Page 12 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

ELIZABETH COULD NOT believe Mr. Darcy still wished to marry her.

She was realizing there were elements of this man that she had not quite understood. He wasn’t exactly priggish and arrogant so much as he was righteous.

Elizabeth didn’t like righteous people, not as a general rule, because it all came to the same thing. Righteous people considered themselves better than everyone else because they could be righteous and other people struggled with it. They were insufferable sort of people, really.

But she supposed she hadn’t realized that maybe it was a struggle for these righteous people, that it was just as difficult for them to resist temptation and do the right thing as it was for everyone else, but they somehow forced themselves to do it anyway.

So, maybe they were justified in feeling smug and lording that over everyone, she didn’t know.

She felt she was taking advantage of his better nature by agreeing to the marriage proposal, however.

She didn’t think she should force him into this, into a marriage with her.

She wasn’t even an appropriate wife for him to begin with, something he’d made abundantly clear during his proposal.

But now, she was so very, very ruined, and she couldn’t saddle him with all of that.

There was a difference between Mr. Darcy and other righteous people.

He was very, very hard on himself.

Well, maybe other righteous people were, too. She didn’t know. Her own sister Mary was that way, really, but if she was hard on herself, Elizabeth didn’t see it.

Anyway, Elizabeth was hard on herself, too, only it tended to be after the fact, because she was often doing things she wished she could take back.

Mr. Darcy was this same way, but he seemed to hold himself to some kind of impossible standard, and it was the first thing about him that had warmed her towards him, truly.

Odd, that.

Being a righteous person, he had attempted to do the right thing, all the time, but it was when he made a mistake that she felt anything positive towards him.

It was dark, and it was still raining, and she didn’t know what the point of these thoughts were. He was asleep, or at least she assumed he was, because he was leaning against the wall of the house, limbs sprawled out, his breathing quite even.

She had tried to sleep, but she couldn’t.

So, when she heard a noise in the distance, something like a horse huffing, a sound that somehow carried through the rain, she sat up straight. If there was a horse and rider out there, she supposed they should get their attention.

She ought to wake Mr. Darcy.

But then… well, did they wish to be discovered? With Mr. Wickham’s body lying out there in the rain and both of them dirty and together here in this shack and all of it? They’d be discovered by some farmer out here, who’d spread the tale far and wide, and… and…

Maybe she’d simply pretend to be asleep and whoever was out there, riding a horse in the downpour, would go wherever it was they were intending to go. They certainly weren’t going to discover them in his dilapidated building. No one came here on purpose.

She didn’t decide on this lack of action, not exactly, but she simply failed to act. She didn’t wake Mr. Darcy and she didn’t go out to flag down the rider.

And then the horse huffing was closer and she could see movement through the windows, and she knew that she’d been wrong, that the rider had come here.

“Darcy?” called a voice, and she recognized it. “Miss Bennet?”

She got to her feet and ran out to the doorway of the shack. “Colonel Fitzwilliam!” she cried.

“Miss Bennet,” he said in relief. “You’ve been here all along, then?”

“How did you get here?” she said. “The bridge broke.”

“Well, the gully there is full of rain water,” he said.

“No going that way. But there is a bridge near Westerham, and then it’s a ride back through the woods this way.

It’s all frightfully out of the way, but when I heard from Mr. Collins that Wickham said for you all to go to the shack out here, I remembered it.

We played here as children sometimes.” The colonel dismounted from his horse.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “So, we can go that way, then, and end up in Westerham, and get back home?”

“Indeed,” said the colonel. “I wonder that Darcy said nothi—” He broke off because he had just caught sight of Wickham. “Oh, bloody hell, what happened?”

She swallowed.

“Apologies,” he said softly. “For swearing, madam.” He tied his horse to a tree trunk and ventured through the rain to kneel next to Wickham’s body.

She thought to herself that she must wake Mr. Darcy now, but she didn’t move.

“He’s dead,” said the colonel. He looked up at her. “Darcy did this.”

“It was sort of an accident, I think,” said Elizabeth. “I think he slipped, and Wickham had the knife pointed the wrong way—”

“His own knife? Wickham was stabbed with his own knife?” said the colonel. “That… why doesn’t that surprise me?” He sighed again.

“It was sort of a duel, but—”

“Of course, he kept harping on that, no matter what I said.” The colonel stood up. “This is all more complicated now. What is Wickham even doing here? I understood he was in Meryton, in the militia.”

“He said he had business in these parts and he stopped by to take us on a picnic. Myself and Mrs. Collins, that is. But I suppose it was all about me. It was all…” She hung her head.

“Oh,” said the colonel. “Well, that explains it, I suppose. Darcy was defending you against Wickham.”

She only shook her head, feeling numb.

“No?”

“He was too late for that,” she muttered.

The colonel went very still. “Good God, Miss Bennet, are you all right?”

“No, I don’t think I am,” she murmured. And she didn’t know if she ever would be.

The colonel closed the distance between them and he reached out and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Listen to me, Miss Bennet, and listen well. No one else will agree with me about this, but I think it is true. There has been nothing taken from you, no matter how anyone speaks of it. There is no loss of anything, not virtue, not innocence, nothing. You are, no matter what anyone says, intact. You have lost nothing, and you must continue to believe that. If you do, you’ll be all right.

