“He’d be a laughing stock.A nitwitted object of scorn — think, Darcy, think.”General Fitzwilliam growled, “How will they speak of him in White’s?Already laughed at — already despised.Simply the whispers about the story.Everyone will make him an object of fun, for having been beaten to a pulp by a woman who he tried to force, and then they will sneer at him for trying to use the courts to rectify a private loss — nay, I tell you, it will hurt him.”
“That isn’t the point.I don’t give a damn about Lechery.I’ll challenge him one day, and then—”
“No!”Elizabeth felt a stab of anxiety, and a flash of seeing the two of them, with smoking pistols staring at each other across a green field on a foggy morning.“I do not wantyouto be injured, or to face the hangman like me.”
Darcy dismissively made a cutting gesture with his hand.“Juries never hang duelists.Much as the judges would wish them to, never happens.I voted to acquit once myself, at the Derbyshire assizes.None of us assembled for that trial demurred.”
Elizabeth took in a shallow breath.“I do not want to see anyone dueling.He would have a gun too, and… no, no, no.I could never bear it if you were shot.And he is a vicious man.He would try to kill you.”
Darcy had a mulish expression and that frightened Elizabeth.She knew that she could not keep him from making the attempt.Darcy said, “I would have made a challenge to him the instant I learned he still lived, if it would not have informed him of where you were hidden.But now—”
“Now I am lost, unable to return to our Green England, and I need you to protect me.”Elizabeth did notlikebeing dependent, but she was enough of a woman to use her weak position to her advantage.“You cannot return to England and leave me alone here and friendless.”
General Fitzwilliam said calmly, “In any case, Darcy, you forget that I have priority, he is my cousin, and I already challenged him to defend Miss Bennet’s honor.He did refuse to face me, like a coward — he might refuse you as well.Not a man who wants to fight with one of equal strength is my cousin.He prefers to fight women, and given the end of his most recent attempt along those lines, I suspect the coward may become too cautious to even do that.”
“Oh, you challenged him?”Elizabeth grinned at General Fitzwilliam, for some reason having vastly less anxiety forhimdying in her defense than Mr.Darcy.Probably because she loved Mr.Darcy, while she did not love General Fitzwilliam.And General Fitzwilliam had an air of being well capable of killing a man without feeling much remorse or hesitation.“What a hero.”
Confirmingthatsentiment, General Fitzwilliam replied, as he filled his coffee again, “My pleasure entirely.I must confess that I was more motivated by the hope to give my cousin a wound that would spout crimson than to make defense of your honor.Cousin Lechery annoys me.Always has.He’d intentionally wing birds when we went hunting as lads, just so they’d flitter to the ground in pain.He is family, and family ought take care of its own — both in good and in ill.”
“Hear, hear.”Major Williams raised his coffee mug, as though he were toasting with a glass of wine.“And Lachglass is no relation ofmine.”
“It would do no good for Elizabeth — Miss Bennet — to sound the story about,” Darcy said.“What we must do is…” He frowned and trailed off.
“Darcy.”Elizabeth put her hand briefly on his arm, so that he looked at her with his beautiful and startlingly deep eyes.It was rather hard to think about anything with the way her stomach twisted and jumped in delight with his eyes upon her.
“I just want,” he said, “I just want you to be safe and happy, and able to return to your family in England, and be in such a position that you need not depend on me, and then…”
Elizabeth nodded.He felt as if his honor would not let him ask her again to marry him while she had such reasons as gratitude and necessity to suggest she must say yes.
Silly man — didn’t he know by now that she was quite talented at refusing men in cases where her interest suggested she must accept them?
“Well,” General Fitzwilliam said.“There would be value in making a scandal of Lachglass — he is one of the junior ministers in the government.A reward for bringing his rotten boroughs with him — a damned disgusting thing how our parliament works.Thatoneman controls more of the government of our country through those MPs than all the people of Manchester.”
“I,” Darcy said, “would not be terribly enthused with giving the radicals amongst the workers in that cityanysay within the governance of our realm.Youfought the French.You saw the sequel.”
Elizabeth smiled.“May I suspect this is a matter of regular contention betwixt you, since you have determined to become a radical, General Fitzwilliam?”
“You have ample proof yourself, from your own life, for why the privileges of the aristocracy should be trimmed back,” General Fitzwilliam replied.
“The system of pocket borough’s appears quite reprehensible, but in truth it is simply another manner of ensuring the greatest landowners in the country — those who have the deepest interest in its long term wellbeing — have a proper say in her governance.”Darcy replied seriously, “Such is the way that our constitution has settled for us to be ruled, and so it has been for many centuries now.We have prospered under this way of law, and we have defeated France many times despite its greater size.The landed interest must not be able to ignore the mercantile interest of the city, but the power of the land should always be predominant.”
General Fitzwilliam laughed.“Spoken exactly as one would expect a man who himself controls a rotten borough to speak.”
Darcy rolled his eyes.“You now have the nonsense idea thateveryone,man of consequence or wandering vagabond, ought equally to have say in who is their MP.I would rather keep my head, and avoid the inevitable sequel of a tyrannical British ogre rising from the masses.”
“Nothing of that sort happened in our colonies — I insist, every man is a soul equal before God, and I think there is no necessity to believe the negative consequences you believe would follow from an extended franchise are necessary.”
“Wide suffrage hasalreadybeen put to the test.And then the French chopped the heads off all their betters—”
“Men such as Lord Lechery.”
“A few were such, but many were the most glittering flowers of civilization.”Darcy shook his head annoyedly.“In her bed, they grabbed Marie Antoinette from her bed, whilst in her bed clothes.A queen.And then they murdered her, in cold blood, whilst making the pretense it was justice.”
“Men such as you — and in general such as I — tend to have a rather narrow application of that sympathy Adam Smith argued was so vital.You have sympathy for the queen who is pulled from her bed.You can imagine those women who you love in such a case.But you have little sympathy for the vagabond who has no bed—”
“I do have sympathy for the poor, at least those willing to work; you know how willingly I pay my poor rates, and how I offer charity above that when needed for those round about Pemberley.”
“In any case,” General Fitzwilliam said, “I know what I’d be expected to do if there was revolution in England.Any attempt at that sort, and I’d be expected to murder every gathered weaver in Manchester, every ‘prentice boy in London, every washer woman who tried to shout for her rights.There was some justice in the fear Robespierre had of reaction.”
