The full import of the words hit Fitz after a second or two of delay, like downing half a bottle of brandy on an empty stomach. He sat back in his chair and laughed like a lunatic, deep, booming guffaws intermixed with stifled high-pitched giggles. Helpless with joy and the release of so much pent-up tension, nearly half a year’s worth, since the humiliation of spring and the sordid arrangements of summer, he needed several long, gasping breaths to regain his voice. “My dear aunt! I know your passion for plain speaking too well to doubt the truthfulness of your account. I can’t thank you enough for coming directly to town to share this wonderful news instead of delaying with a letter. Will you stay for tea?”
Lady Catherine stood, arms folded across her chest, observing Fitz’s embarrassing display with a jaundiced eye. When she spoke again, she resumed her argument as if there had been no interruption, refusing to acknowledge the deliberate provocation. “Can’t you see it’s your wealth she’s after? If you were to take her as your mistress I should not like it, but better than marrying her. My God, when I think of her at Pemberley, that common, vulgar hussy polluting the grandest of estates with her presence, I want to be sick.”
Fitz jumped up and moved to the door. “Let me summon your maid to help you upstairs.”
“Do not open that door,” Lady Catherine said, sounding reassuringly fit, “unless you want your entire household to hear what I have to say to you. I’m not going to spew all over your Turkey carpet, if that’s what you’re worried about. Now think, Darcy. The woman you marry will be the mother of your heir. Her blood will mingle with yours in your offspring. Do you want your own blue blood, or do you want this mongrel bitch—”
“Enough.” Fitz could no longer indulge his aunt’s officiousness. “Better a healthy mongrel than the effete, sickly little doll you’ve raised.” The jibe at his cousin having bought Fitz a moment of stunned, affronted silence, he took the chance to go on the attack, pummeling her with his words like a boxer using both fists to beat his opponent back and down. “Although you feel no qualms at insulting an innocent young lady, I am doubly offended that you would attempt to palm off an invalid wife on a man like me. Since you don’t scruple to talk about such things to my face, I’ll say without equivocation that I have a robust appetite. In all things. And while I’m sorry for Anne’s condition, whatever it is, she could not possibly satisfy a vigorous man. ‘In sickness and in health,’ they say. That’s all fine and good when both parties start out healthy—but to shackle me to someone who would probably faint away from shock on our wedding night, and who, if she did conceive, would be unable to withstand the rigors of childbearing—it’s monstrous.”
Lady Catherine approached her nephew, her whole body quivering with rage, thrumming like the string of a violin brought to strained vibrato. Her face was such a deep purple it was almost black, her eyes mere slits between narrowed lids, but the pupils showed through like portholes opening onto the depths of hell. Foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth. Fitz saw it again, as with Betty, the cotter’s wife—the demon, the Fury who would hound him in the netherworld, the harpy tearing his flesh with her talons…He took a step backward but was stopped by the edge of his chair. Lady Catherine poked him in the chest with an outstretched index finger and he collapsed onto the seat.
“How dare you!” she screamed. “How dare you say such things, of your cousin, of your family, to me! I’ll tell you this much, Fitzwilliam Darcy. I know things about you and your appetites. They may be strong, but they are neither healthy nor natural. I suppose that insolent bitch of yours shares your perversions. She’s the perfect partner in vice, eh? Have you been celebrating at your club on Park Lane?”
Fitz felt the blood draining from his face. He tried to speak, to utter the spell that would undo her curse and send her back to the pit of Hades whence she came, but no words emerged.
“Thought I didn’t know about that.” There was that same expression of satisfaction on Lady Catherine’s face, as if the bitter confirmation of even the most unpleasant truth was preferable to the bland taste of ignorance. “To think I would have let my daughter ruin herself by marrying a perverted specimen like you.”
