“And then he would remind everyone that he murdered his wife,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “I would not in his place.”
“I do not think my father’s chief motivation has ever been mercenary. I know you will disagree, Fitzwilliam.Youdearly wish to keep the distinction of being related to a wife murderer.”
“No really, but how much money is it?” Colonel Fitzwilliam said.
“More than forty thousand by now,” Lord Hartley said. “Which is enough to convince you that you are right. But my father’s manner suggested sincerity. Maybe I should not even be surprised if they are alive. The inquest established that Lady Rochester had fled.”
“I am sure,” Colonel Fitzwilliam declared, “thatIcould convince an inquest, especially one led by my brother—”
“Sir Lewis had only been one of the investigators, he did not lead the group,” Lord Hartley objected.
“Icould convince them that a woman had fled, when she’d been patted into a neat little bed of earth, helping the flowers to grow.”
Everyone else grimaced.
“It is true,” Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “Human remains are as good as fish. Better than manure, the best fertilizer available except for the droppings of a bat. If you ever visit the land where a great battle was fought, you can see a year later the lines of combat by how thickly the grasses grow where the men died and bled out into the soil.”
After saying that, Colonel Fitzwilliam got that look in his eye again which suggested memories most unpleasant.
“And so, with our spirits much enlivened bythatthought,” Lord Hartley said, “might I assume that none ofyouhave lately seen Lady Rochester or her daughter?”
“How would I know if I’d seen her daughter?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked. “I barely knew the mother. But I remember that Lady Rochester was a fine looking woman. A damned pity, all of it. If he did not murder them, I do not know that his crimes are at all comparable to placing a false child into the line of succession. That is a deep sin as well.”
“Beating a child can never be justified.” Darcy remembered Miss Bennet, Mrs. Bingley now, telling him about how Elizabeth had been terribly beaten when she first came to the Bennets.
“I am surprised,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “that you treat such a matter with casualness. As the master of a great estate, you are particularly vulnerable to such a loss.”
“A man ought to be sure of his wife and her integrity before he marries,” Darcy replied.
“And,” Lord Hartley added, “he ought to pay her proper attention so that she does not have reason to stray. My father had always been unkind and harsh to Lady Rochester. The Lord knows that I know she sinned, and that what she did to my father in cuckolding him was wrong. But, Jove, I saw enough oftheir habits to know that I must never treat my own wife in a like manner when I marry.”
“There are many women who are perfectly well treated, whose husbands believed them to be virtuous when they married, and who nonetheless cuckold them.” Colonel Fitzwilliam stretched his legs out on the deep piled red rug. “Neither of you have enough experience of the ‘fairer’ sex, and as a result you still believe them to befair, when they are not. Your average woman is as cunning as any Spanish guerrilla.”
“You would beat children to convince their mothers to never stray?” Lord Hartley asked angrily.
“No, no. I do not say that,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “Bingley, you have not been engaged too much in the dispute, so you are a safe party to ask. That is not what I said, is it?”
“No, not me. I hate disputes,” Bingley replied. “I would much prefer if you both left off the argument.”
“That is why you are the best unbiased party,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.
“But what did you say?” Bingley frowned deeply as he tried to remember. “I think that you said that Lord Rochester’s sin was no worse than that of Lady Rochester. Assuming that he had not murdered either of them.”
“Yes, yes. And that is what I will stand by.” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I do not try to diminish your father’s guilt, but merely to make clear that Lady Rochester is a woman who deserves no one’s sympathy—not even if Lord Rochester was the worst of husbands.”
“I cannot agree,” Darcy said. “Perhaps if he had only beaten Lady Rochester—no, even then he would have acted very wrongly.”
“I donotdisagree on that point,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.
“He terribly beat an innocent child,” Darcy said, “for a cause that had no source in anything she had ever done.Thatis worse. That is unjustifiable. I would never be friends with an adulterous woman, but I will despise a man who beats a child for spite.”
“The legitimacy of all of the great in the land depends on the line of succession being clear,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.
“To make a husband raise the child of a lover is a deep crime against the husband,” Darcy agreed. “I do not disagree. I simply say that the repugnance I feel towards a man who severely beats a child is far greater. Perhaps this is because I have a dear friend who was beaten as a child, and it affected her deeply, but I have never known a man who was forced to raise another’s child as their own.”
Bingley looked at Darcy with tilted head, and an odd expression. “Do you speak of Miss Elizabeth?”
The question made Darcy flush, but he nodded.
