“I am the fool still? It is unreasonable to expect my wife to simply trust my character more than Wickham’s?”
“What has reason ever to do with love?”
“Do not tell methatnonsense.”
“And the haste with which you made the marriage? Once the decision was made youweredesperate tofinallyrut with a woman? — that is to say Papa was right when he counseled you to keep a mistress.”
The thoughthadoccurred to Darcy that, if there had not been a part of his soul which was desperate for female company, he would have been better able to resist the delightful temptation that Elizabeth had offered to him.
“Living in an upright and honorable manner, in accordance with my conscience certainly was not a mistake.”
“Such a wait.” Colonel Fitzwilliam rolled his eye. “And was last night with your lovely wife all you hoped during your—”
“I will not entertain any questions onthatsubject. I beg you for the love we have for each other as cousins to not continue this line of conversation.”
“Fair, I apologize.” Colonel Fitzwilliam nodded. “I am teasing you, but that was not mannerly. Not good form.”
“Thank you.”
The two of them strolled down the lane.
“Did you get so drunk because you were upset that you couldn’t ask her to marry?” Colonel Fitzwilliam smirked at him in a way that showed that he was quite confident in hiscorrectjudgement of Darcy’s motivation.
“You are still teasing me,” Darcy replied.
“At last, you gave us cause to laugh at you over. Do not expect your fallibility to be quickly forgotten.”
Darcy groaned, but in an odd way he was pleased that it was his favorite cousin making sport of him, and not a stranger. He had himself on occasion made sport of Colonel Fitzwilliam, and turnabout was generally considered fair.
“In the end, I approve,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said in a wholly serious tone — which meant he was at most half serious — “You allowed your good judgement to be overcome, but it was inevitable that would someday happen after so many years of always allowing your too good judgment to win over your impulses. And I like Mrs. Darcy. This is more likely to lead to your happiness in the long view than any marriage that your judgement would have approved of.”
“I am a very good judge of character and behavior,” Darcy replied.
“You are not a good judge of what will make your own happiness.”
“I know my duty.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed again. “Your duty is now to your wife. I dare say she is not wholly happy with her situation.”
“How can she not be? She has married a man of ten thousand a year. ‘Good as a Lord’, ‘Good as a Lord.’ That is what her mother was screeching as she praised her clever, clever girl when they found us.”
“Do not tell that to myfather. He’d explain that you arenotas good as a lord. Or at least not as good as an earl. Maybe a viscount or a baron. He dislikes that Pemberley is a bigger and more profitable estate than Matlock, even though he is titled, and you are not.”
“You are missing the point. I was—”
“You admit it yourself. This was your choice. An impulsive choice that would not have been made if you had been sober, and which decided the whole fate of your future life, but still your own choice. I rather suspect it was good for you. You were always too focused on your duty… like a string pulled too tight, ready to snap — I tell you, Coz, I am serious. This has every hope of being the making of you.”
“I was already made,” Darcy replied testily.
“Then the making of your happiness.”
Darcy grunted.
For two blocks neither of them spoke. Darcy studied the bare branched trees around them, the cobblestoned streets, becoming busier and busier as they came closer to the pulsing heart of London, of the entire British Empire.
“I confess I am rather frightened of returning to Spain.” Colonel Fitzwilliam sighed and pushed his hair aside to show the otherwise hidden scar on his temple that he’d received the previous year. “So close. Makes a man aware.”
Darcy placed an arm on his cousin’s shoulder. “You could sell the commission.”
