These Three Remain (55 page)

Their tasks completed, the servants withdrew, and Darcy turned back to his aunt. “I do not take your meaning, Ma’am. What falsehood is this?”

“You have not heard it?” A small smile escaped Lady Catherine’s pursed lips and then was briskly packed away. “But then, it is too incredible for anyone of sense to repeat.” She leveled a censorious countenance upon him. “Nevertheless, Nephew, it must be vigorously denied, especially on your part, and its originator proved a fraud.”

Never one to leap at his aunt’s willful commands, Darcy felt his patience with her odd reluctance to come to the point vanish. “Perhaps, Ma’am, I could more easily put this and your mind to rest if I knew what it is that has excited your apprehension.”

Lady Catherine’s eyes widened disapprovingly at his tone, but he could see she was not checked. Rather, she appeared on the verge of apoplexy. “That young person…toward whom I extended my interest last spring…the friend of my rector’s new wife —”

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet?” Darcy was incredulous. Good Lord, had his assistance on behalf of Lydia Bennet been made public?

“The same! She has shown herself to be in every way undeserving of the notice she received from me. That woman has industriously set about the rumor that
she
is shortly to become Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy!” At the last, Lady Catherine pounded the tip of her walking stick on the floor and sat back, her eyes trained upon his face.

The shock of her words could in nowise excuse the need to maintain the utmost self-control, Darcy knew, as his heart jumped faster, blood and ice running crazily through his veins. “I see,” he managed to reply in an even tone and quickly turned away to the settee across the low table from the one his aunt occupied. He sat down.

“Do you, indeed, Darcy? The tale is already spread in Hertfordshire and came to me in Kent not three days ago. I acted upon it immediately, of course, and have done what could be done.” What had his aunt done? Elizabeth…oh, he was wild to know! Yet if he hoped to wrest all he needed from his aunt’s iron grasp on these events, he must disguise his own emotions and play upon her prejudices with care.

“What I see,” he enlightened her, “is that you are quite overset by a report concerning Miss Elizabeth Bennet. From whence has it come? Is the source reliable?”

His aunt relaxed her grip on her walking stick and then set it aside. “Upon two counts, it is from the best authority. My rector, Mr. Collins, brought it to my attention, and besides being my clergyman, he is related to the woman. Also, she is his wife’s intimate friend. There can be no mistake, Nephew.”

“Perhaps.” Darcy drew out the word as he leaned forward to avail himself of the shield of a cup of tea. From Collins, was it? In truth, it must have been from his wife. A letter from Elizabeth? Or from Lucas Lodge? “In what form did the report arrive, Ma’am?”

“In what form? I had it from Collins’s own lips, Darcy!” She bridled a little at his raised brow but then relented. “A letter, evidently, from his wife’s family imparting the news of the engagement of the eldest Bennet daughter to your friend.” Her voice rose. “Soon to be followed, it was supposed, by your own nuptials with the next daughter. This vicious rumormongering is not to be borne!” The walking stick she’d picked up in her passion came down again with a resounding thud.

Darcy shook his head. “My dear aunt, my name has been coupled with those of any number of young ladies over the years. Rumors all. Complete fabrications. Why should you be distressed by this latest?”

“Because,” she retorted, “you…or rather, she” her mouth snapped shut, and for a moment she could only glare at him. He returned the favor with as much innocence as he could contrive, but in fact her answer to his question was essential. There had to be something more than an idle report to have put Her Ladyship in such a state.

“Please, continue, Ma’am.”

“Oh!” she burst forth. “If you would just have allowed your engagement to your cousin to be published, this could not have happened! The girl could not have presumed to begin with, or lacking that, I would have her promise —”

“Her promise!” Darcy shot to his feet. “What have you done? Have you communicated with Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

“Do not imagine, Darcy, that a letter is sufficient to put an end to matters such as this. I confronted that person to her face with her —”

Everything in Darcy went cold. “When?” he demanded, “when did you speak with her? What did you say?”

“This very morning, sir, and was met with an obscene impertinence and ingratitude the like of which I pray I never encounter again!”

