A Perilous Match

Chapter 9

A low tenderness in Mr Darcy’s voice startled Elizabeth, though she looked away to conceal her reaction and the unexpected frisson that curled up her spine. They had been thrown together often since that unfortunate day in Kent, but never had she felt his past words so close to the surface as now.

Elizabeth did not know what to make of Mr Darcy’s visit. It had been six days since their dining at Darcy House and she’d neither seen nor heard from him, though Miss Darcy and Mrs Annesley had called upon them at Gracechurch Street. Mr Darcy was even absent when Mr Bingley called upon Jane or escorted her to Hyde Park. She had expected to see him not two days ago when Colonel Fitzwilliam had called, and even allowed herself to be disappointed when he did not follow his cousin.

That was a confusing and shocking revelation all on its own. She liked him, well enough at least to note and miss his absence and to be ashamed of some of her intemperate words in the past. There were times when she was inclined to believe her aunt and sister’s supposition that Mr Darcy meant to secure her good opinion, even court her properly. But then, he had not called, and such behaviour recalled to her the unlikelihood of a man proposing twice. Not that she wanted him to court her.

Mr Darcy was a teasing man and she had been resolved to think no more about him, even when her name almost appeared in another mention in the Post alongside his own.

Except now he was here and looking decidedly unnerved.

They had lapsed into uncomfortable silence upon the delivery of tea. Elizabeth was glad of the occupation of pouring, for she was reminded too much of their awkward meetings in Kent. There was a comfortable neutrality in asking how he took his tea, one sugar, no milk or cream.

“We must have some conversation, Lord Dorset,” she teased. “It would be odd to be sitting together drinking tea in silence, do not you think?”

Mr Darcy smiled at this returning thread in their conversation. “Ah, but am I not of the taciturn disposition that is disinclined to say anything unless it be to amaze the whole room?”

She laughed that he could mock himself agreeably. “You may speak of whatever you like, my lord, and I will be sure to be amazed.”

Mr Darcy raised an eyebrow in evident amusement. “You are too kind, Miss Bennet.” He still appeared unsettled somehow. He took a drink of his tea and then lay it to the side, forgotten.

“I know that our friendship has often been rocky, my lord, but we have come a long way, have we not?”

Mr Darcy started, his eyes gleaming at the import of her words. “Are we friends then, Miss Bennet?”

Elizabeth cleared her throat to disguise her embarrassment. “I suppose we might be,” she murmured and unnecessarily added another cube of sugar to her tea. It would be too sweet for her tastes, but her hands must have some occupation or she’d take them up to her cheeks to feel the heat of her blushes.

“I should not ask such a question which seems to beg for some reassurance on your part,” Mr Darcy amended. “I have been remiss in apologising to you for my words in Kent—I do not apologise for the sincere admiration behind my declaration, but the mode of delivery was not…”

She smiled ruefully. “I imagine that we both have cause to repine our behaviour that wretched day and would wish unsaid many things.”

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “but you were honest and I cannot fault you for that honesty nor the defence of your sister and your family.”

“Knowing her goodness, who would not defend Jane?”

He smiled wryly. “Yes, who would not?”

“But you have already apologised for separating Mr Bingley from my sister and remedied the fault by bringing them together again. I hope that you do not feel you must apologise once more, Lord Dorset.”

“No,” he muttered and looked away. Neither of them mentioned Mr Wickham, though the thought of him lingered in Elizabeth’s mind and she felt that the unspoken accusation must be so present for Mr Darcy too. He had warned her to be careful of Mr Wickham and yet had never explained himself. This she did not say.

“What brings you here today, Lord Dorset?” she asked for lack of anything else to say.

He shifted uncomfortably and clinched his jaw. She wondered if he would retreat to the windows as he had often done at Netherfield and Rosings; but he did not, and when he turned to her again, she flushed at the vulnerability in his expression.

He shifted again and leaned forwards, placing his forearms upon his knees.

