Page 42 of Cads & Capers
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Her uncle’s acquaintance seemed displeased to see her—alarmed, almost. “I thought you were not coming this evening.”
Before Elizabeth could reply, a woman in gaudy attire and with half an ostrich in her hair appeared at his side, laughing too loudly for the hushed event. She draped most of her upper body over Mr Knowles’s arm. “There you are, Dumpy. I thought you had abandoned me.” She cast a disparaging look at Elizabeth. “Who is this?”
Elizabeth was not particularly worldly, but even she could guess who—and what—Mr Knowles’s companion must be. She supposed she ought to be shocked, perhaps disgusted, certainly wildly offended, yet all she could think as she looked between them was— Dumpy? It was a struggle to keep her countenance.
Mr Knowles, who had gone as red as the woman’s rouged lips, tried unsuccessfully to prise her off his arm. “Your uncle assured me you were not coming,” he said to Elizabeth. “I did not want to miss the occasion, and Miss Delaney expressed a wish to see the paintings.” Every time he pulled one of ‘Miss Delaney’s’ hands away, she replaced it somewhere else, putting him into an ever-greater fluster. “I had already purchased two tickets in advance. It seemed a shame not to use them.”
“Quite right, sir,” Elizabeth replied. “Why waste a good ticket?”
“Indeed! You are very generous. Dare I hope this means?—”
“It means—I comprehend that your affections have found a new home, and you no longer wish to call on me. I assure you, there are no hard feelings. My uncle will perfectly understand. Good evening.” She inclined her head by the smallest degree and hastened away, smiling to herself to hear him bark at Miss Delaney to let go of him.
It came to something when the discovery that one had been thrown over for a woman of the night was a relief, but this truly was the best thing to have happened to Elizabeth in a long while. Kitty’s admonishment, that she was ‘determined to refuse every bit of interest any man showed in her,’ had not been entirely accurate. Rather, her struggle to repress her true feelings had led to her not refusing Mr Knowles’s interest.
The truth was that despite all her efforts and everybody else’s firm encouragement to be practical, she had not yet learnt to stop loving Mr Darcy. Her endeavours to avoid meeting Lord Rutherford had been powerful proof of that. She fancied she would be happier if she simply allowed herself to feel it and ceased torturing herself with the notion of giving her heart to anyone else. Her family would be disappointed, maybe even angry, but there was nothing for it. When she resolved to come this evening, it had been with the intention of telling Mr Knowles definitively that they had no future together. He could not have made it easier for her.
It was nevertheless a bittersweet victory. She was no less full of regret than she had been before—no less alone. She wended her way through the gallery, keeping an eye on Kitty as she went, until she reached the couch at the far end of the room. She sat down, wondering forlornly what might have happened had she stood up from this spot one minute earlier on Monday and encountered Mr Darcy face-to-face instead of passing behind him as he climbed into his carriage.
There was little point in speculating she supposed, for she would never know. Just as she would never know what might have happened had she not been separated from him at the dinner table when they dined together at Longbourn last autumn, giving them no opportunity to converse. Or what might have happened had her sister not eloped, or had she not rejected Mr Darcy’s offer of marriage, or had he not separated Jane and Mr Bingley. Their association was so dotted with ifs, almosts, and maybes that the addition of a few more misses this week ought not to have made any difference—yet they did.
She wished she had called his name when she saw him on the street. She wished she had not hidden behind a pillar when she saw his sister. She wished she, and not Kitty, had been here at the gallery when he came yesterday.
She wished she had not spurned his offer to love her.
Someone sat down next to her, and with a mumbled apology for having inconsiderately sat in the middle of the couch, she slid sideways to make room.
“Do not move away on my account, Miss Bennet.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped up faster than Kitty’s had earlier, her heart in her throat, for she knew that voice, too. Intimately. “Mr Darcy!”
She was half inclined to think she was hallucinating, that he was a vivid manifestation of her yearning—only then he smiled, and she knew he was real, for no flight of fancy had ever affected her so deeply.
“Good evening,” he said.
She smiled regardless of her discomposure, for it was exactly like him to make her feel so much with so few words. “Good evening,” she replied.
She scarcely knew where to look. To hold his gaze seemed too revealing, yet every time she looked away, she found herself immediately glancing back again to marvel that he was there, to admire his countenance, to confirm that she had not imagined his smile. She had not; he seemed almost unable to repress it as he said, “I cannot express how pleased I am to see you.”
