“It simply happened…and suddenly I found myself in her private parlour, lying on a very generous sofa, my shirt undone.”
The colonel looked at him, incredulous. “But—”
“I know! Uncle Albert has warned us many times never to mix strong cognac with unmarried women,” Darcy proffered with a faint smile. All the young men in the family had, in their youth, appreciated Uncle Albert’s somewhat improper advice when they had cared to listen.
“I am fairly certain I only had two glasses.”
“Two glasses do not make a man forget himself—”
The colonel stopped short. “God!” he exclaimed. “Uncle Albert had never heard of laudanum.”
“Nor had I, except in the hands of physicians,” said Darcy, and suddenly, he recalled the dizzying sensation with which he had returned to awareness—unlike any drunkenness he had experienced before, although he had known intoxication once or twice despite the colonel’s ideal image of him.
“You believe she went that far?”
“What did she write?” The colonel was tense, caught between fear and anger but determined not to let Darcy ruinhimself. He was relieved he had found him before he reached London.
“That I have dishonoured her. And among many florid turns of phrase, she begs me to save her from disgrace,” murmured Darcy, and the colonel saw on his cousin’s face something rare—perhaps never seen before—shame.
“Yes, I am ashamed to have let myself be so deceived, for it was clearly a plan,” he admitted, meeting the colonel’s gaze.
“A direct threat would not have struck you so deeply. She weeps upon your shoulder over two pages, pleading to be rescued from dishonour.”
“Perhaps she is sincere, and we are imagining horrors—that she drugged me with something stronger than cognac.”
Darcy let out a deep breath, unable to hide the storm of emotions inside him but quietly thankful his cousin was there. For the first time since that morning, he felt calm enough to face what had happened. The colonel’s direct and unflinching way of speaking helped him begin to make sense of it all. Honesty had always been the guiding force in Darcy’s life, and that same sense of truth had led him to act as he had earlier that day. He felt he had done wrong—whatever the nature of that wrong—and must act accordingly, even if that meant putting his future in danger.
The colonel had huge doubts, but he had to admit that his cousin was in a dreadful position. There were few things society did not forgive a gentleman for, but to dishonour a lady of high birth was foremost among them. London would be slow to forgive, if it forgave at all, unless he married her. And Lady Olivia, though still weeping and pleading, might soon resort to methods far less sentimental.
Darcy was in desperate straits, but he must not act rashly.
“And you agree this…is not right?”
The colonel nodded gravely.
“I agree. But you must find a way to delay matters. In the morning, you must write to her, saying you will return in ten days and will do what is honourable.”
“What if I left forever for Pemberley?” Darcy asked hesitantly. Both men knew that the young lady he had left behind in Bath would follow him anywhere, not caring she might live far from London for the rest of their days as long as she would be his wife.
“Have you written toher?” the colonel asked.
“Yes. I begged her forgiveness and asked her to forget me.”
“Our valets will arrive in the morning with my carriage. We shall stop in Reading at Uncle Albert’s.”
Darcy gave a silent nod. Uncle Albert, their grandmother’s much younger brother, was indeed the refuge he needed in such moments.
“We shall inform the ladies where we are and say we shall return in a week.”
Chapter 38
“Mary, I am sorry for my silence,” Elizabeth begged as they travelled to Longbourn after a short stay in London. “I must think about how I should behave when we return home. I have decided not to tell anyone about what happened in Bath. I feel desperate and humiliated. It is like he rejected my feelings.”
She thought about her feelings of humiliation for a while, which must have been similar to what he had experienced in Kent after she rejected him. She wondered whether the time they had spent together in Bath, that closeness that had grown between them, was revenge on his part.
Then, she remembered how he had looked at her, his charming smile, and those two occasions when he had kissed her hand in a way only a man in love would do. But she had no experience of love, and she wondered whether those sweet gestures and delicate allusions to feelings and the future were nothing but acts on his part.
“How did you perceive Mr Darcy?” Elizabeth asked Mary, who had shown her fine intelligence in the last two weeks, aswell as her longing to be close to her sister. She had been a quiet but comforting presence during that difficult time.
