Chapter Sixteen #3
Mrs. Bennet grabbed Elizabeth, and they went away to dress and prepare for the wedding. Darcy wished he had better clothes to wear than those he had travelled in, but he would not delay the ceremony while someone fetched his valet and a change of attire from Netherfield.
While he waited with Bingley and Colonel Fitzwilliam in the drawing room, his friend cheerfully asked, “Are you prepared to become the happiest man in the world?”
Darcy glared at him.
Bingley added, without losing any cheerfulness, “I would have an attack of the nerves if I were to marry such a lovely creature as Miss Elizabeth.”
“Perhaps Darcy is less nervous than you would be because he is aware that marriage does not necessarily make a man the happiest in the world,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said.
“Ah, well, yes,” Bingley said in an apologetic tone. “And that business with Wickham tomorrow morning… It is not right what he said. But I do not like duels. They are…brutish. I would rather have everyone think that I was a coward than fight one.”
Darcy did not reply.
He would appear at the appointed place and give Wickham an opportunity to apologise and admit that what he had said about seeing him throw Mary from the balcony was a lie.
But if Wickham did not—and Darcy did not know whether he would apologise or not—Darcy still would not fight him.
And he would gain a reputation as a coward.
Many people, perhaps most, would think less of him.
He would think less of himself.
My life is not my own.
It belonged to Emily, to Georgiana, and in half an hour, it would belong to Elizabeth. No, it already did.
Darcy liked that thought.
“It was shocking what Mr. Wickham said,” Bingley added. “I do not believe any of it, of course…”
“Of course not,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said in a sarcastic tone.
Bingley looked at Darcy’s cousin. “Well, it needs to be said.”
“If it needs to be said, then it is not obvious, and then it is not a matter of course.”
Bingley frowned in thought. He shrugged.
“Darcy and Miss Elizabeth will do well together. She has that same tendency to argue that you and your cousin share. I would hate that in a wife. Too many disputes, which are too much like arguments, which are too much like duels, which are too much like violent murder—Darcy, you are my dearest friend, but I cannot approve.”
“I do not approve either,” Darcy replied quietly.
“I have no fear that he will hit you. I have seen Wickham with a gun in those years when he was your mother’s favourite companion, and he was a poor shot.
But it is a shocking thing to mean to kill him,” Bingley said.
“I do not approve. I would not do it if I were you—he was scared out of his wits.”
“I do not mean to kill him,” Darcy replied. “Not now that I am of a more sound mind.”
“You do not?” Bingley said with surprise.
“No.”
“It is most unlike you to change your mind.”
“It is the influence of Elizabeth,” Darcy replied, “and likely Miss Bennet as well.”
“That explains it all! Jane—I mean Miss Bennet—she is exactly like that. Exactly like that. She forces you to become a better version of yourself. But Darcy, after you have married Elizabeth, you will be the happiest man in the world. Marriage will not be like it was with your first wife.”
“I do not know whether I would like the unending ecstasy,” Darcy replied, “that would be required to be the ‘happiest’ man in the world.”
The tension in Darcy’s body was returning after the clarity of the realisation that he could not shoot Wickham and that he also could not risk himself by facing his fire either.
Every man who saw her would want Elizabeth. But she would see in him what Mary had seen. And she would never…well he did not expect her to love him.
Except he wanted her love, even though he had no right to hope for it, since he did not love her.
He certainly did not feel like the ‘happiest’ man in the world.
“No, no,” Bingley replied. “That is not what it means to be the happiest man in the world. It merely means that you are delighted with the woman you married. That you have a good life, and then children, and that, well, you like each other. Very much.”
“That does not seem,” Darcy said tartly, “to match the description of the ‘happiest’ man in the world. ‘Happiest’ is relative, and it requires exceeding, or at least equalling, everyone else.”
Bingley laughed. “It is so like you to require precision on such a point, particularly when you are about to marry. I imagine when you have more children, you will not even agree that the boy is the handsomest child in the world.”
“As a mathematical proposition, that would be unlikely,” Darcy said, smiling.
He liked the idea of a child—boy or girl—with Elizabeth’s eyes and colouring.
“For my part,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “henceforth I shall only wish people ‘lastingly and rationally happy’. I do not know Miss Elizabeth well enough to expect that from your marriage, or its opposite.”
“Would the opposite be ‘inconstantly and irrationally unhappy’?” Bingley asked.
“Exactly! My dear fellow,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said cheerfully, “you have now proved that you can argue like Darcy about the precise meanings of words!”
“Only as a matter of amusement,” Bingley replied with his easy grin.
“If it should prove to be that opposite case,” Darcy said, “I hope that the inconstancy of our unhappiness might make the situation less grave than it appears at first sight.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed, while Bingley gave him a judging look.
Georgiana returned to the room carrying Emily. His sister was glowing and smiling. “Your Elizabeth looks beautiful.”
“Do not tell him that,” the colonel replied. “Remember, from the first he was repelled by her beauty.”