Chapter Eight The Truth in the Grove
ELIZABETH BENNET WAS convinced that, were there a purgatory designed specifically for unmarried gentlewomen, it would be fashioned to the exact dimensions of the Hunsford parsonage parlour.
It was Wednesday morning, and the air inside the small brick house was thick with the scent of boiled cabbage and the perpetual drone of Mr William Collins.
He was reading aloud from a volume of Dr Fordyce’s Sermons, pausing every three sentences to offer his own, somehow even drier, commentary on the text.
Elizabeth was perched on the edge of her chair, her hands clenched in her lap, as though a blanket of mediocrity had covered her from head-to-foot.
Her mind, however, was not on the virtues of a modest countenance. It was spinning, centred around Mr Darcy’s letter.
You have ruined my peace.
The words echoed in her mind, drowning out Mr Collins.
She had spent the last two nights staring at the ceiling, oscillating wildly between laughter and a bone-deep confusion.
She had rejected the insufferable master of Pemberley; she had slain the dragon.
But the dragon had accidentally handed her his heart, proving he was not a monster of marble and ice, but rather a man who was actively bleeding to death from a wound she had inflicted.
“Charlotte,” Elizabeth interrupted, her voice cutting through a particularly tedious passage regarding the evils of excessive ribbon. “I feel a sudden and overwhelming need for fresh air. My constitution requires a turn in the grove.”
Mr Collins lowered his book, moderately offended. “The grove, Cousin Elizabeth? At this early hour? Lady Catherine may be observing the grounds from her morning room. It would not do to be seen wandering aimlessly without purpose.”
“My purpose is survival, Mr Collins.” Elizabeth rose to her feet. “Charlotte, will you accompany me?”
Charlotte set down her mending. “Of course, Lizzy. A brisk walk is exactly what is required to clear the humours.”
Five minutes later, the two women were walking across the meadow that separated the parsonage from the woodlands of Rosings Park. Elizabeth took a deep, greedy breath of the crisp morning air, the oppressive weight of the parsonage slowly lifting from her shoulders.
She sought the refuge of the grove to escape the endless, mind-numbing chatter of her host. The trees offered a cool, dappled shade, and more importantly, a blessed silence.
“You are walking so fast I fear you intend to march all the way back to Hertfordshire,” Charlotte observed, falling into step beside her. “Is the burden of your secret correspondence growing too heavy?”
Elizabeth shot her friend a look, still lost in a whirlwind of confusing thoughts regarding the disastrous paper. “It is not a ‘secret correspondence,’ Charlotte. That implies a mutual exchange of letters. I am the victim of a clerical error.”
“An error that guarantees you ten thousand pounds a year, should you choose to exploit it.”
“I am not going to exploit a man’s prostration!”
“More’s the pity,” Charlotte sighed. “It is a marvellous breakdown. It seems a waste not to turn it to account.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to deliver a scathing rebuttal about the necessity of marrying for respect and affection, but the words died in her throat.
They had just rounded a dense cluster of laurel bushes and crossed paths with a most unusual procession.
Miss Anne de Bourgh was approaching them.
The heiress of Rosings was wrapped in no fewer than three woollen shawls, despite the relative warmth of the morning.
She was leaning heavily on the arm of her companion, the perpetually anxious Mrs Jenkinson, and was executing a cough so fragile and pathetic it resembled a moth sneezing.
“Miss de Bourgh.” Charlotte instantly adopted the smooth, deferential tone of a vicar’s wife, dropping into a flawless curtsy. Elizabeth followed suit, though her curtsy lacked the requisite amount of obsequious awe.
“Mrs Collins,” Anne whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. “Miss Elizabeth. The air... the air is so taxing today.”
“You should not have ventured out, my dear,” Mrs Jenkinson fretted, hovering over Anne like a mother hen attempting to shield a fragile egg. “Lady Catherine expressly forbade any exertion before luncheon. If the wind changes, you could catch a chill!”
Elizabeth watched Miss de Bourgh. She remembered the intense, calculating look the heiress had given her the day Viscount Keathley had invaded. There was nothing fragile about the intelligence in those pale eyes.
Charlotte, reading the atmosphere with efficiency, stepped forward. She politely but firmly engaged the companion in a detailed, mundane discussion about the local flora.
