“Oh, yes. He keeps a table in his study.”
Jane narrowed her eyes. “You… ahh… you did not trounce him, I hope.”
“Trounce Mr Darcy on his own chess board? A man who, by his admission, was captain of the chess team at… oh, dear, what was the name of his school? It started with a ‘C’… Billy would know.”
Jane leaned forward. “Do you mean he beat you?”
“It was a stalemate, but we have agreed to a rematch. And Jane, I shall never again point fun at Mr Darcy, no matter how he might frustrate me.”
Jane lifted a dubious brow. “What has he done to merit such special consideration from you?”
Elizabeth shrugged and turned her eyes to the window again. “He might seem sour and fearfully rigid, but that is only on the surface. I believe I began to see today the man Richard knows, and do you know, I think he was as afraid of me as I was of him.”
“Youwere afraid of Mr Darcy?” Jane gasped.
“Why should I not be? Have you looked at the man? He looks like a Greek god, he is rich as Croesus, and he is the one with the power over my circumstances at present. You know how badly I react when I am not in control, and how shouldIwork uponhim? He seemed unassailable, but now I have seen that his armour is really little more than for show. And so, since I know now that Icanwound him, I am determined not to. Jane, did you know that poor man has been father and mother to Miss Darcy for better than five years already?”
“‘Poor man?’ I doubt I would have called him that. What brought that up so suddenly?”
“I wonder how old he is,” Elizabeth continued, ignoring her sister. “Richard never said, but I always got the impression that Mr Darcy was much older, by the way Richard talked of him. However, now I think he might be younger.”
Jane opened her mouth in a helpless quest for some reply to her sister’s distracted rambling, but the maid knocked on the door. “Come in,” Elizabeth called out.
It was Margaret, who seemed to have been assigned as “their” maid. “Excuse me, Mrs Fitzwilliam and Miss Bennet. Mr Darcy asks if you will join his guest for dinner tomorrow evening. I have brought some gowns for you to try.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth blinked at Jane, a look filled with surprise. They had been expecting to remain in their room all the next day, avoiding Mr Darcy’s guest. “That is most kind of Mr Darcy. Please give him our thanks, but there is no need for new gowns. We have a few of our own.”
Margaret’s lip twitched. “I beg your pardon, Mrs Fitzwilliam, but Jenny is bringing the sewing basket. We will make any alterations necessary before tomorrow, and Miss Darcy asked us to try a particular style for your hair.”
Elizabeth glanced down at her attire, met Jane’s eyes, and humbly accepted the maid’s help.
“Fitzwilliamismarried?No!I do not believe it.”
Charles Bingley, Darcy’s oldest friend and one of the most trustworthy men of his acquaintance, had scarcely doffed his hat before Darcy took him aside for a private word in the study.
“It is a matter of some delicacy,” Darcy insisted. “I am telling you because it cannot be helped.”
“But you do not want me to spread word of the lady’s existence,” Bingley finished for him. “Do you think she is a fraud?”
“No.” Darcy stirred in his seat and avoided his friend’s gaze as he tried to justify the continued secrecy. “I freely admit I do not know all the facts, but no, I do not doubt her. That is not why we are keeping her presence concealed.”
“Then what is it? Is she a disgrace?”
“She is an American.”
Bingley’s brows shot up and he tapped his lips with his finger. “Well, what of that?” he decided. “Lady Matlock is also an American. Why should Fitzwilliam not follow in his brother’s footsteps and claim a fair creature from the States?”
Darcy nearly laughed but hid it by coughing as he rose from his chair. “You could not find two creatures less alike than Sheila Fitzwilliam, Lady Matlock, and this girl. She is not an heiress, Bingley. In fact, if my guess is correct, Richard was trying to rescue the lady from unfortunate circumstances.”
“And you knew nothing of her? No word at all until she turned up on Matlock’s doorstep?”
“Richard said something of her in his letters, but he never let on that he had married. And yes, she came with her sister and a cousin as an escort and sent a note to Lady Matlock—the Dowager, that is—that she desired to meet her. This was just the day after we had the telegram about Richard, and you can imagine how the family viewed that bit of impertinence. She did not mention her relationship to him when she called, only introducing herself as ‘the former Elizabeth Bennet, of whom Colonel Fitzwilliam had written.’ She was probably trying to be delicate, not knowing what the family knew of her, but it sounded to them like a fraud of some kind.
“After two such calls, I took it upon myself to dispatch the pretender—as I saw her—by disclosing the truth of Richard’s circumstances. I expected she would put on a sufficiently distraught act, beg for money to see her through until her next ‘protector’ could be secured, and that would be the end of it. I was not prepared for the reality.”
“Which was? Did she faint?”
“More or less. And the better I come to know the lady, the more fully I comprehend the sort of blow that must be required to render her senseless. I expect she has sustained rougher physical knocks than many men, and has no doubt seen more hardship. But the news of Richard’s disappearance seemed to quite undo her. I can only conclude that she genuinely cared for him.”
