Page 29 of London Holiday (Sweet Escapes Collection #2)

Chapter twenty-nine

“ D arcy, what in Heaven’s name have you been doing? You came to me this morning proclaiming the vilest accusations against your aunt, and then you spent the day trading clandestine messages with one of your servants and traipsing about Creation? Have you gone mad? I am given to understand that you have been secretly gathering information against your very own relation! And what the devil have you been doing here without telling anyone of your whereabouts? Egad, Darcy, I never thought I should have to scold you. Stand up and face your duties like a man!”

Darcy clenched his fist and stared out the window of the carriage, refusing to look the Earl of Matlock in the eye. “I have no objections to asserting my manhood, but I do object rather violently to manipulation and deceit.”

“Deceit? Deceit! Do I hear you properly? What are these clothes you are wearing, what foolishness have you been masquerading about all day? Preposterous! If your father could have seen you in this—this—”

“I must insist that you do not invoke my father’s name! You are the head of the Fitzwilliam family, but for years you have done nothing to discourage Lady Catherine’s abuse of her position.”

The earl’s eyes flickered in rage. “Have a care, my boy! Do you presume to dictate my duties to me ?”

“I am not afraid to demonstrate to you your failings. I have deferred for years, out of regard for my mother’s family, but Lady Catherine has trespassed against my goodwill in every conceivable way. Yet, when her actions are so blatant that none could consider her under the regulation of sense and decorum, you do not protest! You would hold me accountable for my aunt’s desires despite their ruinous nature, see me perform her pleasure regardless of my own interests, and when I am delayed in seeking the proof of her falsehood that you demanded, I am accused of not performing my duty. Is it not you who ought to have borne the burden of checking her? Yet you claim the right to tell me that my father would be ashamed of my actions!”

“I have no need to tell you that, for your own conscience must inform you of it!” his lordship bellowed. “George Darcy would have done his duty, just as he did by my sister. By Jove! You did not see him disappear for a day like a spoilt child when he was given a bride.”

“My mother did not force his hand with an intoxicated compromise.”

“She did not have to. George knew what was expected of him and fell in love with my sister just as his father instructed. Anne did the same, and they were quite happy. There was not this weakling foolishness about the choosing of a marriage partner in our day! Why could you not do your duty? You are a selfish boy, Fitzwilliam Darcy, and I have nearly had enough of your objections.”

Darcy scowled and turned back to the window. “That will suit me as well, for I too have grown weary of the conflict.”

“And another thing… what the devil? You what?”

His stomach roiled in protest and his entire being recoiled, but he forced himself to spit out the words. “I will speak to my aunt about wedding my cousin.” There was nothing worth fighting for anyway, since he had found the woman he sought, and she despised him.

“However,” he interjected before his uncle could offer his congratulations that he had come to his senses, “I do believe I am owed some sort of explanation. ”

“Explanation? How so? I would counter that it is you who must explain yourself. What can you mean, going off without a word to anyone and in the company of some trollop all day, deliberately to humiliate your cousin?”

“I was with no trollop.”

“Your aunt showed me the proof in your own hand! She even had a name… Benwick, something like that?”

Darcy shifted uneasily in the seat and, for a moment, longed for the safety of the foot pegs on the back of the carriage. “I know of none by the name Benwick. There must have been some misunderstanding.”

“Well, I still say you have a bit of talking to do, for it is utter nonsense to me, that you should have gone off as you did like a petulant boy.”

“What is nonsense is that my aunt was so insistent upon my immediate acceptance of my cousin that she would attempt to drug and then compromise me so that I might not escape with my honour intact. I would know the plain truth, for if I decide to bestow my hand on my cousin, whatever has been the cause of my aunt’s desperation will shortly become my own concern.”

“Her desperation, as you call it, is nothing more than frustration with your lack of commitment.”

“And you do not think it strange that she attempted to impose upon me now? Would she not have had better opportunities on other occasions?”

The earl shook his head. “I have no interest in your intrigues, Darcy. When we walk in the door, I expect you to do your duty as a man of this family and act with honour. Do not forget, we still have Georgiana’s future to think of as well, and I would see you situated first—for her good as well as your own.”

Darcy ground his teeth. “I have not forgotten.”

“Darcy! There you are, my dear boy. Come, let us greet one another as family and put this nonsense behind us. And my dear brother, of course, it is only fitting that you should have come as well, for I am excessively attentive to all manner of discord within a family, and we ought not to have any hint of that between us.” Lady Catherine stood in the centre of his own drawing room, a caped dress spread opulently like a royal cloak and held court at his favourite wingback chair.

“Aunt Catherine,” he acknowledged. “You will pardon me if I do not rush to kiss your cheek. I have a few plain questions to which I must hear an answer.”

She looked hurt, her wrinkled brow falling and her lips trembling. “Darcy, you speak as if you have been the injured party. Would you accuse me, an old woman, of wronging you? I declare I cannot see how. What has anyone done that you ought not to have done yourself?”

He glared darkly, refusing to answer his aunt’s plea. His gaze searched all round till it settled upon his butler, standing at a far door. The man’s face reddened faintly when he felt his master’s scrutiny, but he remained stock still, his hands locked behind his back, and his eyes straight ahead.

“Dawson! Have Mr Wilson brought, please.”

Mr Dawson looked unhappy and glanced to Lady Catherine before he stammered, “Sir, Mr Wilson has been relieved of his duties and confined to his chamber for unseemly conduct. I should not like to expose any ladies or your distinguished guests—”

“Mr Dawson, who pays your salary? I know not what other compensation you have received, but your position in this house is retained at my pleasure.”