“My lord?” She set her own teacup aside.

“Miss Bennet,” he began. His voice was quiet but full of meaning. “Do I have any hope that you could—in the future—reconsider my suit?”

He winced, though whether it was for the awkwardness of their present situation or the recollection of Hunsford, she could not say.

For her part, she was supremely embarrassed. She grasped the fabric at her knees, clinching and causing wrinkles from the sweat of her palms. So her aunt and sister had been right. Yet, it didn’t make sense. She had refused him, absolutely and irrevocably refused him. He was not Mr Collins with his feigned knowledge of the coquetry of ladies. There had been no mistake then, though her present feelings for the gentleman were quite confused.

“I- Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you want me? Especially after …” She resisted a strong urge to flee. It wouldn’t do to leave him here while she escaped upstairs to her room or to the crowded street merely to avoid this dreadful embarrassment.

Mr Darcy leaned back and looked at her gravely for a long moment. It was not an expression she had ever seen from him. There was sadness, yes, and something of resignation, but it prickled at the back of her neck until she determinedly looked away.

“You do not believe that I sincerely admire you,” he declared with some wonder, almost as though he were speaking to himself.

“I do not know what to believe, my lord. Until that day in Hunsford, I’d never seen any evidence that you… well, I often thought your gaze critical and I wondered what was so especially offensive about me,” she confessed and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I should not have—”

“No!” he interrupted. “I would know what you are thinking. I- I have often read you wrong and I cannot make the same mistake again.”

She could not meet his eyes.

“Though I am sorry that you should have thought that I ever looked upon you so critically.”

She scoffed quietly as the words of his initial insult resounded in her head.

Not handsome enough to tempt me.

His pronouncement upon their introduction had deeply wounded her pride. She could hardly believe that he had gone from dismissive to admiring in only some short months.

“Miss Bennet,” he said softly, “I do sincerely admire you and I do not regret that confession. It has been many months since I have considered you the handsomest woman of my acquaintance.”

Her cheeks must be perfect vermillion and she did not refrain from pressing her hands idly to the heated flesh as she turned to Mr Darcy again. He was still leaning back in his seat, his expression soft and vulnerable. A single errant curl had fallen onto his forehead.

“You cannot mean that,” she murmured.

“But it is not only your beauty that I admire, Miss Bennet, but the liveliness of your mind, your wit and intelligence, your kindness.” He started to lean forwards again, but held himself back, watching her carefully.

Elizabeth’s hands seemed to flutter of their own accord so she smoothed her wrinkled dress and then rested them upon her lap before getting up entirely and moving towards the window. Goodness, had he spoken so at Hunsford she might have been kinder in her refusal and more cognisant of any pain she inflicted.

“I did not mean to make you uneasy, Miss Bennet.” He got up, but did not move closer, for which she was grateful. Her nerves flared hot.

“I am only astonished, my lord.”

“I still want to marry you, Miss Bennet.”

Her eyes widened. She longed to ask why again but refrained from any question which would seem purposely to ask for reassurances of his admiration. Instead, she settled upon, “But you are now a marquess and I am only the daughter of a simple country gentleman. If our stations were so disparate before, they are only more so now.”

“It was but a trick of fate that led me to this title,” he insisted. “I was born a gentleman and you are a gentlewoman. So far, we are equal.”

“That was not your opinion only a month ago, my lord.”

He grimaced. “I will forever regret my words then, Miss Bennet.”

“But do you regret the sentiment behind them?” she asked with an arched brow and glanced out the window again, idly watching the traffic below to still her nerves.

“I regret that I ever made you feel inferior in any way.”

It was a pretty sentiment, but not an answer to her question.

“My lord, I will be candid if you will hear me,” she said.

“Miss Bennet,” he said wryly, “you have only ever been candid with me.”

She smiled a little and took a deep breath, before turning to face Mr Darcy completely again. His earnest expression did things she could not explain to her insides.

