Chapter 14
Mr. Darcy
Earlier that morning, Caroline left Netherfield at ten.
She descended in travelling dress, Louisa a pace behind her and an exhausted-looking Hurst bringing up the rear.
No guest remained to witness the departure.
Bingley had arranged that kindness on purpose, though Caroline received it as concealment rather than mercy.
"You will regret choosing strangers over family," she told him.
Bingley's face tightened in a way Darcy had never once seen it do. "Elizabeth was my guest. Darcy is my friend. You tried to use both of them."
"I tried to prevent a disgraceful connection."
"You tried to make one for yourself."
Louisa took Caroline's arm without a word. Hurst asked whether the post horses were ready, with the weary practicality of a man who wanted only to be in a moving carriage.
Caroline turned on Darcy. "You cannot mean to marry her."
"That decision belongs to Elizabeth and to me."
"Her mother will spend your money before the wedding breakfast is even cleared."
"Mrs. Bennet's enthusiasm is not a claim upon my accounts."
"Her sisters will ruin Georgiana."
The name ended whatever patience Darcy had left.
"Do not use my sister to excuse your conduct."
Caroline flinched. A real flinch. For one unguarded instant she looked less like an adversary than like a frightened woman who had mistaken ambition for something that might actually keep her safe.
She is afraid. The thought came plainly, and with it something that might have been pity.
It changed nothing about what came next.
Bingley handed her into the carriage without offering his hand for longer than courtesy required.
Louisa followed. Hurst climbed in after them with a hamper and no farewell at all.
The coach rolled away down the drive, and Darcy watched it go with the particular relief of a man setting down something heavy he had been carrying too long to notice the weight of.
At an upper window, Sarah stood with two other maids, watching the same departure. When she saw Darcy glance up, she stepped back out of sight, quick as a rabbit. Not quite quick enough.
"Mrs. Nicholls wishes to speak with you," Darcy told Bingley.
The housekeeper waited in the breakfast room. Sarah stood beside her, pale and rigid as a poker.
"Miss Bingley accused Sarah of taking a shawl from the retiring room," Mrs. Nicholls said.
"A footman saw blue fringe beneath Miss Bingley's wrap as she left that passage.
Sarah reported the shawl missing before Miss Bingley ever made her accusation.
I have both accounts. I require your decision, sir, since the accusation came from your own sister. "
Bingley looked at Sarah for a long moment. "You keep your place. The accusation is false, and I will not hear it repeated. Mrs. Nicholls tells me she means to train you for higher duties. If that is what you want, you have my approval."
Sarah curtsied. "Thank you, sir."
"You also brought a private matter to Mr. Darcy's valet before you brought it to your own housekeeper."
"Yes, sir."
"That was wrong."
"Yes, sir."
"If anything like it happens again, you go to Mrs. Nicholls first. Do you understand me?"
"I will."
Bingley glanced at Darcy, then back to the maid, and his voice gentled. "You prevented a great deal of harm. I am grateful for that. It does not make the wrong road the right one."
Sarah's eyes went bright. "No, sir."
Mrs. Nicholls dismissed her, and Sarah left the room with steps that were almost, but not quite, steady.
"Was that fair?" Bingley asked, once she had gone.
"Yes."
"I hated every word of it."
"That may be exactly why it was fair."
McKeever was waiting in Darcy's dressing room when he came back upstairs, brush already in hand. He was far too composed for a man who had just watched his fellow conspirator survive a reckoning downstairs.
"Sarah remains?" he asked.
"She does. Mrs. Nicholls will train her as a lady's maid."
McKeever turned to the clothes press with the air of a man who had never once considered any other outcome. "Good."
"Your enthusiasm is alarming."
"I said one word, sir."
"You moved before you had finished the cuff."
McKeever looked down at Darcy's sleeve, where one button hung undone. "A grave lapse."
"You may recover."
The valet fastened it with the wounded dignity of a man performing surgery under insult. "And Miss Elizabeth?"
"Has consented to a courtship."
McKeever finished the second cuff with exaggerated care, betraying nothing whatsoever.
Darcy had hoped for more of a reaction than that. I want him to be glad for me. I want someone in this house to be openly, unreservedly glad. He knew it was unreasonable and wanted it anyway.
"This time," McKeever said, straightening a lapel that did not need straightening, "Miss Elizabeth knows the terms."
