Pride / Prejudice

by Ann Herendeen

  Of course, it was inevitable, in such a close-knit community, that the woman’s husband caught them in the act. George escaped, running the shortcut through the woods and into the park, but the man followed soon after, dragging his half-naked and sobbing wife right through the gate of Pemberley and across the gravel drive to the front entrance, and demanding to speak to Mr. Darcy himself.

  “No, sir,” he said to repeated questions. “Not your boy. It’s t’other one, the steward’s son.” The villagers and the farm laborers all knew Fitz and liked him. To them he had always been honest and fair. It was only his father who had been deceived for so long he thought he had raised the devil’s spawn as his own.

  And Fitz had had to come into the room, tight and uncomfortable in George’s too-small breeches and shirt, and stand in front of his outraged accuser, and swear that the man was mistaken, that it had been a natural confusion—both of them fair, less than two years’ difference in age. He nearly choked bringing the words out. He thought he was going to spew, that God would strike him down for the lie. That’s what finally made it possible for him to do it, the knowledge that he was now lost to salvation, that he had damned himself and that God would punish him.

  Hardest of all was saying such a preposterous thing to the woman. It was one thing to lie to his father—he’d been doing that for so long it had almost ceased to trouble him—and the husband was clearly a brute and a bully and unworthy of the truth. But a wronged woman—that was different. Even a willing whore was entitled to be treated fairly, not insulted with an outrageous falsehood.

  Fitz dared to meet her eyes, squinting against the horror of her scornful, reproachful gaze, as her wrathful husband forced her head up, all the time saying, “That’s right, Betty, you look Master Fitzwilliam in the face and then you tell me it was him.” Fitz took one look, the tangled dark hair over the large eyes, red with weeping, one of them blackened and swollen, the full lips, cut and bleeding at the corner…A vision of hell, what he could expect, the demons, the Furies who would torment him for eternity. He retched, bent over with the dry heaves, but he heard George’s pleas in his head. Oh God, Fitz, you’ve got to get me out of this one. They’ll kill me. Literally. Please, Fitz. I’ll do anything. You know I will. I’ll be your slave for a month, anything you want, every night.

  He pulled himself together and said, “Yes, I’m sorry. It was I, Father. It was very wrong of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it.” It sounded so false, so absurd. How could anyone believe it? So he added, “She’s so beautiful I couldn’t help myself.”

  And the woman winked at him. Fitz must have recoiled or flinched, because she gave a soft little gasp when her husband shook her, demanding that she corroborate the lie for all to hear. She wrenched herself out of her husband’s grasp and said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Darcy. It was your son, Master Fitzwilliam. He pretended to be George Wickham because it’s easier for a steward’s son to come and go in the village without nobody noticing.”

  That time the beating was so severe Fitz passed out from the pain. His father hadn’t done it himself, but set the blacksmith on him with the bullwhip. Fitz wasn’t able to enjoy George’s “slavery” for almost two weeks while he healed. And the settlement to the cuckolded husband had been taken out of Fitz’s allowance. He’d had to beg George for spending money for the remainder of the school year.

  The only good thing to come of it was the visit from the woman, almost a year later, with her child, both turned out of doors. She found the two of them in the barn as usual, marched over to George and shoved the baby in his face. When he stumbled back in disgust she struck him. Just hauled off with the back of one hand and knocked him down, the brat wailing on her hip. “I’d do worse but I don’t want to hang and leave the poor babe without a mother.” She kicked at George where he lay and looked Fitz up and down with an approving smile. “Wish it had been you, love. You’d a done right by me.”

  Before she went she reached over and stroked Fitz’s cheek. He’d thought she was going to hit him too and he stood there, steady and unmoving, ready to take his punishment like a man. Like King Charles I going to his execution, wearing two shirts so he wouldn’t shiver from the cold and appear afraid, paying the fee to the man with the ax and giving him his blessing. God knew he deserved whatever she did to him. But all she did was talk. “Give him a good hot poker up the arse for me, love. But stop being so daft. He’s a very pretty fellow to be sure, but you don’t want to swing for him, neither. He ain’t worth it. You’re more of a man than he’ll ever be.”

