Darcy haughtily said, “I assure you that my sentiments with regards to Miss Elizabeth are under excellent regulation. Only, I am notblindlike so many other gentlemen.”
“I have changed my opinion,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, laughing again. “I hear the wedding bells already.”
Darcy made a strong effort tonotthink about that. Images of Elizabeth that he suddenly found were imprinted in his memory with painful clarity flashed before him.
Dancing with her, her sweet small hand on his. Sitting in the library together, smiling and happy as Mr. Bennet snored next to them. Overhearing her voice that first night, “Mr. Darcy seems to be a more interesting man than Bingley.”
The image of her dressed in a fine silk gown, standing before a parson and smiling at him as he handed her a ring forced itself into his head despite his best efforts.
Damnation, he only admired her and wanted to see her happy. He did not mean to marry someone who was so wholly out of his sphere, not even if his cousin would find it hilarious.
Seeing that Darcy did not intend to say any more upon the matter, Hartley grimly said, “I suppose I should now explain—I no longer am at all convinced that my father murdered Lady Rochester and my half-sister.”
“What! No, no, no,” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed, sitting tall. “Take that back. I have bragged for years about how the half-brother of my least favorite uncle was the most notorious, unhanged, wife murderer in England.”
“Fitzwilliam,” Hartley replied with asperity, “this is not a joke. None of it is. It never was.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam opened his mouth with an expression that said he was about to explain that it was in fact a matter of amusement tohim. But he then thought better. “You are serious. Facts now.”
“Since his attack of apoplexy Papa has endlessly talked with this vicar who has a living three or four miles away. A fanatical young fellow, almost low church in his enthusiasm, though he does hold to the rites. Papa has thrown himself into the same enthusiasm for all that is Holy, and the gentleman of the cloth convinced my father with many sound arguments that he must forgive the adulterer and her spawn.”
“He still refers to them in those terms?” Darcy asked. “It makes me suspect the sincerity of this forgiveness.”
Lord Hartley shrugged. “That is between his soul and the Almighty.Mycommission was to go to London, hire a dozen of those fellows whose jobs are to find people to find Lady Rochester and Lady Elizabeth—though of course Papa, despite having forgiven them, will give neither the appellation of ‘Lady’.”
“He could be saying this to please his priest,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “And he may know perfectly well whichparticular six-foot-deep hole the Lady and her child can be found in.”
Bingley said, “I like to imagine that this is true, and that he is sincere. Maybe you always have thought worse of him than you ought?”
The other three gentleman turned to stare at him.
Bingley blushed. “My wife always says that she hates to think ill of anyone. Perhaps I am influenced by her.”
“Even if he did not murder them, he beat both my sister and my stepmother terribly. I can still remember the sound of his fists hitting Lizzy as she screamed and sobbed. With every blow he shouted, ‘bastard!’ Damn him. I do not care if she was my sister in blood or a transplanted sapling. She was barely five years of age.”
Silence all around.
Colonel Fitzwilliam poured himself, and then everyone else, a tumbler.
Hartley then wiped at his eyes. “And damn these tears. I can never think about that day without crying. No stomach tome.”
“I admire you,” Darcy said to Hartley. “You should cease to care that your father does not think highly of you.”
“Is it not ridiculous that I have this memory before his eyes, and yet his insults still stick under my skin?”
“Not ridiculous,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said.
Bingley had gone pale. He swallowed his port. “I had half-forgotten the details of that story you told us all at Harrow. Even Jane would judge him harshly.”
“You are no longer convinced that Lord Rochester murdered them?” Darcy asked, returning to the chief point. “And in any case you are to hunt the pair out so he may ‘forgive them’.”
“Even though he is a vicious terrible fellow,” Bingley said, “it speaks well of your father that he wishes to now forgive his wife.”
Darcy rolled his eyes.
“I have it!” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “It is part of a plan to have her declared dead in a way that does not put the blame on him. Wasn’t Lady Rochester’s fortune held separately in trust for her and her children? He must wantyouto inherit that extra sum. Didn’t the trustees refuse to pay anything out to him from the income? If they have reinvested everything, it must be a quite tidy sum by now.”
Bingley asked, “Couldn’t he petition a court to have her declared dead after seven years? Is that not what they do with sailors?”
