Page 35 of Such Persuasions as These (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“ Y ou are right, Darcy,” Wentworth said as they closed the door on the last of the shooting party that evening.

“Anything you can do to keep that debauched lieutenant away from the respectable ladies of our fair county would be worth doing. I only wish I had the blackguard under my command—we know how to reform men like him on a naval ship,”

“And a thing worth doing cannot be done too soon. We shall have to arrange a meeting with Colonel Forster, but I have some favours to call in from London beforehand. I believe I have a plan that might answer all our ideas of retribution,” Darcy replied.

They were careful to keep their chatter in whispered tones, and to finish it altogether before joining the Bingleys and Hursts in the drawing room, where they met a very weary Miss Bingley sighing her relief.

“How pleasant it is to have one’s home to oneself again,” she proclaimed. “Well, almost…” she amended, casting a glance at Wentworth.

He had been the target of her petty darts since he had arrived, though she usually waited until her brother was out of the room before shooting them.

Wentworth thought perhaps she had become so comfortable disparaging him that she no longer worried if Bingley was present.

Her next speech to the gentlemen confirmed this suspicion.

“How tedious is the company of these country ciphers. The insipidity and yet the noise. The nothingness and yet the self-importance of these people,” she said.

“I confess I find it quite tiring,” Mrs Hurst added, parroting her sister as was her usual wont.

“Why, when Sir William Lucas was droning on about St James’s, I could hardly keep my countenance,” the younger one continued.

“I find Sir William to be quite a good sort of fellow myself,” her brother interjected.

“And I am sure he kept a very good sort of shop before his elevation to the Knighthood,” she replied, joining Mrs Hurst in a titter at the kind gentleman’s expense.

“As did our father, Caro ,” Bingley nigh on shouted, clearly tired of hearing her self-important shredding of their neighbours. She responded with a horrified scowl, her mouth fully agape, her wild eyes dashing from Bingley to Wentworth.

“That is not the same, Charles, and you know it,” she cried.

“How, pray tell?” Wentworth finally chimed in, heated.

“And please apprise me—at what point will I be admitted into your society without epithet?” With that, Wentworth stood, bowed to the ladies and informed the others, “If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I believe I have an appointment with Italics.”

The look Bingley shot his sister at that moment would have brought a strong man to his knees. Instead, it brought her to her feet, and she left the room in a huff several steps behind Wentworth, not towards the library, but towards her own chambers.

Wentworth had not reached the library door before Bingley and Darcy had joined him, the younger one holding a decanter of brandy and three small-stemmed glasses.

They were all silent as they took their seats.

Drinks were poured and passed about. Italics, seeming to understand who most needed him, lighted onto Wentworth’s lap and began his affectionate ministrations.

“I apologise, Bingley. I should have held my peace back there,” Wentworth said as he stroked the feline’s fur, staring at nothing in particular.

“I simply have no patience left. I am done being reminded of how I have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It has been deuced hard pretending that nothing is the matter when the one woman in the world I have ever truly loved has thrown me over. I just do not understand; Anne never saw me for my value in coin, but for my value as a man. How anyone could have persuaded her to view me otherwise is dumbfounding.”

“She cannot have changed how she views you,” Darcy assured him. “You said yourself she was put upon by her family. The pressure was likely just too great.”

“You said it, Darcy. Though, I think she could have withstood the pressure of her family. It was Lady Russell whose entreaties she could not overcome. That lady used her position of trust, her close friendship with my Anne, to convince her to send me packing. Told her I was trying to gain consequence by marrying the daughter of a baronet; as if anyone would respect me more, knowing I was related to that fool father of hers. She was honour-bound to me; she had already accepted my proposal. Her father had even relented, as disgusted as he was by the prospect. And yet, Lady Russell still urged her to separate herself from me.”

The two men sat, listening with empathy as he poured out his rancorous heart.

Wentworth had planned to acquaint them with the situation at some point so that Darcy might see the pain he was causing by keeping two people apart who loved one another—and so Bingley could see the folly of being too malleable in the hands of his associates.

This was not how he had wished to go about it, however.

He had planned to be self-possessed, nonchalant, even light-hearted about it.

But that would have been a lie. The truth was, Wentworth was devastated.

He was devastated and indignant and bitter.

And pathetic and heartbroken.

And desolate without her.

Over the next hour, Wentworth told them all about his Anne, much as he had with Elizabeth.

Grief oft finds peace in covering the same ground over, and a sense of comfort filled him as he relived the moments of joy and anguish he had experienced since knowing Anne Elliot.

He spoke of how they had met and fallen in love, how they had seen their future in one another, and how he had assured her of the rightness of their union in the face of her family’s indifference.

How he had thought her so steadfast.

“Did I not know how much she loved me, it would not pain me so,” he said.

