Page 20 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
“No!” Elizabeth felt a stab of anxiety, and a flash of seeing the two of them, with smoking pistols staring at each other across a green field on a foggy morning. “I do not want you to be injured, or to face the hangman like me.”
Darcy dismissively made a cutting gesture with his hand. “Juries never hang duelists. Much as the judges would wish them to, never happens. I voted to acquit once myself, at the Derbyshire assizes. None of us assembled for that trial demurred.”
Elizabeth took in a shallow breath. “I do not want to see anyone dueling. He would have a gun too, and… no, no, no. I could never bear it if you were shot. And he is a vicious man. He would try to kill you.”
Darcy had a mulish expression and that frightened Elizabeth. She knew that she could not keep him from making the attempt. Darcy said, “I would have made a challenge to him the instant I learned he still lived, if it would not have informed him of where you were hidden. But now—”
“Now I am lost, unable to return to our Green England, and I need you to protect me.” Elizabeth did not like being dependent, but she was enough of a woman to use her weak position to her advantage. “You cannot return to England and leave me alone here and friendless.”
General Fitzwilliam said calmly, “In any case, Darcy, you forget that I have priority, he is my cousin, and I already challenged him to defend Miss Bennet’s honor.
He did refuse to face me, like a coward — he might refuse you as well.
Not a man who wants to fight with one of equal strength is my cousin.
He prefers to fight women, and given the end of his most recent attempt along those lines, I suspect the coward may become too cautious to even do that. ”
“Oh, you challenged him?” Elizabeth grinned at General Fitzwilliam, for some reason having vastly less anxiety for him dying in her defense than Mr. Darcy.
Probably because she loved Mr. Darcy, while she did not love General Fitzwilliam.
And General Fitzwilliam had an air of being well capable of killing a man without feeling much remorse or hesitation. “What a hero.”
Confirming that sentiment, General Fitzwilliam replied, as he filled his coffee again, “My pleasure entirely. I must confess that I was more motivated by the hope to give my cousin a wound that would spout crimson than to make defense of your honor. Cousin Lechery annoys me. Always has. He’d intentionally wing birds when we went hunting as lads, just so they’d flitter to the ground in pain.
He is family, and family ought take care of its own — both in good and in ill. ”
“Hear, hear.” Major Williams raised his coffee mug, as though he were toasting with a glass of wine. “And Lachglass is no relation of mine .”
“It would do no good for Elizabeth — Miss Bennet — to sound the story about,” Darcy said. “What we must do is…” He frowned and trailed off.
“Darcy.” Elizabeth put her hand briefly on his arm, so that he looked at her with his beautiful and startlingly deep eyes. It was rather hard to think about anything with the way her stomach twisted and jumped in delight with his eyes upon her.
“I just want,” he said, “I just want you to be safe and happy, and able to return to your family in England, and be in such a position that you need not depend on me, and then…”
Elizabeth nodded. He felt as if his honor would not let him ask her again to marry him while she had such reasons as gratitude and necessity to suggest she must say yes.
Silly man — didn’t he know by now that she was quite talented at refusing men in cases where her interest suggested she must accept them?
“Well,” General Fitzwilliam said. “There would be value in making a scandal of Lachglass — he is one of the junior ministers in the government. A reward for bringing his rotten boroughs with him — a damned disgusting thing how our parliament works. That one man controls more of the government of our country through those MPs than all the people of Manchester.”
“I,” Darcy said, “would not be terribly enthused with giving the radicals amongst the workers in that city any say within the governance of our realm. You fought the French. You saw the sequel.”
Elizabeth smiled. “May I suspect this is a matter of regular contention betwixt you, since you have determined to become a radical, General Fitzwilliam?”
“You have ample proof yourself, from your own life, for why the privileges of the aristocracy should be trimmed back,” General Fitzwilliam replied.
“The system of pocket borough’s appears quite reprehensible, but in truth it is simply another manner of ensuring the greatest landowners in the country — those who have the deepest interest in its long term wellbeing — have a proper say in her governance.
” Darcy replied seriously, “Such is the way that our constitution has settled for us to be ruled, and so it has been for many centuries now. We have prospered under this way of law, and we have defeated France many times despite its greater size. The landed interest must not be able to ignore the mercantile interest of the city, but the power of the land should always be predominant.”
General Fitzwilliam laughed. “Spoken exactly as one would expect a man who himself controls a rotten borough to speak.”
Darcy rolled his eyes. “You now have the nonsense idea that everyone , man of consequence or wandering vagabond, ought equally to have say in who is their MP. I would rather keep my head, and avoid the inevitable sequel of a tyrannical British ogre rising from the masses.”
“Nothing of that sort happened in our colonies — I insist, every man is a soul equal before God, and I think there is no necessity to believe the negative consequences you believe would follow from an extended franchise are necessary.”
