Darcy paused, drank and sneered. “I all but laid the path for Wickham’s damned lies.”
In this new light, his insistence upon revealing Georgiana’s misadventure with the miscreant back in Kent made eminently more sense. “Devil take the scheming bastard! I ought to have known he could not be in the same town as you without causing some manner of difficulty. Would that I had insisted you lean on him when first we learnt he was there!”
“It would have made no difference. Her sympathy for him only made for a more heated rejection. She made it perfectly clear she would have refused me anyway.”
“Your manner offended her that much?”
Darcy returned to staring at his drink, shadows once more obscuring his downcast face. “You may as well know the whole of it. Last year I took steps to discourage an alliance between Bingley and Elizabeth’s eldest sister. She somehow got wind of it. As you might imagine, she took a dim view.”
Fitzwilliam’s stomach dropped like a stone. “Gads, Darcy. I think that might have been my doing.” His cousin looked up sharply. “Well it came up in conversation, you see—the whole Bingley fix. I could not be more sorry. Had I but known it was her sister, I?—”
“What’s done is done. In any case, itwaswrong of me to intervene. Elizabeth had every right to be angry.”
“But it is easily rectified. Surely, you could?—”
Darcy shook his head. “I have already spoken to Bingley. He returned to Hertfordshire a fortnight ago.”
“Well then, I do not see that you could not also.”
“He has the advantage of not having proposed as I did.”
“Granted, but now you have corrected Miss Elizabeth’s misapprehensions about Wickham and sent Bingley back to her sister, she might be amenable to a second offer.”
“No, I mean, he has not offended her as I did with my proposal.”
“Upon my life, how did she contrive to take offence from a proposal of marriage?”
“Because in the course ofmyaddress, I catalogued the countless reasons why I shouldnotmarry her.” His voice dripped with bitterness. “I scorned her situation—waxed eloquent on the degradation such a connection would afford.” He gestured wildly as he spoke, heedless of the drink splashing from his glass, his voice rapidlygaining volume. “I made damned sure she understood how hard I had fought to repress my feelings and accused her of pride when she took offence. I might, at one point, have mentioned that I loved her, but only to exemplify my generosity, because regardless of the loss to my fortune, society’s contempt and my family’s disgust, I would take heranywaybecause I amthat great!” He bellowed the last and pounded his fist on the arm of the chair. Then, all was still but for the sound of him breathing heavily through his nose.
“Good God,” Fitzwilliam said quietly. “What the devil possessed you to express yourself thusly?”
“Would that I knew!” He threw back the contents of his glass and thrust it out for more, which Fitzwilliam moved hastily to provide. “I am the greatest fool that ever was. It never even occurred to me that she might say no!”
“I really think that is the part you ought least to regret! It is not unnatural that you should expect a lady of lesser consequence to accept your offer of marriage.”
“That does not excuse the way I vilified her family’s condition in life. I cannot think on it without abhorrence. It is insupportable that I have occasioned her such pain—any pain! She wept, Fitzwilliam. I brought her to tears.”
“Women cry all the time.”
“Not by my hand.” He leant forward to stare into his drink again. “What have I become?”
“There is naught wrong with what you have become! One poorly handled courtship does not make you a bad sort of person.”
“Would that were the extent of my mistakes,” he mumbled, his words now distinctly slurred. “But she held a mirror to me, and I did not know myself. She has properly humbled me.”
“That she most certainly has, my friend.”
Darcy discarded his glass carelessly on the table and put his head in his hands. “I am so in love with her. What the hell am I to do?”
There was nothing to be done and nothing more to be said. All Fitzwilliam could offer was a strong arm to haul Darcy to his bedchamber and a word to his valet to have a tincture ready for the morning that would ease his sore head, if not his bruised heart.
Knightsbridge
20thMay
Georgiana,
Distress yourself no longer. Have duly admonished your brother for conceding injury to anyone other than yours truly and threatened matching slash on opposing cheek should he attempt it again.
