Elizabeth had long been aware of her father’s failings, but loving him as she did, she had never felt them fully before. The true evils of his indolence were painfully clear now, even more so when set in contrast to Darcy’s decisiveness and action. It was not, in this hour, her father who was acting as guardian to her family, but her bridegroom. And if he did so with a stern frown sometimes, how could she blame him? Had he not been proven fully justified in all his misgivings over her family? She was amazed, now that she thought of it, that he hadn’t met her with that frown this morning, that he hadn’t been angry and mortified. He had been, instead, tender, vulnerable, and open. He had kissed her . . . the blush rose in her cheeks to think of how he had kissed her. That was how a husband would kiss his wife, she was sure, and what was more, she had liked it. Although she was still shy with expressions of passion and had not been quite able to return his fervor in equal measure, she had definitely liked it.
Chapter Nineteen
Dealing with the aftermath of Lydia’s aborted flight was exhausting. Breaking the news to the rest of the family, silencing the servants, silencing Mrs. Bennet, restraining Lydia’s temper tantrums—it was all far more than Elizabeth cared to think about, then or later. Mr. Bennet reluctantly accepted the unpleasant task of compelling his wife to become, for perhaps the first time in her life, the soul of discretion, but his daughter was left to do the rest. Darcy lent her what quiet support he could, but there was very little more that he could actually do. There was no time, that day, to regain the intimacy of their morning encounter or to exchange more than the passing squeeze of a hand.
The sisters were shocked into momentary silence when they heard the story; even Mary could find nothing to say. Kitty, perhaps, took a small amount of satisfaction in Lydia’s downfall, but that lasted only until she found out that her father intended to curtail her activities as well. Jane, when she was alone with Lizzy, could only express her amazement and distress. “Oh, Lizzy,” she said, “I can still hardly believe it! Was Lydia truly trying to run away?”
“Yes, to Brighton in a baggage cart! Although I suppose that’s a fitting conveyance for her.”
“Lizzy!”
“Well, Jane? She is a baggage, and you know it.”
“You shouldn’t use such language,” begged Jane. “She did not mean to do wrong, I am sure.”
“Well, she did not mean to ruin herself,” admitted Elizabeth. “It was all a childish prank, like that time she sneaked into the carriage for a ride to town so that she could get out of French lessons. Only then she was ten! She’s almost sixteen now, and she must realize that something worse would have resulted than having our mother buy her a sweet from the sweetshop!”
“She was so disappointed at having to stay home from Brighton.”
“Do not tell me you think our father should have let her go!”
“Of course not! I was very thankful that you and Mr. Darcy prevailed upon him to keep her home. But you know that Lydia has never handled disappointment well.”
“And Mr. Wickham took advantage of it. He is a clever one, I will give him that.”
“Oh, Lizzy!” said Jane again. “I admit that I have not been able to think very well of Mr. Wickham since you told me how he behaved towards you, but I did not think him so very bad as this!”
“Neither did I, Jane, but it seems that he is the worst sort of cad. Did I not once tell you that either Mr. Wickham or Mr. Darcy must be a scoundrel? I was right, although I blush to think whom I counted the scoundrel then.”
“But you must be so pleased to know that Mr. Darcy is as good a man as you had hoped he was.”
“Yes, he is a very good man indeed. I think his treatment of Wickham remarkably forbearing and generous—especially in light of what I have not yet told you.” She related details that she had kept back from the others—Miss Darcy’s near elopement and Mr. Darcy’s present bargain.
“Then Mr. Darcy believes Mr. Wickham to be redeemable still!”
“No, I do not think so. I think rather that he cannot settle it with his conscience to punish him properly—to have him jailed for debt, for instance—if there is any other alternative. I believe he thinks often of his father, who loved him, and Mr. Wickham’s father. There is also Miss Darcy to protect. He will probably not rest easy about her reputation until she is married. If he were not such a good man, he would have dealt with Wickham by some means outside of the law, but he wouldn’t stoop to such measures. He knows that he has given himself a thankless task, but he is determined to do it—to follow through, in every way, the obligation he feels toward his father’s godson and his own childhood friend.”
“Nevertheless, I truly hope that Mr. Wickham will change his way of life now that he has reason to do so.”
“He has had reason before, but so far it has not assisted him. No, Jane, I think my husband will be tracking him down again before very many months have passed.” She realized that Jane had suddenly smiled at her rather brilliantly. “What is it?”
“That is the first time I have ever heard you refer to Mr. Darcy as your husband.”
She blushed. “Oh. He will be my husband then, I mean.”
Jane hugged her. “You are growing happier with him, Lizzy.”
“Of course I am! How could I not, knowing what I do now? I still marvel that I managed to attract him somehow.”
“It’s not a marvel to me. I am very happy that you now have nothing to keep you from loving him. All the things you worried about in the beginning have resolved themselves, just as we hoped they would!”