“Mrs Jenkinson, I was just admiring this specimen of Rhododendron ponticum.” Charlotte gestured vaguely to a bush that was definitely not a rhododendron. “Do you find the Kentish soil provides adequate conditions for its propagation? Or do you employ a mixture of peat?”
Mrs Jenkinson blinked, momentarily distracted from her charge. “Peat? Well, I... I am not certain, Mrs Collins. The head gardener generally manages the soil composition, but I do know Her Ladyship prefers a robust mulch—”
As Charlotte drew the companion several paces down the path, trapping her in a conversation about mulch, a miraculous transformation occurred.
Anne de Bourgh shed her sickly demeanour. She dropped the woollen shawls from her shoulders on the bench behind them, straightened her spine with a loud crack, and let out a long sigh of relief.
“Thank God.” Miss de Bourgh’s voice was devoid of its previous wispy frailty. It was sharp, clear, and laced with a boredom that rivalled her cousin Lord Keathley’s. “If I had to pretend to be out of breath for one more minute, I was going to push Mrs Jenkinson into the fountain.”
Elizabeth stared at her, bewildered. The invalid of Rosings Park was standing upright, not looking at all like a woman on death’s door, as she was supposed to be.
“Miss de Bourgh?” Elizabeth managed. “Are you... are you quite well?”
“I have the constitution of a workhorse, Miss Elizabeth,” Miss de Bourgh said flatly.
“But if I display an ounce of vitality, my mother attempts to force me into an immediate marriage to secure the estate, or worse, assigns me to audit the tenant ledgers. Feigning an imminent demise is the only way I can get any reading done.”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She was standing in a grove with a woman who had apparently masterminded a lifelong, clinical deception purely to avoid bookkeeping.
Miss de Bourgh did not give her time to recover. She stepped closer, her eyes locking onto Elizabeth’s.
“We have very little time before Mrs Jenkinson manages to escape the mulch conversation,” Miss de Bourgh stated briskly. “So, I shall be brief. I know everything.”
Elizabeth felt the blood drain from her face. “Everything?”
“I know that my cousin Fitzwilliam cornered you in the parsonage.” Miss de Bourgh listed on her gloved fingers.
“I know that he delivered a proposal of such staggering ineptitude that it defies human comprehension. I know that you rejected him with a ferocity that has left him emotionally incapacitated.”
Elizabeth took a step back, her heart hammering. How could she possibly know? Mr Darcy would never have spoken of such a humiliation.
“And,” Miss de Bourgh continued, delivering the final, fatal blow, “I know about the horrific mistake of the misdelivered letter. The one residing in your possession.”
Elizabeth gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “He... he told you? Mr Darcy told you he gave me a letter?”
“He did not tell me. He screamed it at the ceiling of his bedchamber while having a total collapse,” Miss de Bourgh corrected. “I was eavesdropping. It is a favourite pastime of mine. When one is universally presumed to be frail and dying, people say the most fascinating things without care.”
The grove seemed to spin around Elizabeth. The secret was out. The master of Pemberley had not just humiliated himself in front of her; he had shouted it from the rafters to his entire family.
“I am... I am mortified on his behalf,” Elizabeth whispered, with a sudden protective urge towards the man she had sworn to hate.
“Do not be.” Miss de Bourgh waved a dismissive hand.
“It is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Fitzwilliam has spent the last twenty-eight years behaving like a marble statue. It is immensely refreshing to see him shatter. It proves he is human, no better than the rest of us, and not just a collection of expensive waistcoats and strict opinions.”
Elizabeth stared at this startling ally. Anne de Bourgh was not the pathetic, sickly creature she had appeared. She was clever, observant, and unsentimental.
“You are agreeing with my right to be furious with him?” Elizabeth tested the waters.
“Of course I am.” Miss de Bourgh validated Elizabeth’s right to be furious with her cousin without hesitation. “He is an idiot. He insulted your family, he insulted your connections, and he proposed as if he were handing down a prison sentence. You were justified in flaying him alive.”
Elizabeth had spent months battling Mr Darcy’s arrogance, and to hear his own cousin agree with her assessment was intoxicating.
“However,” Miss de Bourgh continued, her tone shifting from vindictive amusement to piercing sincerity.
She stepped closer again, forcing Elizabeth to hold her gaze.
“I must also confirm something else. That raw emotion poured into that accidental letter? The crossed-out words? The metaphors about wardens and prisons?”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “Yes?”