By Force of Instinct (9 page)

she knew that she would never forget him—he had made an indelible impression, both in his own right and by shaking her self-concept beyond what she had ever considered possible. The memory of his kiss would not fade either, and still brought a blush to her cheeks. But she had no choice but to put her memories behind her, and with a deep, calming breath, she determinedly changed the subject to safer matters.

the following day elizabeth decided to take advantage of Darcy’s absence to call on Miss Darcy at rosings—she was several visits in her debt, having attempted to avoid meeting her brother at all costs. now that he had left, her worst worry was that she might appear out of spirits . she found Miss Darcy sitting with Lady Derby, and seeming delighted to receive her. After exchanging greetings, Lady Derby suggested a game of commerce, to which the others agreed.

This was elizabeth’s first contact with Lady Derby away from the dominating presence of her husband, and she was interested to discover that she was not quite the pale shadow that she sometimes seemed in larger company. Instead she was perfectly amiable, asking elizabeth questions regarding her home and family, and her view of Kent. Despite elizabeth’s intent to avoid the subject, it did not take her inquisitor long to elicit the intelligence of elizabeth’s previous acquaintance with Darcy, something which proved to be news to Miss Darcy as well, who did not look pleased to discover it.

“I cannot think why my brother never mentioned it to me,” she said with an air of irritation.

elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “our acquaintance was really quite trifling,”

she said placatingly. “It no doubt slipped his mind.”
It is an odd turn of
events that I should be defending Mr. Darcy to his family!
she thought with amusement.

“He never tells me anything,” Georgiana complained. “I wish he would 53

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have more confidence in me. sometimes I think he believes that I am still no more than eleven years old.”

“you are very hard on him sometimes,” Lady Derby said. “He has always done his duty by you, and I might say that he has done better than your parents did by him, and I think that deserving of respect. He cannot take the part of a parent for you, though, Georgiana, no matter how hard he tries.”

Georgiana sat up straight with an indignant look on her face. “I do not know what you mean to say about my parents. They were wonderful; my brother has often told me stories about them.”

Lady Derby sighed. “you say that you are old enough to hear the truth, Georgiana, so perhaps it is time that you learned that your parents were not the saints your brother makes them out to be. your mother was a true Fitzwilliam: lovely, but proud and heedless of the feelings of others. she had little time for her children except as little pictures of her own perfections. she had no feelings beyond those of duty for your father, and after she had produced an heir, she had as little to do with him as possible for two people living in the same house. your father had a great capacity for devotion, much as his son does now, but very early on he developed a highly unsuitable attachment, and I believe that he always regretted her. It was not an ideal home for a sensitive boy like your brother, and I believe that it was a relief when he went off to school. I have always hoped that when he comes to choose a bride, he will marry for affection and respect as well as practical considerations; I confess to some relief on his behalf that he refused to marry Anne.”

This was by far the longest speech elizabeth had ever heard from the often withdrawn Lady Derby, and she could not help but wonder at it, especially given the impropriety of sharing such intimate family views with a relative stranger such as herself. Her bitterness as she described Darcy’s mother as a true Fitzwilliam led elizabeth to suspect that she had paid a considerable price in her own marriage, and she felt a surprising moment of sympathy for her.

Georgiana fiddled with her cards uncomfortably. “My brother has always spoken quite affectionately about our parents, though,” she said quietly, but with a hint of defiance.

Lady Derby’s eye showed a glint of steel which came as a surprise to 54

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elizabeth. “yes, he was very attached to them, and was able to blind himself to their faults, a tendency he continues to demonstrate on occasion.”

“What of the other woman, the one you say my father cared for?” asked Georgiana.

Lady Derby shrugged as if it were of little importance. “she married someone else, I believe, one of the men of the estate. Her family had been servants at Pemberley, so she truly was quite unsuitable. I was under the impression that she and your father remained friends of a sort, although there was never any hint of impropriety.”

noting how shattered the girl looked by her aunt’s revelations, elizabeth said calmingly, “It is unfortunate that it is the way of the world that so few can marry where they please—it takes a certain strength to accept that one’s duty may not lie where one’s heart does.”

she was surprised to see Lady Derby turning a penetrating look on her.

“It can be a bitter thing, though, to marry where there is no affection, and bitterer yet if there is affection one has left behind. I fear that my nephew is all too conscious of his duty, and that he will pay the same price his father did in the end, but I for one shall be sorry for it.”

elizabeth coloured as she realized that Lady Derby had somehow drawn the same conclusions as charlotte—that Mr. Darcy had earned her affections and then determined that she was beneath him—and that her comments on the Darcy family had been made with the intent of providing some comfort to herself. she turned her eyes back to her cards, cursing the il -fortune that had kept her in Kent to expose so much more of herself than she would have wished. After a moment, though, she recal ed Lady Derby’s earlier description of the Fitzwil iams—
proud, and heedles of the feelings of
others
—and gained a new understanding of what this discussion must have cost her. elizabeth looked up with a confidence she did not feel, and said, “I shal hope for his sake that your fears prove groundless, Lady Derby, and since I know of no man with more eligible women courting his favour than Mr. Darcy, I cannot think that he would not be capable of finding a wife of good understanding among them. Do you not think so, Miss Darcy?”

“
He
will never marry for love, that much is certain,” said Georgiana in an unkind tone. “He will choose some very appropriate young lady of good fortune with no regard whatsoever to his feelings, and he will expect me to do the same! Love means nothing to him.”