The blood hammered in Fitz’s neck, restoring the capacity for thought to the blankness in his mind. He would not let this old harridan defeat him, nor would he allow her the advantage of seeing him wounded. “It seems we are in agreement after all,” he said, forcing a tight, cold smile onto his face. “You don’t want me to marry your daughter and I don’t want to marry her. After that, who I choose to marry is none of your concern. I suspect you have nothing more of interest to say to me, aunt, and as I have a great deal of business to get through, I will wish you good day.”
Lady Catherine blinked at her nephew’s surprising recovery from what was supposed to have been a mortal blow. “I have only this to say, Darcy. You will not get one penny from me after I’m gone. And if that person is presiding over it, Pemberley will never see me there.”
“Very well, aunt. Why should I want a penny from you? Your entire estate is worth less to me than an honest penny from an honest source. And indeed, we shall get along very well at Pemberley without uninvited visitors. But I do caution you on one point. Whether or not I have the good fortune to marry Elizabeth Bennet, you will refer to her only as Miss Bennet or Mrs. Darcy, as her title may be. Do I make myself clear? There are laws against slander in this country and I will avail myself of them to protect a lady’s good name.”
Lady Catherine’s color had come down slightly and her voice had shrunk to a whisper. “You would threaten me with the law, you filthy sodomite? You are not a fool, Darcy, whatever else is wrong with you. Your situation is most precarious, and I advise you to stay away from the Brotherhood of Philander if you value any remaining shreds of your reputation.”
Fitz held the steely smile. He had never countenanced lying, but there were others besides himself to protect, and he had sworn several binding oaths of the body. “I’m afraid I am unacquainted with this brotherhood you refer to. Perhaps Miss de Bourgh might find it a congenial place to get a husband. Shall I make inquiries?”
Lady Catherine slumped visibly at this unanticipated riposte. Fitz felt an odd surge of pity for her haggard cheeks and shaking jowls. “You are treading on dangerous ground, Darcy,” she said, without her usual bluster, although she perked up as she turned to leave, glaring at the footman who had opened the door a crack during the shouting. “Out of my way, you little molly.”
“Everything all right, sir?” the man asked after Lady Catherine had stormed out the front door.
“Perfectly,” Fitz said. “But thank you for asking. In fact, Thomas, is it?”
“Yes, sir. Thomas Watkins, sir.”
“I apologize for my aunt’s behavior. Take this for your trouble.” He handed the man a crown.
“Oh no, sir, I couldn’t. Wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard from me gran.”
“I’ll bet your gran never called you a molly.”
Thomas grinned. “No, sir. That’s a new one.”
Fitz held out the coin. “Go on, take it. In fact, tell the others to come in when they have a chance and I’ll give everyone a gift. You can enjoy an early celebration. I’m going to be married—I hope.”
CHARLES, LOST IN a delirium of bliss, was slow to notice that Jane did not seem to share his emotion. It was the moisture rather than the sound of smothered sobs that jolted him to separate their mouths and to snatch his hand away from her breast, although, as he had been in pretty deep, he snagged his cuff on the edge of her bodice and had to spend several awkward moments untangling. “My love! What is the trouble? Did I hurt you?”
“Oh no, Mr. Bingley. No, I am crying from happiness.”
“Charles, my love. Now that we are to be married you must call me Charles. But why would happiness make you weep?”
“My dear Charles,” Jane whispered. “It is a woman’s weakness. I spent so long being in love with you and having to pretend I was not. I had to
pretend it even to myself, so that I would not betray my true feelings by any little misstep. And now I am so happy, I can’t hold it in any longer. When you touch me like that, it all comes out…” She blushed fiery red and would not meet his eyes.
“I am sorry,” Charles said. “That was most ungentlemanly of me. I promise not to do that again.”
“Ooooh, noooo.” The words emerged as another extended moan. “That is not at all what I meant. I like it very much when you touch me. It only made me weep because I had waited so long for this, and now it sometimes seems too perfect, as if I must be dreaming.”
“My dear.” Charles held Jane in a loose embrace, letting her head rest on his shoulder. “That is exactly how it is with me too. I tried so hard not to think about you for all those months, and all along, if I had only known.”
