What had he imagined? What had he expected? That she had the ability to recognize Wickham’s fabrications for the transparent forgeries they were, while to the rest of the world they remained genuine and opaque? How should a girl of twenty possess the experience and knowledge of the world to distinguish such things, while retaining her innocence and virtue? Yet he had somehow dared to hope…
And why should he be disappointed? She was a woman, damn it. She was like all women—coy, cloying, secretive, and devious, always going after things in a roundabout manner, like cats. Until his inevitable marriage, Fitz planned to keep his associations with members of that sex to the minimum, allowing himself only the occasional session—an enjoyable method of maintaining his fighting trim—with ladies safely wedded to complaisant husbands. He had never felt himself so drawn to any particular female.
Until now. This girl.
An unfortunate comparison anyway. Fitz had always liked cats.
Six
MISS BINGLEY KNOCKED on Fitz’s door a short time after the last guests had left—none other than the appalling Bennet family, the mother already angling to move into Netherfield, along with the rest of her nauseating brood, upon the impending marriage of her eldest daughter.
“Mr. Darcy.” Caroline’s voice was high and strained, no flirting now. “Mr. Darcy, please come to the door. I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s vitally important.”
Fitz, fortunately still wearing his shirt and pantaloons, opened the door a crack. Poor Caroline looked haggard. It had been a long night and her face paint had smeared with the heat. She had not removed so much as her headdress, the once-jaunty feather drooping in disappointment.
“What is it, Miss Bingley? Are you quite well?”
“No, Mr. Darcy, I am not. I am near to collapsing with fatigue, and now Charles is saying the most shocking things and behaving in so eccentric a manner that Louisa and I are afraid.”
“Afraid? Had you not better send for the physician?”
“Nothing like that,” she said. “He’s swearing that he will marry that girl with the dreadful family. Miss Bennet. He says he intends to call on her first thing when he returns from his business in town.”
That brought Fitz out into the corridor. “After the appalling exhibition we were treated to tonight he can’t be serious.”
“I assure you, I would not have disturbed you in your room if I thought it was just a passing mood. He won’t listen to me or Louisa, his own sisters, but he listens to you. Please, talk some sense into him.”
“I can try,” Fitz said. “He has been flaunting a rather touching independence lately.”
“We should go up to town with him,” Caroline said, running beside him down the corridor, his long strides making her breathless to keep up.
“Yes, yes. Let me just hear it for myself. I wonder he didn’t come to me first.”
Caroline gasped. “He said he had. He said you knew all about it. Have you been keeping secrets, Mr. Darcy?”
“I don’t reveal the substance of our every intimate conversation, Miss Bingley, however you might wish it. Charles is suffering from the common ailment of green youth—lovesickness, an unsuitable romantic passion. I have let him talk and not attempted to dispute; it seemed the more prudent course. He did mention something of this before the ball, but I took it as just another of his hyperbolic enthusiasms. If one good thing could be said to have come from this night’s debacle, it’s that it should put an end to Charles’s absurd matrimonial notions. I’d have staked Pemberley on my certainty that we’d heard the last of it.”
“Lucky for you you’re not a gambler,” Caroline said with more asperity than Fitz had ever heard from her. “But we may all reap the rewards of such careless dealing.” She eyed Fitz meaningfully.
Fitz restrained his first impulse to snap at the bitch, merely remarking, “We shall see.”
“…declare my intentions, then blave the brist—the blistering wrath of Fitz himself.” Charles’s loud, slurred speech was audible well before they reached the rooms occupied by Louisa and her husband.
“Ah, there you are, Darcy,” Hurst said. “If you would be so kind as to take this Bedlamite away with you, perhaps Mrs. Hurst and I and the rest of this house can enjoy some peace and quiet.”
“Gladly,” Fitz said. “Come on, Charles. Come and tell me what has you so agitated.”
“No, Fitz,” Charles said. “I will not come with you. That’s what I’ve been saying. I’m done with that now. Going to marry Miss Bennet. You’re welcome to stay on while the banns are being read, but once we’re married we shall want to live by ourselves. I’m sure you understand.”