“I have seen firsthand the consequences of an unequal marriage and I do not wish that for myself. I want a partner to share my burdens and my joys and someone who respects me as I respect him,” she confessed. Her voice was tremulous and she was jittery with the knowledge that these words lent credence to his previous observation of her parents. “I would never want my husband to be embarrassed and to resent my presence in his life.”

“And you do not feel that I can be that partner.”

She frowned. “I do not know, my lord.”

“You must know that I respect you utterly and completely.”

“Do you?”

He flushed. “I respect your family because they are your family, Miss Bennet.”

“Perhaps you do, my lord,” she acknowledged, doubt still creeping into her tone. “But I wonder that you respect me enough for marriage.”

“I do not- I have not the privilege of understanding you.”

Elizabeth took another deep breath. “There is still the matter of Mr Wickham,” she said, noting how he stiffened and clinched his jaw at the mention of Mr Wickham. But he did not interrupt and motioned for her to continue.

“You have said—warned me, really—that Mr Wickham may not be all that he appears to be, yet, you do not apparently respect me enough to tell me why nor answer any questions I may have.”

“You have not asked me any questions regarding Wickham,” he said defensively.

She raised an eyebrow. “Do not evade the point, my lord, I beg you.”

“I am not evading anything, Miss Bennet,” he replied.

“Why is Mr Wickham not to be trusted?”

Mr Darcy groaned and pressed a hand to his brow in frustration. “I do not wish to argue about Wickham.”

“Nor do I,” she answered, “but I do wish to hear your story as I have heard his.”

“I can only imagine what Wickham may have told you.”

“That you denied him a living explicitly meant to be his in your father’s will.”

“And you take him for his word, but not mine?” he asked hotly.

“What reasons have you given me to believe you on this matter, my lord?”

“I told you that he is not to be trusted, that he is not an honourable man.”

“But you did not provide me with any sort of explanation. Am I only to trust your proclamation and nothing else? At least Mr Wickham explained to me the reason behind your enmity.”

“I suppose his happy manners give him some credibility, shallow as they may be.”

“I have the ability to reason, my lord.” Elizabeth bit her lip against further retort. “You do not respect me to tell me the truth—that was the point I wished to make, my lord. You wish to make me your wife, yet you will not trust me with an explanation? You must see how I—” she paused, feeling her hackles rise.

Mr Darcy looked at her again and softened. He joined her at the window but kept a respectable distance. In the sunlight, she noticed his pained expression. “I apologise, Miss Bennet. I fear that Wickham brings out the worst in me.”

“Yes, he does,” she agreed and saw that he looked at her fondly.

“Lord Dorset, marriage for a woman will determine her whole life for good or ill. Men, when they have chosen wrongly, may find escape in other avenues—perhaps in careers and interests that take them out of the home. Their whole identities are their own, their respectability their own. But for women, a wrong choice will ruin her life. When we marry, we become an extension of our husbands, join their households and take their names. Our lives are hardly our own—and that is even before the arrival of children. We have no escape nor hope of one if we marry badly. Marriage is our vocation and our life,” she explained. “Even if we are so fortunate to possess wealth or marry a title.”

His expression was still soft and grave, but he looked at her for a long moment as she met his eyes unwavering. He must understand her predicament. She had only a few times to answer yes or no in freedom and she would make them count.

“That is why I must know about Mr Wickham. I must know whether the man who asks to marry me has a resentful temper.”

Mr Darcy remained silent for a moment longer and then he nodded. “Wickham is the son of my father’s steward and a former governess for the daughters of my late uncle, the Marquess,” he began. He told her of the special interest that Lord George Darcy had taken in giving the young Wickham a gentleman’s education, that early recognising Wickham’s intelligence and potential, he paid for his schools and formed him for the Church, too often spoiling him along the way.

“My mother did not appreciate the preference, nor the fact that people began to talk of Wickham being my father’s natural child.”

“Good God!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” Mr Darcy said with a grim smile. “One could hardly blame her. It was untrue, of course. My father was utterly devoted to my mother. Theirs was a ‘true partnership’ as you so eloquently described earlier.”

