Chapter 2
TWO
Elizabeth had a great deal to plague her mind that night.
One matter was what, precisely, Mr Darcy had written to her that he wished her to tell her father.
The other was pondering the feelings which he had so openly expressed.
She had dismissed his words of love as mere freaks of circumstance, but now she could not do so.
And it was inexpressibly moving to think of such a man as Mr Darcy in her power. And to realise that he was a far different man than she had supposed him to be.
You did not like him from the start because he insulted you, she told herself. And did everything you could to quietly promote your disdain, including helping Mr Wickham spread his gossip.
She had been partial, blind, prejudiced, and absurd, and the more she considered it, the more embarrassed she was. Mr Darcy evidently meant to alter his character; perhaps she needed to do the same.
These uncomfortable realisations could be put aside to examine something else, that being the peculiarity of Miss Darcy falling ill at the same time as Mr Darcy was injured.
And also the same time you were tossing a letter in a well and cursing him, she reminded herself, her mind’s eye recollecting the woman at the well and her odd mutterings.
Such nonsense! What do you think, that you inadvertently used black arts on him? She tried to chuckle. It was coincidental misfortune, Elizabeth told herself. Nothing more.
That notion was tested on the following morning. A man arrived from London, balding, with spectacles perched on his nose, and carrying a valise bulging with papers. He introduced himself as Mr Langford, Mr Darcy’s man of business, and asked to be given an audience with the gentleman.
“Allow me to take you to him,” said Charlotte. “We have him situated in the parlour during the days, as the reading light there is much better than in his bedchamber.”
Watching the man walk away with Charlotte, Elizabeth somehow just knew that another calamity was about to fall. What now? What else could it be?
If any mention is made of Friday, she decided, then I must tell him what I did. I must! No two ways for it!
She told Charlotte she was going to her bedchamber to retrieve some mending.
Instead, she quietly crept up the stairs, stopping in a place where she could overhear what the men were saying.
She thought that if it were nothing, merely business, she would go away, but she did not think a man would come down from London for any trifling matter.
“I have bad news, I am sorry to say. The investments in the Durham venture?—”
There was a murmur which must have been Mr Darcy replying.
“Friday morning, it seems Hargrove absconded. They believe he may have fled to the Continent, but no one is wholly certain. The full extent is not yet known, but Abernathy writes that the losses could be as much as…” The businessman’s voice dropped, and Elizabeth could not hear anything more.
She raised her hand to her forehead, pressing her fingers against the skin.
She waited, not breathing, not moving, until she heard Mr Darcy speak, surprisingly clearly.
He sounded as he ever did—commanding, calm, grave.
She had to admire him a little for it. Although she could not understand the substance of things, clearly it was very bad news indeed.
It seemed Mr Darcy was not one to repine, but only to briskly set about mending things.
“I shall write to Abernathy at once, and my solicitor, but I will need you to ready some funds to shore up the accounts for quarter day.”
“Quarter day, sir? It is only April.”
“Best to be prepared,” said Mr Darcy firmly. “Do not look at me so, Langford. I do not blame you.”
“But it was on my counsel that you?—”
“Such is the nature of investing. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.”
“Yes, but such a loss as?—”
“A discouragement to be sure, but I daresay neither I nor any of my household needs to worry for the shirt on their back or the bread on the table.”
“Of course. In any case, write your letter, and I will carry it with me back to London, and do as I can for you there.”
With guilt nearly drowning her, making her wish to sob aloud, Elizabeth ran up the remaining stairs to her bedchamber.
That evening, Mr Collins retired to his study to further hone a sermon of extraordinary length upon the virtue of patience in adversity.
Charlotte had gone up to her bedchamber with a sick headache, likely due to the same sermon, and thus did Elizabeth find herself alone with Mr Darcy in the parlour.
Elizabeth had a letter from Jane who, it seemed, had been called on by Mr Bingley. Mr Bingley had told her sister that his friend had admitted to him that he was mistaken in his understanding of her attachment to him. Mr Bingley had wasted no time in going to Gracechurch Street.
The happiness this produced in Elizabeth’s chest was in direct proportion to the dismay and fury she had felt when she learnt of Mr Darcy’s interference and when she read the phrase ‘certain evils’.
