He had been taught by his parents to always tie himself closely to his family connections, to think highly of them, and to treat them with affection, honor, and consideration.
It didn’t matter that Georgiana had acted in a disgraceful and shameful manner.
She was still his family.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was now able to settle the key fact in his mind: He was the worst sort of hypocrite.
What sort of man would forgive his sister wholly from his heart for eloping with a man he despised, while he expected his wife who he pretended to love and adore to avoid a connection with her beloved aunt and uncle merely because they lived on Gracechurch street near Cheapside?
It was an exceedingly odd and painful sensation to Darcy to realize that he had behaved as a sort of man who he would not wish to be.
The next morning it was more than an hour before dawn when Darcy swung his way into the room of the inn that he’d rented for his party to breakfast in. He found his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam sitting at the table, a platter of rolls and herring in front of him, and he steadily drank from a large jar of coffee.
An empty armchair, of precisely the sort that Darcy found easiest to sit in and rise from, sat next to his cousin, and Darcy lowered himself into it before vigorously shaking Richard’s hands.
“Rode like hell fire was behind me once I received your letter — just as I was about to set off to see you married. Poor timing on everyone’s part for this. So Wickham has grabbed our Georgie.” Richard pushed a cup of coffee into Darcy’s hands. “The proper stuff. It’ll wake you up — drink it as it is.”
“It is hardly her fault, with Mrs. Younge—”
“You think it's our fault? Can’t expect a woman to resist both her companion and that deuced charming rogue. Eh? The stories I’ve heard about what he can do with his tongue and a woman — damnation. I’m annoyed with the girl. She ought to have known better.”
“She is like to have her whole life to settle the lesson in herself.” Darcy took a gulp of the warm coffee. Richard had had it prepared asheliked — with neither cream nor sugar, and very strong. It tasted as bitter as Georgiana’s fate was likely to be. He looked around at the table, but there was no milk or sugar set out.
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “You need a proper coffee to wake up before a cavalry chase — told the staff to only bring the coffee, and make it twice as strong. I’ve half a mind to kill Wickie and save Georgie from her fate. But like as not I won’t. Ha, ha, ha. His Lordship” — such was the way Richard habitually referred to his father — “and Batty Catty were both so angry atyourmarriage and the improvident connections they would tie us to. After this, I dare say, they’ll not often invite you Darcy cousins to Christmas at Matlock.”
Darcy groaned. “I have been such a fool!”
“Would not say that myself — I was the one who suggested Mrs. Younge. Damned fool I was, not thinking. I always liked her. Wanted to do a good turn for her, widowed now, you understand. I had more than a bit of calf love towards her back when I was fourteen or fifteen. I think it was that remnant of tenderness that made me not question her morals hard enough.”
“What!” Darcy sputtered.
“Summer of ‘96 — you remember how I spent the season at Pemberley, before I entered the army? And Miss Wickham, as she was then, was there visiting her uncle?”
“But she was so much older than us.”
Richard laughed. “I was fourteen, nearly fifteen — a great deal of difference betweenthatand yourtwelvesummers at the time. Believe me, at twenty she was a fine and buxom lass. She smiled at me once or twice, and as I said, I was a calf. Any case, whatever argument Wickham put to her, she should never have betrayed Georgiana for her cousin. Bad sort of person, and all. Eh. Drink the rest of the coffee, I’ve watched the grass grow at least an inch since I’ve been waiting down here for you. Saw Athena in the stables — ready to ride ahead with me?”
Darcy gulped back the coffee. No other choice. “Off then.”
He quickly rose, leaning his chest forward first to swing his weight forward onto the crutches, and then lifting his chest up and a bit backwards as he swung his hips and legs off the chair and under him.
Despite the hopelessness of the situation, Darcy felt a great deal of comfort at having Colonel Fitzwilliam riding next to him.
He pushed himself hard over the course of the day, riding far more than he had on any day since the illness. Bum sore, legs sore, arms and back sore, shoulders tired, hands tired, feet tired, everything tired by the end of the day.
Oddly he felt good.
Even though it was hopeless, he was doing all that he could do, and he could not expect more than that from himself. And action was a salve to a wounded spirit. Above all, he tried not to think about how he was supposed to have married today.
Over the course of the day they likely made up eight hours on the couple, and continued to hear of the travelers that matched their description of them on the road. But that was not enough.
Darcy knew it would take a miracle for them to catch Georgiana and Wickham before they made it all the way to Scotland, likely they would cross the border the next evening, while Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam would only reach Scotland around noon the following day.
Worse for Darcy was that the only sort of miracle he thought there was any prospect of actually occurring — a carriage accident causing sufficient injury to prevent them from simply continuing their journey by post — might be worse in its consequences than them reaching Scotland and marrying.
That night he fell asleep quickly, dreaming of what it would have been like had tonight been his wedding night. He imagined Elizabeth in his arms, slowly helping her to undress, the way he would kiss her, and whisper to her, and her naked body pressed against his, entangling with him.
And the next evening his miracle happened.