He took a deep breath. “From a young age, I recognised that Wickham was ill-suited for religious life. I cannot relate such details that are unsuitable for a lady’s ears, but I will say that by the time we were at Cambridge, Wickham’s habits were not those of a gentleman, let alone those of a clergyman. My father was always loath to believe in any fault of his favourite and Wickham knew how to exploit his affection.”

The distaste in Mr Darcy’s voice was clear.

“My lord, I do not know what to say.”

He shrugged. “My father did leave the Kympton living for his godson as soon as it became vacant. However, Wickham had no wish to become a vicar—and had never taken orders. Thus, he asked for, and was granted, the sum of three thousand pounds in lieu of the living. Within three years, he had lost the entire sum at the gaming tables.”

Elizabeth gasped. “I am sorry. I do not know what to say,” she said again.

“There is another, more painful affair between Wickham and my family that I cannot disclose to you, Miss Bennet. Believe me when I say that it is not a lack of respect or trust that forbids disclosure, but it is not my story to tell.”

Elizabeth swallowed and nodded. She believed Mr Darcy, every word, for—though much worse than anything she suspected of him—Mr Darcy’s intelligence met her own suspicion. “I thank you for confiding what must be painful indeed.”

“I should have said something before, but I have always been reluctant to expose my business before the world. Should you wish for further verification, you may speak with my cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. He knows of all my dealings with Wickham.”

His words stung. She had believed Mr Wickham upon very little acquaintance and now felt the impropriety of his confession before virtual strangers. How quickly the story of Mr Darcy’s unjust behaviour had spread, though Mr Wickham had first suggested that he wanted to keep the matter private. What a fool she had been.

She sighed. “I have been so wilfully blind.”

“You are not the first to be taken in by Wickham,” he said with a quiet sadness.

“You need not find excuses for me,” she said. “My vanity was taken by his flattery. It is not pleasant to be confronted with such a picture of oneself.”

“I can find nothing wanting in you, Miss Bennet.”

She laughed, a nervous sort of laughter that might have been touched by bitterness had she any right to that sentiment. She was ashamed of herself. “I do not see how you can say such things to me, my lord.”

“I only speak the truth. You do not—cannot—see what a wonder you are.”

Elizabeth coloured. “Lord Dorset…” but she knew not how to continue or what she would say.

“You say that you want an equal partnership and someone who will value you. I can give you that, I promise you. I value you now, your intelligence and independence. I will not trap you in any sort of cage like Sterne’s wretched bird.”

The image from Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey ran through her mind, the pitiful creature beating its breast against the cage and crying for the futility of its liberator. “I cannot get out,” said the starling, “I cannot get out.” That Mr Darcy read such things too, appreciated and valued them thrilled her, and made her understand his disposition better.

“I am no trapped starling,” she argued.

“You are wasted in Hertfordshire, Miss Bennet. You were meant for more than obscurity,” Mr Darcy said, risking another step towards her, since anger was absent in her tone.

“I suppose you mean to be my liberator from such fate.”

“I would have you raised to a station more suited to your worth. What a wonder you’d be as a marchioness.”

She arched a brow. “Your marchioness, I suppose?”

“Of course,” he smiled, “but then, I felt much the same when I wanted to make you Mrs Darcy.”

She sighed again. “Lord Dorset, my opinion of your character has improved greatly since we parted in Kent. However, I do not care for you in the way that a wife should care for her husband.”

“I am well aware of that, Miss Bennet,” he said, smiling wryly. “You made your feelings quite clear on that point in the past. I do not expect so quick a revolution in your sentiments. However, I do feel that we are suited for one another. Your idea of marriage coincides with my own, and your loyalty and independence of spirit is a rarity in my world. I would treasure such a disposition in my wife.”

“Are you asking me to marry you again?”

“I would do so if I thought that I could obtain your consent.”