  They said in the village she went to Manchester and opened her own house with twenty girls and a liveried man at the door, but that was just market women’s bawdy stories, Fitz decided. Once or twice, riding down the high street, he thought he’d seen her, a hunched figure in rags with a young child, begging to avoid the workhouse. But it was hard to say. Most women looked much the same, and when they were poor and dirty, indistinguishable one from the other.

  Things improved when he went to Cambridge. Away from Pemberley, and in a different college, George had a narrower scope for pinning all his misdeeds on Fitz, requiring as it did the corroboration of tutors and deans. It had been a lovely freedom for Fitz to be judged solely on his own merits. More than one master had encouraged him to take orders and pursue a full degree. Old Biggs, his Greek tutor, had written of Fitz to his father, “An excellent scholar and a first-rate mind.” It might not be a bad life, but of course out of the question for someone of his wealth and position. Fitz had prolonged his gentleman’s course of study as long as he dared, sorry when the two years were up and he had to come home again. George, a year behind, was struggling, fighting the temptations of town wenches and convivial drinking friends, and losing the battle.

  And still it went on. George continued to proclaim his love to Fitz, still begged for help in his scrapes, although he knew not to overreach after the episode with Betty, and after forfeiting his foster father’s unqualified confidence by his dismal performance at university. Fitz continued to take the blame, the two of them just skirting the edge of disaster, knowing an inch too far and the game would be over—either Fitz would reveal the truth at last or they’d both be ruined.

  All for George’s crimes. All for love. Fitz had thought the world well lost, then. And almost it had been, until his father died, still hoping for, if not quite believing in, his only son’s eventual redemption.

  Then the game had ceased to matter to George. He had demanded his “cut,” as he called it, as if his entire life had been devoted to some elaborate swindle that was about to pay off. “You don’t think I’ve been bending over for you out of love. Even you aren’t that blind—are you?”

  “But Wick, you wanted it too, didn’t you?” How many times had George initiated another encounter? Not directly, perhaps, not in words—but signaling with his eyes, or his mouth, the tip of the tongue just beginning to show through parted lips, sometimes just a very slight swivel of the hips, that he wanted Fitz. “I would never have done anything, Wick, if I didn’t think you wanted it.”

  George’s only answer was another sneer. “Such a gentleman. Next you’ll write me sonnets and give me a ring.”

  God, he wished he had George at his mercy just one last time. He’d show him what real force was. He’d been gentle and loving, even as a boy when his whole body had seemed to surge out of control for a continuous period of five years. He had only to look at George or think of him, his smile, his fine fair hair and his clean profile, his slender limbs with their surprisingly chiseled, muscular look beneath the clothes that softened him. And that amazing large prick, unexpected on such a slender man, and seemingly always hard, or able to get there at a moment’s notice, as soon as they had a chance alone…But Fitz usually tried to hold back so as not to hurt him, until that last time, after the taunts and the contempt. Then he had laid into George with the full power of his lust—and only then had George shared in the passion, coming into the straw, gasping and moaning just like
Fitz.

  “You see,” Fitz said. “You do like it.”

  “Oh, any man’s pistol will discharge when he’s rammed deep enough,” George said, trying to appear unmoved by what had just occurred, struggling to keep his voice level. “Doesn’t mean love any more than that ugly old tomcat of yours loves the pusses he screws on his night prowls.”

  “But all these years—” Fitz said.

  “Yes, Darcy. What else was I supposed to do when my lord’s son wanted to have his way with me? And me just the son of the poor steward. But that’s finished now. I’ll take my share—God knows I’ve earned it, and more—and I’ll have the living I was promised.”

  WELL, NONE OF this was anything he could write to a lady. There was enough he could say without offense: the generous inheritance misspent and wasted; the demand for more money to study the law; the repeated failures; and the last renunciation of all help, including the living, in return for three thousand pounds. “I knew he ought not to be a clergyman,” Fitz wrote, grimacing at the dung heap of depravity concealed by the phrase.