He bit out the account of his first meeting with Sir Walter and Miss Elliot, laughing mirthlessly at how precisely Miss Bingley’s words described them: ‘the nothingness, and yet the self-importance.’ Anne’s senseless, spendthrift father had left the family almost penniless after her mother’s death, yet somehow his having been born into a baronetcy made him better than an industrious, serious-minded attorney or shopkeeper… or naval officer.

“You see Bingley here—I do not care that his fortune is from trade. He is a gentleman, a man of sense and education, and, I might add, great hospitality,” Wentworth said, raising his glass in salute.

“And Darcy—I do not care if you own half of Derbyshire. It would not matter to me if you were a fishmonger. You are respectable and good. And Lizzy likes you, which makes you agreeable in my book.”

Another salute, and one returned.

“What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” Darcy quoted the scripture, explaining that his father had used it to remind him of the privilege to which he had been born and the humility with which he should view his station.

“Hear, hear,” Wentworth agreed with another salute.

He then spun poetical tapestries as he explained to Darcy and Bingley the intricacies of Anne’s excellence.

Her application and perspicacity, her gentle way of loving and leading others, her selfless care of those about her, how delightfully bashful she was when he attended her in any small degree, and yet how strong she was in the face of the ridiculousness of her family.

For the most part.

If Mr Darcy drew any similarities in his mind between this woman and another, he did not say so.

Then, through gritted teeth, Wentworth snarled his final feelings on the whole matter:

“My only consolation is that, in the end, this will hurt her far more than myself. I will go on to take my prizes; I will make my fortune. Perhaps I will even find some pretty thing to put up with my ill humours in my old age. But she—she will never find someone who will love her like I do. After this humiliation, I shall not offer for her again. And Lady Russell will have to live with that on her conscience…”

No one in the room believed this idea brought Wentworth any consolation—himself least of all.

In his rooms that night, Darcy could not help but think about what he had learnt from the captain.

He had been separated from the woman he loved by the interference of well-meaning friends.

He did not know whether he had told him this story by design, but Darcy could not help but draw the similarity between himself and Anne Elliot’s Lady Russell.

Had he not strongly urged Bingley to rethink his intentions towards Jane Bennet?

Did he not feel, at the time, that his reasoning was sound?

Did he not attempt to persuade Bingley that Miss Bennet’s social class was an impediment that could not be overcome?

To his shame, Darcy had even suggested that Jane Bennet might be a fortune hunter.

Who was he to decide that for someone else?

Bingley was educated, wealthy, and universally liked—he never met a man who was not proud to call him a friend within the course of an evening.

Why should Darcy think that having an exquisite woman from a respectable but unknown family on his arm would damage Bingley’s place in society?

This will not do.

If his interference could leave Bingley in a state resembling Wentworth’s in any way, Darcy could not live with that on his conscience.

He would leave off warning Bingley of the possibilities of evil associated with his choice of Miss Bennet as a bride.

Darcy would allow his friend to stand on his own two feet, and he would support him in whatever he chose.

Satisfied with this newfound generosity of spirit, he blew out his candles and settled into bed— unsettled .

Something was still nettling him.

It struck him in the dark of his bedchamber that Wentworth’s story had more to teach him. Perhaps he was not only Lady Russell in this drama. Perhaps he also had a bit in common with Sir Walter.

Why else would he arbitrarily assume that any woman without a fortune was mercenary?

Why should he think that Elizabeth’s deceit must be associated with some sort of ploy to fool or compromise him into matrimony?

Why could he not simply believe that she wished to make him comfortable for the sake of helping her fellow man?

And how many offers of such kindness had he failed to benefit from because he, in his conceit, had rejected them as coming from a grasping heart?

No wonder she felt she must lie to him. He was, he now recognised, sorely in need of just such a friend as herself, but if she had tried to be that for him as a poor, unattached country lass, he would have grumbled and delivered her a set-down, just as he had so many other daughters of lowly families.

What makes you better than her? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it for nothing more than being born, why should you boast in it as if you have in some way earned it?

In that moment, Darcy suffered a crushing revelation: he, like Sir Walter, was eaten up with class-pride.

It was not the kind of superiority of mind that, when kept under good regulation, need not be a weakness.

This was a pride that was exclusive and haughty, founded solely on his name and fortune, two things he had done absolutely nothing to attain.

This was the sort of pride that alienated those about him and made others feel inferior.

This was the sort of pride that just might cost him the love of a worthy woman.

Sitting in a plush leather armchair in the master’s chambers, Charles Bingley was smiling.

Sad though he naturally was for poor Wentworth, hearing the captain’s story cemented in him the determination to be his own man, unmoved by the advice and opinions of those who valued society’s approval more than he.

He had decided to offer for Jane Bennet.

He was determined.

He would.