Darcy watched them go with a smile. Jane and Mrs. Gardiner excused themselves and followed at a more sedate pace. Left to their own devices, the gentlemen adjourned to the library. Servants rushed up and down the halls to make arrangements, and they were best kept out of the way.
“I will drop a suggestion to Jane to not extoll too much about the grandeur of Pemberley and its ballroom, for your sake, Darcy,” Bingley said with a cheeky grin.
“For my sake?”
“Yes, or Mrs. Bennet will forever be visiting!”
“Mrs. Bennet visit me? I cannot imagine why she would,” Darcy contained a smile.
“Come, I am not so blind that I do not see something between you and Lizzy. Is it all settled at last?” Bingley leaned forward in expectation.
Darcy’s lips twitched, and he could conceal his joy no longer. “I have finally been accepted, but have yet to write Mr. Bennet.”
Bingley whooped in happiness, and Mr. Gardiner laughed. “It is all Meg and I can do to keep it from the others.”
“You knew?” Bingley asked Gardiner, who nodded. “Well, I suppose that is only right.”
“We are delighted,” the understatement of his life, “however, we have not told Georgiana yet. I would appreciate you if keep it a secret, for now.”
Bingley solemnly agreed, but Darcy had planned to tell her the news that evening before the ball. At dinner, she had her head together with Elizabeth, and they giggled through much of the meal. After the meal, the ladies excused themselves to rest and prepare for the festivities.
About a half an hour before guests were expected to arrive, Darcy knocked on Georgiana’s door. She bade him enter but sounded more melancholy than he had expected. Opening the door, he could not believe his eyes.
“Look at you,” he murmured as he entered the doorway. “A grown woman before my eyes.” Georgiana turned to look at him and twisted her hands. “You look lovely, my dear.”
“Thank you,” she smiled, but it did not reach her eyes.
“What is it?”
Georgiana let out a shaky breath. “Last year when I…when I planned to elope with Mr. Wickham, I thought that I was making a very adult decision. Now, I understand how much I have left to learn about life. I do not think I am ready for tonight.”
“Come,” Darcy took her hand and led her to a set of chairs in the room. Seating her, he poured her a glass of water before taking the chair next to her. “Tonight is only a ball. All that is expected is for you to enjoy yourself. Dance, talk, laugh.”
“I suppose I was allowing my thoughts to get ahead of themselves.” She smiled, at last. “I do not need to find a husband tonight.”
“You need not ever find one if you do not like,” Darcy said.
“One day you will marry, and your wife might not like me forever living with you,” Georgiana said sheepishly.
“Is that what you worry about?”
“One of the things,” she admitted.
“Then allow me to ease your mind.” Darcy smiled and gathered her hands in his. “First, I would never marry a woman who would not accept my sister. Nor would she sway my feelings. Secondly, it is with great joy I tell you that Miss Elizabeth Bennet has accepted my hand in marriage.”
Instantly, Georgiana cried in delight. She leapt from her chair to embrace him tightly about the neck, earning laughter from him.
“Do you think you shall enjoy having your friend as a sister?”
“I shall love it!” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I never had any idea. You both have been so sly! She never even mentioned you to me!”
“We have both been private in our feelings, and I have not been the most adept at courtship.”
“William, this is the best present you could ever give me.”
“Even better than a masquerade?”
Georgiana cocked her head to one side as though thinking seriously. “Just slightly better than a masquerade,” she laughed.
Her maid entered, and Darcy withdrew his watch. “I should go. Guests will arrive soon. I will see you downstairs.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, on your vanity you should find another piece of jewellery to go with your gown.”
Georgiana gasped and hastened to the stool in front of the mirrored table full of bottles of lotions. Her maid came behind her to arrange her hair. Darcy watched for a minute. He could do nothing about the years of distance between them but seeing her now hovering between girl and woman, filled his heart. With Elizabeth by his side, they would be a real family.
