Page 44 of Some Natural Importance (Pride, Prejudice and Romance #3)
“Hoodwinked by a simple country squire...” Or did you hoodwink him? Does your pretty little country miss know about the gold? Shaking his head, Richard rose to pour himself another drink. He ignored the courtesy of offering his cousin a refill.
“A country miss who brings nothing to the marriage, and who seems far more in need of your funds than she does of your love. The rugs at Longbourn are thin and faded?—”
“But the tea was strong and the biscuits were plentiful.” Darcy scowled and stalked across the room .
“If a business transaction is what you wanted, marry Cecilia, as everyone would prefer.”
Darcy’s retort came swiftly. “ I prefer to be regarded as more than a means to unite properties.”
“Oh yes, well, an engagement to a girl mourning her father—after you exchanged signatures on a land deal and a marriage settlement—is not at all similar to being the groom who will help unite properties.”
Darcy shot up, his expression fierce enough that Richard shut his mouth with a snap.
What had seemed complicated to him a month ago now seemed so clear; explaining it, however, was difficult without disclosing details and feelings he was loath to share.
Darcy had refrained from telling Elizabeth about his suspicions on the land’s value beyond its importance as a water source; there was no reason to reveal the slim possibility that Copperdale could hold true riches.
It was a single coin, possibly found on a property with some proximity to an ancient Roman city.
Revealing any of this to his cousin before he had even spoken to Elizabeth, his future wife and the woman to whom these riches would truly belong, was unwise.
In the face of Richard’s virulence, he now questioned whether he could trust Richard to keep any confidence at all.
Darcy’s allegiances had shifted; no longer was he beholden to his family’s approval.
Giving his back to his cousin, he stared into the fire.
There were moments in the past five years when he had questioned the strength of his family ties, and wondered how different a man he would be had his father lived to the age of Lord Matlock.
As much as he had adhered to society’s unwritten rules of being a gentleman and the moral guide his father had given him, Darcy had been his own man, answerable to himself and to the needs of his estates.
The one time he had been persuaded to involve himself in family matters, he had ended up wed to his dying cousin and beset by her near-mad mother.
There was little reason for him to listen now.
“No one has the right to expect anything of me.”
Richard, now sprawled in a wingchair, his feet up on a table, snorted. “My father does. You know he has plans for you to wed Cecilia.”
“Not this again! I have made my intentions, or lack thereof, very clear, but it appears my aunts and uncles find it their duty to choose my brides.” Darcy turned and walked to a chair across from Richard.
He stood behind it, leaning his elbows on the back.
“Now you, my cousin, have a determined opinion as well?”
Wearing an expression Darcy recognised for its cool indifference, Richard shrugged his shoulders.
“My stepsister is an imperfect creature but her manners and connexions are impeccable. She will make any man a fine wife, and why not keep her safe with a marriage of affection with her cousin? It is a better end than many young ladies will find in London.”
“ Find ...that is the material point. She has not been out long enough to be found. It is neither my duty nor obligation to throw myself on that altar, as I have repeatedly stated. Are you all deaf?”
“Tell me then, who is Elizabeth Bennet but the witty and handsome daughter of an idle gentleman with a modest estate who bestirred himself only to reel in a wealthy husband for her?” Richard snorted in distaste. “Or is it the other way...a marriage to increase your own holdings?”
Disgusted, Darcy gripped the back of the chair until his anger spilled over into a torrent of words.
“This, this is your opinion of me? That I would woo a dying country gentleman to win his trust and wed his daughter because I could expand my holdings into a new county? That I care so little for my happiness and that of my sister that I would be so mercenary, so reckless? This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully.”
Richard leapt from his seat and thrust a finger at Darcy. “You wed Anne! You married her, knowing she was unlikely to live another year, and you took Rosings?—”
“From you? You are mistaken. I did not wed Anne to take Rosings from you. You were in France. It had to be me. I wed Anne to save her honour, the Fitzwilliam honour.”
“What?”
Darcy held out his glass and indicated Richard should refill it.
The other man took it grudgingly and walked to the sideboard where he poured them each a new drink.
Darcy sat, rubbed his face, and considered the wisdom of relaying the story to Richard.
While taken aback by his cousin’s urging him to marry Cecilia, he recognised the power of paternal persuasion; Lord Matlock was not an easy father.
