“Tomorrow, Miss Elizabeth is to be married to Mr Clinton.”
“What?” cried Lady Redmond in her turn, so astonished that she forgot entirely that a lady neither raises her voice in company nor displays any strong emotion. But no one minded that now.
“So she refused Darcy,” Lady Matlock reflected in plain voice, “yet is to marry Mr Clinton. I am inclined to think this young woman is not quite as you have described her. Still, Miss Elizabeth little interests me, though London will have matter enough for gossip these many weeks. What concerns me is why you tell us this at present.”
“Because Lady Elizabeth cannot marry Darcy,” Richard answered at last with a sigh of relief.
“And why, pray?”
“Because she and I…love one another.”
A profound silence fell upon the room—but it was far from solemn.
“You love each other,” Lady Matlock repeated, drawing her own conclusion, though much remained to be explained. “Since when?”
“I have loved her since Kent. I was resolved to return and know her better—”
“But Darcy forestalled you.”
“Yes. Afterwards, when I sought to console myself, Lady Elizabeth came to London, and instead of spending her time with Darcy—”
“She remained with you,” concluded Lady Matlock, drawing the obvious inference.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam bears no blame,” Lady Elizabeth said quickly, eager to defend him from suspicion. “It was I who fell in love with him last summer—”
“And why, in Heaven’s name, did you both keep silent so long?”
Lady Matlock needed no answer, for she understood it all: Richard’s loyalty and Lady Elizabeth’s propriety had united to destroy them both—and, with them, Darcy also.
“Again, I ask, why now? Miss Elizabeth is to be married. What concern has that with us all?”
“Simply that I felt I must act,” Richard replied with unaffected earnestness.
Lady Elizabeth answered him with the brightest and most radiant smile imaginable, ready to face whatever consequences might come for his sake and for their love.
Lady Matlock restrained herself with difficulty from laughing outright, so diverting did she find the situation. She already imagined how she would recount it to her husband—and how they would rejoice for Richard. For it was evident enough that these two foolish creatures would marry, even if she were obliged to lead them by the hand—first to Darcy, to end that useless engagement, and afterwards to the church.
“And now?” she asked, merely to give Richard the illusion that the plan was his own. “Will you let her marry when she loves you—and Darcy loves Miss Elizabeth?”
“No,” replied Richard quietly. He approached Lady Elizabeth, took her hand, pressed it to his lips before them all, and departed, leaving the ladies alone.
“Where is he going?” asked Lady Elizabeth, for the first time alarmed.
“To Darcy,” answered Lady Matlock, and still smiling, she withdrew to Lord Matlock’s apartments, brimming with cheerfulness.
Chapter 35
Colonel Fitzwilliam paused for a few moments before his house. The cold autumn wind struck him sharply, bringing him back to life and stirring him to act; his usual state of mind was now intensified by the love he felt for Elizabeth—his Elizabeth. He was still trembling from the scene in his mother’s parlour, which had seemed a confrontation, though now he saw it as nothing more than an intense moment when long-hidden truths had broken forth with sudden force. He, who had never flinched upon the field of battle, found himself afraid of what was yet to come in Darcy’s house.
He was angry with himself for his conduct during those past months, for the want of sincerity so foreign to his nature, and for the suffering it had brought him. Nothing could justify their falsehood—Lady Elizabeth’s and his own—not even what his mother had discerned in an instant, that they had both been drawn into deceit because he had valued, above every other tie, his deep and constant bond with Darcy. At the same time, Elizabeth had been terrified by those rigid rules of decorumthat forbade her from dissolving an engagement she had once accepted. He knew for certain that the same had been true of Darcy, who through all those months had never declared himself ready to break an engagement for the sake of another woman. And he had believed his cousin—for what reason would there have been to break an engagement if the other Elizabeth did not love him?
Only at Netherfield, seeing Darcy and Miss Elizabeth together and emitting that air of mutual profound affection, did he understand the truth—the depth of the folly in which they had all been entangled, all four of them—culminating in the marriage of Miss Elizabeth, which was to take place on the morrow, though she loved Darcy.
Four lives would have been sacrificed upon the altar of rules, and because men and women would not speak the truth of their hearts. Had he told Darcy in Kent that he admired Lady Elizabeth, Darcy would never have proposed to her; of that he was sure. Yet those rules cast their shadows not only over society but between individuals who were taught to conceal what they felt, to speak only of trifles and gossip, and never to acknowledge their emotions. Afterwards, when he and Elizabeth were truly in love, he had lived in constant fear that, were she to break her engagement, Darcy, in a moment of passion, might choose a wife unworthy of the life he sought to live.
It was only when he stepped into his carriage that he comprehended the enormity and peril of all they had endured. Absurd. Preposterous. His mother’s final smile had given him the measure of their turmoil—their adventures were fit for a comedy of Shakespeare.
Though the hour was late, he went first to his club, and only afterwards stopped before Darcy’s house. He ran up the steps without hesitation; the fear that had once held him was gone.