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elizabeth looked at her in shock at the intensity of her statement, especially given her own knowledge that it was far from the truth. she could not imagine what would inspire Georgiana to such beliefs.

“Georgiana, my dear, you will learn with time that a young lady with a fortune can expect many young men to woo her and claim to love her while their true interest is mercenary,” said Lady Derby with the tone of someone repeating an oft-spoken obvious truth.

“Who is to say that a man of little fortune may not truly love a woman of fortune?” Georgiana demanded.

Can it be that she
resents
her brother for the role he played in separating her
from Wickham?
elizabeth wondered.
Surely she cannot believe he loved her!

Deliberately she said, “There is, as you say, Miss Darcy, no reason why a poor man may not love a woman of wealth, but it is all too common to find charming fortune hunters working their wiles upon unsuspecting women.

Why, just recently in my home in Hertfordshire, there was an officer of the regiment who was most attentive to me, but when another girl in whom he had never shown any interest came into an inheritance of 10,000 pounds, he immediately forgot me and proceeded to pay suit to her. to her ill-luck, she accepted him, having failed to see the truth of his interest in her, and in truth I pity her; Lieutenant Wickham will not make so good a husband as he did a suitor, and I fear that Miss King will be quite unhappy.” she looked up from her cards in time to see Georgiana flinch when she revealed Wickham’s name.

Lady Derby looked at her levelly. “It sounds as if you had a narrow escape there, Miss Bennet,” she said.

“In a way, I suppose so, but he had never been serious in his intentions towards me, and I already had reason to suspect that he was not the man he seemed to be,” said elizabeth, thinking that if this was not wholly true, it was certainly the case that there had been ample reason to suspect Wickham; she had merely ignored the evidence before her. “He had, I fear, misrepresented himself to me with a number of falsehoods, including some, I am sorry to say, which concerned your family, Miss Darcy, to whom he once had a connection. once I discovered what sort of man he was, I regretted ever listening to him for a moment.”

Georgiana grew pale. “He had a connection to my family?” she asked in a strained voice.

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elizabeth furrowed her brow seriously. “yes, I believe that his father served yours in some capacity; I cannot recall exactly what it might be.”

“What manner of … falsehoods did he tell you?”

A blush came to elizabeth’s cheeks, though perhaps not for the reason her audience suspected. “My apologies, I fear that I have been quite tactless to have even raised the subject. I would not feel at all comfortable repeating his words; suffice to say that they were quite unkind towards your brother, Miss Darcy, and to a lesser extent toward yourself and other members of your family.”

Abruptly Georgiana stood. “excuse me,” she said, her voice shaky, before quickly departing the room.

There was silence following her sudden disappearance. After a moment, Lady Derby played a card. “Mr. Darcy owes you a debt of gratitude, Miss Bennet. It was generous of you, under the circumstances.”

elizabeth was finding it increasingly difficult to bear being thought to have been disappointed by Mr. Darcy, but since she was without any acceptable way to explain the truth, she had no choice but to tolerate it. “It was nothing more than the truth, and I have no desire to see Miss Darcy harmed by being under a misapprehension, nor to see any member of her family come to harm.”
I can but hope that this will be enough to prevent further commiseration with my imagined position,
she thought. “But I must be returning to the parsonage; Mrs. collins will be expecting me.”

Thankfully, Lady Derby did not question her obvious excuses, and merely wished her a good day, leaving elizabeth a long walk back to the parsonage to contemplate her discomfiture at having Mr. Darcy’s interest in her guessed at by so many.

elizabeth was relieved when the day finally came for her to make her departure from Kent. Although Miss Darcy clearly retained an interest in elizabeth’s friendship, their relations had been somewhat strained since her revelations about Wickham. charlotte’s suspicions of the reasons for her mood were becoming trying as well. she could hardly bear to wait any longer to see Jane and to observe her spirits for herself, as well as to receive her comfort. At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the parcels placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After an affectionate parting from charlotte, elizabeth was attended to the carriage by 57

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Mr. collins; and, as they walked down the garden, he was commissioning her with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter and his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He then handed her in, Maria followed, and the door was on the point of being closed, when he suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies at rosings.

“But,” he added, “you will of course wish to have your humble respects delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you while you have been here.”

elizabeth made no objection;—the door was then allowed to be shut, and the carriage drove off.

“Good gracious!” cried Maria, after a few minutes silence, “it seems but a day or two since we first came!—and yet how many things have happened!”

“A great many indeed,” said her companion with a sigh.

“We have dined nine times at rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!—

How much I shall have to tell!”

elizabeth privately added, “And how much I shall have to conceal.”

Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and within four hours of their leaving Hunsford, they reached Mr.

Gardiner’s house, where they were to remain a few days.

Jane looked well, and elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.

It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy’s proposals. to know that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate; and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister farther.

one morning shortly before they were to leave for Hertfordshire, 58

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elizabeth and Jane were working their embroidery in the sitting room in the pleasant company of their aunt while elizabeth recounted with amusement tales of Lady catherine and rosings Park. she had managed to avoid reference to Mr. Darcy—though Jane already knew of his presence there through Maria Lucas, elizabeth was for her own self not yet ready to speak of him. Her tale was interrupted, however, by the appearance of the Gardiners’ maid at the door. “There are two gentlemen outside, to see Miss Bennet and Miss elizabeth Bennet,” she said to Mrs. Gardiner, handing her two calling cards.