“Was she?” he said with a straight face. “Are you certain?”
Fitzwilliam closed his eyes in disappointment whilst squeezing his hands into fists. “You needso muchhelp. I shall be back very late, but hopefully with something useful.” He walked towards the door. Over his shoulder he called, “Go to the library. Remember, faint heart ne’er won fair lady.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elizabeth had already written to her father, and was as affectionate in her tenor on what she thought due to him in asking for his consent as much as she was on her tender sentiments for Darcy. Her announcement in the breakfast room regarding the library was only a ploy for Darcy to seek her out for a moment of privacy. Expecting him, she was surprised when a quarter of an hour brought Hester instead, dressed in her riding habit.
“Lizzy, I wanted to speak with you before I rode with the others.” For a moment, she needlessly smoothed her long skirt. “I had to ask—apologise, I suppose.”
“Whatever for?”
“I worry that I have left you too often alone.” Hester looked unsure of herself. “I wanted to give you every chance to spend time with Mr Darcy, but it occurred to me that I—well, I am unused to having a young lady under my charge. Have I pressed too hard to forward a match with Mr Darcy? Would you have been more often with Mrs Bingley, or as much with Mrs Annesley if you were Miss Darcy?”
She smiled and squeezed Hester’s hand. “You have been above reproach as a chaperon.” Elizabeth paused, thinking that perhaps her father might have something to say against that if he knew Darcy hadslept in her bed. Hester was now giving her a concerned look. “I have no complaints about our friendship, and no one would expect you to follow me all day and always sit at my elbow.”
Hester’s shoulders lowered to their normal place, and she smiled. “Mr Darcy seemed attentive to you yesterday at Dovedale. I would not be surprised if he sought you out here.”
Elizabeth tried to keep her expression bland when she said, “I am certain Mr Darcy will come to the point before I return home, and I will help him on, of course.”
Hester tilted her head. “Home? Are you not going to Scarborough with us in September?”
“I mean... I am only more confident that the matter will be resolved as I wish.”
“You assume you will need to go home to prepare to be married?” Hester asked, with an excited little smile. She nodded, and Hester gave her a thoughtful look. “I could travel with you, and then return to town. Then you need not travel with one of Mr Darcy’s servants. I suspect it will be a while before he can follow you.”
“I would like that above anything else,” Elizabeth cried. “But do you not want to go to Scarborough? You intended to meet friends there before returning to Haddingtonshire.”
“I will still return home—to Scotland, I mean—for Christmas, but they are mostly Lewis’s friends.” Hester grew nervous again, and Elizabeth waited for her to speak. “Colonel Fitzwilliam will not stay long in Derbyshire. He must return to his regiment in London.”
“And if you are in town, your paths would cross?” Hester nodded, and Elizabeth felt happy. “I had noticed you more at ease with him these past two days.”
Hester blushed. “I have thought about what you said, about deciding what I want. I should give him, give us, a chance... but I worry what society would say about my marrying again.”
When she said nothing else, Elizabeth asked, “Have you decided you want to marry him?”
“No... but I live in dread of his marrying somebody else.”
“How natural!”
They both laughed, and then Hester’s smile faded. “I fear that if Ido not choose soon, choose to have him myself, he will give up and take comfort where he can.”
Elizabeth did not believe for a moment that Colonel Fitzwilliam was ready to abandon Hester. “He must be wishing to attach you. It would be too stupid and too shameful of him to be otherwise, and we know he is not a stupid man.”
Hester only laughed, but she did look relieved.
“You have some of the same friends,” Elizabeth said, “so they might be wishing for the connexion too. Does Mr Balfour know about your relationship?”
“I doubt it,” she said whilst pulling a face. “The colonel and I have kept it a secret. Besides, Lewis is more of a friend than a brother, and we are too near in age, with me being the elder, for him to have ever acted as a guardian to me. He does not understand my fear of being treated unfairly. He is not a woman with a reputation to consider, who is judged more unfairly than a man.”
“He does not appear to share those concerns that you have,” Elizabeth agreed.
Hester shrugged. “It is because I am more betwixt and between than he is. He is a lively man with business that takes him into the world, and he is not immediately seen as one with an Indian parent. One would look and listen to him and think him Scottish through and through.”
“It is how he sees himself?”
Hester nodded. “Whereas I am proudly both Scottish and Indian. Regardless, he does not know about Fitzwilliam and me. I do not think he would be bothered by any romantic entanglement I had, provided it was discreet.”
Hester would be devastated if her brother was the killer.If money was the motive, Mr Utterson seemed more likely to be the culprit since he would be the poorer man in the end. It was impossible not to speculate, but they could not act on conjectures. She and Darcy needed proof to connect one of them to Carew’s death.
