These Three Remain (29 page)

The magnitude of the headache that greeted Darcy the next day was less than he had feared it would be, and even that would soon be soothed by the powders that Fletcher had carefully left beside his water glass sometime during the morning. Leaning on his elbow, he reached over from the bed, poured the medicine into the water, and watched as the early afternoon sun caught and reflected the particles as they drifted and dissolved on their way down the column of liquid. Drifting and dissolving…not unlike himself, he reflected. He drank it in one swallow and then sank back against the pillows, closing his eyes again. He had done all that his society and breeding expected and more. He had, after his sire’s death, set himself to be like him — the best man he could be in all his dealings, whether as landlord, master, brother, or friend. He held himself to scrupulous honesty in his business concerns and exercised unfailing caution in his social affairs. Yet in all the upright principles he imbibed and all their attendant expectations in whose precise fulfillment he took pride, he saw now that he was a mere observer of life, a creature of convention and propriety. Never had he allowed the world beyond his immediate family any claim upon him. In point of fact, he was bred and nurtured to that view. Like a chess master, he had ordered his life according to his own unbridled prejudices and the conceits of his class, congratulating himself on his adherence to them and dismissing all that did not conform to them as unworthy of his consideration…until Elizabeth.

Darcy’s heart turned over in his chest as her name brought home to him every knot of frustration and ache of longing he had ever had of her. Elizabeth, the contradiction of all his expectations. How could he ever have anticipated that on that one fateful night in a hedgerow village in Hertfordshire, amid the most undistinguished company he had ever been called upon to suffer, he would meet both his Nemesis and his Eve, that the dissolution of his carefully contrived existence was begun? Ending, he reminded himself with a groan, in a nest of political and social intrigue and the bottom of a brandy bottle in a strange public house. He flushed with embarrassment and disgust as he remembered his behavior of the evening before. Thank God, Dy had been there! Because of his friend’s peculiar eccentricities, he had succeeded only in making an ass of himself. It could have been very much worse, but that did not dilute the hot shame and repugnance he felt at his weaknesses displayed them.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He must rise and face the day and reflect carefully upon what all that had happened revealed about his character. It was not a pleasant prospect. Already he knew himself to be much diminished in his own estimation. How, then, must he appear in the eyes of his beloved sister? Had his drunken display lost him her respect? Would his confessions of weakness today sink him even further in her regard? The possibility sent a stab of fear through his body. How was he to exert his care and guidance of his sister if he no longer commanded her respect, if every decision he issued was received not with confidence but with dubious hesitancy? For that matter, how confident did he remain in himself? Putting away that fearful thought, Darcy slowly pulled himself upright, pausing to test his equilibrium before swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. The resulting pain in his head was a dull one thanks to Fletcher’s powders and, possibly, that witch’s brew he’d downed. At least he had slept.

The clock on his mantel struck three, announcing the fact that the day was fast waning and his interview with Dy would soon be upon him. Darcy was more than curious about what Brougham would confide concerning his strange behavior and turn of personality over the years since university, but he also entertained a maddening uncertainty about what Dy had made of his drink induced confession of the previous evening; and, worse, what he might do with it. He drew up short at the thought. Exactly what
had
he confessed? Darcy strained to remember how the evening had played out after he and Dy had resumed their seats at the Fox and Drake.

“You had better tell me.” Dy had pinned him with a compassionate air containing not a trace of pity but rather the heartfelt regard of an old friend. Slowly, finally, Darcy opened his mouth, and what had been his most private concern seemed to rush out of him: his initial interest, his resistance and caution, and then his eventual fascination, desire, and love.

“ ‘Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, Thy wish exactly to thy heart’s desire,’ ” Dy quoted absently to himself after Darcy had finished, then whistled under his breath. “Good heavens, Fitz, I know you well, my friend; and having said that, I must say that your Elizabeth must be an extraordinary young woman to have tied you into such excruciating knots!”

“She is not
my
Elizabeth, but you are correct” — he sighed — “she is an extraordinary young woman.”

“So you have said. Pardon me, but I take it from your opening salvo that, despite your manifold reservations and doubts, you
did
offer marriage.”