Guests began to arrive, and the ball started as most do. Georgiana was the guest of honour and so a hush fell over the crowd when she arrived at the top of the stairs. Darcy smiled and hastened to her side, escorting her down. A small flock of ladies her age from neighbouring estates came to admire her gown of white silk with a light blue overlay which made the blue of her eyes shining through her mask burn brighter. Too soon, gentlemen came to claim numbers on her card. Begrudgingly, Darcy allowed it. They were all neighbours or Darcy cousins and men he had known most of his life. He opened the first set with his sister, who talked about how much she was enjoying the evening.
After performing his duty, and while his great uncle, a retired judge, who had refused to wear a mask saying he was too old for one, danced with Georgiana, Darcy allowed his eyes to wander over the sea of guests. He had previously arranged his sets with Elizabeth, but it did not mean he could not look for her now.
“I know you,” Elizabeth’s voice said to his side.
Darcy smiled and spun to see her, his breath catching in his throat. She wore a white slip gown with red gauze overlay and a dark red corset-front bodice. Her puffed sleeves were slashed. Around the sleeves, neck, and hemline were small red roses, matching the ones on her pink dancing slippers. Her bright eyes sparkled from the cut-outs in her mask, with her curls artfully arranged around them.
“My goddess,” he raised her knuckles to his lips. “Your beauty is unsurpassed, Elizabeth.”
She blushed but shook her head. “Jane looks positively divine, and Georgiana is lovely. You are blind, my love.”
Darcy looked over his shoulder at a few gentlemen attempting to inch closer to her and nodded at her full dance card as well. “Blind I was when I did not see all your beauty and all your worth. Now, my eyes have been opened, and I see what I almost missed.”
“Pretty words,” Elizabeth laughed. “How are you this evening?”
Darcy understood the unsaid inquiry in her seemingly innocuous question. This was his first ball as host and a year ago, thoughts of how he was nothing but an imposter would have crippled him this evening. Now, he felt confident in his role. “Far better than I expected,” he acknowledged. “It helps to have you at my side.”
Elizabeth smiled and met his eyes, the expression of love unmistakable. Too soon, a partner came to claim a dance and Darcy had to return to his role as host. The night passed in joyful reverie until sometime after supper. Darcy recognised the figure of his cousin, Stephen, arrive. All the Darcys were tall, but his head rose above them. His black hair gleamed in the candlelight and his broad shoulders cut a path through the crowd.
“A masquerade,” he sneered at Darcy and then ripped off his mask. “How fitting.”
“What do you mean?” Darcy glanced around, looking to signal a footman. He and Stephen had never got along, but now it seemed he might have to physically remove him from his sister’s ball.
“I know the truth,” Stephen hissed. “I know the truth!” He continued and shouted.
All music stopped and dancing ceased. In unison, the entire room turned their heads to Stephen and Darcy. Stephen let out a hollow laugh.
“Always getting the best Pemberley has to offer, but no more.” He reached in his coat and pulled out a packet of papers. “This will see an end to it. This is a signed letter of contention over the inheritance of George Darcy. His legal heir was my father—you are nothing but an ill-gotten bastard from his filthy wife.”
G
asps rang through the room. One woman swooned at the crass language.
“Stephen,” Darcy’s great-uncle stepped forward, but one glare from the younger man held him in place.
“You knew, old man. You knew and allowed this imposter to sit and spend our legacy. Not one drop of Darcy blood in him and if this paper didn’t prove it, then his spending money on the product of whores would!”
“That is enough!” Darcy cried. “We shall speak about this in privacy. To my library, if you please.” Darcy stormed out of the ballroom but not before he saw the shattered looks on the faces of Georgiana and Elizabeth.
In the hallway, he signalled to the butler to end the ball. He would never forgive Stephen for doing this in front of others and at an event to celebrate Georgiana of all things. Was he drunk or simply mad? Or worst of all, emboldened by fact?