  He sat for a long minute or two, letting the pen marinate in the ink bottle, while he debated with himself whether to tell of the attempted elopement with Georgiana. It was the final, damning piece of evidence, and, oddly enough, he felt confident that Elizabeth was the safest person to entrust with such a secret, something he had not shared even with Charles. “I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he has imposed on you,” he concluded, before advising her to apply to Colonel Fitzwilliam for confirmation if she doubted Fitz’s account. He barely admitted to himself that, in love with Wickham as she obviously was, this would destroy any remaining regard for him she might harbor, far more thoroughly than such mundane matters as income and livings.

  God, he wished he had her in the straw now. He would show her just what a gentleman he was…

  No. No, he did not. There was nothing similar between Elizabeth Bennet and the man who had betrayed his trust. She was innocent and good, while George was wicked and practiced in deceit. Any resemblance between them was superficial, the happenstance of physical likeness. Both slim and full of life, with their quicksilver changes, witty and pretty, teasing and laughing…

  George had used it all for treachery, for extortion and blackmail, for cheating and lying and letting others take the blame.

  But she was all purity. If she had led him on, it was due to her artlessness, not deliberate seduction. It was Fitz’s pride that had brought him to the edge of this precipice, so confident of success that he had pursued the distant horizon instead of watching the path under his feet. He was fortunate to have been pulled up before tumbling over the edge, however painful her reining in. What a narrow escape he had had, almost married into that mob of grasping, vulgar jackdaws, his noble family name and lineage forever tainted.

  No, he would simply answer her charges and then he would leave Rosings. Go back to town and forget her. As if that were possible.

  He wished just once to have George again. But the need passed, and with it the desire.

  Sixteen

  “I REALLY AM sorry, Jane,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t want Mr. Darcy to propose to me.” Elizabeth had not been able to keep the recent disturbing events at Rosings entirely to herself. Too upset after receiving Mr. Darcy’s odious proposal even to tell Charlotte, she had spent the last weeks of her visit in tense silence, allowing her friend to believe it was sorrow at leaving her alone with Mr. Collins that depressed her spirits. The return journey to London and Jane had passed in a blur of unhappy reflections.

  Now back at Longbourn, subdued and anxious, Elizabeth wilted under her eldest sister’s perceptive questions. To Jane she disclosed everything, only keeping to herself those parts of Mr. Darcy’s letter that betrayed his role in Mr. Bingley’s deception. During the days she could maintain her customary composure; but the nights were different. Lying in the sisters’ shared bed, whispering in the dark, it was impossible for Elizabeth not to talk about it, recounting the worst of the exchange, hoping to clear her head of the most inconvenient feelings—the beginnings of respect, of warmth, dare she say, regret?

  “You needn’t keep on apologizing,” Jane said. “I know it’s difficult not having Charlotte to confide in, but Lizzy, please, I can’t listen to this anymore.”

  “But I was mistaken,” Elizabeth said. “You see? I thought Wickham was the injured party, but it turns out Mr. Bingley was right after all.”

  Jane sat up in the bed, pushing back the covers, which left Elizabeth exposed as well. “You were the one who wouldn’t believe that Mr. Bingley could possibly know what he was talking about. You were the one who was so sure that Wickham could do no wrong.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth said. “I just thought you’d enjoy being vindicated in your opinion of Mr. Bingley.”

  “Vindication implies there was doubt,” Jane said. “I don’t like to believe Wickham is as bad as you say, but I never for a minute doubted Mr. Bingley’s account of things. Now I’d like to get some sleep, if that’s all right with you, Lizzy.” She lay back down and pulled the covers up, taking most of them for herself.