“Yes,” he stated. “After I had committed myself to forgetting her, we were thrown together in Kent. Her closest friend had wed my aunt’s parson several months before, and Elizabeth had come for a visit not knowing that I would be attending Lady Catherine during that same time. You can imagine my shock to find her there, neatly lodged on the edge of my aunt’s park and already quite Her Ladyship’s favorite.”

“Shock! I would say panic as well! You were in a hopeless position! In love against your better judgment, only recently committed to putting her out of your mind, and there she is!” Brougham shook his head. “And so easily to hand!”

There was a long silence then, but not an awkward one. Dy merely nodded his head in commiseration and then looked away, the tired lines of his face growing deeper as he seemed to withdraw into private contemplations. In time he rose and called to the serving girl for a pot of strong coffee and cups, then taking his seat, he turned again to his friend with a single word. “Then?”

Darcy took a deep breath. “Then, after nights of wrestling with what I owe to my name and station, the prospect of the justifiable disapprobation of my family and Society, and the consequences of allying myself and Georgiana with a family of questionable propriety, I succumbed. Life, a future without her seemed an impossibility. ‘Part of my soul’ since we are quoting Milton.” Dy nodded. “I began to court her, or at least I thought that was what I was doing. At the time, I thought her subdued responses were due to modesty and her consciousness of the disparity in our stations; but in that, as in so much else, I was completely mistaken.” He laughed grimly. “I had made up my mind to ask for her hand, you understand, but found it difficult to finally come to the point. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself, and I leapt upon it. She was alone at the parsonage; I went to her.”

The coffee arrived, delivered by the pub’s owner himself, who cast a questioning glance at Dy as he laid out the cups. Brougham responded with a weary smile. “I will close up for you.” Waving the publican away, he then poured them both deep cups. By this time, they were almost alone, closing time having past. “You went to her,” Dy prodded.

“And she refused me,” Darcy responded grimly.

“There is more to the story than that!” Dy returned.

Darcy closed his eyes, his jaw working as the scene, so oft remembered, sprang easily into even his inebriated consciousness. “More? Oh, yes, there is more,” he answered bitterly. “I professed my love in the strongest terms and, with even more vigor, gave her to know all the struggles I had overcome before appearing at her door to tell her so.”

“Your struggles,” Dy repeated slowly. “Pardon me, but did I hear you aright? You gave her to know all the reasons you should
not
be making her an offer of marriage?” Setting down his coffee, Brougham regarded his old friend in fascination. But after a moment’s reflection, the corners of his mouth hinted at an upward turn and he began to nod his head in agreement. “Yes, yes, that would be the Darcy approach, wouldn’t it? No need to pander to the lady’s sensibilities now, is there?” he offered in tart sarcasm. “Her attractions had prevailed over the inflexible Darcy canon, and what was more natural than that she be made to know her extreme good fortune and how little she deserved it!” Laughing humorlessly into the dangerously narrowed eyes Darcy set upon him, he smacked the table, setting the coffee to dancing. “Yes, only you, my friend, would make the lady’s general unfitness the leading topic in a proposal of marriage. Pray, enlighten me! Which of your scruples led you into such a confession?”

“Honesty…honor…pride — call it what you will!” he bit back angrily.

“To be sure, it was one of them, but it is for you to call, not I!” Dy retrieved his cup and settled back. “Please, continue. How did the lady respond?”

Darcy hesitated, fallen as he was under Brougham’s satirical eye, but the conviction that relating the painful events would release him from the tangled confusion that gripped him body and soul propelled him on. “She sat in utter silence.” He closed his eyes as he spoke, the scene vividly alive in his mind. “Her color high, neither looking at me nor replying to my suit. I was stunned at such a response,” he continued, looking up at the smoky beams of the pub’s ceiling. “It was hardly what I expected. Perhaps she did not believe me, I thought, or perhaps the prospect was too much for her.” His gaze returned to meet his friend’s. “I pressed my suit, desiring her to know that I had considered our proposed union from every conceivable angle for months, that my offer of marriage was not the result of a schoolboy’s infatuation but a well-considered proposal that took into account our relative situations in life.”