“Even with the knowledge that I do not love you?”

Mr Darcy looked away from her. He’d spoken of admiration and respect this afternoon but said not a word of love. The lack bothered her more than it should have, perhaps, since her own feelings did not—could not—rise to such a height. Perhaps he did not love her now, whatever their supposed compatibility, though his admiration had not faded. That was a selfish thought, was it not?

“My parents did not marry for love,” he said, “but they were very happy. In the end, they were entirely devoted to one another.”

“Perhaps it does happen in that way for some couples,” Elizabeth acknowledged, “but it does not often happen for most.” She paused, and then added reluctantly, “I wanted to marry for love.”

Mr Darcy took a deep breath and reached out to take both of her hands. Neither wore gloves, and she was rooted to the sight of their bare flesh touching, the large warmth of his hands cradling hers. His thumbs swept over her knuckles. She swallowed thickly but allowed him the liberty.

At the very least, she was not indifferent to him. She was not unaware of the sheer beauty of his form and flushed under the watchfulness of his solemn eyes.

“Let us not speak of love this afternoon, Miss Bennet.” He stopped there, and she recalled his previous declaration. In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

“We have this afternoon confessed all manner of things, but I find that I have another confession to make.”

She started and he released her hands. She still felt the warmth of his touch. “Tell me quickly then.”

“I have heard through my aunt, Lady Catherine, that your father has been trying to break the entail upon Longbourn. I will help you in that endeavour whether you accept my suit or not.”

Elizabeth gasped. Mr Darcy seemed determined to surprise her today. “Mr Collins wants a great deal of money to break it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“We are friends, are we not?”

She smiled at this parrot of her words. “Whatever else we are,” she admitted, “we must be friends after the last few weeks.” In another moment, she added, “I appreciate your willingness to help, but I could not allow it. It wouldn’t be your place to involve yourself in this affair, most especially when your aunt is connected to the matter.”

“Perhaps not, but I have never agreed with entails, and the undue burden placed upon families, especially women. It is not fair for you or your sisters to lose your inheritance to such a man.”

She acknowledged the unfairness, but it was the way of the world.

Mr Darcy could not resist adding a sly argument. “If I were your husband, Miss Bennet, it would be no impropriety to assist your father in breaking the entail. It would be done, regardless of the cost.”

“My lord Dorset, one would almost think that you mean to bribe me into accepting a proposal you have not yet rendered,” she teased, though there was a thread of truth.

“Perish the thought,” he replied. “But I am not above using every argument in my favour.”

“I see that you are not.” Elizabeth took a step back. “But I am not mercenary, my lord.”

“No, but you are practical, Miss Bennet.”

“Then let us speak in practicalities, Lord Dorset. I will not marry you to break the entail of Longbourn, and I will not marry you without the affection and respect necessary for future marital happiness. I would not make either of us unhappy.”

Mr Darcy frowned. “Do I have no hope then that you may seriously consider our discussion today?”

Elizabeth pursed her lips. “If we were to marry now, I am certain you would grow to resent me for my very acceptance. I do not… a marriage of unequal affection seems a recipe for future misery.”

“I concur, Miss Bennet but I am in good hopes that this may change one day. Rest assured that I have no desire to impose upon you this day. But I would ask that you give me the courtesy of considering my proposal in your own time. One never ought to be pressed into making decisions of his magnitude with haste,” he said and folded his hands in his lap.

“You are quite right, sir. But I can assure you that my mind is made up,” she said but he raised a hand to stop her.

“I understand but as a friend and as a courtesy to me and that friendship I request once more—do consider it on your own, when you have a chance to truly ponder if it would be such a terrible match and if you conclude that it is and would be, then I shall take your answer as final and not trouble you again,” he concluded.

Thus, Elizabeth found herself perplexed and utterly speechless for she knew his question was reasonable and brooked no argument.

“Very well, sir. If it pleases you to wait, then I shall ponder the question in my own time and return an answer after due consideration.”