Alas, his countenance clouded as soon as he said it, and he added stiffly, “Are you here alone?”
“No, I am here with Kitty—and your cousin’s batman, as it happens.” Elizabeth pointed to them, but Mr Darcy did not look.
“Yes, but I meant…” He stopped talking and winced slightly.
“Is something the matter?”
This appeared to surprise him. “It is heartening that you should have to ask. Are you not exceptionally angry with me?”
“What for?”
“For giving you the cut direct, here, on Monday.”
Elizabeth recoiled in dismay. “That was you?”
“It seems it may have been—but…you did not recognise me?”
“I did not see you. What do you mean, it may have been you?”
“It was not intentional, I—” He frowned. “You truly did not see me?”
“No. I was standing over there, lost in my own thoughts, and the next thing I knew, a lady I had never met before informed me I had been given the cut direct and began attempting to remedy all my worldly problems.”
“Lady Tuppence Swanbrook?”
“Yes! Do you know her?”
Mr Darcy’s smile had returned, in wry form—a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth that was wonderfully familiar. “I have just left a dinner party at which she was a guest. I never spoke to her before today, and our first meeting did not go well, for she recognised me instantly as the man who gave her new friend the cut.”
He turned serious again. “After all the ways I have insulted you in the past, I would not blame you for believing me capable of it, but upon my word, it was not intentional. I saw you and was unsure whether you would wish to speak to me. I ultimately decided it was unlikely and left, but my indecision meant I hesitated. Until half an hour ago, I had no idea I had made it look like a deliberate slight. Fitzwilliam told me you would be here. I came directly to beg your forgiveness.”
A powerful feeling of affection blossomed in Elizabeth’s breast. She already knew Mr Darcy was capable of a great many good things—generosity, forgiveness, and gallantry not least among them—but she was nevertheless astonished by the humility of his coming to her in this way, leaving a dinner party halfway through in his impatience to speak to her and then publicly acknowledging his faults.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she told him warmly. “You only looked at me. Lady Tuppence may have mistaken it for a cut direct, but I assure you, the world in general had too much sense to join the scorn.”
“You are certain of that? Her ladyship seemed to think you had been censured and derided as a result of my actions.”
“Yes, she was quite determined that it spelled disaster, but I have returned to this gallery nearly every day this week, and I promise, I am as uninteresting to these people as most of the paintings.”
Mr Darcy chuckled lightly, and Elizabeth felt a thrill to hear it. “I understand she was given the cut direct herself once and suffered cruelly for it,” she continued. “I suspect it has coloured her view of things. But I know you would never willingly subject me to that—not when you have done so much to protect my reputation, and that of all my family, with your unexampled kindness to my sister. Ever since I have known what you did for Lydia, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it.”
He frowned doubtfully. “I was under the impression that you despised me for condemning your sister to an unhappy marriage.”
“Despised you? For saving my sister from ruin? How could you ever think I would despise you for that?”
“Mrs Wickham told me you did.”
Elizabeth’s shoulders slumped, and a tiny huff of incredulity escaped her lips. With her reckless, selfish behaviour, Lydia had inadvertently done more than any other person alive to destroy her chances of happiness with Mr Darcy. To learn that with this lie she had directly and deliberately impeded their understanding was maddening.
“It cannot be a surprise to you to hear that Lydia does not always tell the truth,” she said sadly. “Is this why you thought I would not wish to speak to you—because Lydia said I hated you?”
“You must not lay all the blame at your sister’s door. We both know I have given you plenty of reasons to think ill of me.”
“None for which I had not forgiven you long ago.”
An expression of profound pleasure suffused his face. “I shall not deny how welcome those words are, nor how seriously I have doubted them. I confess, I thought I must be the intended target when I heard you had expressed relief at your sister’s new husband having no friends in high places to persuade him against her family.”
Elizabeth grimaced contritely. “I did say that. I am ever so witty, have you not heard?”
He laughed more fully this time, but then fell silent. Elizabeth took advantage of the hiatus to cast a quick look about the room to ensure Kitty was still safe. The exhibition had begun to empty as the evening drew to a close, with only one or two couples still milling about, and she very quickly established that her sister was not in this chamber.
“I can vouchsafe for Mulhall’s probity,” Mr Darcy said. “Your sister will come to no harm.”
