A Virtue of Marriage

by Elizabeth Ann West

  Each bump and rut pained her bruised body, her porcelain skin marred in too many places just under her dress. The hours to London were long until on the last portion of the trip, Elizabeth finally managed to sleep. It was a change in the road's texture that woke her, embarrassingly lying fully in Mr. Darcy's lap.

  She tried to move too quickly, and cried out in pain. Darcy hastened to assist her, lest she further injure herself.

  “Forgive me, Elizabeth, I did not mean to allow you fall into such a position, but you were finally sleeping, I had not the heart to move you.”

  Regaining her bearings, Elizabeth looked out the window only to regret that action immediately. Even at the carriages slow pace through the crowded streets of London, the world outside moved too fast for her eyes to handle.

  “Should we stop at Gracechurch Street? I am certain your aunt and uncle would listen to our explanations.” Darcy waited to hear Elizabeth's wishes, unwilling to say what a disastrous idea he thought those plans to be, but neither did he wish to prey upon her vulnerable state.

  Elizabeth looked at Anna, the poor maid assigned to her by those same relations. A small shrug provided little reassurances for Elizabeth, but she made her decision.

  “No, I believe it best we go to your home, Mr. Darcy. The scandal of Kent will not remain in that county long, and my appearance is too ghastly for calm interpretations.”

  “You are perfectly lovely—”

  “Mr. Darcy, I did gaze into a hand glass this morning. Save your breath for your stew, sir.”

  Comforted by her humor and wit, Darcy squeezed his beloved's hand in response.

  “Will your staff find me so horrifically wanton?”

  “Are you mad, woman? I mean you've suffered a blow to the head, but Mrs. Potter is wrapped around your smallest finger in all of the best ways. My staff will be honored to aid the illustrious Elizabeth Bennet in her recovery.” Darcy's breath tickled Elizabeth's neck as he huskily explained her position as far as he was concerned just as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of his town home.

  With Darcy and Anna's aid, Elizabeth managed to walk down the path to bright red door of Number 12, Grosvenor Square. The door opened by a footman allowed a cacophony of yells and shrieks to billow out of the house.

  “What's this?” Darcy asked, an angry edge to his voice.

  Inside the entrance hall, the Wickhams were arguing loudly with Caroline Bingley perched high up on the stairs adding her own two bits to the fray. Footmen, maids, and other staff stood sentry along the edges of the entranceway, leery, but to frightened to go near the snarling, crazed George Wickham.

  All parties of the disagreement ceased upon the spectacle of Mr. Darcy's sudden appearance with what appeared to be a half-dead woman on his arm.

  “What is she doing here?” Caroline sneered from above, shattering the silence.

  “I might ask the same of you, Miss Bingley!” Darcy boomed, feeling guilty as Elizabeth flinched beside him. “Mrs. Potter?” Darcy looked around the room until the housekeeper pushed forward. “Please see Miss Bennet and her maid to a guest suite. Give them every accommodation, Doctor Matthews shall visit this evening.”

  “Certainly, sir, come you poor dear.” The matronly arms of Mrs. Potter were just the comfort Elizabeth needed to dare release her Fitzwilliam.

  “That is impossible, Brother. Miss Bingley is in one guest suite, and George in the other. Your mistress will need to find another home to sully with her recuperation. I never knew you to be so violent, Fitzwilliam.” Georgiana's tart reply stung her brother, but he quickly recovered. He looked from the unfamiliar harpy now dwelling in his sweet sibling to the harpy he knew all too well standing just a few steps above her.

  With a smirk, Darcy stepped forward so the front door might close properly less all of London be privy to his private nightmare. Pulling his gloves off and handing them to the young footman Jack, Darcy addressed Mrs. Potter, stalled in her progress on the landing for further instructions.

  “Please situate Miss Bennet in the mistress chambers.” Mrs. Potter beamed at her master, and carefully helped her charge take each step one at a time.

  “You're home suddenly, bit brazen to bring your side dish home to London while your wife is in Kent. Didn't think you had in you Darcy.”

