“No!” Elizabeth looked at all of them. “No, I tell you, I would not.”
“But it is somewhat worrying that no one has spoken to her,” spoke up Mr. Darcy, “even though she was promised some sort of compensation, some kind of money, as would befit the legitimate daughter of a duke.”
“I don’t even care about that!” said Elizabeth, shaking her head at Mr. Darcy.
Sulles lifted his chin, looking them both over, and he nodded slowly. “Yes, perhaps we can all simply trust each other.” He glanced at Caroline Bingley. “You, of course, will be happy enough to keep your counsel as long as you are married, is that not correct, madam?”
“That is why I did all this,” said Caroline.
Mr. Darcy shook his head. “This is your doing, Miss Bingley? Truly?”
“And you two have no reason to speak of anything that would harm the status quo,” said Sulles, looking at Neithern and Houseman. He eyed Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. “And if Mrs. Fitzwilliam only needs to be paid the money she was promised, then I shall make sure that is taken care of.” He smiled. “I don’t think we need to trouble anyone else about this tonight, in fact.”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure she liked the way Bishop Sulles was smiling, but then she’d heard nothing but very bad things about this man, she had to admit. “Wait,” she said, “who is going to marry Caroline?”
“Why, I am, of course,” said Sulles, still smiling very widely.
Elizabeth eyed Caroline.
Caroline, however, only lifted her chin, looking pleased.
“Fine,” said Mr. Darcy. “If that’s settled, then, I should like to take my sister home. She was never meant to be out this late.”
IT ALL CAMEto pass the following morning as Mr. Darcy had said it would. He made a show of opening the letter with the news of the colonel’s death at breakfast.
When Elizabeth heard, she did excuse herself immediately, and Jane came after her. Then, somehow, miraculously, tears came to her eyes, real tears, and she found herself sobbing in Jane’s arms with abandon. She found herself thinking of the colonel, of the way he’d looked at her, the way his voice had gone husky when he’d told her that he wanted to marry her, of the way his mouth had felt the first time he had kissed her, of the way she had fit into his arms on their wedding night, and she…
She did miss him.
She sobbed for him, for her Richard, for the future they could have had, for everything that had gone wrong between themfrom the beginning, for the morass of circumstances that had both kept them apart and brought them together. She sobbed and sobbed.
Jane promised to write to their family about the marriage now, since Elizabeth was too distraught to do so, and it was all seemingly understood that Elizabeth would be traveling with the Darcys back to London.
That carriage ride, she sat on one side of the carriage with Miss Darcy’s maid (her own maid was traveling on the back of the carriage with the manservants, outside) and Mr. Darcy and his sister sat together. Georgiana dabbed at her red eyes the entire journey, and Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy were back to their old habits of not looking at each other.
To his credit, he’d come to try to speak to her, but she’d denied him entrance to her room, unable to know what to say to him anymore. She was badly confused. At any rate, she would have to be in mourning for her husband, so no matter how she had said drunkenly that of course she was going to marry him, no matter how they had bantered back and forth over that, none of it could happen any time soon.
She still should not have engaged in such intimacy with him.
She didn’t regret it, however.
She thought of it from time to time and it warmed her. After she got back to Weythorn, and she was alone with no one but her servants and the black dresses she had made, sometimes she fantasized about it, about what was inside Mr. Darcy’s trousers, about the sleek warmth of the skin of him against her tongue, about the way he leaked salt when she dragged her tongue over the tip of him, about the noises he made when she sucked him into her mouth.
But sometimes, she thought of it and she only felt embarrassment, shame, and disgust. She felt guilt.
How could she have done that right on the heels of hearing of Richard’s death? Certainly, she’d had far too much to drink before she did it, but it wasn’t even like her. Of course, some dark and perverse voice would often speak up and demand to know if she was sure of that? Wasn’t she like that now? Hadn’t she become that?
Whatever the case, it was the worst thing she could have done. It had likely shattered whatever shred of a good opinion Mr. Darcy had of her. She thought sometimes of the way his voice had lilted when he told her to take the blame. And then to take the tip—
He had liked it.
Yes, but he had also been drunk, and she knew that man. He would be regretting all of it, even now. He would likely tell himself to swear off of her. He must realize by now that she was not good for him.
His devotion to her had never wavered, but now, surely, it must.
She went back and forth between these two extremes—fantasizing about Mr. Darcy and then reproaching herself for her wanton behavior—before she met the Matlocks and after.
She met Richard’s parents, Lord and Lady Matlock, and his older brother, and they were polite to her but she could see the disapproval in their eyes. They barely spoke to her, and she was not included in the way the wife of a deceased man should be. Mr. Darcy protested a few times on her behalf, but she asked him to stop, eventually.