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You see!” Stephen tapped the documents spread out on Darcy’s desk. Bingley and Gardiner had joined him, as well as his great-uncle Reginald, a judge.
“Uncle,” Darcy turned to the elderly man. “Father’s will is clear, as is the law. Even if there is a question of my paternity, the union between Lady Anne Fitzwilliam and George Darcy was legal and binding. Any children she bore would be considered his.”
Reginald Darcy took out a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket and perused the papers. Copies of the deed willing it to only heirs of the body of Arthur D’Arcy in the Twelfth Century, a signed affidavit from a footman named Nick Huggins declaring himself as the father of a bastard born to Lady Anne Darcy, and of Stephen’s official petition to the courts.
“Why would you do this?” Darcy asked his cousin. “What inspired you to look into these things?”
Stephen snickered. “There were plenty of rumours when you arrived at Pemberley at eight years old. Lady Anne had been sent away. Everyone knew.”
“Then why wait so long?” Darcy persevered. “There is no reason for secrecy now.”
“Father left a letter to me. He confessed to an affair with your mother. Georgiana is his. He did not want me to marry my sister.”
Darcy listened in awestruck silence as his chest hammered. His father’s brother passed away while Georgiana was at Ramsgate. Never very close to his Darcy relations, he left the area directly after the funeral. He had thought Stephen glared at him with more than the usual animosity at the time and now he understood why. While George Darcy’s will left his brother and that family the use of the dower house and an allowance, they should have been the heirs of Pemberley.
“My boy,” Uncle Reginald turned to Darcy, “I am sorry, but these look authentic. You will have to appear before a court and listen to their findings.”
“No!” Bingley shouted. “Darcy has been a fair master for years. George Darcy intended it, even named him as heir.”
Reginald shook his head. “The contract on the deed might preclude any legalities my nephew had for his wife’s children or his will. If they can prove before a jury that Fitzwilliam is not George’s son…”
“Why now?” Darcy asked softly. “Why now? You could have brought this for anytime since you filed.”
Stephen sneered. “Is it not obvious? I only wanted to press my rights before the jury ruled once you started wasting all of Pemberley’s coffers!” He pulled another paper from his other breast pocket and laid it on the table.
Darcy stared unblinkingly at the papers. A notice of eviction. He and Georgiana had to quit Pemberley until after the case came to court. He no longer had control of Pemberley funds. Nor did he have access to any of the monies he had invested. All he had rights to now was the thirty thousand pounds from Lady Anne Fitzwilliam which had been set aside for daughters and lesser sons.
Darcy fell back in his chair, the next many minutes a blur to him. The others offered words of comfort and condolences. They haggled with Stephen who would allow them only three days’ time to vacate the premises. Finally, they made him leave. Darcy said nothing as Bingley and Gardiner offered him their homes.
“Elizabeth,” he mumbled. He needed to see her. This changed everything.
Bingley and Gardiner exchanged looks and then left. A short while later, there was a quiet knock on his door. The first he had moved in nearly an hour was to open his library door to find Elizabeth looking worried. One glance at him and she launched herself into his arms. Darcy squeezed her to him tightly and shut the door.
“I cannot believe that awful man. Why would he say such things, so publicly, before your neighbours?”
Darcy said nothing, only pressed kisses in her hair. He had deserved this, for years of pretending. Now the world would know, and if he thought the loss of reputation would be the most significant repercussion of Society knowing the truth about him, it was nothing compared with losing the gift of Elizabeth in his arms.
“You are trembling,” she said and pulled him to the sofa. She pushed him down onto it and climbed into his lap. Pressing kisses to his face, she repeated words of love.
“Elizabeth,” Darcy grasped her hands and disentangled them from his neck. “You know what must happen, do you not?”
“No,” Elizabeth whispered and shook her head.
“I am losing Pemberley.”
Elizabeth shook her head again, “No.” The word was more forceful this time.
“My uncle looked over the documents. Everything is there. I never should have inherited.”
