“He does not like me.” She smiled. “Shouldn’t a husband like his wife?”
“Of course he likes you, darling,” Lady Catherine said. “If he knows what is in his own best interest he does.”
“Anne, you are my cousin — I always will have that affection for you appropriate to our connection, but—”
“You do not love me. Not as a wife.” She smiled. “I do not mind. I would be rather frightened, I think, if you did. But now, I must retreat. I confess I am rather tired after this long day.”
After she had vacated the room, Lady Catherine said, “See how heartbroken Anne is?”
It was Lady Amelia who replied, in one of the very rare occasions when she directly opposed Lady Catherine, “I rather think she was relieved and pleased. No surprise — with her poor health childbearing would be like to kill her. Were I in her position I would much prefer to remain unmarried and in control of my own fortune.”
Lady Catherine sneered at her sister-in-law. “It is a wonder you have raised any children at all — I know what Anne wants, and it is to please me. Darcy, I have not finished with this, you will hear me out, and you will in the end agree to fulfil the promise your mother made to me.”
“I shall not listen.” Darcy rose on his crutches. “I have made my intentions wholly clear, and I will not be moved. I bid you all good evening. Perhaps we might see each other again during my remaining residence in London. I will return to Pemberley at the end of the week.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam followed Darcy out of the drawing room. “Dear cousin,” he said laughing, “does your disinclination for further refined conversation with your relations apply to all of us, or only to the older and more female members of your exalted clan?”
“What, old fellow? The war department is not paying you enough to keep yourself in really good brandy, and you hope to leech some off of me?”
“Nonsense. I mean they are not, and I do, but I am chiefly thinking ofyou. To drink alone is desperately sad, and you are not desperately sad. So the only way that you shall enjoy your fine brandy is if you invite me over.”
As the two of them bantered, they went out to the street to wait for Darcy’s carriage to be brought round.
“And you think,” Darcy said leaning on the crutches and smiling, “that I could find no other friend to share my brandy with.”
“Of course you could! — but any other friend would be wholly inferior by virtue of not beingme.”
“Ifthatis your argument, I cannot reply without causing such damage to the esteem you hold for yourself that I think you would never recover.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed, and he climbed first into the carriage when Darcy gestured him to, and Darcy then grabbed the upper bar, pulled himself up, and swung his bottom onto the seat.
His cousin whistled at that. “You have become strong.”
“It took a fair amount of effort — but I absolutely insist on not being a cripple.”
The two of them were soon settled by a warm fireplace in Darcy’s drawing room, with a game of backgammon between them, of course sipping the brandy that Darcy knew was at least a little bit of the draw his quarters held for his cousin.
“I really was a bit frightened for you,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “From how Papa talked when he said you would dine over tonight, he at least considered it quite likely that you were ready to sacrifice yourself to the great principle that great fortunes ought to be consolidated.”
Darcy grimaced. “I think three months ago I was three-fourths prepared to do so.”
“What changed?”
Darcy did not reply. He rolled his dice, which made a nice clicking sound as they tumbled on the wooden board.
“You wild young buck! You found a woman while rusticating in Hertfordshire!”
This led to a coughing fit on Darcy’s part as he had been swallowing some of his brandy right as his cousin spoke, and it went down incorrectly.
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed and slapped him on the back as he did so. “I only hoped to congratulate you, not kill you.”
“I am like to survive.” Darcy croaked, and pointed at a decanter, “Water.”
He swallowed back a whole glass, though there was still a bit of burning from the strong alcohol in the back of his throat.
“Hate when that happens,” his cousin said sympathetically. “But tell me about the woman you’ve met.”
“No.”