Now she wondered if perhaps Mr Darcy had not meant that Jane herself was the certain evil, but rather the indifference he had perceived in her.
Mistakenly assumed, to be sure, but nevertheless understandable.
Indifference between people who wished to marry was an evil, to be sure.
She glanced up from her letter to find Mr Darcy staring at the fire from his position on the sofa, his injured leg propped up by a footstool.
His letter to his steward lay sealed upon the table beside him, and his face, in the flickering light, looked older than his years and very tired.
He had been in a fever of letter writing since the departure of Mr Langford, emphasising to her that whatever financial reversal had fallen upon him was of no little consequence.
She closed her eyes against the fresh wave of guilt that produced.
Cowardly girl! I must admit my perfidy to him! He had been so candid in his disclosures to her, had held nothing back. Did she not owe him the same?
But it was hard, very hard, when a man had called you a ‘woman worthy of being pleased’ to tell him that no, you were a woman who had cursed his name, had thrown his letter in a well and just might have summoned up an evil spirit against him.
When the weight of all of that could no longer be borne, she said, “I am sorry for your trouble, Mr Darcy.”
He raised his eyes to look at her. “You are kind to say so.”
“I do not say so out of mere kindness, sir, but rather from sincerity.”
A ghost of something—not quite a smile—touched his lips. “From you, Miss Bennet, I have always had sincerity, or at least frankness.”
“I have been frank, that is true,” she admitted. “Though I am coming to understand that to be sure in one’s opinions does not make one correct.”
He gave her a steady, questioning gaze.
“You have been very honest about your…feelings and desire to improve your character. I…I likewise feel to do the same. I confess that I took a dislike to you at the first assembly?—”
“The first moment of our acquaintance,” he said, his eyes suddenly very intent upon her. “I remember you saying so, but I confess I did not know?—”
“Tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt you,” she blurted. “Slighted by other men.”
He flushed and winced. “You heard me. Though belatedly offered, may I apologise for my ill humour that night? I assure you that it was indeed that very night that I recognised that I found you very handsome indeed, and all future meetings only persuaded me of how ridiculous I had been in refusing to dance. It was selfish indeed that I did not immediately make amends to you. I am too often concerned with only my own interests.”
“I cannot credit that,” she said gently. “Even if I might have thought so that night, in the time since I have seen that, in fact, most of your life is dedicated to tending to the needs of others.”
He waved his hand a bit as if to brush her words away. “It is what is expected of the master of an estate.”
Images of her father came immediately to her mind. Though it pained her to think it of him, she knew her father did not do well by Longbourn or the Bennet family.
“Not all are so diligent as you are,” she insisted. After all, she had been quite vehement in her abuse of him; ought not she to be equally fervent in complimenting him?
A brief silence fell between them.
“I am afraid that my diligence failed me in this latest venture,” he offered at last.
She pursed her lips a moment, then said, “I am afraid I know little about finances and investing, and they are, of course, very private matters, but if you wished to tell me about it…”
Mr Darcy studied her a moment and then began to explain.
He had fallen, it seemed, for the worst temptation of any man who speculates: a high-risk scheme that promised equally high yields.
Being urged to commit his capital quickly did not deter him; he was, he said, too enraptured by the object, which was the promised gain of tens of thousands of pounds.
“It seemed perfect,” he said. “And I ought to have known then that it was not likely to be real. But I was in too much of a hurry and too blinded by what might be. I ignored what was more likely to be.”
“Why were you in such a hurry?” she asked with simple curiosity.
Mr Darcy was suddenly unable to meet her eye, turning his head to look out the window, into the darkening evening light.
There was a very long pause until he said, “This part is somewhat…awkward, but when a man wishes to marry, he…ideally, and that is to say in the ideal economic sense, he would want to…sort of…in a manner of speaking, replace the sums of money that should be lost when any sisters marry. When Georgiana marries, her thirty thousand will be a direct loss to Pemberley’s coffers, and thus, if looking at marriage in the strictest, most transactional sense, I should wish for a bride with the equal, so that Pemberley does not suffer a loss. ”