“Known what?” Jane asked.
“That you did love me, as I loved you. We could have been married and doing this for a whole year, almost.”
“But why did you go away?” Jane lifted her head and opened her bright blue eyes wide in an expression of innocence that always made Charles’s stomach—or perhaps a very different part of him—leap with dangerous excitement. “Why did you not ask me then? If you had asked me—then—I would have given you the same answer I gave you now, and we would not have wasted a whole year.”
“I was a coward and a fool,” Charles said. “I let Fit—my sisters talk me into thinking you didn’t care for me.”
“That’s why I was crying,” Jane said. “I knew you were the right one for me from the start. Even when you only touched my hand, and only in the most chaste, proper way, it still felt to me as if you were—doing something much more. As if you were kissing me or touching me the way you were just now. And I knew that had to mean it was real, and I thought you had to feel it too, or how could I feel it?”
Charles smiled. Even to him this sounded naïve—and yet gloriously true in the way it matched his own sense of their connection. “Oh, I wish I had listened to my heart, or had the courage to stand up for myself!”
“Well, at least you have done it now,” Jane said, wiping away her tears. “Let’s not dwell on the past but enjoy the present and think of the future. I only hope Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy will know such happiness as we share. But I imagine he must love her very deeply if he was willing to propose a second time after being turned down.”
Charles’s guts lurched again, but with a rather less charming sensation. “What do you mean, propose a second time?”
“Didn’t Mr. Darcy tell you? I thought you two were as close as Lizzy and I are. But perhaps men do not share secrets the same way. When Elizabeth was at Rosings, Mr. Darcy made her an offer, which she declined. Lizzy said…” Jane’s voice trailed off as she saw her betrothed’s unhealthy condition.
Charles leaned against the back of the sofa, his face raised to the ceiling, eyes open but unfocused, limbs dangling as if having lost all their animating force. Jane wondered if gentlemen ever fainted, and what she was supposed to do if one did. Call Mama, of course. But how embarrassing that would be. Mama would think Jane had been taking advantage of Charles. He was so sweet and so gallant, she was sometimes tempted to…hurry things along. But even though they were to be married she could not bear to be thought of as another Lydia, unable to keep her hands off a man. Luckily, she was not forced to make such a call, as the gentleman revived in a minute or two.
“Elizabeth was at Rosings with Fitz?” Charles exclaimed. He sat up, the color coming back into his cheeks with force. “And he made her an offer?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “Are you feeling quite well?”
“He never said a word to me,” Charles replied by way of answer.
“Lizzy said Mr. Darcy’s manner had been—” Jane found it impossible to repeat her sister’s harsh description of a man to his friend’s face. “Lizzy felt it necessary to decline Mr. Darcy’s offer. I think she was most upset because she had not suspected that he had such feelings for her, and I imagine Mr. Darcy was too hurt to wish to confide in anyone, even you.”
“No wonder he was in such a foul mood when he got back!” Charles exclaimed.
“If it’s any comfort,” Jane said, “Mr. Darcy wrote Elizabeth a letter immediately afterward, and she learned she had misjudged him. So although Mr. Darcy could not know it, she had already altered her bad opinion of him.”
Charles sat very still, his face set in a grim expression that Jane had not thought it capable of showing. Finally he said, in a harsh, angry voice, “And to think that he had been preaching to me the entire winter of how unsuitable your family is. Yet as soon as he sees Elizabeth again all his arguments fly out the window. And all that time he had been lying to me.”
Jane, feeling very bold, reached for Charles’s hand and held it loosely between hers. “He probably was humiliated at having his suit turned down.”
Charles warmed to the touch, a hazy memory of childhood. A nursemaid, or the long-dead mother? The icy rage melted out of him, replaced by a desire for combat. He wished to defend this gentle, kind lady, who loved him, who put his welfare ahead of her own, from the depredations of the cruel, heartless world. If he had a suit of armor and a battle-steed, he would ride out against an army of Fitzwilliam Darcys and deceitful sisters and beat them back to the dragon’s lair where they belonged. “No, I mean he lied about you,” he said, looking fiercely into Jane’s trusting eyes. “He was the one who never told me you were in town last winter.”
