These Three Remain Page 13

  What? He could not have heard her aright! Darcy straightened from his position, confusion seizing him and making her words of no meaning.

  “It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly.” Her eyes flashed up at him. “I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which you tell me have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”

  A flood of emotions at her easy dismissal of his months of struggle and the denial of all his hopes swept through Darcy in quick, powerful succession: numb disbelief, shock, acute embarrassment, and finally, an anger so searing that he could not trust himself to speak. In a pale fury, he stood at the hearth in pitched battle with his outraged sensibilities. He, who had forsworn so much to offer her the world and his heart, to be treated in such a careless manner! Who was she to spurn him so! His mind raced in circles, unable to settle into an ordered stream. Why? The question screamed in his brain. He looked back at her, but she seemed to have done with him. Oh, no, my girl! You are not done with me yet!

  “And this is all the reply which I am to have the honor of expecting!” he demanded in a cold rage. “I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus rejected.” He adopted a sardonic tone. “But it is of small importance.”

  Elizabeth rose from her seat at his words, her face a shocking mirror of his own. “I might as well inquire why, with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you like me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?” She laid a hand on the table between them as if in need of its support. “Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?” The fire in her eyes was no less hot than the blood that rose to Darcy’s face at her next accusation. “But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favorable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”

  She knew! How? Richard — damn and blast! Darcy held his fire, knowing it would be useless to interrupt her.

  “Can you deny that you have done it?” she demanded of him.

  “I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister,” he answered with an air of tranquil superiority, “or that I rejoice in my success. Toward him,” he emphasized, “I have been kinder than toward myself.”

  Elizabeth appeared to bridle at his insinuation but abandoned the affront to launch against him again. “But it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham…”

  Wickham! Cold, implacable hatred, easily distinguishable from that hot indignation which had previously engulfed him, rose to peer at Elizabeth from behind hardened eyes. “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns!”

  “Who that knows what his misfortunes have been can help feeling an interest in him?” she countered.

  “His misfortunes!” Darcy spat out the word contemptuously, his emotions rising dangerously at the intrusion of that hated name between himself and one he loved yet again. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”

  “And of your infliction,” Elizabeth cried. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty — comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him…”

  What tale had that devil told her? In what way had his name and character been abused that Wickham should so poison her, the woman he loved, against him? If ever the blackguard had dreamed of revenge, he had now surely achieved it, destroying Darcy’s deepest hopes and injuring him in the most intimate manner possible!

  “…You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.”

  Enough! Pushing away from the mantelpiece, Darcy strode quickly across the room. “And this is your opinion of me!” he thundered. “This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed.” He checked in midstride and turned back to her, suspicion writ large upon his features. “But, perhaps, these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed,” he continued acrimoniously, “had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything.” She stood so still under his barrage, still and defiant of him yet. “But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just.” He stepped back from her and angrily gathered up his gloves, hat, and stick. “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”

  Elizabeth’s voice was eerily composed. “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.” Darcy started at her words. She might as well have slapped him across his face as presented him with such a charge. “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”

  He looked down at her in mute astonishment, his incredulity at her words vying with the creeping heat of mortification that was fast gaining ascendancy over his conviction of the justice of his position.

  “From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike.” Elizabeth’s voice rose. “And I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

  She was lost to him — utterly, irretrievably lost! Darcy’s head reeled. Dear God — Elizabeth! The pain in his chest was growing intolerable. He must leave, get away. It was too much! “You have said quite enough, madam,” he managed to reply. “I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.” He bowed and backed away to the door. Laying a hand on the latch, he stopped, his head bowed, then turned to her, looking deeply into her eyes one last time. “Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time,” he said in a strangled voice, “and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.” Without waiting for her curtsy or a reply, Darcy pulled at the latch and hastily left the room. He took the stairs at no slower a pace, and in bare moments he was outside, the door shut solidly, irrevocably behind him.

  The meadow was little more than a blur as Darcy turned from the parsonage door and set his face for Rosings. By the time he gained the path through the grove, he was able to marvel that his legs should continue to carry him onward without his conscious direction, that his body was, to all outward appearance, still whole and hale with life. But appearances, had he not just so bitterly been taught, were not to be trusted. He pushed blindly on, his shoulders hunched against the racking pain in his chest while his mind spun in tight, shocked circles like a child’s top, unable to fasten onto anything other than the soul-wrenching truth that she was lost to him. Not only lost to him, but never his from the
start. From the very beginning she had taken him into dislike, before Wickham had defamed him, before even he had moved to detach Bingley from her sister. The last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. Her words repeated themselves again and again in his brain, knelling the death of all the hopes for happiness he had cherished. Would he ever be able to wipe from memory his parting sight of her, his lovely Elizabeth, so fiercely adamant in her utter rejection of him? “Oh, God!” The pain drove deep, obliterating thought and mercilessly flaying his emotions, rendering his chest so tight that he could barely breathe. Elizabeth…all his being groaned.

