Page 18 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)

Four months.

Darcy had still not forgotten Elizabeth Bennet.

The night of that horrific ball had been the most dramatic sequence of events in his life — he was refused when he offered marriage to one woman, and then less than an hour later, a different one attempted to force him into a marriage with her.

It was no surprise that the event had left a deep impression on his mind.

One early morning in April he returned to his London townhouse after a ride around Hyde park, full of thoughts and memories of Elizabeth.

He’d woken up at six o’clock after a dream about Elizabeth, and then went out and around for a long ride.

It was the spring season. The heavy verdure, the scent of leaves, the trickle of brooks, the large pond in the park, everything made him think of the woman who had been the most beautiful, most kind, and most honorable amongst all whom he had known.

Even the clatter of horse hooves made him recall that Elizabeth had been described to him as not an accomplished horsewoman.

Eh, she had refused him.

If he were at all sensible, he would stop thinking about her. He partly had. Not a single thought for at least a week.

But Darcy’s mind refused to stop this time.

In the spring, Town could be lovely. Tree lined avenues, gardens filled with a profusion of flowers, rose bushes that he might pause to smell, and the birds twitting and tweeting. Of course just a short distance away was the endless bustle, noise, crowd, and grasping commercial hordes of the main city.

On his roundabout path to return home, he went down one of these streets and bought a bracelet for Georgiana that caught his fancy. The merchant wrapped it in a fine piece of paper, and he smiled at Darcy, asking if the piece was for his sweetheart.

Darcy coldly did not reply.

He… he realized how desperately he wished, once more, to have Elizabeth as his own, to have a wife, a companion of his life who he could buy gifts for.

And then, not quite too late to participate in breakfast he returned home.

The groom at the neighborhood stables took his horse, and with quick steps, holding the smooth wrapped paper parcel, Darcy energetically stepped through the garden in the middle of the square surrounded by a black wrought iron fence and across to his own house.

Three steps up the stairs, and he opened the door without any ceremony.

The servant standing there to respond to callers bowed to him, and Darcy made a small nod of his head in return. “Are my cousin and sister still at breakfast? — ah, I hear them.”

Darcy hurried over to the breakfast room, from which the sound of Georgiana’s giggles could be heard, as Colonel Fitzwilliam said something ridiculous about the French and his general superiority to the world.

He opened the door and enjoyed the scent of freshly baked bread, ham, eggs, chocolate and coffee.

Georgiana smiled at him and waved, “Richard just told a most ridiculous story, about how you cannot lose at billiards.”

“No, what? Of course I can lose.”

“I can’t beat you — Georgie, I’ve played a thousand games against him, and not once has he lost.”

“Then why do you continue to play?” Darcy asked. “He wins one time in five. We are close enough for the game to remain interesting, while distant enough for it to be clear who is the superior.”

Georgiana laughed and embraced him.

Darcy then handed over the wrapped bracelet. “I saw this and thought you might like it.”

She opened it and smiled at the bracelet. “I do not deserve this.”

“Nonsense.” Darcy waved his hand. “Nonsense. Of course you do.”

“You have been so kind to me since—” She sighed. “I know that you are kinder than I deserve.”

“Nonsense.” Darcy shook his head again, and embraced her back.

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Of course he is. He is an excellent brother and friend. Though I’ve on occasion seen him to be less kind to people than he ought to be.”

“Such as?” Darcy replied sharply.

He’d felt an odd sort of reserve and distance in his relations with Colonel Fitzwilliam since the weeks they’d spent together in Netherfield. The officer had disappointed Elizabeth, and after she had refused him for his sake — or at least so Darcy surmised.

He did not actually know.

Colonel Fitzwilliam waved his hand around. “You say it yourself. Your good opinion once lost is lost forever. By Zeus — you know I’ll not argue individuals in front of Georgie.” So saying, he tweaked the nose of his cousin.

Georgiana squealed, laughed, slapped his shoulder, and pulled away to study her new bracelet. “I can in fact listen to the most shocking things.”

“ You can. But Darcy cannot.”

“I have no cause to fear anything you might say about me,” Darcy replied. He quickly and evenly buttered a roll and took a bite of the freshly baked bread. “You do not mean anything in particular though.”

“An idle thought of people we knew in Hertfordshire crossed my mind — ah, and I see you grimace. See, Georgie, I told you that he could not manage such a conversation.”

Darcy was in fact grimacing.

Once it had become clear that no engagement between Colonel Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth was waiting upon the proper time to be announced, Darcy had considered returning to the neighborhood around Meryton to try courting her again, and asking her if it had been Colonel Fitzwilliam who she had loved, and if now that he had proven to be a flighty suitor, she might choose him instead.