And if he’s dead, no one ever need know. ”

She furrowed her brow. “But—”

“No,” he said. “Do not argue with me, and I well know there will be twenty other people arguing the exact opposite of what I have said. But look, consider believing what I say, simply consider it. And I shall talk to Darcy. We’ll do something about this.

This is sort of our fault, isn’t it, because we knew what he was, you see.

Darcy wouldn’t have told you about his sister—”

“He actually did.”

“He did?”

“Oh, not before, but just now, this afternoon. He seems to agree that this means it is somehow his own fault,” she said.

“Well, we must bear some of the blame,” said the colonel. He shook his head, moving away from her, looking off into the rain. “But now, this entire situation has become much more complicated.”

“Because he is dead, you mean?”

“Obviously. I thought I’d be bringing the three of you back.

There are other horses, not too far away, but I left them tied up so that we could go and get to them.

Perhaps we can bind Wickham to a horse’s back and have him borne back that way.

I shall need Darcy’s help to carry him back, though, unless…

” He looked over at his own horse and sighed. “Where is Darcy?”

“Here,” came Mr. Darcy’s voice. He was emerging from the shack. “I’m here.”

“This is all a right mess,” said the colonel.

“Aye,” said Darcy quietly.

“What I don’t understand is why,” said the colonel, turning to scrutinize Elizabeth. “He obviously came a far distance to do this to her, and did he seem to wish to marry you, madam?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth. “He said I must marry him, that I had no choice.”

“That was his design, then, but why? It’s not as if you inherited a great deal of money or something.”

Elizabeth blinked. “The letter.”

“From your father,” said Mr. Darcy. “About your dead aunt.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Elizabeth. “My Aunt Bennet didn’t have any money to leave me. And why would she leave it to me and not to my father or all my sisters?”

“It has to be, however,” said Mr. Darcy softly. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense. He knew of it. He was in Meryton. He was associating with your family.”

“I suppose,” she said. But this was all very, very strange.

“Well, that settles it,” said the colonel. “You must not tell anyone at all what happened with this man. If he went to this much trouble, you have some sort of dowry, Miss Bennet, and you’d best not let on anything that would make it unlikely you find a good marriage.”

“But—”

“No,” said the colonel. “I am quite serious.”

She supposed this was the point in time when she should say that she had agreed to marry Mr. Darcy. But Mr. Darcy wasn’t saying that. Maybe he was thinking better of it, and well he should. So, she was quiet.

Mr. Darcy’s voice was low and very tired. “Perhaps he’s right, Miss Bennet. It is not necessarily likely there is a child. If there is one, we shall handle it all—”

“Oh, yes,” said the colonel, nodding firmly.

“Yes, there are men who would be quite pleased of such a thing, actually, men who are out there actively looking for women who are already with child. Perhaps not many men, it’s true, but it’s not unheard of.

If a man can’t get a child himself, things like that can be negotiated. ”

“So, perhaps you should simply wait,” said Mr. Darcy. “There is nothing to bind you at this point.”

Mr. Darcy was thinking better of it. She was a bit relieved at that, she supposed, because she did not know if marrying a man who was marrying her out of some sense of awful guilt and crushing responsibility was a recipe for a happy marriage.

But also, she had formed some strange idea of this man, that perhaps he was desperately in love with her against his better sense, and she had reason to think so—after all, he had said so when he was proposing to her, and he had renewed that proposal even in the face of her being ruined by another man—but she had to conclude that wasn’t actually the case.

It had never truly made sense, anyway. He didn’t even think she was pretty.

“Good, then,” said the colonel. “We are decided? Not a word of it, to anyone, ever, Miss Bennet. Whatever he did to you, you lock it away, and you pretend it didn’t happen.”

Her lips parted.

“Let’s get you back before you’ve been gone overnight, though,” said the colonel. “Darcy, help me get Wickham’s remains onto my horse?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Darcy. “Yes, of course.”

Pretend it didn’t happen?

She wished it hadn’t happened, actually, so perhaps it could be that way. Perhaps, she could simply forget about it, and she could go back to being the Elizabeth Bennet she’d been at the beginning of this wretched day.

ELIZABETH WAS STILL wearing Mr. Darcy’s jacket when she got back to the rectory. She found her father’s letter in it, and she laid it out beneath a candle and she read what she could of it before bed.

It was true.

She’d been left money by her aunt.

Six thousand pounds.

She looked at it again and she was stunned by it. Why? Where had it come from and why had it been settled on her?

It wasn’t the sort of dowry that put her into the wealthier circles. It would likely need to be nearly doubled before she could even hope to gain entry there. However, currently, she had much less than this, and it was quite strange to think she had money, her own money.

She touched the smeared figures in the letter, and she wondered what she should do about it.

The right thing to do would be to divide it up, give each of her sisters something. She could keep two thousand and give them each one thousand, and that would mean she was being generous but that she also had the benefit of having a bit more, since the money was technically hers.

But then, she put a hand to her belly, wondering if a child did quicken there, and she had a completely different thought.

Not a dowry.

Money enough to keep herself, and then she would never have to do that again. Never have to do that foul and perverse thing with a man’s prick, never have that sticky awfulness spurting all over her, never have to do any of it.

This settled her into like salvation, like the answer to prayer.

Yes, she would do exactly that.

And then, for the first time since the beginning of this ordeal, she began to sob. The sobs overtook her, great hulking things that shook her entire being. But somehow, they were cleansing. When she had done with it, she felt as if she had wrung it all out and she had settled into peace.