“Your concerns about Miss Bennet are wholly without founda?—”
“I am afraid I shall have to stop you there,” Fitzwilliam interrupted. He stood, caught and righted his chair as ittoppled from the only two legs in use, and returned to the nightstand to point at the inkwell. “You are going to have to write it down.”
Darcy gritted his teeth. He sincerely hoped his voice was not permanently gone, for the struggle of making himself understood was becoming intolerably vexatious.
None of you need concern yourselves about Miss Bennet. She is not mercenary, else she would not have turned down an offer from her cousin—heir to Longbourn. It would have secured her future and that of her whole family, yet she refused him because she did not respect him.
It observably gave Fitzwilliam pause, but not so much that he ceased his objections completely. “Or perhaps she turned him down because she had set her sights higher.”
Give it up, Fitzwilliam. She has no wish to marry me.
That earned him a piercing look. “You seem very certain of that.”
I am even more certain of it now that Lady Matlock has attempted to bribe her into silence.
“My mother had only your best interests in mind. It did not occur to any of us that you might actually have designs on the young lady.”
I have known Miss Bennet for many months, not just this one week.
“Yes, she told me you met in Hertfordshire last year. She did not elaborate on the nature of your acquaintance, though—which, it would appear, was closer than any of us supposed.”
Darcy avoided answering directly and wrote,
Her integrity is one of many reasons you need not worry for my reputation.
He took his time replenishing the ink and held his hand over the page for a long moment before adding,
My reputation is not the only one she is protecting. She knows about Wickham and Georgiana.
“What? How?”
It is a long story, but you must not be anxious. I trust her implicitly.
Fitzwilliam looked at him long and hard—a look that Darcy met unflinchingly until his cousin let out a harsh sigh and stalked away across the room. “We must hope your trust is well placed.”
It is better placed than your mother's suspicions. Her good intentions notwithstanding, this attempt to buy Miss Bennet's secrecy, when she was already concealing so much on my behalf, is an insult I can scarcely think on without abhorrence.
Darcy held the note out until Fitzwilliam came back and snatched it from him. He did not speak immediately afterreading it, but leant against the window, looking out as he ruminated on it.
“I grant you,” he said at length, “if she was intent on blackmail, Georgiana’s misadventure must present a far greater likelihood of success than the rumour of a few days at an unknown inn with a man as far beyond her reach as you. She has given no indication that she means to reveal any of it.”
Darcy fixed his cousin with an unyielding look. “She will not.”
“Well, I am convincedyoubelieve it at least.”
Darcy nodded once in acknowledgement—and mouthed an oath at the pain it induced, which seemed all the worse after not having felt it for so long.
“Better?” Fitzwilliam enquired, once he had regained his composure. Darcy almost laughed that he should ask another question requiring a nod in response. He had forgotten how well Elizabeth had learnt to evade such questions. He eschewed answering at all and wrote another note instead.
How was she? When you found us?
He held it up. Fitzwilliam walked closer to peer at it, then frowned deeply. “She was distraught—which I attributed at first to her being frightened by your being comatose and bleeding on the floor. I have wondered since whether she formed an attachment to you in the course of your time together, but that seems unlikely if what you say is true.”
Darcy had thought the same at one time. After she had grown flustered watching his lips; whilst she had held his hand as he spoke about his mother. It all seemed moot now, for since then, they had stood in the snow, arguing bitterly about his selfishness, and his family had insulted her in the worst way imaginable. Nevertheless, he could not easily dismiss thetiny ray of hope he felt in knowing that, of all the horrors Elizabeth had endured last week, none had rendered her distraught—only his malaise, apparently.
“But you do admire her?” Fitzwilliam enquired.
“I do.” He fancied his cousin comprehended his sincerity as, for once, he did not ridicule him.