“Darcy!” Lady Catherine objected. “What accusation is this? Do you suspect me of some treachery in your own household?”

He glanced levelly at the lady but did not give the satisfaction of a reply. “Dawson,” he resumed, “I will also have Mrs White, and the cook brought. ”

“James!” the lady implored now, walking toward the earl, “hear you this? Does he intend to bring some sort of charges against me? I will not be thus spoken to! If he has some manner of protest to make, have I not greater? Has he not refused to perform his duty these six years since his majority? Nay, it has been eight since the subject was first canvassed openly, yet he refuses to oblige! That I should live to see the day my own sister’s son should thus treat his family!”

“Darcy,” the earl’s deep voice cautioned, “we had settled that you intended to accept your duty. Do not delay or complicate matters by reluctance or pointless allegations now.”

“I do not consider it pointless. The integrity of my household has been breached, my authority challenged, and my private affairs meddled with. If—and this point is absolutely conditional—I choose to offer my cousin my hand in marriage, I must have some assurances that such behaviour shall never be repeated.”

“If!” Lady Catherine nearly erupted. “Have you no decency? Your cousin has been disgraced, and in your very own bed! How can you stand before me now and claim that you have some choice in the affair? The matter was settled last night!”

“That is the very point I would dispute, and to do so will require more honest witnesses than can be found in my own corrupted household.”

“I will hear no more of this slander! Where is my daughter? Anne will be heard, for she is the wounded party here!”

A maid was thus dispatched, and the young lady brought from the very next room, but at the same moment she appeared, a footman bowed and announced a Mr Collins to see Lady Catherine.

Darcy, heated and offended as he was, could not help but be checked by such a name. “Collins?” he repeated.

“Indeed,” his aunt smiled. “My parson from Hunsford. He is here to perform the ceremony at my request. I have already procured the license, and I will have satisfaction of you this very night before my daughter’s ruin is made known. ”

Darcy knew not what to think. Outrage at his aunt’s presumption and high-handed meddling was but one of the swirl of ill feelings plaguing him at that moment. Collins? Not… not her Collins, surely!

He had not the opportunity to answer his aunt, for in the next moment, the very bumbling fool he had seen on the pavement in Cheapside that morning now bowed his way into the drawing room. And beside him, with her lovely eyes cast down over rosy cheeks and her hands folded demurely before her….

“My esteemed Lady Catherine,” Mr Collins beamed, “it is with the deepest pleasure that I present, as requested, my betrothed, Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Hertfordshire, to help celebrate the nuptials of our dear Miss de Bourgh. May I again protest the very great honour bestowed upon your humble servants by giving notice of us at such a venerable occasion as the solemnisation of Miss de Bourgh’s marriage to Mr Darcy? Your ladyship is too kind, to consider our satisfaction on sharing such a happy day.”

He could not breathe. She had scarcely raised her eyes, but there could be no question that she had noted his presence. For no other reason would she stare so steadily at a bit of Indian carpet, but that she had been dragged here against her will by that idiot, presented as his unwilling affianced, and then confronted with none other but himself! He longed to go to her, to lift her chin and to bodily remove that simpering idiot’s arm from hers, but all eyes were now on his Elizabeth.

“Your betrothed does not speak,” observed Lady Catherine. “Is she so disrespectful that she cannot express proper courtesy at the introduction?”

“Oh, quite the contrary, My Lady! She is the most modest and exemplary woman, and I feel quite certain that she is merely overcome with gratitude for your ladyship’s notice and condescension. Mr Darcy,” he turned and bowed again, “pray, forgive my manners, for we have not been introduced. May I express my most joyous congratulations upon the occasion of your marriage! ”

She did glance up to him then, and within those fine eyes flickered a spark of… something… but it was quickly dampened by a deep shadow of humiliation. Crimson stained those soft cheeks he had only an hour ago caressed as his own, and he could see her desperately trying to swallow. He had no right to speak to her, for she had not yet responded to Lady Catherine. Angels above, could anyone else see the inferno threatening to consume him if he did not go to her at once?

“Miss Bennet,” Lady Catherine repeated, as if the young lady were deaf, “you are either exquisitely modest, as Mr Collins claims, or unfavourably reticent.”

She blinked, slowly, and with deliberate lassitude, lifted her eyes to his aunt. “I believe you might be the first person to ever think me reticent, My Lady.”

“That is well. Anne,” Lady Catherine gestured to his silent cousin, “does her appearance please you?”

Darcy had scarcely even noticed Anne’s arrival, and as he glanced in her direction now, he could not miss the faint narrowing of her eyes as she acknowledged him. Well, let her be displeased with him! She was party to all this fallacy, let her suffer some of his disdain. But why was Anne to pass any approval on his Elizabeth? Could not everyone else see the contrast between the two? One vibrant and healthy, the very angles of her face formed by every expression of feminine goodness and cheer; the other sallow, ill-disposed toward civility, weak, and pale. They were not even of the same class!

Anne glanced over Elizabeth’s dress, the very one she had worn all day, and appeared unimpressed. “She is respectable enough, I suppose,” was her diffident reply.

“It is fitting that you have some sort of attendant,” Lady Catherine decided. “That is the very reason I insisted that Mr Collins present his betrothed this evening, for she will be coming to Hunsford after her marriage. You may retire to dress, Anne, and Miss Bennet may assist you. ”

And that was the moment that Darcy, with his carefully schooled detachment and his barely restrained sense of decorum, ceased to care what anyone else thought.