Elizabeth knew she ought to search for her regardless but desperately wished to stay. She could almost have believed that with this reassurance, Mr Darcy was attempting to ensure she did, except once she had thanked him for it, he did not say anything more. Fearing that, having made his apology, he would now go, she tried desperately to think of something to say that would keep him there, but just as she decided she would enquire about his sister, he surprised her by asking about hers.
“Is Mrs Malcolm well?”
And with that one question, Elizabeth’s hopes soared, for she did not think for one moment he was interested in how Jane fared. He was making polite conversation—and Mr Darcy abhorred polite conversation. Which must mean that he wished, as keenly as she, to stay exactly where he was and talk to her.
“Yes!” she rushed to say. “Yes, she is exceedingly well. Thank you. She is expecting her first baby.”
“That is happy news. Are she and her husband situated close to Longbourn?”
“No, they have a house in Buckinghamshire. Mama is bereft, but Mr Malcolm appears to be bearing the separation remarkably well.”
He looked only vaguely diverted. “Is he a good brother?”
“He is a vast improvement on my first attempt.”
That earned only a faint smile. “And Mr and Mrs Gardiner? Are they well?”
“They are. They have?—”
“Do not marry him, Elizabeth.”
“What?”
His pretence dissipated; he went from smiling and nodding distractedly at all her answers to looking at her with piercing intensity. “Knowles. I beg you would not accept him. I could give you a hundred reasons why not if I thought you wanted to hear them, only please, do not marry him.”
Elizabeth stared at him, her heart racing at such a pace it was nigh-on painful. She hardly dared believe what she thought he was saying, but oh how dearly she wished to! “I do want to hear them,” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
“Your hundred reasons.”
He searched her face as though trying to ascertain her thoughts, then seemed to give up the endeavour with a small shake of his head and the sweetest smile Elizabeth had ever seen.
“You will hear them all and more, but there is really only one that matters. I do not want you to marry him because that would mean you could not marry me.”
Elizabeth gasped quietly, then bit her lips together in an attempt to contain the swell of emotion that rose up in her. “In that case,” she said as collectedly as she could, “you might like to know that I was not planning to marry Mr Knowles.”
“You were not?”
“Not at any point.”
His relief was unmistakable, as was the strength of his regard when he reverently took up her hand and held it in both of his. “Does this mean you will agree to marry me?”
Elizabeth could not repress the happy laughter that escaped her lips, nor the ecstatic smile that stretched her mouth from ear to ear, nor the vigorous nodding of her head. “Yes! Yes, I will!”
She had never seen any person look as happy as Darcy did then. She was used to him being more economical with his expressions, and she marvelled at how well heartfelt delight suited him. So apparent and profuse were his feelings, it was not much of a surprise when they spilt over, and he stood up, pulling her to her feet with him. She knew not whether he meant to spin her around the room in a reel or pull her into an embrace. Neither did he, apparently, for he ended up somewhere betwixt the two, standing toe to toe with her, his mouth inches from hers, and his eyes on her lips.
The last thing Elizabeth wished was to put any space between them, but she had only narrowly evaded one scandal and had no wish to stumble directly into another. She stiffened, unsure what to do.
“It is well,” Darcy said in a low voice, and he gestured to the rest of the room with a glance.
She turned her head and exhaled in relief to see that her concerns were unwarranted. But for the warm glow of countless candles, the soft music floating in on the air from another room, and the watchful faces of a hundred portraits—and them—the upper east exhibition room was entirely empty. And Kitty was right again; it was quite the most romantic setting Elizabeth could ever have imagined for being reunited with the man who completely owned her heart.
She turned back to Darcy. He was waiting for her, his happiness undiminished, his smile unwavering, and his heart laid open. She brought her hands to rest upon the lapels of his jacket and tilted her head up to his.
He cradled her face with his hands. “Only a cad would kiss an unmarried woman in a public gallery.”
She gave a small hum of agreement. “But you are my cad. And I love you.”
The fervour this induced in Darcy did indeed add an undertone of roguishness to his kiss, but Elizabeth did not object in the slightest. By the time Kitty and Sergeant Mulhall found them, both expressing their surprise to see Mr Darcy there, they were returned to their previous, respectable attitude on the couch. Elizabeth’s new knowledge of her future husband’s rakish capabilities—and her enjoyment of them—was an exceedingly happy discovery but not one she would like to be widely known. Better it was kept a secret how well Elizabeth Bennet liked a cad.