  The tiny stones of the manor’s graveled lane went scattering when Darcy struck the path in a driven gait, but it was not until the steps of Rosings confronted him that he even comprehended where he was. He slowed to a halt, confused to find himself so soon arrived. Looking up at the cold reality of the marble steps leading to the manor house’s imposing façade, he was at last brought to himself. Thoughts of self-preservation surfaced, warning him that he must rise above his anguish, keep his head, if he was to gain his rooms without incident. His stomach lurched at the prospect if he did not. Rapidly mounting the stairs, Darcy passed swiftly across the threshold, so intent upon avoiding delay or discovery in the public rooms that he neglected his usual nod to the old manservant at the door. In moments, he was across the hall and bounding up the stairs, but at the first landing and turn, his flight was arrested.

  “Darcy!” Richard’s call to him was too clear to be ignored. He stopped and looked vaguely down upon his cousin, whose untimely appearance could only mean that he had been lying in wait for his return. “Fitz?” Fitzwilliam looked up at him warily, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “Is it well?”

  “Well?” he repeated, unable at first to attach any relationship between the word and his condition; then he almost laughed at the irony. Good God, would he ever be truly well again? “Well enough, but you must excuse me.” He turned away from the balustrade and continued up the stairs before anything more was offered. The humiliation of Richard’s condolences would be one more burning coal lodged in the pit of his stomach; he would rather put a gun to his head!

  The corridor to his rooms was empty, and in a breath, he was at his door and then safely behind it. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the solid mahogany, his limbs threatening to give way at last to the anguish that was consuming him. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way. Darcy bit his lip against the moan that welled in his chest. No one, no one, must see him like this! He listened for any sound of occupation from his dressing room; all was silent save the ticking of the mantel clock. Pushing away from the door, he went to stand before the ornate timepiece. Was it possible? He glared disbelievingly into its face. Could it be that little more than an hour had passed since he had quit these rooms in a fever of expectation? He threw his stick and coat into a chair, his hat and gloves following soon thereafter. An hour! He snorted bitterly. More than enough time to lay waste to a man’s dreams.

  Abruptly he turned his back on the clock and stalked into the bedchamber, his fingers plucking at his coat buttons and then the knot of his neckcloth. Pulling at it savagely, he unwound the length, dropping it on a table as he slowed to a stand in the middle of the room. What was he to do? he demanded to know. He looked about at the cold, aloof orderliness that was his life as if the answer lay there waiting to be discovered. A wave of revulsion washed over him. This grand sterility! It had sedulously fed his pretensions even as it had revealed the shameful exhaustion of a once honorable resolve, and he wanted nothing so much now as to be clear of it! He advanced upon the bell pull with the express intent of summoning Fletcher to begin packing when the absurdity of such an action struck him. It was dusk; the sun was already below the horizon. Such an obvious testimony to flight would in nowise support the indifferent façade he must, at all costs, maintain before the world.

  Indifferent? A tremor rippled through him, setting him down hard on the edge of the bed, his head sinking into his hands. Indifferent to such a loss? Indifferent to the echoing hollowness within his heart? How could he continue, pretend that Elizabeth did not exist for him, when she had come to define his hope for the future? Darcy slumped back upon the unyielding bed, the stiff brocade of its covering harsh against his cheek, and stared at the canopy stretched above his head. What was he to do? What did life hold for him now?

  Your arrogance! He flinched, Elizabeth’s charge cracking across his memory like a whip. Your conceit! He shook his head. How could it be? He had always abhorred such displays, yet this was Elizabeth’s opinion of him. She had despised him, had faulted everything about him from the start! Unjust…ungenerous — her litany would not cease — The man who has been the means of ruining the happiness of a most beloved sister.

