“Oh, I hope Miss Elizabeth will not hate me for disrupting your wedding. That was even more wrong of me than anything else.”
“It was definitely themostwrong act,” Richard replied quickly.
Georgiana giggled. “Well it was not nice of me.”
Darcy frowned.
“Eh, out with it. You’ve looked more gloomy than happy every time you talk about this woman you are to marry,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “But you still sound as deep in love as anyone with cupid’s grapeshot to the heart.”
“Ah, well.” Darcy grimaced.
“Come, come. I’ve followed you over the better half of England. I now want to hear an interesting story. What is going on between you and this Elizabeth?”
“I was a fool, very much a fool. And I offended her, and we quarreled, and before we could fully settle matters I needed to set off to chase Georgiana.”
“You offended her?” Colonel Fitzwilliam said in a wholly unsurprised tone. “I’m fit to be a parson tied myself in shock.”
“No, I cannot believe that you would offend anyone,” Georgiana exclaimed. “You are the perfect brother.”
“Being the perfect brother,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said sagely to his cousin, “does not necessarily make him the perfectloverand husband. They lie mostly in different lines of professional conduct. Might I guess how you offended her?”
“No.”
“She asked you if a particular ribbon looked fetching on her or not, and you told her your honest assessment that it was not?”
Both Darcy and Georgiana laughed at that. “I’m notthatmuch of a fool. No — I am a worse sort of fool, in a more serious manner.”
“There is no more serious manner than providing the proper praise for a woman’s person.”
Darcy laughed with a sudden memory. “She has already forgiven me once for being such a fool. Ididinsult her beauty in her hearing before we had even met.”
“And she still agreed to marry you,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said with a great deal of surprise. “I thought you said she was sensible and spirited.”
“I apologized to her, at some length.”
“And that worked?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked skeptically. Then he added, “I hate to refer to it, as I know you do not like it to be spoken of. But it must be the infirmity in your legs. Apologizing would never work for me if I’d pricked a woman’s vanity.”
Darcy could not help but laugh, feeling better and more optimistic about how matters would go when he met Elizabeth than he had for days. “Being a cripple has its advantages — but as for the manner I offended her in, I treated her family with contempt as being beneath me, and I said I wished to avoid a connection with her aunt and uncle who are in trade. I say this, because I shall expect you both to behave with every politeness, kindness, and appearance of equality towards those dear to Elizabeth. Even if some of them may annoy you.”
“Another henpecked married man,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “Most wait until the final vows have been said to become so.”
“If happiness has such a cost, I am most willing to pay.”
Suddenly Georgiana exclaimed, “That is why you did not want me there at the wedding, not because I was deficient, but because you disliked her connections.”
Darcy flushed.
“Oh.” Georgiana then added, quietly, “I’d not marry someone who refused to let his sibling meet either of you.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Darcy said, “Hence why I must apologize to her, and beg her to forgive me.”
“Of course she will!” Georgiana cheered him on. “You after all are the finest gentleman in England. And you are apologizing and changing yourself to be kind to her. I would adore it if a man did that for me.”
Chapter Twenty One
Elizabeth lived in a sort of cheerless Christmas limbo.
No wedding. No adventurous journey to the north. No Darcy.