There were always two considerations that stopped Darcy from doing so.

The first was a little pride: He had offered himself, and he would not offer himself again simply because he believed her to be unable to marry the man she preferred.

The other more significant consideration was that her sister had married Mr. Bingley. And Mr. Bingley had demanded that he marry that woman.

Darcy believed that he would never be able to think of that woman with anything approaching calmness of heart or mind.

“Oh, you mean Mr. Bingley! And his awful, awful sister,” Georgiana said. “I do miss Mr. Bingley. He always laughed so much, and was so friendly, and he made the room always seem a bit brighter.”

“And then he tried to force me to marry his sister.” Darcy growled. Suddenly he could not take another bite of his meal, and the food looked heavy, overly cooked and disgusting to him.

“Eh, I don’t think that is quite fair,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “And see the grimace, Georgie? That is how your brother tells people that he does not wish a subject to be discussed. No matter how often he says that he will happily hear any subject, you can see the lack of happiness clearly.”

“That I am not happy about the subject does not make me unwilling to listen to a discussion of it.”

“By the gods of war!” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “Of course you are willing to war. To angrily rant and rave upon how you were mistreated, and how your behavior is unexceptionable in every way, and how there was no way that any reasonable man could have acted, except in precisely the way that you did — all this despite the simple point that I am a reasonable man who would not have cut Bingley so sharply and permanently.”

The reply from Darcy was a glare.

Georgiana glanced between the two of them.

She pressed her hand to her face and said, “Ah…” She flushed and asked, “You two are not really angry at each other are you?”

Darcy turned to her, and he shook his head. “No, I do not think so.”

“You’ve seemed angry to me ever since I refused to follow you,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. But then he flushed, looked at Georgiana, and said, “This is not an argument to have in front of you.”

“It was not the matter of Bingley at all,” Darcy replied. He saw it again like a flash of lightning, like a nightmare: Elizabeth’s face in the strong moonlight. The feelings of another make it impossible for me to accept you .

“Oh,” Georgiana exclaimed. “There was a message for you, or about you in my most recent letter from Anne.”

Georgiana and her cousin Anne de Bourgh had maintained a steady correspondence since Georgiana’s near elopement with Wickham, as she’d been encouraged to write more to her relations by Lady Matlock.

Darcy had always kept a careful distance from Anne, since the suspicion that Lady Catherine would do anything to make him marry her daughter — though of course not quite as much as Miss Bingley had, since Lady Catherine was in fact well bred — had never quite left Darcy.

He became still at being told that Anne had said something about him. “And what is this message?” Anne had no basis from his behavior to harbor any hopes towards him. She shouldn’t have any reason to say anything to him.

“Oh, merely that an acquaintance of yours, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, is visiting — she actually visits her cousin Mr. Collins. The parsonage is ten minutes away across the park, so it sums up to the same.”

“Miss Elizabeth!” Darcy said in astonishment.

There was a softening on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s expression as well. He smiled and said. “I’d dearly like to see how Miss Elizabeth manages Lady Catherine’s tirades.”

“Anne writes,” Georgiana said, “that her mother likes Miss Bennet, but that she finds her rather impertinent, and wishes that her fortune had come from a more respectable source than trade, even if her father does possess a hereditary estate.”

Both Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “That sounds quite like them both.”

“How long is she to stay?” Darcy asked.

Georgiana picked up the letter again. “Oh, the dates seem to be not firmly set, but certainly until a week after Easter.”

Half a day’s carriage ride away.

Of course she had been half a day’s carriage ride away before . In fact she was now much further from London than she had been at Longbourn, but then it had seemed impossible to go to her, or to make an excuse to himself that would let him go.

But now!

There would be nothing simpler now than to simply announce a visit to his aunt, and go.

When Georgiana left the breakfast table to go to the drawing room piano for her morning session of practice upon the piano — she habitually spent at least three hours a day at the instrument — Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam remained sitting in the breakfast room over their coffee.

After a while, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Eh, Coz. Not just Bingley, I suspect you judge his sister more harshly than her desserts as well.”

“I shall not ,” Darcy replied sharply, “hear any word spoken in her favor.”

“Zeus.” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “You are a man who’ll not change his mind readily.” Then he added, with a sudden gloom as he sipped his cooling coffee, “Not that it matters. Not that it matters. She earned harsh judgement.”

“She showed herself to be the worst sort of woman imaginable.”

“You have a very particular notion of the possible range of female deficiencies — what about that woman who promised for a fee to take care of the offspring of unfortunate women who could not raise them on their own, and then murdered them.”

Darcy grimaced. “You hardly will put Miss Bingley in my good graces by convincing me that at least she does not murder babies.”