Jane heard the devastating words issuing from her lover’s mouth that until now had spoken only sweetness, and the contrast hit her with the force of a heart attack. Her face turned greenish-gray, like the first growth of lichen on marble, and as frozen and immobile as any statue. She swayed in her seat, remaining upright only by digging her fingers into the arm of the sofa, then fell back, her eyes rolled up under the fluttering lids and her jaw agape.
What did one do if a lady fainted when you were alone with her? Charles wondered. Call her mother, probably. But Mrs. Bennet would think he had tried to force her. Not that he didn’t want to make love to her, and could hardly wait until the wedding day, but he would never press her to the point of losing consciousness. He chafed her hands, vaguely aware of the strange coldness. He wondered what “smelling salts” were, and whether there might be any in the room, so as not to have to summon help and advertise his lack of gentlemanly restraint. Luckily, the lady’s complexion improved after a few anxious moments.
“I don’t understand,” Jane said, her voice as low and tense as Charles’s had been at the news of Fitz’s rejected proposal. “Why would Mr. Darcy mistreat me so? I was the one who always defended him. When Lizzy said the most scurrilous things of him, I would remind her that he is a gentleman, and your friend. I thought him a most honorable man, because you loved him.”
“He is, usually,” Charles said, striving to undo what he sensed was irreparable damage. “And as we are all to be sisters- and brothers-in-law, he doesn’t want you to despise him. He’s ashamed of what he did, and very sorry, and he begged me not to tell you. I shouldn’t have broken my promise, but I was caught by surprise. When I think of his colossal hypocrisy—all the way since last spring—I can’t give a damn for a promise extracted under false pretenses! Pardon my language.”
“That’s all right, Charles. It is justified by the circumstances, I believe.” Jane felt calm and warmth returning as Charles became more agitated. “And this was because of my family?”
“He said it might have been different if you had returned my feelings.” Charles still found it hard not to defend Fitz, just a little. He was in the habit of love, and where affection had been, was not able to let it go so easily. “He claimed he could see that you were not in love with me.”
“How was he to judge what I felt for you?” Jane said, with more vehemence than Charles had ever heard from her. “I was not in love with him, so why would I show him what I felt? And I thought he loved you. That is not love,
to spoil your beloved’s happiness. I have never been so deceived by anybody. It hurts me to say this about someone you care for, but I don’t think I can forgive Mr. Darcy.”
“My love. I can’t forgive him either. I have already told him so.”
“I don’t wish to behave in a cruel or unchristian fashion,” Jane said, doubting herself at the moment of her lover’s agreement. “You know, I wouldn’t listen when Lizzy defamed his character and mocked his overbearing manner with you, but it seems she saw the truth more clearly than we did.”
They sat in dejected silence, side by side, heads bowed and hands folded in laps, until Jane whispered, “Please, Charles, touch me some more.” When he didn’t immediately obey, she lifted his hand and placed it on the exposed tops of her breasts, smiling at his uneasiness.
“My goodness,” Charles said. “You certainly are not cruel to me. And so much kinder than I had dared hope.” His hand worked its way down, in search of that hard little nipple. “But I don’t want to make you cry again.”
“I am done with crying,” Jane said. “And if you’re worried about Mama or one of my sisters coming in, I can assure you they will not disturb us. Mama is most understanding about engaged couples and how we like to be alone, and she is very fond of you, Charles.”
Things were going so well that Charles didn’t like to press his luck, but he couldn’t resist. He slowly lowered his free hand the length of Jane’s skirts, feeling for the hem, only dimly aware that she was simultaneously gathering them up. He found his way under, encountered stocking and garter, then a rounded, smooth knee. Did he dare move higher?
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