It was true, but for one small matter—the unasked and unanswered question about why Mr. Darcy had taken Mr. Bingley away last autumn. It was a sore point for her still, though she tried not to think of it, not when Mr. Bingley had returned, and with his friend’s consent. It could not matter now, she thought; it could only have been pride, not malice or unkindness, and had he not set his pride aside? But still she wished that she knew his reason.
No one would ever really know what Mr. Bennet said to Mrs. Bennet in the library that afternoon. By the time she came out, she was sulky but silent, and her husband looked exhausted. He shut his door, retreating into solitude until dinner. Retiring to her room, Mrs. Bennet called for her hartshorn and salts, and she did not come out again either for some hours.
Lydia herself could not be brought to any sense of what she had nearly done. She admitted to having formed the plan with Mr. Wickham when she saw him at the Phillipses’ card party on Friday, but would not see the folly in it.
Mr. Bennet threatened her with loss of pin money, which produced more tantrums at first, followed eventually by a sullen compliance. Since Kitty had been likewise threatened with loss of allowance if she so much as dared to set foot outside Longbourn without at least one of the older girls as company, there was a great deal of weeping around the house for some days. Darcy bore it as best he could but found himself more and more joining Mr. Bennet’s retreat into the library. For once, Elizabeth could not be sorry.
They spoke together, she and Darcy, in what brief chances they had, of what had happened—of his sister and her sister, of their escapes. It was strange that they had this in common between them now: a sister who, at the age of fifteen, had almost run off with George Wickham. It was equalizing, in a way, for not all of his money had been sufficient to keep his sister from folly and near disaster. Although she could not help but feel Lydia to be far more culpable than her shy counterpart, the fact remained that both had fallen victim to the same man. Both had verged on ruin.
Without ever meaning to, Elizabeth found herself confiding in Darcy, expressing the disappointment and bitterness she felt towards both her father and her sister. He surprised both himself and her by unexpectedly defending them. “Even the most careful guardian may fail at times,” he said slowly.
“And if he had been a careful guardian, I would not blame him, but he has not, you know he has not.”
“Elizabeth, is your sister�
��s situation truly that much worse than mine? If I had not—”
“Oh, do not compare the two! Your sister acted on the persuasion of weeks, the expectation of marriage, and a belief in real love with a man she had known all her life—not to mention her companion’s encouragement. My sister acted on the impulse of three days, with no greater inducement than a summer’s frivolity in Brighton! I am certain that Mr. Wickham had to do no more than just suggest the idea before she seized on it.”
“And yet I was absent—I sent my sister off insufficiently protected, and that is why she was vulnerable.”
“My father did not even attempt to protect her!”
He hesitated. “No one could have predicted what happened.”
“But if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else, wouldn’t it?” She looked up at him. “She was ripe for mischief.”
Darcy found himself in a difficult position. He wanted to offer her sympathy, but he did not wish to risk insulting her family further by agreeing with her. She saw his uncertainty, and her face softened. “I am sorry,” she said. “I should not be plaguing you with this.”
“I hope you will always speak to me of your concerns,” he replied, “but I am uncertain about how to comfort you. I still can barely think about Georgiana’s near escape with any composure, and that was nearly a year ago. I suppose what comfort we may have is in the fact that they did escape.”
“Because of you,” she replied. “They escaped because of you.”
“Because of a merciful Providence,” he corrected her.
In the meantime, Mr. Bingley had been spending considerable time in Miss Bennet’s company, and it was inevitable that he should find out news which distressed him.
“She was in London, Darcy!” he told his friend in agitated fashion, back at Netherfield one evening. “She was in London the whole winter, and I never knew it!”
Darcy shifted uncomfortably. “Do you think it would have made a difference if you had known?”
“A difference? I don’t know, but—” He paced about a bit. “It might have given me some hope, to know that she had come so far, perhaps to be near me. And she visited my sisters! She wanted to continue the acquaintance!” He shook his head. “How could they not tell me?”
“They doubtless wished to spare you the pain her company might have caused.”
“It is not her company that causes me pain, Darcy, it is the lack of it! I had a right to know.”
Darcy sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Yes, Bingley, I suppose you did.”
“If I could express to you what I felt when she confessed that she had written letters that were never answered! She was so reluctant to say so—I had to press her before she would say so much—all from a wish to spare me pain! Caroline told me she never wrote at all. Darcy, I knew that my sisters did not wish me to marry her, but I never thought they would stoop to such means as this! To cut her acquaintance—to deceive me!”
“They acted as they thought best for your welfare.”
“No, no, you cannot convince me that my best interest was to be deceived—or that the pain such treatment must have caused Miss Bennet was justified!”
Darcy’s conscience was prompting him loudly. “What would you have done, if you knew she was in town? If you knew she had called on your sisters?”
“Oh, called on her, I suppose! I could not be so rude as to ignore her, whatever my sentiments and hers! And if I had seen her smile as she did here—! A man could live his life hoping for such a smile. If you knew, Darcy, how I ached to see her again, to just be near her—but you do know!” He transferred his gaze to the other man. “How would you have felt, I ask you, if—oh, say Lady Catherine suspected your attachment to Miss Elizabeth and conspired to keep you from knowing she was in Kent?”