“ You are the one who reached for the heights of foolishness by naming her the worst sort imaginable . I merely point out to you that it was a fool thing to say.”

“I know,” Darcy replied sharply, “that that is not the real point towards this conversation tends.”

“It showed far more spirit than most girls have — if she’d been who she tried to seem — a bloodless bland creation of an excellent education — I’d like her less than half as much as I do.”

“You never liked her,” Darcy replied. He sipped at his coffee which was now down to the dregs infused with the dusty powder from the ground coffee.

Colonel Fitzwilliam blinked at Darcy several times. “You truly do not understand the subtleties of the conversations around you?”

“You mean to say the persistent way you insulted her, teased her, and inserted yourself into conversations of hers where you were not wanted was a sign of affection?”

“Affection perhaps indicates more strength of feeling than I had… interest certainly.”

“Crazy man.” Darcy shook his head in disgust. “You shall show no interest in her from henceforth. That woman tried to force me into marriage through an entirely disreputable and dishonorable stratagem.”

“Orders again?” Colonel Fitzwilliam clapped his hands twice. “I’ll remind you that I merely stay with you from time to time because I like you, not because I am dependent upon your charity. Command your servants or maybe your sister. Not me.”

Darcy sighed. He rubbed at the back of his head. “That was not proper, and I apologize.”

“Zeus! An apology from Mr. Darcy?” Colonel Fitzwilliam then reached his hand across to shake Darcy’s, and added in a sober tone, “I sincerely appreciate it when you can admit your own failings. And I do understand that you are so used to command that it is difficult for you to cease living in that mode. I have the general, my father and others above me, and even so I from time to time forget myself and give commands to those not under my command.”

Darcy nodded, and he grinned, starting to feel more at ease with his cousin than he had for months. “Neither of us easily accept command.”

“No. Britons never shall be slaves, and all.” The officer then reached across the table, and grabbed a piece of ham that was left on Darcy’s plate, and stuffed it into his mouth. “By the way, I have it upon the word of Miss Elizabeth that Miss Bingley was most sincerely attached to you.”

Darcy glared at his cousin.

“Eh, devil take it!” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughingly added, “I also promised Miss Elizabeth that if opportunity were ever to arise for me to promote the resumption of your friendly relations with Mr. Bingley, that I was to most assiduously—”

“No, no, no.”

“The puppy is probably lost without you, wagging his tail, looking miserably at every passing gentleman to see if they are his lost master.”

“The puppy peed on my boots.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed heartily. He raised his hands. “One expects puppies to pee on your boots. That is why they are so wholly charming.”

“There is nothing charming about pee soaked boots.”

“We would drown all of them if they were not charming.”

“Richard.” Darcy’s voice was cold.

“A fool mistake in a moment of stress that he had never experienced before, that is not sufficient reason—”

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

“Not a Christian attitude, eh.” His cousin shrugged. “But that’s business you ought to raise with your vicar. You’ll be able to explain yourself to Miss Elizabeth in person when we go to Rosings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Miss Elizabeth is there. You want to marry her. You do still wish to marry her, am I not correct?”

“But — what? How do you know that I — that is to say…”

Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned like a shark. “Rather than knowing, I’d surmised — and you have now confirmed my surmise.”

“I… but don’t you admire her yourself? — I had thought that you meant to marry her. She said…” Darcy felt himself flush.

“Just what did she say?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.

Darcy stared at the shiny surface of his china plate, wreathed in flowers and delicate colors.

Did he actually want to tell his cousin the story of the most painful minute of his life?

And the answer that came back to him was: Yes.

Perhaps he was too silent too often with those who he loved, and perhaps that was not turning to his advantage.

Without looking up Darcy said in a slow voice, “As you surmised I asked Miss Elizabeth to marry me. She refused me and said that she could not marry me because her respect for the feelings of another made it impossible.”

Silence from the other side.

Darcy looked up at his cousin, who had a sort of twisted smile. “And you assumed that it was me whose feelings made it impossible?”

Uhhhh.

Richard laughed. “My dear, dear cousin — you are such a silly innocent, always thinking in a very… male way. She was talking about Miss Bingley .”

Oh.

“And as for me , do I admire her? Greatly. But she is too clever by the half for me to marry. I’d like her as my cousin-in-law. Sensible woman, she’d manage you and spare me the worry. In any case, you’ll do better this time with her, because I’ll advise you.”

“You hate visiting Lady Catherine.”

“Hate? Say rather that I view our visits with fond distaste — now what are you waiting for, send Batty Catty that letter. The one saying you’ll arrive, my august person in tow, the day after tomorrow.”

Darcy smiled with something like deep happiness glowing in him for the first time in months. “I dare say I will.”