“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
Darcy congratulated himself on the fact that, although it felt as if lightning had struck him, he did not respond as violently as he might have wished to. An ill-timed sip made him cough and sputter, but that was all. Removing his handkerchief from his breast pocket, he dabbed at his lips, allowing time for the recovery of his composure. Nevertheless, his voice sounded strained and anxious when he said, “Surely not?”
“I know what you are thinking.” Fitzwilliam held his hands up to ward off Darcy’s protest. “How could I wish to marry a woman who had spoken so cruelly to my own cousin? But I think with time, the two of you could easily lay down your arms.”
Darcy wondered whether he had fallen asleep and was dreaming. Was there some demon on his chest, the mara of old Norse mythology, causing these dreadful notions to be spewed at him? “Lay down our arms! H-how can you even consider?—”
“I know, I know! There are other considerations, such as your own strictures against the lady. I have considered them, I assure you. The undistinguished family. No fortune of her own. Not a prudent match in any way altogether. But Darcy, Ilikeher, and given the removal of my prior limitations, I daresay I could be in a fair way towards falling in love with her.”
Had Fitzwilliam gone mad? Yes, they had always competed against one another forthings. Two men close in age, raised as brothers, would either be dearest friends or famous enemies; he and Fitzwilliam had taken their turns at both. But this was not some contest to see who could throw a rock the farthest, or anything so inconsequential. This was the woman heloved.
Feebly, not even knowing what he was saying, he blurted, “But…but she is…she has gone back to Longbourn. Hertfordshire. Her family, they do not come to town.” As ifthatwas the greatest objection to this!
“It does present some difficulty, to be sure,” Fitzwilliam said agreeably. “That is why I hoped perhaps you might be a fine fellow and arrange something with Bingley at his place there. We shall go and rusticate on some flimsy excuse of fishing or shooting or such, and see what transpires. What say you?”
An image sprang to mind of Fitzwilliam strolling in the maze at Netherfield with Elizabeth smiling and laughing on his arm. A roaring sound filled Darcy’s ears and his head swam, and before he knew what he was doing, he shouted, “No. No!” He set his glass down, wincing at the bang it made; he had not intended to do that. “You cannot…Elizabeth… No! You willnotdo this.”
Fitzwilliam startled when Darcy’s glass slammed onto the desk. He stared, first at the glass and then at his cousin before saying, with infuriating calm, “Darcy, I knew you might not be wholly pleased by this, but pray consider my interests above your own for once.”
“It is not selfishness that?—”
“What else could it be? You are off to Kent to propose to Anne, are you not? I say Miss Bennet is fair game.”
Panic thrust Darcy upwards out of his seat. “Fair game? How dare you speak of her so?”
“What do you call it then? You would not wish her to remain unmarried forever. Is that to be her punishment for refusing you, that no man could ever have her?”
Another man. It was not the first time Darcy had imagined her in the arms of another, but itwasthe first that he had imagined her in Fitzwilliam’s arms. Darcy leant against his vacated chair for several long moments, willing his gorge tosettle, then walked towards the window, staring down at the street below.
Behind him, Fitzwilliam said, “I should hope you would wish us both well.”
“I shall not.” Darcy turned to his cousin and thrust a pointing finger in his direction. “She is not for you, andthatis the material point.”
“Who says? You?” Fitzwilliam challenged him, arms crossed over his chest.
Darcy took a deep breath. “She is not a suitable wife for either of us, if you care to examine it with a clear head. She is cousin to Lady Catherine’s parson!”
“Who, himself, will be a landowner one day,” Fitzwilliam observed.
“When her father dies.”
“Yes, Darcy, that is how most of us inherit land…because someone died. You included.”
“H-her family…her mother! You could never see her mother and yours in a room together.”
Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Then I shall notputthem in a room together. I do not wish to marry her family.”
“She is…she is uneducated. They never had a governess, she and her four sisters.”
“Neither did I.”
“You did!”
Fitzwilliam shook his head slowly. “Saye put frogs in her bed and ran her off and got himself sent away to school. He liked it so well, his lordship followed suit with me, as did your father with you two years following.”
“I had a governess until I was nine,” Darcy retorted. “At Pemberley.”
“Well done, you,” Fitzwilliam replied sarcastically. “Nevertheless, I did not, and nothing you say will convince me Idid. And what does it signify? Miss Bennet is clever and sweet, and I do not care two straws how she came to be that way.”