But Richard had kept word of Darcy’s youthful escapades to himself, and had remained silent on Ramsgate until Georgiana revealed it to Cecilia and word spread within the family; at that time, under pressure from his father, Richard had willingly elaborated.
This, however, was a different situation entirely.
“You must swear to me, swear on your honour as a gentleman and an officer, not to reveal a word of what I tell you to anyone, including your father.”
Richard, now sitting sombrely across from him, nodded. “I have, at times, spoken too freely in support of my father, who in turn has spoken too freely to his wife. I swear to you, I will not betray the name of any in my family, even to my family.”
After an affirming nod, Darcy began the sad tale. “I was summoned to Rosings, where I discovered Anne was with child.” He watched his cousin’s scepticism shift to horror.
“But there was not only a child. She was dying of the French disease after a liaison with one of those ‘healers’ our aunt was always bringing to Rosings. There was reason to worry the quack might return to claim Anne and their doomed child and Rosings with it. Lady Catherine would not face the truth, even after I called in my own physician to confirm Anne’s infirmity.
“Hunt was ready to string up the quack who had bled her and proscribed laudanum and tonics.”
His expression darkened at the memories of his cousin, suffering and heartbroken, begging him to go in pursuit of her lover.
“Anne hid it best she could, and the disease was left untreated until bleeding, mercury ointments and tinctures, and heartsease tonics were used. She lost the child two months after we wed, and was so weakened by the treatments and the blood loss...” He shrugged.
“Lady Catherine never truly believed Anne would die. In her mind, the threat was a good means of forcing my hand, but it was not real.”
“Poor Annie,” Richard said, pale with shock. “She did not deserve such a fate, despite her own mistakes. Lady Catherine must have been devastated.”
He raised a brow, still struggling to control his fury at his cousin, to remember that he had been ignorant of the tremendous burdens Darcy had been called upon to bear.
“An understatement. She was angry with me and with herself—loath as she was to admit it. She begged me not to reveal the true cause of Anne’s suffering, but was swallowed up in her own guilt and self-recrimination. ”
Neither man spoke; the colonel’s astonishment and anger prompted him to stalk over and refill his glass.
He took a swallow, and seemingly calmed, retook his seat.
Darcy, who had wished for nothing more than a quiet hour in his rooms to reflect on the hours he had spent with Elizabeth, sighed.
His anger drained, leaving him exhausted; reliving the awful months of five years ago was the last thing he wished for on such a day.
“The apoplexy? Was it rage, you think, that caused it?”
He looked at his cousin. “I believe so. She did not sleep, she ate little, she railed against God, me, Anne, the man who had despoiled her... She fought laudanum and would not drink brandy. She exhausted her body with her spirit’s anger.”
“My father?—”
“Lady Catherine swore me to silence. She feared your father knowing, that he would tell your stepmother and lord it over the de Bourgh name.”
Richard sprang from his chair with such force it nearly toppled. “My father has ever sworn you wed Anne for Rosings, and it was your neglect that killed her.”
“So he has told me.” With a grave expression, Darcy countered. “Did you not think the same? Have you not resented me for taking Rosings from you?”
A flush suffused Richard’s face before he could answer and he began to pace as though he could expunge his ire through movement.
“Resentment seems too strong a word. I understood better than anyone how much you did not want to marry Anne, and how you had resisted our aunt’s demands about the engagement made in your cradles.
I assumed you had reasons beyond self-interest for finally giving in, and Anne’s quick death assured me that her ill health was a factor in your decision.
Lady Catherine’s demise soon after was perhaps unsurprising but my father’s fury was. ..”
Richard ceased movement and fell back into his chair.
“But you have been silent, Cousin. Silent and unwilling to talk to me about it. You bore this alone.”
In this new spirit of conciliation, Darcy opted not to say anything of his concerns for Richard’s discretion. “As have you, in shielding me from stories of your own...occupations.” Richard’s response, furrowed brows and a half smile, led Darcy to continue. “France.”
“Someday, with a good supply of brandy and no other distractions.” He crossed his legs and waved a finger at Darcy. “Tell me true. This wedding—it is of the heart, of true felicity between you and Miss Elizabeth? ”
His tension eased, Darcy sat back, smiled, and nodded. Such a response earned a deep sigh from the colonel.
“Well then, congratulations. You have earned some happiness, but you best tell my father. He despises having to read major announcements in the newspaper. Who knows how my stepmother has spun it.”