  “Mr. Arthur, gather the strongest footmen you have and throw this man out of my home this instant.” Darcy refused to even acknowledge Wickham.

  “Fitzwilliam, no! The talk! Not my husband!” Georgiana rushed forward to grab her brother's arm in desperation but Darcy shrugged her off.

  “Go with him, you shrew. For shame you would sell your family's belongings for his schemes! For shame! Oh yes, dear sister, I know all, thanks to Mrs. Potter's fast thinking. I have agents scouring dealers all over England to procure our family's treasures. Treasures you are not fit to even gaze upon.” Darcy looked to Mr. Arthur, his butler. “Throw him out now, send a stable boy to fetch his things.”

  Six burly men moved forward as one, gleefully delighted in their assignment. Wickham protested most strenuously, but with his injuries and lack of fitness, he was no match for such numbers.

  “Georgie! Georgie! Remember I love you; I've always loved you! Don't let him turn you against me . . .” His cries trailed off the further he was carried off the property.

  “How could you!” Georgiana cried, clenching her fists. “You've stayed away all these months, and just show up to throw people out?”

  Darcy clasped his sister's tiny weapons and stood shocked that for the first time, he felt nothing towards this young woman. No pangs of reminiscence, no sympathy. “You never came to me for help in anything, don't pretend to need my protection now. You have betrayed this family is so many ways; I no longer trust you. It is beneath me to throw a female relation out, but do not test me.”

  “You brute! You monster! As if you could control me, I no longer belong to you. I am Mrs. George Wickham!”

  “Yes, and your future lies penniless out on the sidewalk, with the muck and the mire. Do chase after him.” Darcy released his sister and stepped beyond her, to face the final challenge.

  “Mr. Darcy, I am so relieved you are home—” Miss Bingley did not miss an opportunity and descended the stairs with a look of pure triumph on her face.

  “Miss Bingley, kindly fetch your brother and sister-in-law if you wish to be of service to my family. As soon as they may be found, if you please.”

  “But, but, I must speak to you! It is of an urgent nature! I have papers linking your brother-in-law to a scheme involving the Stanley family and mining—”

  Darcy stood on the landing, pinching the bridge of his nose as he took every ounce of self-control he had left to thwart this scheming woman's ways. “Miss Bingley, how dense do you believe me to be?”

  “Dense? Why no, Mr. Darcy, you are a brilliant business man, my brother says often how well you conduct your holdings and care for so many and I thought a wife of yours should be likewise inclined . . .”

  Darcy laughed. Not a light-hearted, polite laugh. But a deep belly rumble as his sister lay pouting on the parquet floor to his right and Charles' sister was again insinuating herself as his future spouse. His heart lay just beyond her, aching with every breath, selfless in her designs to truly care for him.

  “Wickham and Stanley conducted their business in MY club. Loyalties to the Darcy family run deep. I've been aware of this scheme for quite some time, needing to wait long enough for the beasts responsible for ruining many an illustrious family to snare their own necks irrevocably in the brambles. Thank you for your interests into my affairs, now kindly fetch your brother or I shall send a servant. It makes no difference to me.”

  Darcy pushed past the last woman of no consequence to him and thudded up the stairs of his own home, sickened by the clear spaces on the walls where paintings had hung and the outline of the frame stood as a reminder. It was doubtful he would recover all of the items hocked by the Wickhams, but he had no doubts Georgi
ana was equally responsible for this outright theft.

  Reaching his suite, he could hear muffled voices in the mistress wing and was about to enter when Mrs. Potter suddenly exited the room.

  “Oh, Mr. Darcy, excuse me, sir.”

  “How is she? I know she should not have traveled, but the circumstances . . .”

  The older woman took pity on her master and tsked, tsked sympathetically. “Her maid told me all about that devil who took his hands to her! She sleeps, we managed to get her to take a dose of laudanum.”

  “You did? But how?”

  Mrs. Potter winked. “Miss Bennet is a remarkable young woman, sir, and sometimes remarkable young men and women need their pride in tact as they are offered a cup of tea.”

