Page 6 of Expectations (Obstinate, Headstrong Girl #7)

CHAPTER FIVE

SPEAK IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE

F riday arrived with a speed hitherto never felt by the cottage’s inhabitants.

With her sister Lydia, Elizabeth awaited Mr Darcy’s arrival together in the parlour, weak light from the grey skies beyond the window filtering through, the weather beyond it as gloomy as her thoughts.

She could not hold still, pacing from one side of the room to the other.

“How will you keep Cassandra from interrupting? I am surprised she is not in here already,” Lydia remarked.

“Bribery,” Elizabeth sighed. “I have promised to finish her new dress today if we see neither hide nor hair of her downstairs this morning. If she appears, I will not touch a stitch until, perhaps, next week, and she can remain in her blacks.”

“Clever. Has Mama offered her opinions?”

Elizabeth stiffened at the remembered argument. “Yes. Thank you for telling her.”

Lydia shrugged. “She had already heard enough—Mrs Long called at Longbourn within minutes of leaving my shop, I am certain. However, I did convey the impression that Mr Darcy will not return until next month sometime. I daresay you did not correct her, did you?”

That was Lydia, frank and yet devious. “I did not,” she admitted. “At least the turn to this cottage is out of sight of Longbourn and, truly, anyone else. With any luck, neither she nor Mrs Long will hear of today’s visit at all.”

“They will not hear of it from me, and the Sergeants never gossip. What have you told the children?”

“Only that Mr Darcy has some old business matters to resolve, and I am helping him this morning.”

“Should not you warn them, in case it does not go your way? They have a right to know.”

“Do you mean, like our mother warned us nearly every day of our lives that we were in danger of being thrown out into the hedgerows? It was so comforting, as I recall.”

It was Lydia’s turn to sigh. “It was not gentle, but at least we all knew that our futures were our own to determine, and we could not rely upon circumstance to provide us with a birthright.”

“That is one way of looking at it, I suppose.”

“It is the only way. Kitty would have been settled that much sooner had she listened to my opinions on the subject.”

“It all worked out. She seems very happy with Mr St John.”

Kitty was married now to the man who held the second-best living in Kent, thanks to Mary’s finagling. Her letters were full of parish news and her young son and the simple, homely business of a contented wife and mother.

“Yes, but Papa wasted so much money on the disastrous Season which Jane tried to give her, when I told Kitty she ought to search for a husband within our uncle’s circles, where a man expects to work for his own fortune instead of inheriting someone else’s.”

“Papa must needs waste his money on something. I suppose it did not matter what, in the long run. He would have objected to our uncle’s intervention.”

“You are right about that.” Lydia joined Elizabeth at the window. “Lizzy, you have done everything that you could do for the twins, and more. I do not understand why you are so resistant to any ideas Mr Darcy has for Tommy’s future.”

How could she explain it? She had worn the nursery floors thin, walking those infants, born too soon and so very tiny.

The doctor had believed neither would survive, and she had resisted sending them to the village to be nursed so that she could watch over them herself, too frightened almost to even sleep much the first year.

It had been a terrifying experience, but the bond she had forged with the twins had grown into a love so deep, she could never regret it.

Lydia, not particularly maternal herself and having no children of her own, would never understand.

Elizabeth could only ask, “Whose side are you on?”

“I am always on yours, believe it or not. Is that his carriage?”

They both watched as a gleaming black coach with polished brass rails turned up the rutted drive. “Who else?”

Darcy was shown into a shabby but spotless parlour by the same unsmiling housekeeper who shut the door in his face the first time, where two women awaited him.

Elizabeth, to his surprise, had discarded her blacks, and instead wore a pale green gown that accentuated the perfection of her figure in a way that he was not happy to notice; he would have a devil of a time shoving these memories of her away, once this was all over.

The other appeared vaguely familiar—slightly taller than Elizabeth, more statuesque, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the former Jane Bennet.

Unlike Elizabeth’s, her long-ago image had faded in his mind, but it must be her youngest sister, the only one still residing in the area.

“Mr Darcy, you might remember my sister, Mrs Lydia Philips. Mrs Philips, Mr Darcy is here to discuss Thomas’s future.” She recited this all very formally, and as if the reasons for his appearance had never been discussed between them.

He bowed and seated himself in the single remaining overstuffed chair.

Immediately he sank down much too far within the cushion, his knees now jutting at an awkward angle.

He tried to adjust himself, but there was very little support to find, and he ended up perching uncomfortably at its seat edge.

Elizabeth’s watchful gaze betrayed little, but he thought he saw satisfaction in their dark depths; she had put this chair out on purpose, simply to make him appear ridiculous.

Anger blazed within him but he tamped it down, determined to be civil.

I surprised her the last time , he told himself.

She was unprepared. She has had time to consider now, what is in the child’s best interests.

It was plain that Bingley had not provided, truly, for either of his children, and Elizabeth could not afford to—her surroundings, even the chair he sat upon, proved it.

Still, there was no reason for particular hurry.

If she preferred to wait a few months before uprooting the boy, that was acceptable.

It would give him time to engage a nurse.

Or nurses. How many did one small child need?