Darcy went to Longbourn without pausing to decide whether that deserved a reprimand.
Wickham found Elizabeth in Meryton three days later.
Darcy saw them from Bingley's carriage. Something in his chest dropped before he had even registered why.
Elizabeth stood outside her aunt's house with Jane and Mrs. Philips.
Wickham held his hat against his chest and wore the exact expression of injured candour he had perfected somewhere around the age of twelve and never once updated.
"Stop," Darcy told the coachman.
Bingley caught his arm. "She is not alone."
"I can see that."
"Then do not make a public scene."
Darcy stayed in his seat, though every instinct in him strained toward the door like a dog on a lead.
Every lesson of the past month told him to allow Elizabeth her own judgement, undefended, unwatched-over.
He obeyed it. It cost him something to sit there with his hands closed on the strap and do nothing at all.
Wickham spoke. Elizabeth listened, her face giving away nothing. Mrs. Philips watched with open pleasure, scenting gossip the way other people scented rain coming. Jane watched with concern.
Then Elizabeth answered.
Wickham's smile failed. Just went, all at once, like a candle in a draught. He bowed, and walked away.
Darcy released the strap. He had gripped it hard enough to leave a crease in his glove.
"She did not need you," Bingley said.
"No."
She did not need me. Pride in that fact did nothing to remove the ache of having wanted to stand beside her anyway. If anything, it sharpened the wanting. It made the wanting cleaner, less about doubt and more about a simple, uncomplicated desire to be near her when something threatened.
The carriage stopped at the Bennets' gate. Elizabeth and Jane walked back by the lane on foot, and Darcy met them halfway, Bingley beside him.
"Mr. Wickham spoke to you," Darcy said.
Elizabeth glanced at his marked glove, and her gaze softened at the evidence of it. "He did."
"What did he say?"
"That he had been the victim of your resentment. He expected me to ask for particulars."
"Did you?"
"I told him you had warned my father not to trust him with young women — and that you had refused to use your sister's private history as proof, even though it would have won you the argument outright. I told him a man who wished to accuse you might start with facts he was actually free to answer."
Bingley made a small, appreciative sound. Jane touched his sleeve, and he subsided at once, though not without visible effort.
"How did Wickham respond?" Darcy asked.
"He said your pride had always made you persuasive."
"That is not a response."
"I told him so."
Darcy wanted to laugh and found he could not quite manage it. Relief had gone in too deep, past the place where laughter lived.
"I owe you the truth," he said.
"You owe me nothing. I refused his story on my own account."
"I want you to know it. There is a difference."
Elizabeth held his gaze, steady. "Then tell me when it can be told without exposing Miss Darcy to company."
At Longbourn, Mr. Bennet took them both into the library. Jane stayed behind with Bingley and Mrs. Bennet, a small act of sisterly tact Darcy would be grateful for the rest of his life.
Georgiana's reply had arrived that morning: if Wickham approached Elizabeth, Darcy might tell her and her father the whole account, and no one else.
With that permission, Darcy told the history in full.
His father's affection for Wickham, which had never once wavered no matter what it cost. The living Wickham had refused, exchanged instead for three thousand pounds at his own request. The money spent inside two years.
The later demand for more. Ramsgate. Georgiana at fifteen, lonely, flattered, persuaded toward an elopement that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with her thirty thousand pounds.
His own arrival, by luck more than judgement, in time to stop it.
He kept his voice level all the way through until he reached the part where Georgiana had believed, for weeks afterward, that she had disappointed him.
There his composure gave out. His voice cracked on the word disappointed, and he had to stop and start the sentence again.
Elizabeth did not interrupt him. She sat very still and let him finish.
"She was a child," Elizabeth said, when he had.
"She believed herself old enough to decide."
"Children often do. The adult who used that belief against her bears the guilt for it — not her."
Mr. Bennet removed his spectacles and set them down with unusual care. "You have my confidence, Mr. Darcy. I will restrict Wickham's acquaintance with my younger daughters as far as our public circumstances will allow."
"Thank you."
"I should have watched them more closely, even before your warning. That failure is mine to correct, not yours."
Darcy had expected wit from him, some dry deflection to smooth the moment over. Mr. Bennet's plain seriousness commanded a great deal more respect than a joke would have.