loves to ride.”
Darcy sat back. “Excellent. Then she and Richard may discuss their horses at leisure.”
His mother ignored this. “I begin to understand. I paid marked attention to Miss Finch and placed her near you more than once. We were all speaking at some length together after Georgiana played for us. That same evening, Miss Elizabeth heard only part of something about Miss Finch and then supplied the rest from what she had already observed.”
“She supplied it incorrectly.”
“Yes,” his mother said, growing thoughtful. “But not unreasonably.”
He disliked the mistake, disliked even more that he had been called to account for something in which he had no hand, but he could not disagree.
Miss Elizabeth had watched his mother in her element since December.
She had seen Miss Finch and other ladies repeatedly placed by him, might even have heard some speculation.
From where she stood, the conclusion had likely seemed inevitable.
He was staring at the catalogue on the desk again and made himself look away. “She said something that I am still grappling with. I did not understand it, not really.”
His mother waited.
“She said, ‘I cannot be chosen in this way.’” He hesitated, mulling that over as he had all week. “In what way? Was it only that I was too hasty?”
“Chosen,” she repeated. “In this way?”
“That is what she said. I cannot be sure she even meant to say it aloud. She had refused me already, so it was not the proposal, or not only that.”
“No,” his mother said slowly. “You do not understand it because it is more about what I have done than what you have.” She rose and went to the window.
“All winter I asked myself which man would be her match. I enjoyed her as a challenge. Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Reed, Mr. Fulford. Mr. Aldridge, at the last. Someone else if he failed. It did not occur to me that Miss Elizabeth might actually mean it when she told me she did not wish to be matched at all.”
“She did not.”
“No. And when you proposed the moment you believed Mr. Aldridge might, she had every reason to think she was merely being passed on to you.”
“I did not regard her as something to be passed anywhere.”
“But she could not know that. She saw me arranging introductions, encouraging attentions, deciding which man suited which woman. Then you came to her in haste only because another man had forced you to act.”
Darcy looked away.
“I loved her before Aldridge.”
“Yes. But you kept it carefully hidden.”
He could not argue with that. What had Miss Elizabeth actually seen?
A man who avoided her for more than two months upon advice she had never heard, who had contrived meetings in the park he never admitted were intentional, and who had stood beside Miss Finch when his mother bade him do so.
Every kindness he had offered her had been presented as mere courtesy, and therefore it had been accepted as such.