Nevertheless, he was a reasonable man, as she would soon see.

He opened his mouth to say something conciliatory, but the housekeeper entered with a tea tray, plunked it unceremoniously on the table, and stamped out of the room.

He could not help but watch Elizabeth pour it out, the expert motions of her delicate hands serving her sister first. A part of him thrilled, against his will, when she did not ask how he took it, but prepared it perfectly to his liking. She had remembered his preferences, after all these years.

“It cannot be your first choice to bring a young child into your household. Such a disruption must be the last thing a man such as yourself would wish.”

A man such as myself? It was the way she had referred to him the last time he was here, and he grit his teeth against the irritation of it—as if she was some sort of saint, and he a lowly beggar come to importune.

“I am afraid I do not take your meaning.” He took a sip of his tea, and nearly choked on the bitter taste, the foul liquid doing its best to come right back up again.

“Are you trying to poison me?” he cried.

“I am sorry if it is not to your liking. We live simply here.” Her mouth firmed in disapproval. “I only meant that as a bachelor, to suddenly bring a child and all the attendant persons required into that life causes much commotion and trouble. You cannot want it.”

Darcy set the cup of vile brew down upon the table, glaring at it, and the person who served it to him, with unpreventable resentment. “I am not ignorant of a child’s needs. I raised my sister, for all intents and purposes.”

“Yes, but why would you wish to take the trouble for a stranger, much less for the son of a man you refuse to call a friend? Raising her could not have been easy for you; children are often difficult. Take into consideration that Tommy will have been torn from his sister, from his home and from all of those he has ever known!” Elizabeth paused briefly before continuing.

“I remember hearing, once, that your sister was not a particularly contented young person. Do not you recall, Lydia, hearing Mr Wickham speak of her? He had quite a bit to say of her general unhappiness. It was, evidently, well known. Why would Mr Darcy wish to repeat any portion of that experience for a child not his own? Does this make sense to you?”

Mrs Philips’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but the utter rage he felt at this pointed mention of his old enemy, so long suppressed, outpaced her tongue.

“Oh, certainly, Mrs Philips, please quote to me from his wisdom,” he spat.

“Cite the sage, the judicious, the prudent former lieutenant, Mr Wickham. Perhaps you would like to know the fate of your revered old friend? He is dead, dead of the pox, of Mother’s ruin, and of whatever other selfish indulgences he managed to cram into his short life. ”

Elizabeth’s shock was obvious, but the look she turned upon him was hostile in the extreme.

His own outrage was, plainly, matched by hers.

“If he is dead, it is because of him ,” Elizabeth said, again addressing her sister.

“Tell him, Lydia, of what you know, what we all knew, of the great harm Mr Darcy inflicted upon poor Mr Wickham.”

He opened his mouth to snap a sharp refutation of such foul nonsense, but Mrs Philips stood.

“I came today to facilitate a civil exchange between two adults who have much to decide regarding what must be in the best interests of a six-year-old child. I believe, however, that I will find more sensible conversation in the nursery. Mr Darcy, I bid you a good day. Lizzy, your tea tastes like swill.”

She marched out of the room, leaving him alone with Elizabeth.

Broodingly, Darcy considered the woman who had wreaked such havoc upon his life.

The colour was high in her cheeks, her bosom heaving just a little from a fury that, clearly, still possessed her.

The last thing he had ever done for her was to ensure that George Wickham had, via compulsory means, ‘deserted’ his regiment, removing the ne’er-do-well from the neighbourhood’s vulnerable inhabitants.

She ought to be thanking him, instead of giving credibility to the wretched reprobate.

He hated the urge he had to comfort her, to wrench up the past, to explain himself…

and most of all, to take her in his arms and show her, by the violence of his affections, just how much power she still held over him.

He made his tone the most reasonable one he could summon. “What is in the best interests of the boy must be obvious to us both.”

“You would separate him from the sister he adores?”

“That is entirely up to you.” He hesitated, wondering whether this might be the entire point of the conversation. “I would take both children, if you wished it.”

“ Both children? Take them both from me? Are you such a monster as that?”

Monster. It was useless; she had never loved him as he had loved her, and now she had decided to despise him.

Dragging this out was painful and, really, truly, unnecessary.

The law, and the money to enforce it, was all on his own side, and the right decision was obvious, for her as well as the boy.

It would not matter did he give her months of time to prepare; she would probably only use it to make the boy hate him as much as she did.

He stood, and bowing, prepared to take his leave.

“I will go to town now, to make arrangements for engaging a nurse and other such servants as are appropriate. I will return on Monday for Thomas. I suggest you prepare him for the change, and demonstrate the maturity not to frighten him with scurrilous attacks upon my character. He will have a much better life than the one you can provide, and he is deeply fortunate that I have taken up a duty I was, as you so helpfully pointed out, under no legal obligation to fulfil.”

He made himself move, leaving her staring after him—but at the door, he paused.

“I am sorry, deeply so, that you are unable to see that I have your best interests at heart, as well as his.”

She did not reply, standing frozen, an emotion he could only describe as an intensity of grief upon her lovely features. He could not allow it to change his mind, and shut the door quietly behind him.