“No!” Elizabeth nearly shouted and burst into tears.
He was about to explain again, but he came up short. Elizabeth was intelligent, she understood what he had said. She was not overwrought at the prospect of him losing Pemberley—although he believed she had come to love it—she perceived what he intended to say next.
“No,” she said and broke her hands free to wrap around his neck again. “I will not let you push me aside. I will marry you with no money to your name.”
She tightened her hold on him and nuzzled his neck, pressing kisses to his jaw line. “You are mine, and I am yours, and that is enough.”
Whatever stupid, foolish, noble thoughts he had vanished. Elizabeth was his life and his home. Riches might come and go, but the love of this woman was worth far more than a king’s ransom.
“Shh,” he said as he stroked her back. “We will be together. Nothing will separate us now.”
“Promise me,” Elizabeth demanded.
“I promise to marry you, Elizabeth Bennet, if you will still have me with nought but a few hundred a year and no house.”
“I will have you for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or health, to love and to cherish until death us do part.”
Darcy inhaled sharply to hear Elizabeth repeat part of their marriage vows already. “Did you forget obey?” He smiled down at her.
“Did I?” Elizabeth laughed.
Darcy joined her in laughter, the release of tension what he needed. When they had caught their breath, he lowered his forehead to lean against hers. “Lizzy. I do not deserve you.”
“Yes, you do. You deserve someone to love you no matter what life brings. Let me love you.”
For long moments, Darcy allowed Elizabeth to hold him in her embrace. His plans for the future had vanished. Even if he somehow regained Pemberley, nothing would be the same again. His reputation would never be the same. Georgiana would be all but ruined. Despite her hefty dowry, she would attract few suitors. Should he refuse to touch her funds? Darcy supposed he could take orders. Lady Catherine might have a living to grant him. He had the skills of a steward and might earn more but finding a rich enough gentleman to hire him could prove difficult. Darcy determined he need not find an answer tonight. The more significant concern would be to speak with his neighbours and hope they continued his charity plans even in his absence. He had borne much of the expense, but perhaps the others could divide the cost between them.
“What will you do next?” Elizabeth broke the silence, eventually.
“I am uncertain, and for once
, I have determined that it is enough to survive.”
“We will do more than survive, William. We will live, and we will be happy.”
“We will,” Darcy promised and claimed her lips.
*****
The next three months passed in degrees of headaches for Darcy. Fortunately, the Gardiner home was ready the day following the ball, and so they all removed at once. After a few weeks, Mr. Gardiner had to return to London and took Jane and Elizabeth with him. Bingley and Darcy followed, escorting the ladies to Longbourn. News of Darcy’s birth had spread even to Meryton, but for the most part, no one treated him differently in Hertfordshire. Mrs. Bennet seemed unsure if she should give him precedence over Bingley. Mrs. Phillips crassly told him her husband claimed to have never heard of a case such of his cousin’s being upheld and therefore they believed he would soon regain control of his estate. The next words out of her mouth had been to ask if he needed a new solicitor. Darcy managed a civil reply before Elizabeth rescued him from her aunt.
A relief to Darcy was that Georgiana had found friends who did not care about her status. She and Mrs. Annesley elected to stay with the Gardiners for a time before coming to Netherfield. Additionally, the educational and relief society committee Darcy had established for the poor and orphans of Derbyshire promised to continue their work. Many of the gentlemen went so far as to declare their anger at the injustice of effectively disinheriting Darcy and vowed to support him in any way in the future.
In London, Darcy found the news made little difference. The Foundlings, of course, never read the papers and did not care. At his club, most of the men continued to greet him. They no longer pandered to his interest or dropped hints of wishing him to marry their daughters, but he was approached by more than one man with sound investment opportunities.
About a month before the intended court date, his uncle, the Earl, summoned him to his London house. Darcy seldom had any contact with the man, preferring Richard’s company. When Darcy arrived, Lady Catherine was present as well.
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