Page 11

OVERCOME WITH CONFUSION

Darcy sat glumly in the study at Rosings—the only room where he could be certain of being left to himself. Fitzwilliam and his aunt would assume he was reviewing the account books, which required peace and quiet.

But the account books lay unheeded on the desk before him, as the words he had carelessly, thoughtlessly tossed at a woman he had professed to love played repeatedly in his mind. Now, everlastingly too late, sense had returned, his long-running mental chaos quiet. Had he truly called her sisters ‘cabbage-headed’?

Yes, it seemed he had.

The inconsiderate, tactless words that had circled his brain for the last two weeks had been flushed out by a coarse explosion of unthinking disregard. So fixed had he been upon his own feelings, so absorbed was he inside his own thoughts, that he had almost forgotten to whom he spoke; he had lost any chance of earning her approbation the moment he lost his mind…which was, it seemed, any time she was near.

She had been surprised by his proposal. No, she had been shocked. He thought he had hinted of his feelings a dozen times, yet she was not obtuse. Instead, she had drawn different conclusions. Why? Somehow, he did not think it had much to do with his admittedly botched proposal, and yet…

“What are the odds that in every single even slightly romantic experience I have ever faced, I was an abysmal failure?” He asked it of himself aloud, the words sounding loud in the quiet of the chamber.

His mind ranged back over the years, to encounters both slight and important. The pattern, once he looked for it, was obvious: he had never even had to try.

Darcy knew he was not the most handsome man in the world. Neither was he the most intelligent. But the central fact of the matter was, that amongst the men he knew of equivalent wealth and property, he was the most handsome and the most intelligent. He had stood unrivalled, alone at the top of a very exclusive tree. It had never been a case of trying to earn a particular woman’s attention—it had been a matter of choosing amongst the women who were trying to earn his.

He had met Elizabeth Bennet, and made a singular, disastrous assumption: that she, too, would want him, simply because he existed. He had shoved her into a mental room where went the select few who had earned his approval, and expected her to be flattered. Expected her to like it. Expected her to love him.

“I have no talent with the fairer sex,” he muttered in glum realisation. He had not the talent because he had never taken the trouble to practise.

When the door suddenly opened, he thought it would be Fitzwilliam, and opened his mouth to send him away.

Rather, it was a different cousin who entered—the faded, frail Anne de Bourgh. Her seeking him out was unusual—long ago, they had both stopped confiding in one another, or exercising any other behaviour which might lead to a misinterpretation of their relationship. She sat down in the chair across from the wide polished desk. Her nails, he saw, were bitten to the quick. He bit back his own selfish impatience, in favour of listening to whatever his poor cousin had to say.

“What might I do for you, Anne?”

She looked at her feet instead of at him. “I think…no, I am certain that she knows everything. It is everything your father feared. She must have…she must have witnessed more than I have always hoped.”

Who witnessed what? Yet, it was plain that Anne believed he knew whereof she spoke. Well, he would try first for the who.

“Of whom do you speak?”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Why, Elizabeth Bennet. The Elizabeth that your father tried so diligently to find for me, before he died. He told me he would have you continue the search, and that he had made doubly sure of it in his will. Surely you must have suspected it to be her—I thought that is why you have been so gloomy of late. I know that seeing her again after all this time has done nothing for my nerves.”

He was shocked on more than one count. For her? His father had tried to find an Elizabeth Bennet for Anne? And the terms, so very generous, had something to do with Anne? Anne, who had hardly ever, he had always assumed, left Rosings Park in her entire life? Anne had something to do with Shoe Lane? He was utterly bewildered.

“Father said that the…Elizabeth Bennet he searched for was older, mature. Miss Bennet—the one visiting here…she would have been far too young at the time.”

“Fitzwilliam, it is her. I recognised her the instant I saw her again! When she gave me the money, she said it was from a lady, a lady named Elizabeth Bennet. I was so desperate at the time…it was a-a life-saving amount. But obviously, she…Elizabeth…spoke of herself in the third person. And she was so young, I thought it must be from someone else in the warehouse. But I always wondered… She seemed so very…very self-possessed. She still seems so. When she saw me! I saw it in her face—I saw the recognition! But she did not respond in any other way. I have tried, since, to tell myself that I did not see what I thought I saw. I have been preparing myself for a month to face her. But when she made an excuse not to come to Rosings after all these weeks…well, then I knew for certain. She could not have known who I was then, but now she knows, she knows it was me, and oh, you must get her away! Please! Please!” She began to sob, hysterically, almost violently.

It was all he could do to calm her sufficiently to send for Mrs Jenkinson, who soothed her charge enough to lead her to her own rooms.

Darcy was left with precisely one thousand uncertainties, questions, and difficulties. It was plain that whatever the situation, Anne could not bear further interrogation. In fact, he was sure that, had she not believed that Darcy was already fully aware of the mysterious details of her past troubles involving, somehow, a young Elizabeth, she never would have said a word to him. She was living—or existing, for he could not call her life one well-lived—under a heavy weight, indeed.

All he knew for certain was that it was, clearly, his Elizabeth Bennet who had given Anne two half-crowns, one shilling, a sixpence, and a penny six years ago.

Or, to be more precise, the Elizabeth who would never be his.

That Anne was ashamed was obvious. That Anne believed Elizabeth might someday reveal something shameful was also obvious.

The notion that Elizabeth would ever say anything, to anyone, of some mortifying event in Anne’s past, was ludicrous. She had known his cousin’s identity for nearly a month now; not only had she said nothing, not to her friends, not to him or Fitzwilliam, not to anyone, but she never would. He knew it. Just as he was certain she would never speak of his humiliating marriage proposal.

The bequest, nevertheless, suddenly made a kind of sense. Elizabeth had witnessed something appalling six years ago that Anne—and his own father—desperately wished she had not. At the same time, Elizabeth had given his cousin a handful of money that Anne had urgently required. The legacy was most likely not so much a reward, however, as a bribe.

Never mind it. They were wrong. But somehow, in some way, he would see that Elizabeth received it regardless.

If he had to spend the rest of his life trying.