“Wide suffrage has already been put to the test. And then the French chopped the heads off all their betters—”
“Men such as Lord Lechery.”
“A few were such, but many were the most glittering flowers of civilization.” Darcy shook his head annoyedly. “In her bed, they grabbed Marie Antoinette from her bed, whilst in her bed clothes. A queen. And then they murdered her, in cold blood, whilst making the pretense it was justice.”
“Men such as you — and in general such as I — tend to have a rather narrow application of that sympathy Adam Smith argued was so vital. You have sympathy for the queen who is pulled from her bed. You can imagine those women who you love in such a case. But you have little sympathy for the vagabond who has no bed—”
“I do have sympathy for the poor, at least those willing to work; you know how willingly I pay my poor rates, and how I offer charity above that when needed for those round about Pemberley.”
“In any case,” General Fitzwilliam said, “I know what I’d be expected to do if there was revolution in England.
Any attempt at that sort, and I’d be expected to murder every gathered weaver in Manchester, every ‘prentice boy in London, every washer woman who tried to shout for her rights. There was some justice in the fear Robespierre had of reaction.”
“Nonsense. In the end the French king proved that Robespierre’s fear of mass murder following the victory of the better sort was insane, since when we placed him back upon his throne once more—”
“Not ‘we’, Darcy. It was me. It was Major Fitzwilliam. It was brave lads recruited from your farms, and from amongst the workmen of Manchester and London. Your only part in placing a king once more on the French throne was to pay your taxes.”
“And now you wish we had not done so.”
“I did my duty. I always do my duty. Do not think I will not do my duty — my duty as I see it before the Lord — I take no joy in this anymore. And Napoleon was a tyrant, and Napoleon needed to be removed.”
“And when he was removed there was no reaction such as you fear. There were not thousands of French peasants murdered. The women of Paris were not brutally shot by the new King.”
“Of course not, because he was scared they would rebel again, and remove him. Which they did the instant Napoleon bared his breast and dared the soldiers to shoot their emperor. Why do you think the French are willing to pay for our army to sit in Cambrai? It is because the king and his ministers fear their own people, drained as they already are by the wars. But mark my words — if Louis’s government outlasts twenty years, and I live to see it, I’ll eat my own hat. ”
Darcy sighed and sat back. Elizabeth’s eyes were dancing. She had enjoyed being an observer of this argument a great deal.
“So then,” she said with a delighted smile.
“Not to interfere with your chance to bare swords of words against one another, but Mr. Darcy’s question should be replied to: What is your purpose in spreading the story about Lord Lachglass about, beyond protecting other innocent women from ignorantly entering his clutches? ”
General Fitzwilliam blinked and shook his head.
“Ah that. The government is worried — you should hear my father rant upon the matter — the government worries about an uprising. There were few hints of any such chance whilst we maintained the war, but during the war, though prices were high, wages were high also.”
“It was those such as my mother who were hurt by those high prices,” Major Williams said.
“Those who had all their income from the consols or a pension — Matlock gave her some eighty pounds a year to maintain herself and me after my birth, and he would not raise that just because the necessities rose in price.”
“Yes,” General Fitzwilliam nodded. “There are always those harmed by every change, but then at least everyone who could work had a full belly and full purse. Now employment is scarce, and a hundred thousand discharged soldiers wander the cities and countryside with no honorable place. A story like yours, Elizabeth, of an earl who is a minister in the government who first tried to rape a woman, and then attempted to use the court of law to murder her because she fought back. This sort of story might light a spark to the dry tinder of the already riled masses. The prime minister will push Lachglass to make terms with you, so that the story will go away.”
Darcy sighed. “This is hardly a certain route to protect Elizabeth, to enable her to return to England.”
“Have you a better notion?”
Darcy sighed. “I’d rather not see her name bandied about by the lower orders.”
“‘Tis my choice.” Elizabeth said, “And I am not so delicate — I have worked for my supper, myself.”
“It is entirely different to be a governess. That is still a respectable position, living in close terms with a proper family, rather than hiring yourself out by the day.”
Elizabeth patted his arm. “I thank you for your concern, but I truly have no worry on that account — But how would such a story be passed around? No newspaper would print such a scandalous story about a peer of the realm.”
“Well, well.” General Fitzwilliam scratched at his sideburns. “I know a few men who are well… ah, they have access to a printing press. Or they do not. But they know people who do. You know…”
“Good God!” Darcy exclaimed. “You have friends amongst the suppressed scurrilous press.”
General Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Not friends… friends of friends. Tell the story of what happened, and I’ll see it printed and distributed widely in London, and elsewhere in the country. Miss Bennet, you want that to happen, so Lord Lechery’s next governess will know what to expect.”
“I do.” Elizabeth tapped her foot on the brick tile floor a few times and looked out at the empty winter garden. “For my part, whether it helps me return to England or not, I like your plan.”