Darcy walked slowly away to the window, the better to overcome the horror her words had engendered. Horror soon gave way to a caldron of indignation for himself, but more so for Elizabeth. By the time he faced his aunt again, his rioting emotions had coalesced into a rigid anger that could not be hidden. “Am I to understand,” he began in a precise, demanding tone, “that you traveled to Hertfordshire to tax Miss Elizabeth Bennet with this rumor and then required some sort of promise of her? Good God, Madam! To what purpose and by what right do you interfere in a matter that is properly mine to resolve?”

A martial light glinted in Lady Catherine’s eye. She straightened and, grasping her walking stick, stamped it again on the floor. “By right of your closest relative and in your best interest!” She rose and addressed him scathingly. “Yes,
your
interest! Oh, I saw your weakness when she was about Rosings last spring, but I could not credit that you would so lose yourself to her arts and allurements — and under my own roof! — as to encourage any pretensions! Should I have put this into your hands, what might have come of it? If she will not be moved by claims of duty, honor, and gratitude, how else shall she be worked on save by the truth of what would await her presumption? And that I am entirely within my right to tell her! She shall not stand in the way of your duty to your family or my daughter’s rightful happiness!”

Darcy rounded the table, returning her hawkish eye with all the cold anger her words and actions had birthed. “You have far overreached yourself, madam. There can be no excuse sufficient to pardon your interference in so personal an affair as you describe or to harangue one so wholly unrelated to you yet subject to your whims by your advantage of rank.”

“If I had brought it to you, you would only have denied it! Then where should we be? She, at least, did not deny —”

“Deny what?” Darcy’s hands itched to shake the woman before him, aunt or no. “How did you leave it with her?”

“She would promise me nothing! Though I plied her with every disadvantage attendant upon such a marriage, she would have none of it! She refused to promise not to enter into an engagement if such were offered. Obstinate, headstrong girl! And so I told her! She is determined to ruin you! She is set upon making you the joke of the world.”

Something like hope broke through the ice that had encased Darcy’s heart. She would not promise! She had suffered the most outrageous invasion of her privacy and inquisition of her character, yet she would not promise! Elizabeth…A warm feeling arose in his chest which he longed to nurture. If it were ever to become more, he must clear its path, a task that he must begin immediately.

“Your Ladyship.” Darcy stepped back and bowed. “I must be clear. Your actions in regard to Miss Elizabeth Bennet I can never approve or condone. Perhaps, however, I am somewhat at fault.”

“Humph!” his aunt snorted, a glimmer of triumph in her aspect. “That I should have to remind George Darcy’s son what he owes to himself and his family!”

“No, Madam, my fault lies in another direction entirely. A nuptial between Anne and me is something neither of us desires and never has.” Her Ladyship gasped, but Darcy cut her off. “I should have made that quite clear years ago, but instead, I took the easier path of silence at your hints and maneuverings in the hope that you yourself might see how impossible it would be. I must humbly beg your pardon for what I see now was not only cowardly but cruel.”

“Darcy, you cannot…Anne expects —”

“My cousin does not expect marriage from me. We have spoken of this and are agreed. My cruelty lies in allowing you to labor under a hopeless delusion rather than be forthright concerning the truth of our situation. For that, I beg pardon, Ma’am.” He bowed again.

His aunt for once was speechless. Her face contorted with the effort to assimilate what she had heard. She turned away, turned back as if to speak, and turned away again. Finally, with agonizing effort, her disappointment was cast aside and she rallied her other flank. “Be that as it may, Nephew, you will never impose that…that…
woman
upon your family! You cannot possibly mean to do so against all their wishes and expectations!”

“Madam!” Darcy warned.

“Such an alliance lies in opposition to all interest! She will not be received, have no doubt of that! Who is her family? They can claim no connections or standing save being the subject of the vilest scandal! The youngest daughter — surely you have heard of that! — run off with an officer to London! A patched-up, tawdry affair!”

“Madam, no more!” Darcy thundered, and for a moment his aunt quailed.

Hastily, she cast about for her shawls and hat. Clutching them to her, she turned upon him in such wrath as he had never seen. “I will
not
be silent! I am your nearest relation and must stand in the place of your parents. It is for their sakes and yours that I tell you marriage to that woman would be a disgrace!” Darcy stared at her in stony silence.