“It’s merely infatuation,” Fitz said to the room at large.
“Am not,” Charles said. “Sober as a judge. As sober as your hanging judge of an uncle at the Bloody Assizes.”
“Though he was my great uncle, Monmouth’s Rebellion was, nevertheless, slightly before his time,” Fitz couldn’t resist murmuring. “Come, let’s get you to bed.”
“Not with you, Darcy,” Charles said. “Won’t be getting into my bunghole tonight, old man.”
“Language, Charles,” Fitz said. “Not in front of your sisters.”
“Oh, bugger my sisters,” Charles said. He giggled. “They’d let you, you know. We all let you. Except me. Not anymore.”
“Charles,” Louisa said. “You are being a very naughty boy. If our poor papa were still alive, he’d whip you.”
“He’d whip you two sluts all the way to Bridewell and back, is what he’d do,” Charles said. “Throwing yourselves at Fitz here, with your husband under the same roof.” He turned to Hurst. “Why don’t you put your foot down? Show Louisa you’re a man.”
“I say,” Hurst said. “You have one hell of a nerve barging into my room and telling me how to conduct my marriage. Ought to call you out if you wasn’t my brother-in-law, but it’s late and we’ve both had a lot to drink. Forget it all in the morning. Just hope you don’t take offense, Darcy.” It was the longest speech Fitz had ever heard from him.
“Not at all,” Fitz said through clenched jaws.
“And as for you, Caroline,” Charles continued, Hurst’s mumbling not having registered in his preoccupied mind, “I can promise you Fitz won’t come up to scratch. Has his eye on my beautiful, sweet Jane’s beautiful, not-so-sweet sister, Lizzy. Don’t mean sour. What’s the course, at the end of meal, ain’t sweet, you know, not sugar? Salty?”
“Savory,” Hurst suggested, mellowing at the appeal to his epicurean expertise.
“Savory. That’s it. Fitz likes the salty-savory Lizzy. Likes to poke her. With words, I mean. Not with his poker. Not yet.”
Louisa and Caroline exchanged a significant look. “Now you see what comes of admiring fine eyes,” Caroline said.
“Not really your style, I’d have thought,” Hurst said. Spending most of his days asleep, he was unfortunately wide awake once the clock struck midnight. “Skinny little thing, sharp tongue. None of my affair, I admit, Darcy, but fact is you’d be better off with good old Caroline here. At least she understands about you and Charlie-boy. Can’t imagine Miss Eliza Bennet putting up with that, no matter how savory she may be. Ha! These provincial gentry are the worst sticklers. No knowledge of the fashionable world. D’ye know I saw her deliberately choose a plain dish over a ragout?”
Fitz felt a headache developing, despite having forced himself to abstain. The desire to drink himself into insensibility had come over him early enough in the evening that he had been able to defend against it, although the horrors that followed had been of such severity and had escalated so steeply it had been a struggle toward the end. “I never seriously admired her,” he apologized with poor grace. “It was merely a jest that went too far.”
“Was not,” Charles said. “He thinks of her. You know, when he rogers me.”
The collective and ominous silence that greeted this pronouncement was interrupted again by Hurst, picking up happily on yet ano
ther topic on which he felt qualified to express an opinion. “Bad form, Darcy, old fellow. Never think of anyone else when I’m with Louisa. Wouldn’t say so if I did, of course. Never think of anything at all.”
“True,” Louisa said. “Your mind is as void of substance as your cods.”
Hurst’s stuttering expostulations were overborne by Fitz’s roar. “Charles! I expected at least this much consideration, that what was told you in confidence would not be repeated to the world at large. I am tempted to follow your father’s example and give you the whipping of your life.”
“Too late,” Charles said. “The days of my lowering my breeches and bending over for you are…over. I’m over bending over. No more indulging for me. Indulging? Not quite right. Endowing?” Hoping the picture would lead to the word, he made a vulgar gesture of fist and bent elbow, smiling in triumph when he achieved success. “I have it! Indorsing!” There was the briefest of pauses until another random thought struck. “I say! Now that your friend George Wickham’s in the neighborhood you can go back to indorsing him!” He giggled again. The sound made Fitz’s teeth hurt.