  Darcy smiled in relief, before blowing out a breath. He nodded to his housekeeper and turned around to see to his own care. He had not traveled more than three steps that she called after him.

  “Your water be hot, sir. Simmons saw to it right away.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Potter.” Darcy waved over his shoulder. “If Miss Bingley does not leave in a quarter hour, please send young Calvin to fetch the Bingleys.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mrs. Potter managed before the door to the master's suite shut with a resounding finality. As Catherine Potter turned to go below and see to the kitchens, with her first step she knew without a doubt that with the Master home, soon all would be right as rain once more.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A newly minted master of his own estate, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam answered his father's beckoning to his own study in a state of great irritation. With the drama of Miss Bennet's injuries and Lady Catherine remaining under Dr. Smeads care and sedation, Rosings had quieted enough that the Earl of Matlock felt confident in explaining to his son how utterly wretched his decision in matrimony had been.

  Richard quietly closed the door behind him and called out to his father sitting in the shadows next to the lone fireplace. “I hope you have an important matter to discuss. My wife and I wish for a night of peace.”

  “Did you care for one moment what your marriage might mean for your family? Or was your selfish disdain merely extended to the tip of your own nose?”

  “Careful,Father, careful. I respect your opinion, but I am my own man. You had no qualms about forcing Darcy into this marriage, we merely exchanged one man of Fitzwilliam blood for another.”

  “Fools! Marriage is not so simple as where you wish to marry, and Darcy will learn first hand when he weds that nothing daughter of some backcountry baronet! There are legal ramifications. Contracts! What settlement did you give Anne? Your paltry Colonel's pay?”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam licked his lips and grit his teeth together to bite back his initial reaction. Darcy and he spoke at length how matters were different for their parents; they had no choice. But both men resolved to sow their oats in fields of their own choosing, no matter what the consequences.

  “I'm sorry you could not manage your greedy way into my marriage settlement, Father. Perhaps if you had been forthright in your plans I might have considered your wishes into mine. Then again, on second thought, perhaps not.” Richard bowed low and attempted to leave but his father cried out. “Our Maker cares not more for an Earl's son or a candlemaker's son when the bullets fly. Good night.”

  “You would see your mother thrown out? On the streets?”

  Richard held up his hand with his back to the Earl. “Do not invoke my mother's security. She and Aunt Catherine may bicker over the Dowager House soon as the renovations are complete. Or are you forgetting my brother?”

  “He's not made of your mettle, preferring the company of poets and drunks! The legacy will pass to you undoubtedly when his lifestyle catches up to him. And what legacy will there be? You've placed the land of your ancestors in precarious danger with this foolhardy marriage. Rosings is not but a quarter of Matlock's holdings.”

  Richard had enough. His leave ended in three days' time and he would need to resign his commission to remain with Anne, but he despised the idea of leaving her, nor could he ask her to travel. He had truly important matters to mind, not the tantrum of a peer.

  “Your business dealings are your own, sir. Again, you do not consult me on your own mind, I prefer to keep my own counsel. But don't worry, Father. Pray for the death of your niece and all shall be well. I can still marry that on-the-shelf third daughter of the Duke of Northumberland and his loans will flood your coffers.”

  “You knew! You ungrateful, spiteful . . .”

  The Colonel shrugged and smirked. “I may keep my own counsel from you, but as you point out, Mother and I are very close.”

  The Earl of Matlock and brother to Lady Catherine de Bourgh was left livid and stewing in his own ire while his son Richard enjoyed the last laugh. In the battles of the generations, he and Darcy had won. This round.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Darcy entered his library with a clear head, clearer than it had been in the last three days. It seemed so long ago that he and Elizabeth were laughing, walking in the meadows of Rosings, delighted with their plans to protect the Holbein family. How his life shifted so dramatically sideways, he did not know, but the pattern of such developments for nearly nine months wore him thin.

  Charles Bingley greeted his oldest friend with a genuine embrace, the first time the men had seen one another since one's marriage and the other's downfall.