“If you persist in this folly,” she railed at him, “Rosings will be closed to you, your name will never be mentioned in my hearing, and I will forswear you as any relation of mine!”

“So be it, Madam; as you wish.” Darcy bowed to her once more and then strode to the door. “Lady Catherine’s carriage,” he called down the hall and, turning, held the door open for her. “Your Ladyship.”

“Do not think that I shall be the only one to object to such a misalliance!” Lady Catherine continued as she swept past him and down the stairs. “I shall write your uncle, Lord Matlock, immediately! He will make you see sense. He will cause you to know…”

Only when the door was closed behind her could Darcy release the breath that he’d held in anger against his aunt’s innumerable insults. Stepping to the window, he observed her storm out into the street below. Her carriage swaying under her fury, her driver pulled swiftly away from the curb and set the horses to a hurried trot. Well might she hurry, he thought, as he took up the decanter and poured himself a drink. Good God! He had never been so close to…! He picked up the glass and tossed down a portion. Then setting it down, he strode to the door, then back again. That impossible woman! He took another drink. What had she done! Standing in the middle of the room, his breath coming in chuffs, he raked his hand through his hair. Elizabeth so accosted! He shook his head. What could his aunt have heard that would send her posthaste to Hertfordshire? A mere rumor? No, he decided. There must have been more. He held his breath, attempting to calm himself enough to think rationally. What
had
his aunt done? What had been the actual result of her outrageous presumption?

Sitting down on the settee, he returned to the material truths of the entire extraordinary interview. Elizabeth would not promise
not
to accept him. That was what had so infuriated his aunt. Did he dare believe the converse? Would she accept him? Her manner during his last visit would never have tempted him to believe that she would. Why had she not said as much and been spared such insults? Was it her heart or her anger that had turned back Lady Catherine’s every demand? How was he ever to know unless he returned to Hertfordshire?

“Witcher!” he bellowed down the stairs. “Witcher!”

“Sir?” The old butler appeared, a look of apprehension on his face at such goings-on in the usually sedate confines of Erewile House.

“Order my traveling coach and send Fletcher up to pack. I wish to be gone in the morning!”

“Yes, sir!” the butler replied and scuttled off belowstairs as quickly as his old legs could carry him to deliver the master’s extraordinary demands to an already scandalized household.

“Have faith and wait,” Dy had counseled. Now, as he looked out the coach’s window at the passing scenery of a Hertfordshire afternoon, he could easily imagine the scene that had taken place. How imperious and insufferable his Aunt Catherine could be under the most modest of irritations, he knew very well; but in this, her passion had been thoroughly roused. It must have been terrible for Elizabeth to have been its object, yet she had with-stood it and refused to bow to demands easily met had she decided against him. For the hundredth time since yesterday, he wondered what was her mind and whether by returning to Hertfordshire he was committing folly enough to match all he had ever committed in his life.

In less time by the watch than his anxious thoughts could credit, his coach was rolling up Netherfield’s drive, and the house came into view. He had sent no letter announcing his return, and Bingley’s expectations of it were vague, as Darcy had wanted them to be in case he decided against it. His friend might not be home. But as the coach drew up to the house, the door opened, and Bingley stood at the entrance with a look of pure delight upon his open countenance.

“Darcy! I say, Darcy!” he exclaimed as he came down the steps to meet him. “This is above everything!” He grabbed his friend’s hand as soon as Darcy descended from the coach.

“Charles,” he began, “I apologize for giving you no warning —”

“Nonsense,” Bingley replied. “I am that glad that you are here. I am about to run mad with no one with whom to share my good fortune. Here, you must come in. I have so much to tell you!” Refreshment was ordered as Bingley pulled him into the library and begged him to be seated.

“But, Charles, my dirt!” Darcy indicated the traveling dust that had settled on his arms and shoulders.

“Dirt be hanged, Darcy!” Bingley laughed. A servant knocked and entered with the tray, but almost before the door shut behind him Bingley burst forth. “I am engaged!…Engaged to the loveliest angel in the world! My beautiful Jane has consented, and her father agreed. We are to be married, Darcy, married!” He laughed again. “Can you believe it, for I cannot! It is too wonderful!”