“I’m warning you, Charles,” Fitz said. He passed a hand over his face, in a futile hope that when he opened his eyes his vision would have cleared, that this was all a hallucination brought on by anxiety and the late hour. “One more word from you and—”
“And what?” Charles said. “Only saying Wickham’s a damn’ fine-looking fellow. Thought you might have been gilding the faded memory a bit, but now I’ve seen him, all I can say is—see what you mean. And in that red coat, damn’ near irresistible, I should think. Better’n that poor little sod Denny you’ve been making do with. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Think I don’t notice things. But I see what’s in front of my face as well as any man. And I see that your Wickham has charmed all the ladies—even Lizzy Bennet. Especially Lizzy Bennet. Now there’s a picture, eh? The savory Lizzy bending over for the beautiful George Wickham.”
Fitz acted by instinct, striking Charles with open palm, unable, despite what would be mortal insult from any other man, to bring himself to hurt the one who had been his eromenos, his beloved. Charles’s body, loose-limbed and flexible with drink and desire, slumped to the floor.
This time a cacophony of imprecations put a premature end to another shocked silence.
“Just leave me alone,” Charles said when the storm had broken over his head and dissipated from lack of energy to sustain it. He sat up shakily from his position on the carpet beside Hurst’s stockinged feet. “All of you, just leave me be. I am of age, I am the master of an independent fortune, and as soon as I deal with this stupid business in town I am going to call on the woman I love with all my heart and offer her my hand in marriage. And anyone who doesn’t like it can bloody well move out of my house.”
When Fitz bent down to offer his assistance, Charles pushed him away, his clammy hand slithering against Fitz’s like one of those protective sheaths used in brothels. “Don’t touch me,” Charles said. “Can get up without your help. In fact, can get it up a hell of a lot better without you.”
“Oh!” Caroline put her hands over her ears. “I don’t know what’s come over you, Charles.”
“Fitz,” Charles said, legs sprawled, leaning back on his elbows. “He comes all over me, thinking of his Lizzy and her beautiful eyes. Or perhaps of his lost love, George Wickham, of the enormous prick and the even greater insolence. But I’ll be the one coming soon enough, in bed with my wife.”
In the end Fitz had to hoist Charles to his feet and haul him out into the corridor. Charles didn’t fight but he didn’t help either. He sagged, limp and unresisting in Fitz’s embrace, muttering revolting endearments to his Jane under his breath, radiating spirit-fumes enough to intoxicate the entire household, and collapsed in a stupor on the bed when Fitz dumped him down. His man was standing by and Fitz left him to his distasteful work. Despite Charles’s further amusing intimations, Fitz did not enjoy fucking corpses.
THE NEXT MORNING Charles was so sick he left late for town, barely able to sit upright in the chaise. “Can’t I put it off a day or two?” he begged Fitz in a piteous voice, his head lolling out the open window.
“You know my feelings on procrastination,” Fitz replied.
Charles reached a hand to Fitz’s coat sleeve and clung. “I know—that is, I think—I mean—I seem to recall some unpleasant words last night. Please, Fitz, don’t hate me for anything I might have said in my cups.”
Fitz withdrew his arm. “Drink is no excuse for coarseness, Bingley. An inebriated gentleman ought still to be a gentleman.”
“All I can do is apologize, Fitz. Please believe me when I say how very sorry I am. And don’t call me Bingley like that, as if we were strangers.”
Fitz was damned if he would make this easy. “Friendship without respect is meaningless, and using the outward forms of intimacy when the foundation has rotted away is the kind of sham I abhor. You made your sentiments quite clear, Bingley, and you insulted others besides myself, some of whom were not there to defend themselves. Denying your words now does not undo that damage.”