  “Darcy, you look hollow my friend. Let me fetch us both a drink.” Charles helped himself to the familiar setting of many an evening visit during his bachelor days.

  “You should not have to do that . . .”

  “My friend, I am happily, blissfully married. You, on the other hand, have been through hellfire and lived to tell the tale. And I was too stupid to not see that you needed me.” Charles lifted his drink in a toast, the only amends both men would make to the breach put between them by Georgiana and Bingley's wedding falling on the same day.

  Darcy knocked back the pungent liquid, comforted by the burn down his throat. His mind still felt in a fog over cleaning his house of vermin, and two little mice still schemed, he was sure in a suite above.

  “Have you seen Elizabeth?” Darcy asked, earnestly.

  Charles nodded slowly and placed his glass on a side table. “I'd say I've never seen her look so poorly, but then again . . .”

  “I know, I know . . .” Darcy held up his hands in mock guilt. “Speaking of, would you and Jane be willing to stay here while I ride to Longbourn. I must not wait a moment longer and seek Mr. Bennet's approval for her hand.”

  Charles Bingley grimaced as he witnessed the full-fledged passion his friend held for his sister-in-law. Where he had no doubt of the love and happy future for two of his favorite people in the world, he also had no doubts as to the reception one Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy was likely to receive upon visiting Longbourn.

  “Perhaps you ought to take a seat.”

  Darcy blanched, but quickly recovered. “Are you saying you will not aid me? Aid Elizabeth?”

  “No, Darcy, take a seat, old man! While you and Elizabeth have had your hands full of plans and pretend weddings, the rest of the world marched forward in time. The gossip, the intrigue . . .”

  “All reached Elizabeth's family.” Darcy collapsed his face into his hands, propped upon his knees at the elbow.

  “I'm afraid so. I endured a ghastly upbraiding the last night we hosted the Bennets in Hertfordshire, I tell you! I'm not sure Mr. Bennet will come around, least not before you are his son-in-law.” Bingley retrieved his drink and took a healthy swallow.

  Tentatively Darcy looked up from his disgrace. “What do you mean, before I become his son-in-law?”

  Charles smiled. Raised his glass to his friend and shrugged. “Last I checked you are master of Pemberley, this home, and Carver House, are you not?”

  “Are you suggesting?”

  “Jane is upstairs telling her sister the lay of the land as we speak. Now, as Elizabeth's nearest
male relation, it might do best if she recovers a week or two before dashing off to Scotland. But, even with my Jane in the family way, she made me swear we would stand beside the two of you at the anvil.”

  “Bingley, you are a godsend!” Darcy said, rising from his chair.

  “What did I do?”

  “You and Jane have come through when we've needed you most. She shall never say it, but she needs her family. The breach is killing her inside.”

  Bingley scratched his head at how much Darcy seemed to know of his future bride when he felt he was learning the inner desires of his actual bride every day. “And what of the house? If Jane and I follow, there will be none to protect your holdings. The Fitzwilliams are all in Kent, are they not?”

  Darcy paused at the door and looked back. “The house be damned for all I care! There are more valuables in life all around us too easily lost. I shall not lose her again.” Darcy left the library to return back above stairs to see his Elizabeth. With Jane explaining the situation, Darcy was certain his Lizzie needed him without delay.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Coming upon the sisters in tears, Darcy's plan to provide comfort suddenly felt misapplied. The two women were in an embrace and Darcy felt loathe interrupting them. But when Elizabeth's eyes popped open and she spied her love, she beamed at him and beckoned him closer with her hands behind Jane's back.

  “Fitzwilliam, is it true? Shall we leave for Scotland this very moment? I am well, I swear!”

  “Oh no, Miss Bennet, I will not fall for those tricks again. You have been moved once at great peril to your health, not again!”

  “Lizzie, you do not listen. There must be at least a week before you can travel that distance again. Doctor Matthew's orders.” Jane rubbed her midsection absently, warmed that her headstrong sister still needed the gentle guidance here and again.