There was a long silence. “I would have been very angry,” said Darcy at last.
“Of course you would have been! Any man would!”
Bingley subsided into silence, staring broodingly out the window in a manner much more reminiscent of his friend than himself.
Darcy closed his eyes, bracing himself. “Bingley,” he said eventually, “I knew she was in London.”
He swung around. “What?”
“Miss Bingley informed me she had arrived. She also told me that she had called and that they were delaying their return call so as to depress any pretensions she might have.”
Charles sputtered. “Pretentions!” he exclaimed. “Pretentions? Miss Bennet is the least pretentious woman I’ve ever met! Darcy, how could you?”
“I did not approve of their methods, but I saw no good that could come from your knowing of Miss Bennet’s proximity.” As his friend grew pale and struggled for composure, he stood. “You are right to be angry. I condescended to adopt the very sort of disguise that I have always hated.”
“You—you had no right!”
“No,” he spoke quietly. “I did not.” There was a further pause. “You and I both know how absurd my attempt to direct your affairs has turned out to be. I swear that I acted out of the best of intentions, but I see now that I took too much upon myself. You had every right in the world to choose your own wife, just as I have chosen mine.”
“I’m not a child, Darcy.”
“Of course you are not. For treating you as one, I sincerely apologize.”
Bingley eyed him broodingly for a minute or two and sighed. “You make it blasted hard to stay angry at you.”
Darcy smiled back in relief. “It is your good nature that makes you say so. I certainly deserve no such easy clemency.”
“I know. Look here, does Miss Elizabeth know about this?”
Again he grew uncomfortable. “We have not spoken of it.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Caroline to tell her, just for spite, you know.”
His brow darkened. “I hope she would come tell me directly if such a thing happened. Although . . . it is true I have sometimes thought she suspects that I played a role in your departure.”
Bingley seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. “I hope you know what you’re about,” he said instead.
“So do I, Bingley.”
“You must not think that I have forgiven you yet, for I haven’t.”
“Certainly not.” Darcy suppressed a smile.
“You will support my suit with Miss Bennet?”
“With all my heart if it’s what you want.”
“Well, of course it is! It’s what I’ve always wanted. If I can but win her love!”
“Yes,” murmured Darcy, turning away. “If I can but win her love!”
Darcy knew, in his most rational moments, that it was unreasonable to expect Elizabeth to have fallen in love with him in so few weeks, but the security he had once felt in such an eventuality was completely gone now. He had never known that it was possible to be so happy and unhappy at the same time, to delight in someone’s company even while suffering from it. It had been a little like this in Kent, but there the torment had been from thinking he could not let himself have her; behind it, there always lay the possibility of relief. He had struggled only with himself. Now it was not his own heart he contended with, but Elizabeth’s, and he was beginning to fear that there would be no relief.
He thought often of their last kiss. She had invited him to it and had responded. Yet she had been grateful to him, shaken and emotional. He could not place any dependence on that. He felt he could not place any dependence on any of it—not her smiles, not her teasing, not her laughter. She had always smiled and teased and laughed. Though she had begun to confide in him more, that seemed only natural under the circumstances. He thought she trusted him more, liked him more, surely, but he did not see what he wished to see when he looked in her eyes, what he saw when Jane Bennet’s eyes rested on his friend. The irony of it all cut more deeply than ever: the juxtaposition of Bingley’s circumstances and his own; Bingley’s choices and his own.
Nor did it help that he now felt guilty for h
is role in that affair an more than that, guilty for the fact that he had for so long concealed the truth of it from Elizabeth.
As promised, Darcy went with Elizabeth to pay a call on Mrs. Phillips. It was not a comfortable half hour, but it went off fairly well. Mrs. Phillips could not help but be vulgar, but she was very welcoming, and though she lamented the officers’ leaving nearly as loudly as her nieces, she told so many stories of Elizabeth as a child that Darcy could not help but smile.
He made other calls with her, stubbornly staying by her until she dismissed him and told him to go home. “We are to go to the Lucases’ next, and you will not like it.”
He hesitated. “I would not like to offend Sir William.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Collins are there,” she reminded him. They had arrived a few days ago, driven out of Hunsford by the force of Lady Catherine’s continued displeasure. Mr. Collins had adamantly refused to call at Longbourn. No one at that house lamented it, but he also refused to allow his wife to call, and that, Elizabeth had decided, would never do. No matter how awkward it was, she would see her friend. Having Darcy there, though, would make it even more uncomfortable.
“It would only be polite to pay Mrs. Collins my respects,” he said, although he noticeably cringed at the idea of enduring the parson.
“I will give them your regrets.” She laid her hand on his arm. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and it means a great deal to me, but I wish to have some private conversation with Charlotte, and I . . .” She bit her lip. “I cannot bear to subject you to him.” They both knew who he was.
“I should rather worry about you,” he said, his face darkening as he imagined her enduring her cousin’s reproaches and advice.
Unequal Affections: A Pride and Prejudice Retelling Page 28