“So were yours quite clear,” Charles answered, attempting a brave smile and rubbing his injured if only slightly blemished cheek, “although that damage will be repaired quickly enough. And I’ve apologized to my sisters, and to Hurst”—he compressed his lips at that indignity—“but as to people who ‘weren’t there,’ I think I know who you mean, and all I can say is how truly sorry I am. I say it to you, because you were the one who was hurt by it.” He watched Fitz’s face.
Fitz, by great effort, held his face immobile. He had not expected Charles to remember, or to know he was referring to her.
Receiving no response, Charles sighed but looked all the more resolute, attempting to sit up straight and square his shoulders. “The one thing I won’t do is disown my affections. I shall call on Miss Bennet the minute I return.”
As soon as the carriage had gone safely up the drive and around the bend to the lane, Fitz and the ladies went into action. By midday he and Caroline and Louisa had their plan all worked out; by dinnertime they had everything packed, the furniture covered, horses sent ahead to the coaching inns, and were ready to follow Charles to town. Only at the last minute Fitz remembered to write to his sister to give her time to prepare for his arrival and to expect a guest in another day or two. He wrote quickly, unhindered by his usual admirer, Caroline.
My dearest Georgiana,
Please forgive the sudden notice, but I am required to cut short my visit in Hertfordshire and remove to town. I will not burden you with what must remain a private matter, but suffice it to say that my friend Mr. Bingley has suffered an unfortunate entanglement. At the first stage, I shall invite him to stay with us, so as not to overtax the hospitality of his elder sister and her husband, Mr. Hurst.
Mr. Bingley’s spirits are very low, nor do I possess the delicacy of touch that is the genius of the gentler sex. I am confident that the easy, friendly atmosphere of a harmonious house, along with the lively company of an unaffected and well-brought-up young lady, will provide the best remedy.
I send all my love and hope that you are, as I am, in the best of health,
Your devoted brother,
Fitzwilliam
THE DRIVE NEXT day was ghastly, crammed in between Hurst and the women and their hot, shifting bodies. As soon as decently possible, at the first stage and change of horses, Fitz took the opportunity to ride alongside.
Once settled in town, Fitz waited a judicious couple of days before calling, after Charles had been persuaded to leave the hotel and stay at Hurst’s. Even then Charles was unwilling to receive him, only relenting out of habit and from a pathetic need for company. “I don’t see why you all had to follow me,” he said. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t return to Netherfield after this tedium with the agent is resolved. Miss Bennet will be wondering what has become of me.”
“I doubt that very much,” Fitz said. T
he words came easily, proof that it was not a lie, merely a slight exaggeration that would become truth in time, helped by absence. “She didn’t love you. I could see it in her face. She smiled and looked at everyone the same.”
“How would you know?” Charles protested, but already weakening. “She would look the same to you, perhaps, but not to me.”
Fitz stroked Charles’s cheek. Any lingering hint of a bruise was healed by now, yet the man recoiled as if fearing further blows. “Imagine how mortified you’d be if you declared your intentions, only to have her smile and say in her sweet, serene manner, that she was very sorry but she did not return your affections.”
“I don’t believe that would have happened,” Charles said. “And even if it did, why should I not try? Better to have loved and lost than—”
“Yes, yes, all very well to quote stage plays, but this is life, my dear. You’d have been crushed. Your first real love, so cruelly dispatched.”
“Poor old Fitz,” Charles said. “I think whatever happened between you and Wickham has given you an aversion. Not all loves are doomed to humiliation and disappointment.”
In his all-consuming rage, Fitz did not trust himself to speak. Another few days elapsed before he felt able to extend the invitation that had been his original purpose, and it was a long week before the old mix of affection, concern, and desire began slowly to reassert itself.
IT ALL OCCURRED so quickly, in the span of a few short days, that it took Elizabeth longer than her usual direct penetration to understand that all of them—she, Jane, Charlotte, perhaps even Mr. Bingley—were now bereft of love. Mr. Bingley was gone to town for upward of a fortnight, and judging from the letter Jane had received from Miss Bingley, had apparently every intention of staying there for the rest of the winter. It was pure catastrophe for Jane, but worth putting a brave face on until absolutely certain.
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