Page 30 of Expectations (Obstinate, Headstrong Girl #7)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

EXTRAORDINARY ENLIGHTENMENT

D arcy fixed all of his attention upon the control of his temper.

He heard Elizabeth enter his sitting room; thankfully, she did not speak to him yet—he would require time to shed this particular resentment.

Never had he been thus accused, not in his entire life; the allegations coming from Elizabeth, of all people, were a particularly vile notion to swallow.

However, a single question finally pierced the haze of his outrage.

Had Elizabeth’s uncle been waging a monetary campaign on behalf of Miss Charlotte Lucas , and not Elizabeth Bennet, seven years before?

At last, he turned to face her; she looked small and almost…

defeated, curled upon his oversized sofa, her bare toes peeping out from beneath her nightgown.

At least half of his anger drained away at the sight of her.

With a heavy sigh, he sat down beside her—although the distance between them seemed as far as it ever had been.

After several long moments, she began to speak.

“I should begin with an incident during the ball Bingley held at Netherfield before his marriage to my sister. When I happened into the library, you and Mr Bingley were doing…something with that Lady Petherton, from town. Searching for a particular geography book, he said. Hah! There were no geographies in that pathetic library, and he had no idea which book she held. But her ruined bodice required a large enough tome to cover it, any idiot could see that.”

He recalled the episode immediately, raising his brows.

“I can assure you, Elizabeth, that I walked into that library only a minute before you did—and was as surprised as you were to find Bingley…um, with her. The whole thing was an exercise in madness. I admit to blaming the lady, perhaps unfairly, at the time—she had quite the reputation for enjoying the liberties of her widowhood. She was so many years older than he, I thought she had seduced him. I can assure you, I lectured him within an inch of his life for his stupidity, but none of it was mine. I was hoping and praying, even, that you did not understand what you had seen, and I was ready to kill Bingley for nearly exposing you to it.”

“I was a green girl but not quite that green,” she said, and he saw the way she avoided his look, visibly embarrassed by the topic under discussion.

“I know, now, what my sister had in Bingley. But I suppose it was easier for me, at the time, to imagine you were leading him into vice that night. I tarred you with his brush.”

Then she revealed the whole of Miss Lucas’s accusations, right up to the measly sum he had supposedly offered her to go away.

“A hundred pounds,” he countered resentfully. “You thought I would leave a young lady thus, with what amounts to pocket change.”

She looked miserable. “My aunt and uncle did not think so. They were at Jane’s wedding, you might recall.”

He nodded.

“Afterwards, I persuaded them to take Charlotte with me to London for a visit. Once we reached Gracechurch Street, I confided in them of her situation. They are both discreet and trustworthy, and I believed they might know of someplace where Charlotte might be able to take refuge until her babe was born. But my aunt—she was raised in a town very close to your country estate—she knew of your family. She refused to believe that a Darcy would abandon a respectable female in such a manner.” She looked at him fully then.

“And you did not! You paid, paid handsomely! Why would you, if you were innocent of any wrongdoing?”

Suddenly, Darcy felt very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable, indeed. He scrubbed a hand through his hair.

It was his turn, so it seemed, to provide some explanations.

“Shortly after that ball he threw, Bingley sought me out. He seemed quite shaken, but it took him some time to make his point. After much hemming and hawing, he admitted that he had had relations with a respectable young lady, and she was now in the family way. Miss Bennet, he said.”

Elizabeth shot up in astonishment. “No! That is impossible!”

He was not surprised, any longer, that she had not known.

“I am afraid it was. Bingley was, plainly, not to be trusted with any lady whatsoever.”

But her protests continued. “My sister and I were very close. Jane was never alone with Mr Bingley before they were man and wife. Never. I would have known.”

For the first time, a niggling doubt crept into Darcy’s memory. He tried to recall, more clearly, exactly what Bingley had claimed.

Elizabeth placed her hand upon his arm. “On the night before her wedding, Jane and I spoke of-of what would happen to her on her wedding night because we both wondered . My mother was not very informative, she told me. Jane certainly was not with child.”

“Seven months later, she…”

“Yes,” Elizabeth interrupted, shaking his arm a little in obvious frustration. “Seven months after her wedding the twins were born, much too early. She nearly died. They nearly died. I thought I would lose them all.”

Darcy could no longer remain seated. He stood and paced, trying to remember the moment when Bingley had named Miss Bennet as the young lady he had ruined.

To his dismay, he could not recall him ever doing so.

“I had learnt, the night of that ball, that Bingley’s attentions to your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage,” he tried to explain.

“I observed his behaviour attentively, and perceived that his partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond what I had ever before witnessed in him.”

Darcy placed his hand against his forehead, sorting through his memories.

“I was already troubled by the open attentions Bingley had paid to your sister. When he came to me with his confessions, I may have—I must have assumed I already knew whom he had ruined.” He met Elizabeth’s gaze.

“I was furious with him. He was, plainly, too young to marry—as evidenced by his susceptibility to the Lady Pethertons of the world. A child on the way, however, changed everything. I told him he must wed immediately, and that I would escort him to propose marriage that very instant.”

“You never even asked him,” Elizabeth reproached in dawning realisation. “You drove him right to my sister, forcing him to propose without even asking who it was he had ruined.”

“I did not force her to accept,” he pointed out, but the haunted sorrow in his wife’s eyes struck him in the gut.

“She loved him. It ought to have been an excellent match. She thought—she believed he loved her as well, loved her enough to marry her even though she was without any fortune at all.”

He made himself acknowledge the rest aloud.

“I suppose…I suppose he had come to me to help him with the problem of Miss Lucas, not Miss Bennet. He did not correct my assumptions, however. He did not want to be forced to marry Miss Lucas, and he saw what I would do should he admit the truth. He did care for your sister, truly, I will always believe that…but I can see, now, what he must have seen then—that he could not be forced to marry another if he were already wed.”

Elizabeth sounded something beyond shocked, staring down at her hands in the firelight.

“I learnt of Charlotte’s condition on Jane’s wedding day—the day that the father of her child was marrying my sister.

No wonder she lied. She blamed you—I suppose Bingley told her that the wedding was at your command.

Which it was, in a way. ‘His life was not his own’ he told her.

She would not tell me the truth, could not tell me, and she knew I hated you, regardless. ”

He flinched, but she did not see it. Then she met his eyes with her large, dark ones.

“It still does not explain why you paid Charlotte thousands.”

Darcy would have given anything to have a different answer, but there was nothing in him except the truth.

“Your uncle’s missive did not name the young lady who was ruined. It appeared, to me, to be a letter blaming me for unleashing Bingley upon the unfortunate inhabitants of the country.”

“You could not be held answerable for that,” she said. “It would be weak, a pathetic reason, even, to try.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But it was from your uncle. I thought it meant…I made an assumption that he—Bingley—had seduced more than one Bennet sister. I-I...” He hesitated. “I wanted to make amends,” he finished lamely.