  “Of course, dear. I’m sorry.” Elizabeth snuggled close to her sister. It was hard without Charlotte. Charlotte had always known the right thing to do. She was the one who had recommended not saying anything to Jane about seeing Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy together. But had that been the right decision? If Jane had known about that, she might not have taken Mr. Bingley’s defection so much to heart. All this time, and bravely as she was bearing up, Jane was not her old serene self. Elizabeth could see it, if others could not. She was thinner, for one thing. And pale. It was a vicious circle: listless from sitting indoors too much, she had no appetite, which made her tired and unwilling to walk outdoors. If by some chance Mr. Bingley did ever come back, he might not find her so appealing…

  “I didn’t tell you everything,” Elizabeth said.

  Jane sighed and turned her back. “I’m sleeping, Lizzy.”

  “About why I refused Mr. Darcy’s proposal, I mean.”

  Jane let out an obviously false snore.

  “It wasn’t just because of how he expressed himself, or because of Wickham, but the way he treats Mr. Bingley,” Elizabeth said. “I thought you should know.”

  “Know what?” Jane said.

  Elizabeth considered very carefully before answering. She couldn’t tell Jane the entire truth: that Mr. Darcy had masterminded the deceit of Mr. Bingley, keeping from him the fact of Jane’s visit to London. It was so tempting to give Jane the comfort of knowing that Mr. Bingley had not spurned her, but it wouldn’t solve anything and it would damage Mr. Bingley’s reputation more than Mr. Darcy’s, showing him to be a dupe, so diffident and silly that he believed his friend’s self-interested opinion rather than trusting in his own heart. If there was a chance of his wooing her again, Jane would despise him. On the other hand, if Elizabeth could hint at the true nature of the men’s relationship, it might ease some of her sister’s pain. “I was wrong about Wickham,” she began. “But not about Mr. Bingley. That is, it’s Mr. Bingley whom Mr. Darcy abuses—”

  “Well, that was worth being woken up for,” Jane said. “Lizzy, I have tried to be sympathetic to your situation, receiving an unwelcome proposal—although most women would probably not find a proposal from Mr. Darcy so very disagreeable as you did—but I thought at least such an occurrence would stop you from repeating this offensive jest about Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”

  “You didn’t hear his proposal,” Elizabeth said. “It was the rudest imaginable. I don’t suppose any woman has ever had a worse one. He spoke more of his reasons for not wishing to marry me and how he was lowering himself by contracting an alliance with our family—”

  “If you think about it,” Jane said, “instead of simply repeating it, it’s all quite true. A man in Mr. Darcy’s position is expected to marry a lady of fortune equal to his. The disparity between our family and his is so great
that his relations could hardly be expected to approve of such a match or to welcome you as his wife. It’s a testament to the intensity of his passion that he wanted to marry you despite all that.”

  “That’s what he said. It’s a shame he didn’t want to marry you, Jane. You and he would suit admirably, he always reminding you of his extraordinary condescension and you eternally grateful.”

  “And that’s my reward for being your confidante—to be abused along with Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy.”

  “Oh, Jane, I am truly sorry. This whole business has upset me terribly and made me cruel.” Elizabeth tried to give her sister a hug and kiss, but was rebuffed by a turned back and a bed cap pulled down over the ears. “The only reason I bring up this old business of Mr. Darcy’s treatment of Mr. Bingley is that…I keep thinking that…if you knew the truth…you might not feel—feel so bad about losing him.” It seemed to take her forever, between pauses for breath and gulping in fear, to get to the end of that sentence, and all for naught.

  “I didn’t lose Mr. Bingley,” Jane said. “That implies I had him. But as to the nature of his friendship with Mr. Darcy, if it will make you keep quiet and allow me some sleep, I’ll say what I swore never to tell anyone, not even you: I know. I know it, I know it, I know it.”

  “But how?”

  “Mr. Bingley told me. He said I deserved honesty. It was a measure of his esteem for me, so I thought.”

  “I don’t believe it. How can a man confess such an intimate thing to a young lady he has known only a few weeks?”

  “Are you forgetting that Wickham confessed a most intimate thing to you?” Jane said. “A false thing, I might add—after knowing you only a few days.”