  “No! Not so!” The denial exploded from his lips, the force of his indignation bringing him upright, his conscience bristling at the injustice of Elizabeth’s indictment. As if it were his habit to make sport of the dignity and hopes of others, and especially those beneath his station! He should have answered her back, laid out the matter of her sister as he had so rigorously observed it, before her. He had had good and sufficient reasons to dissuade Bingley from his perilous course, reasons that had been based upon an impartial conviction, not whim or interest. Why had he not risen above the paltry syllables offered by his wounded pride?

  Pushing himself from the bed, Darcy stalked to the window and leaned against the casing. Why? Because her attack upon him had left him almost speechless, first with shock and then with an anger that even now was seething dangerously in his vitals. Ungenerous! And what had she been? Every action of his was attributed to either malice or caprice! “Good God!” Darcy smacked the heel of his hand against the casing with such force that the pane rattled in its frame. Turning away, he strode over to the delicate crystal decanter, seized it by its throat, and wrenched out the stopper. The amber liquor sloshed into the ornate etched glass, spilling over the sides to spread in a pool on the table. Jamming the stopper home, he swooped the glass up to his lips as he resumed his strident gait.

  Arrogant and conceited was he? What did she know of Society? Precious little! She could not have the slightest idea of what his life was like or what his position, his relations, and his peers demanded of him. Her country social circles and modest background bore not the slightest comparison to the milieu into which he had been born! He brought the glass up again, and then, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he slammed it down. And what had been her behavior toward him? She had bantered and fenced with him, accepted his attentions, encouraged in every way his belief that she but awaited his declaration, only to throw the true heart and immeasurable consequence he had offered to her back in his face! Darcy burned with the humiliation of it. He leaned back against the wall, his face aflame. A Darcy of Pemberley, to be dismissed like a damned tinker with only a basketful of shoddy goods to his credit when he had been prepared to entrust her with all that he was! Who was she to treat him thus, to hold him so cheaply? By what right did she accuse him of a whole catalog of ignoble offenses! The answer was not long in coming.

  Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham.

  “Wickham!” The hated name resonated through every part of his body, finally emerging in a growl of rage that brought Darcy’s helplessly disordered thoughts into a focus and propelled his fist straight into the wall. Wickham! Who that knows what his misfortunes have been…Darcy held the thought in a crushing grip as it set him again to churning up the carpets with his agitated pacing. Who that knows! Whatever the “misfortune” Wickham had manufactured for her ears and then laid at Darcy’s door, it had done inestimable damage to his name. His character had been grossly maligned, and for what? So that Wickham might tickle the ears of an obscure village and garner for himself a few sympathetic rounds of ale? What devil had prompted him to spin his deceit around Elizabeth?<
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  “Mr. Darcy?” Darcy spun around at the untoward intrusion and delivered his valet a ferocious glare of displeasure.

  “Fletcher! What do you here?” he demanded harshly. “I did not summon you.”

  His valet glanced up at him, shocked surprise showing pale against the concern on his face. “Your pardon, sir, I thought — that is, I only just learned of your return and —”

  “Spare me your thoughts, if you please!” Darcy angrily bit off each word. “Your services are not required tonight. Leave me!”

  Fletcher’s face went ashen. “Y-yes, sir,” he choked out as he bowed and stumbled back in haste to the dressing room, but Darcy had already turned away, his mind again fastened upon the one indictment in this excruciating debacle of which he knew himself entirely innocent.

  It must not stand! his honor declared hotly. If there were anything this day about which he was certain, it was that George Wickham’s lies impugning his character must be exposed and his name vindicated. Due pride might prevent him from answering all Elizabeth’s charges, but those based upon Wickham’s falsehoods and insinuations must, in justice to himself, be confronted and shown as the slander they were.

  But how was it to be accomplished? He reached out and caught hold of the brandy glass as he passed. A private interview was not likely to be granted after what had passed between them, nor did he relish the idea. As he drained the glass, his gaze traveled over the room, resting at last upon the secretary and the precise stack of stationery that lay there. A letter! But would not propriety require that he place it privately in her hand himself? He wrapped an arm around one of the bedposts, his heart quickening. A letter of vindication, personally delivered…

  Relinquishing his hold, Darcy walked over to the secretary and dropped into the seat as he drew a sheet of foolscap before him. Flicking open the inkwell, he rifled through the quills and pens until he found one to his liking and dipped it into the ink. He wrote her name with a flourish across the top of the sheet, then paused and leaned back in his chair. What he was about to do he would have considered unthinkable only hours before. In truth, he had never thought to put anything of his dealings with Wickham to paper, but now he proposed to do so and, further, do so for the eyes of a woman who had no connection to his family or share in their concerns!