Whistling low, Brougham shook his head. “Why, I would venture there is scarcely a woman in all England who would refuse you an offer to become mistress of Pemberley no matter how pompously you came or how insensitively the offer was made! With all that before her, within her very grasp, yet she was silent! Extraordinary!” He paused, allowing them both time to ponder it before concluding, “And then, despite the immeasurable advantages she and her family would gain, she refused you! She had taken a very great offense, I imagine?”

Darcy laughed grimly. “She took not only offense but the offensive as well! My character was called into blackest question due to Wickham’s lies to her months before and then —”

“Wickham! The son of your father’s steward Wickham?” Dy asked in surprise. “Odd that he should turn up after all this time and in Hertfordshire! Is he the red coat — but of course, he is. In the military now, is he?” Darcy nodded and drank a bit of the coffee. “Go on,” Dy encouraged.

“Then she laid into me about her sister and Bingley.”

“Ah, so this is where Bingley comes in! The Unsuitable Hertfordshire Miss about whom you enlisted my help at Lady Melbourne’s is your Elizabeth’s sister?” Darcy had nodded again and then waited for Brougham’s laugh. It did not come.

“She blames you for her sister’s disappointed hopes,” he stated flatly.

“And she is right to do so, although I had considerable help from Bingley’s own sisters. They did not want any Hertfordshire relations of that sort, and I could not but agree…at the time.”

“I remember,” Brougham replied, then sitting up straighter, he continued. “It is most unfortunate that she discovered your hand in the matter. The death knell of your hopes, I suppose?”

“Death of them? Hardly!” Darcy cried. “She gave me to know in what light she had held me from our very first encounter, which had convinced her that, of all men, I exhibited the epitome of arrogance and conceit. This charming sketch of my character furnished her primary objection to me and laid the ground for her later summation: I am an unfeeling monster who ruins men at whim and dashes the hopes of virtuous maidens.”

“Such animosity! And you never suspected?” Dy’s brows furrowed deeply.

“No, fool that I am!” Darcy slumped back into the chair. “As I was saying when you came in, ‘the World’s Greatest Fool.’ ”

“Well…well,” Brougham repeated with a sigh. “I believe that is enough for tonight. You need to go home.
I
need to go home! It has been a very long day and night, my friend, and ranks among the most interesting in my experience. But you need to go home,” he emphasized again. Darcy could not but agree. Struggling up out of the chair, he swayed and blinked until Brougham reached out and steadied him. He managed to walk to the door, but while he waited for his friend to close up the pub for its owner, the night air hit him like a blow to the head, and his stomach heaved.

“Now, this
does
recall university days,” Dy remarked wryly before stepping out from the shadows to hail a passing cab.

“Where to, gov’nah?” the cabbie called down, then added, “Is yer friend there all right? It’ll be extra if’n I got ta clean up after you!”

“He’ll do,” Dy called back as he piloted Darcy toward the step up into the cab. “Grosvenor Square. Take the turns with care, though, and I will double your fee!”

Slowly and with deliberation, Darcy tucked his pocket watch into his waistcoat pocket and adjusted the fob as Fletcher took a whisk across the shoulders of his frock coat. They, both of them, stood silently before the mirror in his dressing room as they had countless times in the past, about the daily business of preparing him to meet the world as a gentleman. Everything was in place: his pocket watch, his seal, a handkerchief — his own, this time — sequestered neatly in his coat. His clothing fitted perfectly to his frame, a modest but artistic knot lay about his neck, his shoes shone, his chin was smooth. He appeared every inch as he should have until he dared look at the face in the dressing mirror, which with its drawn lineaments and bloodshot eyes, declared his pose a fraud. Quickly, he looked away, but not before glimpsing Fletcher’s carefully bland countenance reflected at his shoulder. There had been no impertinences this day, no quotations from the Bard concerning his state of the previous night, just quiet service performed with a minimum of display and an almost complete absence of noise. Although Darcy found himself grateful for the consideration, it also represented to him the cautious uncertainty into which he had cast his household with his unprecedented departure from his usual habits.